Balkan roots of World War I: truth and fiction

Abstract

The article is devoted to a critical analysis of modern concepts of the Balkan roots of World War I from the point of view of their plausibility to the situation in the Balkans in 1913 and 1914. Special attention is paid to the state of affairs within the so called St. Pe- tersburg–Vienna–Belgrade triangular and Russia’s role in the settling of the Serbian- Albanian contradictions. The author comes to the conclusion that accusations posed against Serbia of her responsibility for the outbreak of World War I were groundless.