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In 1553, King Edward VI sent three ships under Sir Hugh Willoughby to find the Northeast Passage to China. Two ships were trapped in Arctic ice; Willoughby and his crew were later found frozen to death off the coast of Lapland. However, the third ship—the Edward Bonaventure under Richard Chancellor—survived. Chancellor sailed into the White Sea and traveled overland to Moscow.

Britain (and later the US) supplied the USSR via perilous Arctic convoys to Murmansk and Archangel. British sailors lost over 3,000 lives on this route. The Soviets received thousands of tanks, aircraft, and millions of boots and tons of aluminum—material that helped them survive 1941–42 and win at Stalingrad.

Churchill met Stalin face-to-face three times. They respected each other’s ruthlessness but clashed over the post-war shape of Europe. Churchill’s "Percentages Agreement" (1944) attempted to divide Balkan influence—but it was swept away by Soviet military reality. Part 6: Cold War to Post-Soviet Thaw (1945–2020) By 1946, Churchill’s "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, defined the next 45 years. For the duration of the Cold War, Rus-Eng relations meant espionage (the Cambridge Five spy ring), nuclear standoffs, and proxy wars from Korea to Afghanistan. rus eng

In a symbol of this thaw, Tsar Nicholas II (whose mother was Danish) and King Edward VII (whose mother was Danish as well) were cousins. In 1909, Edward made a landmark state visit to Russia—the first and last by a reigning British monarch to Imperial Russia. The Russian Revolution of 1917 shattered everything.

Tsarina Alexandra was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. King George V and Tsar Nicholas II were first cousins—they looked nearly identical. When Nicholas abdicated, Britain initially offered asylum, but George V—fearing revolutionary contagion and political backlash from Labour—withdrew the offer. Nicholas and his family were executed in 1918. This decision haunted the British monarchy for decades. In 1553, King Edward VI sent three ships

Chancellor met Tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible"), who was eager to bypass the Hanseatic League and Polish-Lithuanian rivals for trade. In 1555, England’s Muscovy Company was granted a monopoly on Anglo-Russian trade. Ivan granted the English their own courtyards in Kholmogory and Vologda, and later in Moscow itself. For decades, England supplied rope, saltpeter (for gunpowder), and luxury goods in exchange for Russian furs, wax, and tallow.

Interestingly, Ivan proposed marriage to Queen Elizabeth I’s relative, Lady Mary Hastings, and even offered himself as a political exile in England if his throne were usurped. Elizabeth politely declined. The relationship intensified under Peter the Great. During his Grand Embassy to Western Europe (1697–98), Peter spent three months in England—mostly in Deptford, where he famously trashed the house of writer John Evelyn while studying shipbuilding and astronomy. He met King William III and recruited hundreds of English sailors, engineers, and doctors for his new Russian navy. Chancellor sailed into the White Sea and traveled

Paradoxically, by 1907 the two empires signed the Anglo-Russian Convention , settling their Central Asian disputes and joining France to form the Triple Entente against Germany. The reason: both feared the rising power of Imperial Germany more than each other.