Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

174 II. Россия — Восток get involved in the war for the “entire Slavic/Orthodox world” did not lead to anything creative, especially since the “Slavic world” itself was divided and always tried to escape the initiatives promoted by St. Petersburg. Growing with lands in the Caucasus and Asia, losing the potential for development in wars and strife on the borders, the empire, represented by the ruling monarchs and entourage, moved from absolutism to reaction, from populism to complete indifference and fatigue from the events taking place. The balance of rapprochement with European ruling circles and reliance on the serving nobility of Catherine’s time is a thing of the past. “Imperial overheating” became possible due to a number of circumstances, among which it is necessary to highlight: unbalanced foreign and domestic policies (as a result of the tragic and hasty steps in the Far East at the beginning of the twentieth century), the separation of the ruling house from the people (slipping intomysticismand fatalism), distrust of close elites — led to turmoil in public circles, and then to the revolutionary events of 1905 and 1917. It must be said that the last active attempts at dialogue with the authorities were made by reactionary circles at the end of the reign of Alexander II. Then, pressure from above on the people`s masses gave way to indifference, and disappointment from below with the lack of progress towards change and influence from the outside which must not be forgotten, led to a series of revolutions and the collapse of the Empire. Before moving on to considering Russian volunteerism as a socio- political phenomenon, we posed a number of questions that would allow us to rethink the processes in which Russia was involved at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. List some of them and try to understand the phenomenon of volunteering as such: • what part of Russian society was involved in the process of selfless help; • whether the emergence of the volunteer movement was a consequence of the evolution of Russian society;