Anglo-French-Russian Agreement of 1915

Anglo-French-Russian Agreement of 1915 

a secret agreement concerning the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, concluded during World War I, 1914–18. Under the conditions of this agreement, Great Britain and France agreed to the Russian Empire’s annexation, after victory over the German coalition, of Constantinople (Istanbul) and the straits, as well as the adjoining regions of European and Asiatic Turkey, which was an ally of Germany in World War I. The following documents were formulated: (1) a memorandum dated Mar. 4, 1915, from the Russian minister of foreign affairs, S. D. Sazonov, to the British ambassador in Petrograd, G. Buchanan, and the French ambassador, M. J. Paleologué; (2) a memorandum from Buchanan to Sazonov dated Mar. 12, 1915; (3) a memorandum from Sazonov to Buchanan dated Mar. 22, 1915; (4) a verbal note dated Apr. 10, 1915, from the French embassy in Petrograd to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The treaty satisfied the strivings of the British and French governments to bind Russia more closely to the entente; it was conditioned by Russia’s agreement to “bring the war to a victorious conclusion.” The agreement had no practical results for Russia. It was followed by an Anglo-French agreement on the partition of Asiatic Turkey, the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, to which Russia soon adhered.

PUBLICATIONS

Kliuchnikov, Iu. V., and A. V. Sabanin. Mezhdunarodnaia politika noveishego vremeni v dogovorakh, notakh i deklaratsiiakh, part 2. Moscow, 1926.
Konstantinopol’ i prolivy po sekretnym dokumentam byvshego Ministerstva inostrannykh del, vols. 1 and 2. Edited by E. A. Adamov. Moscow, 1925–26.
Razdel Aziatskoi Turtsii po sekretnym dokumentam byvshego Ministerstva inostrannykh del. Edited by E. A. Adamov. Moscow, 1924.

G. L. BONDAREVSKII