Abroad will help us. This textbook Bender's dictum may well claim to be considered one of our main national ideas.
Foreigners have always been loved in Russia; Ever since those time immemorial, when the Vikings Rurik, Truvor and Sineus came to rule Russia. On this score, however, there is no consensus among historians - the devil only knows, maybe there weren't really any Varangians - nevertheless, the very existence of such a popular version speaks for itself.
("The Slavs," writes Karamzin, "are voluntarily destroying their ancient popular rule and demanding sovereigns from the Vikings, who were their enemies.")
If you think about it, it is difficult to imagine more self-deprecation. It means that the Slavs were all fools and simpletons, and they could not rule their country; they definitely needed kind foreign uncles who would come and immediately establish a happy, new life.
After all, the Germans are tough, They know darkness and light, Our land is rich, There is just no order in it.
Promotional video:
In my opinion, this is the only case in world practice when a nation, without hesitation, is forced to sign its own helplessness and worthlessness, because, following the "Varangian" version, if there were no Varangians, there would be no Russia.
The trouble with our Westernizers and liberals is that they do not know at all and do not even want to know Russian history and, therefore, draw appropriate conclusions from it. Because it is enough just to flip through the same Karamzin or Klyuchevsky to see: from time immemorial any foreign aid came out sideways for Russia. Fear the Danes who bring gifts …
For example, in the XIII century there was such a prince: Daniil Galitsky. Unable to repel the onslaught of the Tatar-Mongols, he, too, naively, decided to seek support in the West, for which he tearfully rushed to beg Pope Innocent IV to protect Russia from the Basurman. For some reason, Daniel sincerely believed that the pope would certainly send troops of crusaders to help him and by joint efforts they would be able to stop the Horde.
However, Innocent IV - he was still a fox - only nodded in agreement, but did nothing. First of all, he demanded that the prince convert to Catholicism, but then, they say, we will agree on everything.
In the end, everything ended rather sadly: the naive Daniel Galitsky took the papal crown in Drogichin, converting his lands to the new faith. But no help was received in return. Except only that Galich and South-West Russia instead of the Tatar-Mongols were captured by Poland and Lithuania; it is not known, by the way, which is better - either on the forehead, or on the forehead …
Centuries passed. Borders, names and outlines of states changed. But the admiration and admiration for the kind foreign uncle remained unchanged as before.
First there was Peter I with his eternal draft from the cut window to Europe. (It is largely due to his efforts that the former, pre-Petrine Rus' was widely regarded as a stronghold of obscurantism and darkness, although even in the most dashing, bloody years of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the oprichnina took much less lives than the Holy Inquisition in enlightened Europe.)
Then his grandson Peter III ascended the throne, openly admiring the German order and taking the Holstein princess as his wife, who quickly threw off the possessed hubby and sat on the throne herself, having managed to give birth to another devout Germanophile - Pavel Petrovich, who imagined that “unwashed Russia »Will save only the blind copying of the Prussian drill. (Once, being late for the watch parade, he ordered his own watch to be sent to the guardhouse.)
As you know, at the instigation of the heir to the throne, Alexander, they strangled him with a scarf right in their chambers. This one (not a scarf, clearly, but Alexander) was already an obvious Anglomaniac; so obvious that, according to a number of historians, the palace coup was organized with the active assistance of the English envoy in St. Petersburg Whitworth.
It must be said that just by the beginning of the 19th century, the British, who considered themselves masters of the world, were seriously concerned about the rapprochement between Russia and France. The emergence of a powerful new force in the international arena did not at all correspond to British interests.
As soon as Paul I moved the forelock Don Cossacks on a campaign against India - together with Napoleon's units, instantly - and not two months had passed - he fell asleep forever in a dead sleep, wrapped in a scarf.
The first thing that Alexander began his reign with was that he brought the Cossacks back and broke their former friendship with Paris. Meanwhile, on the sly, India was quietly seized by the British crown.
As long as the Russians were at enmity with the French, the British could feel quite calm; but after Napoleon's downfall, the British had to once again resort to the world-old tactics of international pitting. They organize a series of Polish uprisings, and then drag Russia into the Crimean War.
When Nicholas I introduced the army to Moldavia and Wallachia, he did not even imagine that he would have to fight not with weak Turkey, but back - with Britain and France. At the congress convened in Vienna, the European powers pompously announced that they would not allow the unfortunate Turks to offend. And although Russia was ready to submit to the conditions of this congress - despite their deliberate humiliation - Turkey, at the instigation of the British and French, deliberately led matters to war with St. Petersburg; which she announced in 1853. Of course, London and Paris immediately came to her aid and with joint efforts defeated Russia, depriving us of the Black Sea Fleet, Southern Bessarabia and our former international prestige.
The largest Russian historian Yevgeny Tarle wrote about this:
“Both Western powers had in mind to defend Turkey (and, moreover, they supported its revanchist dreams) solely in order to reward themselves with the utmost generosity (at Turkish expense) for this service and, above all, to prevent Russia from entering the Mediterranean Sea, to participate in the future division of booty. and approaching the South Asian limits …
Both Palmerston and Napoleon III looked at it as a happy, unique opportunity to oppose a common enemy together. "Do not let Russia out of the war"; to fight with all his might against any belated attempts by the Russian government - when it has already realized the danger of the business it has begun - to abandon its original plans; without fail to continue the war, expanding its geographic theater - that is what has become the slogan of the Western coalition. And just then, when the Russians left Moldova and Wallachia and there could be no talk of a threat to the existence or integrity of Turkey, the allies attacked Odessa, Sevastopol, Sveaborg and Kronstadt, Kola, Solovki, Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka, and the Turks invaded to Georgia.
The British cabinet has already built and elaborated in detail plans for the secession of Crimea, Bessarabia, the Caucasus, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Courland, Livonia from Russia."
Incidentally, the Turkish card was played by England every time, as soon as Russia tried to raise its head again. While the Turks rampaged in the Balkans and uniformly drowned Bulgarians and Bosnians in blood, demonstratively ignoring international agreements, Europe for some reason did not care at all. But as soon as the next Russian-Turkish war began, wild noise arose again and the "civilizers" began to shout about the imperial ambitions of St. Petersburg.
(How can we not recall the events of the recent past: the bombing of Yugoslavia, the international dance around Chechnya.)
When in 1877 the Russian fleet approached the Bosphorus and the Sultan almost asked for peace, the British flotillas instantly appeared, which had set up in the roadstead near the Princes' Islands. However, Alexander II just as demonstratively ignored this gross demonstration of strength (he was a powerful tsar, although he was a liberal); and the preliminary agreement forced the Turks to sign. Under its terms, Russia regained Southern Bessarabia and acquired a number of fortresses in the Transcaucasus. In addition, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania gained independence from the Turks.
However, the "civilized" powers did not like this turn at all. In 1878, they convened an international congress in Berlin, at which they demanded a revision of the Treaty of San Stefano. Chancellor Bismarck, who played a key role at this meeting, although he promised Alexander II to be an "honest broker", in fact took a position that was completely hostile to Russia. And how could it be otherwise, if he himself later confessed in his memoirs:
“As the goal to which Prussia should strive as the foremost fighter of Europe, … the dismemberment of Russia was planned, the severing of the Eastern provinces from her, which, including St. Petersburg, were to go to Prussia and Sweden, the separation of the entire territory of the Polish republic within its most extensive limits, splitting the main part into Great Russia and Little Russia …"
The interests of the Balkan peoples proper, as well as the fate of Turkey, did not bother anyone at the Congress at all; all this bombastic chatter was nothing more than a formal excuse. The same Bismarck once openly declared to the Turks: “If you imagine that the Congress gathered for the sake of the Ottoman Empire, then you are deeply mistaken. The San Stefano Treaty would have remained unchanged if it had not touched on some issues of interest to Europe."
As a result, the Berlin Congress crossed out all the previously reached Russian-Turkish agreements. Russia was forced to return the fortress of Bayazet to the Turks, Austria-Hungary chopped off Bosnia and Herzegovina for itself, and Britain got the island of Cyprus.
Returning from Berlin, the head of the Russian delegation, Chancellor Gorchakov, wrote in a report to the emperor: "The Berlin treatise is the blackest page in my service career." On this document, Alexander II inscribed with his own handwriting: "And in mine too."
At the same time, in the liberal press, the Westernizers actively rushed to throw in the idea of the danger to the civilized world of Slavic ambitions; Russia claims to be the heiress of Byzantium and claims to her lands.
As an argument, the then political strategists usually referred to a certain concept of the "Third Rome". Its meaning boiled down to the fact that the old Rome fell for the loss of faith, the New Rome (Constantinople) - for the loss of piety, and the Third Rome (Moscow) will certainly fall if it does not remain faithful to the precepts of Orthodoxy.
At the same time, even to divert one's eyes, no one tried to understand these intricacies; otherwise, all conversations would disappear by themselves.
The only document confirming the aforementioned concept was the ancient epistle of God Elder Philotheus of Pskov to Tsar Vasily III, published not long before, dated back to the 16th (!) Century. It had nothing to do with the annexation of Constantinople; Philotheus only tried to induce the Grand Duke to turn to morality and renounce earthly blessings: "Do not trust in gold and wealth and glory, all the fear is gathered here and will remain here on earth."
It is noteworthy that for three centuries this letter was not remembered at all; it was pulled out of naphthalene only when there was political expediency in that …
The reason for this duplicity, in fact, lies on the surface and is called the policy of double standards; over the past century and a half, this phenomenon, by the way, has not changed much.
Each of the European superpowers - France, England, Germany, Austria-Hungary - did not want to see Russia alongside them as an equal player. Its vast territories and equally large-scale potential aroused Europe's understandable concerns.
There is nothing criminal here, however; From time immemorial, any foreign policy has been built from a position of strength. Who dared, he ate. Divide and rule. And if we put ourselves in the position of Europeans, then willy-nilly we will have to admit that from their point of view they acted quite logically.
Another question is that for some reason it was not accepted in Russia itself to talk about it; the liberal part of society - all sorts of democrats, commoners and free-thinkers - on the contrary, considered it a norm to admire the Western order. If someone tried to object to them, rightly noting that it was useless to admire foreign customs, such a critic was instantly recorded as obscurantists and haters of progress.
Almost all noble families spoke French better than their native Russian; even after the war of 1812, the Russian nobility continued to revel in the music of the French style and idolize Napoleon; as if it were not Platov's Cossacks who reached Paris and Berlin, but Murat's cavalry fortified forever in the Kremlin.
On this occasion, the playwright Alexander Sumarokov once composed the comedy "Empty Quarrel", the main characters of which - Ksyusha Sobchak of the then era - talk among themselves exclusively as follows:
Duilish: You will not believe that I adore you.
Delamida: I am not measuring this, sir.
Dylish. I think that you were sufficiently remarked that I could confuse you …
Delamida: I do not have this pansé, so that in your eyes I have …
The entire European history of the 19th and 20th centuries is one continuous unceasing aggression against Russia.
And the stronger the state became, the harder our western neighbors behaved; the very same French and British who are dear to the liberal heart.
Nikolai Danilevsky, one of the most interesting Russian thinkers of the century before last, explained this metamorphosis as follows:
“The fact is that Europe does not recognize us as its own. She sees in Russia and in the Slavs in general something alien to her, and at the same time such that cannot serve for her as a simple material from which she could derive her benefits … material that could be formed and dressed in her image and likeness …
Is there still to think about impartiality, about justice. Isn't all means good for a sacred goal? … How to allow the influence of an alien, hostile, barbaric world to spread, even if it extends to what, according to all divine and human laws, belongs to this world? Not allowing this to happen is the common cause of everything that only feels like Europe. Here you can take a Turk as an ally and even give him the banner of civilization."
It sounds like it was said only yesterday and not 140 years ago. As, incidentally, poetry dedicated to gentlemen-liberals …
No, I will not say to whom it is; try to guess for yourself.
Wasted labor - no, you can't understand them -
The more liberal, the more vulgar they are, Civilization is a fetish for them
But her idea is inaccessible to them.
No matter how you bend before her, gentlemen, You will not win recognition from Europe:
In her eyes you will always be
Not servants of education, but slaves.
Do you think the author of these lines is some kind of retrograde, Derzhimorda and an agent of the Third Security Department, like Thaddeus Bulgarin? But no.
Wrote them … Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev is one of the greatest Russian poets and a completely sane person, devoid of any signs of leavened patriotism. (For seventeen years Fyodor Ivanovich served in Russian missions abroad, where he picked up a European polish and made friends with Heine and Schilling.)
In fairness, it should be noted that "civilized" Europe behaved in a similar way in relation to many other states; the point here is not at all in its bestial Russophobia, but exclusively in pragmatic calculation. No wonder Winston Churchill - by the way, the organizer of the blockade against Soviet Russia, and later the initiator of the Cold War - will later say that England has only two permanent allies: the army and the navy.
(When a civil war broke out in China in the middle of the 19th century and the Taiping rebels captured Nanjing, the British immediately took advantage of this and, having found fault with a completely formal reason - the Chinese authorities detained the British ship Arrow, engaged in smuggling - declared war on the emperor. the Chinese, clearly, could not, since the French and the Americans quickly entered the coalition with the British, who also sent their squadrons to the shores of the Celestial Empire. Britain, the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula. Such is the policy of humanism.)
Self-esteem is what our liberals have lacked and still lacks. This does not mean that they did not like Russia; loved, of course, just in their own way.
By sending the boyar children to study in Europe, Peter received back not only trained specialists, but also a well-trained "fifth column". For the rest of their lives, these guys were inflamed with enthusiasm for Western Europe, where everyday life and order - to be honest there - could not be compared with the wild Russian reality; and they bequeathed this worship to their children and grandchildren.
From generation to generation, beautiful legends about overseas beauties and wonders have been passed down. It was the impressionable descendants of these Dutch students - both blood and spiritual - who became the main agents of foreign influence, sincerely believing that these fairy tales can come true only under one single condition: if Russia integrates, as they would say today, into the world space.
They did not understand only one thing: the West did not need such "happiness" for nothing. Our neighbors were openly afraid of Russia's growing power, perceiving it like a monkey with a grenade, but not as a potential partner.
Fedor Tyutchev, already quoted by me, explained this phenomenon as follows:
“For a long time, the originality of the West's understanding of Russia resembled in some respects the first impressions made on contemporaries by the discoveries of Columbus - the same delusion, the same optical illusion. You know that for a very long time the people of the Old World, welcoming the immortal discovery, stubbornly refused to admit the existence of a new continent. They considered it simpler and more reasonable to assume that the discovered lands were only an addition, an extension of the continent they already knew. In a similar way, ideas about another New World, Eastern Europe, where Russia has always remained the soul and the driving force …"
In other words, the West did not want to recognize Russia’s rights to independence and sovereignty; the lot of savages is only to serve the masters.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, when revolutionary sentiments and free-thinking captured Russia, it was our valiant neighbors who did everything possible to develop them and thereby shatter the empire from within.
This is clearly seen in the example of the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905, when the revolutionaries were practically at one with the external enemy.
The official reasons for its beginning are widely known. According to the generally accepted version, the Japanese could not forgive Russia for the annexation of the Liaodong Peninsula, as well as the occupation of Manchuria, so, finding fault with the formal reason, they moved the army of General Kuroki to the Manchu border. However, for some reason, the majority forgets to say about the most important role of the British and Americans in this shameful page of Russian history.
And we will remind you. For example, that in 1902 Britain signed a treaty of alliance with Japan and opened an extensive line of credit for the Mikado, in today's terminology. And it was with this money that the Japanese fleet began to prepare for an attack on Russia; the British did everything possible to lull the vigilance of Nicholas II.
It got to the point that right on the eve of the war, the British organized Russian-Japanese negotiations under their patronage; and almost until the very last day they were trying to convince our Foreign Ministry that the situation was under control and that England - bleeding from the nose - would not allow any bloodshed.
The result of this war was the shameful Portsmouth Peace, according to which Russia was forced to give the Japanese all the Kuriles and South Sakhalin. Meanwhile, the size of the concessions could have been much smaller; but now the Americans have intervened.
By that time, the United States, too, had already entered the global foreground and viewed the Far East as a zone of its strategic interests. They repeatedly incited the Japanese to go to war with Russia; At the same time, the Russian side was told exactly the opposite: they are almost the best - our friends. It is not surprising that with such a cunning policy, the Americans managed to stake out the status of such an international arbiter. The Portsmouth negotiations took place with the direct participation of the States. True, such gullibility has once again turned out to be sideways for Russia.
At first, the Japanese demanded to give them not only the Kuriles, but the whole of Sakhalin, as well as to pay a considerable monetary indemnity, but the Russian delegation led by Count Witte stubbornly refused to agree to such a kneeling. Negotiations were clearly stalled, and in the end, Japan almost backed down. The Japanese emperor decided to abandon claims to Sakhalin, about which he sent appropriate dispatches to his diplomats.
Petersburg was not yet aware of this. But they quickly found out in Washington. However, President Roosevelt not only did not share the good news with his best friend Nikolai Alexandrovich, but on the contrary, instantly repulsed him an alarmed telegram, in which he informed that Japan was firm and adamant in its position as never before; if you do not give them Sakhalin, you will lose all of Transbaikalia altogether.
At the same time, the American Ambassador Mayer began to master the tsar. After numerous admonitions and promises, Nicholas II foolishly backed down.
“Yes, God bless him, this Southern Sakhalin, - almost literally anticipating the legendary monologue of the Bunshi housemaster, he threw in his hearts. - Let them take away …"
It is easy to guess that the Japanese were immediately notified of these careless words of the king. The head of the Japanese delegation, Kikujiro Ishii - by the way, the future foreign minister - immediately rushed to contact his prime minister in order to change the instructions he had received about Sakhalin before. How it ended, I think, is well known to everyone: South Sakhalin moved to the Land of the Rising Sun.
And in Russia, meanwhile, the first revolution broke out, largely provoked by the Japanese events - in all, by the way, senses. First, society could not forgive the authorities for their incompetent defeat in the war. And secondly, the Japanese, together with the British, were actively throwing woods into the revolutionary fire that was going on - they were quite willing to lend money to prepare the uprising to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social-Democrats.
For example, a concrete historical example is known, when a huge arsenal was purchased in Switzerland with Japanese funds: 25 thousand rifles, 3 tons of explosives, over 4 million cartridges, and all this splendor was sent to Russia by the English steamer John Grafton. It was only by chance that Japanese gifts did not reach the militants; the steamer ran aground in our waters …
The analogy with the German sponsors of Bolshevism and Lenin's trip in a sealed carriage - suggests itself. The motivation of Kaiser Wilhelm, who gave money for the Russian revolution, was absolutely identical to the Japanese one; the Germans also had to stop the protracted war by any means. (The fact that Nicholas II was 98% Germanic in blood did not bother the Kaiser at all.)
True, having released the genie from the bottle, Wilhelm himself fell victim to it; inside Germany, a rebellion soon broke out, and the Kaiser was driven out at once. And Europe, only yesterday rather condescendingly looked at the growth of revolutionary sentiments in Russia and even contributed to this as much as possible - (how else: most of the future leaders of the coup lived quietly for themselves in London, Zurich and Paris; out of six congresses of the RSDLP (b), three were held in London; Bolshevik printing houses and schools, which trained qualified agitators and militants, operated almost legally in the West) - as usual, she immediately knitted her eyebrows and screamed about the danger to the fate of democracy.
As many as 14 foreign powers moved to Russia from all sides. This aggression was hedged, as usual, with good, highly moral motives: an allied duty, the fate of civilization …
In reality, nothing of the kind was observed even close. Even from a formal point of view, their invasion was a gross violation of all norms of international law.
The Japanese, for example, landed in Transbaikalia at the request of the self-proclaimed ruler Ataman Semyonov, who certainly did not have such powers. The British landed in Arkhangelsk following a similar appeal by the same impostor Tchaikovsky. The Transcaucasian Mensheviks invited the Turks and the French.
Most of all, the Entente countries were afraid that the Germans would have time to get ahead of them, to whom, according to the terms of the Brest Peace, the Bolsheviks assigned countless territories and natural resources. That is - it was the most common looting; as soon as Russia weakened, the dear allies and champions of world democracy rushed to tear it to pieces, and even squabbled with each other along the way.
To restore the Romanov empire - no one needed it for nothing; speaking in the British Parliament, Prime Minister Lloyd George openly stated that he doubted "the benefits for England of the restoration of the former powerful Russia."
And how could it be otherwise, if not one of the promises made by the Entente to the leaders of the counter-revolution was even close. The British, for example, supporting Kolchak and Denikin, simultaneously financed their own worst enemies, while the French, recognizing the Wrangel government, did not put a finger on their finger to save the black baron from the Crimean defeat.
(The Americans were the most cunning of all. On the one hand, they helped the Bolsheviks, on the other, they financed the campaigns of the Entente.)
Each of the aggressor countries thought primarily about their own economic interests. During the four years of the Civil War, these civilizers tried to take out of Russia the maximum amount of wealth - valuable furs, timber, fish, ships.
Only Admiral Kolchak, who had recently been imported to Omsk in the carriage of the British General Knox, managed to generously bless his allies with the gold reserve of the empire he had seized. In total, the admiral handed over to the governments of the United States, England, France and Japan 8,898 pounds of gold, thus turning the intervention into a lucrative commercial operation.
From the book: "How Russia is Killed". Author: Khinshtein Alexander