The Imperial Russian General Staff and India: A Footnote to Diplomatic History

ONE of the constants of nineteenth century diplomacy was, every schoolboy knows, Anglo-Russian rivalry sharpening at times into hostility and undermined always by mutual distrust. The same all-knowing schoolboy is also aware that British fears of Russian aggression toward India were also a constant factor in the relations between the two major powers. The Afghan Wars were, of course, outgrowths or manifestations of this general situation. So were the fairly numerous scare articles which appeared recurrently in British periodicals and the more elaborate but equally sensational books such as The Russians at the Gates of Herat.l Scarcely less sensational were some of the diplomatic and consular despatches of the period. Sometimes the charges were sweeping-that the Imperial Russian government planned an invasion of India or at least of the borderlands of India. Variations upon this were claims either that such plans were being made by the Russian military behind the backs of the Russian diplomats or that certain individuals (e.g., Generals Kaufman and Skobelev) had more aggressive ambitions along these lines than did the government at St. Petersburg. Whatever the explanation offered, the main thesis was rarely challenged. There seems no doubt that belief in the Russian threat to India was one of the motivations of British policy toward Russia in the nineteenth century. The question here addressed is not, therefore, the sincerity or reality of the British opinion nor of its effects. But, rather, were