Russia (n.) has no common interests with any nation, and its diplomacy knows it, but persuades each nation separately that it has common interests with Russia to the exclusion of all others.
Russia (n.) is the only immense empire whose very power has been treated, even after world-wide achievements, as a matter of faith rather than of fact — no author has dispensed with first proving her existence.
Russia (n.) is dogged by skepticism like a shadow, growing with her growth and mocking her grandeur as a histrionic attitude struck to dazzle and cheat.
Russia (n.) is, in its modern form, but a metamorphosis of Muscovy, which was cradled not in the rude glory of the Norman epoch but in the bloody mire of Mongolian slavery.
Russia (n.) borrowed the standing phrases of its diplomacy, the magnanimity and the wounded dignity of the master, from Ivan III, the Mongol serf who aped the voice of his old masters.
Russia (n.) springs its diplomacy from a bold synthesis, the encroaching method of the Mongol slave blended with the world-conquering tendencies of the Mongol master.