The Big Game – and its Greek and Cypriot “chapter”
First of all we should remember the immense role of Greece in Russian identity. Greece has given us almost all – faith, alphabet (prepared for us by two Greek Saints - Saint Cyril and Saint Matthew), culture,cosmic vision, political concept of Orthodox Empire (the Byzantine as an example), social ideal (κοινωνία), philosophy, law… The same could be said about all Europeans, but our ties are deeper and more organic and direct. So we Russians are absolutely indebted to the Greeks.
But in the course of history Greeks and Russians have seen different dramatic turns. Sometimes we were together (in faith we were and are brothers), sometimes separately… It is difficult in the course of an interview to make the sufficient survey of all these turns – let’s concentrate on the most important ones…