To assert that Joseph Conrad was the first English novelist to recognize a basic English ignorance of Russia and the Russians would be patently absurd. As early as 1891, Rudyard Kipling began his short story “The Man Who Was” with this cryptic sentence: “Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt.” He then follows this opening with a concrete example of the difficulty one can encounter in trying to measure a Russian by Western European standards.

Winston Churchill's famous dictum (as part of a statement made in 1939) exemplifies this difficulty: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

Joseph Conrad, however, was in a more favorable position than most English citizens of the twentieth century to interpret Russian behavior to the West. Born in 1857 in Russian Poland, he had been in a peculiarly advantageous situation to observe first-hand the Tsarist autocracy. In 1862 his father was condemned to exile in Russia because he had taken a leading role in the formation of the secret Polish National Committee. Conrad's mother, there-upon, chose to accompany her husband into exile, taking young Joseph with her. By 1863, the mother had contracted tuberculosis as a result of the hardships she suffered in Russia. After she died in 1865, Joseph was allowed to return to Poland in the care of a maternal uncle. His father was released in 1868 and moved to Cracow with his son, only to die during the following year. Joseph returned to his uncle's home, where he remained until he left for Marseilles in 1874.