Bram Stoker, the author of «Dracula» (1897), which is not only a bestseller, but a «cult» work, belonged to the «ruling» protestant minority in Ireland and believed in British empire myth. The core of his novel is a geopolitical story of the confrontation between civilized Western Europe and backward Eastern Europe, which incorporates Russia. There is no Russophobia in the novel, as some critics suppose, but there is «a top-down view». In fact Stoker created his own myth of the East. He projected his ambivalence – arrogance and empathy – towards the «backward» Catholic majority of Ireland to people of Eastern Europe. He embodied fears of all strange, foreign, lurking in the Victorian cultural subconscious, in the image of Dracula and his invasion of England.
Anglo-Irish literature; Gothic novel; late Victorianism; British geopolitical myths.