The Y. D. Romanovsky Memo Regarding His Attempt to Avert the Bulgarian-Serbian Conflict in the Spring of 1913

Abstract

The article introduces a memorandum, presumably written by a former Russian military agent in Bulgaria, Yuri (George) Dmitrievich Romanovsky in exile in 1943, into scientific circulation. In the spring of 1913, St. Petersburg realized that official Sofia and Belgrade could destroy the Balkan Alliance and start a war over the partition of Macedonia. The note in question covers Romanovsky’s attempt in April–May 1913 to offer the Russian emperor and the Foreign Minister a solution to the Bulgarian-Serbian conflict over Macedonia. He proposed concessions to Bulgaria in favor of Serbia with compensations in Thrace. According to the document, Bulgarian diplomacy positively welcomed this proposal, and only the intransigence of the Serbian Prime Minister N. Pasic and Russian Envoy to Belgrade N. G. Hartwig disrupted the peaceful settlement. The initiator of the note was the Bulgarian lawyer S. Balamezov, who claimed that when publishing diplomatic documents, the reports containing the described proposal were edited. On the basis of published and archival documents, the reliability of the information provided is analyzed, the texts of the published and original letters of the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry to the envoy in Sofia are compared, the correspondence of the Bulgarian representative in St. Petersburg with his superiors is considered. As a result, it becomes obvious that the conversations described in the note by Romanovsky in St. Petersburg could theoretically have taken place. However, there is no confirmation of the story about the readiness of both St. Petersburg and Sofia to agree to the exchange of Macedonian lands for Thracian ones, which raises the question of the purpose of the appearance of this document.

Acknowledgements
The research was carried out at the expense of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No 23-28-01062 “The Balkan Strife of 1912–1913 and Russian society”, https://rscf.ru/project/23-28-01062/.

Received: 08.11.2024.
Revised: 09.02.2025.
Accepted: 18.03.2025.

Citation
Gusev N. S. The Y. D. Romanovsky Memo Regarding His Attempt to Avert the Bulgarian-Serbian Conflict in the Spring of 1913 // Slavic Almanac. 2025. No 1–2. P. 47–64. DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2025.1-2.02