Misreading Russia
Richard Cobden asked Parliament to make a better effort to understand the Russian mindset.
1856
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Richard Cobden asked Parliament to make a better effort to understand the Russian mindset.
1856
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Back in 1801, Napoleon almost persuaded Tsar Paul I to invade India. Further lobbying fell on deaf ears but many in London still believed Russia was poised to invade India, and even Western Europe. After pre-emptive wars in Afghanistan (1838-42) and the Crimea (1853-56), Richard Cobden urged Westminster to get to know Russia better.
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.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.