Summary/Abstract: Behind the back of the Serbian Colonel D. Dimitrijević, which organized the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was the Russian General Staff. This is one of the versions of the Sarajevo assassination, which followed the Soviet historians in particular M. Pokrovsky and N. Poletika. But what could be the motive of St. Petersburg? The answer to this question lies in the situation around the Black Sea straits. Вuring 1914, Russia could permanently lose naval superiority in this region, and thus – the possibility to conduct an amphibious operation in the Straits in the foreseeable future – оperations to which the russian Black sea fleet was preparing since 1880’s. The reason was that by the end of 1914 the Turkish fleet had to get a battleships “Reshad” and “Sultan Osman I”, built in England. Another reason was that after the „case Liman von Sanders“ in the Straits has increased dramatically influence of Germany.
