.. carved out of a land where tribal conflict was constant and common, massacre was well known, and illiterate poachers held huge territory.. hard to imagine from an armchair in a suburb in modern times
Just saying, it’s not Ivan the Great and Peter the Terrible. Both lived up to our modern expectations of autocrats, but one was more involved with what we now consider conducive to ‘greatness’ ie grand reformist ideals, science and modernization.