RUSIJA I SARAJEVSKI ATENTAT: IZAZOVI I ISKUŠENJA JULSKE KRIZE 1914.
RUSSIA AND THE SARAJEVO ASSASSINATION: CHALLENGES AND TEMPTATIONS OF THE JULY CRISIS OF 1914

Summary/Abstract: The assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir presumptive Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 – „probably the most fateful day of the 20th century” – the casus belli for the outbreak of World War I, despite extensive international research and numerous works containing various professional, ideological, and political dimensions, is accompanied by uninterrupted historiographical controversies, re-examinations, dilemmas, and unknowns related to the detailed, complex political background of that assassination, the scope of secret intelligence networks, and the roles of a whole series of calculated actors in the events that soon followed. The assassination was „full of fateful, astonishing coincidences and illogicalities that it simply had to succeed.” In Russian historiography, various interpretations, polemics, and divided views have long been present regarding the share and involvement of some military-political circles of tsarist Russia in the preliminary actions and events, in a broader context, that led to the assassination in Sarajevo. Contradictory positions are noticeable regarding the multilayered role of Russian military representatives in Belgrade and the degree of their personal and institutional connection with Serbian military structures that are directly linked to the organization of that dramatic act. Diplomacy is „the servant of statesmanship, ”especially of great powers. It is an important component of state power, a carefully planned and skillful activity, a means of implementing foreign policy. The first official Russian political assessments, after the assassination, as throughout Europe, were that it, despite accompanying interstate and non-transparent diplomatic disputes and upheavals, would not jeopardize peace on the „old continent.” However, the outbreak and unpredictable course of the confusing July Crisis („multilateral interaction”) thereafter, of which Russia itself was an active protagonist, guided like others by risky self-interests with a growing presence in the Balkans, although insufficiently militarily prepared, influenced the abandonment of the earlier pacifist course, an increase in insecurity and mistrust in inter-bloc relations, the unacceptability of compromise, and threatening tensions among militarized, arrogant great powers, which ultimately led to war. The mood for it, with assessments that the „right moment” had come, existed on all sides. Discussions about that tense time often mix morality and the responsibility of states/governments. Many historians necessarily and meaningfully distinguish between morality and responsibility. History knows many situations in which parts of certain state security bodies act outside official politics and legal institutions to cause great upheavals and breakdowns. Seemingly insignificant pretexts and causes can also, numerous experiences show, have devastating consequences, but only when great powers intervene. The long-standing, sensitive question of all pretexts and long-term causes, as well as responsibility for the beginning of the Great War, bearing in mind all the devastating consequences of that global conflict, remains open in historiography, regardless of the vast literature, different methodological approaches, and angles of observation, and still demands fuller, multi-perspective answers in its totality („the long road to Sarajevo”). The changed reality has actualized new historical perspectives, numerous new questions and topics in analyzing that part of the past, which some have identified as further „broadening the historical horizon, and others as manipulative political revisions.” History, as Margaret MacMillan warns, is a series of questions and it is necessary to discuss them. One, unison view of what happened then is not enough; a multi-layered narrative is needed.

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