Compared with the West, Russia's diplomatic strategy always seems to be very clumsy.

This is not to say, however, that Russia lacks sufficiently good diplomatic talents, and it may be difficult to produce a diplomat like Metternich and Bismarck, and a group of trained and qualified diplomats, which the Russians can still promote.

The reason for its clumsy performance is mainly due to the influence of the geopolitical pattern, and Russia is pursuing a policy of expansion, and under such a big policy, it is impossible not to contradict its neighboring countries. Therefore, he was always besieged by European countries, but once this expansionist policy did not have enough resistance, their diplomatic methods showed their cleverness, and in the process of Russia's plundering of Chinese land, in fact, most of the time it did not use force, but used diplomatic means to seize it.

When Russia is strong enough, of course, this kind of expansionist policy can be implemented, such as in the era of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, expansion will not let foreign countries treat Russia well, but now that China is rising in the East and Austria is strong in the West, Russia still adopts an expansionist policy, which is a bit of a mistake.

It's not that their rulers don't see this, Tsar's Zhukovsky, Russian Prime Minister Zhukovsky, has always been less in favor of the Eastern European territories that the tsar demanded too much.

He always believed that the Tsar must maintain friendly relations with his Western neighbors when he was constrained by China. The policy that should be adopted was to help the Austrian Empire to suppress its internal rebellion, rather than to fight Prussia for expansion like Poland.

But Zhukovsky's suggestion was not taken up by the Tsar, and there was a large number of expansionists in Russia, and it would be tantamount to their lives to let them give up the great opportunity for expansion.

However, Alexander II was not a fool, but a tsar with a fairly high level of culture, but he also had a reason to expand.

The Russia he inherited had to face the dilemma of being a powerful minister, and as a tsar, his restoration was seriously insufficient, so when he saw the opportunity to seize Poland, he had to consider that this was a great opportunity for him to increase his prestige.

It turned out to be as he imagined, and when he annexed Poland, his prestige increased greatly, and then he staged a coup d'état and succeeded in taking power.

In relations with China, too, it was not that the Tsar did not understand that the lands were basically impossible to return, but he was unable to sign, not only because of his sense of honor, but also because he feared that his prestige would be undermined. In recent years, the prestige of the tsar has increased, and at the same time a large number of aristocratic officials and parliamentarians have been trained, but the bourgeois forces in the country are still very strong, and these forces have more or less some anti-tsar plots.

The Tsar's measures had a certain effect, and the Russian bourgeoisie did not move towards a union and then a confrontation with the monarchy as the rest of Europe, because through the support of the Tsar, the power of the aristocracy in industry and commerce was rapidly expanding. With the help of state subsidies, they began to set up large-scale flour mills and sugar mills in the villages, and formed the rural industrial and commercial classes with the kulaks who were turning to industrial and commercial operations, and in the cities they set up factories, but in fact they mainly invested large amounts of cash in the banking industry and became rentier classes, but they also competed in the cities with the urban industrial and commercial classes that slowly began to form after the Napoleonic Wars.

As a result, Russian industry and commerce were divided into three structures: the urban industrial and commercial burghers, the rural industrial and commercial rich peasants, and the aristocratic industrial and commercial class, and instead of uniting against the Tsar, these three forces hoped to obtain privileges by approaching the Tsar.

As a result, the infighting of the industrial and commercial classes made the imperial power more stable.

From this point of view, the policy of the tsars was successful.

But the expansionist policy has caused problems for Russia diplomatically, making them less flexible in diplomacy and lacking room for manoeuvre.

As a result, it became clear that Austrous had become hostile to Russia. The tsar also thought about solving these problems, but it was impossible to return the territory, and he tried to reconcile with the two countries through commercial interests, such as opening some commercial areas to Austro-Prussian businessmen, but this was not enough to reconcile the two countries with Russia, and still formed an anti-Russian alliance behind the scenes.

In terms of diplomatic relations with China, there has also been little progress, and the tsar has begun to consider making concessions, mainly for security reasons, as if he moved the capital to Moscow, but moving the capital to Moscow, avoiding Speransky's power, has also magnified China's military threat.

The Chinese army controlled several cities west of the Volga River, and the trollaway from Moscow, which was defenseless in the face of the Chinese army's bayonets, made the tsar increasingly uneasy. He tried to make some concessions in exchange for the return of the Chinese army to Kazan, Tsaritsyn and other Russian cities.

The Tsar was willing to accept a treaty for the cession of Siberia, anyway, that place was in the impression of the Russians, it was a land of exile, of no value, it was full of desolation, primitive and barbarism in the Russian concept, and where it was discarded, it would not be a major blow to the prestige of the Tsar.

But the cession of the Urals and the lower Volga must not be acceptable, otherwise the tsar's reputation will be damaged, his prestige will decline, and the opposition in parliament will rise again. Of course, the Tsar's refusal to cede the Urals and the lower Volga does not mean that he is really naïve to think that he can take back these lands from which millions of Chinese immigrants have already emigrated on paper. He just didn't want to reflect it in the treaty, he wanted to sign a treaty with China on the cession of Siberia in exchange for the withdrawal of Chinese troops from Russian territory, and then the Urals and the lower Volga as disputed areas, and the status quo on both sides.

However, China did not accept this treaty, and China insisted that the Nanking Treaty was a treaty accepted by all countries, and that no one should be allowed to break it, and that China would still exercise its power in accordance with the contents of the treaty unless Napoleon and the Russian Tsar signed it.

Negotiations with China have been conducted many times, and each time they have been fruitless. At the suggestion of his own teacher, the tsar also made the controversy a bill for his own people to discuss in parliament, and sure enough, it caused a huge wave of opposition, and a large number of parliamentarians shouted that they must not compromise with China to recover the lost territory.

The opposition was too loud for the tsar to understand that if he signed himself, he would offend the public. He regretted that he was too young back then, and he knew that this matter would be more and more troublesome, and when he first ascended the throne, he did not change his concern about his honor and refused to sign. The refusal to sign earned him many accolades, but they did not mean anything. If he had chosen to sign that year, his prestige would have fallen to the bottom, but in the years of Speransky's administration, his prestige had in fact also fallen to the bottom, so he refused to sign, and in the end it did not play any significance, but made the Sino-Russian territorial case unresolved, a dead knot that could not be bypassed by both sides, and put Russia in a very dangerous international situation.

When Austria was carrying out diplomatic activities against Russia, the tsar was also doing the same thing, and the tsar's greatest reliance was on Britain, and the tsar tried to establish a strong all-round alliance with Britain, so that he could resist the attack of Austria and even avoid war, because with Britain and Russia allied, Austria would definitely have some scruples.

However, Britain did not take an active part in continental affairs, and was unwilling to intervene in the territorial dispute between Russia and Austria unless Russia signed an alliance treaty with Britain against China in exchange, and this treaty had to be an open alliance treaty.

It is impossible to establish an open alliance with Britain, which is tantamount to directly opposing China, which is originally a de jure state of war, and I am afraid that as soon as the treaty is signed here, the Chinese army will be in Moscow. There was already a secret agreement between Russia and Great Britain that both sides had the obligation to send troops in the event that Russia was attacked by China on its own initiative, or if Britain was invaded by China. Britain's request would be tantamount to making these secret agreements public, and if they had been made public, they would not have been kept secret in the first place.

Of course, the support of Britain was sought, mainly for Austria, and without British support, Russia also had the confidence to protect itself. Anyway, once China intervenes, Britain will definitely support China.

As for relations with the Ottoman Empire, Russia did not want to get along well, and the Ottomans took the opportunity to take away the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia will have to take back sooner or later, they just lack an opportunity, an opportunity not to involve all parties. For example, if the Ottomans were at odds with Greece or Austria over the Balkans, Russia would be able to easily retake the Crimean peninsula.

As a result, the tsar did not wait for the time he wanted, and the issue of the French throne appeared, and the tsar took the lead in expressing his opposition, which was indeed a mistake, but the tsar wanted to use Napoleon, the common enemy, to urge Prussian to stand with Russia, so that they could rely on Russia against France, so as to reduce their hostility towards Russia, but they did not expect that these two countries would rather put down the threat of the Napoleonic family, but also against Russia, the tsar's statement, but let Prussia solve the final French constraint problem.

Soon after Napoleon III ascended the throne, Russia suddenly found that Austria and Prussia were suddenly in conflict with Russia.

The territory of the three countries is intertwined, ethnic mixture, national hatred, cultural prejudice, these can easily become the focus of contradictions, the key depends on whether you want to use it, just like when you need Poland, the Poles will always revolt, as long as you are bent on finding fault, in fact, you can't waste anything.

The point of contradiction found by Austrous was a common national sentiment, and both countries made a request to Russia that Russia would effectively protect the interests of the German nation in Poland and Livonia, which they considered to be treated unfairly.