“The Great Game” — confrontation between the Anglo-Saxon and Russian world

Abstract

This article is devoted to understanding the essence, defining the spatial and time frames, as well as describing the most significant episodes of the development of The Great Game — the policy of containing the development of Russia by Anglo-Saxon elites and powers, dating back more than two centuries. Perceiving Russia as the main obstacle to achieving its global geopolitical hegemony, Anglo-Saxon elites and powers actively waged large-scale diplomatic, economic, information wars and battles against Russia, military operations, conducted operations to organize coups d’etat and “revolutions”, trying to destroy Russia both by actions from outside and undermining it from within. The author of the article draws attention to the origin of the very concept of “Great Game”, as well as its use in a narrow and broad sense. In a narrow sense, this concept is used to denote the active geopolitical and economic confrontation between Great Britain and the Russian Empire for control over Central Asia throughout the 19th century (or according to a number of authors, starting in 1856) until 1907. Broadly, to indicate the global geopolitical confrontation between the Anglo-Saxon and Russian world from thebeginning of the 19th century and continuing to the present.The author believes that the interpretation of the “Great Game” in a narrow sense is incorrect, politically biased and deliberately aimed at hiding the knowledge of the “Great Game” from the mass audience.The author considers various points of view of domestic and foreign authors to determine the starting and final point, time and spatial framework of the “Great Game”. He refers to the vivid episodes of The “Great Game”: the Palace Coup of 1801 — the assassination of Emperor Paul I; “Napoleonic” wars; December putsch of 1825; Confrontation with England in Turkestan, the Caucasus, other regions; Russo-Persian and Russo-Turkish Wars, Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War; the Caucasian War and events in Central Asia and Turkestan; Financing and organization in the Russian Empire of the “fifth column”; Revolutionary events of 1905–1907; World War I; 1917 Revolution; Russian Civil War; Support for “intra-party” opposition; Bringing A. Hitler to power in Germany; World War II organization; “Cold War”, Dismemberment of the USSR; Chechen Wars; “Color revolutions” in the post-Soviet space; The 2008 war and Georgia’s “coercion” to peace; 2014 coup d’état, the subsequent civil war in Ukraine, start of Special Military Operation.