The State Duma on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Cobden was of the opinion that the Tsars had no interest in annexing India or Western Europe, and suspected that London’s fears arose from the dislike of an economic rival, and from ignorance of Russia itself, imagining it was an ice-bound and uncivilised land whose huddled masses simply could not wait to escape.
THIS people, whom Western Europe regards with terror as a horde of imprisoned barbarians, dissatisfied with their fate, and eager to escape from their rigorous climate and ungrateful soil, to pour the tide of conquest over more favoured and civilized regions, are, beyond any others, proud of their own country: they love its winter as well as summer life, and would not willingly exchange it for any other land.
There is no greater delusion in the world than that which attributes to the Russian people a desire to overrun and occupy, in the spirit of the ancient Goths and Huns, any part of Western Europe. With the exception of the disposition to encroach upon neighbouring Mahometan countries,* the people feel no interest in foreign politics, and the intervention of the government in the affairs of Europe excites no sympathy in Russia.*
Neighbouring countries including the Roman (‘Byzantine’) Empire, Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania came under Turkish domination after The Fall of Constantinople in 1453. The Russians, who had been evangelised by emissaries from Constantinople themselves, felt a strong affinity with these countries and were keen to help them shake off the irksome government of the Ottoman Empire. See also The Conversion of Vladimir the Great.
* The Communist era of 1917-90 saw expansion into Eastern Europe, but that came courtesy of a political ideology exported to Russia from the German Empire, and was something quite alien to Imperial Russia. See Germany’s Secret Weapon.
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