TheRussian Empire[d][e] was anempire that spanned most of northernEurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of theRussian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about 22,800,000 km2 (8,800,000 sq mi), roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it thethird-largest empire in history, behind only theBritish andMongol empires. It alsocolonized Alaska between 1799 and 1867. The empire's1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity.
From the 10th to 17th century, the Russians had been ruled by a noble class known as theboyars, above whom was thetsar, the absolute monarch. The groundwork of the Russian Empire was laid byIvan III who ruled from 1462 to 1505, and greatly expanded his domain, established a centralized Russiannational state, and secured independence against theTatars. His grandson,Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), became in 1547 the first Russian monarch to be crownedtsar of all Russia. Between 1550 and 1700, the Russian state grew by an average of 35,000 km2 (14,000 sq mi) per year.Peter I transformed the tsardom into an empire, and fought numerous wars that turned a vast realm into a major European power. He moved the Russian capital fromMoscow to the new model city ofSaint Petersburg, and led a cultural revolution that introduced a modern, scientific, rationalist, and Western-oriented system.Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) presided over further expansion of the Russian state by conquest,colonization, and diplomacy, while continuing Peter's policy of modernization.Alexander I (r. 1801–1825) helped defeat the militaristic ambitions ofNapoleon and subsequently constituted theHoly Alliance, which aimed to restrain the rise of secularism and liberalism across Europe. Russia further expanded to the west, south, and east, strengthening its position as a European power. Its victories in theRusso-Turkish Wars were later checked by defeat in theCrimean War (1853–1856), leading to a period of reform andconquests in Central Asia.[10]Alexander II (r. 1855–1881) initiatednumerous reforms, most notably the1861 emancipation of all 23 million serfs.
By the start of the 19th century, Russian territory extended from theArctic Ocean in the north to theBlack Sea in the south, and from theBaltic Sea in the west toAlaska, Hawaii, and California in the east. By the end of the 19th century, Russia had expanded its control overthe Caucasus, most ofCentral Asia and parts ofNortheast Asia. Notwithstanding its extensive territorial gains and great power status, the empire entered the 20th century in a perilous state. The devastatingRussian famine of 1891–1892 killed hundreds of thousands and led to popular discontent. As the last remainingabsolute monarchy inEurope, the empire saw rapid political radicalization and the growing popularity of revolutionary ideas such ascommunism.[11] After theRussian Revolution of 1905,Tsar Nicholas II authorized the creation of a national parliament, theState Duma, although he still retained absolute political power.
The foundations of a unified Russian state were laid in the 15th century underIvan III.[16][17]Moscow came to dominate the region known asGreat Russia, and by the early 16th century, the Russian states were united with Moscow.[17][18] The subjects of the Muscovite ruler were overwhelminglyGreat Russian in ethnicity andOrthodox in religion.[17] As Moscow was the only independent Orthodox power following thefall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, its rulers had already taken symbolic steps toward becoming an empire by marrying into the Byzantine imperial dynasty, adopting thedouble-headed eagle as their symbol, and the title oftsar (caesar).[17]
During the reign ofIvan IV, the khanates ofKazan andAstrakhan were conquered by Russia in the mid-16th century, marking the beginning of the transformation from an almost mono-ethnic realm into a multi-ethnic empire.[19][20] The Russians began to expand intoSiberia, initially in pursuit of the region'sprofitable furs.[19] Following theTime of Troubles in the early 17th century, the traditional alliance of autocratic monarchy, church, and aristocracy was seen as the only basis for preserving social order and Russian statehood, which legitimized the rule of theRomanov dynasty.[19]
Peter the Great officially proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721 and became its first emperor. He institutedsweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power. Painting byJean-Marc Nattier, 1717.Coat of arms during the reign of Peter IThe Victoryat Poltava, painted byAlexander von Kotzebue in 1862
The foundations of the Russian Empire were laid duringPeter I's reforms, which altered Russia's political and social structure,[21] and as a result of theGreat Northern War which strengthened Russia's world standing.[22][23]Peter I (r. 1682–1725), played a major role in introducing the European state system into Russia. While Russia's vast lands had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those in the West.[24] Nearly the entire population was devoted to agriculture, with only a small percentage living in towns. The class ofkholops, whose status was close to that ofslaves, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter converted household kholops into houseserfs, thus counting them for poll taxation. Agricultural kholops had been converted into serfs in 1679. They were largely tied to the land, in a feudal sense, until the late 19th century.
Peter's first military efforts were directed against theOttoman Empire. His attention then turned north; Russia lacked a secure northern seaport, except atArkhangelsk on theWhite Sea, where the harbor was frozen for nine months a year. Access to theBaltic Sea was blocked by Sweden, whose territory enclosed it on three sides. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him, in 1699, to make a secret alliance withSaxony, thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, andDenmark-Norway againstSweden; they conducted theGreat Northern War, which ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden asked for peace with Russia. On 2 November [O.S. 22 October] 1721, the day of the announcement of theTreaty of Nystad, theGoverning Senate andSynod invested the tsar with the titles of Peter the Great,[25]Pater Patriae (father of the fatherland),[f] andImperator of all Russia.[g][26][27] The adoption of the title ofimperator by Peter I is seen as the beginning of "imperial" Russia.[h][30]
As a result of the war with Sweden, Peter acquired four provinces situated south and east of theGulf of Finland, securing access to the sea. There he built Russia's new capital,Saint Petersburg, on theNeva river in 1703, to replace Moscow, which had long been Russia's cultural center. This relocation expressed his intent to adopt European elements for his empire. Many of the government and other major buildings were designed underItalianate influence.
Peter reorganized his government based on the latest political models, molding Russia into anabsolutist state. The Military Regulations recognized theautocratic nature of the regime.[31] Peter replaced the oldBoyar Duma (council of nobles) with a nine-memberSenate, in effect a supreme council of state. The vestiges of the independence of theboyars were lost. The countryside was divided into newprovinces and districts. Peter informed the Senate that its mission was to collect taxes, and tax revenues tripled over his reign. Peter continued and intensified his predecessors' requirement of state service from all nobles, in theTable of Ranks and equated thevotchina with anestate. Russia'smodern fleet was built by Peter, along with anarmy reformed in a European style and educational institutions (theSaint Petersburg Academy of Sciences). Civil lettering was adopted during Peter I's reign, and the first Russian newspaper,Vedomosti, was published. Peter I promoted science, particularlygeography andgeology, trade, and industry,[32] including shipbuilding, as well as the growth of the educational system. Every tenth Russian acquired an education during his reign, when there were 15 million Russians.[33]
The concept of the triune of the Russian people, composed of theGreat Russians, theLittle Russians, and theWhite Russians, was introduced under Peter I, and it was associated with the name of ArchimandriteZacharias Kopystensky (1621), the Archimandrite of theKiev Pechersk Lavra and expanded upon in the writings of an associate of Peter I, Archbishop ProfessorTheophan Prokopovich. Several of Peter I's associates includeAlexander Menshikov,Jacob Bruce,Mikhail Golitsyn andAnikita Repnin. During Peter's reign serf labor played a significant role in the growth of industry, reinforcing traditional socioeconomic structures. International trade increased as a result of Peter I's industrial reforms. However, imports of goods overtook exports, strengthening the role of foreigners in Russian trade, particularly theBritish.[35]
Peter died in 1725, leaving an unsettled succession. After a short reign by his widow,Catherine I, the crown passed to EmpressAnna. She slowed reforms and led a successfulwar against the Ottoman Empire. This resulted in a significant weakening of theCrimean Khanate, an Ottoman vassal and long-term Russian adversary. The next emperor, the infant Ivan VI was deposed and killed. The discontent over the dominant positions ofBaltic Germans in Russian politics resulted in Peter I's daughterElizabeth being put on the Russian throne. Elizabeth supported the arts, architecture, and the sciences (for example, the founding ofMoscow University). But she did not carry out significant structural reforms. Her reign, which lasted nearly 20 years, is also known for Russia's involvement in theSeven Years' War, where it was successful militarily, but gained little politically.[38]
Catherine the Great was a German princess who marriedPeter III, the German heir to the Russian crown. After the death of Empress Elizabeth, Catherine came to power after she effected a coup d'état against her very unpopular husband. She contributed to the resurgence of theRussian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great, abolishing State service and granting them control of most state functions in the provinces. She also removed theBeard tax instituted by Peter the Great.[39]
Catherine extended Russian political control over the lands of thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, supporting theTargowica Confederation. However, the cost of these campaigns further burdened the already oppressive social system, under which serfs were required to spend almost all of their time laboring on their owners' land. A major peasant uprising took place in 1773, after Catherine legalized the selling of serfs separate from land. Inspired by aCossack namedYemelyan Pugachev and proclaiming "Hang all the landlords!", the rebels threatened to take Moscow before they were ruthlessly suppressed. Instead of imposing the traditional punishment of drawing and quartering, Catherine issued secret instructions that the executioners should execute death sentences quickly and with minimal suffering, as part of her effort to introduce compassion into the law.[40]
She furthered these efforts by ordering the public trial ofDarya Nikolayevna Saltykova, a high-ranking noblewoman, on charges of torturing and murdering serfs. Whilst these gestures garnered Catherine much positive attention from Europe during theEnlightenment, the specter of revolution and disorder continued to haunt her and her successors. Indeed, her sonPaulintroduced a number of increasingly erratic decrees in his short reign aimed directly against the spread of French culture in response totheir revolution.
In order to ensure the continued support of the nobility, which was essential to her reign, Catherine was obliged to strengthen their authority and power at the expense of the serfs and other lower classes. Nevertheless, Catherine realized that serfdom must eventually be ended, going so far in herNakaz ("Instruction") to say that serfs were "just as good as we are" – a comment received with disgust by the nobility. Catherine advanced Russia's southern and western frontiers,successfully waging war against the Ottoman Empire for territory near theBlack Sea, and incorporating territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during thePartitions of Poland, alongsideAustria andPrussia. As part of theTreaty of Georgievsk, signed with the GeorgianKingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, and her own political aspirations, Catherine waged a new waragainst Persia in 1796 after they had invadedeastern Georgia. Upon achieving victory, she established Russian rule over it and expelled the newly established Persian garrisons in the Caucasus.
Catherine's expansionist policy caused Russia to develop into a major European power,[41] as did theEnlightenment era and the Golden age in Russia. But after Catherine died in 1796, she was succeeded by her son,Paul. He brought Russia into amajor coalition war against the new-revolutionaryFrench Republic in 1798. Russian commander Field MarshalSuvorov led theItalian and Swiss expedition,—he inflicted a series of defeats on the French; in particular, theBattle of the Trebbia in 1799.
Catherine II Sestroretsk Ruble (1771) is made of solid copper measuring 77 mm (3+1⁄32 in) (diameter),26 mm (1+1⁄32 in) (thickness), and weighs1,041 g (2 lb4+3⁄4 oz).[42]
Russia was in a continuous state of financial crisis. While revenue rose from 9 million rubles in 1724 to 40 million in 1794, expenses grew more rapidly, reaching 49 million in 1794. The budget allocated 46 percent to the military, 20 percent to government economic activities, 12 percent to administration, and nine percent for the Imperial Court in St. Petersburg. The deficit required borrowing, primarily from bankers inAmsterdam; five percent of the budget was allocated to debt payments. Paper money was issued to pay for expensive wars, thus causing inflation. As a result of its spending, Russia developed a large and well-equipped army, a very large and complex bureaucracy, and a court that rivaled those ofVersailles and London. But the government was living far beyond its means, and 18th-century Russia became "poor and backward" after the middle of the century[43] and remained "an overwhelmingly agricultural and illiterate country".[44]
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in thefirst Russian colonization of the Pacific, theRusso-Polish War (1654–1667) which led to the incorporation ofleft-bank Ukraine, and theRussian conquest of Siberia. Poland was partitioned by its rivals in 1772–1815, most of its land and population taken under Russian rule. Most of the empire's growth in the 19th century came from gaining territory in central and eastern Asia south of Siberia.[45] By 1795, after thePartitions of Poland, Russia became the most populous state in Europe, ahead ofFrance.
Following a dispute with Emperor Alexander I, in 1812, Napoleon launched aninvasion of Russia. It was catastrophic for France, whose army was decimated during theRussian winter. Although Napoleon'sGrande Armée reached Moscow, the Russians'scorched earth strategy prevented the invaders from living off the country. In the harsh and bitter winter, thousands of French troops were ambushed and killed by peasantguerrilla fighters.[49] Russian troops then pursued Napoleon's troops to the gates of Paris, presiding over the redrawing of the map of Europe at theCongress of Vienna (1815), which ultimately made Alexander the monarch ofCongress Poland.[50] The "Holy Alliance" was proclaimed, linking the monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.
An 1813 painting depicting theFire of Moscow, Russia had burned the city just before Napoleon could reach and occupy it.
Although the Russian Empire played a leading political role in the next century, thanks to its role in defeating Napoleonic France, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress to any significant degree. As Western European economic growth accelerated during theIndustrial Revolution, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, creating new weaknesses for the empire seeking to play a role as a great power. Russia's status as a great power concealed the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic and social backwardness. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I had been ready to discuss constitutional reforms, but thougha few were introduced, no major changes were attempted.[51]
This 1892 painting imagines a scene of Russian troops forming a bridge with their bodies, moving equipment to prepare for invading Persian forces during theRusso-Persian War (1804–1813), which occurred contemporaneously with theFrench invasion of Russia.
The liberal Alexander I was replaced by his younger brotherNicholas I (1825–1855), who at the beginning of his reign was confronted with an uprising. The background of this revolt lay in theNapoleonic Wars, when a number of well-educated Russian officers travelled in Europe in the course of military campaigns, where their exposure to theliberalism of Western Europe encouraged them to seek change on their return toautocratic Russia. The result was theDecembrist revolt (December 1825), which was the work of a small circle of liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brotherConstantine as a constitutional monarch. The revolt was easily crushed, but it caused Nicholas to turn away from the modernization program begun by Peter the Great and champion the doctrine ofOrthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.[52]
In order to repress further revolts, censorship was intensified, including the constant surveillance of schools and universities. Textbooks were strictly regulated by the government. Police spies were planted everywhere. Under Nicholas I, would-be revolutionaries were sent off to Siberia, with hundreds of thousands sent tokatorga camps.[53] The retaliation for the revolt made "December Fourteenth" a day long remembered by later revolutionary movements.[citation needed]
The question of Russia's direction had been gaining attention ever since Peter the Great's program of modernization. Some favored imitating Western Europe while others were against this and called for a return to the traditions of the past. The latter path was advocated bySlavophiles, who held the "decadent" West in contempt. The Slavophiles were opponents of bureaucracy, who preferred thecollectivism of the medieval Russianobshchina ormir over theindividualism of the West.[54] More extreme social doctrines were elaborated by such Russian radicals on the left, such asAlexander Herzen,Mikhail Bakunin, andPeter Kropotkin.
After Russian armies liberated theEastern Georgian Kingdom (allied since the 1783Treaty of Georgievsk) from theQajar dynasty's occupation of 1802,[citation needed] during theRusso-Persian War (1804–1813), they clashed with Persia over control and consolidation of Georgia, and also became involved in theCaucasian War against theCaucasian Imamate. At the conclusion of the war, Persia irrevocably ceded what is nowDagestan, eastern Georgia, and most ofAzerbaijan to Russia, under theTreaty of Gulistan.[55] Russia attempted to expand to the southwest, at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, using recently acquired Georgia at its base for its Caucasus and Anatolian front. The late 1820s were successful years militarily. Despite losing almost all recently consolidated territories in the first year of theRusso-Persian War of 1826–1828, Russia managed to favorably bring an end to the war with theTreaty of Turkmenchay, including the formal acquisition of what are nowArmenia, Azerbaijan, andIğdır Province.[56] In the1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War, Russia invaded northeasternAnatolia and occupied the strategic Ottoman towns ofKarin andGümüşhane (Argiroupoli) and, posing as protector of theGreek Orthodox population, received extensive support from the region'sPontic Greeks. Following a brief occupation, the Russian imperial army withdrew back into Georgia.[57]
Russian emperors quelled two uprisings in their newly acquired Polish territories: theNovember Uprising in 1830 and theJanuary Uprising in 1863. In 1863, the Russian autocracy had given the Polish artisans andgentry reason to rebel, by assailing national core values of language, religion, and culture.[58]France,Britain, and Austria tried to intervene in the crisis but were unable to do so. The Russian press and statepropaganda used the Polish uprising to justify the need for unity in the empire.[59] The semi-autonomouspolity of Congress Poland subsequently lost its distinctive political and judicial rights, withRussification being imposed on its schools and courts.[60] However, Russification policies in Poland, Finland and among the Germans in the Baltics largely failed and only strengthened political opposition.[59]
Imperial Standard of the Tsar between from 1858 to 1917. Previous variations of the black eagle on gold background were used as far back as Peter the Great's time. The emblems on the wings representKazan,Poland,Taurida, theKievan Rus',Finland,Georgia,Siberia, andAstrakhanThe eleven-monthsiege of a Russian naval base atSevastopol during theCrimean WarRussian troops takingSamarkand (8 June 1868)Russian troops enteringKhiva in 1873Capturing of the Ottoman Turkish redoubt during theSiege of Plevna (1877)
In 1854–1855, Russia foughtBritain,France and theOttoman Empire in theCrimean War, which Russia lost. The war was fought primarily in theCrimean peninsula, and to a lesser extent in the Baltic during the relatedÅland War. Since playing a major role in the defeat of Napoleon, Russia had been regarded as militarily invincible, but against a coalition of the great powers of Europe, the reverses it suffered on land and sea exposed the weakness of Emperor Nicholas I's regime.
When EmperorAlexander II ascended the throne in 1855, the desire for reform was widespread. A growing humanitarian movement attackedserfdom as inefficient. In 1859, there were more than 23 million serfs in usually poor living conditions. Alexander II decided to abolishserfdom from above, with ample provision for the landowners, rather than wait for it to be abolished from below by revolution.[61]
TheEmancipation Reform of 1861, which freed the serfs, was the single most important event in 19th-century Russian history, and the beginning of the end of the landed aristocracy's monopoly on power. The 1860s saw further socioeconomic reforms to clarify the position of the Russian government with regard to property rights.[62] Emancipation brought a supply of free labor to the cities, stimulating industry, while the middle class grew in number and influence. However, instead of receiving their lands as a gift, the freed peasants had to pay a special lifetime tax to the government, which in turn paid the landlords a generous price for the land that they had lost. In numerous cases the peasants ended up with relatively small amounts of the least productive land. All the property turned over to the peasants was owned collectively by themir, the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised the various holdings. Although serfdom was abolished, its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to peasants; thus, revolutionary tensions remained. Revolutionaries believed that the newly freed serfs were merely being sold intowage slavery in the onset of the industrial revolution, and that the urbanbourgeoisie had effectively replaced the landowners.[63]
Seeking more territories, Russiaobtained Priamurye (Outer Manchuria) from the weakenedManchu-led Qing China, which had been occupied fighting against theTaiping Rebellion. In 1858, theTreaty of Aigun ceded much of the Manchu homeland to the Russian Empire, and in 1860, theTreaty of Peking also ceded the modernPrimorsky Krai, which provided the land for the establishment of the outpost of the futureVladivostok.[64] Meanwhile, Russia underAlexander II decided to sell what it saw as the indefensibleRussian America to theUnited States for 11 million rubles (7.2 million dollars) in 1867 toAndrew Johnson's government in theAlaska Purchase.[65][66] Initially, many Americans considered this newly gained territory to be a wasteland and useless, and saw the government wasting money, whereupon the transaction was sometimes called "Seward's Folly" through the eponymousSecretary of StateWilliam H. Seward who brokered the deal,[67][68] but later, much gold and petroleum were discovered.[69]
In the late 1870s, Russia and the Ottoman Empire again clashed in the Balkans. From 1875 to 1877, the Balkan crisis intensified, with rebellions against Ottoman rule by various Slavic nationalities,[70] which the Ottoman Turks had dominated since the 15th century. This was seen as a political risk in Russia, which similarly suppressed its Muslims in Central Asia and Caucasia. Russian nationalist opinion became a major domestic factor with its support for liberating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule and making Bulgaria andSerbia independent. In early 1877, Russia intervened on behalf of Serbian and Russian volunteer forces,[71] leading to theRusso-Turkish War (1877–78).[72] Within one year, Russian troops were nearingConstantinople and the Ottomans surrendered. Russia's nationalist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II to force the Ottomans to sign theTreaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating an enlarged, independent Bulgaria that stretched into the southwestern Balkans.[71] When Britain threatened to declare war over the terms of the treaty, an exhausted Russia backed down. At theCongress of Berlin in July 1878, Russia agreed to the creation of a smallerBulgaria andEastern Rumelia, as a vassal state and an autonomous principality inside the Ottoman Empire, respectively.[73][74] As a result,Pan-Slavists were left with a legacy of bitterness againstAustria-Hungary andGermany for failing to back Russia. Disappointment at the results of the war stimulated revolutionary tensions, and helped Serbia,Romania, andMontenegro gain independence from, and strengthen themselves against, the Ottomans.[75]
Another significant result of the war was the acquisition from the Ottomans of the provinces ofBatumi,Ardahan, andKars inTranscaucasia, which were transformed into the militarily administered regions ofBatum Oblast andKars Oblast. To replace Muslim refugees who had fled across the new frontier into Ottoman territory, the Russian authorities settled large numbers of Christians from ethnically diverse communities in Kars Oblast, particularlyGeorgians,Caucasus Greeks, andArmenians, each of whom hoped to achieve protection and advance their own regional ambitions.
In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by theNarodnaya Volya, aNihilistterrorist organization. The throne passed toAlexander III (1881–1894), a reactionary who revived the maxim of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality" of Nicholas I. A committed Slavophile, Alexander III believed that Russia could be saved from turmoil only by shutting itself off from the subversive influences of Western Europe. During his reign, Russia formed theFranco-Russian Alliance, to contain the growing power of Germany; completed theconquest of Central Asia; and demanded important territorial and commercial concessions from China. The emperor's most influential adviser wasKonstantin Pobedonostsev, tutor to Alexander III and his son Nicholas, and procurator of the Holy Synod from 1880 to 1895. Pobedonostsev taught his imperial pupils to fear freedom of speech and the press, as well as dislike democracy, constitutions, and the parliamentary system. Under Pobedonostsev, revolutionaries were persecuted—by theimperial secret police, with thousands being exiled toSiberia—and a policy ofRussification was carried out throughout the empire.[76]
Russia had little difficulty expanding to the south, including conqueringTurkestan,[77] until Britain became alarmed when Russia threatenedAfghanistan, with the implicit threat toIndia; and decades of diplomatic maneuvering resulted, called theGreat Game.[78] That rivalry between the two empires has been considered to have included far-flung territories such asOuter Mongolia andTibet. The maneuvering largely ended with theAnglo-Russian Convention of 1907.[79]
Expansion into the vast stretches of Siberia was slow and expensive, but finally became possible with the building of theTrans-Siberian Railway, 1890 to 1904. This opened upEast Asia; and Russian interests focused on Mongolia,Manchuria, andKorea. China was too weak to resist, and was pulled increasingly into the Russian sphere. Russia obtained treaty ports such asDalian/Port Arthur. In 1900, the Russian Empireinvaded Manchuria as part of theEight-Nation Alliance's intervention against theBoxer Rebellion.Japan strongly opposed Russian expansion, and defeated Russia in theRusso-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Japan took over Korea, and Manchuria remained a contested area.[80]
Meanwhile,France, looking for allies against Germany after 1871, formed amilitary alliance in 1894, with large-scale loans to Russia, sales of arms, and warships, as well as diplomatic support. Once Afghanistan was informally partitioned by theAnglo-Russian Convention in 1907, Britain, France, and Russia came increasingly close together in opposition to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The three would later comprise theTriple Entente alliance in theFirst World War.[81]
In 1894, Alexander III was succeeded by his son,Nicholas II, who was committed to retaining the autocracy that his father had left him. Nicholas II proved as an ineffective ruler, and in the end his dynasty was overthrown by theRussian Revolution.[83] TheIndustrial Revolution began to show significant influence in Russia, but the country remained rural and poor.
Economic conditions steadily improved after 1890, thanks to new crops such as sugar beets, and new access to railway transportation. Total grain production increased, as well as exports, even with rising domestic demand from population growth. As a result, there was a slow improvement in the living standards of Russian peasants in the empire's last two decades before 1914. Recent research into the physical stature of Army recruits shows they were bigger and stronger. There were regional variations, with more poverty in the heavily populatedcentral black earth region; and there were temporary downturns in 1891–93 and 1905–1908.[84]
By the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire had reached its greatest territorial extent, covering a surface area of 22,800,000 km2, and ranking as the third-largest empire in world history.
On the political right, the reactionary elements of the aristocracy strongly favored the large landholders, who, however, were slowly selling their land to the peasants through thePeasants' Land Bank. TheOctobrist party was a conservative force, with a base of landowners and businessmen. They accepted land reform but insisted that property owners be fully paid. They favored far-reaching reforms, and hoped the landlord class would fade away, while agreeing they should be paid for their land. Liberal elements among industrial capitalists and nobility, who believed in peaceful social reform and a constitutional monarchy, formed theConstitutional Democratic Party orKadets.[85]
On the left, theSocialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and the MarxistSocial Democrats wanted to expropriate the land, without payment, but debated whether to distribute the land among the peasants (theNarodnik solution), or to put it into collective local ownership.[86] The Socialist Revolutionaries also differed from the Social Democrats in that the SRs believed a revolution must rely on urban workers, not the peasantry.[87]
In 1903, at the2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, in London, the party split into two wings: the gradualistMensheviks and the more radicalBolsheviks. The Mensheviks believed that the Russian working class was insufficiently developed and that socialism could be achieved only after a period of bourgeois democratic rule. They thus tended to ally themselves with the forces of bourgeois liberalism. The Bolsheviks, underVladimir Lenin, supported the idea of forming a small elite of professional revolutionists, subject to strong party discipline, to act as the vanguard of the proletariat, in order to seize power by force.[88]
Russian soldiers in combat against Japaneseat Mukden (inside China), during theRusso-Japanese War (1904–1905)
Defeat in theRusso-Japanese War (1904–1905) was a major blow to the tsarist regime and further increased the potential for unrest. In January 1905, an incident known as "Bloody Sunday" occurred when FatherGeorgy Gapon led an enormous crowd to theWinter Palace inSaint Petersburg to present a petition to the emperor. When the procession reached the palace, soldiers opened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. The Russian masses were so furious over the massacre that a general strike was declared, which demanded a democratic republic. This marked the beginning of theRevolution of 1905.Soviets (councils of workers) appeared in most cities to direct revolutionary activity. Russia was paralyzed, and the government was desperate.[89]
In October 1905, Nicholas reluctantly issued theOctober Manifesto, which conceded the creation of a nationalDuma (legislature) to be called without delay. The right to vote was extended and no law was to become final without confirmation by the Duma. The moderate groups were satisfied, but the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes. By the end of 1905, there was disunity among the reformers, and the emperor's position was strengthened, allowing him to roll back some of the concessions with the newRussian Constitution of 1906.
Russia, along withFrance andBritain, was a member of theEntente in antecedent toWorld War I; these three powers were formed up in response toGermany's rival[90]Triple Alliance, comprising itself,Austria-Hungary andItaly. The relations with Britain were in disquietude from theGreat Game in Central Asia until the 1907Anglo-Russian Convention, when both agreed to settle their differences and joined to oppose the new rising power of Germany.[91] Russia and France's relations remained isolated before the 1890s when both sides agreed toally when peace was threatened.[92]
Theassassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir,Archduke Franz Ferdinand, raised Europe's tensions, which led to the confrontation between Austria and Russia.[96]Serbia rejected anAustrian ultimatum that demanded an obligation for the heir's death, and Austria-Hungary cut all diplomatic ties and declared war on 28 July 1914. Russia supported Serbia because it was a fellow Slavic state, and two days later, EmperorNicholas II ordered a mobilization to attempt to force Austria-Hungary to back down.[97]
The Russian Emperor Nicholas II declared war onGermany, on the balcony of theWinter Palace, on 2 August 1914.
As a result ofVienna's declaration of war on Serbia, Nicholas II ordered the mobilization of 4.9 million soldiers.Germany, Austria-Hungary's ally, saw the call to arms as a threat,[98] and declared war on 1 August 1914, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire followed suit by declaring war of Russia on 6 August.[99] The Russians were imbued with patriotic earnestness andGermanophobic sentiment, including the name of the capital,Saint Petersburg, which sounded tooGerman and was renamed Petrograd.[100]
The Russian entry into the First World War was followed byFrance.[101] TheGerman General Staff had devised theSchlieffen Plan, which first eliminated France via nonalignedBelgium before moving east to attack Russia, whose massive army was much slower to mobilize.[102]
Russian POWs and equipments which were captured by Germany after theBattle of Tannenberg, a major disaster for Russia
By August 1914, Russia hadinvaded with unexpected speed the German province ofEast Prussia, ending with a humiliating defeat atTannenberg, owing to a message sent without wiring andcoding,[103] causing the destruction of the entiresecond army. Russia suffered a massive defeat at the Masurian Lakes twice, thefirst ending with a hundred thousand casualties;[104] and thesecond suffering 200,000.[105] By October, theGerman Ninth Army was nearWarsaw, and the newly-formedTenth Army had retreated from the frontier in East Prussia.Grand Duke Nicholas, the Russian commander-in-chief, now had the order to invadeSilesia with hisFifth,Fourth, andNinth armies.[106] The Ninth Army, led byMackensen, retreated from the frontline inGalicia and concentrated between the cities ofPosen andThorn. The advancetook place on 11 November against the main army's right flank and rear; theFirst and Second armies were severely mauled, and the Second army was nearly surrounded inŁódź on 17 November.
Exhausted Russian troops began towithdraw fromRussian-held Poland, allowing the Germans to capture many cities, including the kingdom's capitalWarsaw on 5 August 1915.[107] In the same month, the emperor dismissed Grand Duke Nicholas and took personal command;[108] this was a turning point for the Russian army and the beginning of the worst disaster.[109] Russia lost the entire territory of Poland and Lithuania,[110] part of theBaltic states andGrodno, and partly ofVolhynia andPodolia in Ukraine; thereafter the front with Germany was stable until 1917.
Austria-Hungary went to war with Russia on 6 August. The Russians started to invadeGalicia, held by AustrianCisleithania on 20 August, and annihilated theAustro-Hungarian Army atLemberg, leading to the occupation ofGalicia.[111] While thefortress of Premissel wasbesieged, the first attempt to capture the fortress failed, but the second attempt seized the redoubt in March 1915.[112] On 2 May, the Russian army wasbroken through by joint Austro-German forces, retreating from theGorlice toTarnów line and losingPremissel.
On 4 June 1916, GeneralAleksei Brusilov carried out anoffensive by targetingKovel. His offensive was a great success, taking 76,000 prisoners from the main attack and 1,500 from the Austrian bridgehead. But the offensive was halted by inadequate ammunition and a lack of supplies.[113] The eponymous offensive was the most successful allied strike of World War I,[114] practically destroying the Austro-Hungarian army as an independent force, but the slaughter of many casualties (approximately one million men) forced the Russian forces not to rebuild or launch any further attacks.
The Russian Navy'sBlack Sea Fleet was on the defensive in 1914, but this changed in the spring of 1915, when thehigh command ordered the fleet to attack the Turkish coast to assist theWestern Entente landings in Gallipoli.[119] The Russian naval raids did make any difference for the Gallipoli campaign, but they were very successful in disrupting coal shipments to Constantinople from other parts of Anatolia. The coal shortage caused by Russian submarine and destroyer attacks threatened the Ottoman Empire's continued participation in the war.[120]
By the middle of 1915, the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties were increasing, and inflation was mounting. Strikes rose among low-paid factory workers, and there were reports that peasants, who wanted reforms of land ownership, were restless. The emperor eventually decided to take personal command of the army and moved to the front, leaving his wife, the EmpressAlexandra, in charge in the capital. She fell under the spell of a monk,Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916). His assassination in late 1916 by a clique of nobles could not restore the emperor's lost prestige.[121]
On 3 March 1917,International Women's Day, a strike was organized at a factory in the capital, followed by thousands of people took to the streets in Petrograd to protest food shortages. A day later, protesters rose to two hundred thousand, demanding that Russia withdraw from the war and the emperor be deposed. Eighty thousand Russian troops, half of the deployed army sent to restore order, had gone on strike and refused the senior officers' orders.[122] Any imperial symbols were destroyed and burned. The capital was out of control and gripped by protest and strife.[123]
Topographic map of the Russian Empire in 1912Map of the Russian Empire in 1745
By the end of the 19th century the area of the empire was about 22,400,000 square kilometers (8,600,000 sq mi), or almost one-sixth of the Earth's landmass; its only rival in size at the time was theBritish Empire. The majority of the population lived in European Russia. More than 100 differentethnic groups lived in the Russian Empire, with ethnicRussians composing about 45% of the population.[126]
The administrative boundaries ofEuropean Russia, apart from Finland and its portion of Poland, coincided approximately with the natural limits of the East-European plains. To the north was theArctic Ocean.Novaya Zemlya and theKolguyev andVaygach Islands were considered part of European Russia, but theKara Sea was part ofSiberia. To the east were the Asiatic territories of the empire: Siberia and theKyrgyz steppes, which were separated from European Russia by theUral Mountains, theUral River, and theCaspian Sea. The administrative boundary, however, partly extended into Asia on the Siberian slope of the Urals. To the south were theBlack Sea and theCaucasus, being separated from the rest of European Russia by theManych River depression, which in post-Pliocene times connected theSea of Azov with the Caspian. The western boundary was purely arbitrary: it crossed theKola Peninsula from theVarangerfjord to theGulf of Bothnia. It then ran to theCuronian Lagoon in the southernBaltic Sea, and then to the mouth of theDanube, taking a great circular sweep to the west to embrace east-central Poland, and separating Russia fromPrussia,Austrian Galicia, and Romania.
An important feature of Russia is its few free outlets to the open sea, outside the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean. The deep indentations of theGulfs of Bothnia andFinland were surrounded by what isethnically Finnish territory, and it is only at the very head of the latter gulf that the Russians had taken firm foothold by erecting their capital at the mouth of theNeva river. TheGulf of Riga and the Baltic belong also to territory that was not inhabited by Slavs, but by Baltic andFinnic peoples, and byGermans. The east coast of the Black Sea belonged toTranscaucasia, a great chain of mountains separating it from Russia. But even this sheet of water is an inland sea, the only outlet of which, theBosphorus, was in foreign hands, while theCaspian Sea, an immense shallow lake, mostly bordered by deserts, possessed more importance as a link between Russia and its Asiatic settlements than as a channel for intercourse with other countries.
Henry Kissinger noted that the methodological procedure of how the Russian Empire started to expand their territory was comparable to that of how the United States had done the same. Russian statesmanAlexander Gorchakov justified the Russian expansion in consonance of theManifest destiny of the United States; thereafter, the Russian territorial expansion only encountered nomadic or feudal societies which is strikingly similar to the Westward Expansion of the United States.[127]
Following the Swedish defeat in theFinnish War of 1808–1809 and the signing of theTreaty of Fredrikshamn on 17 September 1809, the eastern half of Sweden, the area that then became Finland, was incorporated into the Russian Empire as anautonomousgrand duchy. The emperor eventually ended up rulingFinland as asemi-constitutional monarch through theGovernor-General of Finland and a nativeSenate appointed by him. The emperor never explicitly recognized Finland as a constitutional state in its own right, although his Finnish subjects came to consider the grand duchy as such.
Map ofgovernorates of the western Russian Empire in 1910
The Russian Empire expanded its influence and possessions in Central Asia, especially in the later 19th century, conquering much ofRussian Turkestan in 1865 and continuing to add territory as late as 1885.
Newly discovered Arctic islands became part of the Russian Empire: theNew Siberian Islands from the early 18th century;Severnaya Zemlya ("Emperor Nicholas II Land") first mapped and claimed as late as 1913.
During World War I, Russia briefly occupied a small part ofEast Prussia, then a part of Germany; a significant portion of Austrian Galicia; and significant portions of Ottoman Armenia. While the modern Russian Federation currently controls theKaliningrad Oblast, which comprised the northern part of East Prussia, this differs from the area captured by the empire in 1914, though there was some overlap:Gusev (Gumbinnen in German) was the site of the initialRussian victory.
1814 artwork depicting the Russian warshipNeva and the Russian settlement of St. Paul's Harbor (present-dayKodiak town),Kodiak Island
According to the 1st article of theOrganic Law, the Russian Empire was one indivisible state. In addition, the 26th article stated that "With the Imperial Russian throne are indivisible the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Principality of Finland". Relations with the Grand Principality of Finland were also regulated by the 2nd article, "The Grand Principality of Finland, constituted an indivisible part of the Russian state, in its internal affairs governed by special regulations at the base of special laws", and by the law of 10 June 1910.
Between 1744 and 1867, the empire also controlledRussian America. With the exception of this territory – modern-dayAlaska – the Russian Empire was a contiguous mass of land spanning Europe and Asia. In this it differed from contemporary colonial-style empires. The result of this was that, while the British andFrench empires declined in the 20th century, a large portion of the Russian Empire's territory remained together, first within theSoviet Union, and after 1991 in the smallerRussian Federation.
In 1889, a Russian adventurer,Nikolay Ivanovitch Achinov, tried to establish a Russian colony in Africa,Sagallo, situated on theGulf of Tadjoura in present-dayDjibouti. However this attempt angered the French, who dispatched twogunboats against the colony. After a brief resistance, the colony surrendered and the Russian settlers were deported toOdessa.
From its initial creation until the1905 Revolution, the Russian Empire was led by the emperor (also referred to astsar) who ruled as an absolute monarch. After the Revolution of 1905, Russia developed a new type of government, which became difficult to categorize. In theAlmanach de Gotha for 1910, Russia was described as "aconstitutional monarchy under anautocratic Tsar". This contradiction in terms demonstrated the difficulty of precisely defining the system, transitional andsui generis, established in the Russian Empire after October 1905. Before this date, the fundamental laws of Russia described the power of the emperor as "autocratic andunlimited". After October 1905, while the imperial style was still "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias", thefundamental laws were changed by removing the wordunlimited. While the emperor retained many of his old prerogatives, including an absolute veto over all legislation, he equally agreed to the establishment of an elected parliament, without whose consent no laws were to be enacted in Russia. Not that the regime in Russia had become in any true sense constitutional, far less parliamentary. But the "unlimited autocracy" had given way to a "self-limited autocracy". Whether this autocracy was to be permanently limited by the new changes, or only at the continuing discretion of the autocrat, became a subject of heatedcontroversy between conflicting parties in the state. Provisionally, then, the Russian governmental system may perhaps be best defined as "alimited monarchy under an autocratic emperor".
Conservatism was the ideology of most of the Russian leadership, albeit with some reformist activities from time to time. The structure of conservative thought was based upon anti-rationalism of the intellectuals, religiosity rooted in the Russian Orthodox Church, traditionalism rooted in the landed estates worked by serfs, and militarism rooted in the army officer corps.[129] Regarding irrationality, Russia avoided the full force of the European Enlightenment, which gave priority to rationalism, preferring the romanticism of an idealized nation state that reflected the beliefs, values, and behavior of the distinctive people.[130] The distinctly liberal notion of "progress" was replaced by a conservative notion of modernization based on the incorporation of modern technology to serve the established system. The promise of modernization in the service of autocracy frightened the socialist intellectualAlexander Herzen, who warned of a Russia governed by "Genghis Khan with a telegraph".[131]
Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia, reigning from 1894 to 1917.
Peter the Great changed his title fromtsar toemperor in order to secure Russia's position in the European states system.[132] While later rulers did not discard the new title, the Russian monarch was commonly known as the tsar or tsaritsa until the imperial system was abolished during theFebruary Revolution of 1917. Prior to the issuance of the October Manifesto, the emperor ruled as an absolute monarch, subject to only two limitations on his authority, both of which were intended to protect the existing system: the emperor and his consort must both belong to theRussian Orthodox Church, and he must obey thePauline Laws of succession established byPaul I. Beyond this, the power of the Russian autocrat was virtually limitless.
On 17 October 1905, the situation changed: the ruler voluntarily limited his legislative power by decreeing that no measure was to become law without the consent of theImperial Duma, a freely elected national assembly established by theOrganic Law issued on 28 April 1906. However, he retained the right to disband the newly established Duma, and he exercised this right more than once. He also retained an absolute veto over all legislation, and only he could initiate any changes to the Organic Law itself. His ministers were responsible solely to him, and not to the Duma or any other authority, which could question but not remove them. Thus, while the emperor's personal powers were limited in scope after 28 April 1906, they remained formidable.
This painting fromc. 1847 depicts theGeneral Staff Building opposite theWinter Palace, which was the headquarters of the Army General Staff. Today, it houses the headquarters of the Western Military District/Joint Strategic Command West.TheCatherine Palace, located atTsarskoe Selo, was the summer residence of the imperial family. It is named after EmpressCatherine I, who reigned from 1725 to 1727 (watercolor painting from the 19th century).
Under Russia's revised Fundamental Law of 20 February 1906, the State Council was associated with the Duma as a legislativeUpper House; from this time the legislative power was exercised normally by the emperor only in concert with the two chambers.[133] The Council of the Empire, or Imperial Council, as reconstituted for this purpose, consisted of 196 members, of whom 98 were nominated by the emperor, while 98 were elective. The ministers, also nominated, wereex officio members. Of the elected members, 3 were returned by the "black" clergy (the monks), 3 by the "white" clergy (secular), 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 local governmentalzemstvos, 16 by local governments having no zemstvos, and 6 by Poland. As a legislative body the powers of the council were coordinate with those of the Duma; in practice, however, it has seldom if ever initiated legislation.
The Duma of the Empire or Imperial Duma (Gosudarstvennaya Duma), which formed thelower house of the Russian parliament, consisted (since theukaz of 2 June 1907) of 442 members, elected by an exceedingly complicated process. The membership was manipulated as to secure an overwhelming majority of the wealthy (especially the landed classes) and also for the representatives of the Russian peoples at the expense of the subject nations. Each province of the empire, except Central Asia, returned a certain number of members; added to which were those returned by several large cities. The members of the Duma were chosen by electoral colleges and these, in their turn, were elected by assemblies of the three classes: landed proprietors, citizens, and peasants. In these assemblies the wealthiest proprietors sat in person while the lesser proprietors were represented by delegates. The urban population was divided into two categories according to taxable wealth and elected delegates directly to the college of thegovernorates. Thepeasants were represented by delegates selected by the regional subdivisions calledvolosts. Workmen were treated in a special manner, with every industrial concern employing fifty hands electing one or more delegates to the electoral college.
In the college itself, the voting for the Duma was by secret ballot and a simple majority carried the day. Since the majority consisted of conservative elements (thelandowners and urban delegates), the progressives had little chance of representation at all, save for the curious provision that one member at least in each government was to be chosen from each of the five classes represented in the college. That the Duma had any radical elements was mainly due to the peculiar franchise enjoyed by the seven largest towns —Saint Petersburg,Moscow,Kiev,Odessa,Riga, and the Polish cities ofWarsaw andŁódź. These elected their delegates to the Duma directly, and though their votes were divided (on the basis of taxable property) in such a way as to give the advantage to wealth, each returned the same number of delegates.
In 1905, a Council of Ministers (Sovyet Ministrov) was created, under aminister president, the first appearance of a prime minister in Russia. This council consisted of all the ministers and of the heads of other principal departments. The ministries were as follows:
The Senate and Synod headquarters – today the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation onSenate Square in Saint Petersburg
The Most Holy Synod (established in 1721) was the supreme organ of government of the Orthodox Church in Russia. It was presided over by a layProcurator, representing the emperor, and consisted of the three metropolitans of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Kiev, the Archbishop ofGeorgia, and a number of bishops sitting in rotation.
The Senate (Pravitelstvuyushchi Senat, i.e. directing or governing senate), originally established during theGovernment reform of Peter the Great, consisted of members nominated by the emperor. Its wide variety of functions were carried out by the different departments into which it was divided. It was the supremecourt of cassation; an audit office; a high court of justice for all political offences; and one of its departments fulfilled the functions of a heralds' college. It also had supreme jurisdiction in all disputes arising out of the administration of the empire, notably in differences between representatives of the central power and the elected organs of local self-government. Lastly, it promulgated new laws, a function which theoretically gave it a power akin to that of theSupreme Court of the United States, of rejecting measures not in accordance with fundamental laws.
Map showing subdivisions of the Russian Empire in 1914Residence of the governor of Moscow (1778–82) as seen in 2015
As of 1914, Russia was divided into 81 governorates (guberniyas), 20oblasts, and 1okrug.Vassals andprotectorates of the Russian Empire included theEmirate of Bukhara, theKhanate of Khiva, and, after 1914,Tuva (Uriankhai). Of these, 11 Governorates, 17 oblasts, and 1 okrug (Sakhalin) belonged to Asian Russia. Of the rest, 8 Governorates were in Finland and 10 in Congress Poland. European Russia thus embraced 59 governorates and 1 oblast (that of the Don). The Don Oblast was under the direct jurisdiction of the ministry of war; the rest each had a governor and deputy-governor, the latter presiding over the administrative council. In addition, there were governors-general, generally placed over several governorates 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 (Saint Petersburg, Moscow,Odessa,Sevastopol,Kerch,Nikolayev, andRostov) had administrative systems of their own, independent of the governorates; in these thechief of police acted as governor.
Thejudicial system of the Russian Empire was established by thestatute of 20 November 1864 ofAlexander II. This system – based partly onEnglish andFrench law – was predicated on the separation of judicial and administrative functions, the independence of the judges and courts, public trials and oral procedure, and the equality of all classes before the law. Moreover, a democratic element was introduced by the adoption of thejury system and the election of judges. This system was disliked by thebureaucracy, due to its putting the administration of justice outside of the executive sphere. During the latter years of Alexander II and the reign of Alexander III, power that had been given was gradually taken back, and that takeback was fully reversed by the third Duma after the1905 Revolution.[j]
The system established by the law of 1864 had two wholly separatetribunals, each having their owncourts of appeal and coming in contact with each other only in the Senate, which acted as thesupreme court of cassation. The first tribunal, based on the English model, were the courts of the electedjustices of the peace, with jurisdiction over petty causes, whether civil or criminal; the second, based on the French model, were the ordinary tribunals of nominated judges, sitting with or without a jury to hear important cases.
Since 1870, the municipalities in European Russia had institutions like those of thezemstvos. All owners of houses, tax-paying merchants, artisans, and workmen were enrolled on lists, in descending order according to their assessed wealth. The total valuation was then divided into three equal parts, representing three groups of electors very unequal in number, each of which would elect an equal number of delegates to the municipal duma. The executive was in the hands of an elected mayor and anuprava, which consisted of several members elected by the municipal duma. UnderAlexander III, however,bylaws 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 the Caucasus.
The formerly Swedish-controlled Baltic provinces ofLivonia andEstonia and laterDuchy of Courland, a vassal ofPolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, were incorporated into the Russian Empire after the defeat of Sweden in theGreat Northern War. Under theTreaty of Nystad of 1721, theBaltic German nobility retained considerable powers of self-government and numerous privileges in matters affecting education, police, and the local administration of justice. After 167 years of German language administration and education, in 1888 and 1889 laws were passed transferring administration of the police andmanorial justice from Baltic German control to officials of the central government. About the same time, a process ofRussification was being carried out in the same provinces, in all departments of administration, in the higher schools, and in theImperial University of Dorpat, the name of which was altered toYuriev. In 1893, district committees for the management of the peasants' affairs, similar to those in purely Russian governments, were introduced into this part of the empire.
TheState Bank of the Russian Empire was founded in 1860 as a central bank structure (headquarters in Saint Petersburg, photographed in 1905).
Before theabolition of serfdom in 1861, Russia's economy mainly depended on agriculture.[134] By thecensus of 1897, 95% of the Russian population lived in the countryside.[135]Nicholas I attempted to modernize his country, and have it not been so dependent on a single economic sector.[136] During the reign ofAlexander III, many reforms occurred. ThePeasants' Land Bank was founded in 1883 to provide loans for Russian peasants, both as individuals and in communes. TheNobles' Land Bank, in 1885, made loans at nominal interest rates to the landed nobility. Thepoll tax was abolished in 1886.[137]
WhenIvan Vyshnegradsky was appointed as the new minister of finance in 1886, he increased the pressure on peasants by increasing taxes on land and prescribing how they harvested grain. These policies led to the severeRussian famine of 1891–1892, with four hundred thousand perishing from starvation. Vyshnegradsky was succeeded by CountSergei Witte in 1892. Witte began by raising revenues through a monopoly on alcohol, which brought in 300 million rubles in 1894. These reforms returned the peasants to essentially being serfs again.[138] In 1900, a wealthy peasant class (kulaks) had emerged, representing less than 20% of the population.[139] Anincome tax was introduced in 1916.
Russia had a longstanding economic bargain on fundamentalagriculture on largeestates worked by Russianpeasants (also known asserfs), who did not get any rights from slave masters under the system of "barshchina".[k] Another system was calledobrok,[l] in which serfs worked in exchange for cash or goods from the master, allowing them to work outside the estate.[140] These systems were based on a legal code called theSobornoye Ulozheniye, which was introduced byAlexis I in 1649.
From 1891 to 1892, peasants were faced with new policies carried out by Ivan Vyshnegradsky, causing a famine and disease that took the lives of four hundred thousand people,[141][142] especially in theVolga region, eliciting the greatest decline in grain production.[143]
Watercolor-tinted lithgraph, from the 1840s, depicting the arrival of the firstTsarskoye Selo Railway train atTsarskoye Selo from St. Petersburg on 30 October 1837
After 1860, the expansion of Russian rail had far-reaching effects on the economy, culture, and ordinary life of Russia. The central authorities and the imperial elite made most of the key decisions, but local elites made demands for rail linkages. Local nobles, merchants, and entrepreneurs imagined a future of promoting their regional interests, from "locality" to "empire". Often, they had to compete with other cities. By envisioning their own role in a rail network they came to understand how important they were to the empire's economy.[144]
Contemporary painting of the procession of EmperorAlexander II intoDormition Cathedral in Moscow during hiscoronation in 1856Map of subdivisions of the Russian Empire by largest ethnolinguistic group (1897)
The Russian Empire'sstate religion wasOrthodox Christianity.[146] The emperor was not allowed to "profess any faith other than the Orthodox" (Article 62 of the 1906Fundamental Laws) and was deemed "the Supreme Defender and Guardian of the dogmas of the predominant Faith and is the Keeper of the purity of the Faith and all good order within the Holy Church" (Article 64ex supra). Although he made and annulled all senior ecclesiastical appointments, he did not settle questions of dogma or church teaching. The principal ecclesiastical authority of theRussian Church—which extended its jurisdiction over the entire territory of the empire, including the ex-Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti—was theMost Holy Synod, the civilian OverProcurator of the Holy Synod being one of the council of ministers with widede facto powers in ecclesiastical matters.
The ecclesiastical heads of the national Russian Orthodox Church consisted of threemetropolitans (Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev), fourteenarchbishops and fifty bishops, all drawn from the ranks of the monastic (celibate) clergy. Theparochial clergy had to be married when appointed, but if left widowers were not allowed to marry again; this rule continues to apply today.
All non-Orthodox religions were formally forbidden fromproselytizing within the empire.[147] In a policy influenced by Catherine II but solidified in the 19th century, Tsarist Russia exhibited increasing "confessionalization", pursuing top-down reorganization of the empire's faiths,[147] also referred to as the "confessional state".[148] The tsarist administration sought to arrange "orthodoxies" withinIslam,Buddhism, and theProtestant faiths, which was performed by creating spiritual assemblies (in the case of Islam,Judaism, andLutheranism), banning and declaringbishoprics (in the case ofRoman Catholicism), and arbitrating doctrinal disputes.[147] When the state lacked resources to provide a secular bureaucracy across its entire territory, guided 'reformation' of faiths provided elements of social control.[147][148]
After Catherine II annexed eastern Poland in thePolish Partitions,[149] there were restrictions placed against Jews known as thePale of Settlement, an area of Tsarist Russia inside which Jews were authorized to settle, and outside of which were deprived of various rights such as freedom of movement or commerce.[150] Particularly repressive wasEmperor Nicholas I, who sought the forced assimilation of Jews,[151] from 1827 conscripted Jewish children asCantonists in military institutions in the east aiming to compel them to convert to Christianity,[152] attempted to stratify Jews into "useful" and "not useful" based on wealth[151] and further restricted religious and commercial rights within the Pale of Settlement.[150][153]Emperor Alexander II ceased this harsh treatment and pursued a more bureaucratic type of assimilation,[151] such as compensating the Cantonists for their previous military service, including those who remained Jewish,[150] although certain military ranks were still limited to Christians.[151] In contrast, EmperorAlexander III resumed an atmosphere of oppression, including theMay Laws, which further restricted Jewish settlements and rights to own property, as well as limiting the types of professions available,[150][154] and the expulsion of Jews from Kiev in 1886 and Moscow in 1891. The overallanti-Jewish policy of the Russian Empire led to significant sustained emigration.[150]
Islam had a "sheltered but precarious" place in the Russian Empire.[155] Initially, sporadicforced conversions were demanded against Muslims in the early Russian Empire. In the 18th century, Catherine II issued an edict of toleration that gave legal status to Islam and allowed Muslims to fulfill religious obligations.[156] Catherine also established theOrenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly, which had a degree of imperial jurisdiction over the organization of Islamic practice in the country.[157] As the Russian Empire expanded, tsarist administrators found it expedient to draw on existing Islamic religious institutions that were already in place.[158][157]
Portrait of Muslim Circassian tribes fleeing from persecution after theRussian conquest of Circassia during the 1860s. Summing up the imperial policy ofCircassian genocide, Russian military historian Rostislav Fadeyev wrote: "The state needed theCircassians' land, but had absolutely no need of them."[159]
In the 19th century, the restrictive policies became much more oppressive during the Russo-Turkish Wars, and the Russian Empire perpetrated persecutions such as theCircassian genocide during the 1860s.[156][160] Following itsconquest of Circassia, around 1 to 1.5 million Circassians – almost half of the total population – were killed or forcibly deported.[161] Many of those who fled persecution also died en route to other countries. Today, the vast majority of Circassians live indiaspora communities.[162] Throughout the late 19th century, the term "Circassian" became a common adage for "highwayman" across the Balkan and Anatolian regions, due to the prevalence of homeless Circassian refugees.[163]
Many groups of Muslims such asCrimean Tatars were forced to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire following the Russian defeat in theCrimean War.[164] During the latter portion of the 19th century, the status of Islam in the Russian Empire became associated with the tsarist regime's ideological principles ofOfficial Nationality requiring Russian Orthodoxy.[158] Nonetheless, in certain areas Islamic institutions were allowed to operate, such as theOrenburg Assembly, but were designated with a lower status.[157]
Policy towards non-Eastern Orthodox Christian sects
Corpses of Jewish victims collected for burial in the aftermath of theBiałystok pogrom (1906)
Despite the predominance of Orthodoxy, several Christian denominations were professed.[165]Lutherans were particularly tolerated with the invited settlement ofVolga Germans and the presence ofBaltic German nobility.[166] During the reign of Catherine II, theJesuit suppression was not promulgated, so Jesuits survived in Russian Empire, and this "Russian Society" played a role in re-establishing the Jesuits in the west.[167] Overall,Roman Catholicism was strictly controlled during Catherine II's reign, which was considered an epoch of relative tolerance for Catholicism.[147][168] Catholics were distrusted by the Russian Empire as elements ofPolish nationalism, a perception which especially increased following theJanuary Uprising.[169] After thisRussification policies intensified and Orthodox churches such asAlexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw were built across Congress Poland, but no forced conversion was attempted.
Tsarist religious policy was focused on punishing Orthodox dissenters, such asuniates and sectarians.[147]Old Believers were seen as dangerous elements and persecuted heavily.[170][22] Various minor sects such asSpiritual Christians andMolokan were banished in internal exile to Transcaucasia and Central Asia, with some further emigrating to the Americas.[171]Doukhobors came to settle primarily in Canada.[172]
In 1905, Emperor Nicholas II issued a religioustoleration edict that gave legal status to non-Orthodox religions.[173] This created a "Golden Age of Old Faith" for the previously persecuted Old Believers until the emergence of the Soviet Union.[22] In the early 20th century, some of the restrictions of the Pale of Settlement were reversed, though were not formally abolished until the February Revolution.[150] However, some historians evaluate Tsar Nicholas II as having given tacit approval to the antisemiticpogroms that resulted from reactionary riots.[153][174]Edward Radzinsky suggested that many pogroms were incited by authorities and supported by theTsarist Russiansecret police, theOkhrana, even if some happened spontaneously.[175] According to Radzinsky,Sergei Witte (appointed Prime Minister in 1905) remarked in hisMemoirs that he found that some proclamations inciting pogroms were printed and distributed by imperialPolice.[175]: 69
Demographics of pre-WW1 European countriesEthnographic Map of the Russian Empire byHeinrich Berghaus 1852Ethnographic Map of the Russian Empire by Pauli Gustav-Fedor Khristianovich 1862
According to returns published in 1905, based on theRussian Empire census of 1897, adherents of the different religious communities in the empire numbered approximately as follows.
Russian Central Asia was also calledTurkestan. As of the 1897 census, Russian Central Asia's five oblasts contained 5,260,300 inhabitants, 13.9 percent of them urban. The largest towns wereTashkent (156,400),Kokand (82,100),Namangan (61,900), andSamarkand (54,900). By 1911, 17 percent ofSemireche's population and half of its urban residents were Russians, four-fifths of them agricultural colonists. In the other four oblasts in the same year, Russians constituted only 4 percent of the population, and the overwhelming majority lived in European-style settlements alongside the native quarters in the major towns.[177]
The armed forces of the Russian Empire consisted of theImperial Russian Army and theImperial Russian Navy. The Emperor of Russia was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and implemented out his military policies through theMinistry of War and theMinistry of the Navy, which were tasked with administering their respective branches. There was no joint staff, but joint commissions were formed to work on specific tasks that involved both services.[178][179] The Main Staff of the War Ministry administered the Army's organization, training, and mobilization, as well as coordinating the different branches of the Army, while theGeneral Staff was tasked with operational planning. This structure developed in the 1860s after theCrimean War.[180] The Navy Ministry had a similar structure, including a Main Staff tasked with administration and a Naval Technological Committee, and after theRusso-Japanese War aNaval General Staff was added for operational planning and war preparation.[181][182]
Peter the Great transformed Russia's mix of irregular, feudal, and modernized forces into a standing army and navy to meet the demands posed by theGreat Northern War against Sweden and the conflicts with the Ottoman Empire. His reign also accelerated changes that had already started earlier. Peter issued a decree in 1699 that formed the basis for army recruitment,[183] founded an artillery school in 1701 and an engineer school in 1709, put together military regulations for the organization of the army in 1716,[184] created administrative organs to oversee the land and naval forces in 1718 (theCollege of War and theAdmiralty),[183] and oversaw the building of a new navy from scratch.[183] These reforms were done with the help of foreign experts, though before the end of Peter's reign these experts were being increasingly replaced by Russian officers.[183]
Most of the enlisted soldiers and sailors were peasant conscripts, though by the late 19th century Imperial Navy preferred to draft members of the urban working class to fill its more technical roles. Both the army and navy had a shortage ofnon-commissioned officers, who were promoted from the enlisted ranks and tended to leave the military at the end of their mandatory service.[185][186] Except for a few special units,[187] almost no one voluntarily joined the military without the intention of becoming an officer.[188] After the post-Crimean War reforms, there were three main commissioning sources of army officers: thePage Corps, thecadet corps, and thejunker or military schools.[189] The cadet corps, among which the Page Corps was considered the most elite,[190] provided a military boarding school education to the sons of the high nobility as teenagers.[191] The junker schools provided the largest number of officers, and had a two-year education program for older enlisted soldiers that served for at least one year, and these were most often either lesser nobility or commoners.[192] The majority of army officers were nobles, though this changed by the end of the 19th century, with non-nobles being almost half of the officer corps in the 1890s.[193] The source of naval officers was theNaval Cadet Corps.[194] The majority of naval officers were also from the nobility, and many of them were descended from Baltic German or Swedish families with a history of naval service.[195]
The Russian military budget declined in the late 19th century as the government prioritized spending for civilian purposes, paying interest on foreign loans, and building railways.[195] Russia maintained a large peacetime standing army of over one million troops in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars,[196] and at the outbreak of World War I it was the largest in Europe.[197] During the war the Russian Army was unable to match theGerman Army in tactical and operational proficiency, but its performance against theAustro-Hungarian Army and theOttoman Army was credible.[198] The Russo-Japanese War took Russia from having the third largest navy in the world to the sixth largest.[199] A reconstruction program approved by the State Duma in 1912, but it was not completed before World War I.[200] Russia'sBaltic Fleet stayed on the defensive against the GermanHigh Seas Fleet,[201] but itsBlack Sea Fleet had success in raiding Ottoman merchant shipping and threatened the ability of the Ottoman Empire to continue the war.[120]
The Russian Empire was predominantly a rural society spread over vast spaces. In 1913, 80% of the people were peasants. Soviet historiography proclaimed that the Russian Empire of the 19th century was characterized by systemic crisis, which impoverished the workers and peasants and culminated in the revolutions of the early 20th century. Recent research by Russian scholars disputes this interpretation.Boris Mironov assesses the effects of the reforms of latter 19th-century, especially in terms of the 1861 emancipation of the serfs, agricultural output trends, variousstandard of living indicators, and taxation of peasants. He argues that those reforms brought about measurable improvements in social welfare. More generally, he finds that the well-being of the Russian people declined during most of the 18th century but increased slowly from the end of the 18th century to 1914.[202]
A majority of the population, 81.6%, belonged to the peasant order. The other classes were the nobility, 0.6%; clergy, 0.1%; the burghers and merchants, 9.3%; and military, 6.1%. More than 88 million Russians were peasants, some of whom were former serfs (10,447,149 males in 1858) – the remainder being "state peasants" (9,194,891 males in 1858, exclusive of the Archangel governorate) and "domain peasants" (842,740 males the same year).
1856 painting imagining the announcement of the coronation ofAlexander II that yearThe 1916 paintingMaslenitsa byBoris Kustodiev, depicting a Russian city in winter
The serfdom that had developed in Russia in the 16th century, and had become enshrined in law in 1649, wasabolished in 1861.[203][204]
Household servants or dependents attached to personal service were merely set free, while the landed peasants received their houses and orchards, and allotments of arable land. These allotments were given over to the rural commune, themir, which was responsible for the payment of taxes for the allotments. For these allotments the peasants had to pay a fixed rent, which could be fulfilled by personal labor. The allotments could be redeemed by peasants with the help of the Crown, and then they were freed from all obligations to the landlord. The Crown paid the landlord and the peasants had to repay the Crown, for forty-nine years at 6% interest. The financial redemption to the landlord was not calculated on the value of the allotments but was considered as compensation for the loss of the compulsory serf labor. Many proprietors contrived to curtail the allotments that the peasants had occupied under serfdom, and frequently deprived them of precisely that land of which they were most in need: pasture lands around their houses. The result was to compel the peasants to rent land from their former masters.[205][206]
Serfs lived in deplorable conditions, working in the fields for nearly seven days a week and being exiled to the harsh land ofSiberia or sent to military service. Owners had the right to sell slaves, depending on whether they were targeting land or accused (i.e., had escaped from working). Children of serfs received lesseducation. These serfs were heavily taxed, making them the poorest of any Russians.[140] In 1861, EmperorAlexander II saw serfs as a problem that held back Russia's development, so heliberated 23 million serfs to become free,[207] but they remained indigent throughout the former enslaved population despite their rights. Thezemstvo system was introduced in 1865 as a rural assembly with administrative authority over the local population, including education and welfare, which ex-serfs were unable to acquire.
The former serfs became peasants, joining the millions of farmers who already had peasant status.[206][204] Most peasants lived in tens of thousands of small villages under a highly patriarchal system. Hundreds of thousands moved to cities to work in factories, but they typically retained their village connections.[208]
After Emancipation reform, one-quarter of peasants received allotments of only 1.2 hectares (2.9 acres) per male, and one-half received less than 3.4 to 4.6 hectares (8.5 to 11.4 acres); the normal size of the allotment necessary for the subsistence of a family under the three-fields system is estimated at 11 to 17 hectares (28 to 42 acres). This land was of necessity rented from the landlords. The aggregate value of the redemption and land taxes often reached 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 on the peasants. This burden increased every year; consequently, one-fifth of the inhabitants left their houses and cattle disappeared. Every year more than half the adult males (in some districts three-quarters of the men and one-third of the women) quit their homes and wandered throughout Russia in search of work. In the governments of theBlack Earth Area the state of matters was hardly better. Many peasants took "gratuitous allotments", whose amount was about one-eighth of the normal allotments.[209]
The average allotment inKherson was only 0.36 hectares (0.90 acres), and for allotments from 1.2 to 2.3 hectares (2.9 to 5.8 acres) the peasants paid 5 to 10 rubles in redemption tax. The state peasants were better off; but they, too, were emigrating in masses. It was only in thesteppe that the situation was more hopeful. In Ukraine, where the allotments were personal (the mir existing only among state peasants), the state of affairs was not better, on account of high redemption taxes. In the western provinces, where the land was more cheaply valued and the allotments somewhat increased after thePolish insurrection, the situation was better. Finally, in theBaltic provinces nearly all the land belonged to theGerman landlords, who either farmed the land themselves, with hired laborers, or let it in small farms. Only one-quarter of the peasants were farmers; the remainder were mere laborers.[210]
The situation of the former serf-proprietors was also unsatisfactory. Accustomed to the use of compulsory labor, they failed to adapt to the new conditions. The millions of rubles of redemption money received from the crown was spent without any real or lasting agricultural improvements having been effected. The forests were sold, and the only prosperous landlords were those who exactedrack-rents for the land allotted to peasants. There was an increase of wealth among the few, but along with this a general impoverishment of the mass of the people. Added to this, the peculiar institution of the mir—framed on the principle of community ownership and occupation of the land—the overall effect was not encouraging of individual effort.
During the years 1861 to 1892 the land owned by the nobles decreased 30%, or ranging from 850,000 to 610,000 km2 (210,000,000 to 150,000,000 acres); during the following four years an additional 8,577 km2 (2,119,500 acres) were sold; and since then the sales went on at an accelerated rate, until in 1903 alone close to 8,000 km2 (2,000,000 acres) passed out of their hands. On the other hand, since 1861, and more especially since 1882, when thePeasant Land Bank was founded for making advances to peasants (Yayphar Mayas) who were desirous of purchasing land, the former serfs, or rather their descendants, had between 1883 and 1904 bought about 78,900 km2 (19,500,000 acres) from their former masters.
In November 1906, however, Emperor Nicholas II promulgated a provisional order 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 21 December 1908, was calculated to have far-reaching and profound effects on the rural economy of Russia. Thirteen years previously the government had endeavored 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 order of November 1906 provided that thevarious strips of land held by each peasant should be merged into a single holding; the Duma, however, on the advice of the government, left its implementation to the future, regarding it as an ideal that could only gradually be realized.[210]
Censorship was heavy-handed until the reign of Alexander II, but it never went away.[211] Newspapers were strictly limited in what they could publish, and intellectuals favored literary magazines for their publishing outlets.Fyodor Dostoyevsky, for example, ridiculed the St. Petersburg newspapers, such asGolos andPeterburgskii Listok, accusing them of publishing trifles and distracting readers from the pressing social concerns of contemporary Russia through their obsession with spectacle and European popular culture.[212]
Educational standards were very low in the Russian Empire, though they slowly increased in its last century of existence. By 1800, the level of literacy among male peasants ranged from 1 to 12 percent and from 20 to 25 percent for urban men. Literacy among women was very low. Literacy rates were highest for the nobility (84 to 87 percent), followed by merchants (over 75 percent), and then the workers and peasants. Serfs were the least literate. In every group, women were far less literate than men. By contrast, in Western Europe, urban men had about a 50 percent literacy rate. The Orthodox hierarchy was suspicious of education, seeing no religious need for literacy whatsoever. Peasants did not need to be literate, and those who did — such as artisans, businessmen, and professionals — were few in number. As late as 1851, only 8% of Russians lived in cities.[213]
The accession in 1801 of Alexander I (1801–1825) was widely welcomed as an opening to fresh liberal ideas from the European Enlightenment. Many reforms were promised, but few were implemented before 1820, when the emperor shifted his focus to foreign affairs and personal religious matters, neglecting issues of reform. In sharp contrast to Western Europe, the entire empire had a very small bureaucracy – about 17,000 public officials, most of whom lived in two of the largest cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Modernization of government required much larger numbers; but that, in turn, required an educational system that could provide suitable training. Russia lacked that, and for university education, young men went to Western Europe. The army and the church had their own training programs, narrowly focused on their particular needs. The most important successful reform under Alexander I was the creation of a national system of education.[214]
Russian primary school in the 1900s
TheMinistry of Education was established in 1802, and the country was divided into six educational regions. The long-term plan was for a university in every region, a secondary school in every major city, upgraded primary schools, and – serving the largest number of students – a parish school for every two parishes. By 1825, the national government operated six universities, forty-eight secondary state schools, and 337 improved primary schools. Highly qualified teachers arrived from France, fleeing the revolution there. Exiled Jesuits set up elite boarding schools until their order was expelled in 1815. At the highest level, universities were based on the German model—inKazan,Kharkov,St. Petersburg,Vilna (refounded as the Imperial University in 1803) andDorpat—while the relatively youngImperial Moscow University was expanded. The higher forms of education were reserved for a very small elite, with only a few hundred students at the universities by 1825 and 5500 in the secondary schools. There were no schools open to girls. Most rich families still depended on private tutors.[215]
Emperor Nicholas I was a reactionary who wanted to neutralize foreign ideas, especially those he ridiculed as "pseudo-knowledge". Nevertheless, his Minister of Education, Sergey Uvarov, promoted greater academic freedom at the university level for faculty members, who were under suspicion by reactionary church officials. Uvarov raised academic standards, improved facilities, and opened the admission doors a bit wider. Nicholas tolerated Uvarov's achievements until 1848, after which he reversed these innovations.[216] For the rest of the century, the national government continued to focus on universities, and generally ignored elementary and secondary educational needs. By 1900 there were 17,000 university students, and over 30,000 were enrolled in specialized technical institutes. The students were conspicuous in Moscow and Saint Petersburg as a political force typically at the forefront of demonstrations and disturbances.[217] The majority of tertiary institutions in the empire used Russian, while some used other languages but later underwent Russification.[218] Other educational institutions in the empire included theNersisian School inTiflis.
^Also known asImperial Russia, and in some contexts may be imprecisely referred to asTsarist Russia, or simplyRussia. Also,pre-revolutionary Russia may refer to the Russian Empire either before theRussian Revolution of 1905 or before theRussian Revolution of 1917.
^Russian:Император и Самодержец Всероссийский,romanized: Imperator i Samoderzhets Vserossiyskiy
^Originally there was no distinction between the titlestsar andimperator. However,tsar was also used to refer to other monarchs below the rank of "emperor" (according to the Western European view), and thus Westerners began to translatetsar asrex ("king"). By adopting the titleimperator, Peter claimed equality to theHoly Roman Emperor.[28][29]
^First and only census carried out in the Russian Empire.
^Aukaz of 1879 gave the governors the right to report secretly on the qualifications of candidates for the office ofjustice 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 combining of 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.
^Coleman, Heather J. (2014).Orthodox Christianity in Imperial Russia: A Source Book on Lived Religion. Indiana University Press. p. 4.ISBN978-0-253-01318-7.After all, Orthodoxy was both the majority faith in the Russian Empire – approximately 70 percent subscribed to this faith in the 1897 census–and the state religion.
^Williams, Beryl (1 December 1994). "The concept of the first Duma: Russia 1905–1906".Parliaments, Estates and Representation.14 (2):149–158.doi:10.1080/02606755.1994.9525857.
^Bushkovitch, Paul (2012).A Concise History of Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 48.ISBN978-0-5215-4323-1.Archived from the original on 23 April 2023. Retrieved30 December 2023.Ivan III in his own time already had the reputation of the builder of the Russian state... The consolidation of Russia as a state was not just a territorial issue, for Ivan also began the development of a state apparatus...;Millar, James R. (2004).Encyclopedia of Russian History. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. p. 687.ISBN978-0-0286-5693-9.Archived from the original on 26 October 2023. Retrieved30 December 2023.Under Ivan III's reign, the uniting of separate Russian principalities into a centralized state made great and rapid progress.
^Moss, Walter G. (2003).A History of Russia Volume 1: To 1917. Anthem Press. p. 88.ISBN978-0-8572-8752-6.Ivan III (1462–1505) and his son, Vasili III (1505–1533), completed Moscow's quest to dominate Great Russia. Of the two rulers, Ivan III (the Great) accomplished the most, and Russian historians have called him 'the gatherer of the Russian lands'.
^Madariaga, Isabel De (2014).Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russi. Routledge. pp. 40–42.ISBN978-1-317-88190-2.This explains much of the difficulty encountered by Peter I when he adopted the titleImperator. The etymological origin of the wordtsar had been glossed over and the title had been devalued.
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Etkind, Alexander.Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience (Polity Press, 2011); discussion of serfdom, the peasant commune, etc.
Franklin, Simon, and Bowers, Katherine (eds).Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600–1850 (Open Book Publishers, 2017)onlineArchived 5 December 2017 at theWayback Machine
Freeze, Gregory L.From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (1988)
Kappeler, Andreas (2001).The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History. New York: Longman. p. 480.ISBN978-0-5822-3415-4.
Milward, Alan S. and S. B. Saul.The Development of the Economies of Continental Europe: 1850–1914 (1977) pp. 365–425
Milward, Alan S. and S. B. Saul.The Economic Development of Continental Europe 1780–1870 (2nd ed. 1979), 552 pp
——— (2012),The Standard of Living and Revolutions in Imperial Russia, 1700–1917.
Mironov, Boris N. (2010) "Wages and Prices in Imperial Russia, 1703–1913",Russian Review (Jan 2010) 69#1 pp. 47–72, with 13 tables and 3 chartsonline
Moon, David (1999).The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made. Boston: Addison-Wesley.ISBN978-0-5820-9508-3. 396 pp.
Stolberg, Eva-Maria. (2004) "The Siberian Frontier and Russia's Position in World History",Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center 27#3 pp. 243–67
Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling.Russia's age of serfdom 1649–1861 (2008).
Burbank, Jane, and David L. Ransel, eds.Imperial Russia: new histories for the Empire (Indiana University Press, 1998)
Cracraft, James. ed.Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia (1993)
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Olson, Gust, and Aleksei I. Miller. "Between Local and Inter-Imperial: Russian Imperial History in Search of Scope and Paradigm."Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (2004) 5#1 pp. 7–26.
Sanders, Thomas, ed.Historiography of imperial Russia: The profession and writing of history in a multinational state (ME Sharpe, 1999)
Smith, Steve. "Writing the History of the Russian Revolution after the Fall of Communism."Europe‐Asia Studies (1994) 46#4 pp. 563–78.
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