![]() ![]() ![]() The diplomatic chancery of the time was not by any means in incompetent hands it simply lacked the constancy of government support to give it proper effect. The first period following Peter’s reign was most conspicuous for the instability of the throne and the resultant inconsequence that it inflicted on Russian foreign policy. The coming of the French Revolution magnified these problems, and the coming of Napoleon Bonaparte to some extent supplanted them by grander geostrategic challenges. A crisis in any one of the three states almost invariably involved complications with the others. Moreover, these three sensitive areas were so inextricably interdependent in Russian foreign policy that St Petersburg could not isolate them from each other and deal with them separately. In Russian foreign policy in the era, certain basic generalisations apply: Peter I had dealt remarkably successfully with the Swedish challenge he had devised a novel and rather satisfactory solution for the Polish problem but he had failed to resolve satisfactorily the issue of the Ottoman Empire, a challenge for the future. ![]()
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