Nicholas Hartwig

Hartwig was born into a noble family of ethnic German descent in Gori, Georgia, noted also for being the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

He attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial University where his intelligence and ambition brought him to the notice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he began his diplomatic career in 1875, when he was attached to the Asiatic Department.

His views earned him the admiration of the Russian general staff, which thought similarly, and also won him high-placed friends at the court of Alexander II, which were to prove influential later in his career.

When Count Lamsdorff succeeded Mikhail Muraviev as Foreign Minister in June 1900, he promoted Hartwig to the position of Director of the Asiatic Department.

He was also instrumental in suppressing an attempted revolution to overthrow Mohammad Ali Shah, ordering the Russian-officered Cossack Brigade to surround the British legation and prevent anyone from gaining sanctuary there.

Unless given direct instructions by Sazonov to the contrary, Hartwig would frequently embellish or exaggerate the extent of Russian sympathy for Serbia in his communications to the Serbian government.

Hartwig backed the Serbian government's demands for a revision of the military agreement with Bulgaria, which were to include additional pieces of Macedonian territory.

Hartwig encouraged the resolution of the settlement through a direct meeting of the prime ministers of each of the four Balkan countries (Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro).

Suspicions about Bulgarian territorial aspirations in Macedonia had already driven Greece and Serbia closer together, and Montenegro had followed the Serbian line from the start.