ABSTRACT

The question of Russia’s relationship with Europe has long been vexed and emotive. For some, the Russians are the barbarians at the gates, Asian intruders at a western feast. Converted to Christianity through Byzantium, they never had the benefit of Roman law and Catholic culture. Succumbing to the Tartar invasion of the thirteenth century, for two hundred years they were virtually cut off from western commercial and intellectual currents. They barely felt the impact of either the Renaissance or the Reformation. They remained largely immune to the Enlightenment and their autocratic political system was unaffected by the constitutional development triggered by 1789 and 1848. The revolution of 1917 set Russia on a path which again diverged sharply from the West. The three-quarters of a century of Communist rule which followed forged a society, a system, a culture fundamentally at odds with that of contemporary western Europe.