Russia
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Russia’
The Scottish department store near the Bolshoi Theatre inspired an affection that contrasted sharply with Westminster’s Russophobia.
Politics in Victorian Britain suffered badly from hysterical Russophobia, but between the peoples and merchants of the two nations there was a growing warmth. Nowhere was it more obvious than in the affection felt across the Russian Empire towards ‘Muirka’, the Scottish firm of Muir and Mirrielees.
When Lord Salisbury asked the Russian Minister of the Interior how many agents the Tsar had in India, the reply came as a shock.
Throughout the nineteenth century, London was afraid that the Russian Empire would invade India through Afghanistan. Russian reassurances fell on deaf ears, leading to war in Afghanistan in 1838-42 and again in 1878-80. Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, issued a press crackdown, and Russophobia in the home press spiked.
William Stead warned his fellow-journalists to take care that their bellicose rhetoric did not end in a real war with Russia.
After witnessing a Russian village burn to the ground because a boy played with matches in a barn, journalist William Stead (1849-1912) was moved to be severe on those other ‘boys with matches’ — the hawkish British press, whose incendiary words could spark the powder kegs of European politics.
Scotsman Samuel Greig so impressed his superiors at the Admiralty in London that he was sent as an adviser to the Russian Imperial Navy.
In 1698, Tsar Peter the Great visited England and gained such a healthy respect for the Royal Navy that in 1717 he brought Thomas Gordon, later Admiral Gordon, to St Petersburg. In 1763, when Empress Catherine wanted to accelerate the Imperial Navy’s growth, she too turned to London, and they sent her Samuel Greig.
While the besieged citizens of Novgorod huddled for protection in the city gaol, Archbishop John remained in his cathedral to pray.
After the death of his father Yuri Dolgoruky, Prince of Kiev, in 1157, Andrey Bogolubsky, Prince of Vladimir, Rostov and Suzdal, began to pursue his dream of ruling all Rus’. He drove Prince Mstislav II from Kiev in 1169, and in February 1170 a little matter of unpaid tribute gave him an excuse to besiege Mstislav’s son Roman in the historic city of Veliky Novgorod.
It is one of the world’s most recognisable works of art, and a symbol of God’s blessing on all Christian Rus’.
The Theotokos of Vladimir is an icon of Mary embracing her child Jesus, which came to Kiev from Constantinople in the 1130s. Not only has it become one of the world’s most recognisable works of sacred art, but on several occasions it has been credited with delivering the Christians of Rus’ from seemingly inevitable disaster.