British Russian Rivalry?

Question

Could someone summarise the history and events that consequently led to the current British Russian rivalry?

Answer 1

England and Russia are historical rivals. This was as true during the Czarist regimes as it was during the Bolshevik regime and today. Much of it is due to the fact that the two have long competed for supremacy over the same geographic regions often guided by competing philosophical ideas. The British sometimes proved much more successful in gaining the upper hand in regions where the Russians assumed themselves to be the natural overseers: the Middle East, Africa and Asia specifically. Before the Bolshevik revolution people in these regions grudgingly welcomed the paternalistic and arrogant British domination but only because they had already experienced the brutality and savagery of the Czars. Hence the colonial empires of Britain and the Western Europeans began to crumble thereafter. The Cold War didn’t change it nor the crumbling of the Soviet system. Each continues to jockey for position on the international stage. Its in the blood.