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The Scots in Russia

The Scots in Russia: Episode 1

Factual: History

Episode 1

BBC Radio Scotland - The Scots in Russia, Episode 1

Billy Kay explores the role played by Scottish soldiers in the Russia of Peter the Great.

Billy Kay explores the major role played by Scots in the Russia of Peter the Great, including soldiers Patrick Gordon and Tam Dalyell of the Binns and doctor Robert Erskine.

In a major new three part series, Billy Kay explores the major role played by Scottish soldiers of fortune such as Patrick Gordon and Tam Dalyell of the Binns in the reign of Peter the Great. Gordon was young Peter's tutor, confidant and military right hand man and his diaries are a main source for Russian history in the 17th century. This, despite his less than complimentary description of the Russians: 

"...the people being morose, avaricious, deceitful, false, insolent and tyrannous when they have command, and being under command, submissive and even slavish, sloven and base... and yet overweening and valuing themselves above all other nations...."

Billy gives that quotation by the walls of the Kremlin, the centre of Russian power since the days of ancient Muscovy. In Moscow, he speaks to Olga Lesley, a descendant of another influential Scottish soldier, Alexander Lesley, whose family enjoyed a close relationship with the Czars right down to the Revolution in 1917. 

In the 18th century, the Scots community increased as Jacobites who had been out in the 1715 Rising sought a haven where their military, medical and intellectual skills were welcomed with open arms. Some of them fought at Sherrifmuir, and there at her family home, Billy interviews historian Rebecca Wills, author of The Jacobites and Russia 1715 - 1750. Their attempt to obtain Russian support for another rising never quite succeeded but they are commemorated in a song from James Hogg's Jacobite Relics: 

"Here's a health to the mysterious Czar
I hope he'll send us help from far
To end the work begun by Mar.

One of the staunchest Jacobites was Peter's personal physician, Robert Erskine, the first of a group of Scots doctors who led the Russian medical services for more than 150 years.

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