Sergey Sazonov

Sergei Dmitrievich Sazonov GCB (Russian: Сергей Дмитриевич Сазонов, 10 August 1860, Ryazan Governorate  – 25 December 1927) was a Russian statesman who served as Foreign Minister from November 1910 to July 1916. The degree of his involvement in the events leading up to the outbreak of World War I is a matter of keen debate, with some historians putting the blame for an early and provocative mobilization squarely on Sazonov's shoulders, and others maintaining that his chief preoccupation was "to reduce the temperature of international relations, especially in the Balkans".

Of lesser noble background, Sazonov was the brother-in-law of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, who did his best to further Sazonov's career. Having graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, Sazonov served in the London embassy, and the diplomatic mission to the Vatican, of which he became the chief in March 1906. On 26 June 1909 Sazonov was recalled to St. Petersburg and appointed Assistant Foreign Minister. Before long he replaced Alexander Izvolsky as Foreign Minister and followed a policy along the lines laid down by Stolypin.

Just before he was officially appointed foreign minister, Sazonov attended a meeting between Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany in Potsdam on 4–6 November 1910. This move was intended to chastise the British for their perceived betrayal of Russia's interests during the Bosnian crisis. Indeed, Britain's Foreign Secretary was seriously alarmed by this token of a "German-Russian Détente".

The two monarchs discussed the ambitious German project of the Baghdad Railway, widely expected to give Berlin considerable geopolitical clout in the Fertile Crescent. Against the background of the Persian Constitutional Revolution, Russia was anxious to control the prospective Khanaqin-Tehran branch of the railway. The two powers settled their differences in the Potsdam Agreement, signed on 19 August 1911 and giving Russia a free hand in Northern Iran. As Sazonov hoped, the first railway connecting Persia to Europe would provide Russia with a lever of influence over its southern neighbour.

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