... From an economic point of view, Russia could not have been a less likely imperialist. After the Crimean War, she suffered from a chronic lack of capital and a rising dependence on capital imports from Europe1. Attempts to develop an effective economic foreign policy were greatly limited by financial woes like bank crises, crop failures, and other vulnerabilities to economic fluctuations from abroad2. Furthermore, unlike Western Europe, industrialization in 1860's Russia was monopolized by the autocracy from the beginning, leaving the newly emancipated serfs very few opportunities to organize and participate in this new economic structure. Such a reality seemed contrary to the traditional theory of imperialism as an avenue for export of surplus capital or for import of raw material to feed robust industries. Combining these adequacies in the Russian economy with the backwardness of its military, it seems logical that she would assume a "defensive posture in foreign ...

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