Russia's First Embassies
Trade was the impetus for early contacts between Russia and England, though each country had its own view of how the relationship should function. Helen Szamuely examines the first two centuries of Russian embassies to London.
According to an article by the Jewish historian Joseph Jacobs, published in the Academy in December 1888, the first Russian in England was a Jew, Rabbi Iza or Isaac, who arrived in 1181 from Chernigov, at that time the largest grand principality in Kievan Rus. The evidence for this claim is a little scant but there were sporadic Anglo-Russian links in the following centuries, mostly before the Tatar invasion of the Russian principalities during the 13th century. The English ‘discovery’ of Russia and the subsequent difficult but more or less continuous relationship can be dated to the mid-16th century.
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