The Russian Empire on the Way to India: XVIII Century

The study examines the process of the Russian Empire’s advancement in a southeastern direction toward the Indian frontiers during its formative stage. The focus on exploring the optimal trajectory for reproducing Russian-Indian communications, a component of the geopolitical dimension of 18th-century imperial strategy, is significant in the contemporary realities of global development, as reflected in the decisive role of the countries of the “Global South” and the impressive achievements and promising prospects of the “Asian pivot” in Russian geopolitics. The author offers a conceptual interpretation of the events associated with the implementation of the Indian vector of Russian geopolitics in the 18th century. This interpretation is rooted in the argument that the emerging Russian imperial space galvanized the desire to establish direct Russian-Indian interactions. In light of this, it is argued that the authorities, beginning with the Peter the Great era, initiated a different methodology for plotting routes to the borders of the Indian region than had been used in previous centuries, with the goal of developing a “Central Asian passage” to it. Accordingly, the novelty of the ongoing development of this topic lies in the attempt to reconstruct the experience of contacts between historical subjects using the tools of retrospective geopolitics, which examines the phenomenon of space and actions within it in a historical context. This research perspective allows us to identify key features of the Russian-Indian historical dialogue. Unlike some European countries, including Great Britain, Russia never envisaged India becoming a colony, but rather aimed to develop good-neighborly relations.