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least definitely hostile. For this striking change there arevarious reasons, not the least of which has been the Sovietpolicy of friendship with Kemalist Turkey.Latterly Soviet-Turkish relations have been cloudedwith mutual suspicions, particularly from the Turkishside, where the old fears of ultimate Russian demandsupon the Straits have been revived and played up byGerman propaganda. It is hardly to be expected thatthe memories of the long past of contest, ill-will, andrival intrigue could be sloughed off in twenty years,however radical the revolutions that have transformedboth countries; the long past, with its eleven Russo-Turkish wars (1676-1918), which spelt the historiccontest not only for the northern Black Sea lands, theBalkans, and the heart of the Ottoman empire, but alsofor the eastern seaboard, the Caucasian bridge landsbetween the Black Sea and the Caspian.3. The Black Sea and the CaspianThe Caucasian lands—the great isthmus linkingEurasia with western Asia, immemorial cross-roads ofcultures, trampling ground of urgent armies, and refugeof riven peoples—had been since the sixteenth century acockpit between the Turkish Osmanlis and the PersianSafavids. Ottoman power and influence reached outfrom the eastern Black Sea to the Tatar or Moslempeoples of Eurasia in process of engulfment by theMuscovite and Russian empire. The long duel for theBlack Sea became also a contest for the Caucasus; butit was a triangular contest; both Turkey and Russia hadto face Persia.Russian connexions with the Caucasian peoples hadbeen considerable in the middle of the Kiev period;thereafter they were almost entirely severed until thecapture of Astrakhan in 1556. That made the Caspiantrade and relations with Persia (arbiter of the muchcovetedsilk trade) of continuous importance 4 to Moscow.A generation later Cossack settlements along the Terek(see map 4) pushed Muscovite interests to the foothillsof the eastern Caucasus. Muscovy was too weak and too290