Санстефанският мир: зад кулисите на дипломацията
The Peace Treaty of San Stefano: Backstage Diplomacy

Summary/Abstract: At the very moment of its signature, the San Stefano Peace Treaty was defined by the Russian government as preliminary, i. e., as having no legal validity due to lack of international recognition. On the eve of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877/78, Russia had made secret pacts with Austria-Hungary and Great Britain; upon the conclusion of the war, the Russians knew that no peace treaty would get legal recognition unless it took into account the interests of the remaining Great Powers. Why then did Russia bother to sign a preliminary peace treaty if it were perfectly aware that any such treaty would inevitably be subject to further revision by virtue of the existing secret agreements? The analysis of the post-war manoeuvres conducted by the Russian diplomacy provides an answer to this question. Russia aimed at preserving, and strengthening, its influence in the Eastern as well as in the Western half of the Balkans. For this purpose, its diplomacy embarked on a course that was ambivalent in its nature: on one hand, Russia strove to secure recognition of its strengthened positions in the Balkans and achieved this through the publicity surrounding the signature of the San Stefano Peace Treaty; on the other, it went for this treaty's subsequent revision at the Congress of Berlin because of the binding nature of the pre-war secret agreements which the Russian government had made with other Great Powers.

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