The Russian empire and the phenomenon of serfdom in the historical self-consciousness of Russia and the West

The article is devoted to the process of creating the Russian Empire. The objective historical conditions of this process left for Russia very little chance of success. Climatic, geographical, and geopolitical factors during the creation of the empire in the XVI-XVIII centuries were unfavorable for Russia, its economic and demographic resources were noticeably inferior to competitors. Due to these circumstances, many Western intellectuals for more than a century of the emergence and gigantic expansion of the Russian Empire seemed rationally inexplicable. In the widely disseminated works of foreign travelers and scientists, violence and enslavement are recognized as the only method of creating the Russian Empire, as a result of which the very nature of Russian statehood is interpreted as vicious, artificial and false. However, the analysis of some aspects of the history of serfdom in Russia, conducted in this article, shows that such concepts are based on the substitution of concepts, the distortion of facts and double standards.