If you’ve been following the news, the title above must sound nonsensical.
Ever since Trump moved into the White House, America has ceded her status as Russia’s Enemy Number One. That mantle has passed on to Britain, and hardly a day goes by without a Russian politician or journalist calling for a nuclear strike on London.
Such unfriendly sentiments pre-date the nuclear age. From the 18th century onwards, Russia has consistently regarded England as an enemy.
“The Englishwoman does the dirty” was the buzz phrase attributed to that great warrior Suvorov (d. 1800). In return, Russia has been known to express hostility to England even when allied with her (for example, during the Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War).
But things haven’t always been so tense. When Muscovy was becoming Russia during the reign of Ivan IV, ‘the Terrible’, England was Russia’s best friend, certainly in the West.
That was the time of explorers and adventurers, daredevils who put trade, diplomacy and often even piracy at the service of the Crown. In the 16th century, their interest was piqued by navigating the Northwestern Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The need arose in 1453, when Ottoman Turks conquered Byzantium and started demanding huge tolls from the caravans travelling along the Great Silk Road. Another route to the riches of China and India had to be found, but the icy Arctic was a veritable deathtrap.
Still, eventually the English spirit of maritime adventure could no longer be contained. The idea was mooted that perhaps it would be possible to reach the north coast of what was then known as either Muscovy or Tartary and then use the network of rivers to reach China overland.
That intrepid idea led to a breakthrough not only in Anglo-Russian relations but also in the history of commerce. In 1551 King Edward VI endorsed, and in 1555 Queen Mary I chartered, the Muscovy Trading Company, the first major joint-stock company that, by remote action, added the letters Ltd. or Plc. to so many modern corporations.
The major shareholders were Thomas White, Sebastian Cabot, Richard Chancellor and Sir Hugh Willoughby. They equipped three ships and, with Willoughby as commander and Chancellor as navigator, sailed towards the White and Barents Seas.
However, violent storms broke up the flotilla, and Willoughby’s ship got trapped in ice near present-day Murmansk. Several years later the frozen ship with 60-odd corpses aboard was discovered by fishermen.
Chancellor’s luck was better. He managed to make contact with some locals who eventually sent him over to Moscow. Tsar Ivan, then a young man, instantly grasped the benefits of trading with England. He wined and dined Chancellor lavishly, and several months later sent him back to England with an offer of granting the Muscovy Company a monopoly on Russian trade.
Chancellor was to become a shuttling ambassador, but in 1556 his luck ran out. His ship perished in a storm off the coast of Norway, and the great explorer sailed his last.
The relations continued to flourish under Queen Elizabeth I until things took a humorous turn. In 1570 Ivan launched a full-scale punitive campaign against his own people. But before he struck, the tsar had presciently tried to secure a fallback position in case of failure.
To that end he sent his brocade-gowned, fur-hatted, shaggy-bearded emissaries to propose marriage to Queen Bess. Her putative virginity must have been a factor in Ivan’s proposal, for he prized chastity in his brides and decried its absence. For example, when on their wedding night his fifth wife turned out to be not quite so virginal, Ivan had her drowned in a pond, as one did.
In case the Queen was unable to overcome her maidenly qualms, Ivan suggested a second-best alternative: a mutual guarantee of asylum should rebellious subjects turn against either monarch.
Giles Fletcher, Elizabethan MP and Muscovy Company agent in Russia, renders this offer more eloquently, if a bit archaically, in his important book Of the Russe Common Wealth: “Further, the Emperor requireth earnestly that there may be assurance made by oath and faith betwixt the Queen’s Majestie and him, that yf any misfortune might fall or chance upon ether of them to go out of their countries, that it might be lawful for ether of them to come into the other countrey for the safeguard of themselves and theyr lives…”
Elizabeth wasn’t so much reluctant to accept either offer as perplexed. Since Her Majesty had only a vague idea of Muscovy, she was unlikely to regard it as a suitable haven. Moreover, as she explained to her Russian suitors, should she ask Parliament to endorse such an escape route, that request might be misconstrued.
And since she probably had never heard of Ivan, she was reluctant to let his wooing succeed where Leicester’s had failed. She did however suggest out of politeness that Ivan was welcome to settle in England if he so chose. Forget about the nuptials though.
Ivan took the rejection stoically, and the Muscovy Company continued to enjoy its monopoly, remaining effectively the only trade and diplomatic bridge between Russia and the West until the reign of the second Romanov tsar, Alexei Mikhailovich (d. 1676).
The 1649 execution of Charles I left a strong impression on Alexei, who simply couldn’t countenance such treatment of God-anointed monarchs. Thus, when the Muscovy Company applied for an extension of its licence, it ran into the blow of the tsar’s ukase: “Inasmuch as the said Anglic Germans have slaughtered their own King Carolus to death, we hereby decree that none of the said Anglic Germans shall henceforth be admitted to Russia’s land.”
The tsar’s statement suggests that he grasped the main point about the West, in that instance specifically England: It was becoming dangerous to the well-being of absolute monarchs.
The English were thus banished from Russia, to be replaced in the role of principal trading partners by the Dutch. It was mostly the Dutch, assisted by Scotsmen and Germans, who educated Alexei’s son, Peter I, in the ways of the West.
In the good tradition of asset-stripping, the young tsar took from the Westerners what he found useful, mainly technological and sartorial innovations, and discarded what he saw as dross, that is elements of political liberties. However, though England was now at the back of the queue, Peter retained an interest in that regicidal land.
On his fact-finding gap-year voyage to the West, known as the Grand Embassy (1697-1698), Peter included England in his itinerary. When there, the tsar learned the hard way the difference between topiary and lavatories, and entertained his Deptford hosts by publicly copulating with maidservants during dinner parties.
The English were slightly put off by such uninhibited behaviour but kept up the appearances. However, they must have made a mental note that the two countries were emotionally and culturally incompatible. The relations between England and Russia have never really picked up since then.
The Muscovy Company continued trading until the Bolshevik Revolution, but it was strictly low-key. Other than making England Russia’s best, if short-lived, friend, its main role was paving the way for another joint-stock corporation, the immeasurably stronger East India Company, which expanded the Empire not only by trade but also by military conquest.
Yet the story of the Muscovy Company, in addition to being an historical artifact, has a didactic interest. It shows that two countries can never become friendly for long on the basis of shared commercial interests only. These have to be underpinned by some cultural affinity for the amity to endure.
Intimately familiar as I am with both England and Russia, I’m sure that no other Western country is as incompatible with Russia as England. The Englishman (or “the Englishwoman that does the dirty”) and the Russian sit at the opposite cultural, emotional, political and generally civilisational poles.
Another Western country I’m closely familiar with, the US, has more in common with Russia, and Americans and Russians are often surprised at discovering that commonality when coming in contact with one another.
England, on the other hand, is unlikely ever to become Russia’s best friend again. The days of the Muscovy Company will never return.
That next-to-last paragraph made me think of the scene from Patton, where the great general is forced to endure an evening with his Russian “allies” and is asked to share a drink: “Thank the general and tell him I have no desire to drink with him or any other Russian son of a b****.” Not all Americans look for commonality.
This article highlights the problems with the modern ethos that we can all become fast friends if only we can share economic development.
The first writer I know of who pointed out the commonality between Russians and Americans was Tocqueville. But speaking of American generals, Eisenhower in his memoirs recalls an argument he had with Zhukov, who tried to convince him that communism was superior to capitalism. Eisenhower admitted that he had found those arguments difficult to refute. And Stalin was still going strong at the time. As I recall the film, Patton did have that drink after all, but he certainly had no illusions about the Soviets.