Trubet︠s︡koĭ, Grigoriĭ N. (Grigoriĭ Nikolaevich), kni︠a︡zʹ, 1873-1930

Russian diplomat.

From the description of Grigoriĭ N. Trubet︢s︣koĭ papers, 1886-1989. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122645242

Biographical Note

Grigorii Nikolaevich Trubetskoi was born in 1873 to one of Russia's oldest noble families, a family which traces its princely title to the twelfth century Grand Prince of Lithuania Gediminas. Grigorii had nine sisters and was the youngest of four renowned brothers. The eldest, Piotr Nikolaevich, was Marshal of the Nobility in Moscow. Sergei Nikolaevich was the rector of Moscow University, a prominent philosopher, and a popular professor. His funeral spurred large student demonstrations and proved to be an important event in the 1905 revolution. Evgenii Nikolaevich was also one of Russia's leading philosophers, a professor at Moscow University, and the editor of Moskovskii ezhenedel'nik, an important liberal weekly journal that published broadly on foreign affairs and other topics from 1906 to 1911.

Grigorii studied in the department of history and philology and in 1896 he defended his master's thesis on Russian domestic situation on the eve of the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. He began his diplomatic career with a posting in Constantinople, where he served for nearly ten years. In 1901, he was promoted to the post of first secretary of the embassy in Constantinople. In 1906, Trubetskoi left his career to pursue publicistic and scholarly work, dedicating himself to work for "a free liberal Russia," and commenting extensively on Russian foreign policy. He contributed 53 articles to the liberal journal Moskovskii ezhenedel'nik between 1906 and 1911 and wrote an influential long article for the collection Velikaia Rossiia on the tasks of Russian diplomacy and its great power interests.*

In this period he was one of the leaders of a very important political orientation among the liberals that began to express opposition to the tsar not only on questions of political freedom and domestic political reform, but also by criticizing the tsar's foreign policy on nationalistic grounds. Trubetskoi's critiques of imperial foreign policy were a nuanced mix of his attraction to pan-Slav ideas and his realist views on the best ways to maintain a balance of power and avoid war. But on the whole, his influence probably made it more difficult for the tsar to compromise in the Balkans when Russian and Slav interests were threatened by Austria, and thus he may have--contrary to his intentions--contributed to one of the key causes of World War I.

In 1912 Trubetskoi returned to the foreign ministry. His close colleague and friend, Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, appointed him to head the Near Eastern Department of the Foreign Ministry, which was responsible for Balkan and Ottoman affairs. His influence on foreign policy during the following years was considerably greater than his title might suggest, in large part due to the deep respect of Sazonov for Trubetskoi's opinions and expertise.**

In June 1914, the Russian representative in Serbia, Hartwig, died unexpectedly, and Trubetskoi was immediately appointed as his replacement. Trubetskoi's position thus put him at the center of Russian diplomacy during the crucial period of the Russian entry into the war, and his memoirs of this period are an important source for the study of the outbreak of the war (see d. 56).

Allied negotiations in early 1915 led to plans to occupy Constantinople, envisioning future control to go to Russia. In secret, G. N. Trubetskoi was named the future Russian commissar of the city. In spring 1915, Trubetskoi accompanied the retreating Serbian army to Corfu. In 1916-1917 Trubetskoi served as head of the diplomatic chancery at the headquarters of the Russian Army. He continued his diplomatic career through the time of the Provisional Government, then continued similar work in the White movement from January 1919 in Kiev and Ekaterinodar as a member of the Special Conference (Osoboe soveshchanie) to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Southern Russia and as head of the Special Conference's religion department. He worked closely with the movement until forced to leave Russia through the Crimea on one of the last boats to leave prior to the Bolshevik conquest of the peninsula. He settled in the Paris suburb of Clamart, where he became a benefactor to the émigré community and continued political and scholarly activities, focused primarily on church matters.

In summer and fall of 1917, Trubetskoi became deeply involved in the politics of church reform as a delegate to the All-Russian Council of the Orthodox Church. He played an important role in the decision to restore the Moscow patriarchate. Files contain Trubetskoi's post-1917 correspondence with Patriarch Tikhon, drafts of his many articles in the émigré press about church politics, and other materials relating to the fate of the Orthodoxy within and outside the Soviet Union in the 1920s. He devoted much of his energy to a new diplomatic task: working to unify the church and to overcome the divisions among Orthodox in the world. As his correspondence with Catholic priest and writer Michel d'Herbigny suggests, he extended his diplomatic efforts toward unification beyond the Orthodox world to the Catholic church as well. In one of his late letters to d'Herbigny, Trubetskoi expressed his dream that the crises of Russian Orthodoxy and Europe as a whole might provide an opportunity for peace and universal regeneration.***

*For a full bibliography of his pre-World War I articles, see Sophie Schmitz, "Grigori N. Trubetzkoy: Politik und Völkerrecht, 1873-1930." Unpublished dissertation, University of Vienna, 1971. This dissertation is reproduced in full with the permission of Sophie Schmitz in the collection (see d. 103). (It is also available at the Austrian National Library and the juridical department of the Library of the University of Vienna).

**D.C.B. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (St. Martin's Press: New York, 1983), 91; see also the obituary by B. E. Nol'de in P. B. Struve, Pamiati Kn. Gr. N. Trubetskogo, Sbornik statei (Paris: E. Siial'skoi, 1930).

***For comments on the limits of Trubetskoi's tolerance and universality of values , see Oleg Budnitskii, "Russian Liberalism in War and Revolution," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5 , no. 1 (Winter 2004): 160.

From the guide to the Register of the Grigorii Nikolaevich Trubetskoi papers, 1886-1989, 1914-1929, (Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace)