The Japanese had also settled down to a long siege of Port Arthur after several very costly general assaults on it had failed. The garrison's military leadership proved divided, however, and on Jan. 2, 1905, in a gross act of incompetence and corruption, Port Arthur's Russian commander surrendered the port to the Japanese without consulting his officers and with three months' provisions and adequate supplies of ammunition still in the fortress.
The final battle of the land war was fought at Mukden in late February and early March 1905, between Russian forces totaling 330,000 men and Japanese totaling 270,000. After long and stubborn fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, the Russian commander, General A.N. Kuropatkin, broke off the fighting and withdrew his forces northward from Mukden, which fell into the hands of the Japanese. Losses in this battle were exceptionally heavy, with approximately 89,000 Russian and 71,000 Japanese casualties.
The naval Battle of Tsushima (Tsushima, Battle of) finally gave the Japanese the upper hand in the conflict. The Japanese had been unable to secure the complete command of the sea on which their land campaign depended, and the Russian squadrons at Port Arthur and Vladivostok had remained moderately active. But on May 27–29, 1905, in a battle in the Tsushima Strait, Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō's (Tōgō Heihachirō) main Japanese fleet destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet, which, commanded by Admiral Z.P. Rozhestvensky, had sailed in October 1904 all the way from the Baltic port of Liepāja to relieve the forces at Port Arthur and at the time of the battle was trying to reach Vladivostok. (See Tsushima, Battle of.) Japan was by this time financially exhausted, but its decisive naval victory at Tsushima, together with increasing internal political unrest throughout Russia, where the war had never been popular, brought the Russian government to the peace table.
President Theodore Roosevelt (Roosevelt, Theodore) of the United States served as mediator at the peace conference, which was held at Portsmouth, N.H., U.S. (Aug. 9–Sept. 5, 1905). In the resulting Treaty of Portsmouth (Portsmouth, Treaty of), Japan gained control of the Liaotung Peninsula (and Port Arthur) and the South Manchurian railroad (which led to Port Arthur), as well as half of Sakhalin Island. Russia agreed to evacuate southern Manchuria, which was restored to China, and Japan's control of Korea was recognized. Within two months of the treaty's signing, a revolution compelled the Russian tsar Nicholas II to issue the October Manifesto, which was the equivalent of a constitutional charter.
Witte, Sergey Yulyevich, Graf
▪ prime minister of Russia
Introduction
(Count)
born June 29 [June 17, old style], 1849, Tiflis, Georgia, Russian Empire
died March 13 [Feb. 28, O.S.], 1915, Petrograd
Russian minister of finance (1892–1903) and first constitutional prime minister of the Russian Empire (1905–06), who sought to wed firm authoritarian rule to modernization along Western lines.
Life.
Witte's father, of Dutch ancestry, directed the agricultural department in the office of the governor general of the Caucasus. His mother came from a high-ranking family of the Russian nobility engaged in state service. Witte's childhood in the Caucasus was a happy one. Following his successful career as a student of mathematics at the Novorossiysky University (now Odessa State University) at Odessa, Witte thought of entering on an academic career. But he followed the advice of a family friend, the minister of communications, and entered the railway administration. It was the beginning of a career that brought Witte to the heart of imperial politics and finance. After a period in the chancellery of the governor general of Odessa and Bessarabia (1871–74), Witte studied railway administration in the Odessa Railway at the Odessa office of the Ministry of Communications. He led a disciplined, orderly life, imposed partly by family poverty and partly by an urge to succeed. By the time of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) he had already risen to a position in which he controlled all the traffic passing to the front along the lines of the Odessa Railway. At one critical point he devised a novel system of double-shift working to overcome delays on the line.
Witte showed his freedom from bureaucratic prejudice by appointing men of all nationalities—Jews, Poles, Ukrainians—as his subordinates and by cultivating favourable press relations. His economic acumen was shown in his collection and use of railway statistics and in the implementation of an effective freight tariff whereby he lowered freight rates and increased revenue.
In 1889 Witte was invited to establish a railway department in the Ministry of Finance. He advanced rapidly and became in quick succession minister of communications (February 1892) and minister of finance (August 1892). Far-reaching plans for the economic development of the Russian Empire formed the kernel of Witte's policy. He aimed at “removing the unfavourable conditions which hamper the economic development of the country and at kindling a healthy spirit of enterprise” (Witte's first budget to the Emperor, 1893). Using the full power of the state, Witte unfolded a vast range of activity: a remodelled State Bank made ready capital available to industry; Russian steamship companies and nautical and engineering schools were established; savings banks were encouraged; company law was reformed; and the ruble was made convertible. Witte was also instrumental in raising large loans from investors in France, Britain, Belgium, and Germany to finance Russian industrialization.
He deployed his greatest energy in stimulating railway building, particularly the Trans-Siberian line (actually begun in 1891). He saw it not only as a means to bring urban progress to the countryside but also as an economic stimulus in itself, as a link between European and Asiatic Russia, and as a way of making Russia the chief intermediary between western Europe and the Far East. For almost a decade the “Witte system” enjoyed considerable success, but at the turn of the century international uncertainty (the South African [Boer] War, the Spanish–American War, and the Boxer Rebellion in China) reduced the flow of foreign loans to Russia, and strikes and peasant unrest in Russia revealed that the mass of the population would no longer tolerate the reduced living standards that Witte's policy entailed. Moreover, influential agricultural interests, always hostile to Witte's all-out support for industrialization, made their opposition manifest at court. His relationship with Emperor Nicholas II, who feared this dynamic man, was also unhappy. In August 1903 Witte was removed from the Ministry of Finance and appointed to the largely decorative position of chairman of the Committee of Ministers.
He had to look on in impotence as the government blundered into war with Japan. But he was to render highly important services to the empire in 1905 and 1906. In July 1905 he was appointed chief Russian plenipotentiary to conduct peace negotiations with Japan. He obtained unexpectedly favourable terms for Russia, but his achievement did not make him any more popular.
At a political level, Witte, though he detested constitutionalism in any form, used his influence to persuade the Tsar to issue the “October Manifesto” of 1905, which promised to grant a measure of representative government. No less important was Witte's role as prime minister in the new system of government, in organizing the repression of all the forces of disruption in the autumn and winter of 1905–06—e.g., the St. Petersburg Soviet, or workers' council, the troop mutinies in the Far East, strikes in South Russia, and peasant uprisings in the Baltic provinces.