Imperial Russian Foreign Policy [Hardcover]

Aims to demythologise a field hitherto dominated by suspicion and fear, that of Russian foreign policy. Much of the research is drawn from previously unavailable Russian sources.With contributions from both Russia and the West, this new book aims to demythologise a field hitherto dominated by suspicion and fear, that of Russian foreign policy. The book claims that the tsar was directly responsible for the formulation of most foreign policy and reveals the complex of motives behind his decisions.With contributions from both Russia and the West, this new book aims to demythologise a field hitherto dominated by suspicion and fear, that of Russian foreign policy. The book claims that the tsar was directly responsible for the formulation of most foreign policy and reveals the complex of motives behind his decisions.This book provides an introduction suitable for both specialist and non-specialist to the principal traditions, objectives, conditions, and instruments of Russian foreign policy, 1700-1917, through the presentation of new research. It is both the first cooperative effort in the subject by both Russian and Western historians and the first to be consciously representative of the spirit of glasnost and a post-Cold War mentality. It is based to a large extent on previously inaccessible Russian manuscript source materials, and it contains the only serious scholarly surveys of both the historiography and the bibliography of the subject.Acknowledgements; Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. The Origins Of Imperial Russian Foreign Policy: 1. Imperial consciousness in eighteenth-century Russian foreign policy E. V. Anisimov; 2. The role of the Baltic in Russian foreign policy 17211773 Hans Bagger; Part II. Imperial Russia and the Western Borderlands in the Eighteenth Century: 3. Rusian projects of conquest in the eighteenth century Hugh Ragsdale; 4. Runaway peasants and Russian motives for the partitions of Poland Robert E. Jones; Part III. Imperial Russia lc§