Цусима — знамение конца русской истории. Скрываемые причины общеизвестных событий. Военно-историческое расследование. Том II
Шрифт:
Togo Kichitaro. The Naval Battles of the Russo-Japanese War. Tokyo, 1907.
Westwood J.N. Witnesses of Thushima. Tokyo, 1970.
Westwood J.N. Russia against Japan. A New Look at the Russo-Japanese War. L., 1986.
This treatise reviews the eastward progress of the Russian State, beginning with the Ermak March all the way to the Russo-Japanese, while in fact the Japanese-Russian, War, culminating in the Tsushima Battle which put an end to the March.
The main subject of this work is the Russian Navy and Russian seamen that played a great, if not the decisive, role in those turns of Russia's history. Their destinies, like the events of the rest of the world around the turn of the 19th century, may not look but as belonging to the bygone days to one living in this our tempestuous time. And probably they do. However, this War of the days of yore has produced an unfeigned interest in the author when he came across some material that for one reason or another had escaped attention of the learned researchers who devoted their attention to the War, and the Tsushima Battle in particular.
Already under the Czar, the plan of the navy officers was to assign secrecy to those documents, some under the threat of criminal persecution, for the period of at least a quarter of a century. The year 1937 could have become the possible declassifying date. The special secrecy of the documents was the reason why they had been issued in a very limited number of copies; some did not see light before the Bolshevist Revolution. The revolutionary turmoil and the shaking events that followed in the Russian State in and after 1917 prevented these documents from receiving the attention they deserved even after they were removed from the secrecy list.
This fully applies to the portfolio of documents related with the Russia's seizure of Port Arthur and the Quantung (now Liaotung) Peninsular. Only the fact that they had been totally out of the scope of historians' interest can explain why, quite paradoxically, those “acquisitions” have been considered a success of the Czar's diplomacy right to this day by all researchers, even the patriotically-minded ones.
However, even a cursory glance at these documents sheds a very different light on this historical period. In actuality it presents itself as one of the gravest failures of the Russian Foreign Ministry, bordering on a high treason case. Rather than the much talked about concessions at the Yalu River, it was the Quantung events of 1897–1898 that conditioned the tensity of the situation in the Far East, that stipulated and facilitated the preparation, by certain forces, of the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War.
With the purpose of determining the natural role these events played in the context of Russia's multi-centennial advancement towards the shores of the Pacific Ocean, the treatise contains a brief overview of the historical background, beginning with the annexation of the Czardom of Siberia as a result of the Ermak's March. As we worked on it we found that there were unexpected omissions in the traditional accounts of our eastward progress to Amur, and further on to the transoceanic Siberia — the Russian America. This prompted the author to call the first part of the Trilogy, The Wind from the East, or The long Way to Port Arthur.
The second book deals with the numerous “oddities” related with Russia's preparation for the clearly anticipated military conflict in the Far East, traditionally attributed to the imperfection and lack of resourcefulness of the state controlling mechanism in the Russian Empire. When viewed systematically, all the steps taken by Russia in preparation for the war do instead form a cohesive stream of ventures, not subject to any arbitrariness or lapses. All those 'oddities' will rather present themselves as a series of energetic, well-planned and well-organized acts that led to the notoriously unfavorable conditions for Russia's involvement in the future conflict.
Book II also considers the very peculiar command of the Russian Manchuria Army, also traditionally explained away by the “lack of talent” in Russian military commanders. The documents and witness accounts presented in the book rather cause one to conclude that he commandment was indeed brilliant. The big question however is s whose interests were actually pursued?
For especially serious and politically correct persons may we note that the title of the second book in no way refers to any territorial claims, nor indeed to any other claims that Russia may have to China, but rather has the exclusively metahistorical meaning.
At the center of the Author's attention in this treatise was the Tsushima Battle, which is the subject of the third part of the Trilogy, in conjunction with the contemporary local and world-wide historical events. During this relatively short period, the forces that would normally prefer to stay back in the shade, had manifested themselves in full measure.
What did actually happen in the Tsushima Strait on May 14,1905?
In finding this out the author, who was investigating the circumstances of the Battle itself and the preceding events, was helped a lot by the witness accounts by those participants whom the author calls trustworthy.
This approach proved to be very productive. As a result, a practical criterion was developed for the assessment of the trustworthiness of the participants9 accounts and vision of the historical events, which the author has called the Tsushima Criterion. The Tsushima Criterion may well be used as a practicable instrument for investigating any historical situations, especially of extreme nature.
It should be noted from the outset that Tsushima was treated not only as one military action of the Russo-Japanese War, important as it was, but as a salient geopolitical factor in the history of both Russia and the world at large, or metaphorically, its bifurcation point.
The author therefore saw as his most important task to clarify the circumstances of the preparation, long and meticulous, for the action, and pointing out some other factors that determined both the progress and the results of the Battle. It was not the author's special concern to break fresh ground, yet he was able to unearth something in the peripetiea of the battle that had to date been “the best kept secret”.
As an example, obviously the most unexpected, if not perhaps the most crucial, result of the entire work was the conclusion that the Tsushima Battle, or in any case its preliminary operation s the first offensive by the Russian squadron s was a doubtless tactical success, a victory of the Russian naval martial art. The whole of Tsushima, in any case its first day, was a victory of the Russian martial spirit, not abated by any material factors.
The first to recognize this were the Japanese admirals who went to any lengths to distort the truth about the first stages of the Battle in their reports and schemes, despite the fact that their material success during the daytime action of May 14, s the annihilation of the majority of the best battleships of the 2nd Squadron, s was really impressive.
Only in the light of this factual truth, concealed from the world right to this day, can we get an understanding of why the Minister of Navy of the victorious Japan, the Admiral-Baron Yamamoto Gombay, already after the Tsushima, undertook frenzied efforts to persuade his Government to “agree to concessions for the sake of peace”1{555}, which he did in concord with the Minister of War, the Minister of Economy as well as the commanding officers of the victorious Japanese Manchurian Army.