Does England Hate Russia? England, Truman and the Greek Connection

This paper attempts to uncover why England (and later the United Kingdom) has a deep historical dislike of Russia and Russian society. Starting with William Pitt’s verbal attack on Russia in 1791, the same sentiments moved onto the Dardanelles, the so-called “Great Game”, the Crimean War, the acquisition of Cyprus, Mackinder’s obsession with Russia, the Bolsheviks, the “Fourth World War”, the Greek Civil War, and the Cold War, and more recently, the recent attacks on Russia by British politicians. Most notable of the mentioned events, Britain used Greece to stir up anti-Soviet flames. Individual characteristics such as atavism, nostalgia, arrogance, envy, racism, and what may be termed as “post-imperial rigor mortis” are all key factors in explaining today’s negative attitude towards Russia in the UK.

Introduction

This paper attempts to uncover why England (and later the United Kingdom) has a deep historical dislike of Russia and Russian society. Starting with William Pitt’s verbal attack on Russia in 1791, the same sentiments moved onto the Dardanelles, the so-called “Great Game”, the Crimean War, the acquisition of Cyprus, Mackinder’s obsession with Russia, the Bolsheviks, the “Fourth World War”, the Greek Civil War, and the Cold War, and more recently, the recent attacks on Russia by British politicians. Most notable of the mentioned events, Britain used Greece to stir up anti-Soviet flames. Individual characteristics such as atavism, nostalgia, arrogance, envy, racism, and what may be termed as “post-imperial rigor mortis” are all key factors in explaining today’s negative attitude towards Russia in the UK.

Be that as it may, there have been periods of peaceful co-existence and alliances between the two countries. For example, Ivan the Terrible established “friendly and profitable” relations with England; [1] Britain and Russia were also allies at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, while the “Great Game” came to a reasonable end with a treaty with Russia in 1907, reconciling the differences between the two countries in Asia; Tibet was neutralized; Russia gave up its interests in Afghanistan, leaving control of the country's foreign policy in Britain's hands; and Persia was divided into three- a Russian zone, a neutral one, and a British one. Thus, the Great Game had seemingly been brought to an end. [2] In the Great War, London and Moscow were allies until the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and of course after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. However, it would do well to remember Palmerston: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”.

Before analyzing British policy towards Russia, there have been a few recent examples of emotional attacks on Russia. For example, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called for British people to demonstrate outside the Russian Embassy. More recently, Foreign Secretary David Lammy directly accused Vladimir Putin of running a “mafia state”, likening him to a slave-owner. Lizz Truss, as Foreign Secretary, stated that she was “ready” to launch a nuclear war, “even if it meant global annihilation”. The much vaunted British “stiff upper lip” increasingly appears to be an illusion. Some of the more extreme statements have naturally caused a number of normally phlegmatic Russian leaders some understandable irritation. For example, on October 7, 2024, Medvedev called for the sinking of Great Britain. Emotion and frustration seem to be taking over the political world, but especially so in the UK.

Pitt’s Imperial Anger and Russophobia’s Origins

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Known as one of England’s most bellicose prime ministers, William Pitt the Younger, saw the Ottoman Empire as England’s buffer against Russian attempts to control the Dardanelles. Thus, in 1791, he lambasted Russia for wishing to divide the Ottoman Empire. [3] Apart from his obsession with keeping Russia out of the Dardanelles, defeating Russian goals in Asia emerged as the obsessive aim of generations of British civilian and military officials. [4] As for Queen Victoria, she referred to the “Great Game” as “a question of Russian or British supremacy in the world”. [5]

The Great Game

Although England was to join Russia against Napoleon, this cooperation was proved to be short-lived. Once the traditional military enmity between France and England had been cleared up in 1815, it was back to Russia-bashing and the notion of the “Great Game”. Germany, Britain’s future rival, was not yet united. England’s—later Britain’s—essential policy for Europe was not to allow any European power to control the European Continent. Matters are the same today, explaining Britain’s push for EU enlargement; the more the EU members, the more the Franco-German axis would be rendered impotent in the face of Poland and the Baltic statelets, on top of the administrative burden that comes with managing such an unwieldy mass of states. Britain’s support for NATO enlargement also detracts from any serious Franco-German attempts to establish an EU army that is independent of NATO.

British leaders fear that Russia would not know where to stop, seeing the relationship between the Russians and English as an increasingly democratic society engaged generation after generation in a conflict with “despotic” Russia. Thus eventually, the UK developed a negative view of Russia that went beyond the political and economic differences, dividing the two countries. Britons grew to object to Russians on an emotional level, not merely for what they did but for who they were. [6]

The Straits

Historically, England was always concerned about Russia’s push into once Ottoman lands, as this threatened England’s access to India, as well as its control of the Mediterranean, via Gibraltar, and later Cyprus. Hence, England’s fear that Russia would invade Constantinople, and thereby control the Straits. This explains Britain’s friendly relations with the Ottomans, which became an obsession with British leaders: in 1841, the British Minister to Greece said: “A truly independent Greece is an absurdity. Greece can either be English or Russian, and since she must not be Russian, it is necessary that she be English”. [7] This appears as pure arrogance towards Greece, whose people Britain treated as geopolitical fodder. It is possible that officials such as Lyons were still smarting from the fact that it was Russia which forced Britain into agreeing to at least a sovereign—albeit beholden to the “Powers”—Greek state. Britain had pushed for an “autonomous” Greek state, but as an Ottoman vassal. Greece owes its relative freedom to Russia, more than to any other country, and certainly not to London (although revolutionary and Napoleonic France also have an intellectual claim). For this reason, the 1821 Greek Revolution ended in a form of—albeit qualified—independence. The Anglo-Russian Protocol of April 4, 1826, decided matters: it stipulated that Britain would mediate to make Greece an autonomous vassal of the Ottoman Empire, but if this proved impossible, Britain or Russia could intervene jointly or separately. Russia intervened, and by 1829, Greece, or at least some of it, was reasonably free. Britain was constrained to join and play a more active role. In other words, “If you can’t beat them, join them”.

The Crimea

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Britain’s obsession with keeping Russia away from the Ottoman lands, with the help of the French and Piemontese, manifested in the Crimean War. Russia was unable to take Constantinople and establish its navy in the Black Sea. Russia, weakened but not on its back, began to revitalize itself, defeating the Ottomans in 1877, gaining some previously ceded territories, with Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania being able to throw off the Ottoman yolk. The resulting treaty of San Stefano between Russia and the Ottomans made the Crimean khanate independent of the Turkish sultan; advanced the Russian frontier southward to the Southern (Pivdennyy) Buh River; gave Russia the right to maintain a fleet on the Black Sea; and assigned Russia rights of protection over the Ottoman sultan's Christian subjects. [8]

This was anathema to Britain, which feared a large Russia-friendly Bulgaria extending to, and including, Thessaloniki (to the anger of Greece), which then pushed for a revamp at the Congress of Berlin, where Bulgaria was again cut down to size, with Thrace and Macedonia remaining in Ottoman hands. To Russian, but especially French anger, Britain concluded a secret agreement with the Ottomans to rent Cyprus.

Cyprus

The Great Eastern Crisis demonstrated British concerns about a large pro-Russian Bulgaria, and marked the entry of Cyprus into the geopolitical equation. The British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, wrote: “If Cyprus can be conceded to your majesty by the Porte, and England at the same time enters a defensive alliance with Turkey, guaranteeing Asiatic Turkey from Russian invasion, the power of England in the Mediterranean will be absolutely increased in that region and your Majesty’s Indian Empire immensely strengthened. Cyprus is the key of Western Asia”. [9]

Clearly, Britain’s acquisition of Cyprus betrayed its obsession with supporting the crumbling Ottoman Empire to the detriment of Russia. At any rate, through its military bases, Britain’s possession of Cyprus remains to this day. During the war, the Russian navy mistook some British trawlers in the North Sea for Japanese submarines and fired on them, killing two and sinking a boat. This became known as the Dogger Bank incident, and nearly led to war between Britain and Russia.

Mackinder’s Geopolitical Obsession and the Poisoning of Geography

Although the term “geopolitics” only came into fashion with Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922), the founding father of geopolitical thinking is considered to be German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904). Be that as it may, grabbing the resources of others has been an unfortunate human trait since time immemorial. It is only with 19^th century imperial doctrines that the crude term appeared, as an attempted justification of imperialism. Unlike the German Haushofer, who used the term “Geopolitik” to justify the Nazi’s eastward expansion, the Englishman Halford Mackinder called it “political geography", thus poisoning what had been a decent science. His obsession lay in keeping Russia divided from Germany and the rest of western Europe. Although the crude science of geopolitics had not been a subject of serious study in Russia or the Soviet Union (particularly since the vast nation has more than enough resources of its own and did not entertain the need to go around the world taking other people’s resources), by the heady emotional days of the fall of the Berlin Wall, serious Russians were looking closely at the “science”.

One leading academic brought the thinking world of Russia into frame, with a seminal article that reflects serious later-day Soviet thinking, continuing to hold relevance even today. The author, Igor Malashenko, informed his—obviously educated—audience, that “geopolitics, as the term suggests, is the politics of a country as determined by its geographical features”. In particularly, he adhered to Mackinder’s reference to Russia as occupying a central position on the world’s map, lying in its key region, the Heartland. The confrontation of the continental power which controls the heart of Eurasia and the coalition opposing it is by no means confined, geopolitically, to a contest between East and West, socialism and capitalism (or “totalitarianism” and “liberal democracy”, in Western parlance), as it has quite often been made out over the last few decades. On the contrary, it is an element of global politics.

Properly speaking, the very terms “East” and “West” also reflect, if inadequately, the fact that it is not only ideological rivalry or even a clash of social-political systems taking place, but also a “de-ideologized” geopolitical confrontation. Malashenko noted that for centuries, “Russia was beating off the West’s numerous attempts at establishing control over Eastern Europe, as through the expansionism of Lithuania, Poland, France or Germany. There appeared to be only one way to assure the security of Russia and the key region belonging to it: it was by raising a well-defended geopolitical barrier around it, brick by brick, block by block. This task arose over and over again before various rulers, dynasties and even geopolitical systems. The creation of the Empire was a response to the geopolitical challenge of the West”. [10] While Mackinder’s obsession lay in undermining friendship between Russia and Germany (including Western Europe), Malashenko also refers to “ethnopolitics”, in other words hostility toward the Russian people as a whole, rather than simply the government.

Bolshevism and Russophobia

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Britain’s traditional fear of Russian power was naturally enhanced, politically and emotionally when the Bolsheviks came to power. Serious British interference in Russia in 1919 and the early twenties ended abruptly. Britain, particularly Winston Churchill, did all that was possible to fight Bolshevism. Churchill is reputed to have described Soviet diplomats as “treacherous, incorrigible, and unfit for civilized intercourse”. [11] Clearly referring to Bolshevism, he had also referred to the “schemes of the International Jews”, calling them a “worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society”. [12] Like Germany, which after the horrors of its treatment of Jews between 1934 and 1945, has been kind to Israel, so has Moscow, walking a careful line after of its past pogroms. Overall, Churchill’s and Britain’s distrust of “the International Jew” transmogrified into a fear and dislike of Bolshevism and by extension, of Russia. This was to be brought into full realization in, of all places, Greece.

Churchill, Stalin and Greece

Churchill’s “postage stamp” agreement with Stalin in October 1944, gave Britain 90% control over Greece. What is less well-known is that Moscow had already allowed London to take the lead several months earlier, and that the Foreign Office had admitted that if anyone was to be blamed for the strength of the Communists in Greece, it was Britain itself, as the Soviet government had agreed to let Britain take the lead in Greece. [13] Yet despite this, Britain, mainly Churchill, continued to sow divisions in Greece, the most obvious example being Churchill’s obsession in bringing back an unpopular king. [14] On top of that, Britain continued to fan the flames, despite its agreement with Moscow. Although at the end of the day, Greek fought Greek in the civil war, the British role in helping to get it off the ground was nefarious, with the Head of the MI6 station in Athens playing a particularly nasty part. [15] Britain, in fact, ended up supporting the more pro-German Greeks against her erstwhile Resistance partners. This can be explained through Britain’s manic obsession with Moscow. In the words of Francis Noel-Baker, “Instead of making Greek resistance more moderate, more democratic, more truly representative of the mass of Greek opinion, we drove it to extremes. Instead of helping to strengthen E.A.M by encouraging non-communist elements to join, we tried to weaken its influence, to prevent it “monopolizing” the liberation movement, by aiding its political opponents. The nationalists we tried to use were just those people with whom German propaganda against the “red menace” was most effective. And Goebbels was working day and night to prove that all resistance to the Germans was communist inspired. Little wonder that so many of our “nationalist” friends turned frankly quisling”. [16]

Apart from Britain’s role in the Greek Civil War, Greece was then handed over to America, thus bringing the latter into the Balkans and stimulating the so-called Truman Doctrine.

Post-1945: The Cold War

Despite its agreement with Moscow, Britain fanned the flames in Greece to the extent that it even wished for a Cold War with Moscow. As for actions responsible for the post-1945 Cold War, there are some obvious pointers: first, the West rejected Moscow’s suggestion for a neutral Germany; second, the West convinced its population that after Communist governments had taken power in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, Moscow was intent on conquering all of western Europe (few serious Western politicians actually believed this in private); third, the establishment of the Brussels Treaty by Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg worried Moscow, which already suspected that Germany (at least the Western occupied part) would be drawn in later. Suspicions about the West’s keenness to rearm Germany had already been proven correct by the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, with a particularly strong currency exchange rate. Moscow responded a few months later with the creation in its zone namely the German Democratic Republic. Fourth, NATO’s coming into being in 1949 continued to cause concern for Moscow. Yet when the Soviet Union tried to join NATO in March 1954, it was summarily rejected. It was therefore hardly surprising that the Warsaw Pact was established the following year.

Britain was at the forefront of anti-Soviet (and emotionally, anti-Russian) moves with, perhaps oxymoronically, Socialist British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin taking over the reins from Anthony Eden on July 27, 1945, almost coinciding with Harry Truman’s taking over the American presidency on April 12, 1945. Bevin and Truman’s hatred of communism (one of the reasons he dropped two atom bombs on Japan was to “show the Soviets”) resulted in the so-called Truman Doctrine, which took form via massive military support to Greece and Turkey. Thus, British action in handing Greece to America was a vital ingredient of the Cold War which, with NATO’s establishment, had begun in earnest when both Greece and Turkey joined in 1952. Despite Moscow’s attempts to join NATO, the die had been cast. [17] Perhaps if Franklin Roosevelt had not died when he did, British Churchillian and then Bevinian fear, bordering on hatred of Russia, would not have won the day. At any event, Moscow’s suspicions that the West wished to rearm the Federal Republic of Germany proved to be well-founded when, following the rejection of the European Defense Community by the French National Assembly in August 1954, the Federal Republic joined NATO. [18]

Breathing Room

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England, and later Britain, did its utmost not only to rival Russia, but to work against it whenever the opportunity presented itself. Two important ingredients were Britain’s almost constant support for the Ottoman Empire and the “Great Game”. Fast forward to today, and the fall of the Berlin Wall: far from sticking to its word and not expanding NATO to Russia’s borders, neither Britain nor the US took Russia’s wish to join NATO seriously. [19] Even after NATO’s illegal 78-day bombing of Belgrade—or perhaps because of it—Putin was prepared to make overtures. [20] Then came the West’s illegal and baseless destruction of Iraq, and the destruction of Libya, with Britain playing a leading role. The West’s attempt to destabilize and indulge in “regime” change in Syria nearly proved to be the last straw for Moscow. In the end, limits were reach in Ukraine’s 2014 “Maidan”, when the country’s elected president was forced out by pro-NATO elements. This is the context which helps to explain Moscow’s “special military operation”. It is hardly surprising that Moscow distrusts the West, Britain in particular.

Conclusions

This article mentions individual characteristics such as atavism, nostalgia, arrogance, envy, racism and what is known as “post-imperial rigor mortis” as key factors in explaining the English and British negative attitude towards Russia. Emotional statements by the likes of Truss, Johnson and Lammy coincide with this assumption. The somewhat supercilious attitude of past British leaders toward the peoples of the world, Russia included, are also crucial. Sir Francis Younghusband (famous for having led the invasion of Tibet in 1904) wrote: “Our superiority over them [Indians] is not due to mere sharpness of intellect, but to the higher moral nature to which we have attained in the development of the human race”. [21] Not to be outdone, a Liberal Member of Parliament, Sir Charles Dilke, considered America as the agent of Anglo-Saxon domination, predicting a great racial conflict from which “Saxendom would rise triumphant” with China, Japan, Africa and South America soon falling to the all-conquering Anglo-Saxon, and Italy, Spain, France and Russia “becoming pygmies by the side of such people”. [22] Also notable are statements by revered explorer, mining magnate and politician Cecil Rhodes: “I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives”. [23]

While it may seem slightly out of touch to harp on about past attributes of some English/British leaders, this cannot entirely disappear; atavism should be given its due. For example, the rumbustious and often emotional Boris Johnson—himself only partly British, with a Turkish grandfather, and being born in America—has cultivated a quintessentially “English” image, which wears thin with real unassuming gentlemen. Johnson, who was sacked from The Times early in his career for inventing a quote, eventually had to resign his leadership of the Conservative Party after a series of scandals. Envy should also be given its due. Given that Russia never needed to grab the biggest known overseas empire, it never had an overseas one to lose. When Britain lost most of its empire and was reduced to a tiny area compared to that of Russia, it is possible that some of Britain’s more jingoistic leaders had a bout of atavistic envy. Post-imperial rigor mortis can be a dangerous factor in inter-state relations.

A Russian friend well summarized the reality of today’s current leaders: “Reason is dead. It’s all about interests and primitive instincts these days. I can’t really figure out what’s the underlying problem behind that, but I start to think education matters. Education produces self-interested individuals with low moral standards. People don’t know their own history, there is a total absence of critical thinking. The current generation of leaders are mere individualistic bureaucrats who see their national interests through the same lenses as if it were a company that needs to outmaneuver their competitors”.

While it is true that the dumbing down of, especially, higher education in Britain has indeed produced some rather mediocre intellects, it is also true that the anti-Russian sentiments of current British leaders influence the general population. This is not a new phenomenon: “To begin, the era of free speech is closing down. The freedom of the press in Britain was always something of a fake, because in the last resort, money controls opinion”. [24]

The Cold War was largely about hard-nosed business interests and the obsessional side of geopolitics (i.e. arming NATO member states to profit shareholders and invade weaker counties illegally). Ideology, and now, even racism, were and are merely manufactured socially engineered excuses. As this article has tried to show, it all boils down to mediocre leadership. To end on a melancholic note: according to its founder, Britain's only balalaika orchestra is struggling for members partly because of anti-Russian sentiments within the UK.

1. Ward, Christopher J. and Thompson, John M., Russia: A Historical Introduction from Kievan Rus’ to the Present, Routledge, Ninth Edition, 2021, p.55.

2. Fromkin, David, A Peace to end all Peace, Henry Holt and Company (an Owl Book) New York, 2001 (first published in 1989), pp. 27-32.

3. Wallbank, T. Walter et al (eds.), Civilization, Past and Present, Vol. 2, Harper Collins, New York, 1996, p. 721

4. Fromkin, David, A Peace to end all Peace, Henry Holt and Company (an Owl Book) New York, 2001 (first published in 1989).

5. Ibid.

6. I Fromkin, David, A Peace to end all Peace, Henry Holt and Company (an Owl Book) New York, 2001 (first published in 1989), p.30.

7. Clogg, Richard, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge University Press, 1995 (first published 1992), p. 57. He quotes the British Minister to Greece, Sir Edmond Lyons.

8. Already enshrined in the Treaty of Kuçuk Kainardji of 1774.

9. Buckle, B.E., The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, London,1920, p.291.

10. Malashenko, Igor, ‘Russia: The Earth’s Heartland’, International Affairs, Moscow, Issue 7, July 1990.

11. Irving, David, Churchill’s War, Arrow Books, London, 1989, p.20.

12. Ibid. Irving refers to an article, ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People’, Illustrated Sunday Herald, London, 8 February 1920.

13. Eden, 7 June 1944, Memorandum to War Cabinet, BNA FCO 371/43646, file R 9092. In Mallinson, William, Cyprus: A Modern History, Bloomsbury, London and New York, 2005, 2009 and 1012, p.17.

14. Ibid. p.16.

15. See Chrysopoulos Philip, ‘Father Dimitrios: The Orthodox Monk Who Was a British Spy’, Greek Reporter, 20 June, 2023. The writer obtained much of his information from the archives of St. Panteleimon Monastery, Mount Athos.

16. Noel-Baker, Francis, Greece: The Whole Story, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1946, pp. 55-56.

17. The American Deputy Head of Mission in Moscow, George Kennans’s, telegram of February 1946, which was published in article form in under the pseudonym “X” in July 1947, was also a major earlier ingredient of the Cold War. It argued for the “containment” of the Soviet Union economically and politically and was expressly over-interpreted by Truman as a blank cheque to pursue an aggressive military policy towards Moscow. Within two years, Kennan was criticizing this aggressive approach, but it was too late.

18. See Mallinson, William, From Neutrality to Commitment, Bloomsbury, 2020 (first published by I.B. Tauris in 2010), pp. 218-224, for an account of the diplomatic gyrations that led to the Brussels Treaty Organization being renamed Western European Union, and the Federal Republic joining NATO.

19. PBS News, 12 June 2017.

20. See McGwire, Michael, “Why did we bomb Belgrade?”, International Affairs, vol. 76, no. 1, January 2000, for a trenchant criticism of NATO’s motives for the bombing.

21. Huttenback, Robert A., Racism and Empire, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, p. 15.

22. Ibid., p. 16.

23. Rhodes wrote this in Oxford, on 2 June 1877.

24. Orwell, George, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters: Volume 1, Penguin, 1993, p. 373.