“CHARLE MAGNE’S EUROPE” AND “PETER THE GREAT’S EUROPE”: RUSSIAN CONSERVATIVE THINKERS’ PERSPECTIVES ON RUSSIA’S INTERNATIONAL POSITION IN THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY
The international situation of Russia and its foreign policy were a subject of discussions within the framework of various currents of public thought in the 19th century. However, Russian conservatives, concerned about the future of the country in a changing world, paid special attention to these issues. The conservative concept emerged and evolved in the course of reflections and polemics on Russia’s place in the world and the relationships between foreign policy and domestic development. The emphasis in such discussions was placed on the era of Peter the Great, when Russia had become part of the system of international relations, declared its geopolitical interests and begun to implement them consistently. In fact, in Peter’s time, the Westphalian system, in which Russia was assigned a clearly peripheral role, was replaced by a new European order based on the Congresses in Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden (1713-1714), on the results of the Great Northern War (1700-1721) and the Treaty of Nystad (1721). Under these new conditions, Peter the Great showed not only continuity with his predecessors’ policies but also outlined the main foreign policy vectors, which Russia followed throughout the 18th century and, as conservative thinkers pointed out, the whole of the 19th century.