Russia’s Standing as a Great Power, 1492-1815.doc

Russia’s Standing as a Great Power, 1494--1815 Thanks are due to the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, where, as December Guest in 2002, I commenced work on this piece. Thanks also to Kristian Gerner, Hiski Haukkala, Pål Kolstø, Ole Jacob Sending, Shogo Suzuki, William Wohlforth and particularly Ted Hopf for comments on earlier drafts. Iver B. Neumann (2008) “Russia’s Standing as a Great Power, 1492-1815” pp. 11-34 in Ted Hopf (ed.) Russia’s European Choices New York, NY: Palgrave. Introduction From early contacts between Muscovy and the Holy Roman Empire through the rapid increase in contact during and following Peter the Great’s reign and finally during the Soviet period, Russia has often met the conditions for great-power status. At all points, however, amongst European contemporaries, doubt has remained about Russia’s great-power standing. This suggests a residual that has not been adequately accounted for. I argue that this residual is rooted in a factor that is read out by almost all IR literature, that on the balance of power included, namely that of governance. The Case of Muscovy In the standard work on early contacts between Russia and Europe, Marshall Poe (2000:12-13) notes that, ’Despite the lore of a long scholarly tradition, Russia was not ”discovered” by Europeans in the first quarter of the sixteenth century’, when early travellers like Sigismund von Herberstein arrived, for there had been continuous contacts between the east Slavs and the political entities around the Baltic since the time of the Vikings, and there had also been more scattered contacts with the continental powers. Poe also stresses, however, that ’Muscovites knew little of nothing about ”refined” European customs before the early sixteenth century’ (Poe 2000: 209-210), thus attesting to the absence of a common body of practices for official encounters. In 1486, a noble knight by the name of Nikolai Poppel arrived in Moscow, carrying a letter from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (Karamzin, vol. 6, fifth chapter). The Holy Roman Empire came to know Muscovy as a polity separate from the Polish-Lithuanian state. Upon Poppel’s return to the Empire, he started to spread the word about the Russian state and about the riches and power of its ruler. Here is the official Soviet diplomatic history’s version of what ensued: In 1489, Poppel returned to Moscow, now already as the official agent of the Emperor of the Holy Roman empire. In a secret audience he suggested to Ivan III that he should petition the Emperor to confer upon him the title of king. From the point of view of Western European political thought, this would be the only means of legalising a new state and to introduce it into the the common system of European states – and at the same time place it in a certain state of dependence of the empire. But in Moscow, another point of view held sway. Ivan III answered Poppel with dignity: ’By God’s grace, we are the ruler of our land from the beginning, from the first of our ancestors, it has been given us by God, and as it was for our ancestors, so it is for us’ (Zorin 1959: 262) Ivan III insisted on signing his written answer to the emperor with the title ’Great ruler of all of Rus’ by God’s grace’, and for the next three generations, there ensued a tug-of-war between Russian and Western courts regarding titles. Already in 1508, Ivan’s son Vasiliy sent a letter to the Emperor asking for an alliance in his war against Lithuania. In 1514 the Emperor, somewhat belatedly, sent his envoy Georg Schnitzenpaumer back with an encouraging letter in German. Writing about this letter, Karamzin (volume 7, chapter two) notes that ’instead of the word tsar, he wrote Kaiser’. ’Kaiser’ may be translated back into Russian as ’Imperator’, and so the letter was taken by the Russian court to mean that the Emperor acknowledged Vasiliy as a fellow Emperor. In Maximilian’s letter of 4 August 1514, however, where he confirmed an alliance against the Lithuanian king Sigismund, there was no mention of the Russian king being a ’Kaiser’. Russia was not satisfied in its quest for recognition as an empire. Of course, further West, Kings also struggled to establish themselves on a far with the Holy Roman Emperor. To pick but one example, under Henry VIII, England launched a campaign to be be seen as an empire. The Russian trajectory differs from the others in two key ways, however. First, the shift from seeing the King’s body to seeing the territory of his state as the the locus of government that we may already see in England in the 16th century (empire, not emperor) was wilfully held back. Secondly, in Europe, shifted away from being accepted as an empire in the direction of being accepted as a sovereign state. Empires there were, but the logic of recognition rotated around the term sovereignty, ot around terms like emperor or empire. Again, there was no such development in Russia, which continued to play the old game long after others had embarked on a new one. Contacts were also hampered by cultural practices. For example, Herberstein noted that non-orthodox Christians were considered unclean, which meant that rank-and-file Muscovites had a reason to stay away from them, and that the aristocrats that did meet with them and then followed the European costum of shaking hands, ritually washed themselves after the encounter. As late as the 1660s, when a number of European diplomats, soldiers and merchants had been invited to the realm, a key observer talked about their separate quarters as ’the diseased parts of the state and the body politic’, and it was only during this decade that ambassadors were allowed to walk the streets of Moscow alone (Krizhanich quoted in Poe 2000: 83). Poe (2000: 41) stresses that ’Nonetheless, the Russian authorities realized that dipomacy and mercantile relations with European powers were necessary accoutrements of great power status’. From the very beginning, then, it was a bone of contention between Russian and European rulers where in the hierarchy Russia should fit in, with Russia in principle aiming for a top position. For the next two hundred years, which is the gestation period for the European states system, Russia was a peripheral presence. Its resources were not plentiful enough to make it a presence on the Continent, so there was no rationalist case for great power status here. Constructivists would highlight that the principle on which legitimacy and recognition was sought, divine kingly sovereignty over territory, was the same, and draw attention to the doubt that ensued on both sides about whether the other party could be considered properly Christian. I would highlight how Russia’s despotic regime marked it as “barbarous”. Either way, although Russia made a principled bid for great power status, as seen from Europe, Russia was not a ranking power by any criterion used at the time or indeed later. There were however, cultural and organizational borrowings during this period, and these were speeded up and diversified under tsar Alexei (1645—1676), but it was only during the reign of his son Peter that Russia undertook a self-conscious European socialisation process. After a short lag -- when the War of Spanish Succession ended by the drawing up of with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Russia was not among the signatory powers, -- Peter launched a campaign for Russian great powerhood. In 1993, Russia and Denmark celebrated the 500th anniversary of their diplomatic relations. The date 1493 is as good as any other as a shorthand for the first formalisation of diplomatic contacts between Muscovy and another Northern polity as any other. A conventional date for the placing of Russian-English relations on a similar footing is 1553 (Anderson 1958). Richard Chancellor landed at the mouth of the river Dvina, carrying a letter from Edward VI of England addressed to ’all kings, princes, rulers, judges, and governours of the earth, and all other having excellent dignitie on the same, in all places under the universall heaven’. The letter suggested that trade relations be established, giving as the reason that God had placed things in different regions ’to the ende that one should have neede of another, that by this meanes friendship might be established among all men’ (quoted in Dukes 1990: 1). Chancellor was duly invited by the tsar to visit Moscow. Invariably, the hosts exposed these embassies to much more direct tactics of impression management than those that regulated similar occasions within Roman Christendom. Under the chapter heading ’Legatus ad Moscoviam’, Poe (2000: 40) notes that ’Muscovite officials were quite suspicious of foreign envoys and thus took steps to ensure that they did not learn too much about Russian affairs or recieve the ”wrong” impression of the tsar’s realm. Accordingly, visiting ambassadors were kept in special quarters, surrounded by offically appointed attendants, and discouraged from wandering about or engaging Muscovites in discussions. Moreover, the court presented visiting diplomats with a variety of propagandistic rituals designed to emphasize the authority of the tsar, the wealth of the realm, and the subservience of the population’. Already from 1585 on, one may find an English merchant fulfilling a number of functions that contemporary observers and we would both refer to as councillary. That these functions were first taken care of by merchants is in keeping with a general pattern that may be observed in a number of different places at different times. There was a degree of formalisation of this arrangement in 1623, which was followed by a break when Charles I was executed. France tried to establish a residency in 1629, only to be rebuffed. There was a continuous Swedish presence from 1631 on, but it was only in the 1670s that the institution of resident presence fastened. Even at this time, however, Brandenburg’s attempt at establishing a residency came to naught (Zorin 1959: 316). In 1613 Michael was elected tsar and initiated the Romanov dynasty. His administrative apparatus was rudimentary. Running business was handled mainly by a set of prikazy or chancelleries, and decisions were mostly taken in the tsar’s privy council. A representative council, the boyar duma, met on a regular basis, and the zemskiy sobor met from time to time. Although the basic structure of the system – a political tension between the tsar and the nobles, an administrative tension between an apparatus consisting of offices and a group of councillors – was the same as that of the other polities around the Baltic, the action capacity of Muscovy was not up to their level. Still, Muscovy was a distinct presence. In 1617, the re-established polity concluded the Peace of Stolbovo with Sweden, and Gustavus Adolphus withdrew from Pskov and Novgorod. Russiai, on the other hand, lost its access to the Baltic coast. The Peace of Stolbovo was concluded with th offices of the netherlands and England, and the latter’s envoy was present at the proceedings (Zorin 1959: 293). Russia’s dealing with other powers had now become a matter of major interest to key states. In 1618, Russia concluded an armistice with Poland. On the eve of the Thirty Years War, which should prove pivotal in melding the states around the Baltic and the states further to the south more firmly into one system of states, Russia was established as a power. Both Gustavus Adolphus and the Porte put out feelers for alliances against the Poles. Russia took an active role in supporting one party against another, among other things by providing Denmark with subsidised grain. The principle of legitimacy at this time was dynastic, which means that dynastic ties and hence intermarriage patterns play a particularly important role when it comes to gauging how Russia fit into European political life. As part of the early initial overtures by Russia to reach beyond the Baltic, an effort was made to forge ties with the Stuarts. As to the Baltic ties, the Romanovs tried to upgrade by proposing marriage. The first move by the Romanovs in the direction of intermarriage was made in 1642, when tsar Michael sent a special mission to Denmark to offer the hand of his daughter Irene to the son of Christian IV, Prince Waldemar. The instructions given to the envoys in Moscow must have seemed more than a little strange in Copenhagen: a customary overture to such negotiations, the delivery of a portrait, was to be avoided with the explanation that the taking of portraits could be dangerous for the health of Russian princesses, who in any case were to be viewed whether in the flesh or in effigy by close relatives only. The possibility of Waldemar becoming one of the latter nearly foundered at the beginning over the more serious question of his determination to remain a Lutheran, and when he travelled to Moscow on the understanding that he would not have to convert to orthodoxy only to find his prospective father-in-law a fervent proselytiser, a stalemate ensued which kept the prince under close house arrest (Dukes 1990: 13). In the end, there was no marriage. What we see here is a court which does not conform to established norms for marriage, which has not partaken in the 16th century process of establishing cuius regio eius religio as a baseline for how to get religious pluralism to dovetail with the reality of multiple sovereignties, and which does not acknowledge freedom of movement for visiting royalty. With the Thirty Years War out of the way, the density of contacts between Muscovy and other polities increased. Official Soviet historiography held that ’Beginning from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, Russia already played a most important role in the political life oif Eastern Europe, so that no international problem could any longer be solved without her participation’ (Zorin 1959: 293). Even if this generalisation is accepted, however, what was at stake at this time was no longer what had after the Thirty Years’ War become the regional issue of Baltic politics, but the European-wide states system. This is implicitly accepted two pages later, when the observation is made about the attempt of the Empire to influence the course of what has been called the First Northern war between Russia and Poland ’goes to show that the Russian-Polish conflict had at this time lost its local character and become a matter of all-Euroepan importance (Zorin 1959: 295). Anisimov (1993: 23) concurs when he usefully sketches out a tripartite journey into international society: ‘The first step that Russia took into the Westphalian world of international relations was its participation in the First Northern War (1655-60), a step determined by the decision of 1654 on the subjugation of the Ukraine. The next step was taken in 1686 by the Eternal Peace with the Rech Pospolita [that is, Poland-Lithuania]’. This is not only due to the way both parties now largely proceeded to draw up this treaty according to the general standard of the day, but also because Russia at this time also succeeded in its long struggle to form an alliance with key powers (with the Empire, Venice, Brandenburg and Poland-Lithuania against the Porte). The third step, Anisimov argues, was taken hot on the heels of Peter’s Grand Embassy 1697-1698, when he grasped the potential of alliance with states that his predecessors had considered untouchable for religious reasons for war against Sweden, Poland-Lithuania and the Porte. His first attempt at playing the alliance game failed, however, and the ensuing war that was waged on the Porte was called to a halt at the Congress of Carlowitz (1698-1699) without Russia being present. These three steps all concern Russia’s manoeuvring in the direction of a more central role within what by century’s end had become the Baltic sub-system of international society. These steps were, however, not followed up by increased recognition from the major polities making up the embryonic international society. An early example of Russia being recognised as a factor in a European disposition, but not being recognised as having a droit de régard, we have in Louis XIV’s campaign to put Jan Sobieski on the throne of Poland-Lithuania. Poland, and particularly its Ukrainian part, was a key conduit between international society and Muscovy, as witnessed by the (characteristically lagging) translation of administrative literature. In the late 1670s, Russian overtures to Poland and Austria for help against the Porte failed, and in 1681, Russia has to sign the humiliating treaty of Bakhchisarai. Already at this time, however, Russia could muster an Army of perhaps as many as 200.000, six times as many as half a century earlier (Dukes 1990: 47). These forces were trained with the help of manuals translated from Western lanugages, by officers imported from the West. Translations were first undertake on the second half of the seventeenth century. Military manuals were among the first to be translated. A characteristic lag is evident in the pattern in which the powerful new administrative ethos of neostoicism spread across Europe. In the standard work on the topic, Gerhard Oestreich mentions Russia in his entry for Poland, which is reproduced here in toto: ’We may gauge the enduring popularity of Lipsius in Poland by the chronilogical spread of the translations. Such popularity is not surprising, seeing that the Jesuit order had great influence over Polish eductaion. As early as 1595 the Politics was translated by a secretary of King Sigismund III; a new edition came out in 1604. Only a year before the outbreak of the French Revolution a translation of the Monita et exempla politica appeared. This work was also translated into Russian in the eighteenth century.’ (Oestreich 1982: 102). Russians at this time held a deep scepticism to representations of humans. Throughout the pre-Petrine period, the tsars adamantly refused to put their personal signature on documents. All these treaties carry only the seal of the realm and the signature of a high official. Only Peter broke with this habit, when he put his signature to the treaty with Poland in 1698 (Zorin 1959: 337-338). Granted that diplomacy, and particularly the diplomacy of the European states system, is usually defined as written communication, this was of course a key problem. Furthermore, portraits were not taken, which was a problem in terms of the all-important game of conubium. The interface with Europe was also broadened by Michael granting to a couple of hundred merchants (so-called guests or gosti) a charter whereby they were exempted from taxes and allowed to travel abroad. England was given the right to trade without paying duties, whereas the Dutch were required to pay only half-duty (Dukes 1990: 2). These discriminary moves are, in addition to the feelers for alliances, examples of how Russia had begun to play different powers off against one another, so partaking in the working of the system of states. The greater density of societal contacts between Russia and other polities generated new dimensions of foreign policy. In 1649, outraged at the fate of his English brother monarch and with his officials expressing concern about the possibility that English subjects in Russia should spread dangerous ideas, the tsar stripped English merchants of certain privileges and barred them from travelling from St Petersburg to other cities in his realm. Russia refused to acknowledge Cromwell’s republic, the tsar kept inquiring about the health of Charles’ widow, and even provided funds for the campaign of their son to take what he saw as his rightful place on the throne (which, of course, duly happened). At this time, Russia also made a habit of delivering official protests about publications issued in foreign counries that they found to be slanderous to Russia. For example, it protested to Sweden against a pamphlet published in Riga about the rebellion of Sten’ka Razin. In its 1650 treaty with Poland, Russia even succeeded in having a papragraph included that was meant to limit what could and could not be printed in Poland about the tsar and his state (Zorin 1959: 316, 349). By the end of the seventeenth century, there were particularly two areas in which Russia’s distance from international society was still marked. The following paragraphs are based on Zorin 1959: 303-318, except where otherwise indicated. The first was its lack of permanent missions to other states. Russia seems to have decided to establish a permanent mission in Sweden in 1634, but it only lasted for one and a half years, and was not renewed. It therefore came to appear much like an old-style embassy, that could often last for one, two or even three years. Instead of permanent residencies, Russia fell back on a form of representation that has similarities with the ancient Greek proxenos system as well as with the present system of honorary consuls when, in 1660, they gave the English citizen Sir John Hebdon the title ’comissarius’ to England and the Netherlands. Russia’s first fully fledged resident thus became Vasiliy Tyapkin, who took up residency in Poland from 1673 to 1677. Once Peter was on the throne, permanent missions became the rule. He sent an ’extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador’ to the Nertherlands in 1699, a ’resident’ to Sweden in 1700, a ’minister’ to Vienna in 1701, etc. (Zorin 1959: 344). Peter encouraged the European powers to establish permanent representations in St Petersburg, and he himself established such missions in Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Hamburg (Dukes 1990: 105). The second area where cultural difference was considerable concerned the intense jealousy with which Russia guarded court procedures, as hosts and as guests. In an age marked by elaborate and hierarchical court ritual, Russia still stood out for the tenacity with which it guarded every conceivable aspect of meetings between the tsar and foreign envoys and the display of hierarchy. This would begin already at the border, where an embassy would be met and escorted to the capital. Once on Russian soil, he would be presented with a liberal number of food and drink (korm). This made for a problem in terms of reciprocity when this way of treating foreign envoys gradually changed in the West. When reaching the capital, the visitor would be paraded in by an infantry escort, music was being played, and people would throng the streets. However, no formal contact between the visiting envoy and Russians was allowed to ensue before their envoy had been received by the tsar. It was the order of the day that visiting diplomats were ranked according to the perceived importance of the court that he represented. In Russia, however, The Russian tsar was extremely discriminate in his use of the term ’brother’ to refer to other monarchs. On occasions he would only receive the envoys of the most powerful states, leaving it to the Diplomatic chancellery to take care of the rest. The Vasa kings of Sweden were held to be particularly lowly, of the order of vassals, and in the early years the tsar tried to put an end to direct contact and channel relations through the envoy from Novgorod. The discriminating practice of receiving only what was held to be representatives of the most powerful states continued until the middle of the 18th century (see Zorin 1959: 370). Once he did meet them, it should happen according to a set procedure. One part of this procedure which caused continuous resentment up until Peter’s time was that envoys were not allowed to carry their swords for receptions. Another was the procedure by which Christian envoys were required to kiss the tsar’s hand, only to watch as he immediately washed his hands in a silver bowl which was held forth for him for this purpose. The official reason given for this was cleanliness, but this explanation was not accepted. And rightly so; the case in point seems to have been a taboo on contact with infidels, for a) non-Christians were not allowed to kiss the tsar’s hand at all: b) nobles who dined with foreign guests were sometimes observed washing their hands afterwards and c) in 1588, the Russian envoy to the Persian shah caused an incident by refusing to kiss the shah’s foot (Zorin 1959: 306). There were also incidents over specifics, for example in 1566, when the Lithuanian representative refused to step down from his horse and walk up to greet the tsar. On formal occasions, the tsar would receive the corps diplomatique sitting on his throne in full robes (v bol’shom naryade): golden kaftan, with Monomakh’s hat on his head, orb and sceptre in hand. Around the throne, there would be youth in white kaftans, golden hatchets in hand. Boyars would be present to entertain the hosts. The choreography obviously owed much to Byzantine mores (see Neumann 2006), but also to the reports given by the Russian envoys who had journeyed West. The tsar’s envoys were forbidden, sometimes on pain of death, from formally meeting any representative of the state to which they were sent before they had been received by its head. Since the Western rule was that such a reception was precipitated by dinners hosted by noblemen en route to and also in the capital, as well as talks with officials of the court, this made for tensions. By the same token, Russian envoys insisted on personally handing documents from the tsar to the king to which it was addressed, rather than to an official of the court. The insistence on the personal contact and the adversary relationship to intervening bureaucratic layers was a thoroughly complicating factor for Russian embassies. Furthermore, the Russian envoy usually insisted on seeing the king without there being other envoys present. Since this demand was often widened to block the king receiving other envoys on the same day, the key factor here again seems to have been marking rank, not security. Once receptions did take place, the envoys were not actually trusted with negotiations, just with relaying information, which meant that suggestions or even questions were usually answered with the set phrase ’we will also ask the great tsar about that, when, God willing, we see him ourselves (i my o tom skazhem ego tsarskomy velichestvy, kak, bog dast, uvidim ego svetlye ochi). During the reception, the Russian envoy would not only insist on reading out all the tsar’s titles, which was in accordance with general diplomatic practice, but would also object to points of order as, for example, when the receiving king bared his head. For example, during P.I. Potemkin’s visit to the Spanish king in 1687, the King took off his hat when Potemkin greeted him on bended knee, but kept it on while Potemkin read out the tsar’s titles. Potemkin objected, and there was an incident. To sum up, from its emergence in the late 15th century and throughout the 17th, Russia considered itself great on transcendental and moral grounds; the tsar and his country simply had a superior tie to God. The problem, however, was that this self-understanding was not shared by any other political entity. Russia’s claim to being a power of the first rank (anachronistically, a ‘great power’) was taken note of, but not taken seriously. Powers were ranked within a tightly scripted ritual-based system. Russia kept to other rituals, hence simply was not a player. Russia’s material resources did not allow for much projection beyond its own borders, which meant that there were no other grounds to take cognizance of it, either. Russia was excluded on the grounds that its Christianity was strange (important even in the midst of strong Catholic-Protestant skirmishes) and that it was a despotic regime – i.e., that its system of governance was uncivilized. Peter’s Century: Russia and the other Anciens Régimes Drawing on rationalist arguments, historians universally stress the role of the Great Northern War (1701-1721) in establishing Russia as a central player in international society. It was the war that broke out on the eve of the new century which really brought Russia in. New century indeed: ‘Time itself was made to recognize the grandiose ideas for change that the Tsar had developed during the Great Embassy, as the calendar was adapted for the year to begin on 1 January rather than 1 September and to be numbered from the birth of Christ rather than the supposed creation of the world’ (Dukes 1990: 69). Paul Kennedy (1988: 96) holds that Russia and Prussia added themselves to France, the Habsburg Empire and Britain at the end of the Great Northern War. In 1721, ‘an exhausted, isolated Sweden finally had to admit to the loss of most of its Baltic provinces in the 1721 Peace of Nystad. It had now fallen to the second order of the powers, while Russia was in the first’. Paul Dukes holds that Russia ‘joined Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century’ and that Poltava was ‘the cause of Russia’s wider recognition throughout Europe’ (Dukes 1990: 112, 72). The official Soviet diplomatic history makes no specific comment on this, but it nods indirectly in the direction by noting that, as Peter laid the plans for his Northern campaign ’The international situation in Europe seemed to be favorable for the realization of these plans. Western Europe’s strongest powers – France, England, Austria and the Netherlands – were busy preparing for the War of the Spanish Succession and were not able to meddle in the struggle around the Baltics’ (Zorin 1959: 337). Anisinov argues that ‘The end of the Great Northern War in 1721 registered not only the collapse of Sweden as a great world power but the appearance in its place of a new empire, the Russian’ (Anisinov 1993: 25). It is clear that Peter’s reign marked a tremendous upsurge in Russia’s standing. Drawing on English diplomatic correspondence, Janet Hartley (2001) has demonstrated just how quick and thorough the change in other states’ assessment of Russia under Peter was. For example, on the eve of his great embassy to the West, the English Under-Secretary of State in the Hague had written to William Trumbull, Secretary of State, that Towards the end of the week we are to expect ye Empr & his Rabble here [...] It were to be wishd the Czar loving ye Sea as he does, might discover ye North passage (if there be any such) into Persia, which would be a real advantage that would justify his ramble (quoted in Hartley 2001: 54). Hartley rightly observes that, for the next two decades, that is, ’Both during and after the Great Northern War, Britain attempted to restrain Russian ambitions through the formation of coalitions against her, which is itself indicative of a new respect for Russian power’ (Hartley 2001: 61-62). The leading eighteenth century historian Hans Bagger (1993: 36) even argues that ‘The Peace of Nystadt on 30 August 1721 confirmed the position that Russia had attained as a great power during the Great Northern War. [...] As a consequence of its new status as a great power, Russia became a European state insofar as the Russian Empire had to be incorporated into the system of European international relations’. Bagger’s point is that Russia’s predominance in what was known as the equilibrium of the North, combined with its strength vis-à-vis Austria and Turkey, was enough for it to ‘shake the overall equilibrium of Europe’, and so ‘the courts of Europe could no longer ignore Russia as a semibarbarian state’, but had to take it into account (Bagger 1993: 36). True, but neither Bagger nor anyone else has demonstrated that Russia had at this time resources on a par with, or was indeed at this time a fixation in the military dispositions of the key Continental powers (as opposed to Northern ones). On rationalist scores, doubt must remain about Russia’s great powerhood in the early eighteenth century. For example, despite pleas from its Swedish ally, Lord Bolingbroke, who was Secretary of State for the British Northern Department at the time, did not take Russia all that seriously (Warner 2001). Charles Whitworth, who had served as Minister both in Russia and in Prussia, noted in internal correspondence in 1722 that ’The Czar may be a Bug-Bear to his Neighbours; But neither his Power, nor Designs can immediately affect Great Britain’ (quoted in Hartley 2001: 64-65). Furthermore, note that Bagger explicitly brackets how Russia was still classified as semi-barbarian (as opposed to civilized) when he confers great power status upon it. The tension identified by Bagger where Russia is concerned between a clear military potential on the one hand and a lack of civilizational level on the other mirrors the tension in IR theorizing of great powerhood established above. Furthermore, Bagger produces a quote from Russian Vice-Chancellor Peter Shafirov to demonstrate that Russian statesmen themselves perceived the situation in similar if less pejorative terms. Due to Peter’s ‘transformation of Russia’, Shafirov wrote, the European powers now sought out Russia as an ally, ‘despite the fact that a few decades ago, in the states of Europe people thought and wrote of the nation and state of Russia in the same way as they did of the Indian, Persian and other nations [...that had] no intercourse with Europe whatsoever, apart from a little trade’ (Shafirov 1973: 1--10 quoted in Bagger 1993: 37). Shafirov, furthermore, was keenly aware of the limits beyond which Western recognition did not stretch: We know very well that the greater part of our neighbours view very unfavourably the good position in which it has pleased God to place us; that they would be delighted should an occasion present itself to imprison us once more in our earlier obscurity and that if they seek our alliance it is rather through fear and hate than through feelings of friendship (Shafirov to a French colleague in 1721, here quoted in Dukes 1990: 77). Crucially, as seen by this key Russian statesman, Russia had the material power but lacked social mores required to be fully recognized. Shafirov should turn out to be the first in a long series of Russians who saw things this way. Shafirov’s view was, furthermore, typical for his day, and it bears out very well the limitations of material resources as a measure of great powerhood. Russia has the necessary resources and has proven itself in battle against an already recognized great power, but that is not sufficient to be recognized as a suitable alliance partner. It follows that, on constructivist criteria, where recognition is seen as intersubjective, it is impossible to accept the assessment held by so many historians, that Russia was acknowledged as a great power following the Northern War. When Peter celebrated his victory in 1721 by taking the title emperor (Imperator, referring to the Schnitzenpaumer correspondence as precedence), this was roundly resented, particularly by the Habsburgs (see Nekrasov 1972). There is a parallel here to reactions when Ivan III & IV declared themselves tsars. Although other Northern powers were relatively quick to acknowledge the new title (the exception was Poland, which waited until 1764), Austria and Great Britain did not do so before 1742, and France only in 1744 (Florinsky 1955: 353). An added constructivist argument against Russian great power status in the early 18th century concerns the key alliance-forming practice of the day. Dynasticism spelled conubium as a criterion, and Peter tried to marry intro the kingly houses of Europe. Russia was certainly actively involved, but it did not succeed in intermarrying with the other leading royal houses of its day, targeting instead other Northern powers. In 1724, Peter married off his daughter Anna Petrovna to the duke of Holstein-Gottorp on Swedish behest. In 1745, Elizabeth received feelers from British trone pretender Charles Edward Stuart, but these came to naught. As late as at century’s end, when Paul tried to marry off his daughter to the Kind of Sweden, the project still stranded on the issue of religion. On constructivist criteria, an initial assessment is that we should be wary about Russia’s great power status during the period of the anciens régimes. During the sixty years following the Great Northern War, Russia became gradually more successful in being recognized as a worth-while ally, a power entitled to participation in peace settlements and a power mentioned in treaties as a guarantor of the peace. Russia attended its first Peace Congress at Soissons 1728-1730 (Bagger 1993: 52). In 1732, Russia concluded an alliance with Prussia and Austria, codified in the Berlin Treaty. In the War of the Polish Succession, Russia, by dint among other things of having fielded an army about 30.000 men strong, was definitely a player. Russia was conspicuously absent from the peace settlement, however (Craig and George 1990: 24). But come the Seven Years War (1756—1763, known in the US as the French and Indian Wars). Russia was a key player in the basic change in alliance patterns that precipitated the war. On the rationalist criterion of objective resources and systems-wide reach, this is when Russia became a great power: “By the Seven Years War the Russian army was the largest in Europe, the establishment aimed for at its commencement consisting of 162.430 men in field regiments, 74.548 garrison troops, 27.758 men in the landmilitsiia, 12.937 members of the corps of engineering and artillery, and 44.000 irregulars” (Dukes 1990: 129).The Seven Years War seems to be an important breaking point also in the sense that Russia seemingly restrained its military campaign short of crushing Prussia in order to keep that state in a shape where it could play a continuing important part in the working of the balance of Europe. Russia, in other words, had entered into the management of the states system to the extent of downplaying immediate interests for what was held to be more long-term ones. Note that the Seven Years War is also the period when the term Great Powers emerges. We have found no indication that the shift from talking of powers of the first rank to talking about great powers is related to the tentative entry of Russia into the category, however. During the following decades, Russia also fulfilled the added rationalist criterion of being a great responsible of the system. This factor is treated as crucial by the so-called English School of International Relations. Applying it to Russia, Adam Watson (1985: 70) points to Empress Elizabeth’s secret negotiations with the heads of France and Austria in 1760 as the crucial date. Certainly, by dint of the role Russia played in all three of Poland’s partitions, this criterion was firmly fulfilled by century’s end. If 1760 was an informal breakthrough, the Treaty of Teschen concluded in 1779 was a formal one, inasmuch as it became for the first time a guarantor power. The importance of Teschen has been underlined particularly by German historians such as Hellmann (1978) and Oestreich, who writes that Joseph tried to round off his Austrian territory by acquiring Bavaria and so to effect a notable shift of power within the Empire. Frederick opposed him; he appealed to Russia, who joined with France in guaranteeing the peace of Teschen, which ended the war of the Bavarian succession. In this way the great power of eastern Europe became obliged to defend the status quo in the Empire. The rise of Russia had taken place in the eighteenth century: she had stood united with the imperial army of Prince Eugene on the Rhine in 1735, and in the Seven Years War she had fought to crush Prussia and plundered Berlin. From now on Russia was a card to be watched in the game for internal unity [of Austria] (Oestreich 1982: 255). The official Soviet diplomatic history stresses how Russia’s convention with Turkey from 1783 as well as developments in the law of the sea gave Russia a practical role in the formation of international law – definitely another breakthrough in terms of managing the system (Zorin 1959: 369). By century’s end, Russia was a fully fledged participant in the formation of alliances. For example, in 1780, Russia was a member of the League of Armed Neutrality, which also counted Denmark and Portugal. Twenty years later, a successor was formed, now consisting of Russia, Denmark, Sweden and Prussia. In 1800, the new Russian emperor Paul ordered the College of Foreign Affairs to draw up a comprehensive analysis of Russia’s current standing and future prospects in terms of foreign policy. In the report, the College characterized Russia as “the world’s leading power”, a “Hercules” etc. (Bagger 1993: 60). To a political realist, there is no doubt that Russia was a great power by century’s end. On constructivist criteria as well, the socialization into the states system that had taken place would appear to be strong enough for Russia to qualify. There remained no doubt about its Christian credentials, the principle of legitimacy was the same as in the other powers, dynastic intermarriages had become common. How, then, should we account for the ubiquitous European complaints about Russia’s lack of civility and the continuing doubt about the extent to which it should be considered to be of Europe? (Being a great power and being European are different, no?) For Russia was still not seen as weighing heavily in the scales of civilization, as when David Hume complained that ‘the two most civilized nations, the English and French, should be in decline; and the barbarians, the Goths and the Vandals of Germany and Russia, should be in power and renown (quoted in Horn 1945: 18-19). Variants of this complaint was heard in other forms and in other arenas. For example, in 1804, the French ambassador Hédouville complained to his Foreign Minister Talleyrand that ‘There is no other foreign court where the diplomatic corps is less informed on political dispositions and proceedings than here’ (quoted in Grimsted 1969: 19). We may answer this question by turning away from the problematique of order and towards that of governance. This allows us to highlight two factors. First, as underlined by Frederick the Great and other contemporary politicians, regarded as a police state, Russia was less successful than others. The capacity for state action was less efficient and more limited. Second, the order-centered discussion of Russia so far has not taken notice of the 18th century process discussed above whereby, in Europe, societies emerged and states changed their way of handling societies from being one of direct rule to one of indirect governance. In Europe, this period saw the gradual emergence of liberal forms of governing that replaced that of the police state, and society gradually replaced territory as the object of reference for governing. In degrees that weakened the further east from Britain in Europe one moved, liberalism understood as concrete social practice firmed its grip. Russia eventually had to take cognizance of the change. In summing up Catherine the Great’s reign, Bruce Lincoln places the emphasis on how one cause of her social policy was that Russia’s ‘status as a Great Power’ imposed an imperative for civil peace, which again imposed heightened efficiency in the Russian administration. He then adds another factor which added to this imposition, namely that a number of young Russian bureaucrats held that to a Europe dominated by Enlightenment thinking, the pre-modern military and fiscal concerns of Muscovite Tsars confirmed poorly to the image of a Great Power that their sovereigns hoped to project. To be sure, Russia’s military needs continued greater than ever [sic], but, as a Great Power, she also must exhibit some proper concern for her citizens (Lincoln 1982: 3; comp. 175). To paraphrase, a new ethos of what governing a state entailed was setting a new standard not only for what a state had to be in order to be considered well-ordered, but also, and as a corollary, for which states should be considered great powers. Liberalism formulated an imperative whereby letting go of the state’s direct control of society was becoming a necessity not only for reasons of efficiency (producing a surplus that could feed state need, including a military capacity), but also and more fundamentally for reasons of conforming to a new Europe-wide standard of governance (the need to appear “normal”). Given 19th century European thought’s penchant for thinking about world history in terms of stages taking place in the same order and leading to the same goal, furthermore, the lack of normality was read more specifically as an insufficiently quick civilizational development. Note that the thinking in civilizational terms was not specific to liberalism, but was representative of the entire 19th century; cf. Haukkala’s chapter for examples of how a radical like Karl Marx and conservative like Friedrich List were at one in holding Russia to be lacking in civilization. Russia was a laggard learner, and in this sense, inferior. Conclusion Hiski Haukkala’s chapter in this bok covers the post-Napoleonic period from the vantage point of constructivismis concerned. At Vienna, Russia’s role as great power was institutionalized, most conspicuously in its being amongst the five powers that were given the right to have ambassadors plenipotentiary and extraordinary. From its emergence in the late 15th century and throughout the 17th, Russia considered itself great on transcendental and moral grounds. The problem was that this self-understanding was not shared by any other political entity. Russia’s claim to great powerhood was taken not of, but not recognized. Russia was excluded on the grounds that its variety of Christianity was strange, and that it had an uncivilized system of governance; it was seen as a despoty. As Russia’s ability to project itself grew, epitomized by its victory over what was considered the first-rank power of Sweden in 1721,European rulers came more directly up against Russian claims about parity or superiority for their own, and certainly different, governing structures. I hypothesised that it was the lack of social power to have these governing structures accepted that accounts for Russia’s lingering problems in being recognized as a great power. I gave as a symptomatic quote in this regard Russian Vice-Chancellor Peter Shafirov’s view that due to Peter the Great’s ‘transformation of Russia’, the European powers now sought out Russia as an ally, but that ‘if they seek our alliance it is rather through fear and hate than through feelings of friendship’ (Shafirov to a French colleague in 1721, here quoted in Dukes 1990: 77). This analysis seems to have bearings on the present-day situation. Beginning in the late 1980s, post-Soviet leaders themselves began to identify the root cause of their uneasiness vis-à-vis the West in civilizational terms. One of the key slogans of the perestroika period was the ned to “rejoin civilization’, a slogan that logically implied that the Soviet path had somehow led Russians away from it (Neumann 2005; comp. Haukkala’s chapter below). ). With the fall of communism, the official Russian self-understanding of the Soviet past came to blame a mistaken system of governance for the lingering problems in what was frequently referred to as the civilized world. For example, when Vladimir Putin addressed the nation at the millennium, he said that: Soviet power did not let the country develop a flourishing society which could be developing dynamically, with free people. First and foremost, the ideological approach to the economy made our country lag increasingly behind (otstavanie) the developed states. It is bitter to admit that for almost seven decades we travelled down a blind ally, which took us away from the main track of civilization […] The experience of the 1990s vividly shows that the genuine and efficient revival of our Fatherland cannot be brought about on Russian soil simply by dint of abstract models and schemata extracted from foreign textbooks. The mechanical copying of the experiences of other states will not bring progress. […] Russia will not soon, if ever, a replica of, say, the US or Great Britain, where liberal values have deep-seated traditions. For us, the state, with its institutions and structures, always played an exclusively important role in the life of the country and its people. For the Russian (rossiyanin), a strong state is not an anomaly, not something with which he has to struggle, but, on the contrary, a source of and a guarantee for order, as well as the initiator and main moving force of any change. Contemporary Russian society does not mistake a strong and effective state for a totalitarian one. http://www.government.gov.rus/government/minister/article-vvp1.html, accessed 14 February 2001. For an analysis, see Neumann 2005. This may be read as a plea for recognition of great powerhood on new terms, namely those of democracy and market economy. Ostensibly, this is a liberal model. But note that the Russian leader, like IR theory and political theory both, is trapped within a problematique of order, with a strong state appearing as the guarantor of the system of governance. The problem is that the model of governance that Russia pledges to implement here runs directly against a key liberal trend, where the question always is how the state may govern less. Putin’s view of what a state should do is the exact opposite. The Russian state should rule in direct fashion, not govern from afar. What this means is that Russia is once again evolving a rationality of government that has firm precedents in Western Europe, but that has, at the time of Russia’s adopting it, been left behind by West European states themselves. One corollary of evolving a different rationality of government is that the specific social practices to which those ratonalities give rise will differ. And indeed, notable difference exist between Russia and Western Europe regarding ownership, freedom of contract, judiciary and penal practices, health admistration and a whole swathe of other practices. Another corollary is that, as seen from Western Europe, Russia is once again rigged with a system of governance that jeopardizes its possible standing as a great power. Russia’s standing as a Great Power must be in serious doubt. Russia’s nuclear arsenal and what a Realist would judge to be its sphere of influence in Central Asia count in its favour. So does the size of its armed forces, but the weight of this factor evaporates if we correlate for quality of personnel and equipment. As seen by its inability to use military power efficiently and effectively, most conspicuous in Chechnya, Russia falls short of a key criterion used by Realists, namely an ability to project military power which is on a par with (other) great powers. It also falls short of most other material criteria such as technological innovation, not to mention size of population and of gross national budget. Russia ostensibly shares a moral purpose and a whole string of norms with the system’s (other) leading powers. It is one of five permament members of the UN Security Council, and, following the demise of the Soviet Union, it became a member of the G7, making it the G8. It is also a member of key international institutions such as the WTO, and partakes in a whole gamut of international regimes. It remains a fact, however, that Russia’s membership portfolio is patchy, with key economic institutions lacking and the overall total of institutional and regime memberships being considerably smaller than, for example, that of France. Furthermore, it is a recurrent theme of the literatures on Russia’s role within international organizations such as the UN system or within regimes such as those in the area of human rights that Russia tends to wield its influence by veto rather than by initiative. It rarely plays a leading role within these institutions. These observable facts all sow doubt about the degree in which Russia actually does share a moral purpose with the other powers in the system. I have argued that we may account for Russian lack of “socialization” on the international level by taking into account social practices, and the system of governance in particular. I have highlighted how professional producers of knowledge about Russia outside the discipline of International Relations, most notably historians, have stressed this factor. Finally, regarding state practice itself, I have given a number of examples that historically, European statesmen and diplomats were quite explicit about the way in which they wielded the criterion of government in sizing up Russia. It seems to me that this practice continues. In order to account adequately for why Russia has been seen to be a great power manquée even at the apex of its material power in the 1810s or 1940s, we need to look beyond the question of moral purpose, towards the concrete and underlying question of in what degree Russian governance and Russian governmentality are compatible with the versions that dominate in global politics at any one given time. I conclude that, even if Russia may currently be said to have adequate resources to count as a great power, to share in the management of the system and to share a principle of legitimacy with other great powers, all of which are in some doubt, Russia’s standing is still in doubt due to its professed system of governance. If this argument has merit, then it suggests that the overall research agenda of students of International Relations needs updating. During its hey-dey in the 19th century, Liberalism posed the question of great powerhood in terms of a “standard of civilization”. Liberalism came to dominate in such a degree that this became the “natural” way in which to discuss global politics. At present, Neo-liberalism imposes a similar discursive order by bringing to bear a set of criteria in global politics which centers on governance. Like Liberalism in an earlier era, it is rapidly emerging as the “natural” way to discuss global political questions such as the relative standing of powers. The issue of compatible rationalities of government is at the heart of struggles over globalization and system transformation. In a number of discourses (for example that on development, or on women’s rights) neo-liberal standards for what should be considered good governance have become dominant long since and are already well described empirically and thoroughly theorized. It is high time that scholars working within the field of International Relations get rid of their presuppositions about the non-importance of social factors for state relations and begin to note that the rise of hegemonic Neo-Liberalism is relevant for other discourses on global politics such as the one on great powerhood as well. Bibliography Anisimov, Evgeniy Viktorovich (1993) ‘The Imperial Heritage of Peter the Great in the Foreign Policy of His early Successors’ pp. 21-35 in Hugh Ragsdale (ed.) Imperial Russian Foreign Policy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bagger, Hans (1993) ‘The Role of the Baltic in Russian Foreign Policy’ pp. 36-72 in Hugh Ragsdale (ed.) Imperial Russian Foreign Policy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, Lorne (1990) Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait Painting in the 14th, 15th, and 16th Centuries New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Dukes, Paul (1990) The Making of Russian Absolutism 1613-1801, second ed. London: Longman. Gordon, John Steele (1999) The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power, 1653-2000 New York, NY: Scribner. Griffiths, David M. (1970) ’The Rise and Fall of the Northern System: Court Politics in the First Half of Catherine II’s Reign’ Canadian Slavic Studies 4 (3): around p. 551. Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy (1969) The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801-1825 Berkeley, CA: Hamilton, Keith & Richard Langhorne (1995) The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration. London: Routledge. Hartley, Janet (2000) '"Losing my Best Days": Charles Whitworth, First British Ambassador to Russia', History Today, 51 (6): 40-46. Hartley, Janet (1995) ”It is the Festival of the Crown and Sceptres": The Diplomatic, Commercial and Domestic Significance of the Visit of Alexander I to England in 1814', The Slavonic and East European Review 73 (2): 246-68. Hellmann, Manfred (1978) ‘Die Friedensschlüsse von Nystad (1721) und Teschen (1779) als Etappen des Vordringen Russland nach Europa’ pp. 270-288 in Historisches Jahrbuch Munich-Freiburg: Görres. Horn, D. B. (1945) British Public Opinion and the Partition of Poland Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hosking, Geoffrey (2002) Russia and the Russians. From Earliest Times to 2001 London: Penguin. Hughes, L. (ed.), Peter the Great and the West: New Perspectives (Basingstoke, Macmillan, December 2001 (incl. Hartley, Janet - 'Changing Perceptions: British Views of Russia from the Grand Embassy to the Peace of Nystad' pp. 53-70) ISBN0333920090. Hughes, L & M. Di Salvo (eds), A Window on Russia. Papers from the V International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia (La Fenice Edizioni, Rome, 1996), (incl. Hartley, Janet (1995)- 'England "Enjoys the Spectacle of a Northern Barbarian": The Reception of Peter I and Alexander I' in pp. 11-18) ISSN 8886171226. Izvol’skiy, Aleksandr (ed.and transl. Charles Louis Seeger)(1921) Recollections of a Foreign Minister New York. Kaplan, H. H. (1968) Russia and the Outbreak of the Seven Years War Cambridge. Karamzin, N. M. Istoriya gosudarstva Rossiiskogo http://www.magister.msk.ru:8085/library/history/history1.htm Kratochwil, Friedrich V. (1989) Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levy, Jack S. (1983) War in Modern Great Power Systems, 1495-1975 Lexington, KT: University of Kentucky Press. Malia, Martin (1999) Russia Under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McKay, Derek & H. M. Scott (1983) The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648-1815 London: Longman. Mosse, W. E. (1996) An Economic History of Russia 1856–1914 London: I. B. Tauris. Nekrasov, G. A. (1972) ‘Mezhdunarodnoe priznanie rossiyskogo velikoderzhaviya v XVIII veke’ pp. 381-388 in V. T. Pashuto et al. (eds.) Feodal’naya Rossiya vo vsemirno-istoricheskom protsesse Moscow: Nauka. Neumann, Iver B. (2006) “Sublime Diplomacy: Byzantine, Early Modern, Contemporary” in Millennium 34 (3): 865-888. Neumann, Iver B. (1999) Uses of the Other: “The East” in European Identity Formation Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota Press. University Press. Pagden, Anthony (ed.)(2001) The Idea of Europe : from antiquity to the European Union Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pintner, Walter Russia as a Great Power 1709-1856: Reflections on the Problem of Relative Backwardness, with Special reference to the Russian Army and Russian Society. Washington, DC: The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Occasional Peper, no. 33. Pintner, Walter McKensey& D.K.Rowney (1980) Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century London Pipes, Richard (ed.) (1959 ) Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia: A Translatin and Analysis Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Poe, Marshall T. (2000) ’A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early European Ethnography, 1476-1748 Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Raeff, Marc (1983) The Well-Ordered Police State : Social and Institutional Change Through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 Ithaca, NY: YAle University Press. Ranke, Leopold von [1833] ‘The Great Powers’ in T.H. von Laue (1950) Ranke, the Formative Years Princeton: Princeton University Press. OR pp. 65-101 in Leopold von Ranke (1973) (eds. Georg G. Iggers & Konrad von Moltke) The Theory and Practice of History Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Reisner, M.A (1902) ‘Obshchestvennoe blago i absolyutnoe gosudarstvo’ Vestnik prava November 1029, pp. 16-39 Ringmar, Erik (2002) ‘The Recognition Game: Soviet Russia against the West’ Cooperation and Conflict 37 (2): 115-136. Roberts, Michael (1968) Sweden as a great power 1611-1697; Government, Society, Foreign Policy London: Edward Arnold. Schroeder, Paul W. (1986) “The 19th-Century International System: Changes in the Structure” World Politics 34 (1): 1--26. Shafirov, Peter P. (1973) A Discourse Concerning the Just Causes of the War between Sweden and Russia: 1700-1721 Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana. Tarkiainen, K. (1974) Vår gamle arffiende ryssen Studia historica upsaliensia 54. Tjaden, Anja (1994) ’The Dutch in the Baltic, 1544-1721’ in Göran Rystand, Klaus-R Böhme & Wilhelm M Carlgren (eds.) In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in Power Politics, 1500-1990, vol I: 1500-1890 Lund: Lund University Press. Waltz, Kenneth N. Theory of International Politics (1979) Toronto: Addison-Wesley. Watson, Adam (1985) ‘Russia and the European States System”’ pp. 61—74 in Hedley Bull & Adam Watson (eds.) The Expansion of International Society Oxford: Clarendon. Wohlforth, William C. (1987) ’The Perception of Power: Russia in the Pre-1914 Balance World Politics 34 (3): 353-381. Zorin, V.A. et al. (eds.) (1959) Istoriya diplomatii, second ed. Moscow: Gospolitizdat. PAGE 2