We watched the BBC's "
37 Days" recently about the lead up to the conflict, following the assassination - one of the best TV or film dramatisations I've seen for a long time (though I was slightly distracted throughout as
Emperor Palpitine seems to have been British Foreign Secretary at the time).
Yuri
That's not the worst thing Grey's been accused of...
An excellent mini-series.
Indeed they are.
Interestingly there was also a recreation of the event, staged by some Bosnian Serbs, although it doesn't sound quite like those recreations that are performed by hobbyists who like dressing up:
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-bosnia-serbs-princip-ww1-20140627-story.html
Oh, good grief. Should we expect a replay of the assassination?
Possibly not in technology used, but every year the war was delayed would have been another couple of thousand km of rail network in Russia, and another few percent of increased industrial output.
Germany was already operating on fairly narrow margins in 1914 as it was. It's one of the reasons the army was all for it then.
Yes, though I've got doubts about Russia's ability to actually keep up their economic growth, given the internal instability. For example labour unrest in the 1912-14 period was growing fairly steadily, and the Tsarist response was generally more repression. For example the Lena goldfield strike (1912) which ended in a massacre of >230.
This was not the sort of climate that encouraged foreign investment. In fact the instability it was one of the factors in the 1912 decision of the Rothschilds sell out their interests in Russian oil to Royal Dutch Shell.
While the military began their planned effort to extend the railway system in western Russia in August 1912 (supposedly to be complete by 1917), little was actually accomplished before the beginning of the war. Likewise the 'Great Programme' was passed in June 1914, but the prospect of it actually being carried through without the outbreal of war was slight.
In fact without the war reactionaries like Maklakov (appointed Interior Minister in late 1912) might have succeeded in their attempt to persuade the Tsar to overthrow the Duma. The dismissal in February 1914 of the highly capable Prime Minister Kokovtsov didn't help; he was replaced by the frankly inept Goremykin who failed to manage the reactionaries like Maklakov and the Agriculture Minister, Krivoshein.
Then the Ukranians became restive in March 1914 when the centennial celebration of the poet Shevchenko was banned, while in May the expuslion of Socialist deputies from the Duma triggered a series of strikes; 50,000 workers struck in St. Petersburg alone.
In July there was a series of violent strikes, and even more violent suppressions of them, starting at the Baku oilfields.
Then there's the effect of the apocalyptic movement, which had caught hold amongst the peasantry; in the Spring of 1912 persistent rumors began to circulate, initially in Novgorod but spreading rapidly, that the anti-Christ had been born and the world is about to end. This was exacerbated by other factors, such as the serialisation of Belyi’s apocalyptic novel 'Petersburg' in 1913. And of course the stories about Rasputin...
It's entirely possible that without the events of July/August 1914 the Russian Empire, rather than modernising, might have collapsed under the strain of it's own inept leadership and internal strife..
Slightly OT but I'm currently researching an alternate war starting in 1904 as an Anglo-Russian naval war over the Dogger Bank Incident. A fascinating period.
