Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

173 Alexander S. Zdanevich. The Crisis of Autocracy in Russia (the mid-19th — early 20th С.)... volunteers, <…>, were émigrés fromRussia who had come to South Africa before the war. They had already become part of the local situation and knew perfectly well why and for what they were fighting. Their motivations and interests, nonetheless, may have differed from those of the Boers, but they were defined by local realities. Those who came directly from Russia had different ideas and ideals, none of which had much to do with South Africa. They were, inevitably, motivated by Russian realities and by Russian circumstances and Russian perceptions of world events rather than by what was going on in South Africa, a situation about which they actually knew very little”. 1 The overwhelming majority of the settlers were, however, subjects of the British Crown. Returning to the events of Russian history, we come to the conclusion about the results of the development of Russia throughout the 19th century and the role of the ruling dynasty in the situation that had developed by the beginning of the 20th century. The distancing of the ruling house of the Romanovs from society and the elites represented by the serving nobility, which lasted for almost a hundred years, gave rise to despondency and, as a result, created the ground for rebellion and revolutions. The national policy on the borders of the empire, especially in Poland and the surrounding territories, had exactly the same effect. Deprived of social elevators and prospects, active youth from the outskirts of the empire were tirelessly drawn into revolutionary circles. Internal reforms, the need for which hadmatured in the first quarter of the 19th century, were (for the most part) never implemented. The tossing of autocrats and those around them between the liberal- democratic and conservative agendas led to an imbalance in domestic and foreign policy efforts. “Imperial overheating”, as we put it, was partly provoked by a bias towards a forceful style of resolving issues of internal and external security in defiance of diplomatic efforts. The desire (the only exception, in fact, was the reign of Alexander III) to 1 Davidson A., Filatova I. The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902. P. 60.