Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

178 II. Россия — Восток to give our own view of events, as objective as possible, that are forever fixed on the unchanging historical outline of time. Close contacts betweenRussia andEuropean countries have at times developed into confrontation. The entire 19th century — an almost never-ending series of conflicts in thewidest theater fromtheBlackSea to the Baltic, from the Caspian to the Amur river border. Only occasionally did the efforts of the “sons of the fatherland” — commanders and diplomats — lead to glorious strategically important victories, achieved with minimal loses. The result of the gradual distancing of the ruling dynasty from the people was the loss of faith in the Tsar among educated people — a minority, and atmosphere of turbulence among ordinary residents of the empire— the overwhelming majority. The cornerstone or a kind of “anchor” of social processes was the preparation for the abolition of serfdom. The best minds of the empire took up the solution to this problem throughout the first half of the 19th century, but they came only in the 1860s, completely unprepared. For obvious reasons, the troubles brought to Russian soil by Napoleon's invasion could not contribute to the rapprochement and acceptance of the ideas of European liberalism, and the results of the Crimean War plunged the country into a protracted economic crisis. The high degree of hostility towards everything European in society was aggravated by the detached attitude towards internal problems on the part of the ruling dynasty. We should not forget about such a delicate topic as dynastic marriages of Russian autocrats during the reign of the Romanovs. Apparently, no one had any illusions about changes within the borders of the empire, so the participation of the passionate part of society in conflicts outside the imperial borders can be considered as an example of socio-psychological relief. With regularity, volunteers from various walks of life became involved in their personal battle with the “enemy.” The geography of Russian volunteerism and its goals are very wide. They went to war for the entire Slavic world in the Balkans, fought for theOrthodox faith in the confrontationwith Turkey, defended honor and freedom as such in the ranks of the Garibaldians in Italy and the Boers in South Africa.