ClairefromClare
Give 'em Helen!
True that about the peasant uprising, the reforms, and also the serious biography. Anyone who could lead Czarist Russia to constitutional monarchy had serious game. It just seemed to me that he was being somewhat marginalized by the time things were heating up in Eastern Europe. He was certainly arguing for pursuing the path of peace (my favorite, war cuts into your golf).
I'm no Russian scholar (I was an East Asia guy undergrad -- no preparation whatsoever for my current career as an IT consultant), but it seems like Russia has always had a serious older-brother complex for Serbia. Maybe it's the whole Slavic thing?
I figured it made more sense here.
Witte was something like 70 in 1905; he was checking out shortly thereafter.
Have you read anything by Frederic Morton? He has two books out on the Austro-Hungarian Empire--one at the time of Mayerling and one at the eve of WWI. They're fascinating.
I sorta was a Russian scholar. It would have been my minor, but for the language requirement. I was never able to get into the Russian mindset. It truly is different than western European.