ABSTRACT
As the Ottoman Empire in Europe disintegrated, leaving a number of small successor states, tension mounted between Russia and Austria-Hungary over their rival claims to influence in the area. The conduct of Russian foreign policy suffered from the structural defects of the regime which Stolypin had tried to rectify. An uneasy balance between reform and reaction was reflected in the Duma Statute and the Fundamental Laws issued in February and April 1906. Although Trotsky managed to convene a rival meeting in Vienna seven months later, it proved impossible to forge unity among the non-Bolshevik social democrats, a majority of whose delegations represented non-Russian social democratic organizations within the Empire. The mass of anachronistic Tsarist legislation, the tangle of red tape, the haughty attitude of officials, the impossibility of relying upon the law, the domination of the zemstvos by landowners, and the siphoning off of urban taxes to rural needs - all became more irksome as business opportunities expanded.
