SARIST Russia never developed an elaborate ideology with respect to its Oriental policies comparable in popularity to that of Britain's white man's burden. expansion of Petersburg Russia in Asia was not rationalized through ideological slogans. The mission to spread Western civilization, although used at times as a slogan, never became a part of national consciousness. Moreover, Russia's relation to Asia never became an ideological issue among different schools of Russian political thought, as did Russia's relationship to Europe. Throughout entire Petersburg period, Russian intellectual life was, as is well known, formally oriented toward West. In spite of rather obvious geographic relationship to China, Russian thought saw China almost exclusively from a Western European point of view. Even currents of thought that sought to reject Western values, like Slavophilism, actually only broadened European categories to a point where Russia would fit into them as a part of Europe. For Slavophilism too, Russia remained a part of Christian European world and, though it was contrasted as East with Latin West, it did remain, nevertheless, Occidental in relation to China and Asia in general. Hegel's famous words that the depravity of Chinese is proved by their worshipping Buddha who is void, a statement containing in one phrase three stupidities, was accepted without reservations. Since reign of Alexander III (I88I-1894), state ideology of Petersburg monarchy had been opposed to liberal and constitutional principles coming from West. However, it too remained, just as did Slavophilism, from which it had partly evolved, still consciously Occidental in relation to Asia. An integral part of official Petersburg patriotism (immortalized already by Pushkin) was notion of Russia's mission to defend Europe against onslaught of Far Eastern hordes. This idea goes back to beginnings of Petersburg system when such a claim was to constitute, so to say, Russia's admission ticket into European state system. Similarly, attitude of radical Russian Occidentalism (from