RUSSIA (
Rossiya), the general name for
the European and Asiatic dominions of the "
Tsar of All the Russias." Although the name is
thus correctly applied, both in English and
Russian, to the whole area of the Russian
empire, its application is often limited, no less correctly, to
European Russia, or even to European Russia exclusive of
Finland and
Poland. The use of the name in its most
comprehensive sense dates only from the expansion of the empire in
the 19th century; to the historian who writes of the earlier growth
of the empire, Russia means, at most, Russia in
Europe, or Muscovy, as it was usually called
until the 18th century, from
Moscow, its ancient capital. The origin of the
term " Russia " has been much disputed. It is certainly derived,
through
Rossiya, from Slavonic
Rus or
Ros (Byzantine `Pws or `Pc o-oc),
a name first given to the Scandinavians who founded a principality
on the
Dnieper in the 9th
century; and afterwards extended to the collection of Russian
states of which this principality formed the
nucleus. The word
Rus, in former times
wrongly connected with the tribal name Rhoxolani, is more probably
derived from
Ruotsi, a Finnish name for the Swedes, which
seems to be a corruption of the Swedish
rothsmenn, "
rowers " or " seafarers."
The Russian Empire
The Russian empire stretches over a vast territory in E. Europe
and N.
Asia, with an area exceeding
8,660,000 sq. m., or one-sixth of the land surface of the globe
(one twenty-third of its whole superficies). It is, however, but
thinly peopled on the average, including only one-twelfth of the
inhabitants of the earth. It is almost entirely confined to the
cold and temperate zones. In
Novaya Zemlya and the Taimyr peninsula,
it projects within the
Arctic
Circle as far as 77° 6' and 77° 40' N. respectively; while its S.
extremities reach 38° 50' in
Armenia, 35° on the Afghan frontier, and 42°
30' on the coasts of the Pacific. To the W. it advances as far as
20° 40 E. in
Lapland, 17° in
Poland, and 29° 42' on the Black Sea; and its E. limit - East Cape
on the
Bering Strait - is in
191° E.
The White, Barents and Kara Seas of the Arctic bound it on the
N., and the northern Pacific - that is, the Seas of Bering, Okhotsk
and
Japan - bounds it on the
E.
The Baltic, with the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, limits it on
the N.W.; and two sinuous lines of land frontier separate it
respectively from
Sweden and
Norway on the N.W. and from
Prussia,
Austria and
Rumania on the W. On the S. and E. the frontier
has changed frequently according to the expansion and contraction
of the empire under the pressure of political exigency and
expedience. The Black Sea is the principal demarcating feature on
the S. of European Russia. On the W. side of that sea the S.
frontier touches the
Danube
for some 120 m.; on the E. side of the same sea it zigzags from the
Black Sea to the Caspian, utilizing the river
Aras (Araxes) for part of the distance. As the
Caspian is virtually a Russian sea,
Persia may be said to form the next
link in the S. boundary of the
Russian empire, followed by
Afghanistan. On the
Pamirs Russia has since 1885 been conterminous
with British India (Kashmir); but the boundary then swings away N.
round Chinese
Turkestan and the N. side of
Mongolia, and, since
1904-5, it has skirted the N. of
Manchuria, being separated from it by the
river
Amur. As thus
traced, the boundary in
Central Asia includes the two
khanates of
Bokhara and
Khiva, which, though nominally
protected states, are to all intents and purposes integral parts of
the Russian empire. But it excludes Manchuria, with the Liao-tung
peninsula and
Port
Arthur, upon which Russia only placed her grasp in 1898-99, a
grasp which she was compelled by Japan to release after the war of
1904-5. The total length of the frontier line of the Russian empire
by land is 2800 m. in Europe, and nearly ro,000 m. in Asia, and by
sea over rr,000 m. in Europe and between 19,000 and 20,000 m. in
Asia.
Russia has no oceanic possessions; her islands are all
appendages of the mainland to which they belong. Such. are Karlo,
East Kvarken, the Aland
archipelago, Dagd, and Osel or
Oesel in the
Baltic Sea; Novaya Zemlya, with Kolguyev and
Vaigach, in the
Barents
Sea; the Solovetski Islands in the White Sea; the New Siberian
archipelago, Wrangel Land and
Bear
Islands, off the Siberian coast; the Commander Islands off
Kamchatka; the Shantar
Islands and the N. of
Sakhalin in the
Sea of Okhotsk. The
Aleutian
archipelago was sold to
the United States in 1867, together
with
Alaska, and in 1875 the
Kurile Islands were ceded to Japan.
If the border regions, that is, two narrow belts, on the N. and
S., be left out of account, a striking uniformity of physical
feature prevails throughout the whole vast extent of the Russian
empire. High plateaus like that of Pamir (the " Roof of the World
") and Armenia, and lofty mountain chains like the
snow-clad
Caucasus, the Alai, the
Tian-shan, the
Sayan Mountains, exist only on the
outskirts of the empire.
Viewed broadly, the Russian empire may be said to occupy the
territories to the N.W. of the great plateau formation of the old
continent - the backbone of Asia - which stretches with decreasing
altitude and width from
of Asia. the high tableland of
Tibet and Pamir to the lower plateaus of
Mongolia, and thence N.E. through the Vitim region to the farthest
extremity of Asia. Thus it consists of the immense plains and flat
lands which extend between the plateau formation and the Arctic
Ocean, including the series of parallel chains and hilly spurs
which skirt the former region on the N.W. And it is only to the E.
of Lake
Baikal that it climbs
up on to the plateau, from which it descends again before it
reaches the Pacific.
This plateau formation - the oldest geological continent of Asia
- being unfit for
agriculture and for the most part unsuited
for permanent settlement, while its oceanic slopes have from the
dawn of history been occupied by a
relatively dense population, long prevented Slav colonization from
reaching the Pacific. The Russians chanced to cross it in the 17th
century at its narrowest and most N. part, and thus struck the
Pacific on the foggy and frozen shores of the Sea of Okhotsk; but
two centuries elapsed ere, after colonizing the depressions around
Lake Baikal, they crossed over the plateau in a more genial zone
and descended to the Pacific by the Amur. After that they spread
rapidly S., up to the nearly uninhabited valley of the Usuri, to
what is now the Gulf of
Peter the Great. In the S.W.
higher portions of the plateau formation the empire has only
comparatively recently planted its foot on the Pamir, and it was
only a few years earlier that it established itself firmly on the
highlands of Armenia.
A broad
belt of hilly tracts -
in every respect alpine in character, and displaying the same
variety of climate and organic life as alpine tracts usually do -
skirts the plateau formation throughout its entire length on the N.
and N.W., forming an inter mediate region between the plateau and
the plains. The Caucasus, the
Elburz, the Kopet-dagh and
Paropamisus, the
intricate and imperfectly known network of mountains W. of the
Pamir, the Tian-shan and the
Ala-tau mountain regions, and farther N.E. the
Altai, the still unnamed complex
of the
Minusinsk
Mountains, the intricate mountain-chains of Sayan, with those of
the Olekma, Vitim and Aldan all arranged
en echelon - the former from N.W. to S.E.,
and the others from S.W. to N.E. - all these belong to the same
alpine belt that borders the plateau from end to end of the
series.
The flat lands which extend from the base of the Alpine
foothills to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, assume the character
either of dry deserts, as in the
Aral-Caspian depression, or of low tablelands, as
in central Russia and E.
Siberia, of lacustrine regions in N.W. Russia
and Finland, or of marshy prairies in W. Siberia, and of
tundras in the far N. Throughout the whole of this vast
area, their monotonous surfaces are diversified by only a few, and,
for the most part, low, hilly tracts. Recently emerged from the
Post-
Pliocene sea, or
freed from their
mantle of
ice, they persistently maintain the
self-same features over immense areas; and the few portions that
rise above the general elevation have more the character of broad
and gentle swellings than of mountain-chains. Of this class are the
swampy plateaus of the
Kola
peninsula, sloping gently S. to the lacustrine region of Finland
and N.W. Russia; the Valdai tablelands, where all the great rivers
of Russia take their rise; the broad and gently sloping meridional
belt of the
Ural
Mountains; and lastly the Taimyr, Tunguzka and Verkhoyansk
ranges in Siberia, which, notwithstanding their sub-Arctic
position, do not reach the
snow-line. The picturesque Bureya Mountains
above the Amur, the forest-clad Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and
the volcanic chains of Kamchatka belong, however, to quite another
orographical construction, being the border-ridges of the terraces
by which the great plateau formation descends to the depths of the
Pacific
Ocean.
It is owing to these leading orographical features - divined by
Carl Ritter, but only recently ascertained and established as fact
by geographical research - that so many of the great
Rivers. rivers of the old continent are comprised within
the limits of - the Russian empire. Taking their rise on the
plateau formation, or in its outskirts, they flow first along lofty
longitudinal valleys formerly filled with
great lakes, next they
cleave their way through the rocky barriers, and finally they enter
the lowlands, where they become navigable, and, describing wide
curves to avoid here and there the minor plateaus and hilly tracts,
they bring into watercommunication with one another places
thousands of miles apart. The double river-systems of the
Volga and
Kama, the
Ob and
Irtysh, the Angara and
Yenisei, the
Lena and Vitim on the Arctic slope, and the Amur
and Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances. These were the
obvious channels of Russian colonization.
A broad depression - the Aral-Caspian
desert - has arisen where the plateau formation
reaches its greatest altitude, and at the same time suddenly
changes its direction from N.W. to N.E. This desert is now filled
to only a small extent by the
salt
waters of the Caspian, Aral and
Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable
traces of having been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland
basin. There the Volga, the Ural, the
Syr-darya and the Amu-darya discharge their waters
without reaching the ocean, but they bring life to the rapidly
desiccating
Transcaspian steppes, and link
together the most remote parts of Russia.
The most striking feature in the geology of Russia is its
remarkable freedom from disturbances, either in the form of
mountain folding or of igneous intrusions. Over the greater part of
the
Cambrian country the strata are
still nearly as flat as when they were first laid down, and the
deposits, even of the Cambrian period, are as soft as those of the
Mesozoic and
Tertiary
formations in
England. Only
in the Urals, the Caucasus, the Timan Mountains, the region of the
Donets coalfield, and the
Kielce Hills is there any sign of the great
folding from which nearly the whole of the rest of Europe has
suffered at one time or another.
In the early part of the
Palaeozoic era only the gneissic region
of Finland and
Olonets and
probably the Archean mass of S. Russia remained constantly above
the sea; but there were several oscillations. Gradually, however,
the sea retreated from W. Russia and in the Upper
Carboniferous and
Permian periods it was confined
to the E.
At the beginning of the
Mesozoic era the whole country became
land, bearing upon its surface the salt lakes in which the Trias
was laid down. During the
Jurassic period the sea again invaded the
region, both from the N. and from the S., but still the W. of
Russia
rose above the waves. In
the
Cretaceous period the waters withdrew
from the N.E., but in the S. they spread W., covering the whole of
Poland and finally uniting with the ocean in which the
chalk of W. Europe was deposited.
The Tertiary era was marked by a gradual extension S. of the N.
land-mass. In the later stages arms of the sea were cut off and
were converted at first into lagoons and then into brackish or
fresh-water lakes which continued to occupy much of S. Russia until
the beginning of the
Quaternary period.
During the first part of the
Glacial period Russia seems to have been
covered by an immense ice-
sheet,
which extended also over central
Germany, and of which the E. limits cannot yet
be determined.
The Archean rocks have a broad extension in Finland, N. Russia,
the Ural Mountains and the Caucasus. In S. Russia they form the
floor upon which lies a thin covering of Tertiary beds, and they
are exposed to view in the valleys of the Dnieper and the
Bug. They consist for the most part of
red and grey gneisses and granulites, with subordinate layers of
granite and granitite. The
Finland
rappa-kivi, the Serdobol
gneiss, and the Pargas and Rustiala
marble (with the so-called
Eozoon canadense) yield good building stone; while
iron,
copper and
zinc-ore are common in Finland and in the Urals.
Rocks regarded as representing the Huronian system appear also in
Finland, in N.W. Russia, as a narrow
strip on the Urals, and in the Dnieper ridge.
They consist of a series of unfossiliferous crystalline slates.
The Cambrian is represented by blue clays, ungulite sandstones
and bituminous slates in
Esthonia and St
Petersburg. The
Ordovician and
Silurian systems are widely developed, and it
is most probable that, with the exception of the Archean continents
of Finland and the S, the sea covered the whole of Russia. Being
concealed, however, by more recent deposits, the deposits appear on
the surface only in N.W. Russia (Esthonia,
Livonia, St Petersburg and on the Volkhov),
where all the subdivisions of the system have been found; in the
Timan ridge; on the W. slope of the Urals; in the Pai-kho ridge;
and in the islands of the Arctic Ocean. In Poland the rocks of
these periods are met with in the Kielce Mountains, and in
Podolia in the deeper
ravines.
The
Devonian dolomites, limestones and red sandstones
cover immense tracts and appear on the surface over a much wider
area. From Esthonia these rocks extend N.E. to Lake
Onega, and S.E. to
Mogilev; they form the central
plateau, as also the slopes of the Urals and the Petchora region.
In N.W. and middle Russia they contain a special
fauna, and it appears that the Lower Devonian
series of W. Europe, represented in Poland and in the Urals, is
missing in N.W. and central Russia, where only the Middle and Upper
Devonian divisions are found.
Carboniferous deposits occur over nearly the whole of E. Russia,
their W. boundary being a line drawn from
Archangel to the upper Dnieper, thence to the
upper
Don, and S. to the mouth of
the last-named river, with a long narrow gulf extending W. to
encircle the plateau of the Donets. They are visible, however, only
on the W. borders of this region, being covered towards the E. by
thick Permian and
Triassic strata. Russia has three large
coalbearing regions - the Moscow basin, the Donets region and the
Urals. In the Valdai plateau there are only a few beds of mediocre
coal. In the Moscow basin, which
was a broad gulf of the Carboniferous sea, coal appears as isolated
inconstant seams amidst littoral deposits, the formation of which
was favoured by frequent minor subsidences of the seacoast. The
coal is here confined to the lower division of the system; the
Upper Carboniferous (corresponding with the English Coal-Measures)
is exclusively marine, consisting chiefly of
Fusulina limestone. The Donets
Coal-Measures, containing abundant remains of a rich land-
flora, cover nearly 16,000 sq. m.,
and comprise a valuable stock of excellent
anthracite and coal, together with
iron-mines. In this basin, as in W. Europe generally, the principal
coal seams occur in the Upper Carboniferous, while the Lower
Carboniferous is mainly composed of marine deposits, with, however,
the first
bed of coal near its summit.
Several smaller coalfields on the slopes of the Urals and on the
Timan ridge may be added to the above. The Polish coalfields belong
to another Carboniferous area of
deposit, which extended over
Silesia.
The Permian limestones and marls occupy a strip in E. Russia of
much less extent than that assigned to them by Murchison. The
variegated marls of E. Russia, rich in salt-springs, but very poor
in fossils, are now held by most Russian geologists to be Triassic.
The Permian deposits contain marine shells and also remains of
plants similar to those of England and Germany. But in the
government of
Vologda, on
the rivers Sukhona and N.
Dvina,
Glossopteris, Noeggerathiopsis and other ferns
characteristic of the Indian
Gondwana beds have been found; and with these
are numerous remains of
reptiles similar to those which occur in the
Indian deposits. In the Urals the marine facies is more fully
developed and the fauna shows affinities with that of the
Productus limestone of the Central Asian mountain
belt.
During the Jurassic period the sea began again to invade Russia
from S.E. and N.W. The limits of the Russian Jurassic system may be
represented by a line drawn from the double valley of the Sukhona
and Vytchegda to that of the upper Volga, and thence to Kieff, with
a wide gulf penetrating towards the N.W. Within this space three
depressions, all running S.W. to N.E., are filled up with Upper
Jurassic deposits. They are much denuded in the higher parts of
this region, and appear but as isolated islands in central Russia.
In the S.E. all the older subdivisions are represented, the
deposits having the characters of a deep-sea formation in the
Aral-Caspian region and on the Caucasus.
Cretaceous beds - sands, loose sandstones, marls and white chalk
- occupy nearly the whole of the region S. of a line drawn from the
Niemen to the upper Oka and Don, and thence N.E. to
Simbirsk. Over a large part
of this area, however, they are concealed by the later Tertiary
deposits, and they are absent over the Dnieper and Don ridge in the
Yaila Mountains and in the higher parts of the Caucasus. They are
rich in grinding stone, and in phosphatic deposits.
Missing image
Russia-1.jpg
The Tertiary formations occupy large areas in S. Russia. The
Eocene covers wide tracts from
Lithuania to
Tsaritsyn,
and is represented in the
Crimea and Caucasus by thick deposits belonging
to the same ocean which left its deposits on the
Alps and the Himalayas.
Oligocene,
quite similar to that of N. Germany, and containing brown coal and
amber, has been met with only in
Poland,
Courland and
Lithuania. The
Miocene
(Sarmatian stage) occupies extensive tracts in S. Russia, S. of a
line drawn through
Lublin to
Ekaterinoslav
and
Saratov. Not only the
higher chains of Caucasus and Yaila, but also the Donets ridge,
rose above the :oo 4?.
Geology unknown or unexplored shown thus Jurassic Trias
& Permo-Trial r '
i ' Quaternary :. Tertiary
Cretaceous Ievel of the Miocene sea, which was very shallow to
the N. of this last ridge, while farther S. it was connected both
with the
Vienna basin and with
the Aral-Caspian. The Pliocene appears only in the coast region of
the Black and
Azov Seas, but it is
widely developed in the Aral-Caspian region, where, however, the
Ust-Urt and the Obshchiy Syrt rose above the sea.
The thick Quaternary, or Post-Pliocene, deposits which cover
nearly all Russia were for a long time a
puzzle to geologists. They consist of a
boulder clay in the
N. and of
loess in the S. The
former presents an intimate mixture of boulders brought from
Finland and Olonets (with an addition of local boulders) with small
gravel, coarse
sand and the finest glacial mud, - the whole
bearing no trace of ever having been washed up and sorted by water
in motion, except in subordinate layers of glacial sand and gravel;
the size of the boulders decreases on the whole from N. to S., and
the boulder
clay, especially in N.
and central Russia, often takes the shape of ridges parallel to the
direction of the motion of the boulders. Its S. limits, roughly
corresponding with those established by Murchison, but not yet
settled in the S.E. and E., are, according to M. Nikitin, the
following: - from the S. frontier of Poland to Ovrutch,
Uman,
Kremenchug,
Poltava and Razdornaya (50° N.
latitude), with a
curve N. to Kozelsk (?); thence due
N. to Vetluga (58° N. latitude), E. to Glazova in
Vyatka, and from this place towards the N. and
W. along the
watershed
of the Volga and
Pechora
(?). S. of the 50th parallel appears the loess, with all its usual
characters (land fossils, want of stratification, &c.), showing
a remarkable uniformity of composition over very large surfaces; it
covers both watersheds and valleys, but chiefly the former. Such
being the characters of the Quaternary deposits in Russia, the
majority of Russian geologists now adopt the opinion that Russia
was covered, as far as the above limits, with an immense ice-sheet
which crept over central Russia and central Germany from
Scandinavia and N. Russia. Another icecovering was probably
advancing at the same time from the N.E., that is, from the N. of
the Urals, but the question as to the glaciation of the Urals still
remains open. As to the loess, the usual view is that it was a
steppe-deposit due to the
drifting of fine sand and
dust
during a dry
episode in the
Pleistocene
period.
The deposits of the Post-Glacial period are represented
throughout Russia, Poland and Finland, as also throughout Siberia
and Central Asia, by very thick lacustrine deposits, which show
that, after the melting of the ice-sheet, the country was covered
with immense lakes, connected by broad channels (the
fjarden of the Swedes), which later on gave rise to the
actual rivers. On the outskirts of the lacustrine region, traces of
marine deposits, not higher than 200 or perhaps even 150 ft. above
present sea-level, are found alike on the Arctic Sea and on the
Baltic and Black Sea coasts. A deep gulf of the Arctic Sea advanced
up the valley of the Dvina; and the Caspian, connected by the
Manych with the Black Sea, and by
the Uzboy valley with Lake Aral, penetrated N. up the Volga valley,
as far as its
Samara bend.
Unmistakable traces show that, while during the Glacial period
Russia had an arctic flora and fauna, the climate of the Lacustrine
period was more genial than it is now, and a dense human population
at that time peopled the shores of the numberless lakes.
The Lacustrine period has not yet reached its close in Russia.
Finland and the N.W. hilly plateaus are still in the same
geological phase, and are dotted with numberless lakes and ponds,
while the rivers continue to dig out their yet undetermined
channels. But the great lakes which covered the country during the
Lacustrine period have disappeared, leaving behind them immense
marshes like those of the Pripet and in the N.E. The disappearance
of what still remains of them is accelerated not only by the
general decrease of moisture, but also perhaps by the gradual
upheaval of N. Russia, which is going on from Esthonia and Finland
to the Kola peninsula and Novaya Zemlya, at an average rate of
about two feet per century. This upheaval - the consequences of
which have been felt even within the historic period, by the
drainage of the formerly impracticable marshes of
Novgorod and at the head of
the Gulf of Finland - together with the destruction of forests
(which must be considered, however, as a quite subordinate cause),
contributes towards a decrease of precipitation over Russia and
towards increased shallowness of her rivers. At the same time, as
the gradients are gradually increasing on account of the upheaval
of the continent, the rivers dig their channels deeper and deeper.
Consequently central and especially S. Russia
witness the formation of numerous
miniature canons, or
ovraghi (deep ravines), the summits of which rapidly
advance and ramify in the loose surface deposits. As for the S.
steppes, their
desiccation, the consequence of the above
causes, is in rapid progress.' l Bibliography:
Memoirs,
Izvestia and Geological Maps of the Committee for the
Geological Survey of Russia;
Memoirs and
Sborniks
of the Mineralogical Society, of the Academy of Science and of the
Societies of Naturalists at the Universities;
Mining Journal; Murchison's
Geology of
Russia; Helmersen's and MSller's
Geological Maps of
Russia and the Urals; Inostrantsev in Appendix to Russian
translation of Reclus's
Geogr. Univ., and
Manual of
Geology (Russian).
Population
The population of the empire, which was estimated at 74,000,000
in 1859, was found to be over 129,200,000 at the
census of 1897, taken over all the empire except
Finland. In 1904 it was estimated to be 143,000,000, and in 1906,
according to a detailed estimate of the Central Statistical
Committee, it was 149,299,300. Thus from 1860 to 1897 the
population increased 742%, and from 1897 to 1904 26.3, an average
annual increase of about 31% as compared with an average annual
increase of 21% during the period 1860-97. The increase took place
chiefly in the large cities, in Siberia, Poland, Lithuania, S.
Russia and
Caucasia. The
official divisions of the empire are given here, and details are
given in separate articles.
Province Or Government
European Russia - Archangel
Astrakhan Bessarabia Chernigov Courland
Don Cossacks' territory
Ekaterinoslav Esthonia
Grodno
Kaluga Kazan Kiev Kostroma Kovno Kursk Kharkov Kherson Poland Kalisz Kielce
Lomza Lublin
Grand-Duchy of Finland- Abo-Bjbrneborg
Kuopio Nyland
Caucasia- Kuban
Baku Black Sea territory
Daghestan Russia in
Asia- Turkestan- Transcaspia
Western Siberia- Tobolsk Tomsk Eastern Siberia Irkutsk Yakutsk Transbaikalia Yeniseisk Amur Region Amur
Maritime
Province Sakhalin It has been found, from a comparison of the
densities of population of the various provinces in 1859 with the
distribution in 1897, that the centre of
density has distinctly moved S., towards the
shores of the Black Sea, and W., the greatest increase having taken
place in the E. Polish and in the Lithuanian provinces, along the
S.W. border, in the
prairie
belt beside the Black Sea, and in
Orenburg. N. Caucasia and S.W. Siberia
likewise show a considerable increase. The census of 1897 revealed
in several provinces a remarkably low proportion of men to women.
This was owing to the fact that large numbers of the men engaged in
agricultural pursuits during the summer temporarily move every year
into the large industrial centres for the winter. Consequently
there were only 87.4 and 89.8 women to every 100 men in the
governments of St Petersburg and
Taurida respectively, but as many as 133.8 in
Yaroslavl, 119 in
Tver and 117 in Kostroma. The average
number of women to every 100 men in the Russian governments proper
was 102.9; in Poland, 98.6; in Finland, 102.2; in Caucasia, 88.9;
in Siberia, 93'7; and in Turkestan and Transcaspia, 83 o.
Livonia
Minsk Mogilev Moscow
Nizhniy-Novgorod Novgorod Olonets
Orel Orenburg
Penza Perm
Podolia Poltava
Pskov Ryazan St Petersburg Samara
Piotrkow Plock Radom St
Michel
Tavastehus Uleaborg Stavropol Elizavetpol
Erivan Kars
Saratov Simbirsk
Smolensk
Tambov Taurida
Tula Tver
Ufa Vilna Vitebsk Vladimir
Volhynia Vologda
Voronezh Vyatka Yaroslavl
Siedlce Suwalki Warsaw Viborg Vasa
Terek
Kutais Tiflis with Zakataly
Akmolinsk Semipalatinsk The Steppes
Turgai Uralsk Semiryechensk Samarkand Ferghana Syr-darya The effects of
emigration and
immigration cannot be
estimated with accuracy, because only those who cross the frontier
with passports are taken account of. The
statistics of these show that there was
during the thirty-two years, 1856-88, an excess of emigration over
immigration of 1,146,052 in the case of Russians, and a surplus of
immigration of 2,304,717 foreigners. On the other hand, in the six
years, 1892-97, the excess of Russian emigration over immigration
was 207,353, as compared with an excess of foreign immigration over
emigration of only 136,740. During the years 1900-4 inclusive the
total emigrants from Russia numbered 2,358,539, of whom 1,144,246
were Russians; while the immigrants numbered 2,333,053, of whom
1,432,057 were foreigners. It is also known that the number of
Russian immigrants into the United States in1891-1902was 742,869,
as compared with 313,469 in 1873-90, or a grand total since 1873 of
1,056,338. By far the greater part of these were
Jews. The emigration to Siberia varies much from
year to year. It was 26,129 in 1888, and 60,000 in 1898. During the
two following years it amounted to an average of over 160,000, but
in the years 1901-3 to an average of 84,638 per annum. Altogether
some 800,000 peasants are estimated to have settled in Siberia
during the period 1886-96, but during the years1893-1905no less
than four millions in all. There is also some emigration from
central Russia to the S. Urals, as well as to some of the steppe
governments.
|
Urban
Population.
|
Percentage
of Total.
|
|
European Russia.. .
|
12,027,038
|
12.8
|
|
Poland. .. .
|
2,055,892
|
21.7
|
|
Finland. .. .
|
281,216
|
11.0
|
|
Caucasia. .. .
|
1,010,615
|
10.9
|
|
Siberia. .
|
473, 79 6
|
9'3
|
|
Central Asia. .. .
|
936,655
|
|
|
Russian Empire.. .
|
16,785,212
|
13.0
|
Within the empire a very great diversity of nationalities is
comprised, due to the amalgamation or absorption by the Slav race
of a variety of
Ural-Altaic stocks, of Turko-
Tatars, Turko-
Mongols and various Caucasian races. In some
cases their ethnical relations have not yet been completely
determined. According to the results obtained by the census
committee of 1897, working on a linguistic basis, the distribution
of races was as given in the table opposite: 1 Taken as a whole,
only 13% of the population of Russia lived in towns in 1897, but in
the years 1857-60 less than 10% was urban. In Russia proper less
than 2% emigrated from the
C villages to the towns during
the forty years ending 1897. The following table shows the urban
population in the various divisions of the empire in 1897: - There
were in European Russia and Poland only twelve cities with more
than too,000 inhabitants in 1884; in 1900 there were sixteen,
namely, St Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw,
Odessa,
Lodz,
Riga, Kiev, Kharkov, Vilna,
Saratov, Kazan, Ekaterinoslav,
Rostov-on-the Don, Astrakhan, Tula
and
Kishinev. In other
parts of the empire there were four cities each having over too,000
inhabitants in that year, namely, Baku, Tiflis,
Tashkent and
Helsingfors. While only three of these are
in middle Russia (Moscow, Tula and Kazan), eight are in S. Russia.
There are thirty-four cities in European Russia and Poland, and
forty in the entire empire, with from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants
each. The rural population live for the most part in villages, not
as a rule scattered about the country. In the inclement regions of
the N. and in the N. parts of the forest zone the villages are very
small. They are larger, but still small, in White Russia, Lithuania
and the region of the lakes; but in the steppe governments they are
very appreciably bigger, some of the Cossack
stanitsas or
settlements exceeding 20,000, and many of them numbering more than
10,000 inhabitants each. The houses are generally built of wood and
wear a poverty-stricken aspect. Owing to the great risks from fire
the villages usually cover a large area of ground, and the houses
are scattered and straggling. The mortality in most towns is so
great that during the last ten years of the 19th century, in a very
great number of cities, the deaths exceeded the births by I to 4 in
the thousand. (P. A. K.; J. T. BE.)
Government and
Administration. - Russia was described in the
Almanach de
Gotha for 1910 as " a constitutional monarchy under an
autocratic tsar." This obvious contradiction in terms well
illustrates the difficulty of defining in a single formula the
system, essentially transitional and meanwhile
sui
generis, established in the Russian empire since October 1905.
Before this date the fundamental laws of Russia described the power
of the
emperor as "
autocratic and unlimited." The imperial
style is still " Emperor and Autocrat of All the
Russias "; but in the fundamental laws as remodelled between the
imperial manifesto of 17/30 October and the opening of the first
Duma 1 See A. AItoff,
Peuples et langages de la
Russie (Paris, 1906), based on the report of the Russian
Census Committee of 1897.
of 442 members, elected by an exceedingly complicated 44 ?
Y g Y P process, so manipulated as to secure an overwhelming
preponderance for the wealthy, and especially the landed classes,
and also for the representatives of the Russian as opposed to the
subject peoples. Each province of the empire, except the now
disfranchised steppes of Central Asia, 7 returns a certainro ortion
of members (fixed in each case by P P (Y law in such a way as to
give a preponderance to the Russian element), in addition to those
returned by certain of 2 M. Stolypin defended the
ukaz of the 2nd of June 1907, which in flat
contradiction of the provisions of the fundamental laws altered the
electoral law without the consent of the legislature, on the ground
that what the autocrat had granted the autocrat could take away.
The members of the Opposition, on the other hand, quoting Art. 84
of the fundamental laws (" The empire is governed on the immutable
basis of laws issued according to the established order "), argued
that the emperor himself could only act within the limits of the
order established by those laws. It is noteworthy that even the
third Duma in its address to the throne, if it avoided the tabooed
word " Constitution," avoided also all mention of
autocracy.
Imperator is the official style. The Russian
translation is Gosudar. Popularly, however, the emperor is
known by his old Russian title of tsar (q.v.). This is the
first time since Peter the Great that the clergy have been given a
voice in secular affairs in Russia.
The number of the council was formerly not fixed, and there are
still honorary councillors who have no right to sit. Thus in 1910
the honorary
president of the council
was the
grand-duke
Michael Nicolaievich, the actual president M. G. Akimov. The
judicial and administrative work of the old council was in 1906
assigned to separate committees.
7 These returned 23 members in the first and second Dumas.
XXIII. 28 a descends entire in order of
primogeniture, and by preference to the
male heir; the emperor and his
consort must belong to the Eastern
Orthodox Church; the emperor
can wear no
crown that entails residence
abroad. By the manifesto of the 17/30th of October 1905 the emperor
voluntarily limited his legislative power by decreeing that no
measure was to become law without the consent of the Imperial Duma,
a freely elected national assembly. By the law of the 20th of
February 1906 the Council of the Empire was associated with the
Duma as a legislative Upper House; and from this time the
legislative power has been exercised normally by the emperor only
in
concert with the two
chambers.
|
1
|
Russia in
Europe.
|
Poland.
|
Caucasia.
|
Siberia .
|
Central
Asia.
|
Finland.
|
Totals.'
|
|
Great Russians .
|
48,558,721
|
267,160
|
1, 82 9,793
|
4,4 2 3, 80 3
|
5 8 7,99 2
|
5,939
|
55,673,408
|
|
Sla y s.
|
Little Russians .
White Russians .
|
20,414,866
5,823,383
|
335,337
29,347
|
1 ,3 0 5,4 6 3
19,642
|
223,274
12,346
|
101,611
829
|
..
|
22,380,551
5,885,547
|
|
|
Poles
|
1,109,934
|
6 ,755,5 0 3
|
25,117
|
29,177
|
11,576
|
|
7,931,307
|
|
|
Other Sla y s 2. .
|
213,268
|
7,365
|
3,855
|
182
|
189
|
..
|
224,859
|
|
Letts
|
1,345,160
1,422,021
|
305,32 2
5,064
|
5,121
1,511
|
1,877
6,714
|
1,042
627
|
..
|
1,658,532
1,435,937
|
|
r Rumanians .
|
1,121,669
|
5,223
|
7,232
|
.
|
|
..
|
1,134,124
|
|
Latin and Germans .
|
1,312,188
|
407,274
|
56,729
|
5,424
|
8874
|
1,925
|
1,790,489
|
|
Teutonic Greeks .
|
86,626
|
..
|
100,299
|
..
|
..
|
..
|
186,925
|
|
ARYANS. .
|
Races . Other Europeans 4
|
29,841
|
|
1,435
|
|
|
|
34,276
|
|
Swedes.. .
|
14,199
|
|
|
|
|
349,733
|
363,932
|
|
|
Armenians
|
76,635
|
|
1,096,461
|
|
4,862
|
|
1,173,096
|
|
|
Persians .
|
1,630
|
|
29,278
|
|
8,015
|
|
38,923
|
|
|
Tajiks. .
|
|
|
|
|
350,397
|
|
350,397
|
|
Iranians.
|
Talyshes and
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tates
|
..
|
|
130,347
|
|
|
|
130,347
|
|
|
Kurds
|
|
..
|
99,836
|
|
|
|
99,836
|
|
|
Ossetes
|
|
|
171,716
|
|
|
|
171,716
|
|
.. Gypsies. .
|
16,004
|
1,056
|
3,041
|
6,253
|
771
|
|
27,125
|
|
SEMITES. .. .. Jews. .
|
3,714,995
|
1, 26 7, 1 94
|
40,498
|
32,597
|
7,872
|
|
5,063,156
|
|
|
Esthonians
Finns. .
|
989,883
143,068
|
4,372
|
4,28,
|
4,202
|
|
2,352,990
|
1,002,738
2,496,058
|
|
|
Lapps
|
1,812
|
|
|
|
|
5,300
|
3,r Iz
|
|
|
Mordvinians
|
989,959
|
|
|
20,802
|
13,080
|
|
1,023,841
|
|
Finns
|
Karelians .
|
208,101
|
|
|
|
|
|
208,101
|
|
|
Cheremisses .
|
375,439
|
|
|
|
|
|
375,439
|
|
|
Syryenians
|
146,535
|
|
|
7,083
|
|
|
153,618
|
|
|
Permiaks .
|
103,339
|
|
|
|
|
|
103,339
|
|
|
Votyaks
|
420,970
|
|
|
|
|
|
420,970
|
|
|
Other Finns 5
|
43,393
|
|
|
24,453
|
|
|
67,846
|
|
|
3,940
|
|
|
11,929
|
..
|
..
|
15,869
|
|
|
Tatars
|
19531 55
|
4,336
|
1,509,785
|
210,154
|
60,197
|
..
|
3,737,627
|
|
URAL-ALTAIANS
|
|
Chuvashes
Bashkirs
|
83787
1,488,297
|
929
83
|
411
953
|
4,232
978
|
311
2,672
|
..
|
843,755
1,492,983
|
|
|
Turks (Osmanlis)
|
68,807
|
156
|
139,419
|
172
|
268
|
. .
|
208,822
|
|
Turko-
|
Turkomans .
|
7,938
|
6
|
24,522
|
124
|
248,767
|
|
281,357
|
|
Tatars.
|
Kirghiz
Sarts .
|
264,059
184
|
123
..
|
98
158
|
32,648
305
|
3,9 88, 8 93
968,008
|
|
4,084,139
968,655
|
|
|
Uzbegs
|
43
|
..
|
..
|
77
|
7 26 ,4 1 4
|
|
726,534
|
|
|
Yakuts
|
..
|
..
|
..
|
227,384
|
..
|
|
227,384
|
|
|
Kara-kalpaks
|
..
|
..
|
I
|
2
|
104,271
|
..
|
104,274
|
|
|
Others .
|
46
|
..
|
204,561
|
63
|
5 18 ,949
|
|
724,039
|
|
|
..
|
..
|
..
|
70,064
|
..
|
..
|
70,064
|
|
Mongols Kalmucks. .
Buriats. .
|
170,865
..
|
..
..
|
14,409
..
|
288,663
|
..
..
|
..
..
|
185,274
288,663
|
|
Races
|
|
..
|
1,352,455
|
|
|
|
1,352,455
|
|
{Georia
CAUCASIANS Circassians and
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
other Caucasians ?
|
|
..
|
1,091,782
|
|
|
..
|
1,091,782
|
|
KORYAKS, CHUKCHIS, &c... .
|
..
|
..
|
..
|
39,349
|
|
|
39,349
|
|
CHINESE, JAPANESE AND KOREANS .
|
..
|
..
|
..
|
86,113
|
|
..
|
86,113
|
The Council of the Empire, or Imperial Council
(
Gosudarstvenniy Sovyet), as reconstituted for this
purpose, consists of 196 members, of whom 98 are nominated by the
emperor,
The while 98 are elective. The ministers, also
nominated,
councli are
ex officio
members. Of the elected members
3 are returned by the "
black " clergy (the
monks), 3 by
the " white " clergy (seculars), 5 18 by the corporations of
nobles, 6 by the academy of sciences and the universities, 6 by the
chambers of commerce, 6 by the industrial councils, 34 by the
governments having
zemstvos, 16 by those having no
zemstvos, and 6 by Poland. As a legislative body the
powers of the Council are co-
ordinate with those of the Duma; in practice,
however, it has seldom if ever initiated legislation.6 The Duma of
the Empire or Imperial Duma (
Gosudarstvennaya Duma), which
forms the Lower House of the Russian parliament, consists (since
the
ukaz of the znd of June 1907) on the 27th of April
1906, while the name and princi p le of autocracy was jealously
preserved, the word " unlimited " vanished. Not that the regime in
Russia had become in any true sense constitutional, far less
parliamentary; but the " unlimited autocracy " had given place to a
" self-limited autocracy," whether permanently so limited, or only
at the discretion of the autocrat, remaining a subject of heated
controversy between conflicting parties in the state. 2
Provisionally, then, the Russian governmental system may perhaps be
best defined - as M. Chasles suggests 3 - as " a limited monarchy
under an autocratic emperor." At the head of the government is the
emperor, 4 whose power is limited only by the provisions of the
fundamental laws of the empire. Of these some are ancient and
undisputed: the empire may not be partitioned, but Table Showing
Distribution Of Races ' These totals include in some cases small
linguistic groups not mentioned in the table.
About 77% Bulgarians, the rest mostly Bohemians (Czechs). 3
Inclusive of 448,022 Zhmuds. 4 Principally Frenchmen, with
Englishmen, Italians, Norwegians, Danes, Dutchmen and
Spaniards.
Ethnologically the Bulgarians ought perhaps to come here; but,
as a large admixture of Slav blood flows in their
veins and they speak a distinctly Slav language,
they have in this table been grouped with the Slays.
Includes Georgians, Mingrelians, Imeretians, Lazes and
Svanetians.
' For details, see table under the heading
Caucasia. Of the total given here, 20% are
Circassians.
Missing image
Russia-2.jpg
Missing image
Russia-3.jpg
Missing image
Russia-4.jpg
Missing image
Russia-5.jpg
Missing image
Russia-6.jpg
Missing image
Russia-7.jpg
Missing image
Russia-8.jpg
Missing image
Russia-9.jpg
Missing image
Russia-10.jpg
Missing image
Russia-11.jpg
Missing image
Russia-12.jpg
Missing image
Russia-13.jpg
Missing image
Russia-14.jpg
Missing image
Russia-15.jpg
Missing image
Russia-16.jpg
Missing image
Russia-17.jpg
the great cities. The members of the Duma are elected by
electoral colleges in each government, and these in their turn are
elected, like the
zemstvos (see below), by electoral
assemblies chosen by the three classes of landed proprietors,
citizens and peasants. In these assemblies the large proprietors
sit in person, being thus
electors in the second degree; the lesser
proprietors are represented by delegates, and therefore elect in
the third degree. The urban population, divided into two categories
according to their taxable wealth, elects delegates direct to the
college of the government (
Guberniya), and is thus
represented in the second degree; but the system of division into
categories, according not to the number of taxpayers but to the
amount they pay, gives a great preponderance to the richer classes.
The peasants are represented only in the fourth degree, since the
delegates to the electoral college are elected by the
volosts (see below). The workmen, finally, are specially
treated. Every industrial concern employing fifty hands or over
elects one or more delegates to the electoral P ?
Missing image
Russia-18.jpg
Missing image
Russia-19.jpg
Missing image
Russia-20.jpg
Missing image
Russia-21.jpg
Missing image
Russia-22.jpg
Missing image
Russia-23.jpg
Missing image
Russia-24.jpg
Missing image
Russia-25.jpg
Missing image
Russia-26.jpg
Missing image
Russia-27.jpg
Missing image
Russia-28.jpg
Missing image
Russia-29.jpg
Missing image
Russia-30.jpg
Missing image
Russia-31.jpg
Missing image
Russia-32.jpg
Missing image
Russia-33.jpg
Missing image
Russia-34.jpg
Missing image
Russia-35.jpg
Missing image
Russia-36.jpg
Missing image
Russia-37.jpg
Missing image
Russia-38.jpg
Missing image
Russia-39.jpg
Missing image
Russia-40.jpg
Missing image
Russia-41.jpg
Missing image
Russia-42.jpg
Missing image
Russia-43.jpg
Missing image
Russia-44.jpg
Missing image
Russia-45.jpg
Missing image
Russia-46.jpg
Missing image
Russia-47.jpg
Missing image
Russia-48.jpg
Missing image
Russia-49.jpg
Missing image
Russia-50.jpg
Missing image
Russia-51.jpg
'
: opal e ° °o T A
R ple ' ag a ',ap iJ,wl Karkinit A C K r
B L
Scale, English Miles D
S E A 32 Stavropol P O L
A PI
A N
L A s E Derbent ° I
? ` L I S °
fold K 3 a o '0' Scale, 0 o 4
-Z 5° 4z C
Longitude East 44 of
Greenwich D A B college of the government, in
which, like the others, they form a separate
curia. In the college itself the voting -
secret and by
ballot
throughout - is by majority; and since this majority consists,
under the actual system, of very conservative elements (the
landowners and urban delegates having 8ths of the votes), the
progressive elements - however much they might preponderate in the
country - would have no
chance
of representation at all save for the curious provision that one
member at least in each government must be chosen from each of the
five classes represented in the college. For example, were there no
reactionary
peasant among
the delegates, a reactionary majority might be forced to return a
Social Democrat to the Duma. As it is, though a fixed
minimum of peasant delegates
must be returned,
they by no means probably represent the opinion of the peasantry.
That in the Duma any Radical elements survive at all is mainly due
to the peculiar
franchise enjoyed by the seven largest towns
- St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Riga and the Polish cities
of Warsaw and Lodz. These elect their delegates to the Duma direct,
and though their votes are divided into two
curias (on the
basis of taxable property) in such a way as to give the advantage
to wealth, each returning the same number of delegates, the
democratic colleges can at least return members of their own
complexion.' The competence of the Russian parliament' thus
constituted is strictly limited. It shares with the emperor the
legislative power, including the discussion and sanctioning of the
budget. But, so far as the
parliament is concerned, this power is subject to numerous and
important exceptions. All measures,
e.g. dealing with the
organization of the army and
navy
are outside its competence; these are no longer called " laws " but
" ordinary administrative rules." Moreover, the procedure of the
Houses practically places the control of legislation in the hands
of ministers. Any member may bring in a " project of law," but it
has to be submitted to the minister of the department concerned,
who is allowed a month to consider it, and himself prepares the
final draft laid on the table of the House. Amendments, however,
may be and have been carried against the government. Ministers are
responsible, moreover, not to parliament but to the emperor. They
may be interpellated, but only on the legality, not the policy, of
their acts. In the words of M. Stolypin, there is no intention of
converting the ministerial
bench
into a prisoners'
dock. If by a two-thirds majority
the action of a minister be arraigned, the president of the
Imperial Council lays the case before the emperor, who decides. The
powers of the parliament over the budget are even more limited,
though not altogether illusory. No legislation by means of the
budget is allowed,
i.e. no alteration may be made in
credits necessary for carrying out a law. This deprives parliament
of control over the administrative departments, all the ministries
being thus " armour-plated " - to use the
cant phrase current in Russia - except that of
ways and communications (railways). The sum of 700,000,000 roubles
per annum is thus excepted from the control of the chambers. Other
exceptions are the " Institutions of the Empress Marie," which
absorb,
inter alia, the duties on
playing-cards and the taxes on places of
public entertainment; the imperial
civil list, so far as this does not exceed
the sum fixed in 1906 (16,359,595 roubles!); the expenses of the
two imperial chanceries, 10,000,000 roubles per annum, which
constitute in effect a secret service fund. Altogether, half the
annual expenditure of the country is outside the control of
parliament. Nor is this all. If the budget be not sanctioned by the
emperor, that of the previous year remains in force, and the
government has power,
motu proprio, to impose the extra
taxes necessary to carry out new laws. In certain circumstances,
too, the emperor reserves the right to raise fresh loans.
1 Thus M. Guchkov, leader of the Octobrists, and M. Miliukov,
leader of the cadets, were both returned by the second
curia of St Petersburg to the third Duma.
2 Strictly speaking, the title is inapplicable, there being no
collective official name for the two chambers. The word parliament
may, however, be used as a convenient term, failing a better.
Further, the emperor has the power to issue ordinances having
the force of law,
i.e. under extraordinary circumstances
when the Duma is not sitting. These ordinances must, however, be of
a temporary nature, must not infringe the fundamental laws or
statutes passed by the two chambers, or change the electoral
system, and must be laid upon the table of the Duma at the first
opportunity. Since, however, the emperor has the power of
proroguing or dissolving the Duma as often as he pleases, it is
clear that these temporary ordinances might in effect be made
permanent. Finally, the emperor has the right to proclaim anywhere
and at any time a state of
siege. In this way the fundamental laws were
suspended not only in Poland but in St Petersburg and other parts
of the empire during the greater part of the four years succeeding
the grant of the constitution.
It should be noted, none the less, that the third Duma succeeded
in establishing its position, and that in view of its useful
activities even the extreme Right came to realize that there could
be no return to the old undisguised absolutist regime (see
History, below, ad fin.).
By the law of the 18th of October (November i) 1905, to assist
the emperor in the supreme administration a Council of Ministers
(
Sovyet Ministrov) was created, under a ministerresident
the first a earance of a rime P, PP P minister in Russia. This
council consists of all the ministers and of the heads of the
principal administrations. The ministries are as follows: (1) of
the Imperial Court, to which the administration of the apanages,
the chapter of the imperial orders, the imperial palaces and
theatres, and the Academy of
Fine Arts are subordinated; (2) Foreign
Affairs; (3) War and Marine; (4)
Finance; (5) Commerce and Industry (created in
1905); (6) Interior (including
police, health, censorship and press, posts and
telegraphs, foreign religions, statistics); (7) Agriculture; (8)
Ways and Communications; (9) Justice; (10) Public Instruction.
Dependent on the Council of Ministers are two other councils: the
Holy
Synod and the
Senate.
The Holy Synod (established in 1721) is the supreme organ of
government of the Orthodox Church in Russia. It is presided over by
a lay
procurator,
representing the emperor, and consists, for the rest, of the three
metropolitans of Moscow, St Petersburg and Kiev, the
archbishop of
Georgia, and a number of
bishops sitting in
rotation.
The Senate (
Pravitelstvuyushchi Senat, i.e. directing
or governing senate), originally established by Peter the Great,
consists of members nominated by the emperor. Its functions, which
are exceedingly various, are carried out by the different
departments into which it is divided. It is the
supreme court of cassation
(see
Judicial System, below); an
audit office, a high court of justice for all
political offences; one of its departments fulfils the functions of
a heralds' college. It also has supreme jurisdiction in all
disputes arising out of the administration of the empire, notably
differences between the representatives of the central power and
the elected organs of local self-government. Lastly, it examines
into registers and promulgates new laws, a function which, in
theory, gives it a power, akin to that of the Supreme Court of the
United States, of rejecting measures not in accordance with the
fundamental laws.
For purposes of provincial administration Russia is divided into
78 governments (
guberniya), 18 provinces (
oblast)
and r district (
okrug). Of these 11 governments, 17
- provinces and 1 district (Sakhalin) belong to Asiatic
vincial Russia. Of the rest 8 governments are in Finland,
ro in Poland. European Russia thus embraces 59 governments and 1
province (that of the Don). The Don province is under the direct
jurisdiction of the ministry of war; the rest have each a governor
and deputy-governor, the latter presiding over the administrative
council. In addition there are governors-general, generally placed
over several governments and armed with more extensive powers,
usually including the command of the troops within the limits of
their jurisdiction. In 1906 there were governors-general in
Finland, Warsaw, Vilna, Kiev, Moscow and Riga. The larger cities
(St Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa,
Sevastopol, KertchYenikala,
Nikolayev, Rostov) have an
administrative system of their own, independent of the governments;
in these the. chief of police acts as governor. As organs of the
Police central government there are further, the
ispravniki, chiefs of police in the districts into which
the governments are divided. These are nominated by the governors,'
and have under their orders in the principal localities
commissaries (
stanovoi pristav). Ispravniki and
stanovoi alike are armed with large and ill-defined
powers; and, since they are for the most part illiterate and wholly
ignorant of the law, they have proved exasperating engines of
oppression. Towards the end of the reign of
Alexander II., the government,
in order to preserve order in the country districts, also created a
special class of mounted rural policemen (
uryadniki, from
uriad, order), who, armed with power to
arrest all suspects on the spot, rapidly became
the terror of the countryside. 2 Finally, in the towns every house
is provided with a detective policeman in the person of the
porter (
dvornik), who is
charged with the duty of
reporting to the police the presence of any
suspicious characters or anything else that may interest them .3 In
addition to the above there is also a police organization, in
direct subordination to the ministry of the interior, of which the
principal function is the discovery, pre vention and extirpation of
political
sedition. A
secret police, armed with inquisitorial and arbitrary powers, has
always existed in autocratic Russia. Its most famous development
was the so-called " Third Section " (of the imperial chancery)
instituted by the emperor
Nicholas I. in 1826. This was
entirely independent of the ordinary police, but was associated
with the previously existing corps of gendarmes (
Korpus
Zhandarmov), whose chief was placed at its head. Its object
had originally been to keep the emperor in close touch with all the
branches of the administration and to bring to his notice any
abuses and irregularities (see
Nicholas I.), and for this purpose
its chief was in constant personal intercourse with the sovereign.
Actually, however, its activity, directed mainly to the discovery
of political offences, degenerated into a hideous reign of terror.
Its organization was spread all over Russia; its procedure was
secret and summary (transportation by administrative order); and,
its instruments being for the most part ignorant and largely
corrupt, its victims were counted by thousands.
The " Third Section " was suppressed by Alexander II. in 1880,
but only in name. In fact it was transformed into a separate
department of the ministry of the interior, and, provided with an
enormous secret service fund, soon dominated the whole ministry.
The corps of gendarmes was also incorporated in this department,
the under-secretary of the interior being placed at its head and at
that of the police generally, with practically unlimited
jurisdiction in all cases which, in the judgment of the minister of
the interior, required to be dealt with by processes outside the
ordinary law. In 1896 the powers of the minister were extended at
the expense of those of the under-secretary, who remained only at
the head of the corps of gendarmes; but by a law of the 24th of
September 1904 this was again reversed, and the under-secretary was
again placed at the head of all the police with the title of
undersecretary for the administration of the police.
Local Elected Administrative Bodies. - Alongside the
local organs of the central government in Russia there are three
classes of local elected bodies charged with administrative
functions: (I) the peasant assemblies in the mir and the
volost, ' From Catherine II.'s time to that of Alexander
II. they were elected by the nobles. This was changed in
consequence of the emancipation of the serfs.
2 They were soon nicknamed
Kuryadniki, chicken-stealers
(from
Kura, hen). See
Leroy-
Beaulieu,
L'Empire des tsars, ii. 234.
The
dvornik is on duty for sixteen hours at a stretch,
during which he is not allowed to
sleep or even to shelter in the
porch.
(2) the
zemstvos in the 34 governments of Russia
proper, (3) the municipal
dumas. Of these the peasant
assemblies are the most interesting and in some respects the most
important, since the peasants (i.e. three-quarters of the
population of Russia) form a class apart, 4 largely excepted from
the incidence of the ordinary law, and governed in accordance with
their local customs. The
mir itself, with its customs, is
of immemorial antiquity (see
Village Communities); it was not,
however, till the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 that the
village community was withdrawn from the patrimonial jurisdiction
of the landowning
nobility
and endowed with self-government. The assembly of the
mir
consists of all the peasant householders of the village.' These
elect a head-man (
starosta) and a
collector of taxes, who was responsible, at
least until the
ukaz of October 3906, which abolished
communal responsibility for the payment of taxes, for the
repartition among individuals of the taxes imposed on the
commune. A number of
mirs are united into a
volost, The or
canton, which has an assembly
consisting of elected delegates from the
mirs. These elect
an elder (
starshina) and, hitherto, a court of justice
(
volostnye sud). See
Judicial System, below. The
self-government of the
mirs and
volosts is,
however, tempered by the authority of the police commissaries
(
stanovoi) and by the power of general oversight given to
the nominated " district committees for the affairs of the
peasants." The system of local self-government is continued, so far
as the 34 governments of old Russia are concerned, 6 in the
elective district and provincial assemblies (
zemstvos). 'he
These bodies, one for each district and another
for zemstvos. each province or government, were
created by Alex ander II. in 1864. They consist of a representative
council (zemskoye sobranye) and of an
executive board (zemskaya uprava) nominated by the former.
The board consists of five classes of members: (I) large landed
proprietors (nobles owning S90 acres and over), who sit in person;
(2) delegates of the small landowners, including the clergy in
their capacity of landed proprietors; (3) delegates of the
wealthier townsmen; (4) delegates of the less wealthy urban
classes; (5) delegates of the peasants, elected by the
volosts. The rules governing elections to the
zemstvos were taken as a model for the electoral law of
3906 and are sufficiently indicated by the account of this given
below. The
zemstvos were originally given large powers in
relation to the incidence of
taxation, and such questions as education,
public
health, roads and the like. These powers were, however,
severely restricted by the emperor
Alexander III. (law of 12/25
June 1890), the
zemstvos being absolutely subordinated to
the governors, whose consent was necessary to the validity of all
their decisions, and who received drastic powers of discipline over
the members. 8 It was not till 1905 that the
zemstvos
regained, at least
de facto, some of their independent
initiative. The part played by the congress of
zemstvos in
the earlier stages of the Russian revolution is outlined below (see
History: § 2.
Development of the Russian
Constitution). 4 Until the
ukaz of October 18, 1906,
the peasant class was stereotyped under the electoral law. No
peasant, however rich, could qualify for a vote in any but the
peasants' electoral colleges. The
ukaz allowed peasants
with the requisite qualifications to vote as landowners. At the
same time the Senate interpreted the law so as to exclude all but
heads of families actually engaged in farming from the vote for the
Duma.
5 None but peasants - not even the noble-landowner - has a voice
in the assembly of the
mir. 6 Sixteen provinces have no
zemstvos, i.e. the three Baltic provinces, the nine
western governments annexed from Poland by
Catherine II., and the Cossack provinces
of the Don, Astrakhan, Orenburg and Stavropol.
7 By the law of the 12th (25th) of June 3890 the peasant members
of the
zemstvos were to be nominated by the governor of
the government or province from a list elected by the
volosts. 8 In spite of these restrictions and of an
electoral system which tended to make these assemblies as
strait-laced and reactionary as any government
bureau, the
zemstvos did good work,
notably educational, in those provinces where the proprietors were
inspired with a more liberal spirit. Many
zemstvos also
made extensive and valuable inquiries into the condition of
agriculture, industry and the like.
Secret police. Since 1870 the municipalities in
European Russia have had institutions like those of the
zemstvos. All owners of houses, and tax-paying merchants,
artisans and workmen to their assessed wealth. The total
valuation is then divided into
three equal parts, representing three groups of electors very
unequal in number, each of which elects an equal number of
delegates to the municipal
duma. The executive is in the
hands of an elective
mayor and
an
uprava, which consists of several members elected by
the
duma. Under Alexander III., however, by laws
promulgated in 1892 and 1894, the municipal
dumas were
subordinated to the governors in the same way as the
zemstvos. In 1894 municipal institutions, with still more
restricted powers, were granted to several towns in Siberia, and in
1895 to some in Caucasia.
In the Baltic provinces (Courland, Livonia and Esthonia) the
landowning classes formerly enjoyed considerable powers of
self-government and numerous privileges in matters affecting
education, police and the administration of local justice. But by
laws promulgated in 1888 and 1889 the rights of police and manorial
justice were transferred from the landlords to officials of the
central government. Since about the same time a process of rigorous
Russification has been carried through in the same provinces, in
all departments of administration, in the higher schools and in the
university of Dorpat, the name of which was altered to
Yuriev. In 1893 district
committees for the management of the peasants' affairs, similar to
those in the purely Russian governments, were introduced into this
part of the empire.
Judicial System
Not the least valuable of the gifts of the " tsar emancipator,"
Alexander II., to Russia was the judicial
System system
established by the statute (
Sudebni Ustav) of the 10th of
November 1864. The system which this
1864. superseded was
not indigenous to Russia, but had been set up by Peter the Great,
who had taken as his model the inquisitorial procedure at that time
in vogue on the continent of western Europe. Both civil and
criminal procedure were secret. All the proceedings were conducted
in writing, and the judges were not confronted with either the
parties or the witnesses until they emerged to deliver judgment.
This secrecy, combined with the fact that the judges were very ill
paid, led to universal
bribery and corruption. To check this courts
were multiplied (there were five, six or more instances), which
only multiplied the evil. Documents accumulated from court to
court, till none but the clerks who had written them could tell
their gist;
costs were piled up;
and all this, combined with the confusion caused by the chaotic
mass of imperial ukazes, ordinances and ancient laws - often
inconsistent or flatly contradictory - made the administration of
justice, if possible, more
dilatory and capricious than in the old,
unreformed English court of
chancery. Above all, there was no dividing
'line between the judiciary and the administrative functions. The
judges were not so by profession; they were merely members of the
official class (
chinovniks), the prejudices and vices of
which they shared.
Of this system - except so far as the confusion of the laws is
-concerned - the reform of 1864 made a clean sweep. The new system
established - based partly on English, partly on French models -
was built up on certain broad
1864. p principles: the
separation of the judicial and administrative functions, the
independence of the judges and courts, the publicity of trials and
oral procedure, the equality of all classes before the law.
Moreover, a democratic element was introduced by the adoption of
the
jury system and - so far as
one order of tribunal was concerned - the election of judges. The
establishment of a judicial system on these principles
,constituted, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu justly observes, a fundamental
change in the conception of the Russian state, which, by placing
the administration of justice outside the sphere of the executive
power, ceased to be a despotism. This fact made the new system
especially
obnoxious to
the bureaucracy, ,and during the latter years of Alexander II. and
the reign of Alexander III. there was a piecemeal taking back of
what had been given. It was reserved for the third Duma, after the
revolution, to begin the reversal of this process.' The system
established by the law of 1864 is remarkable in that it set up two
wholly separate orders of tribunals, each having their own courts
of appeal and coming in contact only in the senate, as the supreme
court of cassation. The first of these, based on the English model,
are the courts of the elected justices of the peace, with
jurisdiction over petty causes, whether civil or criminal; the
second, based on the French model, are the ordinary tribunals of
nominated judges, sitting with or without a jury to hear important
cases.
The justices of the peace, who must be landowners' or (in towns)
persons of moderate property, are elected by the municipal
dumas in the towns, and by the
zemstvos Justices
in the country districts, for a term of three years. of
the They are of two classes: (r) acting justices
(
uchastokvye mirovye sudi); (2) honorary justices
(
pochetnye mirovye sudi). The acting justice sits normally
alone to hear causes in his canton of the peace
(
uchastok), but, at the request of both parties to a suit,
he may call in an honorary justice as
assessor or substitute. 3 In all civil cases
involving less than 30 roubles, and in criminal cases punishable by
no more than three days' arrest, his judgment is final. In other
cases appeal can be made to the "
assize of the peace " (
mirovye syezd),
consisting of three or more justices of the peace meeting monthly
(cf. the English
quarter sessions), which acts
both as a court of appeal and of cassation. From this again appeal
can be made on points of law or disputed procedure to the senate,
which may send the case back for retrial by an assize of the peace
in another district.
The ordinary tribunals, in their organization, personnel and
procedure, are modelled very closely on those of
France (see
France,
Law and Institutions). From the
town
The judge
(
ispravnik), who, in spite of the principle laid
ordinary down in 1864, combines judicial and
administrative functions, an appeal lies (as in the case of the
justices of the peace) to an assembly of such judges; from these
again there is an appeal to the district court (
okrugniya
sud), consisting of three judges; 4 from this to the court of
appeal (
sudebniya palata); while over this again is the
senate, which, as the supreme court of cassation, can send a case
for retrial for reason shown. The district court, sitting with a
jury, can try criminal cases without appeal, but only by special
leave in each case of the court of appeal. The senate, as supreme
court of cassation, has two departments, one for civil and one for
criminal cases. As a court of justice its main
drawback is that it is wholly unable to cope
with the vast mass of documents representing appeals from all parts
of the empire.
Two important classes in Russia stood more or less outside the
competence of the above systems: the clergy and the peasants. The
ecclesiastical courts still retain a
]. jurisdiction over the clergy which they
have lost elsewhere in Europe; and in them the old secret written
procedure survives. Their interest for the laity lies ' An ukaz of
1879 gave the governors the right to report secretly on the
qualifications of candidates for the office of
justice
of the peace. In 1889 Alexander III. abolished the election of
justices of the peace, except in certain large towns and some
outlying parts of the empire, and greatly restricted the right of
trial by jury. The confusion of the judicial and administrative
functions was introduced again by the appointment of officials as
judges. In 1909 the third Duma restored the election of justices of
the peace.
2 The justices, though noble-landowners, are almost exclusively
of very moderate means, and, though elected by the land-owning
class, they are - according to M. Leroy-Beaulieu - prejudiced in
favour of the poor
mujik rather than of the wealthy
landlord.
These honorary justices are mainly recruited from the ranks of
the higher bureaucracy and the army.
4 This corresponds to the French tour d'arrondissement,
but its jurisdiction is, territorially, much wider, often covering
several districts or even a whole government.
are enrolled on lists in a descending order according mainly in
the fact that marriage and
divorce fall within their competence; and their
reform has been postponed largely because the wealthy and corrupt
society of the Russian capital preferred a system which makes
divorce easily purchasable and avoids at the same time the
scandal of publicity The case
of the peasants is more interesting, and deserves a somewhat more
detailed notice.
The peasants, as already stated, form a class apart, untouched
by the influence of Western civilization, the principles of which
they are quite incapable of understanding or appreci. ating. This
fact was recognized by the legislators of 1864, and beneath the
statutory tribunals created in that year the special courts of the
peasants were suffered to survive. These were indeed but a few
years older. Up to 1861, the date of the emancipation, the peasant
serfs had been under the patrimonial jurisdiction of their lords.
The
edict of emancipation
abolished this jurisdiction, and set up instead in each
volost a court particular to the peasants (
volostnye
sud), of which the judges and jury, themselves peasants, were
elected by the assembly of the
volost (volostnye skhod)
each year. In these courts the ordinary written law had little to
say; the decisions of the
volost courts were based on the
local customary law, which alone the peasants, and the peasants
alone, understand. The justice administered in them was patriarchal
and rough, but not ineffective. All civil cases involving less than
z oo roubles value were within their competence, and more important
cases by consent of the parties. They acted also as
police courts in
the case of petty thefts, breaches of the peace and the like. They
were also charged with the maintenance of order in the
mir
and the family, punishing infractions of the religious law,
husbands who
beat their wives, and
parents who ill-treated their children. The
penalty of flogging, preferred by the peasants
to fine or imprisonment, was not unknown. The judges were, of
course, wholly illiterate, and this tended to throw the ultimate
power into the hands of the clerk (
pisar) of the court,
who was rarely above corruption.
In 1880, according to the observations of M. Leroy-Beaulieu,'
the fines inflicted by the court were commonly paid in
vodka, which was consumed on
the premises by the judges and the parties to the suit; there is no
reason to suppose that this amiable custom has been abandoned.
The peasants are not compelled to go to the
volost
court. They can apply to the police commissaries
(
stanovoti) or to the justices of the peace; but the great
distances to be traversed in a country so sparsely populated makes
this course highly inconvenient. 2 On the other hand, from the
volost court there is no appeal, unless it has acted
ultra vires or illegally. In the latter case a court of
cassation is provided in the district com mittee for the affairs of
the peasants (
Uyezdnoe po
krestianskim dolam prisutstviye), which has superseded the
assembly of arbiters of the peace (
mirovye posredniki)
established in 1866.3 (W. A. P.) Previous to the revolution of 1905
but little progress had been made in Russia as regards education. 4
Distrust of the natural sciences,
Ed uca- even in their
technical applications, and of Western ideas of free government;
desire to make university
don. education, and even
secondary education, a privilege of the wealthier classes; neglect
of primary education, coupled with suppression by the ministry of
public instruction of all initiative, private and public, in the
matter of disseminating education among the illiterate classes -
these were the distinctive features of the educational policy of
the last twenty years of the 19th century.
L'Empire des tsars, ii. p. 310.
In the ordinary tribunals weight is given to the " customs " of
the peasants, even when these conflict with the written law.
I The abolition of the special courts of the peasants was
announced in the same imperial ukaz (18th of October 1906) which
promised the relief of the peasants from the arbitrary control of
the communes, and permission for them to migrate elsewhere without
losing their communal rights. This was made part of the general
reform of Russian
local government, which in the autumn
of 1910 was still under the consideration of the Duma.
4 Of the effects of the political changes in Russia on the
educational system of the country it was, even in the autumn of
1910, too early to say anything save that an undoubted impetus had
It was only towards its close that a change took place in the
attitude of the government towards
technical education, and a few high
and middle technical schools were opened. It was only then, too,
that a reform was started in secondary education, with the object
of revising the so-called " classical " system favoured in the
lyceums since the 'seventies, the complete failure of which has
been demonstrated after nearly
thirty years of experiment. Apart
from the schools under the ministry of war (Cossack
voiskos and schools at the
barracks), the great bulk of the primary
schools are either under the ministry of public instruction or of
the Holy Synod. Those under the latter body are of recent growth,
the policy of the last twenty years of the 19th century having been
to hand over the budget allowances for primary instruction to the
Holy Synod, which opened parish schools under the local priests.
The schools under the Synod are themselves divided into two
categories: parish schools and
reading schools of an inferior grade. No
teaching certificate is required by the teachers. in either class
of school, the permission of the
bishop (like the French
lettre
d'obedience of 1849) being sufficient. The consequence is,
that the village priests, being too much occupied with their
parochial duties, cannot give more than casual or perfunctory
attention to the schools, and the numerous pupils either exist on
paper only, or are handed over to half-educated cantors, deacons.
or hired teachers. One good feature of the Russian primary school
system, however, is that in many villages there are school gardens
or fields; in nearly moo schools,
bee-keeping, and in 300 silkworm culture is
taught; while in some 900 schools the children receive instruction
in various trades; and in 300 schools in
slojd (a system
of manual training originated in Finland). Girls are taught
handwork in many schools. Nearly 50% of the teachers are women. The
total expenditure on primary schools in 1900 was 5,30o,000 (about
the average in recent years), of which 20%. was supplied by the
state, 23% by the
zemstvos, 351% by the
village
communities and the municipalities and
112 %
by private persons. The middle schools are maintained by the state,
which contributes 25% of the expenditure of the classical and
technical schools, by the fees of the pupils (30%), and by
donations from the
zemstvos and municipalities. The total
grants from the state
exchequer for education of all grades in all
parts of the empire amounted in 1906 to £8,107,000. The progress of
primary education is illustrated by the fact that, while in 1885
there was one school for every 2665 inhabitants and one pupil for
every 48 inhabitants, in 1898 the figures were 1643 and 31
inhabitants. respectively. According to the census of 1897 the
number of illiterates varied from 89.2 to 44.9% of the population
in the rural districts, and from 63.6 to 37.2% in the urban.
For higher education there were in 1904 only 9 universities.
(Yuriev or Dorpat, Kazan, Kharkov, Kiev, Moscow, Odessa, St
Petersburg, Warsaw and Tomsk), with 19,400 students, 6 medical
academies (one for women),
6 theological academies, 6 military academies, 5 philological
institutes, 3 Eastern languages institutes,. 3 law schools, 4
veterinary institutes, 4 agricultural colleges, 2 mining
institutes, 4 engineering institutes, 2 universities for women (93
o students at St Petersburg), 3 technical pedagogic schools, to
technical institutes, I forestry and 1 topographical school. There
has, however, been much activity since 1905 in the establishment of
new educational institutions, notably technical and commercial
schools, which are placed under the new minister of commerce and
industry. Finland has a university of its own at Helsingfors.
The standard of teaching in the universities is on the whole
very high, and may be compared to that of the German universities.
The students are hard working, and generally very intelligent.
Mostly sons of poor parents, they live in extreme poverty,
supporting themselves chiefly by translating and by tutorial work.
The state of secondary education still leaves much to be desired..
The steady tendency of Russian society towards increasing the
number of secondary schools, where instruction would be based on
the study of the natural sciences, is checked by the government in
favour of the classical gymnasiums. 5 Sunday schools and public
lectures are virtually prohibited.
A characteristic feature of the intellectual movement in Russia
is its tendency to extend to women the means of higher instruction.
The gymnasiums for girls are both numerous and good. In addition to
these, notwithstanding government opposition, a series been given
to the effort for improvement, and that the question had been
seriously taken in hand by the imperial administration and the
Duma. What form it would ultimately take depended still on the
balance between the forces of conservatism and change, the
suspicious
temper of the
autocracy being revealed, during the years of unstable
equilibrium, by the
alternate concession and withdrawal of privileges,
e.g. in
the matter of the independence of the universities. Any account of
the educational system cannot, therefore, be otherwise than
historical and provisional [ED.j.
5 An imperial rescript of 10th of June 1902 foreshadowed a
reorganization of secondary education, and an imperial
ukaz of 15th of March 1903 laid down the lines on which
this was to proceed.. The old curriculum of the Real
schools is now superseded.
of higher schools, in which careful instruction is given in
natural and social sciences, have been opened in the chief cities
under the name of " pedagogical courses." At St Petersburg a
women's medical academy, the
examinations of which were even more
searching than those of the ordinary academy (especially as regards
diseases of women and children), was opened, but after about one
hundred women had received the degree of M.D. it was suppressed by
government. In several university towns there are free teaching
establishments for women, supported by subscription, with
programmes and examinations equal to those of the universities.
The natural sciences are much cultivated in Russia. Besides the
Academy of Science, the Moscow Society of Naturalists, the
Mineralogical Society, the Geographical Society, with its Caucasian
and Siberian branches, the archaeological societies and the
scientific societies of the Baltic provinces, all of which are of
old and recognized standing, there have lately sprung up a series
of new societies in connexion with each university, and their
serials are yearly growing in importance, as, too, are those of the
Moscow
Society of Friends of Natural
Science, the Chemico-Physical Society, and various medical,
educational and other associations. The work achieved by Russian
savants, especially in
biology,
physiology and
chemistry, and in the sciences descriptive of
the vast territory of Russia, is well known to Europe.
The ordinary revenue of the empire is in excess of the ordinary
expenditure, but the extraordinary expenditure not only swallows up
this surplus, but necessitates the raising of fresh
F
loans every year. On the other hand, there is a good deal to show
for this extraordinary expenditure. A considerable number of new
railways, including the
Siberian, have been built with money obtained from that source. But
since 1894 all extraordinary items of expenditure, with the
exception of those for the construction of new lines of railway,
have been defrayed out of ordinary revenue. The only sources of
extraordinary revenue still remaining under that head are the money
derived from loans and the perpetual deposits in the Imperial
Bank. The ordinary revenue,
obtained principally from the sale of
spirits (28%), which is a state
monopoly, from state railways
(231%) and customs (roe %), steadily rose from a total of
£132,750,000 in 1895 to a total of £214,360,000 in 1905. Other
noteworthy sources of revenue are trade licences, direct taxes on
lands and forests,
stamp duties,
posts and telegraphs, indirect taxes on
tobacco,
sugar and other commodities, the crown forests,
and land redemption payable annually by the peasants since 1861. At
the same time the total ordinary expenditure has increased at a
similarly steady rate, namely, from £119,391,000 in 1895 to
£202,544,000 in 1905. In 1904, 811% of the extraordinary
expenditure, namely, £71,550,000, was incurred in consequence of
the war with Japan, and to this must be added in 1906 a further
expenditure of £42,085,000. The total
national debt of Russia nearly trebled
between 1852 (£57,038,600) and 1862 (£145,50o,000), and again
between 1872 (£242,277,000) and 1892 (£526,109.000) it more than
doubled, while by 1906 it amounted altogether to £812,040,000. Of
the total, 77% stands at 4% and 17 at less than 4%.
The system of obligatory military service for all, introduced in
1874, has been maintained, but the six years' term of service has
Army. been reduced to five, while the privileges granted
to young men who have received various degrees of education have
been slightly extended. During the reign of Alexander III. efforts
were mainly directed towards - (1) reducing the time required for
the mobilization of the army; (2) increasing the immediate
readiness of
cavalry for war
and its fitness for serving as
mounted infantry (dragoon regiments
taking the place of hussars and lancers); (3) strengthening the W.
frontier by fortresses and railways; and (4) increasing the
artillery, siege and
train reserves. Further, the age
releasing from service was raised from 40 to 43 years and the
militia (
landsturm) was
reorganized. The measures taken during the reign of
Nicholas II. have been
chiefly directed towards increasing the fighting capacity and
readiness for immediate service of the troops in Asia, and towards
the better reorganization of the local irregular militia forces.
Broadly speaking, the army is divided into regulars,
Cossacks and militia. The
peace strength of the army is estimated at 42,000 officers and
1,100,000 men (about 950,000 combatants), while the war strength is
approximately 75,000 officers and 4,500,000 men. However, this
latter figure is merely nominal, the available artillery and train
service being much below the strength which would be required for
such an army; estimates which put the military forces of Russia in
time of war at 2,750,000 - irrespective of the :armies which
may be levied during the war itself - seem to approach more nearly
the strength of the forces which could actually be mustered. The
infantry and rifles are armed
with small-bore magazine rifles, and the active artillery have
steel breech-loaders with extreme
ranges of 4150 to 4700 yds.
Before the Japanese war Russia maintained four separate
squadrons: the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Pacific and the
Caspian.
But in the operations before Port
Arthur and in the
Navy. disastrous
battle of Tsushima the Russian fleets were almost completely
annihilated. The bulk of the Black Sea fleet .and a few other
battleships were, however, still left, and since 1904 steps have
been taken to build new ships, both battleships and powerful
cruisers.
Kronstadt is
the naval headquarters in the Baltic, Sevastopol in the Black Sea
and
Vladivostok on
the Pacific.
Fortresses
The chief first-class fortresses of Russia are Warsaw and
Novogeorgievsk in
Poland, and
Brest-Litovsk and Kovno in Lithuania. The
second-class fortresses are Kronstadt and Sveaborg in the Gulf of
Finland,
Ivangorod in
Poland,
Libau on the Baltic Sea,
Kerch on the Black Sea and
Vladivostok on the Pacific. In the third class are Viborg in
Finland, Ossovets and Ust
Dvinsk (or Dunamunde) in Lithuania, Sevastopol
and
Ochakov on the Black
Sea, and Kars and
Batum in
Caucasia. There are, moreover, 46 forts and fortresses unclassed,
of which 6 are in Poland, 8 in W. and S.W. Russia, and the
remainder (mere fortified posts) in the Asiatic dominions.
European Russia
Geography. - The administrative
boundaries of European Russia, apart from Finland, coincide broadly
with the natural limits of the East-European plains. In the N. it
is bounded by the Arctic Ocean; the islands of NovayaZemlya,
Kolguyev and Vaigach also belong to it, but the
Kara Sea is reckoned to Siberia. To the E. it
has the Asiatic dominions of the empire, Siberia and the
Kirghiz steppes, from both of
which it is separated by the Ural Mountains, the Ural river and the
Caspian - the administrative boundary, however, partly extending
into Asia on the Siberian slope of the Urals. To the S. it has the
Black Sea and Caucasia, being separated from the latter by the
Manych depression, which in Post-Pliocene times connected the
Sea of Azov with the
Caspian. The W. boundary is purely conventional: it crosses the
peninsula of Kola from the Varanger
Fjord to the
Gulf of Bothnia; thence it runs to the
Kurisches Haff
in the southern Baltic, and thence to the mouth of the Danube,
taking a great circular sweep to the W. to embrace Poland, and
separating Russia from Prussia, Austrian
Galicia and Rumania.
It is a special feature of Russia that she has no free outlet to
the open sea except on the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Even the White Sea is merely a gulf of that ocean. The deep
indentations of the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland are surrounded by
what is ethnologically Finnish territory, and it is only at the
very head of the latter gulf that the Russians have taken firm
foothold by erecting their capital at the mouth of the
Neva. The Gulf of Riga and the Baltic
belong also to territory which is not inhabited by Sla y s, but by
Finnish races and by Germans. It is only within the last hundred
and thirty years that the Russians have definitely taken possession
of the N. shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The E. coast
of the Black Sea belongs properly to
Transcaucasia, a great chain of mountains
separating it from Russia. But even this sheet of water is an
inland sea, the only outlet of which, the Bosphorus, is in foreign
hands, while the Caspian, an immense shallow lake, mostly bordered
by deserts, possesses more importance as a link between Russia and
her Asiatic settlements than as a channel for intercourse with
other countries.
The great territory occupied by European Russia - 1600 m. in
length from N. to S., and nearly as much from E. to W. - is on the
whole a broad elevated plain, ranging between 500 and 900 ft. above
sea-level, deeply cut into by river valleys, and bounded on all
sides by broad swellings or low mountain-ranges: the lake plateaus
of Finland. and the Maanselka heights in the N.W.; the Baltic
coast-ridge and spurs of the Carpathians in the W., with a broad
depression between the two, occupied by Poland; the Crimean and
Caucasian mountains in the S.; and the broad but moderately high
swelling of the Ural Mountains in the E.
From a central plateau, which comprises the governments of Tver,
Moscow, Smolensk and Kursk, and projects E. towards Samara,
attaining an average elevation of Boo to 900 ft. above the sea, the
surface slopes gently in all directions to a level of 300 to 500
ft. Then it again rises gradually as it approaches the hilly tracts
which enclose the great plain. This central swelling may be
considered a continuation towards the E.N.E. of the great line of
upheavals of N.W. Europe; the elevated grounds of Finland would
then represent a continuation of the Scanian plateaus of S. Sweden,
and the northern mountains of Finland a continuation of Kjolen (the
Keel) which separate Sweden from Norway, while the other great line
of upheaval of the old continent, which runs N.W. to S.E., would be
represented in Russia by the Caucasus in the S. and by the Timan
ridge of the Pechora basin in the N.
The hilly aspect of several parts of the central plateau is not
due to foldings of the strata, which for the most part appear to be
horizontal, but chiefly to the excavating action of the rivers,
whose valleys are deeply eroded in the plateau, especially on its
borders. The round flattened summits of the Valdai plateau do not
rise above 1100 ft., and they present the appearance of mountains
only in consequence of the depths of the valleys - the rivers which
flow towards the depression of Lake
Peipus being only 200 to 250 ft. above the sea.
The same is true of the plateaus of Livonia, " Wendish
Switzerland," and the
government of Kovno, which do not exceed moo ft. at their highest
points; and again of the E. spurs of the Baltic coast-ridge between
the governments of Grodno and Minsk. The same elevation is reached
by a very few flat summits of the plateau about Kursk, and farther
E. on the Volga about
Kamyshin, where the valleys are excavated to a
depth of 800 or 900 ft., giving quite a hilly aspect to the
country. It is only in the S.W., where spurs of the Carpathians
enter the governments of Volhynia, Podolia and Bessarabia, that
ridges reaching 1 100 ft. are met with, these again intersected by
deep ravines.
The depressions which
gap the
borders of the central plateau thus acquire a greater importance
than the small differences in its vertical elevation. Such is the
broad depression of the middle Volga and lower Kama, bounded on the
N. by the faint swelling of the Uvaly, the watershed between the
Arctic Ocean and the Volga basin. Another broad depression, 250 to
500 ft. above the sea, still filled by Lakes Peipus,
Ladoga, Onega, Byelo-ozero,
Lacha, Vozhe, and many thousands of smaller lakes, skirts the
central plateau on the N., and follows the same E.N.E. direction.
Only a few low swellings penetrate into it from the N.W., about
Lake Onega, and reach 900 ft., while in the N.E. it is enclosed by
the Timan ridge (1000 ft.). A third depression, traversed by the
Pripet and the middle Dnieper, extends to the W. and penetrates
into Poland. This immense lacustrine basin is now broken up into
numberless ponds, lakes and marshes (see MiNsx). It is bounded on
the S. by the broad plateaus which spread out E. of the
Carpathians. S. of 50° N. the central plateau slopes gently towards
the S., and we find there a fourth depression stretching W. and E.
through Poltava and Kharkov, but still reaching in its higher parts
500 to 700 ft. It is separated from the Black Sea by a gentle
swelling which may be traced from
Kremenets in Volhynia to the lower Don, and
perhaps farther S.E. This swelling includes the Donets
coal-measures and the middle granitic ridges which give rise to the
rapids of the Dnieper. Finally a fifth depression, which descends
below the level of the ocean, extends for more than zoo m. to the
N. of the Caspian, comprising the lower Volga and the Ural and Emba
rivers, and establishing a link between Russia and the Aral-Caspian
region. It is continued farther N. by plains below 300 ft., which
join the depression of the middle Volga, and extend as far as the
mouth of the Oka.
The Ural Mountains present the aspect of a broad swelling whose
strata no longer exhibit the horizontality which is characteristic
of central Russia, and moreover are deeply cut into by rivers. They
are connected in the W. with broad plateaus which join those of
central Russia, but their orographical relations to other upheavals
must be more closely studied before they can be definitely
pronounced on.
The rhomboidal peninsula of the Crimea, connected by only a
narrow
isthmus with the
continent, is occupied by an arid plateau sloping gently N. and E.,
and bordered on the S.E. by the Yaila Mountains, the summits of
which range between 4000 and 5000 ft.
Owing to the orographical structure of the East-European plains,
the river systems have become more than usually prominent and.
important features of the configuration. Taking their origin from a
series of lacustrine basins scattered over the plateaus and
differing slightly in elevation, the Russian rivers describe
immense curves before reaching the sea, and flow with a very gentle
gradient, while numerous large tributaries collect their waters
from over vast areas. Thus the Volga, the Dnieper and the Don
attain respectively lengths of 2325, 1410 and 1325 m., and their
basins run to 563,300, 202,140 and 166,000 sq. m. respectively.
Moreover, the chief rivers, the Volga, the W. Dvina, the Dnieper,
and even the Lovat and the Oka, take their rise (in the N.W. of the
central plateau) so close to one another that they may be said to
radiate from the same centre. The sources of the Don interlace with
the tributaries of the Oka, while the upper tributaries of the Kama
join those of the N. Dvina and Pechora. In consequence of this, the
rivers of Russia have been from remote antiquity the principal
channels of trade and
migration, and have
contributed much more to the elaboration of national unity than any
political institutions. Boats could be conveyed over flat and easy
portages from one river-basin to another, and these portages were
subsequently transformed with a relatively small amount of labour
into navigable canals, and even at the present day the canals have
more importance for the traffic of the country than have most of
the railways. By their means the plains of the central plateau -
the very
heart of Russia, whose
natural outlet was the Caspian - were brought into
water-communication with the Baltic, and the Volga basin was
connected with the Gulf of Finland. The White Sea has also been
brought into connexion with the central Volga basin while the
sister-river of the Volga - the Kama - became the main artery of
communication with Siberia.
But although the rivers of Russia rank before the rivers of W.
Europe in respect of length, they are far behind them as regards
the volumes of water which they discharge. They freeze in winter
and dry up in summer, and most of them are navigable only during
the spring floods; even the Volga becomes so shallow during the hot
season that none but boats of light
draught can pass over its shoals.
Arctic Ocean Basin
The Pechora rises in the N. Urals, and enters the ocean by a
large
estuary at the Gulf of
Pechora. Its. basin, thinly-peopled and available only for
cattle-breeding and for
hunting, is quite isolated from
Russia by the Timan ridge. The river is navigable for 770 m.;
grain and a variety of goods
conveyed from the upper Kama are floated down, while furs,
fish and other products of the sea
are shipped up the river to be transported to Cherdyn on the Kama.
The Mezen enters the Bay of Mezen; it is navigable for 450 m., and
is the channel of a considerable export of
timber. The N. Dvina is formed by the union of
the Yug and the Sukhona. The latter, although it flows over a great
number of rapids, is navigable throughout its length (330 m.); it
is connected. by canal with the Caspian and the Baltic. The
Vychegda, which flows W.S.W. to join the Sukhona, through a woody
region, thinly peopled, is navigable for 500 m. and in its upper
portion is connected by a canal with the upper Kama. The N. Dvina
flows with a very slight gradient through a broad valley, and
reaches the White Sea at Archangel. Notwithstanding serious
obstacles offered by shallows,
corn, fish, salt and timber are largely shipped to
and from Archangel. The Onega, which flows into Onega Bay, has
rapids; but timber is floated down in spring, and fishing and some
navigation are carried on in the lower portion.
Baltic Basin
The Neva (40 m.) flows from Lake Ladoga into the Gulf of
Finland. The Volkhov, discharging into Lake Ladoga, and forming
part of the Vyshniy-Volochok system of canals, is an important
channel for navigation; it flows from Lake Ilmen, which receives
the Msta, connected with the Volga, and the Lovat. The Svir, also
discharging into Lake Ladoga, flows from Lake Onega, and, being
part of the
Mariinsk canal
system, is of great importance for navigation. The Narova flows out
of Lake Peipus into the Gulf of Finland at
Narva; it has remarkable rapids, which are used
to generate power for
cotton-mills; in spite of this,
the river is navigated. Lake Peipus, or Chudskoye, receives the
Velikaya, a channel of traffic with S. Russia from a remote
antiquity, but now navigable only in its lower portion, and the
Embach, navigated by steamers to Dorpat (Yuryev). The S. Dvina,
which falls into the sea below Riga, is shallow above the rapids of
Jacobstadt, but navigation is carried on as far as Vitebsk - corn,
timber, potash,
flax, &c.,
being the principal shipments of its navigable tributaries (the
Obsha, Ulla and Kasplya). The Ulla is connected by the
Berezina canals. with the
Dnieper. The Memel (Niemen), with a course of 470 m. in Russia,
rises in the N. of Minsk, leaves Russia at Yurburg, and enters the
Kurisches Haff; rafts are floated upon it almost from its. source,
and steamers ply as far as Kovno; it is connected by the Oginsky
canal with the Dnieper. For the
Vistula, with the Bug and Narew, see
Poland.
Black Sea Basin
The Pruth rises in Austrian
Bukovina, and separates Russia from Rumania;
it enters the Danube, which flows along the Russian frontier for
100 m. below Reni, touching it with its
Kilia branch. The
Dniester (530 m. in Russia) rises in Galicia.
Light boats and rafts are floated at all points, and steamers ply
on its lower portion; its estuary has important
fisheries. The Dnieper,
with a basin of 202,140 sq. m., drains 13 governments, the
aggregate population of which numbers over 28,000,000. It also
originates. in the N.W. parts of the central plateau, in the same
marshy lakes. which give rise to the Volga and the W. Dvina, and
enters the Black Sea. In the middle navigable part of its course,
from Dorogobuzh to Ekaterinoslav, it is an active channel for
traffic. It receives. several large tributaries: - on the right,
the Berezina, connected with the W. Dvina, and the Pripet, both
very important for navigation - as well as several smaller
tributaries on which rafts are floated; on the left the Sozh, the
Desna, one of the most important rivers of Russia, navigated by
steamers as far as
Bryansk,
the Sula, the Psiol and the Vorskla. Below Ekaterinoslav the
Dnieper flows for 46 m. over a series of rapids. At Kherson it
enters its long (40 m.) but shallow estuary, which receives the S.
Bug and the Ingul. The.Don, with a basin of 166,000 sq. m., and
navigable for 880 m., rises in the government of Tula and enters
the Sea of Azov at Rostov, after describing a great curve to the E.
at Tsaritsyn, approaching the Volga, with which it is connected by
a railway (45 m.). Its navigation is of great importance,
especially for goods brought from the Volga, and its fisheries are
extensive. The chief tributaries are the Sosna and North Donets on
the right, and the Voronezh, Khoper, Medvyeditsa and Manych on the
left. The Ylya, the Kuban and the Rion belong to Caucasia.
The Caspian Basin
The Volga, the chief river of Russia, has a length of 2325 m.,
and its basin, about 563,300 sq. m. in area, contains a population
of nearly 40,000,000. It is connected with the Baltic by three
systems of canals (see
Volga).
The Ural, in its lower part, constitutes the frontier between
European Russia and the Kirghiz steppe; it receives the Sakmara on
the right and the Ilek on the left. The Kuma, the Terek and the
Kura, with the Aras, which receives the waters of Lake Gok-cha,
belong to Caucasia.' The soil of Russia depends chiefly on the
distribution of the boulder-clay and loess, on the degree to which
the rivers have
Solt severally excavated their valleys,
and on the moistness of the climate. Vast areas in Russia are quite
unfit for cultivation, 19% of the aggregate surface of European
Russia (apart from Poland and Finland) being occupied by lakes,
marshes, sand, &c., 39% by forests, 16% by prairies, and only
26% being under cultivation. The distribution of all these is,
however, very unequal, and the five following subdivisions may be
established: - (T) the tundras; (2) the forest region; (3) the
middle region, comprising the surface available for agriculture and
partly covered with forests; (4) the black-earth
(
chernozyom) region; and (5) the steppes. Of these the
black-earth region - about 150,000,000 acres - which reaches from
the Carpathians to the Urals, from the
Pinsk marshes in the S.W. to the upper Oka in the
N.E., is the most important. It is covered with a thick sheet of
black earth, a kind of loess, mixed with 5 to 15% of
humus, due to the decomposition of
an herbaceous vegetation, which developed luxuriantly during the
Lacustrine period on a continent relatively dry even at that epoch.
On the three-fields system corn has been grown upon it for fifty to
seventy consecutive years without manure. Isolated black-earth
islands, though less fertile, occur also in Courland and Kovno, in
the OkaVolga-Kama depression, on the slopes of the Urals, and in a
few patches in the N. Towards the Black Sea coast its thickness
diminishes, and it disappears in the valleys. In the extensive
region covered with boulder-clay the black earth appears only in
isolated places, and the soil consists for the most part of a sandy
clay, containing a much smaller admixture of humus. There
cultivation is possible only with the aid of a considerable
quantity of manure. Drainage finding no outlet through the thick
clay, the soil of the forest region is often hidden beneath
extensive marshes, and the forests themselves are often mere
thickets choking marshy ground; large tracts of sand appear in the
W., and the admixture of boulders with the clay in the N.W. renders
agriculture difficult. On the Arctic coast the forests disappear,
giving place to the tundras. Finally, in the S.E., towards the
Caspian, on the slopes of the southern Urals and the plateau of
Obshchiy Syrt, as also in the interior of the Crimea, and in
several parts of Bessarabia, there are large tracts of real desert,
buried under coarse sand and devoid of vegetation.
Notwithstanding the fact that Russia extends from N. to S.
through 30° of latitude, the climate of its different portions,
apart Climate, from the Crimea and Caucasia, presents a
striking uni formity. The aerial currents - cyclones, anti-cyclones
and dry S.E. winds - prevail over extensive areas, and sweep across
the flat plains without hindrance. Everywhere the winter is cold
and the summer hot, both varying in their duration, but differing
relatively little in the extremes of temperature recorded. There is
no place in Russia, Archangel and Astrakhan included, where the
thermometer does not rise in summer nearly to 86° Fahr. and descend
in winter to - 13° and - 22°. It is only on the Black Sea coast
that the absolute range of temperature does not exceed 108°, while
in the remainder of Russia it reaches 126° to 144°, the
oscillations being between - 22° and - 31°, occasionally going down
as low as - 54°, and rising as high as 86° to 104°, or even 109°.
Everywhere the rainfall is small: if Finland and Poland on the one
hand and Caucasia with the Caspian depression on the other be
excluded, the average yearly rainfall varies between 16 and 28 in.
Nowhere does the maximum rainfall take place in winter (as in W.
Europe), but it occurs in summer, and everywhere the months of
advanced spring are warmer than the corresponding months of
autumn.
Though thus exhibiting the distinctive features of a continental
climate, Russia does not lie altogether outside the reach of the
moderating influence of the ocean. The
Atlantic cyclones penetrate
to the Russian plains, mitigating to some extent the cold of
winter, and in summer bringing with them their moist winds and
thunderstorms. Their influence is chiefly felt in W. Russia, though
it does reach as far as the Urals and beyond. They thus check the
extension and limit the duration of the cold anticyclones.
'Bibliography of Geography: see Tillo, in
Izvestia of
Russian Geogr. Soc. (1883); P. P. Semenov,
Geogr. and Statist.
Dictionary of the Russian Empire (in Russian, 5 vols., St
Petersburg, 1863-84), the most trustworthy source for the geography
of Russia; the official
Svod Materialov, with regard to
Russian rivers (1876); Statistical
Sbornik of the Ministry
of Communications, vol. x. (freezing of Russian rivers, and
navigation). A great variety of monographs dealing with separate
rivers and basins are available;
e.g. S. Martynov,
Das
Petschoragebiet (St Petersburg, 1905); G. von Helmersen,
Das Olonezische Bergrevier (St Petersburg, 1860); Turbin,
The Dnieper; Prasolenko, " The Dniester," in
Engin.
Journ. (188T); Danilevsky, " Kuban," in
Mem. Geogr.
Soc. i.; K. E. von Baer,
Kaspische Studien (St
Petersburg, 1857-59) V. Ragozin,
Volga (St Petersburg,
1890); Peretyatkovich,
Volga; and Mikhailov,
Kama. An orohydrographical
map of Russia in four sheets was published in
1878.
Throughout Russia the winter is of long duration. The last days
of
frost are experienced for the
most part in April, but as late as May to the N. of 55° N. The
spring is exceptionally beautiful in central Russia; late as it
usually is, it sets in with vigour, and vegetation develops with a
rapidity which gives to this season in Russia a special
charm, unknown in warmer climates.
The rapid melting of the snow at the same time causes the rivers to
swell, and renders a. great many minor streams navigable for a few
weeks. But a return of cold weather, injurious to vegetation, is
very frequently observed in central and E. Russia between May the
18th and the 24th, sa that it is only in June that warm weather
sets in definitely, and it reaches its maximum in the first half of
July (or of August on the Black Sea coast). In S.E. Russia the
summer is much warmer than in the corresponding latitudes of
France, and really hot weather is. experienced everywhere. It does
not, however, prevail for long, and in the first half of September
frosts begin on the middle Urals. They descend upon W. and S.
Russia in the beginning of October, and are felt on the Caucasus
about the middle of November. The temperature drops so rapidly that
a month later, about October the oth on the middle Urals and
November the 15th throughout Russia, the thermometer ceases to rise
above the freezing-point. The rivers freeze rapidly; towards
November 10th all the streams of the White Sea basin are ice-bound,
and so remain for an average of 167 days; those of the Baltic,
Black Sea and Caspian basins freeze later, but about December the
10th nearly all the rivers of the country are highways for sledges.
The Volga remains frozen for a period varying between 150 days in
the N. and 90 days at Astrakhan, the Don for Too to 110 days, and
the Dnieper for 83 to 122 days. On the W. Dvina ice prevents
navigation for 125 days, and even the Vistula at Warsaw remains
frozen for 77 days. The lowest temperatures are experienced in
January, the average being as low as 20° to 5° Fahr. throughout
Russia; in the west only does it rise above 22°. On the whole,
February and March continue to be cold, and their average
temperatures rise above
zero
nowhere except on the Black Sea coast. Even at Kiev and
Lugansk the average of March is
below 30°, while in central Russia it is 25° to 22°, and as low as
20° and 16° at Samara and Orenburg.
All Russia is comprised between the isotherms of 32° and 54°. On
the whole, they are more remote from one another than even on the
plains of N.
America, those
of 46° to 32° being distributed over twenty degrees of latitude.
They are, on the whole, inclined towards the S. in E. Russia; thus
the
isotherm of 39° runs
from St Petersburg to Orenburg, and that of 35° from Tornea in
Finland to Uralsk. The
inflexion is still greater for the winter
isotherms. Closely following one another, they run almost N. and
S.; thus Odessa and
Konigsberg are situated on the same winter
isotherm of 28°; St Petersburg, Orel and the mouth of the Ural
river on about 20°; and Mezen and Ufa on 9°. The summer isotherms
cross the winter isotherms nearly at right angles, so that Kiev and
Ufa, Warsaw and Tobolsk, Riga and the upper Kama have the same
average summer temperatures of 64°, 622° and 61° respectively.
The laws and relations of the cyclones and anti-cyclones in
Russia are not yet thoroughly understood. It appears, however, that
in January the cyclones mostly travel across N.W. Russia (N. of 55°
and W. of 40° E.), following directions which vary between N.E. and
S.E. In July they are pushed farther towards the N., and cross the
Gulf of Bothnia, while another series of cyclones sweep across
middle Russia, between 50° and 55° N. Nor are the laws of the
anti-cyclones established. The winds closely depend on the routes
followed by both. Generally, however, it may be said that alike in
January and in July W. and S.W. winds prevail in W. Russia, while
E. winds are most common in S.E. Russia. N. winds are predominant
on the Black Sea coast. The strength of the wind is greater, on the
whole, than in the continental parts of W. Europe, and it attains
its maximum velocity in winter. Terrible tempests blow from October
to March, especially on the S. steppes and on the tundras.
Hurricanes accompanied with snow (
burans, myatels), and
lasting from two to three days, or N. blizzards without snow, are
especially dangerous to man and beast. The average relative
moisture reaches 80 to 85% in the N., and only 70 to 81% in S. and
E. Russia. In the steppes it is only 60% during summer, and still
less (57) at Astrakhan. The average amount of
cloud is 73 to 75% on the White Sea and in
Lithuania, 68 to 64 in central Russia, and only 59 to 53 in the S.
and S.E. The amount of rainfall is shown in the Table on next
page.' The flora of Russia, which
represents an intermediate link between the flora of Germany and
the flora of Siberia, is strikingly uniform over a very large area.
Though not poor at any given
Flora. place, it appears so
if the space occupied by Russia be taken into account, only 3300
species of phanerogams and ferns 2 Bibliography of
Meteorology:
Memoirs of the Central Physical
Observatory;
Repertorium fiir
Meteorologie and
Meteorological Sbornik, published by
the same body; Veselovsky,
Climate of Russia (Russian); H.
Wild,
Temperatur-Verhdltnisse des Russ. Reiches (1881);
Voyeikov,
The Climates of the Globe (Russ., 1884),
containing the best general information about the climate of
Russia.
being known. Four regions may be distinguished: the the Forest,
the Steppe and the Circum-Mediterranean.
|
North
Latitude.
|
Height
above
Sea in
Feet.
|
Average Temperatures.
|
Average Rainfall
in Inches.
|
|
Year.
|
Janu-
ary.
|
July.
|
Year.
|
November
to March.
|
|
Archangel .
|
64 34
|
30
|
32.7
|
7.6
|
60 6
|
16.2
|
4'3
|
|
Petrozavodsk
|
61 47
|
160
|
36.4
|
II. 8
|
62. 1
|
..
|
|
|
Helsingfors .
|
60 10
|
40
|
39.0
|
19.5
|
61.5
|
19.6
|
7-3
|
|
St Petersburg
|
59 57
|
20
|
38.4
|
15.0
|
64.0
|
18.3
|
5.3
|
|
Bogoslovsk .
|
59 45
|
630?
|
2 9.4
|
-3.8
|
62.5
|
15.8
|
3.1
|
|
Dorpat .
|
58 22
|
220
|
39.5
|
17'6
|
63.1
|
2 4'9
|
7.3
|
|
Kostroma .
|
57 4 6
|
3 60
|
37.3
|
9.4
|
66.3
|
1 9.4
|
5.2
|
|
Ekaterinburg
|
56 49
|
890
|
32.8
|
2.2
|
63.5
|
14.1
|
1.6
|
|
Kazan .
|
55 47
|
260
|
37.2
|
7.0
|
67.3
|
18 o
|
5'4
|
|
Moscow
|
55 45
|
520
|
39.0
|
12.1
|
66. o
|
23 o
|
7.3
|
|
Vilna. .
|
54 4 1
|
390
|
43'8
|
22.1
|
65'6
|
..
|
|
|
Warsaw .
|
52 14
|
360
|
44.9
|
23.8
|
65.4
|
22.8
|
6.7
|
|
Orenburg .
|
5 1 45
|
3 60
|
37'9
|
41
|
7 0.9
|
1 7.1
|
5'8
|
|
Kursk. .
|
51 44
|
690
|
41 0
|
13.7
|
67.2
|
19.9
|
5.6
|
|
Kiev. .
|
50 27
|
59 0
|
44' 2
|
21.0
|
66.3
|
20. '
|
6 o
|
|
Tsaritsyn .
|
48 42
|
100
|
44'4
|
1 3'4
|
74' 6
|
|
|
|
Lugansk .
|
48 27
|
200
|
45.6
|
17.0
|
73. o
|
1 4.3
|
4.3
|
|
Odessa. .
|
46 29
|
270
|
49' 0
|
2 4.8
|
7 2 '3
|
1 5' 6
|
5.4
|
|
Astrakhan .
|
46 21
|
-70
|
49.0
|
1 9' 2
|
77.9
|
5.7
|
1.5
|
|
Sevastopol .
|
44 37
|
1 3 0
|
53.7
|
35' 2
|
73'8
|
1 5.4
|
7.2
|
|
Poti. .
|
42 9
|
0
|
5 8 '4
|
39.0
|
73'3
|
6 4'9
|
23.4
|
|
Tiflis. .
|
41 42
|
1 44 0
|
54'5
|
33.0
|
75'7
|
1 9'3
|
4'3
|
The
Arctic Region comprises the tundras of the Arctic
littoral beyond the N. limit of the forests, which closely follows
the coastline, with deviations towards the N. in the river valleys
(70° N. in Finland and on the Arctic Circle about Archangel, 68° N.
on the Urals, 71° in W. Siberia). The shortness of the summer, the
deficiency of drainage and the depth to which the soil freezes in
winter, are the circumstances which determine the characteristic
features of the vegetation of the tundras. Their flora is far
closer akin to the floras of N. Siberia and N. America than to that
of central Europe. Mosses and
lichens are distinctive, as also are the
birch, the
dwarf willow
and several shrubs; but where the soil is drier, and humus has been
able to accumulate, a variety of herbaceous flowering plants, some
of them familiar in W. Europe, make their appearance. Only 275 to
280 phanerogams are found within this region.
The
Forest Region of the Russian botanists includes the
greater part of the country, from the Arctic tundras to the
steppes, and over this immense expanse it maintains a remarkable
uniformity of character. Beketov subdivides it into two
portions-the forest region proper and the " Ante-Steppe "
(
predstepie). The N. limit of the ante-steppe is
represented by a line drawn from the Pruth through
Zhitomir, Kursk, Tambov and
Stavropol-on-Volga to the sources of the Ural river. But the forest
region proper presents a different aspect in the N. from that in
the S., and must in turn be subdivided into two partsthe coniferous
region and the region Df the
oak
forests-these being separated by a line drawn through Pskov,
Kostroma, Kazan and Ufa. Of course the oak occurs farther N. than
this, and coniferous forests extend farther S., advancing even to
the border-region of the steppes. To the N. of this line the
forests are of great extent and densely grown, more frequently
diversified by marshes than by meadows or cultivated fields. Vast
and impenetrable forests, impassable marches and thickets, numerous
lakes, swampy meadows, with cleared and dry spaces here and there
occupied by villages, are the leading features of this region.
Fishing and hunting are the most important sources of livelihood.
The characteristics of the oak region, which comprises all central
Russia, are totally different. The surface is undulatory; marshy
meadow lands no longer exist on the flat watersheds, and only a few
in the deeper and broader river valleys. Forests are still numerous
where they have not been destroyed by the hand of man, but their
character has changed. Conifers are rare, and the Scotch
pine, which is abundant on the sandy
plains, takes the place of the
Abies. The forests are
composed of the birch, oak and other
deciduous trees, the soil is dry, and the
woodlands are divided by green prairies. Viewed from rising ground,
the landscape presents a pleasing variety of cornfield and forest,
while the
horizon is broken
by the
bell-towers of the numerous
villages strung along the
banks
of the streams.
Viewed as a whole, the flora of the forest region is to be
regarded as European-Siberian; and, though certain species
disappear towards the E., while new ones make their appearance, it
maintains, on the whole, the same features throughout from Poland
to Kamchatka. Thus the
beech
(
Fagus sylvatica) is unable to survive the continental
climate of Russia, and does not penetrate beyond Poland and the
S.W. provinces, reappearing again in the Crimea. The
silver fir does not extend over Russia, and the oak does
not cross the Urals. On the other hand, several Asiatic species
(Siberian pine,
larch, cedar)
grow freely in the N.E., while numerous shrubs and herbaceous
plants, originally from the Asiatic steppes, have found their way
into the S.E. But all these do not greatly alter the general
character of the vegetation. The coniferous forests of the north
contain, besides conifers, the birch (
Betula alba, B. pubescens, B. fruticosa and
B.
verrucosa), which extends from the Pechora to the Caucasus,
the
aspen, two species of
alder,
the mountain-
ash (
Sorbus aucuparia), the wild
cherry and three species of
willow. S. of 62°-64° N. appears the
lime tree, which multiplies rapidly and,
notwithstanding the rapidity with which it is being exterminated,
constitutes entire forests in the east (central Volga, Ufa).
Farther S. the ash (
Fraxinus excelsior) and the oak make
their appearance, the latter (
Quercus pedunculata)
reaching in isolated groups and single trees as far N. as St
Petersburg and South Finland (
Q. Robur appears only in the
S.W.). The
hornbeam is
prevalent in the
Ukraine,
and the
maple begins to appear
in the S. of the coniferous region. In the forest region no fewer
than 772 flowering species are found, of which 568
dicotyledons occur in
the Archangel government (only 436 to the E. of the White Sea,
which is a botanical limit for many species). In central Russia the
species become still more numerous, and, though the local floras
are not yet complete, they number 850 to 1050 species in the
separate governments, and about 1600 in the best explored parts of
the S.W. Corn is cultivated throughout this region. Its N. limits
advance almost to the Arctic coast at Varanger Fjord, farther E.
they hardly reach N. of Archangel, and the limit is still lower
towards the Urals. The N. boundary of
rye closely corresponds to that of
barley.
Wheat is cultivated in S. Finland, but in W.
Russia it hardly gets N. of 58° N. Its true domains are the oak
region and the steppes.
Fruit
trees are cultivated as far as 62° N. in Finland, and as far as 58°
in the E. Apricots and walnuts flourish at Warsaw, but in Russia
they do not thrive beyond 50°. Apples, pears and cherries are grown
throughout the oak region.
The Region of the Steppes, which is coincident with the
whole of S. Russia, may be subdivided into two zones-an
intermediate zone and that of the steppes proper. The ante-steppe
of the preceding region and the intermediate zone of the steppes
include those tracts in which the W. European climate contends
against the Asiatic, and where a struggle is carried on between the
forest and the steppe. It is comprised between the summer isotherms
of 59° and 63°, being bounded on the S. by a line which runs
through Ekaterinoslav and Lugansk. S. of this line begin the
steppes proper, which extend to the sea and penetrate to the foot
of the Caucasus.
The steppes proper are very fertile, elevated plains, slightly
undulating, and intersected by numerous ravines which are dry in
summer. The undulations are scarcely apparent. Not a tree is to be
seen, the few woods and thickets being hidden in the depressions
and deep valleys of the rivers. On the thick layer of black earth
by which the steppe is covered a luxuriant vegetation develops in
spring; after the old
grass has been burned a bright
green prevails over immense stretches, but this rapidly disappears
under the burning rays of the sun and the hot E. winds. The
colouring of the steppe changes as if by
magic, and only the silvery plumes of the
steppe-grass (
Stipa pennata)
wave in the wind, tinting the steppe a bright
yellow. For days together the traveller sees no other vegetation;
even this, however, disappears as he approaches the regions
recently left dry by the Caspian, where saline clays, bearing a few
Salsolaceae, or mere sand, take the place of the black earth. Here
begins the Aral-Caspian desert. The steppe, however, is not so
devoid of trees as at first sight appears. Innumerable clusters of
wild cherries (
Prunus Chamaecerasus), wild apricots
(
Amygdalus nana), the Siberian
pea-tree (
Caragana frutescens), and other
deep-rooted shrubs grow at the bottoms of the depressions and on
the slopes of the ravines, imparting to the steppe that charm which
manifests itself in the popular
poetry. Unfortunately the spread of cultivation
is fatal to these oases (they are often called " islands " by the
inhabitants); the
axe and the
plough ruthlessly destroy
them.
The vegetation in the marshy bottoms of the ravines and in the
valleys of the streams and rivers is totally different. The moist
soil encourages luxuriant thickets of willows (Salicineae),
surrounded by dense
chevaux-de-frise of
wormwood and thornbearing
Compositae, and
interspersed with rich but not extensive prairies, harbouring a
great variety of herbaceous plants; while in the deltas of the
Black Sea rivers impenetrable beds of reeds (
Arundo
phragmites) shelter a forest fauna. But cultivation rapidly
changes the
physiognomy of the steppe. The prairies are
superseded by wheat-fields, and flocks of
sheep destroy the true steppe-grass (
Stipa
pennata). A great many species unknown in the forest region
make their appearance in the steppes. The Scotch pine still grows
on all sandy spaces, and the maple (
Acer tatarica and
A. campestre), the hornbeam and the black and white
poplar are very common. The
number of species of herbaceous plants rapidly increases, while
beyond the Volga a variety of Asiatic species are added to the W.
European flora.
The
Circum-Mediterranean Region is represented by a
narrow Arctic, strip on the S. coast of the Crimea, where a climate
similar to that of the Mediterranean coast has permitted the
development of a flora closely resembling that of the valley of the
Arno in
Italy. Human cultivation has destroyed the
abundant forests which sixty years ago made
deer-hunting possible at Khersones. The
olive and the
chestnut are rare; but the beech reappears,
and the
Pinus pinaster recalls the
Italian pines. At a few points, such as Nikita
near Livadia and Alupka, where plants have been acclimatized by
human agency, the Californian
Wellingtonia, the
Lebanon cedar, many
evergreen trees, the
laurel, the
cypress, and even the Anatolian
palm (
Chamaerops excelsa) flourish. The
grass vegetation is very rich, and, according to lists still
incomplete, no fewer than 1654 flowering plants are known. But on
the whole, the Crimean flora has little in common with that of the
Caucasus.' Russia belongs to the same zoo-geographical region as
central Europe and N. Asia, the same fauna extending in Siberia as
far as the Yenisei and the Lena. In the forests not many animals
which have disappeared from W. Europe have held their ground; while
in the Urals only a few - now Siberian, but formerly also European
- are met with. In S.E. Russia, however, towards the Caspian, there
is a notable admixture of Asiatic species. Three separate
sub-regions may, however, be distinguished on the E. European
plains - the tundras, including the Arctic islands, the forest
region, especially the coniferous part of it, and the ante-steppe
and steppes of the black earth region. The Ural Mountains might be
distinguished as a fourth sub-region, while the S. coast of the
Crimea and Caucasia, as well as the Caspian deserts, have each
their own individuality.
The fauna of the Arctic Ocean off the Norwegian coast
corresponds, in its W. parts at least, to that of the N. Atlantic
Gulf Stream. The
White Sea and the Arctic Ocean to the E. of Svyatoi Nos on the Kola
peninsula belong to a separate zoological region, connected with,
and hardly separable from, that part of the Arctic Ocean which
washes the Siberian coast as far as the mouth of the Lena. The
Black Sea, the fauna of which appears to be very rich, belongs to
the Mediterranean region, slightly modified, while the Caspian
partakes of the characteristic fauna inhabiting the lakes and seas
of the Aral-Caspian depression.
In the region of the tundras life has to contend with such
unfavourable conditions that it cannot be abundant. Still, the
reindeer frequents it for its
lichens, and on the drier slopes of the
moraine deposits there occur four species of
lemming, hunted by the Arctic
fox (
Vulpes lagopus). The
willow-
grouse (
Lagopus
albus), the
ptarmigan (
L. alpinus or
mutus), the
lark, the
snowbunting (
Plectrophanes nivalis), two or three species
of
Sylvia, one
Phylloscopus and a
Motacilla must be added. Numberless aquatic birds visit it
for breeding purposes. Ducks,
divers, geese, gulls, all the Russian species of
snipes and sandpipers (
Limicolae, Tringae), &c., swarm
on the marshes of the tundras and on the crags of the Lapland
coast.
The forest region, and especially its coniferous portion, though
it has lost some of its representatives within historic times,
still possesses an abundant fauna. The reindeer, rapidly
disappearing, is now met with only in the governments of Olonets
and Vologda;
Cervus pygargus is found everywhere, and
reaches Novgorod. The
weasel,
the fox and the
hare are
exceedingly common, as also are the
wolf and the bear in the N., but the
glutton (
Gulo
borealis), the
lynx and the
elk (
C. alces) are rapidly
disappearing. The wild
boar is
confined to the basin of the W. Dvina, and the
Bison
europea to the Byelovyezh forest in Grodno. The
sable has
quite disappeared, being found only on the Urals; the
beaver may be trapped at a few
places in Minsk, and the
otter
is very rare. On the other hand, the hare, grey
partridge (
Perdix
cinerea),
hedgehog,
quail, lark,
rook and
stork
find their way into the coniferous region as the forests are
cleared. The avifauna of this region is very rich; it includes all
the forest and
garden birds
known in W. Europe, as well as a very great variety of aquatic
birds. A list, still incomplete, of the birds of St Petersburg runs
to 251 species. Hunting and
shooting give occupation to a great number of
persons. The reptiles are few. As for fishes, all those of W.
Europe, except the
carp, are met
with in the lakes and rivers in immense quantities, the
characteristic feature of the region being its wealth in
Coregoni and in Salmonidae generally.
In the ante-steppe the forest species proper, such as
Pteromys volans and
Tamias striatus, disappear,
but common
squirrel
(
Sciurus vulgaris), weasel and bear are still met with in
the forests. The hare is increasing rapidly, as well as the fox.
The avifauna, of course, becomes poorer; nevertheless, the woods of
the steppe, and still more the forests of the ante-steppe, give
refuge to many 1 Bibliography of Flora: Beketov, Appendix to
Russian translation of Griesebach and Reclus's
Geogr.
Univ.; C. F. von Ledebour,
Flora Rossica (Stuttgart,
1842-53); E. R. von Trautvetter,
Rossiae Arcticae Plantae
(1880), and
Florae Rossicae Fontes (St Petersburg, 1880).
For flora of the tundras, Beketov's " Flora of Archangel," in
Mem. Soc. Natur. of St Petersburg University, xv. (1884);
Regel,
Flora Rossica (1884); Brown,
Forestry in the
Mining Districts of the Urals (1885);
Reports by
Commissioners of Woods and Forests in Russia (1884) birds, even to
hazel-hen (
Tetrao
bonasa), capercailzie (
T. tetrix) and
woodcock (
T.
urogallus). The fauna of the scrub in the river valleys is
decidedly rich, and includes aquatic birds. The destruction of the
forests and the advance of wheat into the prairies are rapidly
thinning the steppe fauna. The various species of rapacious animals
are disappearing, together with the colonies of marmots; the
insectivores are also becoming scarce in consequence of the
destruction of insects; while
vermin, such as the suslik, or pouched
marmot (
Spermophilus),
and the destructive insects which are a
scourge to agriculture, become a real
plague. The absence of
Coregoni is a characteristic feature of the fish-fauna of
the steppes; the carp, on the contrary, reappears, and the rivers
abound in
sturgeon
(Acipenseridae). In the Volga below Nizhniy-Novgorod the sturgeon
(
Acipenser ruthenus), and others of. the same family, as
well as a very great variety of ganoids and
Teleostei,
appear in such quantities that they give occupation to nearly
Ioo,000 people. The mouths of the Caspian rivers are especially
celebrated for their wealth of fish.2
Ethnography. -
Remains of
Palaeolithic man, contemporary with the
large Quaternary mammals, are few in Russia; they have been
discovered only in Poland, Poltava and Voronezh, and perhaps also
on the Oka. Those of the later Lacustrine period, on the contrary,
are so numerous that there is scarcely one lacustrine basin in the
regions of the Oka, the Kama, the Dnieper, not to speak of the
lake-region itself, and even the White Sea coasts, where remains of
Neolithic man have not
been discovered. The Russian plains have been, however, the scene
of so many migrations of successive races, that at many places a
series of deposits belonging to widely distant epochs are found one
upon another. Settlements belonging to the
Stone age, and manufactories of stone
implements,
burial-grounds of
the
Bronze epoch, earthen
forts and burial-mounds (
kurgans) - of this last four
different types are known, the earliest belonging to the Bronze
period - are superposed, rendering the task of unravelling their
several relations one of great difficulty.
Two different races - a
brachycephalic and a dolichocephaliccan
be distinguished among the remains of the earlier Stone period
(Lacustrine period) as having inhabited the plains of E. Europe.
But they are separated by so many generations from the earliest
historic times that sure conclusions regarding them are impossible;
at all events, as yet Russian archaeologists are not agreed as to
whether the ancestors of the Sla y s were Sarmatians only or
Scythians also, whose skulls have nothing in common with those of
the Mongol race. The earliest
data which may be regarded
as established belong to the 1st century, when the Finns migrated
from the N. Dvina region towards the W., and the Sarmatians were
compelled to abandon the region of the Don, and cross the Russian
steppes from E. to W., under the pressure of the Aorzes (the
Mordvinian Erzya) and Siraks, who in their turn were soon followed,
by the
Huns and Uigur-Turkish
Avars.
In the 7th century S. Russia
was 'the seat of the
empire' of
the Khazars, who drove the Bulgarians, descendants
of the Huns, from the Don, one Section of them migia.tiug up thu
Volga to found there the Bulgarian empire, and the remainder
travelling towards the Danube. This migration compelled the N.
Finns to advance farther W., and a body of intermingled Tavasts and
Karelians penetrated to the S. of the Gulf of Finland.
2 Bibliography of Fauna: see Pallas,
Zoographia
Rosso-Asiatica; Syevertsov for the birds of south-eastern
Russia; M. A. Bogdanov,
Birds and Mammals of the Black-Earth
Region of the Volga Basin (in Russian, Kazan, 1871); Karelin
for the southern Urals; Kessler for fishes; Strauch,
Die
Schlangen des Russ. Reiches, for reptiles generally;
Rodoszkowski and the publications of the Entomological Society
generally for insects; Czerniaysky for the marine fauna of the
Black Sea; Kessler for that of Lakes Onega and Ladoga; Grimm for
the Caspian. The fauna of the Baltic provinces is described in full
in the
Memoirs of the scientific bodies of these
provinces. A. T. von Middendorf's
Sibirische Reise, vol.
iv.,
Zoology (St
Petersburg, 1875), though dealing more especially with Siberia, is
an invaluable source of information for the Russian fauna
generally. A. E. Nordenskiold's
Vega-expeditionens
Vetenskapliga Iakttagelser (5 vols.,
Stockholm, 2872-87) may be consulted for the
mammals of the
tundra region
and marine fauna. For more detailed bibliographical information see
Apercu des travaux zoo-ge'ographiques, published at St
Petersburg in connexion with the Exhibition of 1878; and the index
Ukazatel Russkoi Literatury for natural science,
mathematics and
medicine, published since
1872 by the Society of the Kiev University.
As early as the 8th century, and probably still earlier, a
stream of Slav colonization, advancing E. from the Danube, poured
over the plains of S.W. Russia. It is also most probable that
another similar stream - the N., coming from the
Elbe, through the basin of the Vistula - ought to
be distinguished. In the 9th century the Sla y s occupied the upper
Vistula, the S. of the Russian lacustrine region, and the W. of the
central plateau. They had Lithuanians to the W.; various Finnish
tribes, intermingled towards the S.E. with Turkish (the present
Bashkirs); the Bulgars, whose
origin still remains doubtful, on the middle Volga and Kama; and to
the S.E. the Turkish-Mongol races of the Pechenegs, Polovtsi, Uzes,
&c., while in the S., along the Black Sea, was the empire of
the Khazars, who had under their rule several Slav tribes, and
perhaps also some of Finnish origin. In the 9th century also the
Ugrians are supposed to have left their Ural abodes and to have
traversed S.E. and S. Russia on their way to the basin of the
Danube. If the Sla y s be subdivided into three branches - the W.
(Poles, Czechs and
Wends), the
S. (Servians, Bulgarians, Croatians, &c.), and the E. (Great,
Little and White Russians), it will be seen that, with the
exception of some 3,000,000 Little Russians, now settled in East
Galicia and in Poland, and of a few on the southern slope of the
Carpathians, the whole of the E. Sla y s occupy, as a compact body,
W., central and S. Russia.
Like other races of mankind, the Russian race is not pure. The
Russians have absorbed and assimilated in the course of their
history a variety of Finnish and Turko-Finnish elements. Still,
craniological researches show that, notwithstanding this fact, the
Slav type has been maintained with remarkable persistency: Slav
skulls ten and thirteen centuries old exhibit the same
anthropological features as those which characterize the Sla y s of
our own day. This may be explained by a variety of causes, of which
the chief is the maintenance by the Slays down to a very late
period of
gentile or tribal
organization and gentile marriages, a fact vouched for, not only in
the pages of the Russian chronicler
Nestor, but still more by visible social
evidences, the
gens later developing into the village
community, and the colonization being carried on by large
co-ordinated bodies of people. The Russians do not emigrate as
isolated individuals; they migrate in whole villages. The
overwhelming numerical superiority of the Sla y s, and the very
great differences in ethnical type, belief and
mythology between the IndoEuropean and the
Ural-Altaic races, may have contributed to the same end. Moreover,
while a Russian man, far away from home among Siberians, readily
marries a native, the Russian woman seldom does the like. All these
causes, and especially the first-mentioned, have enabled the Sla y
s to maintain their ethnical purity in a relatively high degree,
whereby they have been enabled to assimilate foreign elements and
make them intensify or improve the ethnical type, without giving
rise to half-breed races. The very same N. Russian type has thus
been maintained from Novgorod to the Pacific, with but minor
differentiations on the outskirts - and this notwithstanding the
great variety of races with which the Russians have come into
contact. But a closer observation of what is going on in the
recently colonized confines of the empire - where whole villages
live without mixing with the natives, but slowly bringing them over
to the Russian manner of life, and then slowly taking in a few
female elements from them - gives the
key to this feature of Russian life.
Not so with the national customs. There are features - the
wooden house, the
oven, the
bath - which the Russian never
abandons, even when swamped in an
alien population. But when settled among these
the Russian - the N. Russian - readily adapts himself to many other
differences. He speaks Finnish with Finns, Mongolian with
Buriats, Ostiak with
Ostiaks; he shows remarkable
facility in adapting his agricultural practices to new conditions,
without, however, abandoning the village community; he becomes
hunter, cattle-breeder or fisherman, and carries on these
occupations according to local usage; he modifies his
dress and adapts his religious
beliefs to the locality he inhabits. In consequence of all this,
the Russian peasant (not, be it noted, the trader/ proves himself
to be an excellent colonist.
Three different branches can be distinguished among the Russians
from the dawn of their history: - the Great Russians, the Little
Russians (Malorusses or Ukrainians), and the White -
Russians (the Byelorusses). These correspond to the two currents of
immigration mentioned above - the N. and S., with perhaps an
intermediate stream, the proper place of of the
White Russians not having been as yet exactly determined. The
primary distinctions between these branches have been increased
during the last nine centuries by their contact with different
nationalities - the Great Russians absorbing Finnish elements, the
Little Russians undergoing an admixture of Turkish blood, and the
White Russians submitting to Lithuanian influence. Moreover,
notwithstanding the unity of language, it is easy to detect among
the Great Russians themselves two separate branches, differing from
one another by slight divergences of language and type and deep
diversities of national character - the Central Russians and the
Novgorodians. The latter extend throughout N. Russia into Siberia.
Many minor anthropological differentiae can be distinguished among
both the Great and the Little Russians, depending probably on the
assimilation of various minor subdivisions of the
Ural-Altaians.
The Great Russians occupy in one compact mass the space enclosed
by a line drawn from the White Sea to Lake Pskov, the upper courses
of the W. Dvina and the Donets, and thence, through the mouth of
the Sura, by the Vetluga, to the Mezen. To the E. of this boundary
they are intermingled with Turko-Finns, but in the Ural mountains
they reappear in a second compact body, and thence extend through
S. Siberia and along the courses of the Lena and the Amur. Great
Russian Nonconformists are disseminated among Little Russians in
the governments of Chernigov and Mogilev, and they reappear in
greater masses in Novoroissa (i.e. S. Russia), as also in N.
Caucasia.
The Little Russians occupy the steppes of S. Russia, the S.W.
slopes of the central plateau and those of the Carpathian and
Lublin mountains, and the Carpathian plateau, that is, the
governments of Podolia, Volhynia, Poltava, and Kiev. The
Zaporozhian Cossacks colonized the steppes farther E., towards the
Don, where they met with a large population of Great Russian
runaways, constituting the present Don Cossacks. The Zaporozhian
Cossacks, sent by Catherine II. to colonize the E. coast of the Sea
of Azov, constituted there the Black Sea and later the Kuban
Cossacks (part of whom, the Nekrasovsty, migrated to
Turkey). They have also peopled
large parts of the government of Stavropol and of N. Caucasia.
The White Russians, intermingled to some extent with Great and
Little Russians, Poles and Lithuanians, occupy the upper parts of
the W. slope of the central plateau.
The Finnish races, which in prehistoric times extended from the
Ob all over N. Russia, even then were subdivided into Ugrians,
Permyaks, Bulgarians and Finns proper, who drove back the previous
Lapp population from what is now Finland, and about the 7th century
penetrated to the S. of the Gulf of Finland, in the region of the
Livs and Kurs, where they fused to some extent with the Lithuanians
and the Letts. At present the races of Finnish origin are
represented in Russia by the following: (a) the W. Finns; the
Tavasts, in central Finland; the Kvaens, in N.W. Finland; the
Karelians, in the E., who also occupy the lake regions of Olonets
and Archangel, and have settlements in Novgorod and Tver; the
Izhores, on the Neva and the S.E. coast of the Gulf of Finland; the
Esths, in Esthonia and the N. of Livonia; the Livs, on the Gulf of
Riga; and the Kurs, intermingled with the Letts; (
b) the
N. Finns, or Lapps, in N. Finland and on the Kola peninsula, and
the Samoyedes in Archangel and W. Siberia; (
c) the Volga
Finns, or rather the old Bulgarian branch, to which belong the
Mordvinians, and the
Cheremisses in Kazan,
Kostroma and Vyatka, though they are classified by some authors
with the following: (
d) the Permyaks, or Cis-Uralian
Finns, including the Votiaks on the E. of Vyatka, the Permyaks in
Perm, the
Syryenians
or Zyryans in Vologda, Archangel, Vyatka and Perm; (
e) the
Ugrians, or Trans-Uralian Finns, including the Voguls on both
slopes of the Urals, the Ostiaks in Tobolsk and partly in Tomsk,
and the
Magyars, or
Ugrians.
The following are the chief subdivisions of the Turko-Tatars in
European Russia: - (i) The Tatars, of whom three different branches
must be distinguished: (a) the Kazan Tatars on both banks of the
Volga, below the mouth of the Oka, and on the lower Kama, but
penetrating farther S. in Ryazan, Tambov, Samara, Simbirsk and
Penza; (
b) the Tatars of Astrakhan at the mouth of the
Volga; and (
c) those of the Crimea, a great many of whom
emigrated to Turkey after the
Crimean War (1854-56). There are, besides,
a certain number of Tatars in the S.E. in Minsk, Grodno and Vilna.
(2) The Bashkirs, who inhabit the slopes of the S. Urals, that is,
the steppes of Ufa and Orenburg, extend also into Perm and Samara.
(3) The
Chuvashes, on
the right bank of the Volga, in Kazan and Simbirsk. (4) The
Meshcheryaks, a tribe
of Finnish origin who formerly inhabited the basin of the Oka, and,
driven thence during the 15th century by the Russian colonists,
immigrated into Ufa and Perm, where they now live among the
Baskhirs, having adopted their religion and customs. (5) The
Teptyars, also of Finnish origin, settled among the Tatars and
Bashkirs in Samara and Vyatka. The Bashkirs, Meshcheryaks and
Teptyars rendered able service to the Russian government against
the Khirgiz, and until 1863 they constituted a separate Cossack
army. (6) The Khirgiz, whose true abodes were in Asia, in the
Ishim and Khirgiz steppe. One
section of them crossed the Urals and occupied the steppes between
the Urals and the Volga; the remainder belong to Turkestan and
Siberia.
The Mongol race is represented in Russia by the Kalmucks, who
inhabit the steppes of Astrakhan between the Volga, the Don and the
Kuma. They are Lamaists by religion and immigrated to the mouth of
the Volga from Dzungaria, in the 17th century,
driving out the Tatars and Nogais, and after
many wars with the Don Cossacks, one part of them was taken in by
the Don Cossacks, so that even now there are among these Cossacks
several
Kalmuck
sotnias or squadrons. They live for the most part in
tents, and support themselves by breeding live stock, and partly by
agriculture.
The Semitic race is represented by upwards of 5,000,000 Jews.
They first entered Poland from Germany during the era of the
crusades, and soon spread
through Lithuania, Courland, the Ukraine, and, in the 18th century,
Bessarabia. The rapidity with which they peopled certain towns
(e.g. Odessa) and the whole provinces was really prodigious. The
law of Russia prohibits them from entering Great Russia, only the
wealthiest and best educated enjoying this privilege; nevertheless
they are met with everywhere, even on the Urals. Their chief
abodes, however, continue to be Poland, the W. provinces of
Lithuania, White and Little Russia, and Bessarabia. In
Russian Poland
they constitute 132% of the total population. In Kovno, Vilna,
Mogilev, Grodno, Volhynia, Podolia, Minsk, Vitebsk, Kiev,
Bessarabia and Kherson, they constitute, on the average, 12 to 172%
of the population, while in the cities and towns of these
governments they reach 30 to 59% of the population. Organized as
they are into a kind of community for mutual protection and mutual
help, they soon become masters of the trade wherever they
penetrate. In the villages they are mostly innkeepers,
intermediaries in trade and pawnbrokers. In many towns most of the
skilled labourers and a great many of the unskilled (for instance,
the grain-porters at Odessa and elsewhere) are Jews.
The Jews of the Karaite
sect
differ entirely from the orthodox Jews both in worship and in mode
of life. They, too, are inclined to trade, but they also carry on
agriculture successfully. Those inhabiting the Crimea speak Tatar,
and the few who are settled in W. Russia speak Polish. They are on
good terms with the Russians.
Of W. Europeans, the Germans only attain considerable numbers in
European Russia. In the Baltic provinces they constitute the
ennobled landlord class, and are the tradesmen and artisans in the
towns. Considerable numbers of Germans, tradesmen and artisans,
settled at the invitation of the Russian government in many of the
larger towns as early as the 16th century, and to a much greater
extent in the 18th century. Numbers were invited in 1762 to
settle in S. Russia, as separate
agricultural colonies, and these have since then gradually extended
into the Don region and N. Caucasia. Protected as they were by the
right of self-government, exempted from military service, and
endowed with considerable
allotments of good land,
these colonies are much wealthier than the neighbouring Russian
peasants, from whom they have adopted the slowly modified village
community. They are chiefly
Lutherans, but many of them belong to other
religious sects -
Anabaptists, Moravians,
Mennonites. During the
closing years of the 19th century great numbers of Germans flocked
into the industrial governments of Poland, namely, Piotrkow, Warsaw
and Kalisz.
The Rumanians (Moldavians) inhabit the governments of
Bessarabia, Podolia, Kherson and Ekaterinoslay. In Bessarabia they
constitute from one-fourth to three-fourths of the population of
certain districts, and nearly 50% of the entire population of the
government. On the whole the Novorossian governments (Bessarabia,
Kherson, Ekaterinoslav and Taurida) exhibit the greatest variety of
population. Little and Great Russians, Rumanians, Bulgarians,
Germans, Greeks, Frenchmen, Poles, Tatars and Jews are mingled
together and scattered about in small colonies, especially in
Bessarabia. The Greeks inhabit chiefly the towns, where they are
traders, as also do the Armenians, scattered through the towns of
S. Russia, and appearing in larger numbers only in the district of
Rostov.
The Lithuanians prevail in Kovno, Vilna and Suwalki; and the
Letts, who are, however, more scattered, are chiefly concentrated
in Vitebsk, Courland and Livonia.
In the Baltic provinces (Esthonia, Livonia and Courland) the
prevailing population is Esthonian, Kuronian or Lettish, the
Germans being respectively only 3.8, 7.6 and 8.2% of the
population. The relations of the Esths and Letts with their
landlords are anything but friendly.
The governments of St Petersburg (apart from the capital),
Olonets and Archangel contain an admixture of Karelians, Samoyedes
and Syryenians, the remainder being Great Russians. In the E. and
S.E. provinces of the Volga (Nizhniy-Novgorod, Simbirsk, Samara,
Penza and Saratov) the Great Russians prevail, the remainder being
chiefly Mordvinians, Tatars, Chuvashes and Bashkirs, Germans in
Samara and Saratov, and Little Russians in the last named. In the
Ural governments of Perm and Vyatka Great Russians are in the
majority, the remainder being a variety of Finno-Tatars. In the S.
Ural governments (Uralsk, Orenburg, Ufa) the admixture of
Turko-Tatars - of Kirghiz in Uralsk, Bashkirs in Orenburg and Ufa,
and less important races - becomes considerable.
The state religion is that of the Orthodox Greek Church
(Orthodox
Catholic or
Orthodox Eastern Church). Its head is the tsar; but although he
makes and annuls all appointments, he does not determine questions
of
dogmatic
theology. The principal ecclesiastical authority is the Holy
Synod, the head of which, the Procurator, is one of the council of
ministers and exercises very wide powers in ecclesiastical matters.
In theory all religions may be freely professed, except that
certain restrictions, such as
domicile,' are laid upon the Jews; but in
actual fact the dissenting sects are more or less severely treated.
According to returns published in 1905 the adherents of the
different religious communities in the whole of the Russian empire
numbered approximately as follows, though the heading Orthodox
Greek includes a very great many
Raskolniki or Dissenters.
Indeed it is estimated that there are more than 12,000,000
Dissenters in Great Russia alone.
|
Orthodox Greek .
|
|
87,123,600
|
|
Dissenters
|
|
2,204,600
|
|
Armenian Gregorians
|
.
|
1,1 79 ,240
|
|
Armenian Catholics
|
.
|
38,840
|
|
Roman Catholics
|
.
|
I I ,468,000
|
|
Lutherans
|
|
3,572,650
|
|
Reformed
|
.
|
85,400
|
|
Baptists
|
.
|
38,140
|
|
Mennonites
|
|
66,560
|
|
Anglicans
|
|
4,180
|
|
Other Christians
|
|
3950
|
|
Karaite Jews
|
|
12,900
|
|
J ews .
|
|
5,215,800
|
|
Mahommedans
|
|
13,907,000
|
|
Buddhists
|
|
433,860
|
|
Other non-Christians
|
|
285,300
|
Total. 125,640,020 The ecclesiastical heads of the national
Orthodox Greek Church consist of three metropolitans (St
Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev), fourteen archbishops and fifty bishops,
all drawn from the ranks of the monastic (celibate) clergy. The
parochial clergy are celibate in so far as they must be married
when appointed, but if left widowers may not marry again.
All Russians, with the exception of a number of White Russians
who belong to the United Greek Church (see
Roman
Catholic Church), profess the Orthodox Greek faith or belong to
one or other of the numberless dissident sects. The Poles and most
of the Lithuanians are Roman Catholics. The Esths and all other
Western Finns, the Germans and the Swedes are
Protestant. The Tatars, Bashkirs and Kirghiz
are Mahommedans; but the last-named have to a great extent
maintained along with Mahommedanism their old
Shamanism. The same holds good of the
Meshcheryaks, both Moslem and Christian. The Mordvinians are nearly
all Orthodox Greek, as also are the Votyaks, Voguls, Cheremisses
and Chuvashes, but their religions are, in reality, modifications
of Shamanism under the influence of some Christian and Moslem
beliefs. The Moguls, though baptized, are in fact believers in
fetishism as much as the
unconverted Samoyedes. Finally, the Kalmucks are Lamaite
Buddhists.
In his relations with Moslems, Buddhists and even fetishists the
Russian peasant looks rather to conduct than to creed, the latter
being in his view simply a matter of
nationality. Indeed, towards paganism, at
least, he is perhaps even more than tolerant, preferring on the
whole to keep on good terms with
pagan divinities. The numerous
outbreaks against the Jews are directed, not against their creed,
but against them as keen business men and extortionate
money-lenders. Any idea of proselytism is quite foreign to the
ordinary Russian mind, and the outbursts of proselytizing zeal
occasionally manifested by the clergy are really due to the desire
for " Russification," and traceable to the influence of the higher
clergy and of the government.
1 The restrictions on domicile were to some extent relaxed in
the beginning of 1907.
It is this political rather than religious spirit which also
underlies the repressive attitude of the government, and of the
Orthodox Church as the organ of the government, towards the various
dissident sects (
Raskolniki, from
raskol, schism), which for more than two
centuries past have played an important part in the popular life of
Russia, and, since the political developments of the end of the
19th and early years of the zoth century, have tended to do so more
and more. To understand the problem of the
Raskolniki it
is necessary to bear two things in mind: the fundamental principle
of Eastern Orthodoxy as distinct from Western Catholicism, and the
practical identification in Russia of the National Church with the
National State. The very basis of Orthodoxy is that the Church is
by Christ's
ordinance
unalterable, that its traditional forms, every one of which is a
vehicle of saving grace, were established in the beginning by
Christ and his apostles, and that
consequently nothing may be added or altered. The trouble began
early in the 17th century with the attempt, made in connexion with
the
printing of the
liturgical books, to emend certain
ritual details in which there was proved to have
been a departure from primitive usage; 1 it came to a head under
the
patriarch Nikon. Under his influence a synod
endorsed the changes in 1654; one bishop alone, Paul of Colomna,
dissented, and he was deposed, knouted and kept in
prison till he died mad. In 1656
the synod anathematized the adherents of the old forms, and the
anathema was confirmed by
those of 1666 and 1667. To the conservatives, known subsequently as
Old Ritualists or Old Believers, this marked the beginning of the
reign of
Antichrist
(was not 666 the number of the Beast?); but they continued the
struggle, conservative opposition to the Westernizing policy of the
tsars, which was held responsible for the introduction of Polish
luxury and
Latin heresy, giving it a political as
well as a religious character. The rising of the Strelitsi in 1682
all but gave them the victory; the crushing of the rising relegated
them definitely to the status of schismatics. They were placed in
still completer antagonism to the established Orthodox Church by
the innovations of Peter the Great. The
Muscovite tsars had pursued them with fire
and
sword. The Russian emperors,
having established themselves as heads of the Church and the Holy
Synod as a state department, were not likely willingly to tolerate
their existence. The
Raskol was threatened with extinction
by the gradual dying out of its priests, which led to a further
schism within itself, into the
Popovshchina (with priests)
and the
Bezpopovshchina (without priests). The
Popovsti, who were served by priests converted from the
Orthodox Church, made their headquarters in the island of Werka, in
a tributary of the Dnieper, n Poland (1695), and after its
destruction by the government in 1735 and again in 1764, at
Starodubye in the government of Chernigov, whence their doctrine
spread in the country of the Don. In 1771 their headquarters were
fixed at Moscow, in the Rogoshkiy
cemetery assigned to them during the plague;
here they had a monastery,
seminary and
consistory, until they were ejected by the
emperor Nicholas I. In 1832 priests were forbidden to join them,
and they had to apply to a deposed Bosnian
metropolitan, who became their chief
bishop, establishing his see in the monastery of Belokrinitsa in
Bukovina. In 1862 the synod of the
Popovshchina passed a
circular letter making advances to the government with a view to a
compromise, which was
arranged on the basis of the Old Believers consenting to accept the
ministrations of Orthodox priests on condition that they should use
the unrevised books. This led to a further schism into three
sections: those who recognize the metropolitan and the compromise
(
Edinovyertsi), those who recognize the metropolitan but
repudiate the compromise, those who repudiate both
(
Bieglopopovtsi). There had already been other schisms on
such questions as the right way to swing a censer and the legality
of self-immolation for the Lord's sake. The
Bezpopovtsi,
known also as
Pomoranye, because they are 1 The most
important alterations were the repetition twice, instead of three
times, of the " Alleluiah " at the
Eucharist, and the making the sign of the
cross with two fingers instead of three.
mainly found in the sparsely populated country near the White
Sea, are in some ways more remarkable. They reject the ministration
of priests altogether, since in the time of Antichrist (i.e. the
heretic tsar) the only
sacrament that remains is
baptism. They therefore elect elders, who
expound the Scriptures, baptize and hear confessions. They are,
however, in no sense evangelicals in the Western sense; for they
observe rigorous fasts, reverence icons, and believe implicitly in
the efficacy of the multiplication of crossings, bowings and
prostrations. They have, moreover, thrown off from time to time a
number of extravagant offshoots. Such are the
Philippovsti, founded by one
Philip (who burned himself
alive for Christ's sake in 1 743), who have exalted self-immolation
into a principle; the
Stranniki (pilgrims) and
Byeguni (runners), who interpret Matt. x. 37 ff.
literally, and reject legal marriage; the
Nyetovsti
(denyers), who deny the necessity for common worship, since there
are no priests; the
Molchalyniki (mutes), whom no
torture can persuade to utter a
word.
Closely akin to these, though not derived from the Old
Believers, are certain mystic sects which deny the efficacy of the
sacraments altogether. Of these the most remarkable are the
so-called
Khlysti (" flagellants," from
klyesat, " to
strike, lash," but possibly a corruption of Khristi, " Christs ").
They originated in 1645, when, according to their belief, God the
Father descended in a
chariot of fire on Mount Gorodim, in the
province of Vladimir, and took up his
abode in a peasant named
Daniel Philippov, who chose
another peasant, named Ivan Suslov, for his son, the Christ. Suslov
selected a " mother of God " and twelve apostles. Though twice
crucified and once flayed by order of the tsar, he always rose
again, and did not die till 1716. Suslov chose a successor in one
Prokopiy Lupkin, and since then - in the belief of the sect - every
generation, even every community, has had its Christ and its "
mother of God," who are worshipped by reason of the Divine Spirit
dwelling in them. It is the duty of all believers to strive to
become one or other of these by subduing the flesh, which is the
product of Evil, and all motions of the will. Each community is
presided over by an "
angel," or prophet, and a
prophetess, whose word is law. All alike are subject to the twelve
commandments issued by the " Sabaoth," that is to say Daniel
Philippov. These include the
prohibition of alcoholic drink, of fleshly
sins and of marriage, and the inculcation of faith in the Holy
Ghost and complete surrender to his
influence. At their prayermeetings the Khlysti
dance. to the
accompaniment of
hymns, the dance gradually
developing into a wild
dervish-like
spinning which is kept up till they drop,
foaming at the mouth and prophesying. Perhaps the most remarkable
fact about this sect is that it is secret, and that its members
ostensibly belong to the Orthodox Church.
An offshoot of the Khlysti is the more celebrated secret sect of
the
Skoptsi
(skopets, a
eunuch),
which represents an extreme ascetic reaction from the promiscuous
immorality of some (by no means all) of the Khlysti. Their idea of
attaining salvation is self-
mutilation according to the
counsel of perfection implied in
Matt. xix. 12 and xviii. 8, 9. The " royal
seal " is complete
self-castration; partial mutilation is known as the " second
purity." In the case of women the mutilation usually takes the form
of amputation of the breasts. This horrible sect, which was founded
by one Selivanov in the last quarter of the 18th century, seems to
have a morbid attraction for people of all classes in Russia, and
all the efforts of the government have not succeeded in stamping it
out (see SK0PTSI).
Closer akin to certain Western forms of dissidence from
traditional Catholicism, though of native growth, are the
Molokani, so called popularly because they continue to
drink
milk (
moloko)
during fasts. Their origin is unknown, but they are officially
mentioned as early as 1765. They style themselves " truly spiritual
Christians," and in their rejection of the sacraments, their
indifference to outward forms, and their insistence on the
spiritual interpretation of the
Bible (" the letter killeth "), they are closely
akin to the
Quakers, whom
they resemble also in their inoffensive mode of life and the
practice of mutual help.
From the Molokani the
Dukhobortsi, in England better
known as
Doukhobors,
are distinguished by their subordination of the Scriptures to the
authority of the " inner light." They are dualists, like the
Bogomils, ascribing the body
to a fall from a state when the soul was on the same plane as God.
The Incarnation was no isolated historical occurrence, but it is
repeated over and over again in the faithful, each one of whom is
in a certain sense God, by virtue of the indwelling Spirit. Both
the Molokani and the Dukhobortsi deny the authority of the civil
government as such, and object on principle to military service.
The former, however, give little trouble; on the other hand, the
government has from time to time proceeded with extreme severity
against the Dukhobortsi, whose refusal to serve in the army, if
allowed to go unpunished, would have set a contagious example.
Dissidence of all kinds has made a considerable advance since
the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the increase - as might be
expected in a wholly illiterate population - being greatest in the
more extravagant sects. On the other hand, Western Protestantism
has also made great headway, notably the Stundists, whose
rationalisticProtestant teaching has gained a firm foothold
especially in Little Russia, where the
Raskol never
penetrated. The
Baptists
have also made considerable progress, notably among the Molokani.1
Social Conditions. - The old subdivisions of the
population into orders possessed of unequal rights is still
maintained. The great mass of the people, 81.6%, belong to the
peasant order, the others being: nobility, 1.3%; clergy, 0.9; the
burghers and merchants, 9.3; and military, 6.1. Thus more than 88
millions of the Russians are peasants. Half of them were formerly
serfs (10,447,149 males in 1858) - the remainder being " state
peasants " (9,194,891 males in 1858, exclusive of the Archangel
government) and " domain peasants " (842,740 males the same
year).
The
serfdom which had
sprung up in Russia in the 16th century, and became consecrated by
law in 1609, taking, however, nearly one hundred and fifty years to
attain its full growth, was abolished in 1861. This act liberated
the serfs from a yoke which was really terrible, even under the
best landlords, and from this point of view it was obviously an
immense benefit.2 But it was far from securing corresponding
economic results.
The household servants or dependents attached to the personal
service of their masters were merely set free; and they entirely
went to reinforce the town
proletariat. The peasants proper received
their houses and orchards, and allotments of arable land. These
allotments were given over to the rural commune (
mir),
which was made responsible, as a whole, for the payment of taxes
for the allotments. For these allotments the peasants had to pay,
as before, either by personal labour or by a fixed
rent. The allotments could be redeemed by them
with the help of the crown, and then they were freed from all
obligations to the landlord. The crown paid the landlord in
obligations representing the capitalized rent, and the peasants had
to pay the crown, for forty-nine years, 6% interest on this
capital. The redemption was not calculated on the value of the
allotments of land, but was considered as a
compensation for the loss of the
compulsory labour of the serfs; so that throughout Russia, with the
exception of a few provinces in the S.E., it was - and still
remains, notwithstanding a very great increase in the value of land
- much higher than the market value of the
allotment. Moreover, many proprietors
contrived to curtail seriously the allotments which the peasants
had possessed under serfdom, and frequently they deprived them of
precisely the parts which they were most in need of, namely,
pasture lands around their houses, and forests. The effect of this,
craftily calculated beforehand, was to compel the peasants to rent
pasture lands from the landlord at any price.
1 See N. Tsakni, Russie sectaire (1888); A.
Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tsars, tome iii. (1889;
trans. 1896); C. K. Grass, Russische Sekten (1907 sqq.).
Further useful references.are given in Bonwetsch's article, "
Raskolniken," in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklop. (3rd ed.,
2905), vol. xvi. p. 436.
It was only as late as 1904, however, that the landed
proprietors were forbidden by law to inflict
corporal
punishment upon the peasants.
The present condition of the peasants - according to official
documents - appears to be as follows. In the twelve central
governments they grow, on the average, sufficient rye-
bread for only 200 days in the year
- often for only. 180 and 100 days. One quarter of them have
received allotments of only 2.9 acres per male, and one-half less
than 8.5 to 11.4 acres - the normal size of the allotment necessary
to the subsistence of a family under the three-fields system being
estimated at 28 to 42 acres. Land must thus of necessity be rented
from the landlords at fabulous prices. The aggregate value of the
redemption and land taxes often reaches 185 to 275% of the normal
rental value of the allotments, not to speak of taxes for
recruiting purposes, the church, roads, local administration and so
on, chiefly levied from the peasants. The arrears increase every
year; one-fifth of the inhabitants have left their houses; cattle
are disappearing. Every year more than half the adult males (in
some districts three-fourths of the men and one-third of the women)
quit their homes and wander throughout Russia in search of labour.
In the governments of the black-earth region the state of matters
is hardly better. Many peasants took the " gratuitous allotments,"
whose amount was about one-eighth of the normal allotments.
The average allotment in Kherson is only 0.90
acre, and for
allotments from 2.9 to 5.8 acres the peasants pay 5 to 10 roubles
of redemption tax. The state peasants are better off, but still
they are emigrating in masses. It is only in the steppe governments
that the situation is more hopeful. In Little Russia, where the
allotments were personal (the
mir existing only among
state peasants), the state of affairs does not differ for the
better, on account of the high redemption taxes. In the W.
provinces, where the land was valued cheaper and the allotments
somewhat increased after the Polish insurrection, the general
situation might be better were it not for the former misery of the
peasants. Finally, in the Baltic provinces nearly all the land
belongs to the German landlords, who either
farm the land themselves, with hired labourers, or
let it in small farms. Only one-fourth of the peasants are farmers,
the remainder being mere labourers, who are emigrating in great
numbers. The situation of the former serf-proprietors is also
unsatisfactory. Accustomed to the use of compulsory labour, they
have failed to accommodate themselves to the new conditions. The
millions of roubles of redemption money received from the crown
have been spent without any real or lasting agricultural
improvements having been affected. The forests have been sold, and
only those landlords are prospering who exact
rack-rents for the land without which the peasants
could not live upon their allotments. During the years 1861 to 1892
the land owned by the nobles decreased 30%, or from 210,000,000 to
150,000,000 acres; during the following four years an additional
2,119,500 acres were sold; and since then the sales have gone on at
an accelerated rate, until in 1903 alone close upon 2,000,000 acres
passed out of their hands. On the other hand, since 1861, and more
especially since 1882, when the Peasant Land Bank was founded for
making advances to peasants who were desirous of purchasing land,
the former serfs, or rather their descendants, have between 1883
and 1904 bought about 19,500,000 acres from their former masters.
There has been an increase of wealth among the few, but along with
this a general impoverishment of the mass of the people, and the
peculiar institution of the
mir, framed on the principle
of community of ownership and occupation of the land, was not
conducive to the growth of individual effort. In November 1906,
however, the emperor Nicholas II. promulgated a provisional
ukaz permitting the peasants to become freeholders of
allotments made at the time of emancipation, all redemption dues
being remitted. This measure, which was endorsed by the third Duma
in an act passed on the 21st of December 1908, is calculated to
have far-reaching and profound effects upon the rural economy of
Russia. Thirteen years previously the government had endeavoured to
secure greater fixity and permanence of
tenure by providing that at least twelve years
must elapse between every two redistributions of the land belonging
to a
mir amongst those entitled to share in it.' The
ukaz of November 1906 had provided that the various strips
of land held by each peasant should be merged into a single
holding; the Duma, however, on the advice of the government, left
this to the future, as an ideal that could only gradually be
realized.
The co-operative spirit of the Great Russians shows itself in
another sphere in the
artel, which has been a prominent feature of
Russian life since the dawn of history. The artel " Arte/s." very
much resembles the co-operative society of W.
Europe, with this difference that it makes its appearance
without See Collection of Materials on the Village
Community, vol. i.; Collection of Materials on
Landholding, and Statistical Descriptions of Separate
Governments, published by several zemstvos (Moscow, Tver,
Nyzhniy-Novgorod, Tula, Ryazan, Tambov, Poltava, Saratov, &c.);
Kawelin, The Peasant Question; Vasilchikov, Land
Property and Agriculture (2 vols.), and Village Life and
Agriculture; Ivanukov, The Fall of Serfdom in Russia;
Shashkov, " Peasantry in the Baltic Provinces," in Russkaya
Mysl. (1883), iii. and ix.; V. V., Agric. Sketches of
Russia; Golovachov, Capital and Peasant Farming;
Engelhardt's Letters from the Country. any impulse from
theory, simply as a spontaneous outgrowth of popular life. When
workmen from any province come, for instance, to St Petersburg to
engage in the textile industries, or to work as carpenters, masons,
&c., they immediately unite in groups of ten to fifty persons,
settle in a house together, keep a common table and pay each his
part of the expense to the elected elder of the artel. All over
Russia there is a network of such artels - in the cities, in the
forests, on the banks of the rivers, on journeys and even in the
prisons.
The industrial artel is almost as frequent as the preceding, in
all those trades which admit of it. Artels of one or two hundred
carpenters, bricklayers, &c., are common wherever new buildings
have to be erected, or railways or
bridges constructed; the contractors always
prefer to deal with an artel, rather than with separate workmen. It
is needless to add that the
wages divided by the artels are higher than those
earned by isolated workmen.
Finally, a great number of artels on the
stock exchange,
in the seaports, in the great cities, during the great fairs and on
railways have grown up, and have acquired the confidence of
tradespeople to such an extent that considerable sums of money and
complicated banking operations are frequently handed over to an
artelshik (member of an artel) without any
receipt, his number or his name being accepted
as sufficient
guarantee.
These artels are recruited only on personal acquaintance with the
candidates for membership. Co-operative societies have also been
organized by several
zemstvos. They have achieved good
results, but do not exhibit, on the whole, the same unity of
organization as those which have arisen in a natural way among the
peasants and artisans.
The chief occupation of approximately seven-eighths of the
population of European Russia is agriculture, but its character
varies considerably according to the soil, the climate and
Agri- the geographical position of the different regions.
A
culture. sinuous line drawn from Zhitomir via Kiev, Tula
and Kazan to Ufa - that is, from W.S.W. to E.N.E. - separates the "
northern soils " from the " southern soils." To the S. of this
line, as far as the sandy deserts of Astrakhan and the steppes of
N. Caucasia, lies the " black earth " region. Broadly speaking, the
forests here yield to steppes, and the soil is very fertile; but
the whole region suffers periodically from drought. The " northern
soils," which are glacial deposits more or less redistributed by
water, are much less fertile as a rule, and consist of all possible
varieties from a tough boulder clay to loose sand. Both N. and S.
of this line it is customary to distinguish several zones, lying,
generally, parallel to it, and, differentiated chiefly by climatic
differences. In the tundras of the extreme N. agriculture does not
exist; the reindeer constitutes the principal wealth of the
nomad Samoyedes and Lapps. In the
forest region S. of the tundras, which extends over an area of more
than 500,000 sq. m., agriculture is carried on with great
difficulty, not only because of the infertility of the soil, but
also because of the severity of the climate and the fact that there
are only three to four months in the year during which agriculture
can be carried on. Apart from hunting and fishing, the exploitation
of the forests provides the principal occupation of the
inhabitants. Crops, chiefly barley, rye, oats, turnips and green
crops, are, however, grown on clearings in the forest, though the
yield is poor. S. of 60° N. agriculture becomes the predominant
industry, while the exploitation of the forests plays only a
secondary part. In this zone, which extends over an area of nearly
600,000 sq. m., and on the S. touches the agrarian line already
mentioned, the principal crops are rye and oats, with barley and
wheat coming next, though flax and green crops are also grown.
Cattle have to be housed for the winter. In the W. of this zone,
that is in the Baltic provinces, the climate is less severe as well
as moister. Agriculture is carried on in a more intelligent manner,
and the yield is higher. Flax is almost of as much importance as
wheat, and the
potato is more
cultivated than in any other part of Russia. Hardy fruit thrives,
and live-stock breeding prospers. In the W. governments of Kovno,
Vitebsk, Vilna, Mogilev, Minsk and Grodno the climate is more
temperate, but agriculture is more backward than in the Baltic
provinces. The three-field system of cropping a patch of land until
its fertility is exhausted, and then allowing it to revert to the
primeval condition, is still pursued, and both landowners and
peasantry suffer from want of capital and lack of agricultural
training. Flax is one of the principal exports of this region,
timber being another.
In middle Russia the winters are both longer and harder, and
agriculture is consequently carried on under greater difficulties.
One of the most serious of these is caused not by the unfavourable
character of the climate but by the shortness of labour. Since
their emancipation in 1861, the peasants of the central governments
of Russia have in large numbers drifted away into the black earth
zone, or have gone to the factories. The methods of agriculture are
still unscientific and unprogressive. Rye is the
staple crop,
though
buckwheat, flax,
green crops and the potato are cultivated in considerable
quantities.
Agriculture is most advanced in the W. of the black earth zone,
that is in the governments of Kiev, Podolia, Poltava and in part of
Kharkov. The winters are less severe, and modern agricultural
machinery is generally employed, at all events on the larger
estates.
In consequence of these more favourable conditions there is
greater variety in the cropping; a good deal of wheat is grown, as
well as beetroot for sugar, fibre plants and oleaginous plants,
fruit, and even (W. of the Dnieper) the
vine. Live-stock breeding is likewise in a more
prosperous condition. The rest of the black earth zone, which
stretches from these governments N.E. to the Volga, is less
favoured by nature; the winters are longer and more inclement, and
droughts are not uncommon. When this happens there is great
suffering from
famine, for
wheat is the crop upon which the people principally depend, though
rye, buckwheat and oats are also cultivated. But a long course of
continuous cropping with these grain crops, without affording
compensation to the soil in the form of manure or deep cultivation,
has so ex. hausted it that its productiveness has sadly
deteriorated. The consequence is that the peasantry are constantly
in a state bordering on destitution, and exposed to the horrors of
famine, like those which visited them in 1890 and 1898, and
threatened in 1907.
|
European Russia.
|
Poland.
|
|
Acres.
|
er-
centage.
|
Acres.
|
centage.
|
|
Arable land
|
301,435,000
|
26
|
16,900,000
|
53
|
|
Meadows and
pasturages .
|
185,498,000
|
16
|
6,059,000
|
19
|
|
Forests
|
452,152,000
|
39
|
7,334,000
|
23
|
|
Uncultivated .
|
220,279,000
|
19
|
1,594,000
|
5
|
|
Total
|
1,159,364,000
|
loo
|
31,887,000
|
100
|
|
European Russia.
|
Poland.
|
|
Acres.
|
Per-
centage.
|
Acres.
|
Per-
centage.
|
|
State and im-
perial family
|
400,816,000
|
35
|
1,808,000
|
52
|
|
Peasants .
|
446,657,000
|
382
|
1 3,5 8 4, 000
|
422
|
|
Private owners,
towns, &c.
|
245,835,000
|
21
|
15,106,000
|
472
|
|
Unfit for culti-
vation .
|
66,056,000
|
52
|
1,389,000
|
42
|
|
Total
|
1,159,364,000
|
100
|
31,887,000
|
100
|
S. of the above zone come the S. steppes. In the W., in Bess.
arabia, the three chief products
are
maize,
wine and hardy fruit, especially plums. Here the
climate is temperate and fairly moist, but farther E. it is
distinctly more arid. Wheat is the principal crop, with barley
second. Water-melons, sun-flowers and flax, both the last two for
oil, are usual crops. But the breeding of horses and sheep is of
equal importance with agriculture. Here again both capital and
labour are short, and the cultivation of the soil suffers from the
fact that, owing to the absence of timber, dry dung is used for
fuel instead of being employed as
manure. The steppe conditions extend over the greater part of the
Crimea and up to the foothills of the Caucasus. The actual
distribution of arable land, forests and meadows, in European
Russia and Poland is shown in the following table The land in
European Russia and Poland (Caucasia being excluded) is divided
amongst the different classes of owners as follows Down to January
1st 1903, the peasants had actually redeemed out of the land
allotted to them in 1861 a total of 280,530,516 acres.. In Poland
the peasants as a body have, in addition to the land thus assigned
to them by the government, bought some 22 million acres since 1863,
and of this quantity they purchased no less than 1,600,000 acres,
or 64% of the whole, between 1893 and 1905.
Taking the whole of European Russia and Poland, almost exactly
two-thirds of the total area is sown every year with cereals. But
generally in from 18 to 33 out of the 72 governments in European
Russia (including Caucasia) and Poland the yield of cereals is not
sufficient for the wants of the people. In 30 to 40 governments,
however, there is in most years a surplus available for export. Out
of the total acreage under cereals 34% is generally sown with rye,
26% with wheat, 20% with oats and 102% with barley. Beetroot (6-8
million tons annually) for sugar is especially cultivated in
Poland, the governments of Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Kharkov,
Bessarabia and Kherson. About 100,000 tons of tobacco are grown
annually in the S. Flax and
hemp
occupy considerable acreages in central and N.W. Russia. The vine
is cultivated as far N. as 49° N. (in Bessarabia, Crimea, Don
Cossacks. territory and Caucasia), the annual production of wine
amounting to 35-50 million gallons, three-fifths in Caucasia.
Market-gardening and fruit-growing are profitable occupations in
certain parts of S. and central Russia, and have led recently to
the establishment of factories for canning fruit and for making jam
and pickles. Transcaucasia supplies, chiefly from the government of
Erivan, some 12,000 tons of raw cotton annually. The
tea plant thrives and is being planted fairly
rapidly on the Black Sea littoral in Transcaucasia.
Live-stock are diminishing in numbers
all
round: in the case of horses, from 21 per 100 inhabitants in
1882 to II per loo inhabitants in 1904; of cattle, from 31 in 1851
to 23 in 1882 and 27 in 1904; sheep, from 56 to 46 and 41 in the
years named respectively; and pigs, from 13 to 9 and 10
respectively. Recent investigations in the government of Moscow
have revealed that 40% of the peasant households possessed no
horses, and similar inquiries in 41 governments elicited the fact
that 28% of the peasant households were without horses, although of
the total number of horses in the country 82% belong to the
peasantry. The animal commonly met with is small and possessed of
very little strength; the best are those of Poland, the W.
governments and the S. steppe country. Both the horses of the
Cossacks and the
bityug race of S. Russia are fine
animals, and those of the Kirghiz, though not big, are famous for
their endurance. Finland ponies are exported in large numbers. The
best bred races of cattle are those of Poland, the W. provinces,
Little Russia and the far N. (Kholmogory). Of the 55 million sheep
kept in Russia only about 15 millions belong to the fine
merino breed, and these are
pastured chiefly on the Black Sea steppes. Modern
dairy-farming is only just beginning in Russia,
but
butter is being exported
in increasing quantities to W. Europe, including Great
Britain. Poultryfarming is
being more extensively engaged in, and vast numbers of eggs are
exported.
|
Region.
|
Square Miles.
|
Percentage of
Total Area.
|
|
European Russia
|
706,500
|
39
|
|
Poland
|
11,500
|
23
|
|
Finland. .
|
79,000
|
55
|
|
Caucasia. .
|
29,200
|
16
|
|
Total .
|
826,200
|
39
|
Agriculture stands at a low level in Russia. The landowners are
often poor, and suffer from want of capital and lack of enterprise.
The peasantry are impoverished, and in many parts live on the
verge of
starvation for the greater part of the year.
While the methods of agriculture have generally shown little, if
any, advance, the population is increasing rapidly; and although
since the emancipation of the peasants the average annual export of
cereals has increased from less than 12 million tons in 1860 to
over 6 million tons in 1900, this result has been attained largely
by the repeated cropping to exhaustion of the soil. Thus the
cultivators, whether noble or peasant, have not profited much from
the change in their economic circumstances brought about by the
social emancipation of 1861. Agriculture suffers from the
widespread poverty of the agricultural classes, from the taxation
which weighs unjustly upon the peasantry, from their lack of
education, their technical
ignorance and national indolence, and from
the absence of those progressive institutions (e.g. co-operative
buying) by means of which the peasantry of
Denmark have so wonderfully improved their
position. As illustrating the general impoverishment of the Russian
peasantry, it may be stated that the arrears of taxation owed by
them have increased enormously since 1882, when they a ,ounted to
£2,854,000, until in 1900 the total amount was put k £15,222,000.
And, strange to say, the heaviest arrears are du: from the fertile
black earth region of S. Russia, namely, 80 `2 of their total
indebtedness. Within recent years, however, some efforts have been
made both by the Ministry of Agriculture and by the more
enlightened of the
zemstvos to improve the education of
the peasantry, but the progress achieved has been small. The
methods adopted by the
zemstvos for improving the
condition of agriculture have included the formation of
agricultural councils, the appointment of inspectors, and the
founding of museums, meteorological stations and depots for the
sale of agricultural machinery. Measures are being taken by the
zemstvos to increase the very low productivity of the
forests. These cover a considerable area, as may be seen by the
following table for 1904: - The distribution of forests is very
unequal, the area covered by them in the various governments
varying from 70% of the total area in the Ural governments of Perm
and Ufa, and 68% in Olonets and Archangel, down to 2% in the S.E.
The state is the chief owner of forests (almost exclusive owner in
Archangel), and owns no less than 289,226,000 acres in European
Russia and Poland (235,000,000 acres of good forests), while
private persons own 171,800,000 acres, the peasant communities
67,250,000 and the imperial family 22,400,000 acres.
Sericulture, which was in a flourishing condition in the
'sixties both in Caucasia and in S. Russia, was reduced to a very
low ebb, in consequence of the silkworm disease, and was only
renewed with any vigour towards the end of the 'eighties. At the
beginning of the 10th century it was most developed in
Transcaucasia (Kutais,
Elisavetpol), and extended into N.
Caucasia. Sericulture is taught in a number of special schools and
in a great number of village schools. Attempts are being made to
re-establish the silkworm industry in S. Russia and in Poland.
Altogether raw
silk and silk
yarn to an annual value exceeding 1-1
millions
sterling are
exported from Russia.
Notwithstanding the wealth of the country in minerals and metals
of all kinds, and the endeavours made by government to encourage
mining, including the
imposition of protective
Mining
tariffs even against Finland (in 1885), this and the related
and re- industries are still at a low stage of
development. The
Iaterlin- remoteness of the mining from
the industrial centres, the
dustrles. want of technical
instruction and of capital, and the existence of vexatious
regulations, aggravated by the disturbed condition of the country,
which hinder credit, confidence and enterprise, are amongst the
chief reasons for this. The imports of foreign metals in the rough
and of coal are steadily increasing, while the exports, never
otherwise than insignificant, show no advance. As a producer of
iron Russia nevertheless runs France neck and neck for the fourth
place amongst the iron-producing countries of the world, her annual
output having increased from 1,004,800 metric tons in 1891 to
2,808,000 in 1901 and to 2,900,000 in 1904. The two principal
mining centres of European Russia are the Urals, Ekaterinoslav,
Kharkov and the Don Cossacks territory. The Ural industry is the
older, and is still conducted on primitive methods, wood being
largely used for fuel, and the ore and metals being transported by
water down the Kama and other rivers. The minerals chiefly produced
in the Urals are iron, coal,
gold,
platinum, copper, salt and
precious stones. The
production of
pig-iron nearly
doubled between 1890 and 1900, increasing from 446,800 tons in the
former year to 801,600 in the latter; but since 1900 the output has
declined, the total for 1904 (inclusive of Siberia) being 644,000
tons. The amount of iron and steel produced in the Urals is not
quite 20% of the total in all European Russia and Poland. The
output of coal in the Urals is, altogether, less than 3% of the
total for all the empire and 4% of the output of European Russia
(exclusive of Poland) alone. The annual increase is but small,
261,300 tons having been the total in 1891, and 517,000 tons the
total in 1904. Gold has been mined in the Urals since 1820; but
since 1892 the output has fallen off very considerably. Whereas in
the latter year the yield amounted to 395,500 oz., in 1900 it was
only 291,250 oz. No less than 96% of the world's supply of platinum
comes from the Urals; but the total output only ranges between
10,000 and 16,000 lb annually. The copper industry has greatly
declined since the 18th century; whereas then it kept 20 smelting
works employed, now one-tenth of that number can hardly be kept
going. The output for the year is less than 4000 tons. At one time
all Russia was supplied with salt from the Urals, but at the
present time the output is extremely small, less than 350 tons
annually. Salt has been mined there since the 16th century.
The mining region of S. Russia is much more important. It is of
comparatively recent foundation (1860), and is carried on largely
with French and Belgian capital, with modern appliances and with
modern scientific knowledge. Out of an average of some 2,700,000
tons of pig-iron produced annually in the whole of the Russian
empire, 61.5% is produced in the basin of the Donets, and out of an
average of 2,160,500 tons of worked iron and steel 48.7% are
prepared in the same region. The principal consumer of this iron
and steel is the government, for its railways, locomotives, wagons,
arsenals, artillery, &c. The output of coal in the Russian
empire has increased from a total of less than 300,000 tons in 1860
to 3,280,000 in 1880, 15,878,200 in 1900, and 18,620,000 tons in
1904. Of these totals something like 70% is produced in the S.
coal-field. Coal takes, however, an altogether secondary place as a
fuel in Russia; wood is much more extensively used, not only for
domestic, but also for industrial purposes. It is estimated that
for domestic purposes nearly 150,000,000 tons of wood are consumed
every year, while the steamships, railways and factories consume
another 20 or 25 million tons. At the same time large quantities of
petroleum refuse are
used as fuel in the railways of S.E. Russia and Caucasia, and on
the steamboats of the Volga system. For the petroleum industry and
the mining of the Caucasus region, see
Caucasia. Mining in Poland and Siberia are
more fully discussed under those headings.' Since the time of Peter
the Great, the Russian government has been unceasing in its efforts
for the creation and development of home manufactures. Important
monopolies in the 18th
maritime- century, and prohibitive
import duties, as well as large
tares and money bounties,
in the 19th, contributed towards the
pe t
t y -
In accumulation of immense private fortunes,
but
manu-
pastries.
factures have on the whole developed but slowly. A great upward
movement has, however, been observable since 1863. About that time
a thorough reform of the machinery in use was effected whereby the
number of hands employed was reduced, but the yearly production
doubled or trebled. Manufacturing industry in the modern sense can
hardly be said to have existed in Russia ' See
Russian Journal
of Financial Statistics, in English (2 vols., St Petersburg,
1901).
before the 19th century, that is to say, industries carried on
with capital and machinery in large factories. Industry of this
character was first established in Poland in 1820, and it has grown
there rapidly, though never so rapidly as during the last few years
of the 19th century. The principal centre is Lodz in the government
of Piotrkow, the staple industry being cottons. A good many
factories have sprung up also in Warsaw and at Sosnowice and
Bendzin in the extreme S. W. corner of Poland. Besides cottons the
products 'nclude woollens and cloth, silks, chemicals, machinery,
ironware,
beer and
flour. At Lodz alone the workmen,
in great part Germans and Jews, number between 50,000 and 60,000,
and the total output of the factories is estimated at £9,000,000 to
£10,500,000 annually. Similar industries, carried on by similar
methods, exist at St Petersburg, Riga, Narva and Odessa. In S.
Russia, more particularly at Ekaterinoslav, a very vigorous
metallurgical industry has grown up since 1860 in conjunction with
the iron and coal mining.
The peculiar feature of Russian industry is the development out
of the domestic petty handicrafts of central Russia of a
semifactory on a large scale. Owing to the forced abstention from
agricultural labour in the winter months the peasants of central
Russia, more especially those of the governments of Moscow,
Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver, Smolensk and Ryazan have for
centuries carried on a variety of domestic handicrafts during the
period of compulsory leisure. The usual practice was for the whole
of the people in one village to devote themselves to one special
occupation. Thus, while one village would produce nothing but felt
shoes, another would carve sacred images (
ikons), and a
third spin flax only, a fourth make wooden spoons, a fifth nails, a
sixth iron chains, and so on. In the same way certain governments
become famous for certain commodities, as Moscow for
osier baskets,
flower baskets, wicker furniture and
lace; Kostroma for lace, wooden
utensils, toys, wooden spoons, cups and
bowls, bast sacks and mats, bast boots and garden
products; Yaroslavl for furniture,
brass samovars, saucepans, spurs, rings, &c.;
Vladimir for furniture, osier baskets and flower-stands and
sickles; NizhniyNovgorod for bast mats and sacks, knives, forks and
scissors; Tver for lace,
nails, sieves, anchors, fish-hooks, locks, coarse clay pottery,
saddlery and
harness, boots and shoes, and
so on. Out of these have grown large factories, employing as many
as 10,000 to 12,000 men each; but when
harvest comes round, these men leave the
factories and repair to their fields, and meantime the factories
stand still for two or three months. Nor do the people work on the
holidays of the church, the number of days they lose in this way
amounting to nearly one-third of the whole year. Hence, although
wages are painfully low, the cost of production to the manufacturer
is relatively high; and it is still further increased by the cost
of the raw materials, by the heavy rates of transport owing to the
distance from the sea, by the dearness of capital and by the
scarcity of fuel. As a consequence this central Russian industry,
even when supported by very high protective duties, is only able to
produce for the home market and the markets of the adjacent
territories in Asia which are under Russian political control. Here
again cotton is the principal product; and the remarkable growth of
the industry is illustrated by the fact that, whereas in 1843 there
were only 350,000 spindles at work, fifty years later there were
4,332,000 so employed, and in 1900, 6,554, 600. The number of looms
increased from 87,190 in 1890 to 154,600 in 1900. Next after
cottons come woollens, silk, cloth, chemicals, machinery, paper,
furniture, hats,
cement,
leather,
glass and
china and other products. From the governments of
Vyatka and Vladimir large numbers of bricklayers, carpenters and
Other handicraftsmen migrate temporarily to the S. governments
every year, and similarly plasterers and painters from the
government of Moscow.
|
Branch of Industry.
|
Number of Workers.
|
|
1887.
|
1897.
|
1902.
|
|
Textiles .
|
399,178
|
642,520
|
708,186
|
|
Food products
|
205,223
|
2 55,357
|
303,213
|
|
Animal products .
|
38,876
|
64,418
|
-
|
|
Wood .
|
30,703
|
86,273
|
79,664
|
|
Paper. .
|
19,491
|
46,190
|
78,395
|
|
Chemical products
|
21,134
|
35,320
|
60,108
|
|
Ceramics .
|
67,346
|
143,291
|
150,809
|
|
Mining and metals .
|
390,915
|
544,333
|
549,000
|
|
Metal goods. .
|
103,300
|
214,311
|
252,215
|
|
Various.. .
|
41,882
|
66,249
|
78,183
|
|
Total
|
1,318,048
|
2,098,262
|
2,259,773
|
The growth of Russian industry is set forth in the following
table, which compares the number of workers for 1887, 1897 and
1902, of all factories throughout the empire of which the annual
production was valued at more than £210: With regard to Russian
industry generally, the extravagant prices which have to be paid
for iron and all iron goods, owing to the prohibitive tariffs,
combined with the obstacles put in the way of education, hamper the
development of all industries. The cotton factories excel chiefly
in the production of red and printed cottons. In the flax-mills the
tendency is to produce the finest tissues as well as the coarser.
The silk-mills employ silk obtained from the Caucasus, Italy and
France. The growth of the sugar industry is shown by the fact that
in 1888-93 the average annual production of sugar was 444,520 tons,
in 1902-3 it was 1,180,293 tons. Since 1894 the government has had
a monopoly in retailing spirituous liquors, but not wine or beer;
but distilling, a very widespread industry, is left in private
hands. Beer is chiefly brewed in Poland and the Baltic provinces.
Tanneries exist in nearly every government, but it is especially at
Warsaw and St Petersburg, and after these at Moscow, that the
largest and best modern tanneries and
shoe and
glove
factories are established. The governments of Orel (shoe
factories), Kherson, Vyatka, Nizhniy-Novgorod, Perm, Kiev and Kazan
rank next in this respect. Furniture factories are developing
greatly, as is the paper industry. Flour-mills play an important
part in the general industry of Russia, and there are several
tobacco and hemp factories.
Far from being destroyed by the competition of the " modern "
factories, domestic industries have well maintained their ground,
new branches of petty trade having sprung up in some districts,
among them the manufacture of agricultural machinery (thrashing
machines in Ryazan, Vyatka and Perm; ploughs in Smolensk, &c.)
deserves notice.
The wealth of Russia consisting mainly of raw produce, the trade
of the country turns chiefly on the purchase of this for export,
and on the sale of manufactured and imported goods
I in
exchange. This traffic is in the hands of a great number of
middlemen,-in the W. Jews, and elsewhere Russians,-to whom the
peasants are for the most part in debt, as they purchase in advance
on
security of subsequent
payments in corn,
tar, wooden wares,
&c. A good deal of the internal trade is carried on by
travelling merchants.
The fairs are very numerous. Those of Nizhniy-Novgorod, with a
return of 20 millions sterling, of
Irbit and Kharkov, of
Menzelinsk in Ufa, and
Omsk and Ishim in Siberia, have considerable
importance both for trade and for home manufactures. Altogether, no
fewer than 16,600 fairs are held in Russia, 85% of them in European
Russia. Of these, 30 show returns of goods imported to the value of
over £ioo,000 each, 41 from £50,000 to £roo,000, and 437 from
£io,000 to £50,000 each.
|
Years (average).
|
Exports.
|
Imports.
|
|
1886-1891
|
£72,200,000
|
£43,250,000
|
|
1892-1896 .
|
60, 360,000
|
46, 100,000
|
|
1897-1901
|
68, 500, 000
|
55, 1 80, 000
|
|
1902-190
|
103,448,000
|
66, 533, 000
|
The external trade of the Russian empire (bullion and the
external trade of Finland not included) since the year 1886 is
shown in the following table: The exports rank in the following
order :- cereals (wheat, barley, rye, oats, maize, buckwheat)
and flour, 49.2%; timber and wooden wares, 7.2; petroleum, 5.8;
eggs, 5.4; flax, 5; butter, 3; sugar, 2-4; cottons and oilcake, 2
each; oleaginous seeds, &c., 1.5; with hemp, spirits,
poultry, game, bristles,
hair, furs, leather,
manganese ore,
wool,
caviare, live-stock,
gutta-percha,
vegetables and fruit, and tobacco. The two best customers of Russia
are Germany, which takes 23.3% of her total exports, and the
United
Kingdom, which takes 22.9%. Then follow the
Netherlands (9.8%),
France, Italy, Finland,
Belgium,
Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Turkey and
Sweden. The commodities which the United Kingdom principally takes
are wheat, wool, barley, eggs, oats and flax. With regard to the
imports into Russia-they consist mainly of raw materials and
machinery for the manufactures, and of provisions, the principal
items being raw cotton, 17% of the aggregate; machinery and
metal goods, 13%; tea, 5%; mineral
ores, 5%; gums and resins, 4%; wool and woollen yarns, 32%;
textiles, 3%; fish, 3%; with leather and hides, chemicals, silks,
wine and spirits, colours, fruits,
coffee, tobacco and
rice. The countries from which Russia buys most
extensively are Germany (34%), the United Kingdom (152) and the
United States (92). Machinery, coal, iron, woollens, ships,
lead and copper are the
commodities supplied by the United Kingdom.
The total
mercantile marine of Russia does not
aggregate 700,000 tons; and it is distributed in the following
proportions: 35'4% in the
Caspian Sea, 34'7% in the Black Sea and
Shipping. Sea of
Azov, 24.7 / o in the Baltic Sea and 5.2% in the White Sea. And
these proportions represent fairly well the tonnages entering and
clearing at the ports of these respective seas. But of the vessels
that visit the Russian ports in the way of trade every year only
8.3% are Russian, the rest being of course foreign. Russian craft
play, however, a much more important part on the internal
waterways, the traffic on which increases rapidly,
e.g.
whilst in 1894 it amounted to an aggregate of 23,293,400 tons, in
1904 it reached a total of 38,720,240, or an increase of over 66%
in the ten years. During the same period the
tonnage of the craft themselves more than
doubled, while the ] crews increased 191%, the number of men
employed in the latter year being approximately 150,000.
In 1860 Russia possessed less than 1000 m. of railways; by 1885
this had increased to 16,155 m., and by the middle of 1905 there
a. were open for traffic over 40,500 m. of railway, of
which Railways. 1 0m.or8 34, 5 4'3% were in European
Russia and nearly 6400 m. (15.7%) in Asiatic Russia. Between 1895
and 1905 the building of railways proceeded at a rapid rate, the
total length nearly doubling within the ten years, namely, from
22,600 to 40,500 m. The European railways cost on an average
£10,465 per mile to construct, and the Asiatic railways £5092 per
mile.
A considerable number of new railways, some of great strategic
as well as commercial importance, were built during the last twenty
years of the 19th century. At the same time the chief lines of
railway which had been built by public companies with a state
guarantee, and which represented a loss to the empire of £3,171,250
per annum, as well as a growing indebtedness, were bought by the
state. On the whole, the state derives profit from its railways,
although several of the later lines, while imperative for state
purposes, must necessarily yield but a very small revenue, or be
worked at a loss. The most important of the new railways is the
Siberian, of which the first section,
Chelyabinsk to Omsk, was opened in December
1895, and which, except for a short section round Lake Baikal, in
1901 was completed right through to
Stryetensk, on the Shilka, the head of
navigation on the Shilka and the Amur, 2710 m. from Chelyabinsk and
4076 miles from Moscow, via Samara and Chelyabinsk. The section
round the S. end of Lake Baikal was completed in 1905. At the
Pacific end of the Siberian railway a line connecting Vladivostok
with
Khabarovsk (479
m.) at the junction of the Amur and the Usuri, was first of all
built, following the valley of the Usuri. But it was soon found
that the cost of the section required to complete the railway
between Stryetensk and Khabarovsk, along the Shilka (246 m.) and
the Amur (1160 m.), would be enormous, while neither the wild
mountainous tracts of the lower Shilka and upper Amur, nor the
marshy, often inundated region between Khabarovsk and the Little
Khingan mountains, could ever
be the seat of a numerous population. Consequently a company was
formed by the Russian government in 1896 to construct, with the
consent of the Chinese government, a railway from Vladivostok
across Manchuria to Karymskaya near
Chita in Transbaikalia. This runs for 222 m. on
Russian territory and for 1080 m. on Manchurian territory, and from
Kharbin sends off a branch to Dalny near Port Arthur on the
Liao-tung peninsula. The first portion of the Manchurian railway,
built by Russian engineers, with Chinese labour, was finished in
1902. At the same time several secondary lines were built in
connexion with the Siberian line. Chelyabinsk was linked by a
transverse line with the middle Urals railway, which connects Perm,
the head of navigation in the Volga basin, with
Tyumen, the head of navigation on the Ob and
Irtysh, passing through
Ekaterinburg and other mining centres of
the middle Urals. Tomsk is now connected with the main line by a
short side branch. A railway has also been built to connect Perm
with Kotlas, near the confluence of the Sukhona with the Yug, at
the head of the N. Dvina. This N. portion of the Russian railway
system was further completed by the opening in 1906 of a line from
St Petersburg via Vologda to Vyatka, intersecting the
MoscowArchangel line at Vologda.
Another line of great strategic importance was built across the
Transcaspian territory to Ferghana. Starting from
Krasnovodsk, it runs
S.E. to Mery (560 m.), with a branch line (194 m.) to
Kushk, near
Herat, then N.E. across the desert to Charjui, on
the
Amur river,
Bokhara and the Russian fort Katta-
kurgan, and then to Samarkand, Kokand and
Andijan in Ferghana, 710 m.
from
Merv, with a branch to
Tashkent (220 m.). This railway has become important for the export
of raw cotton from Central Asia to Russia. In 1905 a second totally
independent line was opened from Tashkent down the Syr-darya to
Kazalinsk, and thence to Orenburg.
A third line of great importance is the junction line between
the Transcaucasian railway - which runs from Batum and
Poti to Baku, via Tiflis, with a
branch line to Kars - and the railway system of Russia proper. This
junction has been effected not across the main Caucasus range, but
at its E. extremity, that is, via the Caspian ports of Baku and
Petrovsk, which are connected
with
Vladikavkaz
(Beslan junction). The Black Sea port of
Novorossiysk, in W. Caucasia, having been
connected with the Rostov-Vladikavkaz line, has consequently also
been brought into touch with the Russian railways. The Volga is
reached from central Russia by seven lines of railways, including
one to Kazan, and three main lines radiate from the Volga E. (one
to Siberia and two to the Ural river), while the upper Volga
(Yaroslavl) is connected with Archangel by a line 523 m. long. A
zone
tariff was introduced on
the Russian railways in 1894, and the cost of long journeys was
considerably reduced; a journey of 623 m. can be made third class
at a cost of only about 17 shillings, while for less than twice as
much 1990 m. can be covered.
Fish form an important article of national food. The numerous
fasts of the national church prescribe a fish diet on many days in
the
Fishing. year, and the continuous frost of winter is
favourable to
F the transportation of fish for great
distances. Along the Murman coast of the Arctic Ocean and in the
White Sea, where many millions of herrings are caught annually by
some 3000 persons, the yearly produce is estimated at the value of
£140,000. In the Baltic Sea, as well as in the lakes of its basin
(Ladoga, Onega, Ilmen, &c.), the yearly value is estimated at £
200,000. Of anchovies alone, to,000,000 jars are prepared annually,
while salted fish is, next after bread, the staple food of large
masses of the population. The Black
Sea fisheries, in which
about 4000 men are engaged, yield fish valued at £300,000 per
annum. The value of the fish has much increased owing to the
introduction of cold storage; as a result of the employment of this
method of packing, fish is now exported in a fresh state from the
Black Sea to all parts of S.W. Russia, and even to Moscow. The
annual yield of the Azov Sea fisheries, occupying 15,000 men, is
valued at £600,000. In the Volga section of the Caspian Sea fish
are caught to the value of about £I,000,000 annually; in the Ural
section over 40,000 tons of fish and nearly 1500 tons of caviare
are obtained. The total value of the Caspian fisheries is estimated
at £3,000,000 per annum. Taking the Lake Aral and Siberian river
fisheries into account, it is estimated that altogether the fishing
industries yield a revenue to the state of £330,000 annually.' In
addition from 13,000 to 60,000
seals and about 200 whales are
killed annually off the Murman coast. Hunting is an occupation of
considerable importance in N. and N.E. Russia, and along the shores
of the Arctic Ocean.
Authorities
- The
Russkiy Encyclopedicheskiy Slovar, edited by
Brockhaus and Efron, was begun in 1890, with the idea of giving a
Russian version of Brockhaus's
Conversations Lexikon, but
from the very first volumes it became a monumental
encyclopaedia, and
is, indeed, an inexhaustible source of information on everything
Russian. A general popular description of Russia entitled
Rossiya, containing excellent geographical, geological and
other descriptions of separate regions, and very well-chosen
illustrations, was begun in 1899 under the editorship of V. P.
Semenov.
La Russie a la fin du xix e siecle, under the
editorship of W. W. Kovalevsky, is especially worthy of notice. See
also H.
Norman,
All the
Russias (London, 1902); Sir D.
Mackenzie Wallace,
Russia (2 vols.,
new ed., 1905, London); A. Leroy-Beaulieu,
L'Empire des
tsars (3 vols., 1882-88; Eng. trans.,
London, 1893-96); A. Hettner,
Das
europaische Russland (Leipzig, 1905); R.
Martin,
The Future of Russia (Eng.
trans., London, 1906); M. M. Kovalevsky,
Russian Political
Institutions (Chicago, 1902),
Modern Customs and Ancient
Laws of Russia (London, 1891),
Le Regime economique de la
Russie (Paris, 1898), and
Die produktiven Krcifte
Russlands (Paris, 1896); A. M. B. Meakin,
Russia
(London, 1906); G. von Schulze-Gavernitz,
Volkswirthschaftliche
Studien aus Russland (Leipzig, 1899); J. Machat,
La
Developpement economique de la Russie (Paris, 1902);
Industries of Russia, by the Department of Trade and
Manufactures (English by J. M. Crawford, 5 vols., St Petersburg,
1893); A. F. Rittich, " Die Ethnographic Russlands " in
Petermanns Mitteilungen, Erganzungsheft 54 (Gotha, 1878);
C. Joubert,
Russia as it really is (London, 1904). (P. A.
K.; J. T. BE.)
History The
history of Russia may be conveniently divided into four consecutive
periods: (I) the period of Independent Principalities; (2) the
Mongol Domination; (3) the Tsardom of Muscovy; and (4) the Modern
Empire.
I.
A Conglomeration of Independent Principalities. -
The first period, like the early history of many other
countries, begins with a legend. Nestor, an old monkish chronicler
Origin of Kiev, relates that in the middle of the 9th century
of the the Slav and Finnish tribes inhabiting the forest
region around Lake Ilmen, between Lake Ladoga and the upper waters
of the Dnieper, paid
tribute
to military adventurers from the land of
Ras, which is commonly supposed to have been a part
of Sweden. In the year 859 these tribes expelled the Northmen, but
finding that they quarrelled among themselves, they invited them,
three years later, to return. Our land, said the deputation sent to
Ras for this purpose, is great and fertile, but there is no order
in it; come and reign and rule over us. Three brothers, princes of
Ras, called respectively Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, accepted the
invitation and founded a dynasty, from which many of the Russian
princes of the present day claim descent.
Who were those warlike men of Ras who are universally recognized
as the founders of the Russian Empire? This question has given rise
to an enormous amount of discussion among learned men, and some of
the disputants have not yet laid down their arms; but for impartial
outsiders who have carefully studied the evidence there can be
little doubt that 1 See Researches into the State of Fisheries
in Russia (9 vols.), edited by Minister of Finance (1896,
Russian); Kusnetzow's Fischerei and Thiererbeutung in den
Gewassern Russlands (1898).
the men of
Rus, or Variags, as they were
sometimes called, were simply the hardy Norsemen or
Normans who at that time, in
various countries of Europe, appeared first as armed marauders and
then lived in the invaded territory as a dominant military
caste until they were gradually
absorbed by the native population. Lake Ilmen and the river
Volkhov, on which stands Novgorod, Rurik's capital, formed part of
the great waterway from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and we know
that by this route travelled from Scandinavia to
Constantinople
the tall fair-haired Northmen who composed the famous Varangian
bodyguard of the Byzantine emperors.
The new rulers did not long confine their attention to the
tribes who had invited them. They at once began to conquer the
surrounding country in all directions, and before two centuries had
passed they had established themselves firmly at Kiev on the
Dnieper, invaded. Byzantine territory, threatened Constantinople
with a fleet of small craft, obtained as consort for one of their
princes, Vladimir I, (q.v.), a sister of the Byzantine emperor on
condition of the prince becoming a Christian, adopted
Christianity for
themselves and their subjects, learned to hold in check the nomadic
hordes of the steppe, and formed matrimonial alliances with the
reigning families of Poland,
Hungary, Norway and France. In short, they
became a considerable power in eastern Europe, and might be
regarded as one of the claimants for the
inheritance of the decrepit East Roman
Empire. Unfortunately for the political future of this new state,
its internal consolidation did not keep
pace with its territorial expansion. In theory the
whole Russian land was a gigantic family estate belonging to the
Rurik dynasty, and each member of that great family considered
himself entitled to a share of it. It had to be divided, therefore,
into a number of independent principalities, but it continued to be
loosely held together by the dynastic sentiment of the descendants
of Rurik and by the patriarchal authority - a sort of
patria
potestas - of the senior member of the family, called the
grand-prince, who ruled in Kiev, " the mother of Russian cities."
His administrative authority was confined to his own principality,
but when territorial disputes arose between two or more of his
relations, his paternal influence was exercised in the interests of
peace and justice. What added to the practical difficulties of this
arrangement was that the post of grand-prince was not an hereditary
dignity in the sense of descending from father to son, but was
always to be held by the senior member of the dynasty; and in the
subordinate principalities the same principle of succession was
applied, so that reigning princes had to be frequently shifted
about from one district to another, according as they could
establish the strongest claim to vacant principalities. What
constituted in this primitive system of inheritance the strength of
a claim was often not easily determined, and even when the legal
question was clear enough the law was not always respected by the
contending parties. Hence family quarrels became very frequent.
These princes were, in fact, men of like passions with ourselves,
and acted as powerful men generally do in a rude state of society.
Instead of conforming to abstract principles of public law and
hereditary succession, they strove to enlarge their territories at
the expense of their rivals, and to leave them at their death to
their sons rather than to their brothers, nephews and more distant
relations. In these circumstances, the traditional authority of the
grand-prince, never very great, rapidly declined, and the
complicated law of succession, never scrupulously respected, was
gradually replaced by " the good old rule, the simple plan, that he
should take who has the power, and he should keep who can."
Yaroslav, surnamed the Great, a man of commanding
personality, was the
last grand-prince who upheld vigorously the old system. After his
death in 1054 the process of disintegration went on apace and the
family feuds multiplied at an alarming rate. During the next 170
years (1054-1224) no less than 64 principalities had a more or less
ephemeral existence, 293 princes put forward succession-claims, and
their disputes led to 83 civil wars.
During these interminable struggles of rival princes, Kiev,
which had been so long the residence of the grand-prince and of the
metropolitan, was repeatedly taken by
storm and ruthlessly pillaged, and finally the
whole valley of the Dnieper fell a
prey to the marauding tribes of the steppe.
Thereupon Russian colonization and political influence retreated
northwards, and from that time the continuous stream of Russian
history is to be sought in the land where the Vikings first settled
and in the adjoining basin of the upper Volga. Here new
principalities were founded and new agglomerations of
principalities came into existence, some of them having a grand
prince who no longer professed
allegiance to Kiev. Thus, appeared the
grand-prince of Suzdal or Vladimir, of Tver,, of Ryazan and of
Moscow - all irreconcilable rivals with little or no feeling of
blood-relationship. The more ambitious and powerful among them
aspired not to succeed but to subdue the others and to take
possession of their territory, and the armed. retainers, who were
wont formerly to wander about as free lances, gave up their roving
mode of life, settled down permanently in one principality, became
landed proprietors, and. sought to share as boyars the princes'
authority.
Among the principalities of that northern region the first place
was long held by Novgorod. Since the days when Rurik had first
chosen it as his headquarters, the little town on the Volkhov had
grown into a great commercial
of Nov- city and a member of
the
Hanseatic
league, and it had brought under subjection a vast expanse of
territory, stretching from the shores of the Baltic to the Ural
Mountains, and containing several subordinate towns, of which the
principal were Pskov, Nizhniy-Novgorod and Vyatka. Unlike the
ordinary Russian principalities, it had a republican rather than a
monarchical form of government. Indeed, it was not so much a
principality as a municipal republic of the Venetian type. It
always had a prince, no doubt, but he was engaged by formal
contract without much attention being paid to hereditary rights,
and he was merely leader of the troops, while all the political
power remained in the hands of the civil officials and the
Vetche, a popular assembly which was called together in
the market-place, as occasion required, by the tolling of the great
bell. Descendants of Rurik, impregnated with the pride of a
dominant military caste, did not much like serving those truculent,
wilful burghers, and some of them, after a time, voluntarily laid
down their office and retired to more congenial surroundings. Those
of them who tried to have their own way and came into conflict with
the authorities had always to yield in the long run, and they were
liable to be treated very unceremoniously, so that the vulgar
adage, " If the prince is bad, into, the mud with him!" became a
maxim of state policy.
There was here in the Russian land the germ of republicanism or
constitutional monarchy, but it was not destined to be developed.
The principality which was to become the nucleus of the future
Russian empire was not Novgorod with its democratic institutions,
but its eastern
neighbour Moscow, in which the popular
assembly played a very insignificant part, and the supreme law was
the will of the prince. The opposition which he encountered came
not from the burghers but from the boyars and the nobles.
II.
The Mongol or Tatar Domination, 1238-1462. -
Between Moscow and Novgorod there was a long and bitter
rivalry,. breaking out occasionally into armed conflicts, and among
the princes of the other principalities the old struggle for
precedence and territory
went on unceasingly until it was suddenly interrupted, in the first
half of the thirteenth century, by the unexpected irruption of an
irresistible foreign foe coming from the mysterious. regions of the
Far East. " For our sins," says the Russian chronicler of the time,
" unknown nations arrived. No one knew their origin or whence they
came, or what religion they practised. That is known only to God,
and perhaps to wisemen learned in books." The Russian princes first
heard of them from the wild nomadic Polovtsi, who usually pillaged
the Russian settlers on the frontier but who now preferred
- friendship and said: " These terrible strangers have
taken our country, and to-morrow they will take yours if you do not
come and help us." In response to this call some Russian princes
formed a league and went out eastward to meet the foe, but they
were utterly defeated in a great battle on the banks of the Kalka
(1224), which has remained to this day in the memory of the Russian
common people. Now the country was at the
mercy of the invaders, but, instead of advancing,
they suddenly retreated and did not reappear for thirteen years,
during which the princes went on quarrelling and fighting as
before, till they were startled by a new invasion much more
formidable than its predecessor. This time the invaders came to
stay, and they built for themselves a capital, called Sarai, on the
lower Volga. Here the commander of " the
Golden Horde," as the western
The
section of the Mongol empire was called, fixed his
Golden
headquarters and represented the
majesty of his
Horde. sovereign the grand
khan who lived with the Great Horde in the valley
of the Amur. About the origin and character of these terrible
invaders we are much better informed than the early Russian
chroniclers. The nucleus of the invading horde was a small
pastoral tribe in Mongolia,
the chief of which, known subsequently to Europe as
Jenghiz Khan, became
a mighty conqueror and created a vast empire stretching from China,
across northern and central Asia, to the shores of the Baltic and
the valley of the Danube - a heterogeneous state containing many
nationalities held together by purely administrative ties and by an
enormous military force. For forty years after the death of its
founder it remained united under the authority of a series of grand
khans chosen from among his descendants, and then it began to fall
to pieces till the various fractions of it became independent
khanates.
The khanate closely connected with the history of Russia was
that of Kipchak or the Golden Horde, the khans of which settled, as
we have seen, on the lower Volga and built for themselves a capital
called Sarai. Here they had their headquarters and held Russia in
subjection for nearly three centuries.
The term by which this subjection is commonly designated, the
Mongol or Tatar yoke, suggests ideas of terrible oppression,
Character but in reality these barbarous invaders from the
Far
of Tatar East were not such cruel, oppressive
taskmasters as
rule. is generally supposed. In the first
place, they never settled in the country, and they had not much
direct dealings with the inhabitants. In accordance with the
admonitions of Jenghiz to his children and grandchildren, they
retained their pastoral mode of life, so that the subject races,
agriculturists and dwellers in towns, were not disturbed in their
ordinary avocations. In religious matters they were extremely
tolerant. When they first appeared in Europe they were idolaters or
Shamanists, and as such they had naturally no religious fanaticism;
but even when they adopted
Islam
they remained as tolerant as before, and the khan of the Golden
Horde (Berkai) who first became a Mussulman allowed the Russians to
found a Christian bishopric in his capital. One of his successors,
half a century later, married a daughter of the Byzantine emperor,
and gave his own daughter in marriage to a Russian prince. These
represent the bright side of Tatar rule. It had its dark side also.
So long as a great horde of nomads was encamped on the frontier the
country was liable to be invaded by an overwhelming force of
ruthless marauders. These invasions were fortunately not frequent,
but when they occurred they caused an incalculable amount of
devastation and suffering. In the intervals the people had to pay a
fixed tribute. At first it was collected in a rough-and-ready
fashion by a swarm of Tatar tax-gatherers, but about 125 9 it was
regulated by a census of the population, and, finally, the
collection of it was entrusted to the native princes, so that the
people were no longer brought into direct contact with the Tatar
officials.
By the princes the " yoke " was felt more keenly, and it was
very galling. In order to reply to accusations brought against
them, or in order to be confirmed in their functions, they had to
travel to the Golden Horde on the Volga or even to the camp of the
grand khan in some distant part of Siberia, and the journey was
considered so perilous that many of them, before setting out, made
their last will and testament and wrote a parental admonition for
the guidance of their children. Nor were these precautions by any
means superfluous, for not a few princes died on the journey or
were condemned to death and executed for real or imaginary
offences. Even when the visit to the Horde did not end so
tragically, it involved a great deal of anxiety and expense, for
the Mongol dignitaries had to be conciliated very liberally, and it
was commonly believed that the judges were more influenced by the
amount of the bribes than by the force of the arguments. The grand
khan was the lord
paramount or suzerain of the Russian princes,
and he had the force required for making his authority respected.
Ambitious members of the Rurik dynasty, instead of seeking to
acquire territory by conquest in the field, now sought to attain
their ends by intrigue and bribery at the Mongol court.
Of all the princes who sought to advance their fortunes in this
way the most dexterous and successful were those of Moscow. They
made themselves responsible for the tribute of
The other
principalities as well as of their own, and gradu-
princes
of ally they became lieutenants-general of their Mongol
Moscow. suzerain. So long as the Mongol empire remained
united and strong, they were most submissive and
1362-
obsequious, but as soon as it was weakened by internal
1389. dissensions and began to fall to pieces, they
assumed airs of independence, intrigued with the insubordinate
Tatar generals, retained for their own use the tribute collected
for the grand khan, and finally put themselves at the head of the
patriotic movement which aimed at throwing off completely the hated
Mongol yoke. For this purpose Dimitri Donskoi formed in 1380 a
coalition of Russian
princes, and gained a great victory over Khan Mamai of the Golden
Horde on the famous battlefield of Kulikovo, the memory of which
still lives in the popular legends. For some time longer the Tatars
remained troublesome neighbours, capable of invading and
devastating large tracts of Russian territory and of threatening
even the city of Moscow, but the Horde was now broken up into
independent and mutually hostile khanates, and the Moscow
diplomatists could generally play off one khanate against the
other, so that there was no danger of the old political domination
being re-established.
Having thus freed themselves from Tatar control, the Moscow
princes continued to carry out energetically their traditional
policy of extending and consolidating their dominions at the
expense of their less powerful relations. Already Dimitri of the
Don was called the grand-prince of all Russia, but the assumption
of such an ambitious title was hardly justified by facts, because
there were still in his time principalities with grand princes who
claimed to be independent. The complete suppression of these small
moribund states and the creation of the autocratic tsardom of
Muscovy were the work of
Ivan
III., surnamed the Great, his son
Basil and his grandson
Ivan IV., commonly known as Ivan the Terrible,
whose united reigns cover a period of 122 years (1462-1584).
III. The Tsardom of Muscovy. - What may be called the
home policy of these three remarkable rulers consisted in absorbing
the few principalities which still remained indepen- Ivan
III. dent, and in creating for themselves an uncontrolled
1462- monarchical authority. In the pursuit of both of
these 1505. objects they were completely successful. When
Ivan III. came to the throne the remaining independent
principalities were Great Novgorod, Pskov, Tver, Ryazan and
NovgorodSeversk. He first directed his attention to Novgorod, and
by gradually undermining and then destroying the ancient republican
liberties he reduced the haughty city, which had long styled itself
Lord Novgorod the Great, to the rank of a provincial town. Then he
annexed its colonies and thereby extended his dominions to the
Polar Ocean and the Ural Mountains. At the same time he took
possession of Tver, on the ground that the: prince had allied
himself with Lithuania. His suc- Basil HI. cessor Basil
followed in his footsteps, and dealt with 1505the municipal
republic of Pskov was Ivan had dealt 1533. with Novgorod.
Finding the inhabitants too much attached to.
their ancient liberties, he abolished the popular assembly,
removed the great bell to Novgorod, installed his own boyars in the
administration, transported 300 of the leading families to other
localities, replaced them by 300 families from Moscow, and left in
the town a strong
garrison of his own troops.
Ryazan shared the same fate. In 1521 the prince, being suspected of
forming an
alliance with
the Crimean Tatars, was summoned to Moscow and arrested. Two years
later the prince of NovgorodSeversk was accused of intriguing with
the Poles and imprisoned for the rest of his life. Thus all the
principalities were brought under the power of Moscow, and in that
respect there remained nothing for Ivan the Terrible to do. He took
precautions, however, against any of the dead or moribund
principalities being resuscitated, and punished with merciless
severity any attempt to resist or undermine his authority.
With the suppression and absorption of the independent
principalities the problem was only half solved. The tsars of
Muscovy meant to be autocratic rulers alike in their old and in
their new territories. Their forefathers had been trained in the
Tatar school of politics and administration, and in their ideas of
government they had come to resemble Tatar khans much more than
grand-princes of the old patriarchal type. Their autocratic
tendencies were fostered also by the Church. As Christianity was
brought into Russia from Constantinople it was only natural that
the ecclesiastics, many of whom were Greeks, should admire
Byzantine ideals and recommend them as models to be imitated. For
the ambitious Moscow princes many of the Byzantine ideas were very
acceptable. They liked to consider themselves as the Lord's
anointed, placed high above all ordinary mortals even of the most
exalted rank; and when Constantinople fell into the hands of the
infidel they began to imagine that, as the most powerful potentates
of the Eastern Orthodox world they were the protectors of the
Orthodox faith and the political heirs of the East Roman emperors.
With a view to strengthen this claim Ivan III. married a niece of
the emperor
Constantine Palaeologus, who had
fallen fighting when his capital was taken by the
Turks (1453). From that moment Ivan's subjects
noticed a change in his attitude towards them, and attributed it to
the evil influence of the Greek princess. In the old times the
grand-prince was simply
primes inter pares among the minor
princes, and these lived with their boyars almost on a footing of
equality. Now the tsar of Muscovy and of all Russia adopted the
airs and methods of a Tatar khan and surrounded himself with the
pomp and splendours of a Byzantine emperor. Ivan III.,
notwithstanding the influence of his Greek consort, showed some
respect for the ancient traditions and the susceptibilities of
those around him, but his successor Basil did not follow his
father's example. All through his reign he preferred to employ as
officials men of humble origin, and habitually treated the boyars
and great nobles very unceremoniously. For disobedience to his
orders he imprisoned a
boyar who
was his own brother-in-law, and he caused another to be beheaded
for complaining that the boyar-council was not consulted in
important affairs of state. A boyar of Nizhniy-Novgorod who allowed
himself to criticize the new order of things, and attributed the
change to the influence of the Greek princess, had his tongue cut
out. From the ecclesiastics Basil likewise insisted on
unquestioning obedience, and he did not hesitate to depose by his
own authority a metropolitan who was at that time the highest
dignitary of the Russian Church. According to Siegmund von
Herberstein (1486-1566), an Austrian
envoy who visited Moscow at that period, no
sovereign in Europe was obeyed like the grand-prince of Muscovy,
and his court was remarkable for barbaric luxury. In his palace
were numerous equerries, chamberlains and other court dignitaries,
and when he went out he was attended by a guard of young nobles
dressed in
gaudy costumes and
armed with silver halberds.' Such radical changes naturally
produced a great deal of ' See Friedrich Adelung,
Siegmund
Freiherr von Herberstein, mit besonderer Riicksicht auf seine Reisen in Russland
geschildert. (St Petersburg, 1818); autobiography of
Herberstein in
Fontes rerum Austriacarum, part i. vol. i.
pp. 67-396.
dissatisfaction among men of Slavonic temperament, whose
grandfathers had been independent princes, boyars or free lances,
and the malcontents could not adopt the old practice of emigrating
to some other principality. There was no longer within the Russian
land any independent principality in which an
asylum could be found, and emigration to a
principality beyond the frontier, such as Lithuania, was regarded
as
treason, for which the
property of the fugitive would be confiscated and his family might
be punished. In these circumstances the only outlet for discontent
was sedition, and the malcontents awaited impatiently a favourable
opportunity for an attempt to curb or overthrow the autocratic
power. That opportunity came when Basil died in 1533, leaving as
successor a child only three years old, and the chances seemed all
on the side of the nobles; but the result belied the current
expectations, for the child came to be known in history as Ivan the
Terrible, and died half a century later in the full enjoyment of
unlimited autocratic power. The fierce struggle between autocratic
tyranny and oligarchic disorder, which went on in intermittent
fashion during the whole of his reign, cannot be here described in
detail, but the chief incidents may be mentioned.
During Ivan's minority the country was governed, or rather
misgoverned, first by his mother, and then by rival factions led by
great nobles such as the princes Shuiski and Belski. Only once
during this period did the young tsar come forward and assert his
authority. Having convoked his boyars he reproached them
collectively with robbing the treasury and committing acts of
injustice, and he caused one of them, a Prince Shuiski who happened
to be in power at the moment, to be seized by his huntsmen and torn
in pieces by a
pack of hounds, as
a warning to others. Thus apparently he asserted his authority, but
in reality, being only thirteen years old, he was a mere puppet in
the hands of one of the opposition factions, who wished to oust
their rivals, and for the next four years the misgovernment of the
nobles went on as before. It was not till he was about seventeen
that he took an active part in the administration, and one of his
first acts foreshadowed his future policy: he insisted on the
metropolitan crowning him, not as grand-prince of Muscovy, but as
tsar of all Russia (1547). From the earliest times the term tsar -
a contraction of the word Caesar - had been applied to the kings in
Biblical history and the Byzantine emperors, and Ivan III. had
already been described in the Church service as " the ruler and
autocrat of all Russia, the new Tsar Constantine in the new city of
Constantine Moscow," but on no previous occasion had a grand-prince
been crowned under that title. A few months later occurred in
Moscow a great fire, which destroyed nearly the whole of the city,
and a serious popular tumult, in which the tsar's uncle was
murdered by the populace. Ivan regarded these events as a
punishment from
Heaven for the
neglect of his duties, and he began to attend to public affairs
under the influence of an enlightened
priest called Sylvester and an official of
humble origin called Adashev. With the assistance of these two
counsellors he held in check the lawless, turbulent nobles, and
ruled justly, to the
satisfaction of the people, for fourteen
years. Then suddenly, for reasons which cannot easily be explained,
he inaugurated a reign of terror which lasted for
twenty-four years and earned
for him the epithet of "theTerrible." Though there had been no open
insurrection, he caused many boyars and humbler persons to be
executed, and when some of the great nobles, fearing a similar
fate, fled across the frontier and tendered their allegiance to the
prince of Lithuania, his suspicion and indignation increased and he
determined to adopt still more drastic measures. For this purpose
he organized, outside the regular administration, a large corps of
civil officials and armed retainers, whose duty it was to obey him
implicitly in all things; and with this force, which rose rapidly
from 1000 to 6000 men, he acted like a
savage invader in a conquered country.
Accompanied by these so-called
Oprichniki, who have been
compared to the Turkish
Janissaries of the worst period, he
ruthlessly devastated large districts - with no other object
apparently than that of terrorizing the population and rewarding
his myrmidons - and during a residence of six weeks in Novgorod,
lest the old turbulent spirit of the municipal republic should
revive, he massacred, it is said, no less than 60,000 of the
inhabitants, including many women and children. It is quite
possible, as some apologists suggest, that the number of his
victims may have been exaggerated, but that they are to be counted
by thousands there can be no doubt. In the monastery of St
Cyril has been preserved a list of
those for whom he requested the prayers of the Church, the total
being 3470. The only reference to Novgorod in this curious document
is: " Remember, 0 Lord, the souls of thy Novgorodian servants to
the number of 1505 persons." According to the Novgorodian
annalists as many as 1500
persons were sometimes put to death in a single day. Perhaps the
discrepancy is to be explained by supposing that the pious tsar did
not consider all his victims as servants of the Lord, whose souls
deserved the prayers of the faithful.
While thus uniting under their vigorous autocratic rule the
small rival principalities, the Moscow princes had to keep a
watchful eye on their eastern neighbours. The Golden Horde, long
weakened by internal dissensions, had now fallen into several
khanates, the chief of which were Kazan, Astrakhan and the Crimea.
As these independent Tatar states were always jealous of each
other, and their
jealousy
often broke out in open hostility, it was easy to prevent any
combined action on their part; and as in each khanate there were
always several pretenders and contending factions, Muscovite
diplomacy had little
difficulty in weakening them individually and preparing for their
annexation. In the
case of Kazan and Astrakhan the annexation was effected without any
great effort in 1552-54, and two years later the Bashkirs, who had
likewise formed part of the great Mongol empire, consented to pay
tribute. On the other hand, the khans of the Crimea were able,
partly from their geographical position and partly from having
placed themselves under the protection of the sultans of Turkey, to
resist annexation for more than two centuries and to give the
Muscovites a great deal of trouble, not only by frequent raids and
occasional invasions, but also by allying themselves with the
Western enemies of the tsars. As late as 1571 Moscow was pillaged
by a Tatar horde; but there was no longer any question of permanent
political subjection to the Asiatics, and the Russian frontier was
being gradually pushed forward at the expense of the nomads of the
steppe by the constant advance of the agricultural population in
quest of virgin soil. These latter, like the colonists in the
American Far West, had to be constantly on the alert against the
attacks of their troublesome neighbours, and they accordingly
organized themselves in semi-military fashion. Those of them who
lived on the outskirts of the pacified territory adopted a mode of
life similar to that of their hereditary opponents, and constituted
a peculiar class known as Cossacks, living more by flocks and
The h
e rds and by marauding expeditions than by
a ri
y g p ?' g culture. In the basins of the
southern rivers they formed semi-independent military communities.
Those of the Volga and the Don professed allegiance to the tsar of
Muscovy, whilst those of the Dnieper recognized at first as their
suzerain the king of Poland. In neither case did the allegiance
involve strict obedience to orders from the superior, and their
loyalty was always in danger of
being troubled by their love of independence and equality and their
desire for
loot. More than once
they raided and pillaged in wholesale fashion the territory they
were supposed to protect. On the whole, however, at that period as
in more recent times, they contributed largely to the process of
territorial expansion. (See also
Poland:
History.) Before the Eastern
menace had been entirely removed the ambitious Moscow princes had
begun to look with envious eyes beyond their western frontier. Here
lay the principality of Lithuania and beyond it the kingdom of
Poland, two loosely conglomerated states which had been created by
the Piast and
Gedymin
dynasties in pretty much the same way as the tsardom of Muscovy had
been created by the descendants of Rurik. When the two became
united under one ruler towards the end of the 14th century they
formed a broad strip of territory stretching from the Baltic to the
Black Sea and separating Russia from central Europe. For Russian
ambition the barrier was a formidable one, but it did not entirely
preclude possibilities of expansion in a more or less remote
future. When examined closely it was found to contain many internal
flaws. In no sense could it be considered a homogeneous political
unit, for in Lithuania the majority of the population were Russian
in nationality, language and religion, whereas in Poland the great
majority of the inhabitants were Polish and
Roman
Catholic. Gradually, it is true, the Lithuanian nobles, who
possessed all the land and held the peasantry in a state of
serfage, adopted Polish nationality and culture, but this change
did not secure homogeneity, because the masses clung obstinately to
their old nationality and religion, and all the efforts of the
Church of
Rome to bring them under
papal authority proved fruitless. A further source of weakness was
the political organization. Nominally it was an hereditary
monarchy, but the warlike, turbulent nobles systematically
encroached on the sovereign power till they reduced it to a mere
shadow and made it elective, with
the result that the kingdom of Poland, including the principality
of Lithuania, was at last, politically speaking, the most
anarchical country in Europe.
As the Muscovite and the Lithuano-Polish princes were equally
ambitious and equally anxious to widen their borders, they
naturally came into conflict. At first the Muscovite was decidedly
the aggressor. On the death of
Casimir, king of Poland and grand-prince of
Lithuania, in 1492, the kingdom and the principality ceased to be
united and Ivan III. considered he had a good opportunity for
attacking the latter. After a short campaign a peace was concluded
and Ivan's daughter was given in marriage to the Lithuanian
grandprince, but the matrimonial alliance did not improve the
relations between the two countries. On the contrary it served as a
pretext for Ivan to interfere in Lithuanian affairs. He not only
insisted that his daughter's religion should be duly respected, but
he constituted himself the
protector of the Orthodox population and this
led to a new war in 1499, which went on till 1503, when it was
concluded by the cession to Russia of Chernigov,
Starodub and 17 other towns.
His successor, Basil, tried to get himself elected grand-prince of
Lithuania when the throne became vacant by the death of his
brother-in-law in 1506, but the choice fell on the late prince's
brother
Sigismund, who
was likewise elected king of Poland. The two countries were thus
once more united and better able to resist aggression, but some of
the great nobles were discontented and Basil hoped with their
assistance to attain his ends. He began war therefore in 1514 and
at once captured Smolensk, but in the following year he was
defeated, and the war dragged on during more than
seven
years, with varying successes and without any important result.
In the negotiations for peace the inordinate pretensions of the
Muscovite prince were put forward boldly: he not only refused to
restore Smolensk, but claimed Kiev and a number of other towns on
the ground that in the old time of the independent principalities
they had belonged to descendants of Rurik.
The policy of expansion westwards, inaugurated by Ivan III., was
modified and enlarged by Ivan the Terrible. The former had aimed
simply at making annexations in Lithuania; '
Ivan' IV. the
latter aspired to obtaining a firm footing on the Baltic coast and
establishing direct relations, diplomatic and commercial, with the
Western Powers. In this respect he was a precursor of Peter the
Great, but he greatly underestimated the difficulties of the task.
To reach the Baltic he had to overcome the resistance, not only of
the Lithuanians and the Poles, but also of the Teutonic and
Livonian military orders, the Swedes and the Danes, who all had
possessions in the intervening territory and who all objected to
the barbarous Muscovites, already sufficiently formidable,
strengthening themselves by direct foreign trade with western
Europe and especially by the importation of arms and cunning
with foreign artificers. Like the European settlers on the
coast of
Africa in more recent
times, they wished the barbarians of the interior to be restricted
to the use of their primitive weapons. One of the Polish kings, for
example, threatened with death the English sailors who should
attempt to carry on the illicit trade in arms, on the ground that "
the Muscovite, who is not only our opponent of to-day but the
eternal enemy of all free nations, should not be allowed to supply
himself with cannons, bullets and munitions or with artisans who
manufacture arms hitherto unknown to those barbarians." This was
precisely the reason why Ivan IV. was so anxious to force his way
to the coast. His grandfather had obtained from
Venice an " artist " who undertook " to build
churches and palaces, to cast big bells and cannons, to fire off
the said cannons and to make every sort of castings very cunningly
"; and with the aid of that clever Venetian he had become the proud
possessor of a "
cannon-house," subsequently dignified with the
name of "
arsenal." In
imitation of the grandfather the grandson gave a commission to a
Saxon, in whom he had confidence, to collect artists and artisans
in Germany and bring them to Moscow, but he was prevented from
carrying out his scheme by the Livonian Order (1547). A few years
later (1553) he found unexpectedly a different route for
communication with the West. A ship of an English
squadron which was trying
First to reach China by the North-East passage, entered
the
relations northern Dvina, and her captain, Richard
Chancellor,
with journeyed to Moscow in quest of
opportunities for trade.
England. He met with such a
favourable reception from the tsar that on his return to England a
special envoy was sent to Moscow by Queen
Mary, and he succeeded in obtaining for
his countrymen the privilege of trading freely in Russian towns. In
return the Russians were allowed to trade freely in England. This
afforded great satisfaction to Ivan, but it did not entirely
satisfy his requirements, because the new route by the White Sea
and
North Cape was
long and uncertain and for a great part of the year communications
were stopped by the ice. He continued, therefore, his efforts to
reach the Baltic coast, and he soon came into collision with the
Swedes. After a dilatory war of three years he concluded a peace on
the ground of free commercial relations, and then he attacked the
Livonian Order, on the pretext that the Livonian town of Dorpat had
not paid tribute according to ancient
treaties. Finding himself unable to resist the
Muscovites, the grand master of the Order put himself under Polish
protection, and this led to a seven years' war (1563-70) with
Poland, during which the Swedes and Danes intervened on their own
account. Ivan did not display much military
talent, but he showed a remarkable amount of
tenacity. No sooner had he made peace with the Poles and failed to
get himself elected as their king, than he began a war with the
Swedes which dragged on for more than a decade (1572-1583), and
before it was ended he was again at war with Poland (1 57981).
Though severely tried by disappointments and defeats he never lost
hope, and when he died in 1584 he was preparing to renew the
struggle and endeavouring to form for that purpose an alliance with
England; his great idea, however, was not to be realized till more
than a century later, and meanwhile the tsardom of Muscovy had to
pass through a severe internal crisis in which its existence was
seriously endangered.
Ivan the Terrible had succeeded in stamping out ruthlessly all
open resistance to his will, and had created an autocratic
Theodore government of
the Oriental type; but the elements
1.,1584- of disorder
were still lying beneath the surface, and
1598. as soon as
the cunning, energetic
despot
died they reappeared. His son and successor, Theodore (Feodor), was
a weak man of saintly character, very ill fitted to consolidate his
father's work and maintain order among the ambitious, turbulent
nobles; but he had the good fortune to have an energetic
brother-in-law, with no pretensions to sanctity, called
Boris Godunov, who was able,
with the tsar's moral support, to keep his fellow-boyars in order.
This he did during fourteen years, and his administration was
signalized by two important innovations - the attaching of the
peasants to the land (
adscriptio glebae) and the creation
of the patriarchate - both of which deserve a passing notice.
Boris has often been called the creator of serfage in Russia,
but in reality he merely accelerated a process which was the
natural result of economic conditions. In a primitive,
Begin- thinly populated, agricultural country, in which
the flings of demand for agricultural labour greatly
exceeds the serfdom. supply, the value of land is in
proportion to the number of permanent labourers settled on it, and
the landed proprietors naturally try to attract to their estates as
many peasants as possible; and in this competition the large
proprietors have evidently an advantage over their humbler and
weaker rivals. Such had been for a considerable time the condition
of Russia, and the small proprietors were now becoming so
impoverished that they could no longer fulfil their duties to the
state. The remedy they proposed was that the labourers should be
prohibited from migrating from one estate to another, and an order
to that effect was issued, with the result that the peasants, being
no longer able to change their domicile and seek new employers,
fell practically under the unlimited power of the proprietors on
whose land they resided. This change was, of course, popular among
the lower and middle ranks of the landlord class, but was very
displeasing to the great nobles.
The second of the two innovations above mentioned was popular
among all classes. Hitherto the highest authority in the Russian
Church was the metropolitan, who was
The nominally under
the jurisdiction of the patriarch of
patri-
Constantinople, and as soon as Constantinople fell
archate. into the hands of the infidel, and the tsars of
Muscovy claimed to be the successors of the Byzantine emperors, it
seemed right and proper that the Russian Church should become
autocephalous and
be governed by an independent Russian patriarch. The change was
very dexterously effected by Godunov, with the formal assent of the
Eastern Orthodox Church as a whole, and one of his adherents was
placed on the patriarchal throne.
Having thus gained the support of a large majority of the landed
proprietors and the ecclesiastics, Boris Godunov increased his
influence to such an extent that on the
Boris death of
Tsar Feodor without male issue in 1598 he
Godunov, was
elected his successor by a Great National Assembly.
1598-
His short reign was not so successful as his adminis-
1605. tration under the weak Feodor. The oligarchical
party considered it a disgrace to obey a simple boyar; conspiracies
were frequent, the rural districts were desolated by famine and
plague, great bands of armed brigands roamed about the country
committing all manner of atrocities, the Cossacks on the frontier
were restless, and the government showed itself incapable of
maintaining order. Under the influence of the great nobles who had
unsuccessfully opposed the election of Godunov, the general
discontent took the form of hostility to him as a usurper, and
rumours were heard that the late tsar's younger brother Dimitri
(Demetrius), supposed
The to be dead, was still alive and
in hiding. In 1603
- a man calling himself Dimitri, and
professing to be
Demet- the rightful heir to the throne,
appeared in Poland,
reuses. and a few months later he
crossed the frontier with a large force of Poles, Russian exiles,
German mercenaries and Cossacks from the Dnieper and the Don. In
reality the younger son of Ivan the Terrible had been strangled
before his brother's death - by orders, it was said, of Godunov -
and the mysterious individual who was impersonating him was an
impostor; but he was regarded as the rightful heir by a large
section of the population, and immediately after Boris's death in
1605 he made his triumphal entry into Moscow. Thus began a period
of Russian history commonly called " the Troublous Times, " which
lasted until 1613. (See
Demetrius, PsEUDO-.) The reign of Dimitri was
short and uneventful. Before a year had passed a
conspiracy was formed
against him by an ambitious noble called Basil (Vassili) Shuiski,
and he was assassinated in the Kremlin. The chief con spirator,
Shuiski, seized the power and was elected tsar by an Assembly
composed of his
faction, but
neither
Shuiski, the ambitious boyars, nor the pillaging
Cossacks, nor the German mercenaries were satisfied with the
change, and soon a new impostor, likewise calling himself Dimitri,
son of Tsar Ivan, came forward as the rightful heir. Like his
predecessor, he enjoyed the protection and support of the Polish
king,
Sigismund
III., and was strong enough to
ii., compel Shuiski to
abdicate; but as soon as the throne was vacant Sigismund put
forward as a candidate his own son,
Wladislaus. To this latter the people of
Moscow swore allegiance on condition of his maintaining Orthodoxy
and granting certain rights, and on this understanding the Polish
troops were allowed to occupy the city and the Kremlin. Then
Sigismund unveiled his real plan, which was to obtain the throne
not for his son but for himself. This scheme did not please any of
the contending factions and it roused the anti-Catholic fanaticism
of the masses. At the same time it was displeasing to the Swedes,
who had become rivals of the Poles on the Baltic coast, and they
started a false Dimitri of their own in Novgorod.
Russia was thus in a very critical condition. The throne was
vacant, the great nobles quarrelling among themselves, the Catholic
Poles in the Kremlin of Moscow, the Protestant Swedes in Novgorod,
and enormous bands of brigands everywhere. The severity of the
crisis produced a remedy, in the form of a patriotic rising of the
masses under the leadership of a
butcher called Minin and a Prince Pozharski. In
a short time the invaders were expelled, and a Grand National
Assembly elected as tsar Michael
Romanov, the young son of the metropolitan
Philaret, who was connected
by marriage with the late dynasty.
During the reign of Michael (1613-45) the new dynasty came to be
accepted by all classes, and the country recovered to some extent
from the disorders and exhaustion
-4 f
r om which
it had suffered so severely; but it was not
1613-45. y i
strong enough to pursue at once an aggressive foreign policy, and
the tsar prudently determined to make peace with Sweden and
conclude an
armistice of
fourteen years with Poland. At the conclusion of the armistice in
1632, during a short
interregnum in Poland, he attempted to
avenge past injuries and recover lost territory; but the campaign
was not successful, and in 1634 he signed a definitive treaty by no
means favourable to Russia. That
lesson was laid to heart, and he subsequently
maintained a purely defensive attitude. As a precaution against
Tatar invasions he founded fortified towns on his southern
frontiers - Tambov,
Kozlov,
Penza and Simbirsk; but when the Don Cossacks offered him Azov,
which they had captured from the Turks, and a National Assembly,
convoked for the purpose of considering the question, were in
favour of accepting it as a means of increasing Russian influence
on the Black Sea, he decided that the town should be restored to
the
sultan, much to the
disappointment of its captors. In the reign of Michael's successor,
Alexius (1645-76), the country
recovered its strength so rapidly that the tsar was tempted to
revive the energetic aggressive policy and put forward claims to
Livonia, Lithuania and Little Russia, but he was obliged to
moderate his pretensions. Livonia continued to be under Swedish
rule, and Lithuania remained united with Poland. Some advantages,
however, were obtained. Smolensk and Chernigov were definitely
incorporated in the tsardom of Muscovy, and great progress was made
towards the absorption of Little Russia. Roughly speaking, Little
Russia, otherwise called the Ukraine, may be described as the basin
of the Dnieper southward of the 51st parallel of latitude. In the
16th century it was a thinly populated region inhabited chiefly by
Cossacks, speaking the so-called Little Russian
dialect, and until 1569 it formed nominally
part of Lithuania, but was practically independent. In that year,
when Lithuania and Poland were permanently united, it fell under
Polish rule, and the Polish government considered it necessary to
tame the wild inhabitants and bring them under regular
administration. For this decision there were good reasons, for
those turbulent sons of the steppe paid no taxes and were much
given to
brigandage,
and their raiding propensities occasionally created international
difficulties with the khan of the Crimea and the sultan of Turkey.
It was proposed, therefore; in 1576, that 6000 families should be
registered as a militia under a Polish
Hetman for the protection of the country against
Tatar raids, and that the remainder of the inhabitants should be
assimilated to the ordinary peasants of Poland. This arrangement
was very distasteful to all classes. The registered Cossacks
objected to being placed under a Hetman not freely chosen by
themselves, and those who were not included in the militia objected
still more strongly to the prospect of being reduced to the
miserable condition of Polish serfs. To escape this danger many of
them moved down the river and settled on the waste lands beyond the
rapids. Here, about 1590, was founded an independent military
colony called the
Setch,
the members of which, recognizing no authority but that of their
own elected officers, lived by fishing, hunting and making raids on
the Tatars, and were always ready to assist their less fortunate
countrymen in resisting Polish aggression. For half a century the
struggle between the two races went on with varying success, but on
the whole the Polish government proved stronger than its
insubordinate subjects, and about 1638 it seemed to have attained
its object. Polish proprietors settled in large numbers on the
Cossack territory, and great efforts were made, with the assistance
of the
Jesuits, to bring the
Orthodox population under papal authority. But for both proprietors
and Jesuits a surprise was in
store. Threatened seriously in their liberty and
their faith, the people rose with greater enthusiasm than before,
and a general insurrection, in which the peasants joined, spread
over the whole country under the leadership of
Bogdan
Chmielnicki or Khmelnitski (q.v.), whose name is still
remembered in the Ukraine. As in all previous insurrections the
Poles proved stronger in the field, and Khmelnitski in desperation
sought foreign assistance, first in Constantinople and then in
Moscow. For some time Tsar Alexius hesitated, because he knew that
intervention could
entail a
war with Poland, but after consulting a National Assembly on the
subject, he decided to take Little Russia under his protection, and
in January 1654 a great Cossack assembly ratified the arrangement,
on the understanding that a large part of the old local
autonomy should be preserved.
In the expected war with Poland, which followed quickly, the
Russians were so successful that the arrangement was upheld; but it
was soon found that the Cossacks, though they professed unbounded
devotion to the Orthodox tsar, disliked Muscovite, quite as much as
Polish, interference in their internal affairs, and some of their
leaders were in favour of substituting federation with Poland for
annexation by Russia. In these circumstances the tsar was induced
to accept a compromise, and signed in 1667 the treaty of
Andrussovo, by which the territory in dispute was partitioned and
the middle course of the Dnieper became the frontier between Russia
and Poland.
In the reign of Alexius a conflict took place between the tsar
and the patriarch, which is often described as a conflict between
Church and State, and which illustrates the relations between the
temporal and the spiritual power in Russian state-organization.
Until the beginning of the 17th century the Byzantine tradition
that in all matters outside the sphere of
dogma the ecclesiastical is subordinate to the
civil power had been observed in Russia; but the traditional
conceptions had been to some extent undermined during the reign of
Michael, when the metropolitan Philaret, who was the tsar's father
(
vide supra), became patriarch and was associated with his
son in the government on a footing of equality. Like the tsar, he
had the official title of " Great Lord " (
veliki gosudar),
and he had his palace, his court-dignitaries, his
retinue, his boyars and his
officials all organized on the model of those of the sovereign.
Without his assent and blessing no important decisions were taken,
all state documents emanating from the highest authority bore his
signature, and he was
regarded, both in the official world and by the xxru. 2 9 public
generally, as the tsar's equal in rank and dignity. His immediate
successors, being men of humble origin and submissive character,
made no pretensions to such an exalted position, but when the
haughty, ambitious and energetic Nikon, who enjoyed in large
measure the
affection
and favour of the devout Tsar Alexius, became patriarch, he took
Philaret as his model, and propounded, like the popes in western
Europe, the doctrine that the spiritual is higher than the temporal
power, the former corresponding to the sun and the latter to the
moon in the
firmament. In accordance with this view he
declared that the patriarch was the
image of Christ, the head of the Church, and was
therefore subject to no earthly authority, and he complained of the
tsar's interference in ecclesiastical affairs. His pretensions and
his haughty dictatorial manner at last exhausted the tsar's
patience, and he was formally
deposed and exiled to a monastery. As no voice was raised in his
defence and the decision of the ecclesiastical council which
condemned him was universally accepted without protest, we must
conclude that the conflict was not really between Church and State
but simply between the haughty, ambitious Patriarch Nikon and the
devout, long-suffering Tsar Alexius. The incident afforded a new
proof, where no proof was required, that the autocratic power in
Russia was supreme. In order to prevent such incidents in future,
Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate altogether, and
entrusted the administration of the Church to a synod entirely
dependent on the government.
Much more important in its consequences was Nikon's activity as
an ecclesiastical reformer. During the Russian Dark Ages certain
clerical errors had crept into the liturgical books
Reforms
a nd certain peculiarities had been adopted in the ritual.
of Nikon. p p These had been detected and pointed out by
learned ecclesiastics of Kiev, where some of the ancient learning
of
Byzantium had been
preserved, and Nikon determined to make the necessary corrections.
He determined also to introduce into the Church many desirable
reforms. His project was approved by an ecclesiastical council and
was supported by the tsar, but it met with violent opposition from
a large section of the clergy, and it alarmed the ignorant masses,
who regarded any alterations in the ritual, however insignificant
they might be, as heretical and very dangerous to salvation. When
put into execution the project produced in the Russian Church a
great schism and numerous fantastic sects. The cruel persecutions
instituted by the authorities with a view to securing conformity
increased the number and fanaticism of the schismatics and
heretics, and created among them a widespread belief that the reign
of Antichrist, foretold in the
Apocalypse, was at hand. In support of this
idea, independently of the ecclesiastical innovations, many
significant facts could be adduced. Numerous foreigners had been
allowed to settle in Moscow and to build for themselves a heretical
church, and their strange unholy customs had been adopted by not a
few courtiers and great dignitaries. Matveyev, the most influential
of the boyars, had married a foreigner who conversed freely with
her husband's male friends, contrary to the Muscovite notions of
respectability and decorum, and his house, in which the tsar was a
frequent visitor, was furnished and decorated in foreign fashion.
Books on mundane subjects, not at all conducive to the spiritual
edification of the faithful, were read by the tsar's counsellors,
and a
theatre had been
erected, in which the tsar often witnessed very unedifying dramas
and ballets. Worst of all, the Orthodox tsar occasionally abandoned
the decorous flowing
robes of
his venerated ancestors, and appeared publicly in the unseemly
costume of heretical
foreigners, whilst his consort, when carried through the streets in
a
litter, did not conceal her
face from the public gaze. Such innovations troubled deeply the
pious souls of the conservative Muscovites, and confirmed them in
their repugnance to accept the ecclesiastical reforms. Though this
original fanaticism gradually cooled and the rigorists had to make
many concessions to the exigencies of practical life, a large
section of the Russian people remained outside the official fold,
so that at the present day, if we may credit the most competent
authorities, the schismatics and heretics number more than twelve
millions.
While the Muscovites of the upper classes were thus beginning to
abandon their old oriental habits, their government was preparing
to make a political
evolution of a similar kind.
F o i Notwithstanding the efforts of the Poles and the
Military Orders to exclude Russia from the shores of the Baltic and
keep her in a state of isolation, she was coming slowly into closer
relations with central and western Europe. The emperor, the
governments of England,
Holland, France and Sweden,
and even the Grand Turk made advances to the tsar. Some of them
wished to gain him as an ally against their rivals, whilst others
hoped to obtain from him commercial privileges and permission to
trade directly with Persia. The political and the commercial
proposals were alike received with coldness, because the native
diplomatists had aims which could not be reconciled completely with
the policy of any other country, and the native merchants were
afraid of foreign competition. The negotiations gave, therefore,
little tangible result, but they helped to prepare the way for the
new order of things which was soon to be introduced by Alexius's
son, Peter the Great.
Before reaching the new order of things, the country had to pass
through an internal crisis similar to that which followed the death
of Ivan the Terrible, but not nearly so severe. Alexius had been
twice married and had left several children by each of his wives,
and, as generally happened in such cases, a struggle for power
ensued between the two rival families. The late tsar's eldest son,
Theodore, was weak in health and died
Theodore without
male issue after an uneventful reign of six
III.. years
(1676-82). As the second son, Ivan, next in
1676-82. the
order of succession, was almost an
imbecile, the third son, Peter, born of the
second marriage, was proclaimed tsar, and his maternal relations
became the dominant faction, but their triumph was of very short
duration. An ambitious, energetic sister of Ivan, well known in
Russian history as
Sophia
Alexeyevna,instigated the
stryeltsi(strelitz), as the
troops
Sophia of the unreformed standing army were called,
to upset
Alexey- the arrangement. After making a tumult in
the Krem-
evna. lin and assassinating several of the men
in power, they insisted that Ivan should be proclaimed tsar
conjointly with
Ivan
V. Peter, and that Sophia should act as
regent during the (IL), minority of the two
young sovereigns. She accepted
1682-89. unhesitatingly the
difficult and dangerous post, and ruled autocratically for seven
years (1682-89), but this did not satisfy her ambition. Having
discovered that Peter, who had reached the age of seventeen, was
thinking of taking the administration into his own hands, she
conspired against him with the commander of the
stryeltsi
and some of his maternal relations; but she was circumvented by the
rival faction and interned in a
convent, and Peter's mother was put in her
place. The importance of these incidents, which are very
characteristic of political life in the tsardom of Muscovy, will
appear in the sequel.
If Peter really thought of taking the administration into his
own hands, he very soon abandoned the idea and returned to the
irregular suburban life he had led during his half-
Peter
the sister's regency - associating with foreigners who could
Great, teach him the mechanical arts of the West, drilling
1689- troops, building and sailing boats, forming projects
1725. for the creation of a great navy, indulging publicly
Bacchanalian revels and boisterous amusements not at all to the
taste of his pious countrymen, and appearing in Moscow as Orthodox
tsar only on great ceremonial occasions. Already the desire to make
his country a great naval power was becoming his ruling passion,
and when he found by experience that the White Sea, Russia's sole
maritime outlet, had great practical inconveniences as a naval
base, he revived the project of getting a firm footing on the
shores of the Black Sea or the Baltic. At first he gave the
preference to the former, and with the aid of a flotilla of small
craft, constructed on a tributary of the Don, he succeeded in
capturing Azov from the Turks. Greatly elated by this success, he
recommended to the council of boyars the construction of a powerful
fleet for carrying on war with the infidel, and he himself went
abroad to learn more about
shipbuilding and useful foreign
inventions, and to prepare diplomatically the projected crusade.
His foreign tour, during which he visited Germany, Holland,
England, France and Austria, lasted nearly a year and a half, and
was suddenly interrupted, when on his way from Vienna to Venice to
study the construction of war-galleys, by the alarming news that
the turbulent
stryeltsi of Moscow had mutinied anew with
the intention of placing Sophia on the throne. On arriving in
Moscow he found that the
mutiny had been suppressed and the ringleaders
punished, but he considered it necessary to reopen the
investigation and act with exemplary severity. Of the surviving
mutineers over twelve hundred were executed, some of them by his
own hand, and the entire corps was disbanded.
From this moment may be dated the personal reign of Peter, for
he now began to direct personally all branches of the
administration, and governed with indefatigable vigour for
twenty-seven years, during which he greatly increased the area and
profoundly modified the internal condition of his country. At first
he concentrated his attention on foreign affairs. During his
foreign tour he had discovered that the idea of a grand crusade
against the infidel was irrealizable, for France was, according to
her traditional policy, the ally of the sultan, Austria wished to
avoid trouble on her eastern frontier in order to devote her
energies to the question
of the Spanish
succession, and all the other countries which he wished to draw
into the coalition had good reasons of their own for desiring the
maintenance of peace in eastern Europe. For his Baltic. schemes, on
the contrary, he had found the ground well prepared. During a
halt of a few days in Poland on his
way back from Vienna, King Augustus had explained to him a project
for partitioning the transBaltic provinces of Sweden, by which
Poland should recover Livonia and annex Esthonia, Russia should
obtain Ingria and Karelia, and Denmark should take possession of
Holstein. As Sweden was known
to be exhausted by the long wars of
Gustavus Adolphus and his
successors, and weakened by internal dissensions, the dismemberment
seemed an easy matter, and Peter embarked on the scheme with a
light heart; but his illusions were quickly dispelled by the
eccentric young Swedish
king,
Charles XII.,
who arrived suddenly in Esthonia and completely routed the Russian
army before Narva. Thus began the so-called Northern War, which
lasted intermittently for more than twenty years, and was
terminated by the treaty of Nystad (Sept. Io, 1721). By that treaty
Peter acquired not only Ingria and Karelia, as originally
contemplated, but also Livonia, Esthonia and part of Finland. The
problem of obtaining a firm footing on the Baltic coast, on which
Ivan the Terrible had squandered his resources to no purpose, was
now solved satisfactorily.
Peter's other favourite scheme, that of acquiring the command of
the Black Sea, was as far from realization as ever. In the midst of
the Northern War, shortly after the great Russian victory of
Poltava (1709), the sultan, at the instigation of Swedish and
French agents, determined to recover Azov, and made great military
preparations for that purpose. Having annihilated at Poltava the
army of Charles XII., Peter was not at all indisposed to renew the
struggle with Turkey, and began the campaign in the confident hope
of making extensive conquests; but he had only got as far as the
Pruth when he found himself surrounded by a great Turkish army,
and, in order to extricate himself from his critical position, he
had to sign a humiliating treaty by which Azov and other conquests
were restored to the sultan. His dreams of freeing the Christians
from the yoke of the infidel had to be abandoned, and the conquest
of the northern shores of the Black Sea was postponed till the
reign of Catherine II.
Those tedious and exhausting wars did not prevent Peter from
attending to internal affairs, and he displayed as a reformer even
more vigour and tenacity than as a general in
Greats the
field. His first reforms were connected with the army. Several of
his immediate predecessors had come to recognize that Russia, with
her antiquated military organization, was unable to cope with her
Western neighbours, and had begun to organize, with the help of
foreigners, a military force more in accordance with modern
requirements; but the progress made in that direction had been slow
and unsatisfactory. Unlike his predecessors, Peter was in a
hurry to realize his plans, and he
set to work at once. In less than two years from the time of
disbanding the
stryeltsi he contrived to create an army of
40,000 men. This army, it is true, was so inefficient that it was
completely routed by the Swedish king with a most inferior force,
but it was improved gradually until it learned to conquer its
Swedish opponents. To accomplish such a feat it was necessary, of
course, to expend large sums of money; and as the country could ill
bear an increase of taxation, the whole financial system had to be
improved and the natural resources of the country had to be
developed. At the same time the military and financial requirements
dislocated the local and central administration, and consequently a
series of radical administrative reforms had to be undertaken. Thus
one reform led to another; but Peter was not dismayed by the
magnitude of the task, and worked vigorously in all departments
with a
sublime disregard for
the clamour of reactionary opponents and for the feelings and
prejudices of his subjects in general. A prudent ruler in his
position would have sought to preserve the outward forms while
changing the inner substance, but Peter was not at all prudent in
that sense. Very often he wantonly provoked opposition, as when he
shaved off his
beard and
compelled his chief officials to do likewise, though he well knew
that the operation was regarded by the ignorant masses and the
pious of all ranks as a sinful defacing of the image of God. In his
eyes the beard was a
symbol of
the old regime, and as such it must be removed. Reckless of
consequences, he swept away the venerated ceremonial formalities
which his ancestors had scrupulously observed, openly scoffed at
ancient usage, habitually dressed in foreign costume, and generally
chose foreign heretics as his boon companions. In adopting foreign
innovations, he showed, like the Japanese of the present day, no
sentimental preference for any particular nation, and was ready to
borrow from the Germans, Dutch, English, Swedes or French whatever
seemed best suited for his purpose. The innovations, it must be
admitted, did not prove so efficient as he expected, because human
nature and traditional habits cannot be changed as quickly as
institutions. When the Boyar Duma became the Senate, and the
Prikazi or administrative departments were organized under
the name of Colleges, and when every important town was endowed
with a
Rathhaus, a Polizeimeister, gilds, aldermen, and all the municipal
paraphernalia of
western Europe, the vices of the old institutions survived in the
new. Notwithstanding the changes in organization and terminology,
the officials remained ignorant, indolent, careless, indifferent to
the public welfare, high-handed and extortionate, and the local
self-government which was intended to enlighten and control them
proved sadly wanting in vitality and practically worthless. So
inefficient, indeed, were the reforms as a whole, and so unsuited
to the national character and customs, that the Slavophil critics
of a later date could maintain plausibly the paradoxical thesis
that in regard to internal administration Peter was anything but a
national benefactor. However that may be, it must be confessed even
by Slavophils that he dragged his countrymen, more by force than by
persuasion, from the paths of traditional routine and pushed them
along with all his might on the broad road of progress in the
modern sense of the term. Abandoning the ancient Muscovite capital,
where many influential personages were fanatically hostile to his
innovations and not a few of the superstitious inhabitants regarded
him with horror as Antichrist, he built at the mouth of the Neva a
new capital which was to serve as " a
window through which his people might look into
Europe "; and laying aside the national
St title of tsar
he proclaimed himself (1711) emperor
Peters- (Imperator) of all Russia - much to
the surprise and indignation of foreign diplomatic chancelleries,
which resented the audacity of a semi-barbarous potentate in
claiming to be equal in rank with the head of the Holy Roman
Empire. Gradually, however, the chancelleries had to withdraw their
protests, for it came to be generally recognized that the
semibarbarian, who died at the early age of fifty-three, had
transformed the oriental tsardom of Muscovy into a state of the
Western type and had made it a powerful member of the European
family of nations (see
Peter I.).
IV.
The Modern Empire. - On the death of Peter (1725)
the internal tranquillity and progress of the empire were again
seriously threatened by the uncertainty of the order of succession,
and the autocratic power which he had wielded so vigorously passed
into the hands of a series of weak, indolent sovereigns who were
habitually guided by personal caprice and the advice of intriguing
favourites rather than by serious political considerations. During
this period, which lasted from 1725 to 1762, the male line of the
Romanov dynasty became extinct, and the succession passed to
various members of the female line, which intermarried with German
princes. In this way German influence was enormously increased, and
was represented by men of considerable capacity holding the highest
official positions, such as
Biren, Miinnich and Ostermann. The
main events of the period may be summarized very briefly. Peter, by
his first marriage, had a son, the unhappy
cesarevich Alexius (q.v.), who figures more
largely in imaginative literature than in history - a
narrow-minded, obstinate, pious youth, who had no sympathy with his
father's violent innovations, and was completely under the
influence of the old Muscovite reactionary faction. Intimidated by
the paternal anger and threats he took refuge in Austria, and when
he had been induced by illusory promises to return to Russia he was
tried for high treason by a special tribunal, and after being
subjected to torture died in prison (1718). To avert the danger of
a man of this type succeeding to the throne Peter made a law by
which the reigning sovereign might choose his successor according
to his own judgment, and two years later he caused his second wife,
Catherine Catherine, the daughter of a Lithuanian peasant,
to 1 , be crowned with all due solemnity, " in recognition of the
courageous services rendered by her to the Russian Empire." This
gave Catherine a certain right to the throne at her husband's
death, and her claims were supported by Peter's most influential
coadjutors, especially by Prince Menshikov, an ambitious man of
humble origin who had been raised by his patron to the highest
offices of state. On the other hand the great nobles of more
conservative tendencies wished to get the young son of the
cesarevich Alexius made emperor under their own control. The former
faction triumphed, and Catherine reigned for about a year and a
half, after which the son of the cesarevich Alexius,
Peter II., occupied the
throne from 1727 to 1730. At first he was under the tutelage of
Menshikov, who wished him to marry his daughter, but he soon
contrived, with the aid of the Dolgorukis and other old families,
to get his imperious tutor arrested and exiled to Siberia. The
Dolgorukis and their friends thus came into power, and on the death
of Peter II. in 1730 they offered the throne to Anne, duchess of
Courland, a daughter of Ivan V., elder brother of Peter the Great,
on condition of her signing a formal document by which the seat of
government should be transferred from St Petersburg to Moscow, and
the autocratic power should be limited and controlled by a grand
council composed of their own faction. Anne accepted the condition
and became empress, but when she discovered that the attempt to
limit her powers in favour of a small conservative
oligarchy was extremely
unpopular among all classes, she submitted the question to an
assembly of Boo ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries, and at their
request the unlimited autocratic rule was re-established. Her reign
(1730-40) was a regime of methodical German despotism on the lines
laid down by her uncle, Peter the Great, and as she was naturally
indolent and much addicted to frivolous amusements, the
administration was directed by her favourite Biren (q.v.) and other
men of German origin. Having no male issue, she chose as her
successor the
infant son of
her niece,
Anna Leopoldovna, duchess of
Brunswick, and at her death
the child was duly proclaimed emperor, under the name of
Ivan VI., but in little more
than a year he was dethroned by the partisans of the Princess
Elizabeth, a daughter of
Peter the Great and
Catherine I. As a true daughter of the
great Russian reformer, Elizabeth (1741-61) relegated the German
element to a subordinate position in the administration and gave
her confidence to genuine Russians like Bestuzhev,
Vorontsov, Razumovski (her
morganatic husband) and the Shuvalovs. Her hatred of Germans showed
itself likewise in her persistent struggle with
Frederick the Great, which
cost Russia 300,000 men and 30 millions of roubles - an enormous
sum for those days - but in the choice of a successor she could not
follow her natural inclinations, for among the few descendants of
Michael Romanov there was no one, even in the female line, who
could be called a genuine Russian. She proclaimed, therefore, as
heir-apparent the son of her deceased elder sister Anna, Charles
Peter
Ulrich, duke of
HolsteinGottorp, a German in character, habits and religion, and
tried to Russianize him by making him adopt the Eastern Orthodox
faith and live in St Petersburg during the whole of her reign; but
her well-meant efforts were singularly unsuccessful. Impervious to
Russian influence, he remained true to his original nationality,
and by his undisguised aversion to everything in his adopted
country and his passionate, childish admiration of Frederick the
Great, he made himself so unpopular that within a few months of his
accession, in December 1761, he was dethroned and assassinated by
the partisans of his ambitious and able consort, the famous
Catherine II.1 During the long reign of Catherine II. (1762-96)
Russia made rapid progress in civilization, and came to be fully
recognized as one of the Great Powers. Coming after a series of
incompetent rulers, the German princess
11., proved
herself a worthy successor to Peter the Great both in home and in
foreign affairs; but she was not a mere imitator. Peter had
endeavoured to import from western Europe the essentials of good
government and such of the useful arts as were required for the
development of the natural resources of the country; Catherine did
likewise, but she did not restrict herself to purely utilitarian
aims in the narrower sense of the term. She strove to impart also
something of the refinement and ornamental attributes of Western
civilization, and aspired to raise her adopted fatherland
intellectually and artistically to the west-European level. This
new departure she lost no time in proclaiming to the world. Within
a few months of her accession, having heard that the publication of
the famous French
Encyclopedie was in danger of being
stopped by the French government on account of its irreligious
spirit, she proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great
work in Russia under her protection. Four years later she
endeavoured to embody in a legislative form the principles of
enlightenment which she had imbibed from the study of the French
philosophers. A Grand Commission, which might be called a
consultative parliament, composed of 652 members of all classes -
officials, nobles, burghers and peasants - and 1 To assist the
reader in threading the genealogical
maze briefly described above, the following
tabular statement is inserted (I.) Michael, founder of the Romanov
dynasty (1613-45). (II.) Alexius (2645-76).
(III.) Theodore (IV.) Ivan V. Sophia (IV.) Peter I.+(V.)
Catherine I.
(1676-82). (1682-). (Regent 2682-89). (1682-1725).
(1725-27).
Catherine, (VII.) Anne Cesarevich
Ale x ius Anna, (IX.) Elizabeth duchess of
(1730-40). duchess of (1741-61)..
Anna Leopoldovna, (VI.) Peter II. (X.)
Peter III.-{-(XI.) Catherine duchess of
Brunswick. (1727-30). (1761-62). II. (2762-96).
(VIII.) Ivan VI. (1740-41)
II., of various
nationalities, was called together at Moscow to consider the needs
of the empire and the means of satisfying them. The instructions
for the guidance of the Assembly were prepared by the empress
herself and were, as she frankly admitted, the result of "
pillaging the philosophers of the West," especially Montesquieu and
Beccaria. As many of the democratic principles frightened her more
moderate and experienced advisers, she wisely refrained from
immediately putting them into execution. After holding more than
200 sittings the so-called Commission was dissolved without getting
beyond the
realm of theory and
pia desideria. Subsequently very important reforms were
introduced, not by the vote of an assembly, but by the
fiat of the autocratic power. The large
Adminis-
territorial units of administration created by Peter the
trative Great were broken up into so-called " governments
"
reforms. (gubernii) and further subdivided into
districts (
uyezdy), and each government was confided to
the care of a governor and a vice-governor assisted by a council. A
certain amount of local self-government was entrusted to the nobles
and the burghers, and the judicial administration was thoroughly
reorganized in an enlightened and humane spirit. The great estates
of the Church, on which were settled about a million serfs, were
secularized and assimilated with the state-domains. At one moment
the idea of emancipating all the serfs was entertained, but the
project was speedily abandoned, because it would have alienated the
nobles - the only class on which Catherine could rely for support.
To conciliate them she greatly extended the area of serfage by
making large grants of land and serfs to courtiers and public
servants who had specially distinguished themselves. About
education a great deal was spoken and written, and a certain amount
of progress was effected. Whilst primary education was neglected,
secondary schools were created in the principal towns and a Russian
Academy was founded in St Petersburg. In the imperial court, so far
as outward decorum and refinement were concerned, there was an
immense improvement, and the upper section of the old Russian
Dvorianstvo became a noblesse with French aristocratic
conceptions and ideals. A taste for
French literature spread rapidly, and
the poets and dramatists of
Paris found clever imitators in St
Petersburg.
By such means Catherine made herself very popular in the upper
ranks of society, but as a woman and a usurper who did little or
nothing to lighten the burdens of the people she failed to gain the
loyalty and devotion of the masses. In the first part of her reign
popular discontent found expression in various forms, and on one
occasion it produced a serious insurrection. In 1773 a Don Cossack
called Pugachev, who was so uneducated that he could not even sign
the manifestoes written for him, declared himself to be Peter III.,
and announced that he was going to St Petersburg to punish his
faithless wife and place his son Paul on the throne. Many believed,
or affected to believe, in the pretender, and in a short time he
gathered around him a large force of Cossacks, peasants, Tatars and
Tchuvash, swept over the basin of the lower Volga, executed
mercilessly the landed proprietors, seized and pillaged the town of
Kazan, and kept the whole country in a state of alarm for more than
a year. Finally, after a crushing defeat in which 2000 of the
insurgents were killed and 6000 taken prisoners, he was betrayed by
some of his followers and executed in Moscow. His name and exploits
still live in the popular legends, and the insurrection is often
referred to in revolutionary
pamphlets as a laudable popular protest
against tyrannical autocracy.
In foreign affairs Catherine devoted her attention mainly to
pushing forward the Russian frontier westwards and south-
Foreign wards, and as France was the traditional ally of
policy of Sweden, Poland and Turkey, she adopted at first
Cath- the so-called
systeme du Nord, that is to say, a close
erine.
alliance with Prussia, England and Denmark against France and
Austria, who had buried their traditional enmity in the famous
alliance of 1756. The first step westwards was taken in Courland,
which lay between Russian territory and the Baltic coast. At the
time of her accession the duchy was ruled by a son of the Polish
king
Augustus
III., and he gave a pretext for aggression by refusing to allow
Russian troops returning from the Seven Years' War to pass through
his territory. For this unfriendly act he was deposed and replaced
by Biren, who had previously been duke of Courland (1737-40) and
had since been an exile in Siberia and Yarosla y. Under Biren
(1763-69) and his son and successor (1769-95), as nominees of
Catherine, Courland was completely under Russian influence until
1795, when it was formally incorporated with the empire. The next
country to feel the expansive tendencies of Russia was Poland,
which had now very little
Poland. power of resistance.
Whilst Russia, Austria, Prussia and France were becoming powerful
monarchies with centralized administration, Poland had remained a
weak feudal republic with an elected king chosen under foreign
influence and fettered by constitutional restrictions. All
political authority was in the hands of turbulent nobles who
quarrelled among themselves, who were always inclined to submit the
questions at issue to the arbitrament of arms, and who did not
scruple to invite foreign
powers to intervene on their behalf. The middle classes, which were
making other countries rich and powerful, existed only in an
embryonic condition. Instead of a wellorganized army of the modern
type there was merely an undisciplined militia composed almost
exclusively of irregular cavalry; and the national defences as a
whole were so weak that, in the opinion of such a competent
authority as
Maurice of
Saxony, the country might easily be conquered by
a regular army of 48,000 men. Here was a tempting field for the
application of Catherine's aggressive policy, and if she had had to
deal merely with the Poles she would have had an easy task.
Unfortunately for the success of her schemes she had to reckon with
stronger states which were anxious to check the Russian advance,
and which were determined, in the event of aggression, to have a
share of the
plunder.
Frederick the Great was at that moment impatient to extend and
consolidate his kingdom by getting possession of the basin of the
lower Vistula, which separated eastern Prussia from the rest of his
dominions, while Austria had also claims on Polish territory and
would certainly not submit to be excluded by her two rivals. In
these circumstances Catherine hesitated to bring matters to a
crisis, but her hand was forced by Frederick, and in 1772 the first
partition of Poland took
place without any very strenuous resistance on the part of the
victim. This national disaster opened the eyes of many Polish
patriots to the necessity of changing radically the old order of
things, and an attempt was made by them to remove some of the more
glaring absurdities of the existing constitution: the throne was
declared to be hereditary, the
liberum veto by which any petty noble could annul the
most important decision of the national assembly was abolished, the
royal authority was greatly strengthened, and the towns were
empowered to send deputies to the Diet (1791). Such salutary
reforms were naturally unwelcome to the aggressive neighbours who
wished to preserve the traditional anarchy in order to have new
facilities for intervention, and as Russia had signed with the
puppet-king in 1768 a treaty by which the constitution could not be
modified without her consent, she had a plausible ground for
protest. She waited, however, until a deputation of the
malcontents, who regretted the loss of
liberum veto and
who were afraid that the party of reform might undertake the
emancipation of the serfs, came to St Petersburg and asked for
support in defence of the ancient liberties. Then an imperial
manifesto reminding the Poles of the treaty of 1768 was issued and
a large Russian force entered the Ukraine. This led to the second
partition (1793), by which Russia obtained the eastern provinces
with three millions of inhabitants. Even now the work of spoliation
was not complete. When the patriots under Koscziusko made a
desperate effort to recover the national independence the struggle
produced a third partition (1795), by which the remainder of the
kingdom was again divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Thus
Poland disappeared for a time from the map of Europe.
Russia's advance westward raised indirectly
the
Eastern Question, because it threatened two of France's
traditional allies, Sweden and Poland, and Choiseul considered that
the best means of checkmating Catherine's
7l aryl,
aggressive schemes was to incite France's third traditional ally,
Turkey, to attack her. This was not a difficult matter, because
the Sublime
Porte had many things to complain of in the past and had good
reason to fear aggression in the near future. War was accordingly
declared in 1768, but it proved disastrous for the sultan; and he
had to sign in 1774 the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, which gave
Russia a firm hold on the Black Sea and the lower Danube (see
Turkey:
History) . The
Tatars of the Bug, of the Crimea and of the Kuban were liberated
from the
suzerainty of
the Porte; Azov, Kinburn and all the fortified places of the Crimea
were ceded to Russia; the Bosphorus and
Dardanelles were opened to Russian merchant
vessels; and Russian ambassadors obtained the right to intervene in
favour of the inhabitants of the Danubian principalities. Ten years
later the semblance of independence which was left to the khans of
the Crimea was destroyed and the peninsula formally annexed to the
empire. The peace concluded at Kuchuk-Kainarji was not of long
duration. Catherine had conceived an ambitious plan of solving
radically the Eastern Question by partitioning Turkey as she and
her allies had partitioned Poland, and she had persuaded the
emperor
Joseph II. to
take part in the scheme. It was intended that Russia should take
what remained of the northern coast of the Black Sea, Austria
should annex the Turkish provinces contiguous to her territory, the
Danubian principalities and Bessarabia should be formed into an
independent kingdom called
Dacia, the Turks should be expelled from Europe,
the Byzantine empire should be resuscitated, and the grand-duke
Constantine, second son of the Russian heir-apparent, should be
placed on the throne of the Palaeologi. Rumours of this gigantic
scheme reached Constantinople, and as Catherine's menacing attitude
left little doubt as to her aggressive intentions the Porte
presented an
ultimatum
and finally declared war (1787). Fortune again favoured the Russian
arms, but as Austria was less successful and signed a separate
peace at
Sistova in 1791,
Catherine did not obtain much material advantage from the campaign.
By the peace of
Jassy, signed in
January 1792, she retained Ochakov and the coast between the Bug
and the Dniester, and she secured certain privileges for the
Danubian principalities, but the Turks remained in Constantinople,
and the realization of the famous Greek project, as it was termed,
had to be indefinitely postponed. During the first years of
the French
Revolution Catherine's sympathy with philosophic liberalism
rapidly evaporated, and the European sovereigns to the democratic
movement; but she carefully abstained from joining the Coalition,
and waited patiently for the moment when the complications in
western Europe would give her an opportunity of solving
independently the Eastern Question in accordance with Russian
interests. That moment never came. In November 1796, when the
country was not yet prepared to enter on a decisive struggle with
Turkey, Catherine died at the age of sixty-six, and was succeeded
by her son Paul, whom she had kept during her long reign in a state
of semi-captivity.
The short reign of Paul (1796-1801) resembled in many points the
still shorter one of his father, Peter III. Both sovereigns. were
childishly wayward and capriciously autocratic; both were
recklessly indifferent to the feelings, convictions and wishes of
those around them; both took a passionate interest in the minutiae
of military affairs; as Peter had conceived a boundless admiration
for Frederick the Great, so Paul conceived a similar admiration for
Napoleon, and both suddenly
reversed the national policy to suit this feeling; both were
singularly blind to the consequences of their foolish conduct; and
both fell victims to court conspiracies which could be in some
measure justified, or at least excused, on patriotic grounds.
Paul left no deep, permanent
mark on Russian history. In
internal affairs he wished to undo what his mother had done, but
his impulsive, incoherent efforts in that direction merely
dislocated the administrative mechanism without producing any
tangible results. In foreign affairs he displayed the same
capriciousness and want of perseverance. After proclaiming his
intention of conferring on his subjects the blessings of peace, he
joined in 1798 an Anglo-Austrian coalition against France; but when
Austria paid more attention to her own interests than to the
interests of monarchical institutions in general, and when England
did not respect the independence of
Malta, which he had taken under his protection,
he succumbed to the artful blandishments of Napoleon and formed
with him a plan for ruining the
British empire by the conquest of
India. Having roused, by what ought
perhaps to be called his
insanity, the enmity, distrust and fear of all
around him, including some members of his own family, he was
assassinated on the night of the 23rd to 24th of March 1801, and
was succeeded by his son
Alexander I.
The early part of Alexander's reign (1801-25) was a period of
generous ideas and liberal reforms. Under the influence of his
Swiss tutor, Frederick Cesar de Laharpe, he
Alex- had
imbibed many of the democratic ideas of the time, and he aspired to
put them in practice, with the assistance at first of three young
friends, Novosiltsov,
Adam Czartoryski and
Strogonov, who were his intimate counsellors and were popularly
known as the Triumvirate, and later of
Mikhail Speranski.
Some of the more oppressive measures of the previous reign were
abolished; the clergy, the nobles and the merchants were exempted
from corporal punishment; the central organs of administration were
modernized and the Council of the Empire was created; the idea of
granting a constitution was academically discussed; great schemes
for educating the people were entertained; parish schools,
gymnasia, training colleges and ecclesiastical seminaries were
founded; the existing universities of Moscow, Vilna and Dorpat were
reorganized and new ones founded in Kazan and Kharkov; the great
work of serf-emancipation was begun in the Baltic provinces. In all
these schemes Alexander took a keen personal interest; but his
enthusiasm was soon cooled by practical difficulties, and his
attention became more and more engrossed by foreign affairs.
At that time, in respect of foreign affairs, Russia was entering
on a new phase of her history. Hitherto she had confined her
efforts to territorial expansion in eastern Europe and in Asia, and
she had sought foreign alliances merely as temporary expedients to
facilitate the attainment of that object. Now she was beginning to
consider herself a powerful member of the European family of
nations, and she aspired to exercise a predominant influence in all
European questions. This tendency was already shown by Catherine
when she created the League of Neutrals as an arm against the naval
supremacy of England, and by Paul when he insisted that his peace
negotiations with
Bonaparte should be regarded as part of a
general European pacification, in which he must be consulted.
Alexander insisted still more strongly on this claim, and in the
convention which he concluded with the First
Consul in October 1801 it was
agreed that the maintenance of a just equilibrium between Austria
and Prussia should be
Napoleon. taken as an
invariable principle in the plans of both parties, that the
integrity of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies should be respected,
that the duke of
Wurttemberg should receive in Germany an
indemnity proportionate to
his losses, that the dominions of the elector of
Bavaria should be preserved intact, and that
the independence of the
Ionian Islands should not be violated.
Having obtained these important concessions the tsar imagined for a
moment that in any further territorial changes he would be
consulted and his advice allowed due weight, and he seems even to
have indulged in the hope that the affairs of Europe might be
directed by himself and his new ally. His illusion was soon
dispelled, because the aims and policy of the two potentates were
utterly irreconcilable. Whilst she did all in her power to
stimulate the hostility of the one strove to erect bulwarks against
French aggression, the other was preparing the ground for fresh
annexations. During 1803-4 the
breach between the two rivals widened, because
Napoleon became more and more aggressive and unceremonious in Italy
and Germany. Before the end of 1803 Alexander had come to perceive
the necessity of resisting him energetically in order to save
Europe from complete subjection, and in August 1804 he recognized
that an armed conflict was inevitable. It broke out in the
following year, and after the battles of
Austerlitz (December 1805) and
Friedland (June 1807), in
which the Russians were completely defeated, the two sovereigns had
their famous interviews at
Tilsit, at which they not only made peace but
agreed to divide the world between them, with a sublime
indifference to the interests of other states. The grandiose
project was at once vaguely outlined in three formal documents, to
the intense satisfaction of both parties, and on both sides there
was much rejoicing at the conclusion of such an auspicious
alliance; but the diplomatic
honeymoon was not of long duration. The
mutual assurances of unbounded confidence, admiration and sympathy,
if there was any genuine sincerity in them, represented merely a
transient state of feeling. Napoleon, who could brook no equal, was
nourishing the secret hope that his confederate might be used as a
docile subordinate in the realization of his own plans, and the
confederate soon came to suspect that he was being duped. His
suspicions were intensified by the hostile criticisms of the Tilsit
arrangement among his own subjects and by the arbitrary conduct of
his ally, who continued his aggressions in reckless fashion as if
he were sole master of Europe. The sovereigns of
Sardinia,
Naples,
Portugal and
Spain were dethroned, the
pope was driven from Rome, the
Rhine Confederation was extended till France
obtained a footing on the Baltic, the grand-duchy of Warsaw was
reorganized and strengthened, the promised evacuation of Prussia
was indefinitely postponed, an armistice between Russia and Turkey
was negotiated by French diplomacy in such a way that the Russian
troops should evacuate the Danubian principalities, which Alexander
intended to annex to his empire, and the scheme for breaking up the
Ottoman empire and ruining
England by the conquest of India, which had been one of the most
attractive baits in the Tilsit negotiations, but which had not been
formulated in the treaty, was no longer spoken of. At the same time
Napoleon threatened openly to crush Austria, and in 180 9 he
carried out his
threat by
defeating the Austrian armies at
Wagram and elsewhere, and dictating the treaty
of Schonbrunn (October 14).
Russia now remained the only unconquered power on the continent,
and it was evident that the final struggle with her could not be
long delayed. It began in 1812 by the advance of the on Moscow, and
it ended in 1815 at
Waterloo. During those three
years Alexander was the chief antagonist of Napoleon, and it was
largely due to his skill and persistency that the allies held
together and freed Europe permanently from the Napoleonic
domination. When peace was finally concluded, he had obtained that
predominant position in European politics which had been the object
of his ambition since the commencement of his reign, and he now
believed firmly that he had been chosen by
Providence to secure the happiness of the
world in general and of the European nations in particular. In the
fulfilment of this supposed mission he was not very successful,
because his conception of national happiness and the means of
obtaining it differed widely from that of the peoples whom he
wished to benefit. They had fought for freedom in order to liberate
themselves not only from the yoke of Napoleon but also from the
tyranny of their own governments, whereas he expected them to
remain submissively under the patriarchal institutions which their
native rulers imposed on them. Thus, in spite of his academic
sympathy with liberal ideas, he became, together with Metternich, a
champion of political stagnation, and co-operated willingly in the
reactionary measures against the revolutionary movements in
Germany, Italy and Spain. In the affairs of his own country he
refrained from developing and extending the liberal institutions
which he had created immediately after his accession, and he
finally adopted in all departments of administration a strongly
reactionary policy. This naturally caused profound disappointment
and dissatisfaction in the liberal section of the educated classes
and especially among the young officers of the regiments which had
spent some years in western Europe. Some of these officers had been
in touch with the revolutionary movements, and had adopted the idea
then prevalent in France, Germany and Italy that the best
instrument for assuring political progress was to be found in
secret societies. In Russia such societies began to be formed about
1816. The tsar, though he came to know of their existence,
refrained from taking repressive measures against them, and when he
died suddenly at
Taganrog
on the 1st of December 1825, two of them made an attempt to realize
their political aspirations. The heir to the throne was the late
tsar's eldest brother, Constantine, but he declined, for private
reasons, to accept the succession, and a few days elapsed before
the second brother, I.,
Nicholas, was proclaimed
emperor. Taking advantage of this short interregnum, some members
of the secret societies, mostly officers of the Guards, organized a
mutiny among the troops quartered in St Petersburg and in Podolia,
with a view to effecting a political revolution, but the movement
was easily suppressed, and the ringleaders, known subsequently as
the Decembrists, were severely punished (see
Nicholas
I.).
Nicholas was a blunt soldier incapable of comprehending his
brother's sentimental sympathy with liberalism. The Decembrists'
abortive attempt at revolution and the Polish insurrection of 1831,
which he crushed with great severity, confirmed him in his
conviction that Russia must be ruled with a strong hand. That
conviction he put into practice with extreme rigour during the
thirty years of his reign (1825-55), endeavouring by every means at
his disposal to prevent revolutionary ideas from germinating
spontaneously among his subjects and from being imported from
abroad. For this purpose he created a very severe press-censorship
and an expensive system of passports, which made it more difficult
for Russians to visit foreign countries. It would be unjust,
however, to say that he was the determined enemy of all progress.
Progress was to be made in certain directions and in a certain way.
Not only was the army to be well drilled and the fleet to be
carefully equipped, but railways were to be constructed,
river-navigation was to be facilitated, manufacturing industry was
to be developed, commerce was to be encouraged, the administration
was to be improved, the laws were to be codified and the tribunals
were to be reorganized. All this was to be done, however, under the
strict supervision and guidance of the autocratic power, with as
little aid as possible from private initiative and with no control
whatever of public opinion, because influential public opinion is
apt to produce insubordination. When the results proved
unsatisfactory, remedies were sought in increased administrative
supervision, draconian legislation and severe punishment, and no
attempt was made to get out of the vicious circle. In the last
months of his life, under the influence of a great national
disaster, the conscientious, persistent autocrat began to suspect
that his system was a mistake, but he still clung to it
obstinately. " My successor," he is reported to have said on his
death-bed, " may do as he pleases, but I cannot change ! "
This steadfast faith in autocratic methods and the exaggerated fear
of revolutionary principles were shown in foreign as well as in
home affairs. Like Alexander in the last period of his reign,
Nicholas considered himself the supreme
guardian of European order, and was ever on
the
watch to oppose revolution
in all its forms. Hence he was generally in strained relations with
France, especially in the time of
Louis Philippe, who became king not by
the grace of God but by the will of the people. During the
revolutionary ferment of 1848-49 he urged the Prussian king to
refuse the imperial crown, co-operated with the Austrian emperor in
suppressing the Hungarian insurrection, and compelled the Prussians
to withdraw their support from the insurgents in
Schleswig-Holstein. Unfortunately
for the peace of the world his habitual policy of maintaining the
existing state of things was frequently obscured and disturbed by
his desire to maintain and increase his own and his country's
prestige, influence and
territory. By the Persian War, which broke out in 1826, in
consequence of frontier disputes, he annexed the provinces of
Erivan and
Nakhichevan, and during
the whole of his reign the conquest of the Caucasus was
systematically carried on. With regard also to the Ottoman empire
his policy cannot be said to have been strictly conservative. As
protector
Nicholas of the Orthodox Christians he espoused
the cause of
L and the the rayahs in
Greece,
Servia and Rumania. Under a
Ottoman
threat of war he obtained in 1826 the Convention of
empire. Akerman, by which the autonomy of
Moldavia,Walachia and Servia was confirmed, free passage of the
straits was secured for merchant ships and disputed territory on
the Asiatic frontier was annexed, and in July 1827 he signed with
England and France the treaty of London for the solution of the
Greek question by the
mediation of the Powers. As the sultan
rejected the mediation, his fleet was destroyed by the combined
squadrons of the three Powers at Navarino; and as this " untoward
event " did not suffice to overcome his resistance, a Russian army
crossed the Danube and after two hard-fought campaigns advanced to
Adrianople. Here, on the
14th of September 1829, was signed a treaty by which the Porte
ceded to Russia the islands at the mouth of the Danube and several
districts on the Asiatic frontier, granted full liberty to Russian
navigation and commerce in the Black Sea, and guaranteed the
autonomous rights previously accorded to
Moldavia,
Walachia and Servia. By the 10th article of
the treaty, moreover, Turkey acceded to the
protocol of the 22nd of March 1829, by which
the Powers had agreed to the erection of Greece into a tributary
principality. 'This attempt of Russia to secure the sole prestige
of liberating Greece was, however, frustrated by the action of the
other Powers in putting forward the principle of the independence
of the new Greek state, with a further extension of frontiers.
The result of the war was to make Russia supreme at
Constantinople; and before long an opportunity of further
increasing her influence was created by
Mehemet Ali, the ambitious
pasha of
Egypt, who in November 1831 began a war with his
sovereign in
Syria, gained a
series of victories over the Turkish forces in
Asia Minor and threatened
Constantinople. Sultan Madmud II. after appealing in vain to Great
Britain for active assistance turned in despair to Russia. Nicholas
immediately sent his Black Sea fleet into the Bosphorus, landed on
the Asiatic shore a force of 10,000 men, and advanced another large
force towards the Turkish frontier in Bessarabia. Under pressure
from
Treaty of England and France the Egyptians retreated
and the
Unklar- Russian forces were withdrawn, but the
tsar had mean-
Skelessl, while (July 8, 1833) concluded
with the sultan the
1833' treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, which
constituted ostensibly a defensive and offensive alliance between
the two Powers and established virtually a Russian
protectorate over
Turkey. In a secret article of the treaty the sultan undertook in
the event of a
casus foederis arising, and in
consideration of being relieved of his obligations under the
articles of the public treaty, to close the Dardanelles to the
warships of all nations "
au besoin," which meant in
effect that in the event of Russia being threatened with an attack
from the Mediterranean he would close the Dardanelles against the
invader. England and France protested energetically and the treaty
remained a dead letter, but the question came up again in 1840,
after Mahmud's renewed attempt to crush Mehemet
Ali had ended in the utter defeat of the Turks by
Ibrahim at Nezib (June 24, 1839). This time Mehemet Ali was
supported by the French government, which aimed at establishing
predominant influence in Egypt, but he was successfully opposed by
a coalition of Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia, which
checkmated the aggressive designs of France by the convention of
London (July 15, 1840) (see
Mehemet Ali and
Turkey). In this way the development of Russian
policy with regard to Turkey was checked for some years, but the
project of confirming and extending the Russian protectorate over
the Orthodox Christians was revived in 1852, when
Napoleon III.
obtained for the Roman Catholics certainrivile es with regard to
the Holy Places in
The Holy P g ?' Y
Places.
Palestine. At the same time
Austria intervened in Montenegrin affairs and induced the sultan to
withdraw his troops from the principality. In these two incidents
the tsar perceived a diminution of Russian prestige and influence
in Turkey, and Prince Menshikov was sent on a special mission to
Constantinople to obtain reparation in the form of a treaty which
should guarantee the rights of the Orthodox Church with regard to
the Holy Places and confirm the protectorate of Russia over the
Orthodox rayahs, established by the treaties of Kainarji,
Bucharest and Adrianople.
The resistance of the sultan, supported by Great Britain and
France, led to the Crimean War, which was terminated by the taking
of
The Sevastopol (September 1855) and the treaty of Paris
Crimean (March 30, 1856). By that important document
Russia
War. reluctantly consented to a strict limitation
of her armaments in the Black Sea, to withdrawal from the mouths of
the Danube by the retrocession of Bessarabia which she had annexed
in 1812, and finally to a renunciation of all special rights of
intervention between the sultan and his Christian subjects.
Nicholas did not live to experience this humiliation. He had died
at St Petersburg on the 2nd of March 1855 and had been succeeded by
his eldest son, Alexander II.
The first decade of Alexander's reign is commonly known in
Russia as " the epoch of the great reforms," and may be described
as a violent reaction against the political and
Alex-
intellectual stagnation of the preceding period. The
ander
II., repressive system of Nicholas, in which all other public
1855-81. interests were sacrificed to that of making
Russia a great military power, the guardian of order in Europe and
the predominant factor in the Eastern Question, had been tried and
found wanting. Ending in a military disaster and a diplomatic
humiliation, it had failed to attain even the narrow object for
which it had been created. This was clearly perceived and keenly
felt by the educated classes, and as soon as the strong hand of the
uncompromising autocrat was withdrawn, they clamoured loudly for
radical changes in the aims and methods of their rulers. Russia
must adopt, it was said, those enlightened principles and liberal
institutions which made the Western nations superior to her not
only in the arts of peace but even in the art of war; only by
imitating her rivals could she hope to overtake and surpass them in
the race of progress. On that subject there was wonderful
unanimity, and the few persons who could not join in the
chorus had the prudence to remain
silent. For the first time in the history of Russia public opinion
in the modern sense became a power in the state and influenced
strongly the policy of the government. Though the young emperor was
of too phlegmatic a temperament to be carried away by the
prevailing excitement and of too practical a turn of mind to adopt
wholesale the doctrinaire theories of his selfconstituted,
irresponsible advisers, he recognized that great administrative and
economic changes were required, and after a short period of
hesitation he entered on a series of drastic reforms, of which the
most important were the emancipation of the serfs, the thorough
reorganization of the judicial administration and the development
of local self-government. All these undertakings, in which the
humane, liberal-minded autocrat received the sympathy, support and
co-operation of
the more enlightened of his subjects, were successfully
accomplished. The serfs were liberated entirely from the arbitrary
rule of the landowners and became proprietors of the communal land;
the old tribunals which could be justly described as " dens of
iniquity and incompetence," were replaced by civil and criminal
lawcourts of the French type, in which justice was dispensed by
trained jurists according to codified legislation, and from which
the traditional bribery and corruption were rigidly excluded; and
the administration of local affairs - roads, schools, hospitals,
&c. - was entrusted to provincial and district councils freely
elected by all classes of the population. In addition to these
great and beneficent changes, means were taken for developing more
rapidly the vast natural resources of the country, public
instruction received an unprecedented impetus, a considerable
amount of liberty was accorded to the press, a strong spirit of
liberalism pervaded rapidly all sections of the educated classes, a
new imaginative and critical literature dealing with economic,
philosophical and political questions sprang into existence, and
for a time the young generation fondly imagined that Russia,
awakening from her traditional
lethargy, was about to overtake, and soon to
surpass, on the path of national progress, the older nations of
western Europe.
These sanguine expectations were not fully realized. The
economic and moral condition of the peasantry was little improved
by freedom, and in many districts there were signs of positive
impoverishment and demoralization. The local self-government
institutions after a short period of feverish and not always
well-directed activity, showed symptoms of organic exhaustion. The
reformed tribunals, though incomparably better than their
predecessors, did not give universal satisfaction. In the imperial
administration, the corruption and long-established abuses which
had momentarily vanished, began to reappear. Industrial enterprises
did not always succeed. Education produced many unforeseen and
undesirable practical results. The liberty of the press not
unfrequently degenerated into
licence, and sane liberalism was often replaced
by socialistic dreaming. In short, it became only too evident that
there was no royal road to national prosperity, and that Russia,
like other nations, must be content to advance slowly and
laboriously along the rough path of painful experience. In these
circumstances sanguine enthusiasm naturally gave way to
despondency, and the reforming zeal of the government was replaced
by tendencies of a decidedly reactionary kind. Partly from
disappointment and nervous exhaustion, and partly from a conviction
that the country required rest in order to judge the practical
results of the reforms already accomplished, the tsar refrained
from further initiating new legislation, and the government gave it
to be understood that the epoch of the great reforms was
closed.
In the younger ranks of the educated classes this state of
things produced keen dissatisfaction, which soon found vent in
revolutionary agitation. At first the agitation
R tionary
was of an academic character and was dealt with by the
press-censure; but it gradually took the form of secret
associations, and the police had to interfere. There were no great,
well-organized secret societies, but there were many small groups,
composed chiefly of male and female students of the universities
and technical schools, which worked independently for a common
purpose. Finding that the walls of autocracy could not be
overturned by blasts of revolutionary trumpets in the periodical
press and in clandestinely printed seditious proclamations, the
young enthusiasts determined to seek the support of the masses, or,
as they termed it, " to go in among the people " (
idti v
narod). Under the disguise of doctors, midwives, school
teachers, governesses, factory hands or common labourers, they
sought to make proselytes among the peasantry and the workmen in
the industrial centres by revolutionary pamphlets and oral
explanations. For a time the propaganda had very little success,
because the uneducated peasants and factory workers could not
understand the phraseology and abstract principles of
socialism; but when the
propagandists descended to a lower
platform and spread rumours that the tsar had
given all the land to the peasants, and was prevented by the
proprietors and officials from carrying out his benevolent
intentions, there was a serious danger of agrarian disorders, and
energetic measures were adopted by the authorities. Wholesale
arrests were made by the police, and many of the accused were
imprisoned or exiled to distant provinces, some by the regular
tribunals, and others by so-called " administrative procedure "
without a formal trial. The activity of the police and the
sufferings of the victims naturally produced intense excitement and
bitterness among those who escaped arrest, and a secret
organization calling itself the Executive Committee announced in
its clandestinely printed organs that the functionaries who
distinguished themselves in the suppression of the propaganda would
be " removed." A number of prominent officials were accordingly
condemned to death by this secret terrorist tribunal, and in some
cases the sentences were carried out. General Mezentsov, the head
of the political police, was assassinated in broad daylight in one
of the principal streets of St Petersburg, and in the provinces a
good many officials of various grades shared the same fate. As
these acts of terrorism had quite the opposite of the desired
effect, repeated attempts were made on the life of the emperor, and
at last the carefully laid plans of the conspirators were
successful. On the 13th of March 1881, when returning from a
military
parade to the Winter
Palace, Alexander II. was terribly wounded by the explosion of a
bomb, and died shortly afterwards.
(For details of this revolutionary movement, see
Nihilism.) In respect of
foreign policy the reign of Alexander II. differed widely from that
of Nicholas. The Eastern
Colossus no longer inspired respect and fear
in Europe. Until the country had completely recovered from the
exhaustion of the Crimean War the government remained in the back
ground of European politics. Its attitude was graphically described
in the famous declaration of Prince
Gorchakov: " La Russie ne boude pas; elle se
recueille." On one point, however, this description was not
accurate; Russia sulked so far as Austria was concerned, for she
could not forget that the emperor
Francis Joseph, by his wavering and
unfriendly conduct towards her during the Crimean War, had ill
repaid her assistance to the
Habsburg Monarchy in 1849, and had fulfilled
the cynical prediction of Prince
Schwarzenberg that his country would
astonish the world by her ingratitude. It was not without secret
satisfaction, therefore, that Prince Gorchakov watched the repeated
defeats of the Austrian army in the Italian campaign of 1859, and
he felt inclined to
respond
to the advances made to him by Napoleon III.; but the germs of a
Russo-French alliance, which had come into existence immediately
after the Crimean War, ripened very slowly, and they were
completely destroyed in 1863 when the French emperor wounded
Russian sensibilities deeply by giving moral and diplomatic support
to the Polish insurrection. On that occasion
Bismarck helped Gorchakov to
ward off the threatened
intervention of France and England, and he thereby founded the
cordial relations which subsisted between the cabinets of
Berlin and St Petersburg down to
1878, and which contributed powerfully to the creation of the
German empire by defending the Prussian cabinet against the
jealousy and enmity of Austria and France. In return for these
services Bismarck helped Russia to recover a portion of what she
had lost by the Crimean War, for it was thanks to his connivance
and diplomatic support that she was able in 1871 to denounce with
impunity the clauses of the treaty of Paris which limited Russian
armament in the Black Sea. Had the tsar been satisfied with this
important success, which enabled him to rebuild Sevastopol and
construct a Black Sea fleet, his reign might have been a peaceful
and prosperous one, but he tried to recover the remainder of what
- had been lost by the Crimean War, the province of
Turkish Bessarabia and predominant influence in Turkey.
War of To effect this, he embarked on the
Turkish War
of
1877-78. 18 77-7 8, which ended in disappointment
Though the campaign enabled him to recover Bessarabia at the
expense of his Rumanian ally, it did not increase Russian prestige
in the East, because the Russian army was repeatedly repulsed by
the Turks, and when at last it reached Constantinople, it was
prevented from entering the city by the threatening attitude of
England and Austria. In the field of diplomacy there was likewise
disappointment. The concessions extorted from the Porte in the
preliminary treaty of San Stefano (March 3, 1878) were revived and
considerably modified in favour of Turkey by the
congress of Berlin (June
13 - July 13, 1878); see
Europe:
history. Much greater success
attended the efforts of Russian diplomacy and Russian arms in Asia.
By the treaty of
Aigun (May 28,
1858), and without any military operations, the cession of a great
part of the basin of the Amur was obtained from China. Six years
later began the rapid expansion of Russia in Central Asia, and at
the end xxiii. 2 9 a of Alexander
II.'s reign her
domination had been firmly established throughout nearly the whole
of the vast expanse of territory lying between Siberia on the north
and Persia and Afghanistan on the south, and stretching without
interruption from the eastern coast of the Caspian to the Chinese
frontier. The greater part of the territory was formally
incorporated into the empire, and the petty potentates, such as the
khan of Khiva and the
amir of
Bokhara, who were allowed to retain a semblance of their former
sovereignty, became
obsequious vassals of the White Tsar.
The assassination of Alexander II. by the terrorists made a
profound impression on his son and successor, and determined
Alex- the general character of his rule. Alexander III.
(1881-94), who had never sympathized with liberalism
1881-94. in any form, entered frankly on a reactionary
policy, which was pursued consistently during the whole of his
reign. He could not, of course, undo the great reforms of his
predecessor, but he amended them in such a way as to counteract
what he considered the exaggerations of liberalism. Local
self-government in the village 111. communes, the rural
districts and the towns was carefully restricted, and placed to a
greater extent under the control of the regular officials. The
reformers of the previous reign had endeavoured to make the
emancipated peasantry administratively and economically independent
of the landed proprietors; the conservatives of this later era,
proceeding on the assumption that the peasants did not know how to
make a proper use of the liberty prematurely conferred upon them,
endeavoured to re-establish the influence of the landed proprietors
by appointing from amongst them " land-chiefs," who were to
exercise over the peasants of their district a certain amount of
patriarchal jurisdiction. The reformers of the previous reign had
sought to make the new local administration (zemstvo) a
system of genuine rural self-government and a basis for future
parliamentary institutions; these later conservatives transformed
it into a mere branch of the ordinary state administration, and
took precautions against its ever assuming a political character.
Even municipal institutions, which had never shown much vitality,
were subjected to similar restrictions. In short, the various forms
of local self-government, which were intended to raise the nation
gradually to the higher political level of western Europe, were
condemned as unsuited to the national character and traditions, and
as productive of disorder and demoralization. They were accordingly
replaced in great measure by the old autocratic methods of
administration, and much of the administrative corruption which had
been cured, or at least repressed, by the reform enthusiasm again
flourished luxuriantly.
In a small but influential section of the educated classes there
was a conviction that the revolutionary tendencies, which
culminated in
Nihilism and
Anarchism, proceeded
from the adoption of
cosmopolitan rather than national
principles in all spheres of educational and administrative
activity, and that the best remedy for the evils from which the
country was suffering was to be found in a return to the three
great principles of Nationality, Orthodoxy and Autocracy. This
doctrine, which had been invented by the Slavophils of a previous
generation, was early instilled into the mind of Alexander III. by
Pobe- donostsev (q.v.), who was one of his
teachers, and later his most trusted adviser, and its influence can
be traced in all the more important acts of the government during
that monarch's reign. His determination to maintain autocracy was
officially proclaimed a few days after his accession. Nationality
and Eastern Orthodoxy, which are so closely connected as to be
almost blended together in the Russian mind, received not less
attention. Even in European Russia the regions near the frontier
contain a great variety of nationalities, languages and religions.
In Finland the population is composed of Finnish-speaking and
Swedish-speaking Protestants; the Baltic provinces are inhabited by
German-speaking, Lettspeaking and Esth-speaking Lutherans; the
inhabitants of the south-western provinces are chiefly
Polish-speaking Roman Catholics and Yiddish-speaking Jews; in the
Crimea and on the Middle Volga there are a considerable number of
Tatarspeaking Mahommedans; and in the Caucasus there is a
conglomeration of races and languages such as is to be found on no
other portion of the earth's surface. Until recent times these
various nationalities were allowed to retain unmolested the
language, religion and peculiar local administration of their
ancestors; but when the new nationality doctrine came into fashion,
attempts were made to spread among them the language, religion and
administrative institutions of the dominant race. In the reigns of
Nicholas I. and Alexander II. these attempts were merely occasional
and intermittent; under Alexander III. they were made
systematically and with very little consideration for the feelings,
wishes and interests of the people concerned. The local
institutions were assimilated to those of the purely Russian
provinces; the use of the
Russian language was made obligatory
in the administration, in the tribunals and to some extent in the
schools; the spread of Eastern Orthodoxy was encouraged by the
authorities, whilst the other confessions were placed under severe
restrictions; foreigners were prohibited from possessing landed
property; and in some provinces administrative measures were taken
for making the land pass into the hands of Orthodox Russians. In
this process some of the local officials displayed probably an
amount of zeal beyond the intentions of the government, but any
attempt to oppose the movement was rigorously punished. Of all the
various races the Jews were the most severely treated. The great
majority of them had long been confined to the western and
south-western provinces. In the rest of the country they had not
been allowed to reside in the villages, because their habits of
keeping vodka-shops and lending money at usurious interest were
found to demoralize the peasantry, and even in the towns their
numbers and occupations had been restricted by the authorities.
But, partly from the usual laxity of the administration and partly
from the readiness of the Jews to conciliate the needy officials,
the rules had been by no means strictly applied. As soon as this
fact became known to Alexander III. he ordered the rules to be
strictly carried out, without considering what an enormous amount
of hardship and suffering such an order entailed. He also caused
new rules to be enacted by which his Jewish subjects were heavily
handicapped in education and professional
advancement. In short, complete
Russification of all nonRussian populations and institutions was
the chief aim of the government in home affairs.
In the foreign policy of the empire Alexander III. likewise
introduced considerable changes. During his father's reign its main
objects were: in the west, the maintenance of the alliance with
Germany; in south-eastern Europe,
policy. the recovery of
what had been lost by the Crimean War, the gradual weakening of the
Sultan's authority, and the increase of Russian influence among the
minor Slav nationalities; in Asia, the gradual but cautious
expansion of Russian domination. - In the reign of Alexander III.
the first of these objects was abandoned. Already, before his
accession, the bonds of friendship which united Russia to Germany
had been weakened by the action of Bismarck in giving to the
cabinet of St Petersburg at the Berlin congress less diplomatic
support than was expected, and by the Austro-German treaty of
alliance (October 1879), concluded avowedly for the purpose of
opposing Russian aggression; but the old relations were partly
'reestablished by secret negotiations in 1880, by a meeting of the
young tsar and the old emperor at
Danzig in 1881, and by the meeting of the three
emperors at
Skierniewice in 1884, by which the Three
Emperors' League was reconstituted for a term of three years (see
Europe:
History).
Gradually, however, a great change took place in the tsar's views
with regard to the German alliance. He suspected Bismarck of
harbouring hostile designs against Russia, and he came to recognize
that the permanent weakening of France was not in accordance with
Russian political interests. He determined, therefore, to oppose
any further disturbance of the
balance of power in favour of Germany,
and when the treaty of Skierniewice expired in 1887 he declined to
renew it. From that time Russia gravitated slowly towards an
alliance with France, and sought to create a counterpoise against
the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy. The tsar was
reluctant to bind himself by a formal treaty, because the French
government did not offer the requisite guarantees of stability, and
because he feared that it might be induced, by the prospect of
Russian support, to assume an aggressive attitude towards Germany.
He recognized, however, that in the event of a great European war
the two nations would in all probability be found fighting on the
same side, and that if they made no preparations for concerted
military action they would be placed at a grave disadvantage in
comparison with their opponents of the Triple Alliance, who were
believed to have already worked out an elaborate plan of campaign.
In view of this contingency the Russian and French military
authorities studied the military questions in common, and the
result of their labours was the preparation of a military
convention, which was finally ratified in 1894. During this period
the relations between the two governments and the two countries
became much more cordial. In the summer of 1891 the visit to
Kronstadt of a French squadron under
Admiral Gervais was made the occasion for an
enthusiastic demonstration in favour of a Franco-Russian alliance;
and two years later (October 1893) a still more enthusiastic
reception was given to the Russian Admiral Avelan and his officers
when they visited
Toulon and
Paris. But it was not till after the death of Alexander III. that
the word " alliance " was used publicly by official personages. In
1895 the term was first publicly employed by M. Ribot, then
president of the council, in the Chamber of Deputies, but the
expressions he used were so vague that they did not entirely remove
the prevailing doubts as to the existence of a formal treaty. Two
years later (August 1897), during the official visit of M.
Felix
Faure to St Petersburg, a little more light was thrown on the
subject. In the complimentary speeches delivered by the president
of the French Republic and the tsar, France and Russia were
referred to as allies, and the term " nations alliees " was
afterwards repeatedly used on occasions of a similar kind.
In south-eastern Europe Alexander III. adopted an attitude of
reserve and expectancy. He greatly increased and strengthened his
Black Sea fleet, so as to be ready for any emergency that might
arise, and in June 1886, contrary to the declaration made in the
Treaty of Berlin (Art. 59), he ordered Batum to be transformed into
a fortified naval port, but in the
Balkan Peninsula he persistently
refrained, under a good deal of provocation, from any intervention
that might lead to a European war. The Bulgarian government, first
under Prince Alexander and afterwards under the direction of M.
Stamboloff, pursued systematically an anti-Russian policy, but the
cabinet of St Petersburg confined itself officially to breaking off
diplomatic relations and making diplomatic protests, and
unofficially to giving tacit encouragement to revolutionary
agitation.
In Asia, during the reign of Alexander III. the expansion of
Russian domination made considerable progress. A few weeks after
his accession he sanctioned the annexation of the territory of the
Tekke Turkomans, which had been conquered by General Skobelev, and
in 1884 he formally annexed the Mer y
oasis without military operations. He then
allowed the military authorities to push forward in the direction
of Afghanistan, until in March 1885 an engagement took place
between Russian and Afghan forces at
Panjdeh. Thereupon the British government,
which had been for some time carrying on negotiations with the
cabinet of St Petersburg for a delimitation of the Russo-Afghan
frontier, intervened energetically and prepared for war; but a
compromise was effected, and after more than two years of
negotiation a delimitation convention was signed at St Petersburg
on 10th July 1887. The forward movement of Russia was thus stopped
in the direction of Herat, but it continued with great activity
farther east in the region of the Pamirs, until another
Anglo-Russian convention was signed in 1895. During the whole reign
of Alexander III. the increase of terri
tory in Central Asia is calculated by
Russian authorities at 4 2 9, 8 95 square kilometres.
On 1st November 1894 Alexander III. died, and was succeeded by
his son, Nicholas II., who, partly from similarity of character and
partly from veneration for his father's memory, continued the
existing lines of policy in home and foreign affairs. The
expectation entertained in many
III.; ac- quarters that
great legislative changes would at once
of be made
in a liberal sense was not realized. When
Nicholas an
influential deputation from the province of Tver, which had long
enjoyed a reputation for liberalism, ventured to hint in a loyal
address that the time had come for changes in the existing
autocratic regime, they received a reply which showed that the
emperor had no intention of making any such changes. Private
suggestions in the same sense, offered directly and respectfully,
were no better received, and no important changes were made in the
legislation of the preceding reign. But a great alteration took
place noiselessly in the manner of carrying out the laws and
ministerial circulars. Though resembling his father in the main
points of his character, the young tsar was of a more humane
disposition, and he was much less of a doctrinaire. With his
father's aspiration of making Holy Russia a homogeneous empire he
thoroughly sympathized in principle, but he disliked the systematic
persecution of Jews, heretics and schismatics to which it gave
rise, and he let it be understood, without any formal order or
proclamation, that
the severe measures hitherto employed would not meet with his
approval. The officials were not slow to take the hint, and their
undue zeal at once disappeared. Nicholas II. showed, however, that
his father's policy of Russification was neither to be reversed nor
to be abandoned. When an influential deputation was sent from
Finland to St Petersburg to represent to him respectfully that the
officials were infringing the local rights and privileges solemnly
accorded at the time of the annexation, it was refused an
audience, and the leaders of
the movement were informed indirectly that local interests must be
subordinated to the general welfare of the empire. In accordance
with this declaration, the policy of Russification in Finland was
steadily maintained, and caused much disappointment, not only to
the Finlanders, but also to the other nationalities who desired the
preservation of their ancient rights.
In foreign affairs Nicholas II. likewise continued the policy of
his predecessor, with certain modifications suggested by the change
of circumstances. He strengthened the cordial understanding with
France by a formal agreement, the terms of which were not divulged,
but he never encouraged the French government in any aggressive
designs, and he maintained friendly relations with Germany. In the
Balkan Peninsula a slight change of attitude took place. Alexander
III., indignant at what he considered the ingratitude of the Slav
nationalities, remained coldly aloof, as far as possible, from all
intervention in their affairs. About three months after his death,
de Giers, who thoroughly approved of this attitude, died (26th
January 1895), and his successor, Prince Lobanov, minister of
foreign affairs from 19th March 1895 to 30th August 1896,
endeavoured to recover what he considered Russia's legitimate
influence in the Slav world. For this purpose Russian diplomacy
became more active in south-eastern Europe. The result was
perceived first in
Montenegro and Servia, and then in
Bulgaria. Prince
Ferdinand of Bulgaria had
long been anxious to legalize his position by a reconciliation, and
as soon as he got rid of Stamboloff he made advances to the Russian
government. They were well received, and a reconciliation was
effected on certain conditions, the first of which was that Prince
Ferdinand's eldest son and heir should become a member of the
Eastern Orthodox Church. As another means of opposing Western
influence in south-eastern Europe, Prince Lobanov inclined to the
policy of protecting rather than weakening the Ottoman empire. When
the British government seemed disposed to use coercive measures for
the protection of the Armenians, he gave it clearly to be
understood that any such proceeding would be opposed by Russia.
After Prince Lobanov's death and the appointment of Count Muraviev
as his successor in January 1897, this tendency of Russian policy
became less marked. In April 1897, it is true, when the Greeks
provoked a war with Turkey, they received no support from St
Petersburg, but at the close of the war the tsar showed himself
more friendly to them; and afterwards, when it proved extremely
difficult to find a suitable person as governor-general of
Crete (see
Crete), he recommended the appointment of his
cousin, Prince
George of
Greece - a selection which was pretty sure to accelerate the union
of the island with the Hellenic kingdom. How far the recommendation
was due to personal feeling, as opposed to political
considerations, it is impossible to say.
In Asia, after the accession of Nicholas II., the expansion of
Russia, following the line of least resistance and stimulated by
the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, took the direction
of northern China and the effete little kingdom of
Korea. A great part of the
eastern section of the railway was constructed on Chinese
territory, and elaborate preparations were made for bringing
Manchuria within the sphere of Russian influence. With this view,
the cabinet of St Petersburg, at the close of the
Chino-Japanese War in 18 9 5,
objected to all annexations by Japan in that quarter, and insisted
on having the treaty of Shimonoseki modified accordingly.
Subsequently, by obtaining from the Tsungli-Yaman a long
lease of Port Arthur and
Talienwan and a concession
to unite those ports with the Trans-Siberian by a branch line, she
tightened her hold
on that portion of the Chinese
empire and prepared to complete the work of aggression by so-called
" spontaneous infiltration." From Manchuria, it was assumed, the
political influence and spontaneous infiltration would naturally
spread to Korea, and on the deeply indented coast of the
Hermit Kingdom might be
constructed new ports and arsenals more spacious and strategically
more important than Port Arthur.
This grandiose project was unexpectedly destroyed by the
energetic resistance of Japan, who had
ear-marked the Hermit Kingdom for herself, and who
declared plainly that she would never tolerate the exclusive
influence of Russia in Manchuria. In vain the Russian diplomatists
sought to overcome her opposition by dilatory negotiations, in the
firm conviction that a small island kingdom in the Pacific would
never have the audacity to attack a power which had conquered and
absorbed the whole of Northern Asia. Their calculations proved
erroneous. Convinced that the onward march of the Colossus could
not be permanently arrested by mere diplomatic conventions, the
cabinet of Tokio suddenly broke off diplomatic relations and
commenced hostilities (February 8, 1 9 04). For Russia the war
proved a series of uninterrupted reverses both on land and on sea,
until it was terminated by the treaty of
Portsmouth in October 1905 (see
Russo-Japanese War).
What contributed powerfully to the conclusion of peace was the
fact that the Russian government was hampered by internal troubles.
The old Liberal movement and the terrorist organizations which had
been suppressed by Alexander III. were being resuscitated, and the
liberal and revolutionary leaders, taking advantage of the
unpopularity of the war, were agitating for the
convocation of a
Constituent Assembly, which should replace the hated bureaucratic
regime by democratic institutions. With great reluctance the tsar
consented to convoke a consultative chamber of deputies as a sop to
public opinion, but that concession stimulated rather than calmed
public opinion, and shortly after the conclusion of peace the
Liberals and the Revolutionaries, combining their forces, brought
about a general strike in St Petersburg together with the stoppage
of railway communication all over the empire. Panic-stricken for a
moment, the government issued a manifesto proclaiming Liberal
principles and promising in vague language all manner of political
reforms (October 30, 1905), and when the inordinate expectations
created by this extraordinary document were not at once realized,
preparations were made for overthrowing the existing regime by
means of an armed insurrection. Many believed that the end of
autocracy had come, and an extemporized Council of Labour Deputies,
anxious to play the part of a
Comite de Salut Public, was
ready to take over the supreme power and exercise it in the
interests of the proletariat. In reality the revolutionary movement
was not so strong and the government not so weak as was generally
supposed. Mutinies occurred, it is true, during the next few weeks
in Kronstadt and Sevastopol, and in December there was
streetfighting for several days in Moscow, but such serious
disorders were speedily suppressed, and thereafter the
revolutionary manifestations were confined to mass meetings,
processions with red flags, attempts on the lives of officials and
policemen, robberies under arms and agrarian disturbances.
Notwithstanding the unsatisfactory results of the October
manifesto the tsar kept his promise of convoking a legislative
assembly, and on the 10th of May 1906 the first Duma was opened by
his majesty in person; but it was so systematically and violently
hostile to the government and so determined to obtain executive, in
addition to its legislative, functions, that it was dissolved on
the 23rd of July without any legislative work being accomplished.
The second Duma, which met on the 5th of March 1907, avoided some
of the mistakes of its predecessor, but as a legislative assembly
it showed itself equally incompetent, and a large section of its
members were implicated in a well-organized attempt to spread
sedition in the army by revolutionary propaganda. It was dissolved,
therefore, on the 16th of June 1907, and the electoral law which
had given such unsatisfactory results was modified by imperial
ukase.
The third Duma was subsequently convoked for the 14th of
November 1907. (D. M. W.)
Development of the Russian
Constitution. - At the end of 1910 the Russian revolution,
which seemed at one time to promise an overturn as complete as that
of
the
ancien regime in France, would seem to have entered on
a path of orderly and conservative development, and it is possible,
now that the
smoke of combat has
cleared away, to form some estimate of the forces through the
interplay of which this result has been achieved. At the outset the
superficial resemblance between the revolutionary movement in
Russia and that of 1789 in France was
The striking: there
was the same breakdown of the traditional machinery of government,
the same general outcry for control by a representative national
assembly, the same gradual and reluctant concessions wrung from the
crown under pressure of disaffection in the army, popular
emeutes, the assassination of unpopular officials, and the
burning of country houses by organized bands of peasants. Similar,
too, was the revelation, when freedom of speech was at last
allowed, of the unhappy effect of the long divorce of the
intellect of the country
from any experience of practical politics. But here the
analogy breaks down. France in
178 9, though its ancient provincial boundaries survived, had long
since been welded into a nation conscious of its common interests;
Russia remains a vast empire, composed of the most heterogeneous,
sometimes even mutually hostile, elements., whose antagonisms were
bound to be an element of weakness in any assembly truly
representative of all sections of the people. In France the
Revolution had been the work of the middle classes; in Russia an
indigenous middle class has, comparatively speaking, no existence,
the peasants forming the overwhelming majority of the population.'
The supreme peril to the autocracy in Russia lay in the genuine
grievances of the peasants, less political than economic, which had
opened their minds to revolutionary propaganda. These grievances
once removed, and their legitimate land-
hunger satisfied, the peasants would become a
bulwark of the established
order, whatever that might be, as had happened in similar
circumstances in Austria in 1849. As for the revolutionary "
intellectuals," without the
lever of agrarian discontent they In 1897 only
15% of the population were engaged in commerce or industry,
including the work-people. Of the middle class, moreover, a large
proportion were Jews and Germans. The peasants numbered 75%.
THE ] were practically powerless, the more so as their political
activity consisted mainly in " building theories for an imaginary
world." The
bourgeois revolutionists of France had
all been
philosophes, but their
philosophy had at least paid
lip-service to " reason "; the Russian
revolutionists who formed the majority of the first and second
Dumas, as though inspired by the exalted nonsense preached by
Tolstoi, 1 subordinated reason to sentiment, until - their
impracticable temper having been advertised to all the world - it
became easy for the government to treat them as a mere excrescence
on the national life, a
malignant growth to be removed by a necessary
operation. In 1909 the number of exiles for political reasons from
Russia was reckoned at 180,000; but the third Duma, purged and
packed by an ingenious franchise system, was in its third year
passing measures of beneficent legislation, in complete harmony
with the government. It is proposed to trace briefly the steps by
which this result was obtained.
In order to explain the course of the revolution which came to a
head in 1905 it is necessary to say a few words about
constitutional plans and liberal experiments, initiated from above,
which had preceded it. Of the ancient
zemski sobor
(assembly of the country) it is unnecessary here to say much,
though Nicholas II. was pressed by the more reactionary elements to
model his parliament on this rough equivalent of the Western
states-general.
The
zemski sobor, which had played a considerable part in
the struggle of the tsars against the great boyars in the 17th
century, had met but once since the days of Peter the Great. 2 The
origin of the present constitution of Russia must be sought, not in
this ancient and obsolete institution, but in the artificial
constitution elaborated by Mikhail Speranski (q.v.) in 1809 at the
instance of the emperor Alexander I. Of Speranski's plan only the
establishment of the Imperial Council (January 1st, 1810) was
realized in his lifetime. 3 In 1864, however, the emperor Alexander
II. carried the scheme a step further by the creation of elected
provincial assemblies (
zemstvos), to which in 1870 elected
municipal councils (
dumas) were added. The opportunity
thus given for debate naturally stimulated the movement in favour
of constitutional government, which received new impulses from the
sympathetic attitude of the emperor Alexander II., his grant in
1879 of a constitution to the liberated principality of Bulgaria,
and the multiplication of Nihilist outrages which pointed to the
necessity of conciliating Liberal opinion in order to present a
united front against revolutionary agitation. In January 1881
Count
Loris-Melikov, minister of the interior, proposed to convene a
" general commission " to examine legislative proposals before
these were laid before the Imperial Council; this commission was to
consist of members elected by the
zemstvos and the larger
towns, and others nominated in the provinces having no
zemstvos. The plan was approved by Alexander II. on the
very morning of his assassination (February 17th, 1881), but it was
never promulgated. The new tsar, Alexander III., was an apt pupil
of his tutor Pobedonostsev (q.v.), the celebrated procurator of the
Holy Synod, for whom the representative system was a modern lie,"
and his reign covered a period of frank reaction, during which
there was not only no question of affected even the stolid and
apparently immovable masses of the peasantry.
The movement came to a head, as a result of the disasters of the
war with Japan, in 1904. The assassination of the minister of the
interior Plehve, on the 14th of July, by the revolutionist Sazonov
was remarkable as a
of the symptom mainly owing to the
widespread sympathy of the European press of all shades of opinion
with
War. the motives of the
assassin. It was clear that the system with
which the murdered minister's name had been associated stood all
but universally condemned, and in the appointment of the
conciliatory Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski as his successor the tsar
himself seemed to concede the necessity for a change of policy. 4
In November, with the tacit consent of the police, a private
assembly of eminent members
zemst- of local
zemstvos and municipal
dumas was held
vos. in St Petersburg to discuss the situation.
The majority of this decided to approach the crown with a
suggestion for a reform of the Russian system on the basis of a
national representative assembly, an extension of local
self-government, and wider guarantees for individual liberty. The
day on which the deputation laid these views before Prince Mirski
was hailed by public opinion as recalling the 5th of May 1789, the
date of the meeting of the French states-general at
Versailles. The emperor,
however, whatever his own views, was surrounded by reactionary
influences, of which the most powerful were the empress-mother,
Pobedonostsev the procurator of the Holy Synod, Count Muraviev and
the Grandduke
Sergius. The
imperial
ukaz of the 12th of December enunciating reforms
affecting the peasants, workmen and local
zemstvos failed
to satisfy public opinion; for there was no word in it of
constitutional government. Petitions continued to flow in to the
emperor's cabinet, praying for a national representation, from the
zemstvos, from the nobles and from the professional
classes, and their moral was enforced by general agitation, by
partial strikes, and by outrages which culminated at Moscow in the
murder of the Grand-duke
Sergius (February 4th, 1 9 05). In the imperial counsels the
resisting forces still seemed to have the upper hand. Prince Mirski
resigned, his resignation being immediately followed by a
reactionary imperial manifesto reaffirming the principle of
autocracy (February 18th). Bulygin, Mirski's successor, had no
knowledge of this until after its publication; he hastened to the
tsar and obtained the issue on the same day of a rescript which,
while reserving the " fundamental laws of the empire " inviolate,
stated the emperor's intention of summoning the representatives of
the people to aid in " the preparation and examination of
legislative proposals." A commission of inquiry, under the
emperor's
presidency,
was now established to elaborate the means for carrying this
promise into effect. On the 6th of June, in reply to a deputation
of the second congress of
zemstvos headed by Prince
Trubetzkoi, the emperor promised the speedy convocation of a
National Assembly. When, however, on the 6th of August, the new law
was promulgated, it was found that the " Imperial Duma " 5 was to
be no more than a consultative body, charged with the examination
of legislative proposals before these came before the Imperial
Council, the duty and right of passing them into law being still
reserved for the autocrat alone. The members of the Duma, moreover,
were placed at the mercy of the government by a clause empowering
the Directing Senate to suspend or deprive them. The promulgation
of this truncated constitution was greeted by a furious agitation,
culminating in September in a general strike, rightly described as
the most remarkable political
phenomenon of modern times. For days the
whole mechanism of civilized existence in Russia was at a
standstill, all intercourse 4 Sazonov's sentence of twenty years'
hard labour was commuted by Nicholas II. to fourteen years.
Duma =council, assembly (
dumat, to think over,
reflect upon). The name was first suggested by Speranski, under
Alexander I., for the suggested parliament of delegates from the
zemstvos and local
dumas. IIi granting any fresh
liberties but those already conceded (e.g. the principle of the
separation of the administrative and judicial functions) were
largely curtailed. The result of this policy of repression,
associated as it was with
gross
incompetence and corruption in the organs of the administration,
was the rapid spread of the revolutionary movement, which gradually
permeated the intelligent classes and ultimately " Tolstoi -
observed that that was argument and reason, and that he paid no
attention to them; he only guided himself (he said) by sentiment,
which he felt sure told him what was good and right! " - Interview
with Metchnikoff in Sir
Ray
Lankester's
Science from an Easy Chair, p. 43 2 In 1767,
when Catherine II. - in a
mood of
encyclopaedist enlightenment - summoned it. The meeting confined
its attention to economic questions, and had no political character
whatever.
' In his speech at the opening of the first Polish parliament at
Warsaw in 1818, Alexander I. publicly announced his intention of
granting free institutions to Russia.
with the outside world cut off; until at last the government was
forced to yield, and on the 17/30th of
tionstitu- October
1 05 the tsar issued the famous manifesto
tional 9
manifesto promising to Russia a constitution based on the
of October main principles of modern Liberalism: national
re
1 9 /5. presentation, freedom of
conscience and opinion,
1905. " the
Union of the Russian People," began an organized extermination of
the elements supposed to be hostile to the traditional regime. The
" black band " (
chernaya sotnia), or " black hundreds," as
they were branded by public opinion, directed their attacks
especially against the Jews, and
pogroms,' i.e. organized
wholesale
robbery and murder
of Jews, occurred in many places, it was believed with the
connivance of the police and veiled approval in exalted
quarters.
Meanwhile the political parties which were to divide the new
Duma had taken shape. Apart from the extremists on
Develop- one side or the other, frank reactionaries on the
De ment of Right and Socialists on the Left, two main
divisions
political of opinion revealed themselves in the
congresses of
parties. the
zemstvos that met at
Moscow in September and November. In the former there had been a
fusion between the Radicals,
supporters of the autonomy of Poland and a federal constitution for
the empire, and the Independence party (
Osvobozhdenya)
formed by political exiles at Paris in 1903, the fusion taking the
name of Constitutional Democrats, known (from a word-play on the
initials K.D.) as " Cadets."
The more moderate elements found a rallying cry in the manifesto of
October, took the name of " the Party of 17 October," and became
known as " Octobrists." In the
zemstvo congress of
November the " Cadets " protested against the " grant " of a
constitution already elaborated, and demanded the convocation of a
Constituent Assembly. The Octobrists, on the other hand, supported
Count Witte's moderate
programme, the most important provisions of
which were the extension (r1 December 1905) of the
suffrage under the stillborn
constitution of August, and (20 February 1906) the reorganization
of the Duma as the Lower House, and of the Imperial Council (half
of which was to be elective) as the Upper House 2 in the new
parliament.
The elections were held in March 1906, and on the 27th of April
the emperor Nicholas II. solemnly opened the first Duma of the
Empire. The " Cadets " commanded an overwhelming majority in the
Lower House, and their intractable temper and ignorance of affairs
became at once apparent.
The address in reply to the speech from the
throne, voted after a debate in which abstract theories had
triumphed over common sense, demanded universal suffrage, the
establishment of pure parliamentary government, the abolition of
capital
punishment, the
expropriation of the landlords, a
political
amnesty, and the
suppression of the Imperial Council. When the minister of the
interior, M. Goremykin, who had succeeded Witte at the head of the
government, met these preposterous demands with a flat refusal, the
House voted, on the motion of M. Kuzmin-Karaviev, for an appeal to
the
1 Pogrom = pillage, destruction.
See the section Government and Administration,
above.
people (July 4). 3 Four days later the government dissolved the
Duma, M. Goremykin at the same time being replaced by M. Stolypin.
The " Cadets " refused to accept this action and, in imitation of
the famous meeting in the
tennis-court at Versailles, adjourned to Vyborg
in Finland, where, under the ex-
The president of the
Duma, M. Muromtsov, they drew up
Vyborg and issued a
manifesto calling on the Russian people
mani- to refuse
taxes and military service. Its sole result,
festo. apart
from the punishment which afterwards fell on its authors,4 was to
show how little the majority of the dissolved Duma had represented
the Russian people. Isolated mutinies in the army followed, and
terrorist outrages here and there - notably, in August, the
dastardly bomb
outrage in
the Isle of Apothecaries at St Petersburg, which seriously injured
one of M. Stolypin's little daughters; but the mass of the nation
and of the army remained wholly unmoved, while the repetition of
troubles was made more difficult by the establishment of field
courts martial with summary powers.
The second Duma met on the 6th of March 1907. M. Stolypin had
not ventured to alter the electoral law without parliamentary
consent, but with the aid of a complaisant Senate the pro-
The visions of the existing law were interpreted in a
restrictive
second sense for the purpose of influencing
the elections. The
Duma. result was, however, hardly more
satisfactory to the government. The " Cadets," it is true, lost
many seats both to the Socialists and to the extreme Right, but
they held the balance of the House, of which the Octobrists and the
Right together only constituted one-fifth, and their leader, M.
Golovin, was elected president of the House. The temper of the
second Duma, was, indeed, even more democratic than that of the
first; but M. Stolypin did his best to work in harmony with it,
realizing that under the existing law another
dissolution could but
lead to a like result, and shrinking from the only alternative - an
alteration of the law by a
coup d'etat, a course which
could only be justified on the plea of extreme necessity. On the
19th of March he laid before the House his programme of reforms,
which included the emancipation of the peasants from the control of
the communes and the handing over to them of the crown lands and
imperial estates. The majority, however, refused to be reconciled.
The abolition of the field courts martial was demanded; on the 13th
of April a bill for the expropriation of landlords was carried by a
twothirds majority,' and the 30th the Army Bill would have been
lost but for the Polish vote. The crisis came with the discovery of
a treasonable plot for the subornation of the army, in which many
Socialist members of the Duma were involved. On the r4th of June
Stolypin's proposal for the arrest of 16 members and the
indictment of
55
was shelved by being referred to a committee.
The excuse for which the government had been waiting
Alteration was thus provided, and two days later the Duma
was
by ukaz dissolved. An imperial
ukaz fixed the
new elections
of the for the 14th of September, and the
meeting of the
electoral third Duma for the 14th of
November; at the same
law. time, in violation of the
October manifesto, the electoral law was altered, so as to secure a
representation at once more Russian and more conservative. The
non-Russian frontier provinces (
okrainas) had even before
been under-represented (one member for every 350,000 inhabitants,
as against one for every 250,000 in the
central provinces); the
members returned by Poland, the Caucasus and Siberia were now
reduced from 89 to 39, those from the Central Asian steppes (23)
were swept away altogether; the total number of deputies was
reduced from 524 to 442. Even more drastic were the changes in the
electoral machinery, by far the most complicated in Europe,
established by the law of 1905.6 This was based on the principle of
indirect 3 Of this M. Chasles remarks that it would have been a
revolutionary act even in republican France.
4 They were condemned in 1907 to three months' imprisonment and
loss of civil rights.
6 This was reversed, on the 8th of June, by 238 votes to 191,
after a patient exposition by M. Stolypin of the fact that there
was plenty of land in Russia for the peasants without any attack on
private property.
6 The electoral law covers 107
octavo pages.
guarantees for individual liberty.
The enormous programme of constitutional reform foreshadowed in
the manifesto had to be elaborated in haste by Count Witte, the
minister of the interior, under circumstances by no means
promising. The organs of government seemed paralysed by the
repudiation of the principle on which their authority was based,
and the empire to be in danger of falling into complete anarchy.
The revolutionary terrorists took advantage of the situation to
multiply outrages; popular agitation was fomented by a multitude of
new journals
preaching
every kind of extravagant doctrine, now that the
censor no
The longer dared to act; in
December the trouble "union culminated in a formidable rising in
Moscow. The
of the revolutionary terrorists were countered
by the
Russian terrorists of the reaction who under the
name of
People." The first Duma. THE ] election, through a
series of electoral colleges. It was a simple matter to manipulate
these so as to throw the effective power into the hands of the
propertied classes without ostensibly
The depriving any
one of the vote.' The result was that
third in the third
Duma, which met on the 15th of November
Duma. 1907, the
conservative Right preponderated as much as the Left had done in
its two predecessors. Its president, M. Khomiakov, had been one of
the founders of the " Union of 17 October," but even the Octobrists
formed but a third of the House and were compelled to act with the
reactionaries of the Right; and the vice-president, Prince
Volkonsky, was a member of the Union of the Russian People.
On the whole, the new Duma was fairly representative of the
changed temper of the Russian people, disillusioned and weary of
anarchy. The government had done wisely in obscuring the passion
for democratic ideals by an appeal to Russian
chauvinism, an appeal soon to bear fruit in
disuniting the revolutionary parties. The congress of
zemstvos, hitherto the
focus of Liberalism, had petitioned the
government, before the opening of the third Duma, to take measures
for the restoration of order. The authorities began to exhibit
something of their old spirit. M. Dubrovin, president of the Union
of the Russian People and organizer of
pogroms, having
written a letter of congratulation to the tsar on the occasion of
the
coup d'etat, received a gracious reply; the hideous
reign of terror of the " Black Hundred " in Odessa did not prevent
the Grand-duke Constantine from accepting the badge of membership
of the Union. The ordinary laws, too, had been suspended; the
fining and
confiscation of
newspapers had been resumed, and the "
Cadets " had been forbidden to hold a congress. All this, however,
did not argue an intention on the part of the government to revert
to the autocratic
status quo. M. Stolypin indeed defended
the
coup d'etat in the Duma on the ground that the
autocrat had merely altered what the autocrat had originally
granted; but, while laying stress on the necessity for restoring
order in the body politic, he announced a long programme of
reforms, including agrarian measures, reform of local government
and its extension in the frontier provinces, and state
insurance of workmen. The
most far-reaching of these reforms, carried in the first
session of the third Duma, was
the partial abolition of the communal and family ownership of land,
which involved the establishment of a class of true
peasant-proprietors. 2 Besides this, the Duma had passed before its
adjournment on the
28th of October 1908 much useful legislation, some 300 bills in
all, including two for the building of important railways on the
Amur and in Siberia. Nor had it exhibited by any means a wholly
docile spirit. On the 7th of June, for instance, M. Guchkov
attacked the maladministration in the navy, pointing out that no
reforms were possible so long as grand-dukes were at the head of
its departments. The Duma endorsed this all but unanimously, and as
the result the Grand-dukes Peter and Sergius resigned their posts
of inspector-general of Engineers and
Ordnance respectively, and the Grand-duke
Nicholas his chairmanship of the Committee of National Defence. A
year later the Duma again came into collision with the government
in a matter highly illuminating of the struggle between the ancient
traditions and the new ideas in Russia. On the 14th of June 1909 a
bill was passed removing the disabilities hitherto attaching to
some 15,000,000 of Old Believers. In spite of strenuous government
opposition, inspired by the authorities of the Orthodox Church,
amendments were carried allowing dissident ministers to assume
ecclesiastical titles and to preach, and permitting Christians to
join non-Christian religions or even to describe themselves as
unbelievers. Thus a step forward was made in securing the freedom
of conscience proclaimed in the October manifesto and denounced by
a synod of Orthodox bishops at Kiev in 1908, though the rights
granted by the Duma were seriously curtailed in the Imperial
Council, and have been largely rendered a dead letter by the action
of the administration.
' See above, Government and Administration. 2 The law
establishing individual peasant-proprietorship was p assed on
December 21st.
Meanwhile the
pan-Russian movement had been
gaining apace. At first it had seemed that the new birth of Russia
would lead to a revival of pan-Slavism, directed not,
Neo-Slav as in the middle of the i 9th century, against
Austria
and pan= but against Germany. In May 1908 a
deputation of
Russian the Slav members of the Austrian
Reichsrat paid a
moveens. ceremonial visit to the
Duma at St Petersburg, and in this " neo-Slav " demonstration M.
Dmowski, leader of the Polish party in the Duma, took part. In the
following year, however, the situation was completely altered, a
result due to the growing anti-Polish feeling in the Duma and, more
especially, to the support given by the Austrian Sla y s to the
annexation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. This
event caused the utmost excitement in Russia; the crown prince of
Servia, who arrived in St Petersburg on the 28th of October to ask
for the armed assistance of the tsar, was received with enthusiasm
by all classes of the people; and, though armed intervention was
impossible, M. Isvolsky took the lead in the abortive demand for a
European conference (see
Europe:
History). Neo-Slav dreams were
now replaced by a passionate desire to consolidate the Russian
empire on a purely Russian basis. Even the remnant of the " Cadets
" had by this time renounced their sympathy with Polish
aspirations, and in the matter of Finland the Duma proved itself
even more imperial than the emperor himself. The Finnish question
is dealt with elsewhere (see
Finland:
History). Here it may suffice
to mention, as illustrating the changed temper of the Russian
national assembly,
The Duma that the Russian majority of
the Duma included
and among the imperial questions in
Finland which the
Finland. Finnish diet ought to refer to
the imperial legislature not only all military matters - as the
tsar demanded (Rescript of October 14) - but the question of the
use of the Russian language in the grand-duchy, the principles of
the Finnish administration, police, justice, education, formation
of business companies and of associations, public meetings, the
press, the customs tariff, the monetary system, means of
communication, and the
pilot and
lighthouse system. The
old tendency illustrated by the outcome of the revolutionary
movements of 1848 was once more in evidence - the tendency of
merely artificial theories of democratic liberty to succumb to the
immemorial
instinct of
race and race ascendancy.
As an international force Russia had been, of course, all but
completely crippled by the outcome of the Japanese War and the
subsequent revolution. Her recovery, however,
Inter-
revealed the immense reserves of her strength. On
national
the 30th of July 1907 she signed a convention with
position Japan of mutual respect for treaty and
territorial
of Russia. rights, and guaranteeing the
integrity of China. On the 31st of August of the same year the long
period of mutual suspicion between Great Britain and Russia was
closed by a convention for an amicable settlement of all questions
likely to disturb the relations of the two Powers in Asia
generally, including the demarcation of Persia into
spheres
of influence (see
Persia:
History). This new
entente with Great Britain,
cemented by a visit paid by King
Edward VII. to the tsar at
Reval on the 9th June 1908, helped to knit close
once more the loosened alliance with France, and so to preserve the
threatened balance of Europe. That in the work of restoring its
military position the Russian government had the support of the
Russian parliament was proved by a
subsidy of
Li
1,000,000 voted by the Duma, on the 30th of December 1909, for the
special service of the reorganization and redistribution of the
army. (W. A. P.) Bibliography. - The history of Russia, especially
that of the last few years, has formed the subject of a vast number
of works, of very varying authority, in many languages. In Russia
itself the first great history of the Russian empire was that of N.
M. Karamzin (12 vols., St Petersburg, 1818-29; French translation,
Ii vols., 1819-26), which, though reactionary in tone and largely
superseded, remains a classic. The next monumental history of
Russia, that of Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev (29 vols., Moscow,
1863-75), marks the enormous advance made since Karamzin's day in
historical method and research. Soloviev's history, from the
earliest times to 1774, is based throughout on original
investigation of sources, and therefore, though inferior to
Karamzin's work as literature, is incomparably superior to it in
authority. Of other works it is only possible to give a classified
selection. In general, the reader must be warned that most Russian
works on history, especially those dealing with recent years, are
inspired by a violent party
bias -
the inevitable result of the conflict of diametrically opposed
political ideals, - and this quality is shared by not a few foreign
books about Russia.
Sources
See Sienkiewicz, Recueil de documents relatifs a la Russie,
1502-1842 (1852); Soloviev, Russian Historical Writers
(Pisateli russkoe ist. in collected works, vol. xviii. sqq.);
Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov (1817-1885), professor of history at
Kiev and St Petersburg, whose monographs and researches are
collected in his Sobranye sochinenye (collected works, 21
vols., St Petersburg, 1903-6); V. Burtsev and S. M. Kravchinski,
Za sto lyet, 1800-1896. Documents relating to the
political and social movements in Russia (London, 1897). There is a
French translation by L. Leger (Paris, 1884), of the chronicle of
Nestor, the main source for early Russian history. The publications
of the Imperial Russian Historical Society of St Petersburg,
amounting to upwards of 100 vols., are of great value. For
diplomatic history, see F. F. de Martens, Recueil des traites
conclus par la Russie avec les puissances etrangeres (St
Petersburg, from 1878 still incomplete), which contains valuable
historical introductions based on unpublished sources; A. N.
Rambaud, Recueil des instructions aux ambassadeurs de
France, vols. viii. and ix., Russie, 1657-1793
(Paris, 1890).
General Works
In addition to those of Karamzin and Soloviev, already
mentioned, see R. Nisbet Bain,
The Pupils of Peter the Great.
.. 16 971 74 0 (Westminster, 1897);
The Daughter of Peter
the Great. A History of Russian Diplomacy under the Empress
Elizabeth Petrovna, 1741-1762 (1899);
The First Romanovs,
1613-1725 (1905); K. N. Bestuzhev-Riumin,
Russkaya
istoriya (2 vols., St Petersburg, 1872), especially for
internal history and social life; A. Bruckner,
Gesch.
Russlands. .. bis zum Tode Peters des Grossen (Gotha, 1896);
Gaston Crehange,
Histoire de la Russie depuis la mort de Paul I. (Paris, 1882; 2nd
ed. extended to 1894,
ibid. 1896); T. von Bernhardi,
Geschichte Russlands.1814-1831 (3 vols.,
Leipzig, 1868-78);
J.
W. A. von Eckardt,
Russland vor and nach dem Kriege (1879;
Eng. trans. 1880); N. Flerovski,
Three Political Systems:
Nicholas I., Alexander IL, Alexander III. (Russ.,
Geneva, 1897;1897; Germ. transl.,
Berlin, 1898); V. Kluchevski,
Kurs russkoe istoriy
(1904-8); A. Kleinschmidt,
Drei Jahrhunderte russischer
Geschichte, 1598-1898 (Berlin, 1898); A. Krausse,
Russia
in Asia, 1558-1899 (1899); W. R. Morfill,
Russia
(Story of the Nations Series,
New York, 1891),
History of Russia
(
New York, 1902); H. H. Munro,
Rise of the Russian Empire (Boston, 1900); F. Neuburger,
Russland unter Kaiser Alexander III. (Berlin, 1895); W. R.
S. Ralston,
Early Russian History-1613 (1874); A. N.
Rambaud,
Histoire de la Russie (Paris, 1878; new ed. 1900;
Eng. transl. of 1st ed. by L. B. Lang, 2 vols., 1879); Theodor
Schiemann,
Russland, Polen and Livland bis im xvii.
Jahrhundert (2 vols., in Oncken's
Allgemeine Gesch.,
Berlin, 188687),
Gesch. Russlands unter Kaiser Nikolaus I.
(vol. i., " Kaiser Alexander I. and die Ergebnisse seiner
Lebensarbeit," Berlin, 1904, vol. ii. 1908), with appendices giving
many unpublished documents; J. H. Schnitzler,
Gesch. des
Russischen Reichs (Leipzig, 1874); F. H. Skrine,
The
Expansion of Russia, 1815-1900 (Cambridge, 1903) V. L. P.
Thomsen,
The Relation
between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia and the Origin of the
Russian State (London, 1877); the series of works by K.
Waliszewski under the general title of
Les Origines de la
Russie moderne: L'Heritage de Pierre le Grand, 1725-41 (Paris,
1900),
La Derniere des Romanov (1902), La Crise
revolutionnaire, 1584-1614 (1906),
Le Berceau d'une
dynastie. Les Premiers Romanov (1909). For the relations of
Russia with the
papacy, see T.
Pierling,
Russie et le Saint-Siege,1417-1758 (4 vols.,
1896-1907). The only history of Little Russia is that in Russian by
D. N. Bantysh-Kamenski (Moscow, 1842). Of the numerous books on the
Russian revolutionary movement, besides those of " Stepniak,"
Kropotkin, and other revolutionary writers, the following may be
mentioned: C. A. de Arnaud,
The New Era in Russia
(Washington, 1890); E. von der Bruggen,
Das heutige
Russland (Eng. trans. " Russia of To-day," 1904); G. Drage,
Russian Affairs (New York, 1904); P. N. Miliukov,
La
Crise russe (Paris, 1907; an earlier English edition appeared
in 1905); Bernard Pares,
Russia and Reform (1907); A.
Thun,
Geschichte der
revolutionaren Bewegungen in Russland (Leipzig, 1883); Konni
Zilliacus,
The Russian Revolutionary movement (London,
1905).
Economic Works. - Georges Alfassa,
La Crise agraire
en Russie (Paris, 1905);
Anatole
Leroy-Beaulieu,
L'Empire des Tsars (3 vols., Paris,
1882-88; Eng. trans., 1896), an admirable account, partly
historical, partly based on personal observation of the government,
religion and the social and economic conditions of Russia; Combes
de Lestrade,
La Russie economique et sociale (Paris,
1896); " Nikolai " (pseudonym of Danielson),
Histoire des
developpement economique de la Russie depuis l'abolition du
servage (Paris, 1899).
Law and Constitution
A.
Chasles, Le Parlement russe
(Paris, 1910); H. D.
Edwards, Das Staatsrecht Russlands
(vol. iv. of
Marquardsen's Handbuch des ofentlichen Rechts,
Freiburg, 1888);; S. N.
Harper, The New Electoral Law for the Russian Duma
(Chicago, 1908); J. Kapnist, Code d'organisation
judiciaire russe
(Paris, 1893); V. Kluchovski, Boyarskaya
Duma
(1882), an account of the boyars' duma
from the
10th to the 17th century; Maksim M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs
and Ancient Laws of Russia
(London, 1891); Max von
Ottingen, Abriss des russischen Staatsrechts
(1899); F. de
Rocca, Les Assembles dans la Russie ancienne; Zemskie Sobors
(1899); L. Z. Slonimsky, Polit. entsiklopyediya
(t. 1,
1907), compiled from the Liberal standpoint.There is a fuller bibliography of Russian history in vol. xvii.
of the Historians' History of the World (" Times " ed.,
1907), which also includes considerable extracts from Russian works
not elsewhere translated. Many additional works will be found
s.v. " Russia " in the Subject Index of the
London Library (1909).
(W. A. P.)
The 1922 extension to the 1911 encyclopedia has updated
information on this subject.
See Russia (addition) for this
information. |
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Misc
Timeline
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
listen); Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijə] (
Search
