Count Vladimir Nikolayevich Lamsdorf (; ; ) was an Imperial Russian statesman of Baltic German descent who served as Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire in 1900–1906, a crucial period which included the Russo-Japanese War and the Russian Revolution of 1905. Early career Lamsdorf was the son of a career officer in the Imperial Russian Army and attended the Page Corps as a youth. As with many other Russian diplomats, he attended the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum in St. Petersburg and began his career as a government bureaucrat in 1866. At the Berlin Congress he was in the retinue of Prince Alexander Gorchakov, the Chancellor of the Russian Empire. In 1884 the young diplomat was present at the meeting of Alexander III of Russia, Wilhelm I of Prussia and Franz Josef of Austria in Skierniewice and Kroměříž. Gorchakov's successor, Nicholas de Giers, singled out Lamsdorf as his protégé and prospective successor. During the 1880s, he was a vocal supporter of the Three Emperors' League but shifted his views after Bismarck's resignation in 1890. In 1897 he was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. He played a major role at the First Hague Peace Conference of 1899. There was a fair degree of continuity in policies when he succeeded Mikhail Muraviev three years later in 1900. Foreign Minister Lamsdorf's main concerns revolved around the Eastern Question and the proposed administrative reform of the Ottoman Empire towards strengthening and protecting Russia's position in the Balkans. In late 1902 he personally visited Belgrade, Sofia and Vienna to discuss the Balkan impasse with Nikola Pašić, Hristo Tatarchev, Agenor Maria Gołuchowski, and their monarchs. In September 1903 he accompanied Tsar Nicholas II to Vienna and Mürzzuschlag. Lamsdorf was anxious to prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the face of Slavic nationalism and emphatically condemned the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising and other activities of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. He was also sympathetic to the Zionist cause, as promoted by Theodor Herzl. Lamsdorf did not share the Tsar's position that Russia was destined to rule East Asia, and cooperated with Finance Minister Sergey Witte and War Minister Aleksey Kuropatkin to curtail the influence of the Bezobrazov Circle over the Tsar. He proposed to relinquish Russia's commercial and industrial enterprises in Korea to obtain an agreement with Japan, in order to safeguard her interests in the Chinese Eastern Railway and avoid complications with Great Britain. However, he was steadily sidelined