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1 results

  • 24 - Russian foreign policy, 1725–1815

  • from Part VI - Foreign Policy and the Armed Forces
  • Edited by Dominic Lieven, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    17 August 2006, pp 504-529

  • Summary

    The first period following Peter's reign was most conspicuous for the instability of the throne and the resultant inconsequence that it inflicted on Russian foreign policy. Russian foreign policy of the era of palace revolutions, then, had cost the country a good deal and gained it little but unrealised potential influence. Enlightened despotism as a paradigm of modernisation conceived and driven by the state was as unpopular in eighteenth-century Russia as it was imperative. Catherine II discovered early the force of conservative reaction, it spoiled her Legislative Assembly and her plans to improve the lot of the serfs. The notoriously expansionist nature of Catherine's foreign policy underwent decisive changes in the decade of the 1790s. Once the crisis of conflict with Britain had passed, Alexander circulated to Russian embassies abroad his first general exposition of foreign policy.