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mainly because Catholics were synonymous with Poles.This ' German colony,' a little fragment of industrious,ingenious, Protestant Europe, was where Peter the Greatfrom an early age disported himself, intellectually andphysically, poles removed from the forbidding associationsof the Kremlin or the congested, tumultuous Streltsyquarter of Moscow. Here in the 'German colony' hethoroughly imbibed Europe several years before heactually visited the West (1697). 1Tolerance of foreigners came from the top, from thecourt and a few favoured personages. The mass of theclergy and the populace at best looked askance at them,at worst raged against them, swallowing with superstitiouscredulity any tale bruited abroad in their disfavouror that of Russians who associated with them. When theMoscow mob was out, it was touch and go to be a foreigndoctor, fatal to keep a cuttlefish in your house.Nevertheless, together with the technical, economic,and military innovations introduced by foreigners, westernmanners and customs began to filter into the court andthe houses of a few of the upper class, followed by thedeeper cultural effect of western ideas. Here the twomain influences, from about 1650 onwards, came throughPoland and the Ukraine.Despite the heritage of conflict, Poland in the secondhalf 01 the seventeenth century came to be regarded in arather different light at least in some of the leading circlesin Moscow. Tsar Alexis (b. 1629, reigned 1645-76),impulsive mixer of the old Orthodox way of life andwestern innovations, had three of his children taughtPolish and Latin (his son Peter's children sixty yearslater will be learning German and French), and the factis typical of the little groups of outward-looking men inMuscovy of that generation. Polish dress and furniturebegan to appear. The influence of Polish verse andchronicle writing made itself felt. Through Poland1There are vivid scenes depicting Peter's early contacts with 'theGerman colony' in Alexis Tolstoy's novel Peter the Great (1930-34;English translation 1936). Alexis Nikolaievich Tolstoy (b. 1882), nowone of the foremost Soviet writers, is no relation of the great Tolstoy, norof Alexis Konstantmovich Tolstoy (1817-75), the dramatist and poet,who was a distant cousin of the great Tolstoy.330