Alexandr Izvolski
(Moscow, 1856-Paris, 1919) Russian politician and diplomat, main architect of the alliance between Russia and England in the years before the First World War.
Alexandr Izvolski
Educated at the Imperial Lyceum in Saint Petersburg, he soon held important diplomatic posts: he was Russian ambassador to the Vatican, Yugoslavia, Germany, Japan and Denmark.Between 1906 and 1910 he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs; after that he was appointed ambassador to France.
In 1907, Izvolski signed a pact that strengthened the alliance between France and England against Germany.Thanks to this pact, the British and the Russians divided Persia, which was divided into three zones of influence: a British, a Russian and a neutral zone between the two (Afghanistan was under the protection of Great Britain).This pact, together with the Franco-Russian alliance of 1890 and the Anglo-French agreement of 1904, formed the embryo of what would later become the Triple Entente.
In October 1908, Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed to Austria-Hungary after a meeting in which the Count of Arhental knew how to handle Izvolski; Arhental secretly suggested the use of the strategic enclaves of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus in exchange for said annexation.However, it was of little use to Russia.The representative of Austria-Hungary did not keep his word and, immediately after annexation, the central powers achieved a victory in the Balkans.This not only caused a crisis in the region, but also caused Austria to increase its importance at the expense of Russia, causing its ire and the discrediting of Izvolski.
When in 1910 he was appointed plenipotentiary minister in Paris for Tsar Nicholas II, Izvolski did everything in his power to further strengthen the Russian Alliance with the British and French, against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Germans.After the fall of the Romanov dynasty, after the Russian Revolution, he remained in Paris, the city where he died.
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