Faced with these threats, in 1881 the Russian government stated in the prologue to its twenty-year naval construction programme that Russia 'must be able to challenge the enemy beyond the limits of Russian coastal waters both in the Baltic and Black seas'.[191] The financial implications of this decision to build major fleets in both seas to meet possible British or German challenges were daunting. Partly for that reason, in 1885 the twenty-year programme was somewhat reduced. Nevertheless by 1896, fourteen modern battleships and many other vessels were in service or nearing completion in the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Meanwhile the new 1895-1902 construction programme envisaged the building of still more units. The additional cost just of the ships designated for the Baltic fleet would be almost 149 million roubles. One gains some sense ofthe enormous pressure of military budgets on Russia's economic development when one compares this sum (devoted to just one fleet of Russia's junior military service) to the 33.6 million roubles which comprised the budget of the Russian Ministry of Education in 1900.
By 1896, however, a new threat and a new potential theatre of naval operations had emerged in the Pacific. In this period competition for empire was reaching its peak. Between 1876 and 1915 roughly one-quarter of the world's land surface was annexed by the European imperialist powers and the United States. The 'Scramble for Africa' was completed in 1899-1902 by the British conquest ofthe Boer republics. Meanwhile the centre of imperialist competition had moved to East Asia, where the Ching Empire's days seemed clearly numbered. In 1898 the Americans annexed the Philippines. In 1900 the Boxer rebellion threatened the Ching dynasty's survival and resulted in Great Power military intervention in China.
Russia had a long border with China and was a near neighbour too ofJapan, whose military and economic power was growing rapidly. Saint Petersburg neither could nor wished to stand outside imperialist competition in East Asia, on which the whole future global balance of power seemed likely to depend. However, by taking the lead first in 1895 in blocking Japanese annexation of Port Arthur and then three years later in taking the port herself, Russia made herself Japan's potential enemy. The large-scale Japanese 1895 naval programme, funded partly by the proceeds of victory over China in 1894, made clear the potential threat to Russian security. A conference summoned to consider this threat by Nicholas II noted that 'in comparison to 1881 circumstances in the Far East have changed radically and not at all in our favour'. The emperor himself correctly commented that 'our misfortune is that Russia has to build and maintain three independent fleets'.[192]
The main reason why this was the case was the enormous distances between the three theatres in which the Russian navy operated. In addition, however, until the Montreux agreement of 1936 warships had no right of passage through the Straits at Constantinople. The Black Sea fleet was therefore entirely isolated. When Russia wished to send ships even to the Mediterranean they had to come from the Baltic fleet. Russia's Pacific squadron was also made up of ships built in and despatched from the Baltic. Not merely was the voyage to the Far East very long but Russia had no bases between Libau and Port Arthur. This caused difficulties even in peacetime. In wartime, with neutral ports closed, it was a huge problem. Meanwhile the need to create a new infrastructure to sustain the Pacific fleet in Vladivostok and Port Arthur was extremely difficult and expensive, given their geographical remoteness from industrial centres and their dependence on the carrying capacity of the single-track Siberian and East-Chinese railways. Though finances were the main problem surrounding the creation of three independent fleets they were not, however, the only one. The types of ships suitable for war against Germany in the confined coastal waters of the Baltic were wholly unsuitable for long-distance raids against British commerce in the Atlantic or Pacific. A battleship squadron capable of contestingJapanese domination of the Yellow Sea had still other requirements.
The Russian government attempted to prioritise the East Asian theatre. In December 1897 it was decided to limit the Baltic fleet to a purely defensive role. Though the build-up of the Black Sea fleet was to continue, most of the available naval forces were to be concentrated in the Far East. For this purpose a new construction programme ('For the Requirements of the Far East') was agreed in 1898 in addition to the existing 1895 programme. It aimed to add a further five battleships and numerous smaller ships to the Pacific fleet by 1905.[193]
The new programme was very expensive. In total the navy was allocated 732 million roubles between 1895 and 1903. This was more than three times the Japanese naval budget and it also shifted the share of the navy in overall Russian military expenditure from 17 per cent in 1895 to 25 per cent in 1902.[194]
The Russian Ministry of Finance insisted that the new naval construction programme should be completed in 1905, although the rival Japanese programme was intended to reach fruition significantly earlier. Finance Minister Witte claimed both that it was impossible for Russia to afford such vast sums for shipbuilding in a shorter period and that the Japanese would never be able to finance the completion of their naval programme before 1908. The finance minister proved mistaken. The Japanese programme was completed by 1903.[195]Moreover, awareness that Japan possessed a window of opportunity before the completion of the Russian shipbuilding programme was a major incentive for the Japanese to go to war in 1904. Meanwhile, however, the Russian government was convinced that its build-up of naval forces in the Pacific had checkmated the Japanese. Its attention was returning to Europe and particularly to the Straits, where crisis loomed and the Ottoman regime's survival seemed ever more doubtful. In 1903 a vast new twenty-year naval construction programme was agreed for the Baltic and Black seas. Russia's unexpected involvement in war with Japan changed all these plans.
Within the Naval Ministry responsibility for the design, construction, operation and repair of ships lay with the Naval Technical Committee (MTK), whose basic job was to ensure that the fleet was fully up-to-date in technical terms. However, in the 1890s the committee was too understaffed to do its job properly, which caused much delay and many mismatched and unco-ordinated requirements for new ships. As regards the 1898 programme the MTK only defined requirements for the draught, speed, cruising range and armament of the new ships. This resulted in ships supposedly of the same class which were built in different factories having significantly different features, which complicated future operations.
The MTK in any case had no control over money: the realisation of all its plans depended on the release of funds by the so-called Chief Administration of Shipbuilding and Supply (GUKiC). Even department chiefs in the GUKiC had no engineering background and little grasp of shipbuilding, however. In the light of spiralling naval budgets, the GUKiC put much effort into enforcing economies in many aspects of naval life. Areas hardest hit included provision of effective modern shells instead of the existing poor explosives; adequate shooting practice; training at sea in order to practise squadron manoeuvres and bring ships and their companies up to a high state of readiness. These economies were a key cause of Russia's defeat in the war against Japan.
193
V Iu. Griboevskii, 'Rossiiskii flot Tikhogo okeana. Istoriia sozdaniia i gibeli 1898-1905',
pp. 17-19.
195
On Japanese preparations for the war, see D. C. Evans and M. R. Peattie,