​RUSSIA (Rossiya), the general name for the European andAsiatic dominions of the “Tsar of All the Russias.” Althoughthe name is thus correctly applied, both in English and Russian,to the whole area of the Russian empire, its application isoften limited, no less correctly, to European Russia, or even toEuropean Russia exclusive of Finland and Poland. The use ofthe name in its most comprehensive sense dates only from theexpansion of the empire in the 19th century; to the historianwho writes of the earlier growth of the empire, Russia means, atmost, Russia in Europe, or Muscovy, as it was usually calleduntil the 18th century, from Moscow, its ancient capital.The origin of the term “Russia” has been much disputed.It is certainly derived, throughRossiya, from SlavonicRus orRos (ByzantineῬῶς orῬώσοι), a name first givento the Scandinavians who founded a principality on theDnieper in the 9th century; and afterwards extended tothe collection of Russian states of which this principalityformed the nucleus. The wordRus, in former times wronglyconnected with the tribal name Rhoxolani, is more probablyderived fromRuotsi, a Finnish name for the Swedes, whichseems to be a corruption of the Swedishrothsmenn, “rowers”or “seafarers.”

​

Emery Walker sc.

The Russian empire stretches over a vast territory inE. Europe and N. Asia, with an area exceeding 8,660,000 sq. m.,or one-sixth of the land surface of the globe (one twenty-thirdof its whole superficies). It is, however, but thinly peopledon the average, including only one-twelfth of the inhabitantsof the earth. It is almost entirely confined to the cold andtemperate zones. In Novaya Zemlya and the Taimyr peninsula,it projects within the Arctic Circle as far as 77° 6′ and 77° 40′ N.respectively; while its S. extremities reach 38° 50′ inArmenia, 35° on the Afghan frontier, and 42° 30′ on thecoasts of the Pacific. To the W. it advances as far as 20° 40′ E.in Lapland, 17° in Poland, and 29° 42′ on the Black Sea;and its E. limit—East Cape on the Bering Strait—is in 191° E.

The White, Barents and Kara Seas of the Arctic boundit on the N., and the northern Pacific—that is, the Seas ofBering, Okhotsk and Japan—bounds it on the E.The Baltic, with the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, limitsit on the N.W.; and two sinuous lines of land frontierseparate it respectively from Sweden and Norway on the N.W.Boundaries.and from Prussia, Austria and Rumania on the W. On theS. and E. the frontier has changed frequently according tothe expansion and contraction of the empire under the pressureof political exigency and expedience. The Black Sea is theprincipal demarcating feature on the S. of European Russia.On the W. side of that sea the S. frontier touches the Danubefor some 120 m.; on the E. side of the same sea it zigzagsfrom the Black Sea to the Caspian, utilizing the river Aras(Araxes) for part of the distance. As the Caspian is virtuallya Russian sea, Persia may be said to form the next link in theS. boundary of the Russian empire, followed by Afghanistan.On the Pamirs Russia has since 1885 been conterminous withBritish India (Kashmir), but the boundary then swings awayN. round Chinese Turkestan and the N. side of Mongolia, and,since 1904–5, it has skirted the N. of Manchuria, being separatedfrom it by the river Amur. As thus traced, the boundary inCentral Asia includes the two khanates of Bokhara and Khiva,which, though nominally protected states, are to all intentsand purposes integral parts of the Russian empire. But itexcludes Manchuria, with the Liao-tung peninsula and PortArthur, upon which Russia only placed her grasp in 1898–99,a grasp which she was compelled by Japan to release afterthe war of 1904–5. The total length of the frontier line ofthe Russian empire by land is 2800 m. in Europe, and nearly10,000 m. in Asia, and by sea over 11,000 m. in Europe andbetween 19,000 and 20,000 m. in Asia.

Russia has no oceanic possessions; her islands are allappendages of the mainland to which they belong. Suchare Karlo, East Kvarken, the Åland archipelago,Dagö, and Ösel or Oesel in the Baltic Sea; NovayaZemlya, with Kolguyev and Vaigach, in the Barents Sea; theSolovetski Islands in the White Sea; the New SiberianIslands.archipelago, Wrangel Land and Bear Islands, off the Siberiancoast; the Commander Islands off Kamchatka; the ShantarIslands and the N. of Sakhalin in the Sea of Okhotsk. TheAleutian archipelago was sold to the United States in 1867,together with Alaska, and in 1875 the Kurile Islands were cededto Japan.

If the border regions, that is, two narrow belts, on the N.and S., be left out of account, a striking uniformity of physicalfeature prevails throughout the whole vast extentof the Russian empire. High plateaus like that ofPamir (the “Roof of the World”) and Armenia,and lofty mountain chains like the snow-clad Caucasus, the Alai,Leading physical features.the Tian-shan, the Sayan Mountains, exist only on the outskirtsof the empire.

Viewed broadly, the Russian empire may be said to occupythe territories to the N.W. of the great plateau formationof the old continent—the backbone of Asia—whichstretches with decreasing altitude and width fromthe high tableland of Tibet and Pamir to the lowerplateaus of Mongolia, and thence N.E. through the VitimPlateau formation
of Asia.region to the farthest extremity of Asia. Thus it consistsof the immense plains and flat lands which extend betweenthe plateau formation and the Arctic Ocean, including the seriesof parallel chains and hilly spurs which skirt the formerregion on the N.W. And it is only to the E. of Lake Baikalthat it climbs up on to the plateau, from which it descendsagain before it reaches the Pacific.

This plateau formation—the oldest geological continent of Asia—beingunfit for agriculture and for the most part unsuited for permanentsettlement, while its oceanic slopes have from the dawn ofhistory been occupied by a relatively dense population, long preventedSlav colonization from reaching the Pacific. The Russianschanced to cross it in the 17th century at its narrowest and mostN. part, and thus struck the Pacific on the foggy and frozen shoresof the Sea of Okhotsk; but two centuries elapsed ere, after colonizingthe depressions around Lake Baikal, they crossed over the plateauin a more genial zone and descended to the Pacific by the Amur.After that they spread rapidly S., up to the nearly uninhabited valleyof the Usuri, to what is now the Gulf of Peter the Great. In theS.W. higher portions of the plateau formation the empire has onlycomparatively recently planted its foot on the Pamir, and it wasonly a few years earlier that it established itself firmly on thehighlands of Armenia.

A broad belt of hilly tracts—in every respect alpine in character,and displaying the same variety of climate and organic life as alpinetracts usually do—skirts the plateau formation throughoutits entire length on the N. and N.W., forming anintermediate region between the plateau and the plains. TheCaucasus, the Elburz, the Kopet-dagh and Paropamisus,The alpine belt.the intricate and imperfectly known network of mountains W. ofthe Pamir, the Tian-shan and the Ala-tau mountain regions, andfarther N.E. the Altai, the still unnamed complex of the MinusinskMountains, the intricate mountain-chains of Sayan, with those ofthe Olekma, Vitim and Aldan all arrangeden échelon—the formerfrom N.W. to S.E., and the others from S.W. to N.E.—all thesebelong to the same alpine belt that borders the plateau from end toend of the series.

The flat lands which extend from the base of the Alpine foothillsto the shores of the Arctic Ocean, assume the character either ofdry deserts, as in the Aral-Caspian depression, or of lowtablelands, as in central Russia and E. Siberia, oflacustrine regions in N.W. Russia and Finland, or of marshyprairies in W. Siberia, and oftundras in the far N. ThroughoutThe flat lands.the whole of this vast area, their monotonous surfaces arediversified by only a few, and, for the most part, low, hilly tracts.Recently emerged from the Post-Pliocene sea, or freed fromtheir mantle of ice, they persistently maintain the self-samefeatures over immense areas; and the few portions that riseabove the general elevation have more the character of broad andgentle swellings than of mountain-chains. Of this class are theswampy plateaus of the Kola peninsula, sloping gently S. to thelacustrine region of Finland and N.W. Russia; the Valdai tablelands,where all the great rivers of Russia take their rise; the broadand gently sloping meridional belt of the Ural Mountains; andlastly the Taimyr, Tunguzka and Verkhoyansk ranges in Siberia,which, notwithstanding their sub-Arctic position, do not reach thesnow-line. The picturesque Bureya Mountains above the Amur,the forest-clad Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and the volcanic chainsof Kamchatka belong, however, to quite another orographicalconstruction, being the border-ridges of the terraces by which thegreat plateau formation descends to the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

It is owing to these leading orographical features—divined byCarl Ritter, but only recently ascertained and established as factby geographical research—that so many of the greatrivers of the old continent are comprised within the limitsof the Russian empire. Taking their rise on the plateau formation,or in its outskirts, they flow first along lofty longitudinal valleysRivers.formerly filled with great lakes, next they cleave their way throughthe rocky barriers, and finally they enter the lowlands, where theybecome navigable, and, describing wide curves to avoid here andthere the minor plateaus and hilly tracts, they bring into water-communicationwith one another places thousands of miles apart.The double river-systems of the Volga and Kama, the Ob andIrtysh, the Angara and Yenisei, the Lena and Vitim on the Arcticslope, and the Amur and Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances.These were the obvious channels of Russian colonization.

A broad depression—the Aral-Caspian desert—has arisen wherethe plateau formation reaches its greatest altitude, and at the sametime suddenly changes its direction from N.W. to N.E. This desertis now filled to only a small extent by the salt waters of the Caspian,Aral and Balkash inland seas; but it bears unmistakable traces ofhaving been during Post-Pliocene times an immense inland basin.There the Volga, the Ural, the Syr-darya and the Amu-daryadischarge their waters without reaching the ocean, but they bringlife to the rapidly desiccating Transcaspian steppes, and linktogether the most remote parts of Russia.

Geology.—The most striking feature in the geology of Russia is its ​remarkable freedom from disturbances, either in the form of mountainfolding or of igneous intrusions. Over the greater part of thecountry the strata are still nearly as flat as when they were firstlaid down, and the deposits, even of the Cambrian period, are assoft as those of the Mesozoic and Tertiary formations in England.Only in the Urals, the Caucasus, the Timan Mountains, the regionof the Donets coalfield, and the Kielce Hills is there any sign of thegreat folding from which nearly the whole of the rest of Europe hassuffered at one time or another.

In the early part of the Palaeozoic era only the gneissic region ofFinland and Olonets and probably the Archean mass of S. Russiaremained constantly above the sea; but there were several oscillations.Gradually, however, the sea retreated from W. Russia andin the Upper Carboniferous and Permian periods it was confined tothe E.

At the beginning of the Mesozoic era the whole country becameland, bearing upon its surface the salt lakes in which the Trias waslaid down. During the Jurassic period the sea again invaded theregion, both from the N. and from the S., but still the W. of Russiarose above the waves. In the Cretaceous period the waters withdrewfrom the N.E., but in the S. they spread W., covering thewhole of Poland and finally uniting with the ocean in which thechalk of W. Europe was deposited. The Tertiary era was markedby a gradual extension S. of the N. land-mass. In the later stagesarms of the sea were cut off and were converted at first into lagoonsand then into brackish or fresh-water lakes which continued tooccupy much of S. Russia until the beginning of the Quaternaryperiod.

During the first part of the Glacial period Russia seems to havebeen covered by an immense ice-sheet, which extended also overcentral Germany, and of which the E. limits cannot yet be determined.

The Archean rocks have a broad extension in Finland, N.Russia, the Ural Mountains and the Caucasus. In S. Russiathey form the floor upon which lies a thin covering of Tertiarybeds, and they are exposed to view in the valleys of the Dnieperand the Bug. They consist for the most part of red and greygneisses and granulites, with subordinate layers of granite andgranitite. The Finlandrappa-kivi, the Serdobol gneiss, and thePargas and Rustiala marble (with the so-calledEozoon canadense)yield good building stone; while iron, copper and zinc-ore arecommon in Finland and in the Urals. Rocks regarded as representingthe Huronian system appear also in Finland, in N.W.Russia, as a narrow strip on the Urals, and in the Dnieper ridge.They consist of a series of unfossiliferous crystalline slates.

The Cambrian is represented by blue clays, ungulite sandstonesand bituminous slates in Esthonia and St Petersburg. The Ordovicianand Silurian systems are widely developed, and it is mostprobable that, with the exception of the Archean continents ofFinland and the S., the sea covered the whole of Russia. Beingconcealed, however, by more recent deposits, the deposits appearon the surface only in N.W. Russia (Esthonia, Livonia, St Petersburgand on the Volkhov), where all the subdivisions of the systemhave been found; in the Timan ridge; on the W. slope of theUrals; in the Pai-kho ridge; and in the islands of the ArcticOcean. In Poland the rocks of these periods are met with inthe Kielce Mountains, and in Podolia in the deeper ravines.

The Devonian dolomites, limestones and red sandstones coverimmense tracts and appear on the surface over a much wider area.From Esthonia these rocks extend N.E. to Lake Onega, and S.E.to Mogilev; they form the central plateau, as also the slopesof the Urals and the Petchora region. In N.W. and middle Russiathey contain a special fauna, and it appears that the Lower Devonianseries of W. Europe, represented in Poland and in the Urals, ismissing in N.W. and central Russia, where only the Middle andUpper Devonian divisions are found.

Carboniferous deposits occur over nearly the whole of E. Russia,their W. boundary being a line drawn from Archangel to the upperDnieper, thence to the upper Don, and S. to the mouth of thelast-named river, with a long narrow gulf extending W. to encirclethe plateau of the Donets. They are visible, however, only onthe W. borders of this region, being covered towards the E. bythick Permian and Triassic strata. Russia has three large coal-bearingregions—the Moscow basin, the Donets region and theUrals. In the Valdai plateau there are only a few beds of mediocrecoal. In the Moscow basin, which was a broad gulf of the Carboniferoussea, coal appears as isolated inconstant seams amidst littoraldeposits, the formation of which was favoured by frequent minorsubsidences of the seacoast. The coal is here confined to thelower division of the system; the Upper Carboniferous (correspondingwith the English Coal-Measures) is exclusively marine,consisting chiefly ofFusulina limestone. The Donets Coal-Measures,containing abundant remains of a rich land-flora, cover nearly16,000 sq. m., and comprise a valuable stock of excellent anthraciteand coal, together with iron-mines. In this basin, as in W. Europegenerally, the principal coal seams occur in the Upper Carboniferous,while the Lower Carboniferous is mainly composed ofmarine deposits, with, however, the first bed of coal near its summit.Several smaller coalfields on the slopes of the Urals and on theTiman ridge may be added to the above. The Polish coalfieldsbelong to another Carboniferous area of deposit, which extendedover Silesia.

The Permian limestones and marls occupy a strip in E. Russiaof much less extent than that assigned to them by Murchison.The variegated marls of E. Russia, rich in salt-springs, but verypoor in fossils, are now held by most Russian geologists to beTriassic. The Permian deposits contain marine shells and alsoremains of plants similar to those of England and Germany. Butin the government of Vologda, on the rivers Sukhona and N.Dvina,Glossopteris,Noeggerathiopsis and other ferns characteristicof the Indian Gondwana beds have been found; and with theseare numerous remains of reptiles similar to those which occur inthe Indian deposits. In the Urals the marine facies is more fullydeveloped and the fauna shows affinities with that of theProductuslimestone of the Central Asian mountain belt.

During the Jurassic period the sea began again to invade Russiafrom S.E. and N.W. The limits of the Russian Jurassic systemmay be represented by a line drawn from the double valley ofthe Sukhona and Vytchegda to that of the upper Volga, and thenceto Kieff, with a wide gulf penetrating towards the N.W. Withinthis space three depressions, all running S.W. to N.E., are filledup with Upper Jurassic deposits. They are much denuded inthe higher parts of this region, and appear but as isolated islandsin central Russia. In the S.E. all the older subdivisions are represented,the deposits having the characters of a deep-sea formationin the Aral-Caspian region and on the Caucasus.

Cretaceous beds—sands, loose sandstones, marls and whitechalk—occupy nearly the whole of the region S. of a line drawnfrom the Niemen to the upper Oka and Don, and thence N.E. toSimbirsk. Over a large part of this area, however, they are concealedby the later Tertiary deposits, and they are absent overthe Dnieper and Don ridge in the Yaila Mountains and in thehigher parts of the Caucasus. They are rich in grinding stone,and in phosphatic deposits.

The Tertiary formations occupy large areas in S. Russia. TheEocene covers wide tracts from Lithuania to Tsaritsyn, and isrepresented in the Crimea and Caucasus by thick deposits belongingto the same ocean which left its deposits on the Alps and theHimalayas. Oligocene, quite similar to that of N. Germany, andcontaining brown coal and amber, has been met with only inPoland, Courland and Lithuania. The Miocene (Sarmatian stage)occupies extensive tracts in S. Russia, S. of a line drawn throughLublin to Ekaterinoslav and Saratov. Not only the higher chainsof Caucasus and Yaila, but also the Donets ridge, rose above the ​level of the Miocene sea, which was very shallow to the N. of thislast ridge, while farther S. it was connected both with the Viennabasin and with the Aral-Caspian. The Pliocene appears only inthe coast region of the Black and Azov Seas, but it is widelydeveloped in the Aral-Caspian region, where, however, the Ust-Urtand the Obshchiy Syrt rose above the sea.

The thick Quaternary, or Post-Pliocene, deposits which covernearly all Russia were for a long time a puzzle to geologists. Theyconsist of a boulder clay in the N. and of loess in the S. Theformer presents an intimate mixture of boulders brought fromFinland and Olonets (with an addition of local boulders) with smallgravel, coarse sand and the finest glacial mud,—the whole bearingno trace of ever having been washed up and sorted by water inmotion, except in subordinate layers of glacial sand and gravel;the size of the boulders decreases on the whole from N. to S., andthe boulder clay, especially in N. and central Russia, often takesthe shape of ridges parallel to the direction of the motion of theboulders. Its S. limits, roughly corresponding with thoseestablished by Murchison, but not yet settled in the S.E. and E., are,according to M. Nikitin, the following:—from the S. frontier ofPoland to Ovrutch, Umañ, Kremenchug, Poltava and Razdornaya(50° N. latitude), with a curve N. to Kozelsk (?); thence dueN. to Vetluga (58° N. latitude), E. to Glazova in Vyatka, andfrom this place towards the N. and W. along the watershed ofthe Volga and Pechora (?). S. of the 50th parallel appears theloess, with all its usual characters (land fossils, want of stratification,&c.), showing a remarkable uniformity of composition oververy large surfaces; it covers both watersheds and valleys, butchiefly the former. Such being the characters of the Quaternarydeposits in Russia, the majority of Russian geologists now adoptthe opinion that Russia was covered, as far as the above limits,with an immense ice-sheet which crept over central Russia andcentral Germany from Scandinavia and N. Russia. Anotherice-covering was probably advancing at the same time from the N.E.,that is, from the N. of the Urals, but the question as to the glaciationof the Urals still remains open. As to the loess, the usualview is that it was a steppe-deposit due to the drifting of fine sandand dust during a dry episode in the Pleistocene period.

The deposits of the Post-Glacial period are represented throughoutRussia, Poland and Finland, as also throughout Siberia andCentral Asia, by very thick lacustrine deposits, which show that,after the melting of the ice-sheet, the country was covered withimmense lakes, connected by broad channels (thefjärden of theSwedes), which later on gave rise to the actual rivers. On theoutskirts of the lacustrine region, traces of marine deposits, nothigher than 200 or perhaps even 150 ft. above present sea-level,are found alike on the Arctic Sea and on the Baltic and Black Seacoasts. A deep gulf of the Arctic Sea advanced up the valley ofthe Dvina; and the Caspian, connected by the Manych with theBlack Sea, and by the Uzboy valley with Lake Aral, penetratedN. up the Volga valley, as far as its Samara bend. Unmistakabletraces show that, while during the Glacial period Russia had anarctic flora and fauna, the climate of the Lacustrine period wasmore genial than it is now, and a dense human population at thattime peopled the shores of the numberless lakes.

The Lacustrine period has not yet reached its close in Russia.Finland and the N.W. hilly plateaus are still in the same geologicalphase, and are dotted with numberless lakes and ponds, while therivers continue to dig out their yet undetermined channels. Butthe great lakes which covered the country during the Lacustrineperiod have disappeared, leaving behind them immense marsheslike those of the Pripet and in the N.E. The disappearance ofwhat still remains of them is accelerated not only by the generaldecrease of moisture, but also perhaps by the gradual upheavalof N. Russia, which is going on from Esthonia and Finland to theKola peninsula and Novaya Zemlya, at an average rate of abouttwo feet per century. This upheaval—the consequences of whichhave been felt even within the historic period, by the drainageof the formerly impracticable marshes of Novgorod and at thehead of the Gulf of Finland—together with the destruction offorests (which must be considered, however, as a quite subordinatecause), contributes towards a decrease of precipitation over Russiaand towards increased shallowness of her rivers. At the sametime, as the gradients are gradually increasing on account of theupheaval of the continent, the rivers dig their channels deeperand deeper. Consequently central and especially S. Russia witnessthe formation of numerous miniature cañons, orovraghi (deepravines), the summits of which rapidly advance and ramify in theloose surface deposits. As for the S. steppes, their desiccation,the consequence of the above causes, is in rapid progress.^[1]

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​Population.—The population of the empire, which wasestimated at 74,000,000 in 1859, was found to be over 129,200,000at the census of 1897, taken over all the empire except Finland.In 1904 it was estimated to be 143,000,000, and in 1906, accordingto a detailed estimate of the Central Statistical Committee,it was 149,299,300. Thus from 1860 to 1897 the populationincreased 74⁠1/2⁠%, and from 1897 to 1904 26·3, an averageannual increase of about 3⁠1/2⁠% as compared with anaverage annual increase of 2⁠3/4⁠% during the period 1860–97.The increase took place chiefly in the large cities, in Siberia,Poland, Lithuania, S. Russia and Caucasia. The officialdivisions of the empire are given here, and details are givenin separate articles.

Province or Government

European Russia—
	Archangel	Livonia	Saratov
	Astrakhan	Minsk	Simbirsk
	Bessarabia	Mogilev	Smolensk
	Chernigov	Moscowo	Tambov
	Courland	Nizhniy-Novgorod	Taurida
	Don Cossacks’ territory	Novgorod	Tula
	Ekaterinoslav	Olonets	Tver
	Esthonia	Orel	Ufa
	Grodno	Orenburg	Vilna
	Kaluga	Penza	Vitebsk
	Kazan	Perm	Vladimir
	Kiev	Podolia	Volhynia
	Kostroma	Poltava	Vologda
	Kovno	Pskov	Voronezh
	Kursk	Ryazan	Vyatka
	Kharkov	St Petersburg	Yaroslavl
	Kherson	Samara
Poland—
	Kalisz	Piotrkow	Siedlce
	Kielce	Plock	Suwalki
	Lomza	Radom	Warsaw
	Lublin
Grand-Duchy of Finland—
	Åbo-Björneborg	St Michel	Viborg
	Kuopio	Tavastehus	Vasa
	Nyland	Uleaborg
Caucasia—
	Kuban	Stavropol	Terek
	Baku	Elizavetpol	Kutais
	Black Sea territory	Erivan	Tiflis with Zakataly
	Daghestan	Kars
Russia in Asia—
	The Steppes ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Akmolinsk Semipalatinsk Turgai Uralsk ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Semiryechensk Samarkand
Turkestan—
	${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Ferghana Syr-darya
	Transcaspia
Western Siberia—
	${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Tobolsk Tomsk
Eastern Siberia—
	${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Irkutsk Transbaikalia	Yakutsk
		Yeniseisk
Amur Region—
	${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Amur Maritime Province
	Sakhalin

It has been found, from a comparison of the densities of populationof the various provinces in 1859 with the distribution in 1897, thatthe centre of density has distinctly moved S., towards the shores ofthe Black Sea, and W., the greatest increase having taken place inthe E. Polish and in the Lithuanian provinces, along the S.W.border, in the prairie belt beside the Black Sea, and in Orenburg.N. Caucasia and S.W. Siberia likewise show a considerable increase.The census of 1897 revealed in several provinces a remarkably lowproportion of men to women. This was owing to the fact that largenumbers of the men engaged in agricultural pursuits during thesummer temporarily move every year into the large industrialcentres for the winter. Consequently there were only 87·4 and 89·8women to every 100 men in the governments of St Petersburg andTaurida respectively, but as many as 133·8 in Yaroslavl, 119 inTver and 117 in Kostroma. The average number of women toevery 100 men in the Russian governments proper was 102·9; inPoland, 98·6; in Finland, 102·2; in Caucasia, 88·9; in Siberia, 93·7;and in Turkestan and Transcaspia, 83·0.

​The effects of emigration and immigration cannot be estimatedwith accuracy, because only those who cross the frontier withpassports are taken account of. The statistics of these show that therewas during the thirty-two years, 1856–88, an excess of emigrationover immigration of 1,146,052 in the case of Russians, and a surplusof immigration of 2,304,717 foreigners. On the other hand, in thesix years, 1892–97, the excess of Russian emigration over immigrationwas 207,353, as compared with an excess of foreign immigrationover emigration of only 136,740. During the years 1900–4 inclusivethe total emigrants from Russia numbered 2,358,539, of whom1,144,246 were Russians; while the immigrants numbered 2,333,053,of whom 1,432,057 were foreigners. It is also known that thenumber of Russian immigrants into the United States in 1891–1902was 742,869, as compared with 313,469 in 1873–90, or a grand totalsince 1873 of 1,056,338. By far the greater part of these wereJews. The emigration to Siberia varies much from year to year.It was 26,129 in 1888, and 60,000 in 1898. During the two followingyears it amounted to an average of over 160,000, but in the years1901–3 to an average of 84,638 per annum. Altogether some800,000 peasants are estimated to have settled in Siberia duringthe period 1886–96, but during the years 1893–1905 no less thanfour millions in all. There is also some emigration from centralRussia to the S. Urals, as well as to some of the steppe governments.

Within the empire a very great diversity of nationalities iscomprised, due to the amalgamation or absorption by the Slav race of avariety of Ural-Altaic stocks, of Turko-Tatars, Turko-Mongols andvarious Caucasian races. In some cases their ethnical relations havenot yet been completely determined. According to the resultsobtained by the census committee of 1897, working on a linguisticbasis, the distribution of races was as given in the tableoppositebelow:^[2]—

​

Table showing Distribution of Races

	Russia in  Europe.	Poland.	Caucasia.	Siberia.	Central Asia.	Finland.	Totals.[3]
Aryans ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Slavs ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Great Russians Little Russians White Russians Poles Other Slavs[4]   Lithuanians ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Lithuanians[5] Letts   Latin  and  Teutonic  Races ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Rumanians Germans Greeks Other Europeans[6] Swedes   Iranians ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Armenians Persians Tajiks Talyshes and Tates  Kurds Ossetes     Gypsies    Semites Jews    Ural-Altaians ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Finns ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Esthonians Finns Lapps Mordvinians Karelians Cheremisses Syryenians Permiaks Votyaks Other Finns[7]     Samoyedes   Turko  -Tatars ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \end{array}}$ Tatars Chuvashes Bashkirs Turks (Osmanlis) Turkomans Kirghiz Sarts Uzbegs Yakuts Kara-kalpaks Others     Tunguses   Mongols ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Kalmucks Buriats    Caucasians ${\displaystyle \{\begin{array}{c}\\ \end{array}}$ Georgian Races[8] Circassians and other Caucasians[9]     Koryaks, Chukchis, &c.  Chinese, Japanese and Koreans
	48,558,721	267,160	1,829,793	4,423,803	587,992	5,939	55,673,408
	20,414,866	335,337	1,305,463	223,274	101,611	..	22,380,551
	5,823,383	29,347	19,642	12,346	829	..	5,885,547
	1,109,934	6,755,503	25,117	29,177	11,576	..	7,931,307
	213,268	7,365	3,855	182	189	..	224,859
	1,345,160	305,322	5,121	1,877	1,042	..	1,658,532
	1,422,021	5,064	1,511	6,714	627	..	1,435,937
	1,121,669	5,223	7,232	..	..	..	1,134,124
	1,312,188	407,274	56,729	5,424	8,874	1,925	1,790,489
	86,626	..	100,299	..	..	..	186,925
	29,841	..	1,435	..	..	..	34,276
	14,199	..	..	..	..	349,733	363,932
	76,635	..	1,096,461	..	4,862	..	1,173,096
	1,630	..	29,278	..	8,015	..	38,923
	..	..	..	..	350,397	..	350,397
	..	..	130,347	..	..	..	130,347
	..	..	99,836	..	..	..	99,836
	..	..	171,716	..	..	..	171,716
	16,004	1,056	3,041	6,253	771	..	27,125
	3,714,995	1,267,194	40,498	32,597	7,872	..	5,063,156
	989,883	4,372	4,281	4,202	..	..	1,002,738
	143,068	..	..	..	..	2,352,990	2,496,058
	1,812	..	..	..	..	1,300	3,112
	989,959	..	..	20,802	13,080	..	1,023,841
	208,101	..	..	..	..	..	208,101
	375,439	..	..	..	..	..	375,439
	146,535	..	..	7,083	..	..	153,618
	103,339	..	..	..	..	..	103,339
	420,970	..	..	..	..	..	420,970
	43,393	..	..	24,453	..	..	67,846
	3,940	..	..	11,929	..	..	15,869
	1,953,155	4,336	1,509,785	210,154	60,197	..	3,737,627
	837,872	929	411	4,232	311	..	843,755
	1,488,297	83	953	978	2,672	..	1,492,983
	68,807	156	139,419	172	268	..	208,822
	7,938	6	24,522	124	248,767	..	281,357
	264,059	123	98	32,648	3,988,893	..	4,084,139
	184	..	158	305	968,008	..	968,655
	43	..	..	77	726,414	..	726,534
	..	..	..	227,384	..	..	227,384
	..	..	1	2	104,271	..	104,274
	466	..	204,561	63	518,949	..	724,039
	..	..	..	70,064	..	..	70,064
	170,865	..	14,409	..	..	..	185,274
	..	..	..	288,663	..	..	288,663
	..	..	1,352,455	..	..	..	1,352,455
	..	..	1,091,782	..	..	..	1,091,782
	..	..	..	39,349	..	..	39,349
	..	..	..	86,113	..	..	86,113

Government and Administration.—Russia was described intheAlmanach de Gotha for 1910 as “a constitutional monarchyunder an autocratic tsar.” This obvious contradiction interms well illustrates the difficulty of defining in a single formulathe system, essentially transitional and meanwhilesui generis,established in the Russian empire since October 1905. Beforethis date the fundamental laws of Russia described the powerof the emperor as “autocratic and unlimited.” The imperialstyle is still “Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias”;but in the fundamental laws as remodelled between the imperialmanifesto of 17/30 October and the opening of the firstDumaon the 27th of April 1906, while the name and principle ofautocracy was jealously preserved, the word “unlimited”vanished. Not that the régime in Russia had become in anytrue sense constitutional, far less parliamentary; but the“unlimited autocracy” had given place to a “self-limitedautocracy,” whether permanently so limited, or only at thediscretion of the autocrat, remaining a subject of heatedcontroversy between conflicting parties in the state.^[10] Provisionally,then, the Russian governmental system may perhaps be bestdefined—as M. Chasles suggests^[11]—as “a limited monarchyunder an autocratic emperor.”

At the head of the government is the emperor,^[12] whose poweris limited only by the provisions of the fundamental laws ofthe empire. Of these some are ancient and undisputed:the empire may not be partitioned, butdescends entire in order of primogeniture, and byThe emperor.preference to the male heir; the emperor and his consort mustbelong to the Eastern Orthodox Church; the emperor canwear no crown that entails residence abroad. By themanifesto of the 17/30th of October 1905 the emperor voluntarilylimited his legislative power by decreeing that no measurewas to become law without the consent of the Imperial Duma,a freely elected national assembly. By the law of the 20thof February 1906 the Council of the Empire was associatedwith the Duma as a legislative Upper House; and from thistime the legislative power has been exercised normally by theemperor only in concert with the two chambers.

The Council of the Empire, or Imperial Council (GosudarstvenniySovyet), as reconstituted for this purpose, consists of 196members, of whom 98 are nominated by the emperor,while 98 are elective. The ministers, also nominated,areex officio members. Of the elected members3 are returned by the “black” clergy (the monks),The Council of the Empire.3 by the “white” clergy (seculars),^[13] 18 by the corporationsof nobles, 6 by the academy of sciences and the universities,6 by the chambers of commerce, 6 by the industrial councils,34 by the governments havingzemstvos, 16 by those having nozemstvos, and 6 by Poland. As a legislative body the powersof the Council are co-ordinate with those of the Duma; inpractice, however, it has seldom if ever initiated legislation.^[14]

The Duma of the Empire or Imperial Duma (GosudarstvennayaDuma), which forms the Lower House of the Russian parliament,consists (since theukaz of the 2nd of June 1907)of 442 members, elected by an exceedingly complicatedprocess, so manipulated as to secure an overwhelmingpreponderance for the wealthy, and especially the landed classes,The Duma.

Electoral system.and also for the representatives of the Russian as opposed tothe subject peoples. Each province of the empire, except thenow disfranchised steppes of Central Asia,^[15] returns acertain proportion of members (fixed in each case bylaw in such a way as to give a preponderance to theRussian element), in addition to those returned by certain of

​the great cities. The members of the Duma are elected byelectoral colleges in each government, and these in their turnare elected, like thezemstvos (see below), by electoral assemblieschosen by the three classes of landed proprietors, citizens andpeasants. In these assemblies the large proprietors sit inperson, being thus electors in the second degree; the lesserproprietors are represented by delegates, and therefore electin the third degree. The urban population, divided into twocategories according to their taxable wealth, elects delegatesdirect to the college of the government (Guberniya), and isthus represented in the second degree; but the system of divisioninto categories, according not to the number of taxpayersbut to the amount they pay, gives a great preponderance tothe richer classes. The peasants are represented only in thefourth degree, since the delegates to the electoral college areelected by thevolosts (see below). The workmen, finally,are specially treated. Every industrial concern employing fiftyhands or over elects one or more delegates to the electoral ​college of the government, in which, like the others, they forma separatecuria.

In the college itself the voting—secret and by ballot throughout—isby majority; and since this majority consists, under theactual system, of very conservative elements (the landownersand urban delegates having⁠5/8⁠ths of the votes), the progressiveelements—however much they might preponderate in thecountry—would have no chance of representation at all savefor the curious provision that one member at least in eachgovernment must be chosen from each of the five classesrepresented in the college. For example, were there no reactionarypeasant among the delegates, a reactionary majoritymight be forced to return a Social Democrat to the Duma. Asit is, though a fixedminimum of peasant delegatesmust bereturned, they by no means probably represent the opinion ofthe peasantry. That in the Duma any Radical elementssurvive at all is mainly due to the peculiar franchise enjoyed bythe seven largest towns—St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa,Riga and the Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz. These electtheir delegates to the Duma direct, and though their votes aredivided into twocurias (on the basis of taxable property) insuch a way as to give the advantage to wealth, each returning thesame number of delegates, the democratic colleges can at leastreturn members of their own complexion.^[16]

The competence of the Russian parliament^[17] thus constitutedis strictly limited. It shares with the emperor the legislativepower, including the discussion and sanctioning ofthe budget. But, so far as the parliament is concerned,this power is subject to numerous and importantexceptions. All measures,e.g. dealing with the organizationPowers of the Duma.of the army and navy are outside its competence; these areno longer called “laws” but “ordinary administrative rules.”Moreover, the procedure of the Houses practically places thecontrol of legislation in the hands of ministers. Any membermay bring in a “project of law,” but it has to be submitted tothe minister of the department concerned, who is allowed amonth to consider it, and himself prepares the final draft laidon the table of the House. Amendments, however, may beand have been carried against the government. Ministers areresponsible, moreover, not to parliament but to the emperor.They may be interpellated, but only on the legality, not thepolicy, of their acts. In the words of M. Stolypin, there is nointention of converting the ministerial bench into a prisonersdock. If by a two-thirds majority the action of a ministerbe arraigned, the president of the Imperial Council laysthe case before the emperor, who decides. The powers of theparliament over the budget are even more limited, though notaltogether illusory. No legislation by means of the budgetis allowed,i.e. no alteration may be made in credits necessaryfor carrying out a law. This deprives parliament of controlover the administrative departments, all the ministries beingthus “armour-plated”—to use the cant phrase current inRussia—except that of ways and communications (railways).The sum of 700,000,000 roubles per annum is thus exceptedfrom the control of the chambers. Other exceptions are the“Institutions of the Empress Marie,” which absorb,inter alia,the duties on playing-cards and the taxes on places of publicentertainment; the imperial civil list, so far as this does notexceed the sum fixed in 1906 (16,359,595 roubles!); the expensesof the two imperial chanceries, 10,000,000 roubles perannum, which constitute in effect a secret service fund. Altogether,half the annual expenditure of the country is outsidethe control of parliament. Nor is this all. If the budget be notsanctioned by the emperor, that of the previous year remains inforce, and the government has power,motu proprio, to impose theextra taxes necessary to carry out new laws. In certain circumstances,too, the emperor reserves the right to raise fresh loans.

Further, the emperor has the power to issue ordinanceshaving the force of law,i.e. under extraordinary circumstanceswhen the Duma is not sitting. These ordinances must, however,be of a temporary nature, must not infringe the fundamentallaws or statutes passed by the two chambers, or changethe electoral system, and must be laid upon the table of theDuma at the first opportunity. Since, however, the emperorhas the power of proroguing or dissolving the Duma as oftenas he pleases, it is clear that these temporary ordinances mightin effect be made permanent. Finally, the emperor has theright to proclaim anywhere and at any time a state of siege.In this way the fundamental laws were suspended not only inPoland but in St Petersburg and other parts of the empireduring the greater part of the four years succeeding the grantof the constitution.

It should be noted, none the less, that the third Duma succeededin establishing its position, and that in view of its usefulactivities even the extreme Right came to realize that therecould be no return to the old undisguised absolutist régime(seeHistory, below,ad fin).

By the law of the 18th of October (November 1) 1905, toassist the emperor in the supreme administration a Councilof Ministers (Sovyet Ministrov) was created, under aminister president, the first appearance of a primeminister in Russia. This council consists of all theministers and of the heads of the principal administrations.Council of MinistersThe ministries are as follows: (1) of the Imperial Court,to which the administration of the apanages, the chapter ofthe imperial orders, the imperial palaces and theatres, andthe Academy of Fine Arts are subordinated; (2) ForeignAffairs; (3) War and Marine; (4) Finance; (5) Commerce andIndustry (created in 1905); (6) Interior (including police,health, censorship and press, posts and telegraphs, foreignreligions, statistics); (7) Agriculture; (8) Ways and Communications;(9) Justice; (10) Public Instruction. Dependenton the Council of Ministers are two other councils: the HolySynod and the Senate.

The Holy Synod (established in 1721) is the supreme organof government of the Orthodox Church in Russia. It ispresided over by a lay procurator, representing theemperor, and consists, for the rest, of the threemetropolitans of Moscow, St Petersburg and Kiev,the archbishop of Georgia, and a number of bishops sittingin rotation.Holy Synod.

The Senate (Pravitelstvuyushchi Senat,i.e. directing orgoverning senate), originally established by Peter the Great,consists of members nominated by the emperor. Itsfunctions, which are exceedingly various, are carriedout by the different departments into which it isdivided. It is the supreme court of cassation (seeJudicialThe Senate.System, below); an audit office, a high court of justice for allpolitical offences; one of its departments fulfils the functionsof a heralds’ college. It also has supreme jurisdiction in alldisputes arising out of the administration of the empire, notablydifferences between the representatives of the central power andthe elected organs of local self-government. Lastly, it examinesinto registers and promulgates new laws, a function which, intheory, gives it a power, akin to that of the Supreme Court ofthe United States, of rejecting measures not in accordancewith the fundamental laws.

For purposes of provincial administration Russia is dividedinto 78 governments (guberniya), 18 provinces (oblast) and1 district (okrug). Of these 11 governments, 17provinces and 1 district (Sakhalin) belong to AsiaticRussia. Of the rest 8 governments are in Finland,10 in Poland. European Russia thus embraces 59Provincial adminis­tration.governments and 1 province (that of the Don). TheDon province is under the direct jurisdiction of the ministryof war; the rest have each a governor and deputy-governor,the latter presiding over the administrative council. Inaddition there are governors-general, generally placed overseveral governments and armed with more extensive powers, ​usually including the command of the troops within the limitsof their jurisdiction. In 1906 there were governors-generalin Finland, Warsaw, Vilna, Kiev, Moscow and Riga. Thelarger cities (St Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Sevastopol, Kertch-Yenikala,Nikolayev, Rostov) have an administrative systemof their own, independent of the governments; in these thePolice.chief of police acts as governor. As organs of thecentral government there are further, theispravniki,chiefs of police in the districts into which the governments aredivided. These are nominated by the governors,^[18] and haveunder their orders in the principal localities commissaries(stanovoï pristav).Ispravniki andstanovoï alike are armedwith large and ill-defined powers; and, since they are for themost part illiterate and wholly ignorant of the law, theyhave proved exasperating engines of oppression. Towardsthe end of the reign of Alexander II., the government, in orderto preserve order in the country districts, also created a specialclass of mounted rural policemen (uryadniki, fromuriad, order),who, armed with power to arrest all suspects on the spot,rapidly became the terror of the countryside.^[19] Finally, in thetowns every house is provided with a detective policeman inthe person of the porter (dvornik), who is charged with the dutyof reporting to the police the presence of any suspiciouscharacters or anything else that may interest them.^[20]

In addition to the above there is also a police organization,in direct subordination to the ministry of the interior, ofwhich the principal function is the discovery,prevention and extirpation of political sedition. Asecret police, armed with inquisitorial and arbitrarypowers, has always existed in autocratic Russia. Its mostSecret police.famous development was the so-called “Third Section” (of theimperial chancery) instituted by the emperor Nicholas I. in1826. This was entirely independent of the ordinary police,but was associated with the previously existing corps ofgendarmes (Korpus Zhandarmov), whose chief was placed atits head. Its object had originally been to keep the emperorin close touch with all the branches of the administration andto bring to his notice any abuses and irregularities (seeNicholas I.), and for this purpose its chief was in constantpersonal intercourse with the sovereign. Actually, however,its activity, directed mainly to the discovery of politicaloffences, degenerated into a hideous reign of terror. Itsorganization was spread all over Russia; its procedure wassecret and summary (transportation by administrative order);and, its instruments being for the most part ignorant andlargely corrupt, its victims were counted by thousands.

The “Third Section” was suppressed by Alexander II. in1880, but only in name. In fact it was transformed into aseparate department of the ministry of the interior, and,provided with an enormous secret service fund, soon dominatedthe whole ministry. The corps of gendarmes was also incorporatedin this department, the under-secretary of the interiorbeing placed at its head and at that of the police generally,with practically unlimited jurisdiction in all cases which,in the judgment of the minister of the interior, required to bedealt with by processes outside the ordinary law. In 1896the powers of the minister were extended at the expense ofthose of the under-secretary, who remained only at the headof the corps of gendarmes; but by a law of the 24th of September1904 this was again reversed, and the under-secretary was againplaced at the head of all the police with the title of under-secretaryfor the administration of the police.

Local Elected Administrative Bodies.—Alongside the localorgans of the central government in Russia there are threeclasses of local elected bodies charged with administrativefunctions: (1) the peasant assemblies in themir and thevolost,(2) thezemstvos in the 34 governments of Russia proper,(3) the municipaldumas. Of these the peasant assemblies arethe most interesting and in some respects the most important,since the peasants (i.e. three-quarters of the population ofThe mir.Russia) form a class apart,^[21] largely excepted fromthe incidence of the ordinary law, and governed inaccordance with their local customs. Themir itself, with itscustoms, is of immemorial antiquity (seeVillage Communities);it was not, however, till the emancipation of theserfs in 1861 that the village community was withdrawn fromthe patrimonial jurisdiction of the landowning nobility andendowed with self-government. The assembly of themirconsists of all the peasant householders of the village.^[22] Theseelect a head-man (starosta) and a collector of taxes, who wasresponsible, at least until theukaz of October 1906, whichabolished communal responsibility for the payment of taxes,for the repartition among individuals of the taxes imposed on theThe volost.commune. A number ofmirs are united into avolost,or canton, which has an assembly consisting of electeddelegates from themirs. These elect an elder (starshina)and, hitherto, a court of justice (volostnye sud). SeeJudicialSystem, below. The self-government of themirs andvolosts is,however, tempered by the authority of the police commissaries(stanovoï) and by the power of general oversight given to thenominated “district committees for the affairs of the peasants.”

The system of local self-government is continued, so faras the 34 governments of old Russia are concerned,^[23] in theelective district and provincial assemblies (zemstvos).These bodies, one for each district and another foreach province or government, were created by Alexander II.in 1864. They consist of a representative councilThe zemstvos.(zemskoye sobranye) and of an executive board (zemskaya uprava)nominated by the former. The board consists of five classesof members: (1) large landed proprietors (nobles owning 590acres and over), who sit in person; (2) delegates of the smalllandowners, including the clergy in their capacity of landedproprietors; (3) delegates of the wealthier townsmen; (4) delegatesof the less wealthy urban classes; (5) delegates ofthe peasants, elected by thevolosts.^[24] The rules governingelections to thezemstvos were taken as a model for the electorallaw of 1906 and are sufficiently indicated by the account of thisgiven below. Thezemstvos were originally given large powersin relation to the incidence of taxation, and such questions aseducation, public health, roads and the like. These powerswere, however, severely restricted by the emperor Alexander III.(law of 12/25 June 1890), thezemstvos being absolutelysubordinated to the governors, whose consent was necessaryto the validity of all their decisions, and who received drasticpowers of discipline over the members.^[25] It was not till 1905that thezemstvos regained, at leastde facto, some of their independentinitiative. The part played by the congress ofzemstvosin the earlier stages of the Russian revolution is outlined below(seeHistory: § 2.Development of the Russian Constitution).

​Since 1870 the municipalities in European Russia have hadinstitutions like those of thezemstvos. All owners of houses,and tax-paying merchants, artisans and workmenare enrolled on lists in a descending order accordingto their assessed wealth. The total valuation is thendivided into three equal parts, representing three groups ofMunicipal dumas.electors very unequal in number, each of which elects an equalnumber of delegates to the municipalduma. The executiveis in the hands of an elective mayor and anuprava, whichconsists of several members elected by theduma. UnderAlexander III., however, by laws promulgated in 1892 and 1894,the municipaldumas were subordinated to the governors in thesame way as thezemstvos. In 1894 municipal institutions,with still more restricted powers, were granted to several townsin Siberia, and in 1895 to some in Caucasia.

In the Baltic provinces (Courland, Livonia and Esthonia)the landowning classes formerly enjoyed considerable powersof self-government and numerous privileges in mattersaffecting education, police and the administration oflocal justice. But by laws promulgated in 1888 and1889 the rights of police and manorial justice were transferredBaltic provinces.from the landlords to officials of the central government. Sinceabout the same time a process of rigorous Russification hasbeen carried through in the same provinces, in all departmentsof administration, in the higher schools and in the universityof Dorpat, the name of which was altered to Yuriev. In 1893district committees for the management of the peasants’ affairs,similar to those in the purely Russian governments, were introducedinto this part of the empire.

Judicial System.—Not the least valuable of the gifts of the“tsar emancipator,” Alexander II., to Russia was the judicialsystem established by the statute (Sudebni Ustav) ofthe 20th of November 1864. The system which thissuperseded was not indigenous to Russia, but hadSystem before 1864.been set up by Peter the Great, who had taken as hismodel the inquisitorial procedure at that time in vogue onthe continent of western Europe. Both civil and criminalprocedure were secret. All the proceedings were conductedin writing, and the judges were not confronted with eitherthe parties or the witnesses until they emerged to deliver judgment.This secrecy, combined with the fact that the judgeswere very ill paid, led to universal bribery and corruption. Tocheck this courts were multiplied (there were five, six or moreinstances), which only multiplied the evil. Documents accumulatedfrom court to court, till none but the clerks who hadwritten them could tell their gist; costs were piled up; and allthis, combined with the confusion caused by the chaotic mass ofimperial ukazes, ordinances and ancient laws—often inconsistentor flatly contradictory—made the administration of justice, ifpossible, more dilatory and capricious than in the old, unreformedEnglish court of chancery. Above all, there was no dividingline between the judiciary and the administrative functions.The judges were not so by profession; they were merely membersof the official class (chinovniks), the prejudices and vices of whichthey shared.

Of this system—except so far as the confusion of the laws isconcerned—the reform of 1864 made a clean sweep. The newsystem established—based partly on English, partlyon French models—was built up on certain broadprinciples: the separation of the judicial and administrativefunctions, the independence of the judges andLaw of 1864.courts, the publicity of trials and oral procedure, the equalityof all classes before the law. Moreover, a democratic elementwas introduced by the adoption of the jury system and—so faras one order of tribunal was concerned—the election of judges.The establishment of a judicial system on these principlesconstituted, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu justly observes, a fundamentalchange in the conception of the Russian state, which,by placing the administration of justice outside the sphere ofthe executive power, ceased to be a despotism. This factmade the new system especially obnoxious to the bureaucracy,and during the latter years of Alexander II. and the reign ofAlexander III. there was a piecemeal taking back of what hadbeen given. It was reserved for the third Duma, after therevolution, to begin the reversal of this process.^[26]

The system established by the law of 1864 is remarkablein that it set up two wholly separate orders of tribunals, eachhaving their own courts of appeal and coming in contact onlyin the senate, as the supreme court of cassation. The first ofthese, based on the English model, are the courts of theelected justices of the peace, with jurisdiction over pettycauses, whether civil or criminal; the second, based onthe French model, are the ordinary tribunals of nominatedjudges, sitting with or without a jury to hear importantcases.

The justices of the peace, who must be landowners^[27] or(in towns) persons of moderate property, are elected by themunicipaldumas in the towns, and by thezemstvos in the country districts, for a term of three years.They are of two classes: (1) acting justices (uchastokvyeJustices of the peace.mirovye sudi); (2) honorary justices (pochetnye mirovye sudi).The acting justice sits normally alone to hear, causes in hiscanton of the peace (uchastok), but, at the request of bothparties to a suit, he may call in an honorary justice asassessor or substitute.^[28] In all civil cases involving less than30 roubles, and in criminal cases punishable by no more thanthree days’ arrest, his judgment is final. In other cases appealcan be made to the “assize of the peace” (mirovye syezd),consisting of three or more justices of the peace meetingmonthly (cf. the English quarter sessions), which acts both asa court of appeal and of cassation. From this again appeal canbe made on points of law or disputed procedure to the senate,which may send the case back for retrial by an assize of the peacein another district.

The ordinary tribunals, in their organization, personnel andprocedure, are modelled very closely on those of France (seeFrance,Law and Institutions). From the townjudge (ispravnik), who, in spite of the principle laiddown in 1864, combines judicial and administrativefunctions, an appeal lies (as in the case of the justices ofThe ordinary tribunals.the peace) to an assembly of such judges; from these againthere is an appeal to the district court (okrugniya sud), consistingof three judges;^[29] from this to the court of appeal(sudebniya palata); while over this again is the senate, which,as the supreme court of cassation, can send a case for retrialfor reason shown. The district court, sitting with a jury,can try criminal cases without appeal, but only by specialleave in each case of the court of appeal. The senate, assupreme court of cassation, has two departments, one forcivil and one for criminal cases. As a court of justice itsmain drawback is that it is wholly unable to cope with thevast mass of documents representing appeals from all partsof the empire.

Two important classes in Russia stood more or less outsidethe competence of the above systems: the clergy and thepeasants. The ecclesiastical courts still retain ajurisdiction over the clergy which they have lostelsewhere in Europe; and in them the old secretwritten procedure survives. Their interest for the laity liesEcclesiastical courts. ​mainly in the fact that marriage and divorce fall withintheir competence; and their reform has been postponed largelybecause the wealthy and corrupt society of the Russian capitalpreferred a system which makes divorce easily purchasableand avoids at the same time the scandal of publicity. Thecase of the peasants is more interesting, and deserves a somewhatmore detailed notice.

The peasants, as already stated, form a class apart, untouchedby the influence of Western civilization, the principles of whichthey are quite incapable of understanding or appreciating.This fact was recognized by the legislators of1864, and beneath the statutory tribunals created inthat year the special courts of the peasants were suffered toVolost courts.survive. These were indeed but a few years older. Up to1861, the date of the emancipation, the peasant serfs had beenunder the patrimonial jurisdiction of their lords. The edict ofemancipation abolished this jurisdiction, and set up instead ineachvolost a court particular to the peasants (volostnye sud), ofwhich the judges and jury, themselves peasants, were electedby the assembly of thevolost (volostnye skhod) each year. Inthese courts the ordinary written law had little to say; thedecisions of thevolost courts were based on the local customarylaw, which alone the peasants, and the peasants alone, understand.The justice administered in them was patriarchal andrough, but not ineffective. All civil cases involving less than100 roubles value were within their competence, and moreimportant cases by consent of the parties. They acted alsoas police courts in the case of petty thefts, breaches of thepeace and the like. They were also charged with the maintenanceof order in themir and the family, punishing infractionsof the religious law, husbands who beat their wives, and parentswho ill-treated their children. The penalty of flogging, preferredby the peasants to fine or imprisonment, was not unknown.The judges were, of course, wholly illiterate, and this tended tothrow the ultimate power into the hands of the clerk (pisar)of the court, who was rarely above corruption.

In 1880, according to the observations of M. Leroy-Beaulieu,^[30]the fines inflicted by the court were commonly paid invodka,which was consumed on the premises by the judges and theparties to the suit; there is no reason to suppose that thisamiable custom has been abandoned.

The peasants are not compelled to go to thevolost court.They can apply to the police commissaries (stanovoï) or tothe justices of the peace; but the great distances to be traversedin a country so sparsely populated makes this course highlyinconvenient.^[31] On the other hand, from thevolost court thereis no appeal, unless it has actedultra vires or illegally. In thelatter case a court of cassation is provided in the district committeefor the affairs of the peasants (Uyezdnoe po krestianskimdolam prisutstviye), which has superseded the assembly ofarbiters of the peace (mirovye posredniki) established in 1866.^[32] (W. A. P.) 

Geography.—The administrative boundaries of EuropeanRussia, apart from Finland, coincide broadly with the naturallimits of the East-European plains. In the N. it isbounded by the Arctic Ocean; the islands of Novaya-Zemlya,Kolguyev and Vaigach also belong to it, butthe Kara Sea is reckoned to Siberia. To the E. it has theBoundaries.Asiatic dominions of the empire, Siberia and the Kirghiz steppes,from both of which it is separated by the Ural Mountains, theUral river and the Caspian—the administrative boundary,however, partly extending into Asia on the Siberian slope ofthe Urals. To the S. it has the Black Sea and Caucasia, beingseparated from the latter by the Manych depression, which inPost-Pliocene times connected the Sea of Azov with the Caspian.The W. boundary is purely conventional: it crosses the peninsulaof Kola from the Varanger Fjord to the Gulf of Bothnia; thenceit runs to the Kurisches Haff in the southern Baltic, and thenceto the mouth of the Danube, taking a great circular sweep to theW. to embrace Poland, and separating Russia from Prussia,Austrian Galicia and Rumania.

It is a special feature of Russia that she has no free outlet tothe open sea except on the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean.Even the White Sea is merely a gulf of that ocean. The deepindentations of the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland are surroundedby what is ethnologically Finnish territory, and it is only at thevery head of the latter gulf that the Russians have taken firmfoothold by erecting their capital at the mouth of the Neva.The Gulf of Riga and the Baltic belong also to territory whichis not inhabited by Slavs, but by Finnish races and by Germans.It is only within the last hundred and thirty years that theRussians have definitely taken possession of the N. shores of theBlack Sea and the Sea of Azov. The E. coast of the Black Seabelongs properly to Transcaucasia, a great chain of mountainsseparating it from Russia. But even this sheet of water is aninland sea, the only outlet of which, the Bosphorus, is in foreignhands, while the Caspian, an immense shallow lake, mostlybordered by deserts, possesses more importance as a link betweenRussia and her Asiatic settlements than as a channel for intercoursewith other countries.

The great territory occupied by European Russia—1600 m.in length from N. to S., and nearly as much from E. to W.—is onthe whole a broad elevated plain, ranging between 500 and900 ft. above sea-level, deeply cut into by river-valleys,and bounded on all sides by broad swellingsor low mountain-ranges: the lake plateaus of FinlandConfig­uration.and the Maanselkä heights in the N.W.; the Baltic coast-ridgeand spurs of the Carpathians in the W., with a broad depressionbetween the two, occupied by Poland; the Crimean andCaucasian mountains in the S.; and the broad but moderatelyhigh swelling of the Ural Mountains in the E.

Ethnography.—Remains of Palaeolithic man, contemporarywith the large Quaternary mammals, are few in Russia; theyhave been discovered only in Poland, Poltava and Voronezh,and perhaps also on the Oka. Those of the later Lacustrineperiod, on the contrary, are so numerous that there is scarcelyone lacustrine basin in the regions of the Oka, the Kama, theDnieper, not to speak of the lake-region itself, and even theWhite Sea coasts, where remains of, Neolithic man have not beendiscovered. The Russian plains have been, however, the sceneof so many migrations of successive races, that at many placesa series of deposits belonging to widely distant epochs are foundone upon another. Settlements belonging to the Stone age,and manufactories of stone implements, burial-grounds of theBronze epoch, earthen forts and burial-mounds (kurgans)—ofthis last four different types are known, the earliest belongingto the Bronze period—are superposed, rendering the task ofunravelling their several relations one of great difficulty.

Two different races—a brachycephalic and a dolichocephalic—canbe distinguished among the remains of the earlier Stoneperiod (Lacustrine period) as having inhabited the plains ofE. Europe. But they are separated by so many generations fromthe earliest historic times that sure conclusions regarding themare impossible; at all events, as yet Russian archaeologists arenot agreed as to whether the ancestors of the Slavs were Sarmatiansonly or Scythians also, whose skulls have nothing incommon with those of the Mongol race. The earliest datawhich may be regarded as established belong to the 1st century,when the Finns migrated from the N. Dvina region towardsthe W., and the Sarmatians were compelled to abandon theregion of the Don, and cross the Russian steppes from E. to W.,under the pressure of the Aorzes (the Mordvinian Erzya) andSiraks, who in their turn were soon followed by the Huns andUigur-Turkish Avars.

In the 7th century S. Russia was the seat of the empire of theKhazars, who drove the Bulgarians, descendants of the Huns,from the Don, one section of them migrating up the Volga tofound there the Bulgarian empire, and the remainder travellingtowards the Danube. This migration compelled the N. Finns toadvance farther W., and a body of intermingled Tavasts andKarelians penetrated to the S. of the Gulf of Finland.

​As early as the 8th century, and probably still earlier, a streamof Slav colonization, advancing E. from the Danube, pouredover the plains of S.W. Russia. It is also most probable thatanother similar stream—the N., coming from the Elbe, throughthe basin of the Vistula—ought to be distinguished. In the9th century the Slavs occupied the upper Vistula, the S. of theRussian lacustrine region, and the W. of the central plateau.They had Lithuanians to the W.; various Finnish tribes, intermingledtowards the S.E. with Turkish (the present Bashkirs);the Bulgars, whose origin still remains doubtful, on the middleVolga and Kama; and to the S.E. the Turkish-Mongol races ofthe Pechenegs, Polovtsi, Uzes, &c., while in the S., along theBlack Sea, was the empire of the Khazars, who had under theirrule several Slav tribes, and perhaps also some of Finnish origin.In the 9th century also the Ugrians are supposed to have lefttheir Ural abodes and to have traversed S.E. and S. Russiaon their way to the basin of the Danube. If the Slavs besubdivided into three branches—the W. (Poles, Czechs andWends), the S. (Servians, Bulgarians, Croatians, &c.), and theE. (Great, Little and White Russians), it will be seen that, withthe exception of some 3,000,000 Little Russians, now settledin East Galicia and in Poland, and of a few on the southern slopeof the Carpathians, the whole of the E. Slavs occupy, as a compactbody, W., central and S. Russia.

Like other races of mankind, the Russian race is not pure.The Russians have absorbed and assimilated in the course oftheir history a variety of Finnish and Turko-Finnish elements.Still, craniological researches show that, notwithstanding thisfact, the Slav type has been maintained with remarkable persistency:Slav skulls ten and thirteen centuries old exhibitthe same anthropological features as those which characterizethe Slavs of our own day. This may be explained by a varietyof causes, of which the chief is the maintenance by the Slavsdown to a very late period of gentile or tribal organization andgentile marriages, a fact vouched for, not only in the pages ofthe Russian chronicler Nestor, but still more by visible socialevidences, the gens later developing into the village community,and the colonization being carried on by large co-ordinatedbodies of people. The Russians do not emigrate as isolatedindividuals; they migrate in whole villages. The overwhelmingnumerical superiority of the Slavs, and the very great differencesin ethnical type, belief and mythology between the Indo-Europeanand the Ural-Altaic races, may have contributed tothe same end. Moreover, while a Russian man, far away fromhome among Siberians, readily marries a native, the Russianwoman seldom does the like. All these causes, and especiallythe first-mentioned, have enabled the Slavs to maintain theirethnical purity in a relatively high degree, whereby they havebeen enabled to assimilate foreign elements and make themintensify or improve the ethnical type, without giving rise tohalf-breed races. The very same N. Russian type has thus beenmaintained from Novgorod to the Pacific, with but minordifferentiations on the outskirts—and this notwithstanding thegreat variety of races with which the Russians have come intocontact. But a closer observation of what is going on in therecently colonized confines of the empire—where whole villageslive without mixing with the natives, but slowly bringing themover to the Russian manner of life, and then slowly taking in afew female elements from them—gives the key to this feature ofRussian life.

Not so with the national customs. There are features—thewooden house, the oven, the bath—which the Russian neverabandons, even when swamped in an alien population. Butwhen settled among these the Russian—the N. Russian—readilyadapts himself to many other differences. He speaksFinnish with Finns, Mongolian with Buriats, Ostiak withOstiaks; he shows remarkable facility in adapting his agriculturalpractices to new conditions, without, however, abandoningthe village community; he becomes hunter, cattle-breederor fisherman, and carries on these occupations according tolocal usage; he modifies his dress and adapts his religiousbeliefs to the locality he inhabits. In consequence of all this,the Russian peasant (not, be it noted, the trader) proves himselfto be an excellent colonist.

The state religion is that of the Orthodox Greek Church(Orthodox Catholic or Orthodox Eastern Church). Its headis the tsar; but although he makes and annuls allappointments, he does not determine questions ofdogmatic theology. The principal ecclesiastical authorityis the Holy Synod, the head of which, the Procurator, is one ofReligion.the council of ministers and exercises very wide powers inecclesiastical matters. In theory all religions may be freelyprofessed, except that certain restrictions, such as domicile,^[39]are laid upon the Jews; but in actual fact the dissenting sectsare more or less severely treated. According to returnspublished in 1905 the adherents of the different religious communitiesin the whole of the Russian empire numbered approximatelyas follows, though the heading Orthodox Greekincludes a very great manyRaskolniki or Dissenters. Indeedit is estimated that there are more than 12,000,000 Dissentersin Great Russia alone.

In his relations with Moslems, Buddhists and even fetishiststhe, Russian peasant looks rather to conduct than to creed, thelatter being in his view simply a matter of nationality. Indeed,towards paganism, at least, he is perhaps even more thantolerant, preferring on the whole to keep on good terms withpagan divinities. The numerous outbreaks against the Jewsare directed, not against their creed, but against them as keenbusiness men and extortionate money-lenders. Any idea ofproselytism is quite foreign to the ordinary Russian mind,and the outbursts of proselytizing zeal occasionally manifestedby the clergy are really due to the desire for “Russification,”and traceable to the influence of the higher clergy and of thegovernment.

​It is this political rather than religious spirit which alsounderlies the repressive attitude of the government, and of theOrthodox Church as the organ of the government,towards the various dissident sects (Raskolniki, fromraskol, schism), which for more than two centuries pasthave played an important part in the popular life of Russia,The Raskolniki.and, since the political developments of the end of the 19thand early years of the 20th century, have tended to do so moreand more. To understand the problem of theRaskolniki it isnecessary to bear two things in mind: the fundamental principleof Eastern Orthodoxy as distinct from Western Catholicism,and the practical identification in Russia of the National Churchwith the National State. The very basis of Orthodoxy is thatthe Church is by Christ’s ordinance unalterable, that its traditionalforms, every one of which is a vehicle of saving grace,were established in the beginning by Christ and his apostles,and that consequently nothing may be added or altered. Thetrouble began early in the 17th century with the attempt, madein connexion with the printing of the liturgical books, to emendcertain ritual details in which there was proved to have beena departure from primitive usage;^[40] it came to a head underthe patriarchNikon (q.v.). Under his influence a synodendorsed the changes in 1654; one bishop alone, Paul, ofColomna, dissented, and he was deposed, knouted and keptin prison till he died mad. In 1656 the synod anathematizedthe adherents of the old forms, and the anathema was confirmedby those of 1666 and 1667. To the conservatives, knownsubsequently as Old Ritualists or Old Believers, this markedthe beginning of the reign of Antichrist (was not 666 the numberof the Beast?); but they continued the struggle, conservativeopposition to the Westernizing policy of the tsars, which washeld responsible for the introduction of Polish luxury and Latinheresy, giving it a political as well as a religious character.The rising of the Strelitsi in 1682 all but gave them the victory;the crushing of the rising relegated them definitely to the statusof schismatics. They were placed in still completer antagonismto the established Orthodox Church by the innovations ofPeter the Great. The Muscovite tsars had pursued them withfire and sword. The Russian emperors, having established themselvesas heads of the Church and the Holy Synod as a statedepartment, were not likely willingly to tolerate their existence.

TheRaskol was threatened with extinction by the gradualdying out of its priests, which led to a further schism, withinitself, into thePopovshchina (with priests) and theBezpopovshchina(without priests). ThePopovsti, who were served bypriests converted from the Orthodox Church, made their headquartersin the island of Werka, in a tributary of the Dnieper,in Poland (1695), and after its destruction by the governmentin 1735 and again in 1764, at Starodubye in the government ofChernigov, whence their doctrine spread in the country of theDon. In 1771 their headquarters were fixed at Moscow, in theRogoshkiy cemetery assigned to them during the plague;here they had a monastery, seminary and consistory, until theywere ejected by the emperor Nicholas I. In 1832 priests wereforbidden to join them, and they had to apply to a deposedBosnian metropolitan, who became their chief bishop, establishinghis see in the monastery of Belokrinitsa in Bukovina.In 1862 the synod of thePopovshchina passed a circular lettermaking advances to the government with a view to a compromise,which was arranged on the basis of the Old Believersconsenting to accept the ministrations of Orthodox priests oncondition that they should use the unrevised books. This ledto a further schism into three sections: those who recognizethe metropolitan and the compromise (Edinovyertsi), thosewho recognize the metropolitan but repudiate the compromise,those who repudiate both (Bieglopopovtsi). There had alreadybeen other schisms on such questions as the right way to swinga censer and the legality of self-immolation for the Lord’s sake.

TheBezpopovtsi, known also asPomoranye, because they aremainly found in the sparsely populated country near the WhiteSea, are in some ways more remarkable. They reject theministration of priests altogether, since in the time of Antichrist(i.e. the heretic tsar) the only sacrament that remains is baptism.They therefore elect elders, who expound the Scriptures, baptizeand hear confessions. They are, however, in no sense evangelicalsin the Western sense; for they observe rigorous fasts,reverence icons, and believe implicitly in the efficacy of themultiplication of crossings, bowings and prostrations. Theyhave, moreover, thrown off from time to time a number ofextravagant offshoots. Such are thePhilippovsti, foundedby one Philip (who burned himself alive for Christ’s sake in1743), who have exalted self-immolation into a principle; theStranniki (pilgrims) andByeguni (runners), who interpretMatt. x. 37 ff. literally, and reject legal marriage; theNyetovsti(denyers), who deny the necessity for common worship, sincethere are no priests; theMolchalyniki (mutes), whom notorture can persuade to utter a word.

Closely akin to these, though not derived from the OldBelievers, are certain mystic sects which deny the efficacyof the sacraments altogether. Of these the most remarkableare the so-calledKhlysti (“flagellants,” fromklyesat, “to strike,lash,” but possibly a corruption of Khristi, “Christs”). Theyoriginated in 1645, when, according to their belief, God theFather descended in a chariot of fire on Mount Gorodim, in theprovince of Vladimir, and took up his abode in a peasant namedDaniel Philippov, who chose another peasant, named IvanSuslov, for his son, the Christ. Suslov selected a “mother ofGod” and twelve apostles. Though twice crucified and onceflayed by order of the tsar, he always rose again, and did not dietill 1716. Suslov chose a successor in one Prokopiy Lupkin,and since then—in the belief of the sect—every generation,even every community, has had its Christ and its “mother ofGod,” who are worshipped by reason of the Divine Spirit dwellingin them. It is the duty of all believers to strive to becomeone or other of these by subduing the flesh, which is the productof Evil, and all motions of the will. Each community is presidedover by an “angel,” or prophet, and a prophetess, whoseword is law. All alike are subject to the twelve commandmentsissued by the “Sabaoth,” that is to say Daniel Philippov.These include the prohibition of alcoholic drink, of fleshlysins and of marriage, and the inculcation of faith in the HolyGhost and complete surrender to his influence. At their prayer-meetingsthe Khlysti dance to the accompaniment of hymns,the dance gradually developing into a wild dervish-like spinningwhich is kept up till they drop, foaming at the mouth and prophesying.Perhaps the most remarkable fact about this sect isthat it is secret, and that its members ostensibly belong to theOrthodox Church.

An offshoot of the Khlysti is the more celebrated secret sectof theSkoptsi (skopets, a eunuch), which represents an extremeascetic reaction from the promiscuous immorality of some(by no means all) of the Khlysti. Their idea of attaining salvationis self-mutilation according to the counsel of perfectionimplied in Matt. xix. 12 and xviii. 8, 9. The “royal seal” iscomplete self-castration; partial mutilation is known as the“second purity.” In the case of women the mutilation usuallytakes the form of amputation of the breasts. This horriblesect, which was founded by one Selivanov in the last quarter ofthe 18th century, seems to have a morbid attraction for peopleof all classes in Russia, and all the efforts of the governmenthave not succeeded in stamping it out (seeSkoptsi).

Closer akin to certain Western forms of dissidence fromtraditional Catholicism, though of native growth, are theMolokani,so called popularly because they continue to drink milk(moloko) during fasts. Their origin is unknown, but they areofficially mentioned as early as 1765. They style themselves“truly spiritual Christians,” and in their rejection of the sacraments,their indifference to outward forms, and their insistenceon the spiritual interpretation of the Bible (“the letter killeth”),they are closely akin to the Quakers, whom they resemble alsoin their inoffensive mode of life and the practice of mutual help. ​From the Molokani theDukhobortsi, in England better knownasDoukhobors (q.v.), are distinguished by their subordinationof the Scriptures to the authority of the “inner light.” Theyare dualists, like theBogomils (q.v.), ascribing the body to a fallfrom a state when the soul was on the same plane as God.The Incarnation was no isolated historical occurrence, but itis repeated over and over again in the faithful, each one ofwhom is in a certain sense God, by virtue of the indwellingSpirit. Both the Molokani and the Dukhobortsi deny theauthority of the civil government as such, and object onprinciple to military service. The former, however, give littletrouble; on the other hand, the government has from time totime proceeded with extreme severity against the Dukhobortsi,whose refusal to serve in the army, if allowed to go unpunished,would have set a contagious example.

Social Conditions.—The old subdivisions of the populationinto orders possessed of unequal rights is still maintained. Thegreat mass of the people, 81·6%, belong to the peasantorder, the others being: nobility, 1·3%; clergy, 0·9;the burghers and merchants, 9·3; and military, 6·1. Thusmore than 88 millions of the Russians are peasants. Half ofthem were formerly serfs (10,447,149 males in 1858)—theremainder being “state peasants” (9,194,891 males in 1858,exclusive of the Archangel government) and “domain peasants”(842,740 males the same year).

The serfdom which had sprung up in Russia in the 16thcentury, and became consecrated by law in 1609, taking, however,nearly one hundred and fifty years to attain its full growth,was abolished in 1861. This act liberated the serfs from a yokewhich was really terrible, even under the best landlords, andfrom this point of view it was obviously an immense benefit.^[42]But it was far from securing corresponding economic results.

The household servants or dependents attached to thepersonal service of their masters were merely set free; andthey entirely went to reinforce the town proletariat. Thepeasants proper received their houses and orchards, and allotmentsof arable land. These allotments were given over to therural commune (mir), which was made responsible, as a whole,for the payment of taxes for the allotments. For these allotmentsthe peasants had to pay, as before, either by personallabour or by a fixed rent. The allotments could be redeemedby them with the help of the crown, and then they were freedfrom all obligations to the landlord. The crown paid the landlordin obligations representing the capitalized rent, and thepeasants had to pay the crown, for forty-nine years, 6%interest on this capital. The redemption was not calculatedon the value of the allotments of land, but was considered as acompensation for the loss of the compulsory labour of theserfs; so that throughout Russia, with the exception of a fewprovinces in the S.E., it was—and still remains, notwithstandinga very great increase in the value of land—much higher thanthe market value of the allotment. Moreover, many proprietorscontrived to curtail seriously the allotments which the peasantshad possessed under serfdom, and frequently they deprivedthem of precisely the parts which they were most in need of,namely, pasture lands around their houses, and forests. Theeffect of this, craftily calculated beforehand, was to compel thepeasants to rent pasture lands from the landlord at any price.

The history of Russia may be conveniently divided intofour consecutive periods: (1) the period of IndependentPrincipalities; (2) the Mongol Domination; (3) the Tsardomof Muscovy; and (4) the Modern Empire.

1.A Conglomeration of Independent Principalities.—The firstperiod, like the early history of many other countries, beginswith a legend. Nestor, an old monkish chroniclerof Kiev, relates that in the middle of the 9th centurythe Slav and Finnish tribes inhabiting the forestregion around Lake Ilmen, between Lake Ladoga and the upperOrigin of the Russians.waters of the Dnieper, paid tribute to military adventurersfrom the land of Rūs, which is commonly supposed to havebeen a part of Sweden. In the year 859 these tribes expelledthe Northmen, but finding that they quarrelled amongthemselves, they invited them, three years later, to return.Our land, said the deputation sent to Rūs for this purpose, isgreat and fertile, but there is no order in it; come and reignand rule over us. Three brothers, princes of Rūs, called respectivelyRurik, Sineus and Truvor, accepted the invitationand founded a dynasty, from which many of the Russianprinces of the present day claim descent.

Who were those warlike men of Rūs who are universallyrecognized as the founders of the Russian Empire? Thisquestion has given rise to an enormous amount of discussionamong learned men, and some of the disputants have not yetlaid down their arms; but for impartial outsiders who havecarefully studied the evidence there can be little doubt that ​the men of Rūs, or Variags, as they were sometimes called,were simply the hardy Norsemen or Normans who at thattime, in various countries of Europe, appeared first as armedmarauders and then lived in the invaded territory as a dominantmilitary caste until they were gradually absorbed by the nativepopulation. Lake Ilmen and the river Volkhov, on whichstands Novgorod, Rurik’s capital, formed part of the greatwaterway from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and we knowthat by this route travelled from Scandinavia to Constantinoplethe tall fair-haired Northmen who composed the famousVarangian bodyguard of the Byzantine emperors.

The new rulers did not long confine their attention to thetribes who had invited them. They at once began to conquerthe surrounding country in all directions, and beforetwo centuries had passed they had establishedthemselves firmly at Kiev on the Dnieper, invadedByzantine territory, threatened Constantinople withEarly conditions. The grand-princes.a fleet of small craft, obtained as consort for oneof their princes,Vladimir I., (q.v.), a sister of theByzantine emperor on condition of the prince becominga Christian, adopted Christianity for themselves and theirsubjects, learned to hold in check the nomadic hordes of thesteppe, and formed matrimonial alliances with the reigningfamilies of Poland, Hungary, Norway and France. In short,they became a considerable power in eastern Europe, andmight be regarded as one of the claimants for the inheritanceof the decrepit East Roman Empire. Unfortunately for thepolitical future of this new state, its internal consolidation didnot keep pace with its territorial expansion. In theory thewhole Russian land was a gigantic family estate belonging tothe Rurik dynasty, and each member of that great familyconsidered himself entitled to a share of it. It had to bedivided, therefore, into a number of independent principalities,but it continued to be loosely held together by the dynasticsentiment of the descendants of Rurik and by the patriarchalauthority—a sort ofpatria potestas—of the senior member ofthe family, called the grand-prince, who-ruled in Kiev, “themother of Russian cities.” His administrative authority wasconfined to his own principality, but when territorial disputesarose between two or more of his relations, his paternal influencewas exercised in the interests of peace and justice. Whatadded to the practical difficulties of this arrangement was thatthe post of grand-prince was not an hereditary dignity in thesense of descending from father to son, but was always to beheld by the senior member of the dynasty; and in the subordinateprincipalities the same principle of succession wasapplied, so that reigning princes had to be frequently shiftedabout from one district to another, according as they couldestablish the strongest claim to vacant principalities. Whatconstituted in this primitive system of inheritance the strengthof a claim was often not easily determined, and even whenthe legal question was clear enough the law was not alwaysrespected by the contending parties. Hence family quarrelsbecame very frequent. These princes were, in fact, men oflike passions with ourselves, and acted as powerful men generallydo in a rude state of society. Instead of conforming to abstractprinciples of public law and hereditary succession, they stroveto enlarge their territories at the expense of their rivals, andto leave them at their death to their sons rather than to theirbrothers, nephews and more distant relations. In thesecircumstances, the traditional authority of the grand-prince,never very great, rapidly declined, and the complicated lawof succession, never scrupulously respected, was graduallyreplaced by “the good old rule, the simple plan, that heshould take who has the power, and he should keep who can.”Yaroslav, surnamed the Great, a man of commanding personality,was the last grand-prince who upheld vigorously the oldsystem. After his death in 1054 the process of disintegration wenton apace and the family feuds multiplied at an alarming rate.During the next 170 years (1054–1224) no less than 64 principalitieshad a more or less ephemeral existence, 293 princes putforward succession-claims, and their disputes led to 83 civil wars.

During these interminable struggles of rival princes, Kiev,which had been so long the residence of the grand-prince andof the metropolitan, was repeatedly taken by storm andruthlessly pillaged, and finally the whole valley of the Dnieperfell a prey to the marauding tribes of the steppe. ThereuponRussian colonization and political influence retreatednorthwards, and from that time the continuous stream of Russianhistory is to be sought in the land where the Vikings firstsettled and in the adjoining basin of the upper Volga. Herenew principalities were founded and new agglomerations of principalitiescame into existence, some of them having a grand princewho no longer professed allegiance to Kiev. Thusappeared the grand-prince of Suzdal or Vladimir, of Tver,of Ryazan and of Moscow—all irreconcilable rivals with littleor no feeling of blood-relationship. The more ambitious andpowerful among them aspired not to succeed but to subdue theothers and to take possession of their territory, and the armedretainers, who were wont formerly to wander about as freelances, gave up their roving mode of life, settled down permanentlyin one principality, became landed proprietors, andsought to share as boyars the princes’ authority.

Among the principalities of that northern region the firstplace was long held by Novgorod. Since the days when Rurikhad first chosen it as his headquarters, the little townon the Volkhov had grown into a great commercialcity and a member of the Hanseatic league, and it hadbrought under subjection a vast expanse of territory, stretchingRepublic of Novgorod.from the shores of the Baltic to the Ural Mountains, andcontaining several subordinate towns, of which the principalwere Pskov, Nizhniy-Novgorod and Vyatka. Unlike theordinary Russian principalities, it had a republican rather thana monarchical form of government. Indeed, it was not so mucha principality as a municipal republic of the Venetian type. Italways had a prince, no doubt, but he was engaged by formalcontract without much attention being paid to hereditaryrights, and he was merely leader of the troops, while all thepolitical power remained in the hands of the civil officials andtheVetche, a popular assembly which was called together in themarket-place, as occasion required, by the tolling of the greatbell. Descendants of Rurik, impregnated with the pride ofa dominant military caste, did not much like serving thosetruculent, wilful burghers, and some of them, after a time,voluntarily laid down their office and retired to more congenialsurroundings. Those of them who tried to have their own wayand came into conflict with the authorities had always to yieldin the long run, and they were liable to be treated very unceremoniously,so that the vulgar adage, “If the prince is bad, intothe mud with him!” became a maxim of state policy.

There was here in the Russian land the germ of republicanismor constitutional monarchy, but it was not destined to bedeveloped. The principality which was to become the nucleusof the future Russian empire was not Novgorod with its democraticinstitutions, but its eastern neighbour Moscow, in whichthe popular assembly played a very insignificant part, and thesupreme law was the will of the prince. The opposition whichhe encountered came not from the burghers but from the boyarsand the nobles.

II.The Mongol or Tatar Domination,1238–1462.—BetweenMoscow and Novgorod there was a long and bitter rivalry,breaking out occasionally into armed conflicts, andamong the princes of the other principalities the oldstruggle for precedence and territory went onunceasingly until it was suddenly interrupted, in theMongol
and Tatar invasions.first half of the thirteenth century, by the unexpected irruptionof an irresistible foreign foe coming from the mysteriousregions of the Far East. “For our sins,” says the Russianchronicler of the time, “unknown nations arrived. No oneknew their origin or whence they came, or what religion theypractised. That is known only to God, and perhaps to wisemen learned in books.” The Russian princes first heard ofthem from the wild nomadic Polovtsi, who usually pillagedthe Russian settlers on the frontier but who now preferred ​friendship and said: “These terrible strangers have taken ourcountry, and to-morrow they will take yours if you do not comeand help us.” In response to this call some Russian princesformed a league and went out eastward to meet the foe, but theywere utterly defeated in a great battle on the banks of theKalka (1224), which has remained to this day in the memoryof the Russian common people. Now the country was at themercy of the invaders, but, instead of advancing, they suddenlyretreated and did not reappear for thirteen years, during whichthe princes went on quarrelling and fighting as before, till theywere startled by a new invasion much more formidable thanits predecessor. This time the invaders came to stay, and theybuilt for themselves a capital, called Sarai, on the lower Volga.Here the commander of “the Golden Horde,” as the westernThe Golden Horde.section of the Mongol empire was called, fixed hisheadquarters and represented the majesty of hissovereign the grand khan who lived with the GreatHorde in the valley of the Amur. About the origin andcharacter of these terrible invaders we are much better informedthan the early Russian chroniclers. The nucleus ofthe invading horde was a small pastoral tribe in Mongolia, thechief of which, known subsequently to Europe asJenghiz Khan(q.v.), became a mighty conqueror and created a vastempire stretching from China, across northern and centralAsia, to the shores of the Baltic and the valley of the Danube—aheterogeneous state containing many nationalities heldtogether by purely administrative ties and by an enormousmilitary force. For forty years after the death of its founderit remained united under the authority of a series of grand khanschosen from among his descendants, and then it began to fall topieces till the various fractions of it became independent khanates.

The khanate closely connected with the history of Russiawas that of Kipchak or the Golden Horde, the khans of whichsettled, as we have seen, on the lower Volga and built for themselvesa capital called Sarai. Here they had their headquartersand held Russia in subjection for nearly three centuries.

The term by which this subjection is commonly designated,the Mongol or Tatar yoke, suggests ideas of terrible oppression,but in reality these barbarous invaders from the FarEast were not such cruel, oppressive taskmasters asis generally supposed. In the first place, they neversettled in the country, and they had not much direct dealingsCharacter of Tatar rule.with the inhabitants. In accordance with the admonitionsof Jenghiz to his children and grandchildren, theyretained their pastoral mode of life, so that the subject races,agriculturists and dwellers in towns, were not disturbed in theirordinary avocations. In religious matters they were extremelytolerant. When they first appeared in Europe they wereidolaters or Shamanists, and as such they had naturally noreligious fanaticism; but even when they adopted Islam theyremained as tolerant as before, and the khan of the GoldenHorde (Berkai) who first became a Mussulman allowed theRussians to found a Christian bishopric in his capital. One ofhis successors, half a century later, married a daughter of theByzantine emperor, and gave his own daughter in marriage to aRussian prince, These represent the bright side of Tatar rule. Ithad its dark side also. So long as a great horde of nomads wasencamped on the frontier the country was liable to be invadedby an overwhelming force of ruthless marauders. These invasionswere fortunately not frequent, but when they occurredthey caused an incalculable amount of devastation and suffering,In the intervals the people had to pay a fixed tribute. At firstit was collected in a rough-and-ready fashion by a swarm ofTatar tax-gatherers, but about 1259 it was regulated by a censusof the population, and, finally, the collection of it was entrustedto the native princes, so that the people were no longer broughtinto direct contact with the Tatar officials.

By the princes the “yoke” was felt more keenly, and itwas very galling. In order to reply to accusations broughtagainst them, or in order to be confirmed, in their functions,they had to travel to the Golden Horde on the Volga or evento the camp of the grand khan in some distant part of Siberia,and the journey was considered so perilous that many of them,before setting out, made their last will and testament and wrotea parental admonition for the guidance of their children. Norwere these precautions by any means superfluous, for not a fewprinces died on the journey or were condemned to death andexecuted for real or imaginary offences. Even when the visitto the Horde did not end so tragically, it involved a great deal ofanxiety and expense, for the Mongol dignitaries had to be conciliatedvery liberally, and it was commonly believed that thejudges were more influenced by the amount of the bribes thanby the force of the arguments. The grand khan was the lordparamount or suzerain of the Russian princes, and he had theforce required for making his authority respected. Ambitiousmembers of the Rurik dynasty, instead of seeking to acquireterritory by conquest in the field, now sought to attain theirends by intrigue and bribery at the Mongol court.

Of all the princes who sought to advance their fortunes in thisway the most dexterous and successful were those of Moscow.They made themselves responsible for the tribute of Theother principalities as well as of their own, and graduallythey became lieutenants-general of their Mongolsuzerain. So long as the Mongol empire remainedThe princes of Moscow. Dimitri Donskoi, 1362–1389.united and strong, they were most submissive and obsequious, but as soon as it was weakened by internaldissensions and began to fall to pieces, they assumed airsof independence, intrigued with the insubordinate Tatargenerals, retained for their own use the tribute collected forthe grand khan, and finally put themselves at the head of thepatriotic movement which aimed at throwing off completely thehated Mongol yoke. For this purpose Dimitri Donskoi formedin 1380 a coalition of Russian princes, and gained a great victoryover Khan Mamai of the Golden Horde on the famous battlefieldof Kulikovo, the memory of which still lives in the popularlegends. For some time longer the Tatars remained troublesomeneighbours, capable of invading and devastating large tracts ofRussian territory and of threatening even the city of Moscow,but the Horde was now broken up into independent andmutually hostile khanates, and the Moscow diplomatists couldgenerally play off one khanate against the other, so that therewas no danger of the old political domination being re-established.

Having thus freed themselves from Tatar control, the Moscowprinces continued to carry out energetically their traditionalpolicy of extending and consolidating their dominions at theexpense of their less powerful relations. Already Dimitri of theDon was called the grand-prince of all Russia, but the assumptionof such an ambitious title was hardly justified by facts,because there were still in his time principalities with grand princeswho claimed to be independent. The complete suppressionof these small moribund states and the creation of theautocratic tsardom of Muscovy were the work of Ivan III.,surnamed the Great, his son Basil and his grandson Ivan IV.,commonly known as Ivan the Terrible, whose united reignscover a period of 122 years (1462–1584).

III.The Tsardom of Muscovy.—What may be called the homepolicy of these three remarkable rulers consisted in absorbingthe few principalities which still remained independent,and in creating for themselves an uncontrolledmonarchical authority. In the pursuit of both of theseobjects they were completely successful. When Ivan III.Ivan III. 1462–1505.came to the throne the remaining independent principalitieswere Great Novgorod, Pskov, Tver, Ryazan and Novgorod-Seversk.He first directed his attention to Novgorod, and bygradually undermining and then destroying the ancient republicanliberties he reduced the haughty city, which had longstyled itself Lord Novgorod the Great, to the rank of a provincialtown. Then he annexed its colonies and thereby extended hisdominions to the Polar Ocean and the Ural Mountains. At thesame time he took possession of Tver, on the ground that theBasil III. 1505–1533.prince had allied himself with Lithuania. Hissuccessor Basil followed in his footsteps, and dealt with the municipal republic of Pskovwas Ivan had dealtwith Novgorod. Finding the inhabitants too much attached to ​their ancient liberties, he abolished the popular assembly,removed the great bell to Novgorod, installed his own boyars inthe administration, transported 300 of the leading families toother localities, replaced them by 300 families from Moscow, andleft in the town a strong garrison of his own troops. Ryazanshared the same fate. In 1521 the prince, being suspected offorming an alliance with the Crimean Tatars, was summoned toMoscow and arrested. Two years later the prince of Novgorod-Severskwas accused of intriguing with the Poles and imprisonedfor the rest of his life. Thus all the principalities were broughtunder the power of Moscow, and in that respect there remainednothing for Ivan the Terrible to do. He took precautions,however, against any of the dead or moribund principalitiesbeing resuscitated, and punished with merciless severity anyattempt to resist or undermine his authority.

With the suppression and absorption of the independentprincipalities the problem was only half solved. The tsars ofMuscovy meant to be autocratic rulers alike in theirold and in their new territories. Their forefathershad been trained in the Tatar school of politics andadministration, and in their ideas of government they had comeCharacter of the tsardom.to resemble Tatar khans much more than grand-princes of theold patriarchal type. Their autocratic tendencies were fosteredalso by the Church. As Christianity was brought into Russiafrom Constantinople it was only natural that the ecclesiastics,many of whom were Greeks, should admire Byzantine ideals andrecommend them as models to be imitated. For the ambitiousMoscow princes many of the Byzantine ideas were very acceptable.They liked to consider themselves as the Lord’s anointed,placed high above all ordinary mortals even of the most exaltedrank; and when Constantinople fell into the hands of the infidelthey began to imagine that, as the most powerful potentates ofthe Eastern Orthodox world they were the protectors of the Orthodoxfaith and the political heirs of the East Roman emperors.With a view to strengthen this claim Ivan III. married a nieceof the emperor Constantine Palaeologus, who had fallen fightingwhen his capital was taken by the Turks (1453). Fromthat moment Ivan’s subjects noticed a change in his attitudetowards them, and attributed it to the evil influence of the Greekprincess. In the old times the grand-prince was simplyprimusinter pares among the minor princes, and these lived with theirboyars almost on a footing of equality. Now the tsar of Muscovyand of all Russia adopted the airs and methods of a Tatar khanand surrounded himself with the pomp and splendours of aByzantine emperor. Ivan III., notwithstanding the influence ofhis Greek consort, showed some respect for the ancient traditionsand the susceptibilities of those around him, but his successor Basildid not follow his father’s example. All through his reign hepreferred to employ as officials men of humble origin, and habituallytreated the boyars and great nobles very unceremoniously.For disobedience to his orders he imprisoned a boyar who was hisown brother-in-law, and he caused another to be beheaded forcomplaining that the boyar-council was not consulted in importantaffairs of state. A boyar of Nizhniy-Novgorod who allowedhimself to criticize the new order of things, and attributed thechange to the influence of the Greek princess, had his tonguecut out. From the ecclesiastics Basil likewise insisted onunquestioning obedience, and he did not hesitate to depose byhis own authority a metropolitan who was at that time thehighest dignitary of the Russian Church. According to Siegmundvon Herberstein (1486–1566), an Austrian envoy who visitedMoscow at that period, no sovereign in Europe was obeyed likethe grand-prince of Muscovy, and his court was remarkablefor barbaric luxury. In his palace were numerous equerries,chamberlains and other court dignitaries, and when he went outhe was attended by a guard of young nobles dressed in gaudycostumes and armed with silver halberds.^[46]

Such radical changes naturally produced a great deal ofdissatisfaction among men of Slavonic temperament, whosegrandfathers had been independent princes, boyars or freelances, and the malcontents could not adopt the old practiceof emigrating to some other principality. There was no longerwithin the Russian land any independent principality in whichan asylum could be found, and emigration to a principalitybeyond the frontier, such as Lithuania, was regarded as treason,for which the property of the fugitive would be confiscated andhis family might be punished. In these circumstances theonly outlet for discontent was sedition, and the malcontentsawaited impatiently a favourable opportunity for an attemptto curb or overthrow the autocratic power. That opportunitycame when Basil died in 1533, leaving as successor a child onlythree years old, and the chances seemed all on the side of thenobles; but the result belied the current expectations, for thechild came to be known in history as Ivan the Terrible, and diedhalf a century later in the full enjoyment of unlimited autocraticpower. The fierce struggle between autocratic tyrannyand oligarchic disorder, which went on in intermittent fashionduring the whole of his reign, cannot be here described in detail,but the chief incidents may be mentioned.

During Ivan’s minority the country was governed, or rathermisgoverned, first by his mother, and then by rival factionsled by great nobles such as the princes Shuiski andBêlski. Only once during this period did the young tsar come forward and assert his authority. Havingconvoked his boyars he reproached them collectively withIvan the Terrible, 1533–84.robbing the treasury and committing acts of injustice,and he caused one of them, a Prince Shuiski who happenedto be in power at the moment, to be seized by his huntsmenand torn in pieces by a pack of hounds, as a warningto others. Thus apparently he asserted his authority, butin reality, being only thirteen years old, he was a merepuppet in the hands of one of the opposition factions, whowished to oust their rivals, and for the next four years themisgovernment of the nobles went on as before. It was not tillhe was about seventeen that he took an active part in the administration,and one of his first acts foreshadowed his futurepolicy: he insisted on the metropolitan crowning him, not asgrand-prince of Muscovy, but as tsar of all Russia (1547). Fromthe earliest times the term tsar—a contraction of the wordCaesar—had been applied to the kings in Biblical history andthe Byzantine emperors, and Ivan III. had already been describedin the Church service as “the ruler and autocrat of allRussia, the new Tsar Constantine in the new city of ConstantineMoscow,” but on no previous occasion had a grand-prince beencrowned under that title. A few months later occurred inMoscow a great fire, which destroyed nearly the whole of thecity, and a serious popular tumult, in which the tsar’s uncle wasmurdered by the populace. Ivan regarded these events as apunishment from Heaven for the neglect of his duties, and hebegan to attend to public affairs under the influence of an enlightenedpriest called Sylvester and an official of humble origincalled Adashev. With the assistance of these two counsellorshe held in check the lawless, turbulent nobles, and ruled justly,to the satisfaction of the people, for fourteen years. Thensuddenly, for reasons which cannot easily be explained, heinaugurated a reign of terror which lasted for twenty-four yearsand earned for him the epithet of “the Terrible.” Though there hadbeen no open insurrection, he caused many boyars and humblerpersons to be executed, and when some of the great nobles,fearing a similar fate, fled across the frontier and tendered theirallegiance to the prince of Lithuania, his suspicion and indignationincreased and he determined to adopt still more drasticmeasures. For this purpose he organized, outside the regularadministration, a large corps of civil officials and armed retainers,whose duty it was to obey him implicitly in all things;and with this force, which rose rapidly from 1000 to 6000 men,he acted like a savage invader in a conquered country. Accompaniedby these so-calledOprichniki, who have beencompared to the Turkish Janissaries of the worst period, heruthlessly devastated large districts—with no other object ​apparently than that of terrorizing the population and rewardinghis myrmidons—and during a residence of six weeks inNovgorod, lest the old turbulent spirit of the municipal republicshould revive, he massacred, it is said, no less than 60,000 of theinhabitants, including many women and children. It is quitepossible, as some apologists suggest, that the number of hisvictims may have been exaggerated, but that they are to becounted by thousands there can be no doubt. In the monasteryof St Cyril has been preserved a list of those for whom he requestedthe prayers of the Church, the total being 3470. The only referenceto Novgorod in this curious document is: “Remember, OLord, the souls of thy Novgorodian servants to the number of 1505persons.” According to the Novgorodian annalists as many as1500 persons were sometimes put to death in a single day.Perhaps the discrepancy is to be explained by supposing thatthe pious tsar did not consider all his victims as servants of theLord, whose souls deserved the prayers of the faithful.

While thus uniting under their vigorous autocratic rule thesmall rival principalities, the Moscow princes had to keep awatchful eye on their eastern neighbours. The GoldenHorde, long weakened by internal dissensions, had nowfallen into several khanates, the chief of which were Kazan,Astrakhan and the Crimea. As these independent Tatar stateswere always jealous of each other, and their jealousy oftenbroke out in open hostility, it was easy to prevent any combinedaction on their part; and as in each khanate there werealways several pretenders and contending factions, Muscovitediplomacy had little difficulty in weakening them individuallyand preparing for their annexation. In the case of Kazan andAstrakhan the annexation was effected without any great effortin 1552–54, and two years later the Bashkirs, who had likewiseformed part of the great Mongol empire, consented to pay tribute.On the other hand, the khans of the Crimea were able, partlyfrom their geographical position and partly from having placedthemselves under the protection of the sultans of Turkey, toresist annexation for more than two centuries and to give theMuscovites a great deal of trouble, not only by frequent raidsand occasional invasions, but also by allying themselves withthe Western enemies of the tsars. As late as 1571 Moscowwas pillaged by a Tatar horde; but there was no longer anyquestion of permanent political subjection to the Asiatics,and the Russian frontier was being gradually pushed forwardat the expense of the nomads of the steppe by the constantadvance of the agricultural population in quest of virgin soil.These latter, like the colonists in the American Far West, hadto be constantly on the alert against the attacks of their troublesomeneighbours, and they accordingly organized themselves insemi-military fashion. Those of them who lived on the outskirtsof the pacified territory adopted a mode of life similarto that of their hereditary opponents, and constituted a peculiarThe Cossacks.class known as Cossacks, living more by flocks andherds and by marauding expeditions than by agriculture.In the basins of the southern rivers theyformed semi-independent military communities. Those of theVolga and the Don professed allegiance to the tsar of Muscovy,whilst those of the Dnieper recognized at first as their suzerainthe king of Poland. In neither case did the allegiance involvestrict obedience to orders from the superior, and their loyaltywas always in danger of being troubled by their love of independenceand equality and their desire for loot. More thanonce they raided and pillaged in wholesale fashion the territorythey were supposed to protect. On the whole, however, at thatperiod as in more recent times, they contributed largely to theprocess of territorial expansion. (See alsoPoland:History.)

Before the Eastern menace had been entirely removed the ambitiousMoscow princes had begun to look with enviouseyes beyond their western frontier. Here lay theprincipality of Lithuania and beyond it the kingdom ofand Poland, two loosely conglomerated states which hadbeen created by the Piast and Gedymin dynasties inRelations with
Poland and Lithuania.pretty much the same way as the tsardom of Muscovyhad been created by the descendants of Rurik. Whenthe two became united under one ruler towards the endof the 14th century they formed a broad strip of territorystretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea and separatingRussia from central Europe. For Russian ambition thebarrier was a formidable one, but it did not entirely precludepossibilities of expansion in a more or less remote future. Whenexamined closely it was found to contain many internal flaws.In no sense could it be considered a homogeneous political unit,for in Lithuania the majority of the population were Russian innationality, language and religion, whereas in Poland the greatmajority of the inhabitants were Polish and Roman Catholic.Gradually, it is true, the Lithuanian nobles, who possessed allthe land and held the peasantry in a state of serfage, adoptedPolish nationality and culture, but this change did not securehomogeneity, because the masses clung obstinately to their oldnationality and religion, and all the efforts of the Church ofRome to bring them under papal authority proved fruitless.A further source of weakness was the political organization.Nominally it was an hereditary monarchy, but the warlike,turbulent nobles systematically encroached on the sovereignpower till they reduced it to a mere shadow and made it elective,with the result that the kingdom of Poland, including the principalityof Lithuania, was at last, politically speaking, the mostanarchical country in Europe.

As the Muscovite and the Lithuano-Polish princes wereequally ambitious and equally anxious to widen their borders,they naturally came into conflict. At first the Muscovite wasdecidedly the aggressor. On the death of Casimir, king ofPoland and grand-prince of Lithuania, in 1492, the kingdomand the principality ceased to be united and Ivan III. consideredhe had a good opportunity for attacking the latter.After a short campaign a peace was concluded and Ivan’sdaughter was given in marriage to the Lithuanian grand-prince,but the matrimonial alliance did not improve therelations between the two countries. On the contrary itserved as a pretext for Ivan to interfere in Lithuanian affairs.He not only insisted that his daughter’s religion should be dulyrespected, but he constituted himself the protector of theOrthodox population and this led to a new war in 1499, whichwent on till 1503, when it was concluded by the cession toRussia of Chernigov, Starodub and 17 other towns. Hissuccessor, Basil, tried to get himself elected grand-prince ofLithuania when the throne became vacant by the death ofhis brother-in-law in 1506, but the choice fell on the late prince’sbrother Sigismund, who was likewise elected king of Poland.The two countries were thus once more united and better ableto resist aggression, but some of the great nobles were discontentedand Basil hoped with their assistance to attain his ends.He began war therefore in 1514 and at once captured Smolensk,but in the following year he was defeated, and the war draggedon during more than seven years, with varying successes andwithout any important result. In the negotiations for peacethe inordinate pretensions of the Muscovite prince were putforward boldly: he not only refused to restore Smolensk, butclaimed Kiev and a number of other towns on the ground thatin the old time of the independent principalities they hadbelonged to descendants of Rurik.

The policy of expansion westwards, inaugurated by Ivan III.,was modified and enlarged by Ivan the Terrible. The formerhad aimed simply at making annexations in Lithuania;the latter aspired to obtaining a firm footing on theBaltic coast and establishing direct relations, diplomaticand commercial, with the Western Powers.Ivan IV. and western Europe.In this respect he was a precursor of Peter the Great,but he greatly underestimated the difficulties of the task. Toreach the Baltic he had to overcome the resistance, not onlyof the Lithuanians and the Poles, but also of the Teutonic andLivonian military orders, the Swedes and the Danes, who all hadpossessions in the intervening territory and who all objectedto the barbarous Muscovites, already sufficiently formidable,strengthening themselves by direct foreign trade with westernEurope and especially by the importation of arms and cunning ​foreign artificers. Like the European settlers on the coast ofAfrica in more recent times, they wished the barbarians of theinterior to be restricted to the use of their primitive weapons.One of the Polish kings, for example, threatened with deaththe English sailors who should attempt to carry on the illicittrade in arms, on the ground that “the Muscovite, who is notonly our opponent of to-day but the eternal enemy of allfree nations, should not be allowed to supply himself withcannons, bullets and munitions or with artisans who manufacturearms hitherto unknown to those barbarians.” Thiswas precisely the reason why Ivan IV. was so anxious to forcehis way to the coast. His grandfather had obtained fromVenice an “artist” who undertook “to build churches andpalaces, to cast big bells and cannons, to fire off the said cannonsand to make every sort of castings very cunningly”; and withthe aid of that clever Venetian he had become the proud possessorof a “cannon-house,” subsequently dignified with the name of“arsenal” In imitation of the grandfather the grandsongave a commission to a Saxon, in whom he had confidence, tocollect artists and artisans in Germany and bring themto Moscow, but he was prevented from carrying out hisscheme by the Livonian Order (1547). A few years later (1553)he found unexpectedly a different route for communicationwith the West. A ship of an English squadron which was tryingFirst relations with England.to reach China by the North-East passage, entered thenorthern Dvina, and her captain, Richard Chancellor,journeyed to Moscow in quest of opportunities for trade.He met with such a favourable reception from the tsarthat on his return to England a special envoy was sentto Moscow by Queen Mary, and he succeeded in obtaining forhis countrymen the privilege of trading freely in Russian towns.In return the Russians were allowed to trade freely in England.This afforded great satisfaction to Ivan, but it did not entirelysatisfy his requirements, because the new route by the WhiteSea and North Cape was long and uncertain and for a greatpart of the year communications were stopped by the ice. Hecontinued, therefore, his efforts to reach the Baltic coast, andhe soon came into collision with the Swedes. After a dilatorywar of three years he concluded a peace on the ground of freecommercial relations, and then he attacked the Livonian Order,on the pretext that the Livonian town of Dorpat had not paidtribute according to ancient treaties. Finding himself unableto resist the Muscovites, the grand master of the Order puthimself under Polish protection, and this led to a seven yearswar (1563–70) with Poland, during which the Swedes andDanes intervened on their own account. Ivan did not displaymuch military talent, but he showed a remarkable amount oftenacity. No sooner had he made peace with the Poles andfailed to get himself elected as their king, than he began a warwith the Swedes which dragged on for more than a decade (1572–1583),and before it was ended he was again at war with Poland(1579–81). Though severely tried by disappointments anddefeats he never lost hope, and when he died in 1584 he waspreparing to renew the struggle and endeavouring to form forthat purpose an alliance with England; his great idea, however,was not to be realized till more than a century later, and meanwhilethe tsardom of Muscovy had to pass through a severeinternal crisis in which its existence was seriously endangered.

Ivan the Terrible had succeeded in stamping out ruthlesslyall open resistance to his will, and had created an autocraticgovernment of the Oriental type; but the elementsof disorder were still lying beneath the surface, andas soon as the cunning, energetic despot died theyreappeared. His son and successor, Theodore (Feodor), wasTheodore I., 1584–1598.a weak man of saintly character, very ill fitted to consolidatehis father’s work and maintain order among theambitious, turbulent nobles; but he had the good fortuneto have an energetic brother-in-law, with no pretensions tosanctity, called Boris Godunov, who was able, with the tsar’smoral support, to keep his fellow-boyars in order. This hedid during fourteen years, and his administration was signalizedby two important innovations—the attaching of the peasantsto the land (adscriptio glebae) and the creation of thepatriarchate—both of which deserve a passing notice.

Boris has often been called the creator of serfage in Russia,but in reality he merely accelerated a process which was thenatural result of economic conditions. In a primitive,thinly populated, agricultural country, in which thedemand for agricultural labour greatly exceeds thesupply, the value of land is in proportion to the numberBeginnings of serfdom.of permanent labourers settled on it, and the landed proprietorsnaturally try to attract to their estates as manypeasants as possible; and in this competition the largeproprietors have evidently an advantage over their humbler andweaker rivals. Such had been for a considerable time the conditionof Russia, and the small proprietors were now becomingso impoverished that they could no longer fulfil their dutiesto the state. The remedy they proposed was that the labourersshould be prohibited from migrating from one estate to another,and an order to that effect was issued, with the result that thepeasants, being no longer able to change their domicile andseek new employers, fell practically under the unlimited powerof the proprietors on whose land they resided. This changewas, of course, popular among the lower and middle ranks ofthe landlord class, but was very displeasing to the great nobles.

The second of the two innovations above mentioned waspopular among all classes. Hitherto the highest authority inthe Russian Church was the metropolitan, who wasnominally under the jurisdiction of the patriarch ofConstantinople, and as soon as Constantinople fellinto the hands of the infidel, and the tsars of Muscovy claimedThe patriarchate.to be the successors of the Byzantine emperors, it seemed rightand proper that the Russian Church should become autocephalousand be governed by an independent Russian patriarch. Thechange was very dexterously effected by Godunov, with theformal assent of the Eastern Orthodox Church as a whole, andone of his adherents was placed on the patriarchal throne.

Having thus gained the support of a large majority of thelanded proprietors and the ecclesiastics, Boris Godunov increasedhis influence to such an extent that on thedeath of Tsar Feodor without male issue in 1598 hewas elected his successor by a Great National Assembly.His short reign was not so successful as his administrationBoris Godunov, 1598–1605.under the weak Feodor. The oligarchical partyconsidered it a disgrace to obey a simple boyar; conspiracieswere frequent, the rural districts were desolated by famineand plague, great bands of armed brigands roamed about thecountry committing all manner of atrocities, the Cossacks onthe frontier were restless, and the government showed itselfincapable of maintaining order. Under the influence of thegreat nobles who had unsuccessfully opposed the election ofGodunov, the general discontent took the form of hostilityto him as a usurper, and rumours were heard that the latetsar’s younger brother Dimitri (Demetrius), supposedto be dead, was still alive and in hiding. In 1603man calling himself Dimitri, and professing to bethe rightful heir to the throne, appeared in Poland,and a few months later he crossed the frontier with a largeThe pseudo-Demetrius.force of Poles, Russian exiles, German mercenaries andCossacks from the Dnieper and the Don. In reality theyounger son of Ivan the Terrible had been strangled beforehis brother’s death—by orders, it was said, of Godunov—andthe mysterious individual who was impersonating him was animpostor; but he was regarded as the rightful heir by a largesection of the population, and immediately after Boris’s deathin 1605 he made his triumphal entry into Moscow. Thus begana period of Russian history commonly called “the TroublousTimes,” which lasted until 1613. (SeeDemetrius, Pseudo-.)

The reign of Dimitri was short and uneventful. Beforea year had passed a conspiracy was formed against him byan ambitious noble called Basil (Vassili) Shuiski, andhe was assassinated in the Kremlin. The chiefconspirator, Shuiski, seized the power and was electedtsar by an Assembly composed of his faction, but neitherBasil Shuiski, 1606–10. ​the ambitious boyars, nor the pillaging Cossacks, nor theGerman mercenaries were satisfied with the change, and soona new impostor, likewise calling himself Dimitri, son of TsarIvan, came forward as the rightful heir. Like his predecessor,he enjoyed the protection and support of the Polishking, Sigismund III., and was strong enough tocompel Shuiski to abdicate; but as soon as thethrone was vacant Sigismund put forward as acandidate his own son, Wladislaus. To this latter the peoplePseudo-Demetrius II., 1608–10.of Moscow swore allegiance on condition of his maintainingOrthodoxy and granting certain rights, and on this understandingthe Polish troops were allowed to occupy the cityand the Kremlin. Then Sigismund unveiled his real plan,which was to obtain the throne not for his son but forhimself. This scheme did not please any of the contendingfactions and it roused the anti-Catholic fanaticism of themasses. At the same time it was displeasing to the Swedes,who had become rivals of the Poles on the Baltic coast,and they started a false Dimitri of their own in Novgorod.

Russia was thus in a very critical condition. The thronewas vacant, the great nobles quarrelling among themselves,the Catholic Poles in the Kremlin of Moscow, theProtestant Swedes in Novgorod, and enormous bandsof brigands everywhere. The severity of the crisisproduced a remedy, in the form of a patriotic risingAccession of the house of Románov.of the masses under the leadership of a butcher called Mininand a Prince Pozharski. In a short time the invaders wereexpelled, and a Grand National Assembly elected as tsarMichael Románov, the young son of the metropolitan Philaret,who was connected by marriage with the late dynasty.

During the reign of Michael (1613–45) the new dynastycame to be accepted by all classes, and the country recoveredto some extent from the disorders and exhaustionfrom which it had suffered so severely; but it was notstrong enough to pursue at once an aggressive foreignpolicy, and the tsar prudently determined to make peace withMichael, 1613–45.Sweden and conclude an armistice of fourteen years withPoland. At the conclusion of the armistice in 1632, duringa short interregnum in Poland, he attempted to avenge pastinjuries and recover lost territory; but the campaign was notsuccessful, and in 1634 he signed a definitive treaty by no meansfavourable to Russia. That lesson was laid to heart, and hesubsequently maintained a purely defensive attitude. As aprecaution against Tatar invasions he founded fortified townson his southern frontiers—Tambov, Kozlov, Penza andSimbirsk; but when the Don Cossacks offered him Azov, whichthey had captured from the Turks, and a National Assembly,convoked for the purpose of considering the question, were infavour of accepting it as a means of increasing Russian influenceon the Black Sea, he decided that the town should berestored to the sultan, much to the disappointment of its captors.

In the reign of Michael’s successor, Alexius (1645–76), thecountry recovered its strength so rapidly that the tsar wastempted to revive the energetic aggressive policyand put forward claims to Livonia, Lithuania andLittle Russia, but he was obliged to moderate hispretensions. Livonia continued to be under Swedish rule, andAlexius, 1645–76.Lithuania remained united with Poland. Some advantages,however, were obtained. Smolensk and Chernigov weredefinitely incorporated in the tsardom of Muscovy, and greatprogress was made towards the absorption of Little Russia.

Roughly speaking, Little Russia, otherwise called the Ukraine,may be described as the basin of the Dnieper southwardof the 51st parallel of latitude. In the 16thcentury it was a thinly populated region inhabitedchiefly by Cossacks, speaking the so-called LittleRussian dialect, and until 1569 it formed nominally part ofThe Ukraine. Lithuania, but was practically independent. In that year,when Lithuania and Poland were permanently united, it fellunder Polish rule, and the Polish government considered itnecessary to tame the wild inhabitants and bring them underregular administration. For this decision there were goodreasons, for those turbulent sons of the steppe paid no taxesand were much given to brigandage, and their raiding propensitiesoccasionally created international difficulties with thekhan of the Crimea and the sultan of Turkey. It was proposed,therefore, in 1576, that 6000 families should be registered as amilitia under a Polish Hetman for the protection of the countryagainst Tatar raids, and that the remainder of the inhabitantsshould be assimilated to the ordinary peasants of Poland. Thisarrangement was very distasteful to all classes. The registeredCossacks objected to being placed under a Hetman not freelychosen by themselves, and those who were not included in themilitia objected still more strongly to the prospect of beingreduced to the miserable condition of Polish serfs. To escapethis danger many of them moved down the river and settledon the waste lands beyond the rapids. Here, about 1590, wasfounded an independent military colony called theSetch, themembers of which, recognizing no authority but that of theirown elected officers, lived by fishing, hunting and making raidson the Tatars, and were always ready to assist their less fortunatecountrymen in resisting Polish aggression. For half acentury the struggle between the two races went on with varyingsuccess, but on the whole the Polish government proved strongerthan its insubordinate subjects, and about 1638 it seemed tohave attained its object. Polish proprietors settled in largenumbers on the Cossack territory, and great efforts were made,with the assistance of the Jesuits, to bring the Orthodox populationunder papal authority. But for both proprietors andJesuits a surprise was in store. Threatened seriously in theirliberty and their faith, the people rose with greater enthusiasmthan before, and a general insurrection, in which the peasantsjoined, spread over the whole country under the leadership ofBogdan Chmielnicki or Khmelnitski (q.v.), whose name is stillremembered in the Ukraine. As in all previous insurrectionsthe Poles proved stronger in the field, and Khmelnitski indesperation sought foreign assistance, first in Constantinopleand then in Moscow. For some time Tsar Alexius hesitated,because he knew that intervention could entail a war withPoland, but after consulting a National Assembly on the subject,he decided to take Little Russia under his protection, andin January 1654 a great Cossack assembly ratified the arrangement,on the understanding that a large part of the old localautonomy should be preserved. In the expected war withPoland, which followed quickly, the Russians were so successfulthat the arrangement was upheld; but it was soon found thatthe Cossacks, though they professed unbounded devotion tothe Orthodox tsar, disliked Muscovite, quite as much as Polish,interference in their internal affairs, and some of their leaderswere in favour of substituting federation with Poland forannexation by Russia. In these circumstances the tsar wasinduced to accept a compromise, and signed in 1667 the treatyof Andrussovo, by which the territory in dispute was partitionedand the middle course of the Dnieper became the frontier betweenRussia and Poland.

In the reign of Alexius a conflict took place between thetsar and the patriarch, which is often described as a conflictbetween Church and State, and which illustrates therelations between the temporal and the spiritual powerin Russian state-organization. Until the beginning ofthe 17th century the Byzantine tradition that inThe tsar and the patriarch.all matters outside the sphere of dogma the ecclesiastical issubordinate to the civil power had been observed in Russia;but the traditional conceptions had been to some extent underminedduring the reign of Michael, when the metropolitanPhilaret, who was the tsar’s father (vide supra), became patriarchand was associated with his son in the government on a footingof equality. Like the tsar, he had the official title of “GreatLord” (veliki gosudár), and he had his palace, his court-dignitaries,his retinue, his boyars and his officials all organizedon the model of those of the sovereign. Without his assentand blessing no important decisions were taken, all state documentsemanating from the highest authority bore his signature,and he was regarded, both in the official world and by the ​public generally, as the tsar’s equal in rank and dignity. Hisimmediate successors, being men of humble origin and submissivecharacter, made no pretensions to such an exaltedposition, but when the haughty, ambitious and energetic Nikon,who enjoyed in large measure the affection and favour of thedevout Tsar Alexius, became patriarch, he took Philaret as hismodel, and propounded, like the popes in western Europe,the doctrine that the spiritual is higher than the temporalpower, the former corresponding to the sun and the latter tothe moon in the firmament. In accordance with this view hedeclared that the patriarch was the image of Christ, the headof the Church, and was therefore subject to no earthly authority,and he complained of the tsar’s interference in ecclesiasticalaffairs. His pretensions and his haughty dictatorial manner atlast exhausted the tsar’s patience, and he was formally deposedand exiled to a monastery. As no voice was raised in his defenceand the decision of the ecclesiastical council which condemnedhim was universally accepted without protest, we must concludethat the conflict was not really between Church and Statebut simply between the haughty, ambitious Patriarch Nikonand the devout, long-suffering Tsar Alexius. The incidentafforded a new proof, where no proof was required, that theautocratic power in Russia was supreme. In order to preventsuch incidents in future, Peter the Great abolished the patriarchatealtogether, and entrusted the administration of theChurch to a synod entirely dependent on the government.

Much more important in its consequences was Nikon’s activityas an ecclesiastical reformer. During the Russian Dark Agescertain clerical errors had crept into the liturgical booksand certain peculiarities had been adopted in the ritual.These had been detected and pointed out by learnedecclesiastics of Kiev, where some of the ancient learning ofReforms
of Nikon.Byzantium had been preserved, and Nikon determined to makethe necessary corrections. He determined also to introduce intothe Church many desirable reforms. His project was approvedby an ecclesiastical council and was supported by the tsar, but itmet with violent opposition from a large section of the clergy, andit alarmed the ignorant masses, who regarded any alterationsin the ritual, however insignificant they might be, as hereticaland very dangerous to salvation. When put into executionthe project produced in the Russian Church a great schism andnumerous fantastic sects. The cruel persecutions instituted bythe authorities with a view to securing conformity increasedthe number and fanaticism of the schismatics and heretics, andcreated among them a widespread belief that the reign ofAntichrist, foretold in the Apocalypse, was at hand. In supportof this idea, independently of the ecclesiastical innovations,many significant facts could be adduced. Numerous foreignershad been allowed to settle in Moscow and to build for themselvesa heretical church, and their strange unholy customs hadbeen adopted by not a few courtiers and great dignitaries.Matveyev, the most influential of the boyars, had married aforeigner who conversed freely with her husband’s male friends,contrary to the Muscovite notions of respectability and decorum,and his house, in which the tsar was a frequent visitor, wasfurnished and decorated in foreign fashion. Books on mundanesubjects, not at all conducive to the spiritual edification of thefaithful, were read by the tsar’s counsellors, and a theatre hadbeen erected, in which the tsar often witnessed very unedifyingdramas and ballets. Worst of all, the Orthodox tsar occasionallyabandoned the decorous flowing robes of his veneratedancestors, and appeared publicly in the unseemly costume ofheretical foreigners, whilst his consort, when carried throughthe streets in a litter, did not conceal her face from the publicgaze. Such innovations troubled deeply the pious souls of theconservative Muscovites, and confirmed them in their repugnanceto accept the ecclesiastical reforms. Though this originalfanaticism gradually cooled and the rigorists had to make manyconcessions to the exigencies of practical life, a large section of theRussian people remained outside the official fold, so that at thepresent day, if we may credit the most competent authorities,the schismatics and heretics number more than twelve millions.

While the Muscovites of the upper classes were thus beginningto abandon their old oriental habits, their government waspreparing to make a political evolution of a similar kind.Notwithstanding the efforts of the Poles and theMilitary Orders to exclude Russia from the shores of theBaltic and keep her in a state of isolation, she was coming slowlyForeign relations.into closer relations with central and western Europe. Theemperor, the governments of England, Holland, France andSweden, and even the Grand Turk made advances to the tsar.Some of them wished to gain him as an ally against their rivals,whilst others hoped to obtain from him commercial privilegesand permission to trade directly with Persia. The politicaland the commercial proposals were alike received with coldness,because the native diplomatists had aims which could not bereconciled completely with the policy of any other country,and the native merchants were afraid of foreign competition.The negotiations gave, therefore, little tangible result, but theyhelped to prepare the way for the new order of things which wassoon to be introduced by Alexius’s son, Peter the Great.

Before reaching the new order of things, the country had topass through an internal crisis similar to that which followedthe death of Ivan the Terrible, but not nearly so severe. Alexiushad been twice married and had left several children by each ofhis wives, and, as generally happened in such cases, a strugglefor power ensued between the two rival families. The late tsar’sTheodore III., 1676–82.eldest son, Theodore, was weak in health and diedwithout male issue after an uneventful reign of sixyears (1676–82). As the second son, Ivan, next inthe order of succession, was almost an imbecile, the third son,Peter, born of the second marriage, was proclaimed tsar, and hismaternal relations became the dominant faction but theirtriumph was of very short duration. An ambitious, energeticsister of Ivan, well known in Russian history as SophiaAlexeyevna, instigated thestryeltsi (strelitz), as the troopsSophia Alexeyevna.

Ivan V. (II.), 1682–89.of the unreformed standing army were called, to upsetthe arrangement. After making a tumult in the Kremlinand assassinating several of the men in power, they insistedthat Ivan should be proclaimed tsar conjointly withPeter, and that Sophia should act as regent during theminority of the two young sovereigns. She acceptedunhesitatingly the difficult and dangerous post, and ruled autocraticallyfor seven years (1682–89), but this did not satisfy herambition. Having discovered that Peter, who had reached theage of seventeen, was thinking of taking the administration intohis own hands, she conspired against him with the commanderof thestryeltsi and some of his maternal relations; but she wascircumvented by the rival faction and interned in a convent, andPeter’s mother was put in her place. The importance of theseincidents, which are very characteristic of political life in thetsardom of Muscovy, will appear in the sequel.

If Peter really thought of taking the administration into hisown hands, he very soon abandoned the idea and returned tothe irregular suburban life he had led during hishalf-sister’s regency—associating with foreigners who couldteach him the mechanical arts of the West, drillingtroops, building and sailing boats, forming projectsPeter the Great,
1689–1725.for the creation of a great navy, indulging publicly inBacchanalian revels and boisterous amusements not at allto the taste of his pious countrymen, and appearing in Moscowas Orthodox tsar only on great ceremonial occasions. Alreadythe desire to make his country a great naval power was becominghis ruling passion, and when he found by experience that theWhite Sea, Russia’s sole maritime outlet, had great practicalinconveniences as a naval base, he revived the project of gettinga firm footing on the shores of the Black Sea or the Baltic.At first he gave the preference to the former, and with theaid of a flotilla of small craft, constructed on a tributary of theDon, he succeeded in capturing Azov from the Turks. Greatlyelated by this success, he recommended to the council of boyarsthe construction of a powerful fleet for carrying on war withthe infidel, and he himself went abroad to learn more aboutshipbuilding and useful foreign inventions, and to prepare ​diplomatically the projected crusade. His foreign tour, duringwhich he visited Germany, Holland, England, France andAustria, lasted nearly a year and a half, and was suddenlyinterrupted, when on his way from Vienna to Venice to studythe construction of war-galleys, by the alarming news that theturbulentstryeltsi of Moscow had mutinied anew with theintention of placing Sophia on the throne. On arriving inMoscow he found that the mutiny had been suppressed andthe ringleaders punished, but he considered it necessary toreopen the investigation and act with exemplary severity.Of the surviving mutineers over twelve hundred were executed,some of them by his own hand, and the entire corps was disbanded.

From this moment may be dated the personal reign of Peter,for he now began to direct personally all branches of the administration,and governed with indefatigable vigour for twenty-sevenyears, during which he greatly increased the area and profoundlymodified the internal condition of his country. At first heconcentrated his attention on foreign affairs. During hisforeign tour he had discovered that the idea of a grand crusadeagainst the infidel was irrealizable, for France was, accordingto her traditional policy, the ally of the sultan, Austria wished toavoid trouble on her eastern frontier in order to devote herenergies to the question of the Spanish succession, and all theother countries which he wished to draw into the coalition hadgood reasons of their own for desiring the maintenance of peacein eastern Europe. For his Baltic schemes, on the contrary,he had found the ground well prepared. During a halt of a fewdays in Poland on his way back from Vienna, King Augustushad explained to him a project for partitioning the trans-Balticprovinces of Sweden, by which Poland should recoverLivonia and annex Esthonia, Russia should obtain Ingriaand Karelia, and Denmark should take possession of Holstein.As Sweden was known to be exhausted by the long wars ofGustavus Adolphus and his successors, and weakened by internaldissensions, the dismemberment seemed an easy matter, andPeter embarked on the scheme with a light heart; but hisillusions were quickly dispelled by the eccentric young Swedishking, Charles XII., who arrived suddenly in Esthonia andcompletely routed the Russian army before Narva. Thusbegan the so-called Northern War, which lasted intermittentlyfor more than twenty years, and was terminated by the treatyof Nystad (Sept. 10, 1721). By that treaty Peter acquirednot only Ingria and Karelia, as originally contemplated, butalso Livonia, Esthonia and part of Finland. The problem ofobtaining a firm footing on the Baltic coast, on which Ivanthe Terrible had squandered his resources to no purpose, wasnow solved satisfactorily.

Peter’s other favourite scheme, that of acquiring the commandof the Black Sea, was as far from realization as ever.In the midst of the Northern War, shortly after the greatRussian victory of Poltava (1709), the sultan, at the instigationof Swedish and French agents, determined to recover Azov,and made great military preparations for that purpose. Havingannihilated at Poltava the army of Charles XII., Peter was notat all indisposed to renew the struggle with Turkey, and beganthe campaign in the confident hope of making extensive conquests;but he had only got as far as the Pruth when he foundhimself surrounded by a great Turkish army, and, in order toextricate himself from his critical position, he had to sign ahumiliating treaty by which Azov and other conquests wererestored to the sultan. His dreams of freeing the Christiansfrom the yoke of the infidel had to be abandoned, and theconquest of the northern shores of the Black Sea was postponedtill the reign of Catherine II.

Those tedious and exhausting wars did not prevent Peterfrom attending to internal affairs, and he displayed as a reformereven more vigour and tenacity than as a general inthe field. His first reforms were connected with thearmy. Several of his immediate predecessors had cometo recognize that Russia, with her antiquated military organization,Peter the Great’s reforms.was unable to cope with her Western neighbours, andhad begun to organize, with the help of foreigners, a militaryforce more in accordance with modern requirements; but theprogress made in that direction had been slow and unsatisfactory.Unlike his predecessors, Peter was in a hurry torealize his plans, and he set to work at once. In less than twoyears from the time of disbanding thestryeltsi he contrived tocreate an army of 40,000 men. This army, it is true, wasso inefficient that it was completely routed by the Swedishking with a most inferior force, but it was improved graduallyuntil it learned to conquer its Swedish opponents. To accomplishsuch a feat it was necessary, of course, to expend largesums of money; and as the country could ill bear an increaseof taxation, the whole financial system had to be improvedand the natural resources of the country had to be developed.At the same time the military and financial requirementsdislocated the local and central administration, and consequentlya series of radical administrative reforms had to beundertaken. Thus one reform led to another; but Peterwas not dismayed by the magnitude of the task, and workedvigorously in all departments with a sublime disregard for theclamour of reactionary opponents and for the feelings andprejudices of his subjects in general. A prudent ruler in hisposition would have sought to preserve the outward formswhile changing the inner substance, but Peter was not at allprudent in that sense. Very often he wantonly provokedopposition, as when he shaved off his beard and compelledhis chief officials to do likewise, though he well knew that theoperation was regarded by the ignorant masses and the piousof all ranks as a sinful defacing of the image of God. In hiseyes the beard was a symbol of the old régime, and as such itmust be removed. Reckless of consequences, he swept awaythe venerated ceremonial formalities which his ancestors hadscrupulously observed, openly scoffed at ancient usage, habituallydressed in foreign costume, and generally chose foreignheretics as his boon companions. In adopting foreign innovations,he showed, like the Japanese of the present day, nosentimental preference for any particular nation, and wasready to borrow from the Germans, Dutch, English, Swedesor French whatever seemed best suited for his purpose. Theinnovations, it must be admitted, did not prove so efficientas he expected, because human nature and traditional habitscannot be changed as quickly as institutions. When theBoyar Duma became the Senate, and thePrikazi or administrativedepartments were organized under the name of Colleges,and when every important town was endowed with aRathhaus,aPolizeimeister, gilds, aldermen, and all the municipal paraphernaliaof western Europe, the vices of the old institutionssurvived in the new. Notwithstanding the changes in organizationand terminology, the officials remained ignorant, indolent,careless, indifferent to the public welfare, high-handed andextortionate, and the local self-government which was intendedto enlighten and control them proved sadly wanting in vitalityand practically worthless. So inefficient, indeed, were thereforms as a whole, and so unsuited to the national characterand customs, that the Slavophil critics of a later date couldmaintain plausibly the paradoxical thesis that in regard tointernal administration Peter was anything but a nationalbenefactor. However that may be, it must be confessed evenby Slavophils that he dragged his countrymen, more by forcethan by persuasion, from the paths of traditional routine andpushed them along with all his might on the broad road ofprogress in the modern sense of the term. Abandoning theancient Muscovite capital, where many influential personageswere fanatically hostile to his innovations and not a few of thesuperstitious inhabitants regarded him with horror as Antichrist,he built at the mouth of the Neva a new capital whichFoundation of St Petersburg.was to serve as “a window through which his peoplemight look into Europe”; and laying aside the nationaltitle of tsar he proclaimed himself (1711) emperor(Imperator) of all Russia—much to the surprise andindignation of foreign diplomatic chancelleries, which resentedthe audacity of a semi-barbarous potentate in claiming to be ​equal in rank with the head of the Holy Roman Empire.Gradually, however, the chancelleries had to withdraw theirprotests, for it came to be generally recognized that the semi-barbarian,who died at the early age of fifty-three, had transformedthe oriental tsardom of Muscovy into a state of theWestern type and had made it a powerful member of theEuropean family of nations (seePeter I.).

IV.The Modern Empire.—On the death of Peter (1725)the internal tranquillity and progress of the empire were againseriously threatened by the uncertainty of the order of succession,and the autocratic power which he had wielded so vigorouslypassed into the hands of a series of weak, indolentsovereigns who were habitually guided by personal caprice andthe advice of intriguing favourites rather than by serious politicalconsiderations. During this period, which lasted from 1725to 1762, the male line of the Romanov dynasty became extinct,and the succession passed to various members of the female line,which intermarried with German princes. In this way Germaninfluence was enormously increased, and was represented bymen of considerable capacity holding the highest official positions,such as Biren, Münnich and Ostermann. The main eventsof the period may be summarized very briefly. Peter, by hisfirst marriage, had a son, the unhappy cesarevichAlexius (q.v.),who figures more largely in imaginative literature than inhistory—a narrow-minded, obstinate, pious youth, who hadno sympathy with his father’s violent innovations, and wascompletely under the influence of the old Muscovite reactionaryfaction. Intimidated by the paternal anger and threats he tookrefuge in Austria, and when he had been induced by illusorypromises to return to Russia he was tried for high treason by aspecial tribunal, and after being subjected to torture died inprison (1718). To avert the danger of a man of this typesucceeding to the throne Peter made a law by which the reigningsovereign might choose his successor according to his ownjudgment, and two years later he caused his second wife,Catherine I., 1725–27.Catherine, the daughter of a Lithuanian peasant, tobe crowned with all due solemnity, “in recognitionof the courageous services rendered by her to theRussian Empire.” This gave Catherine a certain rightto the throne at her husband’s death, and her claims weresupported by Peter’s most influential coadjutors, especiallyby Prince Menshikov, an ambitious man of humble origin whohad been raised by his patron to the highest offices of state.On the other hand the great nobles of more conservativetendencies wished to get the young son of the cesarevichAlexius made emperor under their own control. The formerfaction triumphed, and Catherine reigned for about a year anda half, after which the son of the cesarevich Alexius, Peter II.,Peter II., 1727–30.occupied the throne from 1727 to 1730. At first hewas under the tutelage of Menshikov, who wished himto marry his daughter, but he soon contrived, withthe aid of the Dolgorukis and other old families, to gethis imperious tutor arrested and exiled to Siberia. The Dolgorukisand their friends thus came into power, and on thedeath of Peter II. in 1730 they offered the throne to Anne,duchess of Courland, a daughter of Ivan V., elder brotherof Peter the Great, on condition of her signing a formal documentby which the seat of government should be transferredfrom St Petersburg to Moscow, and the autocratic power shouldbe limited and controlled by a grand council composed of theirAnne,
1730–40.own faction. Anne accepted the condition andbecame empress, but when she discovered that theattempt to limit her powers in favour of a smallconservative oligarchy was extremely unpopular among allclasses, she submitted the question to an assembly of 800ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries, and at their request theunlimited autocratic rule was re-established. Her reign(1730–40) was a régime of methodical German despotism onthe lines laid down by her uncle, Peter the Great, and as shewas naturally indolent and much addicted to frivolous amusements,the administration was directed by her favouriteBiren(q.v.) and other men of German origin. Having no male issue,she chose as her successor the infant son of her niece, AnnaLeopoldovna, duchess of Brunswick, and at her death thechild was duly proclaimed emperor, under the name of Ivan VI.,but in little more than a year he was dethroned by the partisansof the Princess Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter the Great andElizabeth, 1741–61.Catherine I. As a true daughter of the great Russianreformer, Elizabeth (1741–61) relegated the Germanelement to a subordinate position in the administrationand gave her confidence to genuine Russians likeBestuzhev, Vorontsov, Razumovski (her morganatic husband)and the Shuvalovs. Her hatred of Germans showed itself likewisein her persistent struggle with Frederick the Great, whichcost Russia 300,000 men and 30 millions of roubles—an enormoussum for those days—but in the choice of a successor shecould not follow her natural inclinations, for among the fewdescendants of Michael Romanov there was no one, even in thefemale line, who could be called a genuine Russian. She proclaimed,therefore, as heir-apparent the son of her deceasedelder sister Anna, Charles Peter Ulrich, duke of Holstein-Gottorp,a German in character, habits and religion, and triedto Russianize him by making him adopt the Eastern Orthodoxfaith and live in St Petersburg during the whole of her reign;but her well-meant efforts were singularly unsuccessful. Imperviousto Russian influence, he remained true to his originalnationality, and by his undisguised aversion to everything inhis adopted country and his passionate, childish admirationof Frederick the Great, he made himself so unpopular that withina few months of his accession, in December 1761, he wasdethroned and assassinated by the partisans of his ambitiousand able consort, the famous Catherine II.^[47]

During the long reign of Catherine II. (1762–96) Russiamade rapid progress in civilization, and came to be fully recognizedas one of the Great Powers. Coming after aseries of incompetent rulers, the German princessproved herself a worthy successor to Peter the Greatboth in home and in foreign affairs; but she was not aCatherine II., 1762–96.mere imitator. Peter had endeavoured to import from westernEurope the essentials of good government and such of theuseful arts as were required for the development of the naturalresources of the country; Catherine did likewise, but she didnot restrict herself to purely utilitarian aims in the narrowersense of the term. She strove to impart also something of therefinement and ornamental attributes of Western civilization,and aspired to raise her adopted fatherland intellectuallyand artistically to the west-European level. This new departureshe lost no time in proclaiming to the world. Withina few months of her accession, having heard that the publicationof the famous FrenchEncyclopédie was in danger of beingstopped by the French government on account of its irreligiousspirit, she proposed to Diderot that he should complete hisgreat work in Russia under her protection. Four years latershe endeavoured to embody in a legislative form the principlesof enlightenment which she had imbibed from the study of theFrench philosophers. A Grand Commission, which might becalled a consultative parliament, composed of 652 membersof all classes—officials, nobles, burghers and peasants—and ​of various nationalities, was called together at Moscow toconsider the needs of the empire and the means of satisfyingthem. The instructions for the guidance of the Assemblywere prepared by the empress herself and were, as she franklyadmitted, the result of “pillaging the philosophers of theWest,” especially Montesquieu and Beccaria. As many of thedemocratic principles frightened her more moderate and experiencedadvisers, she wisely refrained from immediatelyputting them into execution. After holding more than 200sittings the so-called Commission was dissolved without gettingbeyond the realm of theory andpia desideria. Subsequentlyvery important reforms were introduced, not by the vote of anassembly, but by thefiat of the autocratic power. The largeAdministra­tive reforms.territorial units of administration created by Peter theGreat were broken up into so-called “governments”(gubernii) and further subdivided into districts (uyezdy),and each government was confided to the care of a governorand a vice-governor assisted by a council. A certain amountof local self-government was entrusted to the nobles and theburghers, and the judicial administration was thoroughlyreorganized in an enlightened and humane spirit. The greatestates of the Church, on which were settled about a millionserfs, were secularized and assimilated with the state-domains.At one moment the idea of emancipating all the serfs wasentertained, but the project was speedily abandoned, becauseit would have alienated the nobles—the only class on whichCatherine could rely for support. To conciliate them shegreatly extended the area of serfage by making large grantsof land and serfs to courtiers and public servants who hadspecially distinguished themselves. About education a greatdeal was spoken and written, and a certain amount of progresswas effected. Whilst primary education was neglected, secondaryschools were created in the principal towns and aRussian Academy was founded in St Petersburg. In the imperialcourt, so far as outward decorum and refinement were concerned,there was an immense improvement, and the uppersection of the old RussianDvorianstvo became a noblesse withFrench aristocratic conceptions and ideals. A taste for Frenchliterature spread rapidly, and the poets and dramatists of Parisfound clever imitators in St Petersburg.

By such means Catherine made herself very popular in theupper ranks of society, but as a woman and a usurper whodid little or nothing to lighten the burdens of the people shefailed to gain the loyalty and devotion of the masses. Inthe first part of her reign popular discontent found expressionin various forms, and on one occasion it produced a seriousinsurrection. In 1773 a Don Cossack called Pugachev, whowas so uneducated that he could not even sign the manifestoeswritten for him, declared himself to be Peter III., and announcedthat he was going to St Petersburg to punish his faithless wifeand place his son Paul on the throne. Many believed, oraffected to believe, in the pretender, and in a short time hegathered around him a large force of Cossacks, peasants, Tatarsand Tchuvash, swept over the basin of the lower Volga, executedmercilessly the landed proprietors, seized and pillagedthe town of Kazan, and kept the whole country in a state ofalarm for more than a year. Finally, after a crushing defeatin which 2000 of the insurgents were killed and 6000 takenprisoners, he was betrayed by some of his followers and executedin Moscow. His name and exploits still live in the popularlegends, and the insurrection is often referred to in revolutionarypamphlets as a laudable popular protest against tyrannicalautocracy.

In foreign affairs Catherine devoted her attention mainlyto pushing forward the Russian frontier westwards and southwards,and as France was the traditional ally ofpolicy of Sweden, Poland and Turkey, she adopted at firstthe so-calledsystème du Nord, that is to say, a closealliance with Prussia, England and Denmark againstFrance and Austria,Foreign policy of Catherine.who had buried their traditional enmityin the famous alliance of 1756. The first step westwards wastaken in Courland, which lay between Russian territory andthe Baltic coast. At the time of her accession the duchy wasruled by a son of the Polish king Augustus III., and he gavea pretext for aggression by refusing to allow Russian troopsreturning from the Seven Years’ War to pass through histerritory. For this unfriendly act he was deposed and replacedby Biren, who had previously been duke of Courland (1737–40)and had since been an exile in Siberia and Yaroslav. UnderBiren (1763–69) and his son and successor (1769–95), asnominees of Catherine, Courland was completely under Russianinfluence until 1795, when it was formally incorporated withthe empire. The next country to feel the expansive tendenciesof Russia was Poland, which had now very littlepower of resistance. Whilst Russia, Austria, Prussiaand France were becoming powerful monarchies with centralizedPoland.administration, Poland had remained a weak feudal republic withan elected king chosen under foreign influence and fetteredby constitutional restrictions. All political authority was inthe hands of turbulent nobles who quarrelled among themselves,who were always inclined to submit the questions atissue to the arbitrament of arms, and who did not scruple toinvite foreign powers to intervene on their behalf. The middleclasses, which were making other countries rich and powerful,existed only in an embryonic condition. Instead of a well-organizedarmy of the modern type there was merely anundisciplined militia composed almost exclusively of irregularcavalry; and the national defences as a whole were so weakthat, in the opinion of such a competent authority as Mauriceof Saxony, the country might easily be conquered by a regulararmy of 48,000 men. Here was a tempting field for theapplication of Catherine’s aggressive policy, and if she had hadto deal merely with the Poles she would have had an easy task.Unfortunately for the success of her schemes she had to reckonwith stronger states which were anxious to check the Russianadvance, and which were determined, in the event of aggression,to have a share of the plunder. Frederick the Great was atthat moment impatient to extend and consolidate his kingdomby getting possession of the basin of the lower Vistula, whichseparated eastern Prussia from the rest of his dominions, whileAustria had also claims on Polish territory and would certainlynot submit to be excluded by her two rivals. In these circumstancesCatherine hesitated to bring matters to a crisis,but her hand was forced by Frederick, and in 1772 the firstpartition of Poland took place without any very strenuousresistance on the part of the victim. This national disasteropened the eyes of many Polish patriots to the necessity ofchanging radically the old order of things, and an attempt wasmade by them to remove some of the more glaring absurditiesof the existing constitution: the throne was declared to behereditary, theliberum veto by which any petty noble couldannul the most important decision of the national assemblywas abolished, the royal authority was greatly strengthened,and the towns were empowered to send deputies to the Diet(1791). Such salutary reforms were naturally unwelcome tothe aggressive neighbours who wished to preserve the traditionalanarchy in order to have new facilities for intervention, andas Russia had signed with the puppet-king in 1768 a treatyby which the constitution could not be modified without herconsent, she had a plausible ground for protest. She waited,however, until a deputation of the malcontents, who regrettedthe loss ofliberum veto and who were afraid that the party ofreform might undertake the emancipation of the serfs, cameto St Petersburg and asked for support in defence of theancient liberties. Then an imperial manifesto reminding thePoles of the treaty of 1768 was issued and a large Russian forceentered the Ukraine. This led to the second partition (1793),by which Russia obtained the eastern provinces with threemillions of inhabitants. Even now the work of spoliation wasnot complete. When the patriots under Koscziusko made adesperate effort to recover the national independence the struggleproduced a third partition (1795), by which the remainder of thekingdom was again divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria.Thus Poland disappeared for a time from the map of Europe.

​Russia’s advance westward raised indirectly the EasternQuestion, because it threatened two of France’s traditionalallies, Sweden and Poland, and Choiseul consideredthat the best means of checkmating Catherine’saggressive schemes was to incite France’s thirdtraditional ally, Turkey, to attack her. This was nota difficult matter, because theTreaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, 1774.Sublime Porte had many thingsto complain of in the past and had good reason to fearaggression in the near future. War was accordingly declaredin 1768, but it proved disastrous for the sultan; and he hadto sign in 1774 the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, which gaveRussia a firm hold on the Black Sea and the lower Danube(seeTurkey:History). The Tatars of the Bug, of the Crimea andof the Kuban were liberated from the suzerainty of the Porte;Azov, Kinburn and all the fortified places of the Crimea wereceded to Russia; the Bosphorus and Dardanelles were openedto Russian merchant vessels; and Russian ambassadorsobtained the right to intervene in favour of the inhabitants ofthe Danubian principalities. Ten years later the semblanceof independence which was left to the khans of the Crimeawas destroyed and the peninsula formally annexed to the empire.

The peace concluded at Kuchuk-Kainarji was not of longduration. Catherine had conceived an ambitious plan ofsolving radically the Eastern Question by partitioning Turkeyas she and her allies had partitioned Poland, and she hadpersuaded the emperor Joseph II. to take part in the scheme.It was intended that Russia should take what remained of thenorthern coast of the Black Sea, Austria should annex theTurkish provinces contiguous to her territory, the Danubianprincipalities and Bessarabia should be formed into an independentkingdom called Dacia, the Turks should beexpelled from Europe, the Byzantine empire should be resuscitated,and the grand-duke Constantine, second son of theRussian heir-apparent, should be placed on the throne of thePalaeologi. Rumours of this gigantic scheme reached Constantinople,and as Catherine’s menacing attitude left littledoubt as to her aggressive intentions the Porte presented anultimatum and finally declared war (1787). Fortune againfavoured the Russian arms, but as Austria was less successfuland signed a separate peace at Sistova in 1791, Catherine didnot obtain much material advantage from the campaign. Bythe peace of Jassy, signed in January 1792, she retained Ochakovand the coast between the Bug and the Dniester, and she securedcertain privileges for the Danubian principalities, but the Turksremained in Constantinople, and the realization of the famousGreek project, as it was termed, had to be indefinitely postponed.

During the first years of the French Revolution Catherine’ssympathy with philosophic liberalism rapidly evaporated, andshe did all in her power to stimulate the hostility ofthe European sovereigns to the democratic movement;but she carefully abstained from joining the Coalition,and waited patiently for the moment when thecomplications inCatherine and the Revolution.western Europe would give her an opportunityof solving independently the Eastern Question in accordancewith Russian interests. That moment never came.In November 1796, when the country was not yet preparedto enter on a decisive struggle with Turkey, Catherine died atthe age of sixty-six, and was succeeded by her son Paul, whomshe had kept during her long reign in a state of semi-captivity.

The short reign of Paul (1796–1801) resembled in many pointsthe still shorter one of his father, Peter III. Both sovereignswere childishly wayward and capriciously autocratic;both were recklessly indifferent to the feelings, convictionsand wishes of those around them; both took a passionateinterest in the minutiae of military affairs; as Peter hadPaul.conceived a boundless admiration for Frederick the Great, soPaul conceived a similar admiration for Napoleon, and bothsuddenly reversed the national policy to suit this feeling; bothwere singularly blind to the consequences of their foolishconduct; and both fell victims to court conspiracies whichcould be in some measure justified, or at least excused, onpatriotic grounds.

Paul left no deep, permanent mark on Russian history. Ininternal affairs he wished to undo what his mother had done,but his impulsive, incoherent efforts in that, direction merelydislocated the administrative mechanism without producingany tangible results. In foreign affairs he displayed the samecapriciousness and want of perseverance. After proclaiminghis intention of conferring on his subjects the blessings ofpeace, he joined in 1798 an Anglo-Austrian coalition againstFrance; but when Austria paid more attention to her owninterests than to the interests of monarchical institutions ingeneral, and when England did not respect the independenceof Malta, which he had taken under his protection, he succumbedto the artful blandishments of Napoleon and formed with hima plan for ruining the British empire by the conquest of India.Having roused, by what ought perhaps to be called his insanity,the enmity, distrust and fear of all around him, including somemembers of his own family, he was assassinated on the nightof the 23rd to 24th of March 1801, and was succeeded by hisson Alexander I.

The early part of Alexander’s reign (1801–25) was a periodof generous ideas and liberal reforms. Under the influenceof his Swiss tutor, Frederick César de Laharpe, hehad imbibed many of the democratic ideas of thetime, and he aspired to put them in practice, withthe assistance at first of three young friends, Novosiltsov,Adam Czartoryski andAlexander I., 1801–25.Strogonov, who were his intimatecounsellors and were popularly known as the Triumvirate, andlater ofMikhail Speranski (q.v.). Some of the more oppressivemeasures of the previous reign were abolished; the clergy,the nobles and the merchants were exempted from corporalpunishment; the central organs of administration weremodernized and the Council of the Empire was created; theidea of granting a constitution was academically discussed;great schemes for educating the people were entertained;parish schools, gymnasia, training colleges and ecclesiasticalseminaries were founded; the existing universities of Moscow,Vilna and Dorpat were reorganized and new ones foundedin Kazan and Kharkov; the great work of serf-emancipationwas begun in the Baltic provinces. In all these schemesAlexander took a keen personal interest; but his enthusiasmwas soon cooled by practical difficulties, and his attentionbecame more and more engrossed by foreign affairs.

At that time, in respect of foreign affairs, Russia was enteringon a new phase of her history. Hitherto she had confined herefforts to territorial expansion in eastern Europe and in Asia,and she had sought foreign alliances merely as temporaryexpedients to facilitate the attainment of that object. Nowshe was beginning to consider herself a powerful member ofthe European family of nations, and she aspired to exercise apredominant influence in all European questions. This tendencywas already shown by Catherine when she created the Leagueof Neutrals as an arm against the naval supremacy of England,and by Paul when he insisted that his peace negotiations withBonaparte should be regarded as part of a general Europeanpacification, in which he must be consulted. Alexanderinsisted still more strongly on this claim, and in the conventionAlexander and Napoleon.which he concluded with the First Consul in October1801 it was agreed that the maintenance of a justequilibrium between Austria and Prussia should betaken as an invariable principle in the plans of bothparties, that the integrity of the kingdom of the Two Siciliesshould be respected, that the duke of Württemberg shouldreceive in Germany an indemnity proportionate to his losses,that the dominions of the elector of Bavaria should be preservedintact, and that the independence of the Ionian Islands shouldnot be violated. Having obtained these important concessionsthe tsar imagined for a moment that in any further territorialchanges he would be consulted and his advice allowed dueweight, and he seems even to have indulged in the hope thatthe affairs of Europe might be directed by himself and his newally. His illusion was soon dispelled, because the aims andpolicy of the two potentates were utterly irreconcilable. Whilst ​the one strove to erect bulwarks against French aggression,the other was preparing the ground for fresh annexations.During 1803–4 the breach between the two rivals widened,because Napoleon became more and more aggressive andunceremonious in Italy and Germany. Before the end of 1803Alexander had come to perceive the necessity of resisting himenergetically in order to save Europe from complete subjection,and in August 1804 he recognized that an armed conflict wasinevitable. It broke out in the following year, and after thebattles of Austerlitz (December 1805) and Friedland (June 1807),in which the Russians were completely defeated, the twosovereigns had their famous interviews at Tilsit, at which theynot only made peace but agreed to divide the world betweenthem, with a sublime indifference to the interests of otherstates. The grandiose project was at once vaguely outlinedin three formal documents, to the intense satisfaction of bothparties, and on both sides there was much rejoicing at theconclusion of such an auspicious alliance; but the diplomatichoneymoon was not of long duration. The mutual assurancesof unbounded confidence, admiration and sympathy, if therewas any genuine sincerity in them, represented merely atransient state of feeling. Napoleon, who could brook noequal, was nourishing the secret hope that his confederatemight be used as a docile subordinate in the realization ofhis own plans, and the confederate soon came to suspect thathe was being duped. His suspicions were intensified by thehostile criticisms of the Tilsit arrangement among his ownsubjects and by the arbitrary conduct of his ally, who continuedhis aggressions in reckless fashion as if he were sole masterof Europe. The sovereigns of Sardinia, Naples, Portugaland Spain were dethroned, the pope was driven from Rome,the Rhine Confederation was extended till France obtained afooting on the Baltic, the grand-duchy of Warsaw was reorganizedand strengthened, the promised evacuation of Prussiawas indefinitely postponed, an armistice between Russia andTurkey was negotiated by French diplomacy in such a waythat the Russian troops should evacuate the Danubian principalities,which Alexander intended to annex to his empire,and the scheme for breaking up the Ottoman empire andruining England by the conquest of India, which had beenone of the most attractive baits in the Tilsit negotiations, butwhich had not been formulated in the treaty, was no longerspoken of. At the same time Napoleon threatened openlyto crush Austria, and in 1809 he carried out his threat bydefeating the Austrian armies at Wagram and elsewhere, anddictating the treaty of Schönbrunn (October 14).

Russia now remained the only unconquered power on thecontinent, and it was evident that the final struggle with hercould not be long delayed. It began in 1812 by the advance OftheGrande Armée on Moscow, and it ended in 1815 at Waterloo.During those three years Alexander was the chief antagonist ofNapoleon, and it was largely due to his skill and persistency thatthe allies held together and freed Europe permanently from theNapoleonic domination. When peace was finally concluded, hehad obtained that predominant position in European politicswhich had been the object of his ambition since the commencementof his reign, and he now believed firmly that he had beenchosen by Providence to secure the happiness of the world ingeneral and of the European nations in particular. In thefulfilment of this supposed mission he was not very successful,Alexander and the reaction
in Europe.because his conception of national happiness and themeans of obtaining it differed widely from that of thepeoples whom he wished to benefit. They had foughtfor freedom in order to liberate themselves not onlyfrom the yoke of Napoleon but also from the tyrannyof their own governments, whereas he expected them to remainsubmissively under the patriarchal institutions which their nativerulers imposed on them. Thus, in spite of his academic sympathywith liberal ideas, he became, together with Metternich,a champion of political stagnation, and co-operated willinglyin the reactionary measures against the revolutionary movementsin Germany, Italy and Spain. In the affairs, of his owncountry he refrained from developing and extending the liberalinstitutions which he had created immediately after his accession,and he finally adopted in all departments of administration astrongly reactionary policy. This naturally caused profounddisappointment and dissatisfaction in the liberal section of theeducated classes and especially among the young officers ofthe regiments which had spent some years in western Europe.Some of these officers had been in touch with the revolutionarymovements, and had adopted the idea then prevalent in France,Germany and Italy that the best instrument for assuringpolitical progress was to be found in secret societies. In Russiasuch societies began to be formed about 1816. The tsar, thoughhe came to know of their existence, refrained from taking repressivemeasures against them, and when he died suddenly atTaganrog on the 1st of December 1825, two of them made anattempt to realize their political aspirations. The heir to thethrone was the late tsar’s eldest brother, Constantine, but heNicholas I., 1825–55.declined, for private reasons, to accept the succession,and a few days elapsed before the second brother,Nicholas, was proclaimed emperor. Taking advantageof this short interregnum, some members of the secret societies,mostly officers of the Guards, organized a mutiny among thetroops quartered in St Petersburg and in Podolia, with a viewto effecting a political revolution, but the movement was easilysuppressed, and the ringleaders, known subsequently as theDecembrists, were severely punished (seeNicholas I.).

Nicholas was a blunt soldier incapable of comprehendinghis brother’s sentimental sympathy with liberalism. TheDecembrists’ abortive attempt at revolution and the Polishinsurrection of 1831, which he crushed with great severity,confirmed him in his conviction that Russia must be ruledwith a strong hand. That conviction he put into practicewith extreme rigour during the thirty years, of his reign (1825–55),endeavouring by every means at his disposal to preventrevolutionary ideas from germinating spontaneously amonghis subjects and from being imported from abroad. For thispurpose he created a very severe press-censorship and anexpensive system of passports, which made it more difficult forRussians to visit foreign countries. It would be unjust, however,to say that he was the determined enemy of all progress.Progress was to be made in certain directions and in a certainway. Not only was the army to be well drilled and the fleetto be carefully equipped, but railways were to be constructed,river-navigation was to be facilitated, manufacturing industrywas to be developed, commerce was to be encouraged, theadministration was to be improved, the laws were to be codifiedand the tribunals were to be reorganized. All this was to bedone, however, under the strict supervision and guidance of theautocratic power, with as little aid as possible from privateinitiative and with no control whatever of public opinion,because influential public opinion is apt to produce insubordination.When the results proved unsatisfactory, remedies weresought in increased administrative supervision, draconianlegislation and severe punishment, and no attempt was madeto get out of the vicious circle. In the last months of his life,under the influence of a great national disaster, the conscientious,persistent autocrat began to suspect that his system was amistake, but he still clung to it obstinately. “My successor,”he is reported to have said on his death-bed, “may do as hepleases, but I cannot change!”

This steadfast faith in autocratic methods and the exaggeratedfear of revolutionary principles were shown in foreign as well asin home affairs. Like Alexander in the last period of his reign,Nicholas considered himself the supreme guardian of Europeanorder, and was ever on the watch to oppose revolution in all itsforms. Hence he was generally in strained relations with France,especially in the time of Louis Philippe, who became king notby the grace of God but by the will of the people. During therevolutionary ferment of 1848–49 he urged the Prussian kingto refuse the imperial crown, co-operated with the Austrianemperor in suppressing the Hungarian insurrection, and compelledthe Prussians to withdraw their support from the insurgents ​in Schleswig-Holstein. Unfortunately for the peace of theworld his habitual policy of maintaining the existing state ofthings was frequently obscured and disturbed by his desire tomaintain and increase his own and his country’s prestige,influence and territory. By the Persian War, which broke outin 1826, in consequence of frontier disputes, he annexed theprovinces of Erivan and Nakhichevan, and during the wholeof his reign the conquest of the Caucasus was systematicallycarried on. With regard also to the Ottoman empire his policycannot be said to have been strictly conservative. As protectorNicholas I. and the Ottoman empire.of the Orthodox Christians he espoused the cause ofthe rayahs in Greece, Servia and Rumania. Under athreat of war he obtained in 1826 the Convention ofAkerman, by which the autonomy of Moldavia, Walachiaand Servia was confirmed, free passage of the straits was securedfor merchant ships and disputed territory on the Asiatic frontierwas annexed, and in July 1827 he signed with England andFrance the treaty of London for the solution of the Greekquestion by the mediation of the Powers. As the sultan rejectedthe mediation, his fleet was destroyed by the combined squadronsof the three Powers at Navarino; and as this “untoward event”did not suffice to overcome his resistance, a Russian army crossedthe Danube and after two hard-fought campaigns advanced toAdrianople. Here, on the 14th of September 1829, was signeda treaty by which the Porte ceded to Russia the islands at themouth of the Danube and several districts on the Asiatic frontier,granted full liberty to Russian navigation and commerce in theBlack Sea, and guaranteed the autonomous rights previouslyaccorded to Moldavia, Walachia and Servia. By the 10tharticle of the treaty, moreover, Turkey acceded to the protocolof the 22nd of March 1829, by which the Powers had agreed tothe erection of Greece into a tributary principality. This attemptof Russia to secure the sole prestige of liberating Greece was,however, frustrated by the action of the other Powers in puttingforward the principle of the independence of the new Greekstate, with a further extension of frontiers.

The result of the war was to make Russia supreme at Constantinople;and before long an opportunity of further increasingher influence was created by Mehemet Ali, the ambitiouspasha of Egypt, who in November 1831 began a war with hissovereign in Syria, gained a series of victories over the Turkishforces in Asia Minor and threatened Constantinople. SultanMadmud II. after appealing in vain to Great Britain for activeassistance turned in despair to Russia. Nicholas immediatelysent his Black Sea fleet into the Bosphorus, landed on the Asiaticshore a force of 10,000 men, and advanced another large forcetowards the Turkish frontier in Bessarabia. Under pressure fromTreaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833.England and France the Egyptians retreated and theRussian forces were withdrawn, but the tsar hadmeanwhile (July 8, 1833) concluded with the sultan thetreaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, which constituted ostensiblya defensive and offensive alliance between the two Powers andestablished virtually a Russian protectorate over Turkey. Ina secret article of the treaty the sultan undertook in the eventof acasus foederis arising, and in consideration of being relievedof his obligations under the articles of the public treaty, toclose the Dardanelles to the warships of all nations “au besoin,”which meant in effect that in the event of Russia being threatenedwith an attack from the Mediterranean he would close theDardanelles against the invader. England and France protestedenergetically and the treaty remained a dead letter,but the question came up again in 1840, after Mahmud’s renewedattempt to crush Mehemet Ali had ended in the utter defeatof the Turks by Ibrahim at Nezib (June 24, 1839). This timeMehemet Ali was supported by the French government, whichaimed at establishing predominant influence in Egypt, but hewas successfully opposed by a coalition of Great Britain, Russia,Austria and Prussia, which checkmated the aggressive designsof France by the convention of London (July 15, 1840)(seeMehemet Ali andTurkey). In this way the developmentof Russian policy with regard to Turkey was checked for someyears, but the project of confirming and extending the Russianprotectorate over the Orthodox Christians was revived in 1852,The Holy Places.when Napoleon III. obtained for the Roman Catholicscertain privileges with regard to the Holy Places inPalestine. At the same time Austria intervened inMontenegrin affairs and induced the sultan to withdraw histroops from the principality. In these two incidents the tsarperceived a diminution of Russian prestige and influence inTurkey, and Prince Menshikov was sent on a special mission toConstantinople to obtain reparation in the form of a treatywhich should guarantee the rights of the Orthodox Churchwith regard to the Holy Places and confirm the protectorateof Russia over the Orthodox rayahs, established by the treatiesof Kainarji, Bucharest and Adrianople. The resistance ofthe sultan, supported by Great Britain and France, led to theThe Crimean War.Crimean War, which was terminated by the taking ofSevastopol (September 1855) and the treaty of Paris(March 30, 1856). By that important document Russiareluctantly consented to a strict limitation of her armaments inthe Black Sea, to withdrawal from the mouths of the Danubeby the retrocession of Bessarabia which she had annexed in1812, and finally to a renunciation of all special rights of interventionbetween the sultan and his Christian subjects. Nicholasdid not live to experience this humiliation. He had died atSt Petersburg on the 2nd of March 1855 and had been succeededby his eldest son, Alexander II.

The first decade of Alexander’s reign is commonly known inRussia as “the epoch of the great reforms,” and may be describedas a violent reaction against the political andintellectual stagnation of the preceding period. Therepressive system of Nicholas, in which all other publicinterests were sacrificed to that of making Russia a greatmilitary power, the guardian of order in Europe and the predominantfactor in the Eastern Question,Alexander II., 1855–81.had been tried andfound wanting. Ending in a military disaster and a diplomatichumiliation, it had failed to attain even the narrow object forwhich it had been created. This was clearly perceived andkeenly felt by the educated classes, and as soon as the stronghand of the uncompromising autocrat was withdrawn, theyclamoured loudly for radical changes in the aims and methodsof their rulers. Russia must adopt, it was said, those enlightenedprinciples and liberal institutions which made the Westernnations superior to her not only in the arts of peace but evenin the art of War; only by imitating her rivals could she hope toovertake and surpass them in the race of progress. On thatsubject there was wonderful unanimity, and the few personswho could not join in the chorus had the prudence to remainsilent. For the first time in the history of Russia public opinionin the modern sense became a power in the state and influencedstrongly the policy of the government. Though the youngemperor was of too phlegmatic a temperament to be carriedaway by the prevailing excitement and of too practical a turnof mind to adopt wholesale the doctrinaire theories of hisself-constituted, irresponsible advisers, he recognized that greatadministrative and economic changes were required, and after ashort period of hesitation he entered on a series of drastic reforms,of which the most important were the emancipation ofthe serfs, the thorough reorganization of the judicial administrationand the development of local self-government. All theseundertakings, in which the humane, liberal-minded autocratreceived the sympathy, support and co-operation of the moreenlightened of his subjects, were successfully accomplished. Theserfs were liberated entirely from the arbitrary rule of the landownersand became proprietors of the communal land; the oldtribunals which could be justly described as “dens of iniquityand incompetence,” were replaced by civil and criminal law-courtsof the French type, in which justice was dispensed bytrained jurists according to codified legislation, and from whichthe traditional bribery and corruption were rigidly excluded; andthe administration of local affairs—roads, schools, hospitals, &c.—wasentrusted to provincial and district councils freely elected byall classes of the population. In addition to these great and beneficentchanges, means were taken for developing more rapidly the ​vast natural resources of the country, public instruction receivedan unprecedented impetus, a considerable amount of liberty wasaccorded to the press, a strong spirit of liberalism pervadedrapidly all sections of the educated classes, a new imaginativeand critical literature dealing with economic, philosophical andpolitical questions sprang into existence, and for a time the younggeneration fondly imagined that Russia, awakening from her traditionallethargy, was about to overtake, and soon to surpass, on thepath of national progress, the older nations of western Europe.

These sanguine expectations were not fully realized. Theeconomic and moral condition of the peasantry was littleimproved by freedom, and in many districts there were signsof positive impoverishment and demoralization. The localself-government institutions after a short period of feverishand not always well-directed activity, showed symptoms oforganic exhaustion. The reformed tribunals, though incomparablybetter than their predecessors, did not give universalsatisfaction. In the imperial administration, the corruptionand long-established abuses which had momentarily vanished,began to reappear. Industrial enterprises did not always succeed.Education produced many unforeseen and undesirable practicalresults. The liberty of the press not unfrequently degeneratedinto licence, and sane liberalism was often replaced by socialisticdreaming. In short, it became only too evident that there wasno royal road to national prosperity, and that Russia, like othernations, must be content to advance slowly and laboriouslyalong the rough path of painful experience. In these circumstancessanguine enthusiasm naturally gave way to despondency,and the reforming zeal of the government was replaced by tendenciesof a decidedly reactionary kind. Partly from disappointmentand nervous exhaustion, and partly from a conviction thatthe country required rest in order to judge the practical resultsof the reforms already accomplished, the tsar refrained fromfurther initiating new legislation, and the government gave it tobe understood that the epoch of the great reforms was closed.

In the younger ranks of the educated classes this state ofthings produced keen dissatisfaction, which soon found ventin revolutionary agitation. At first the agitationwas of an academic character and was dealt with bythe press-censure; but it gradually took the form ofsecret associations, and the police had to interfere.There were no great, well-organizedRevolutionary propaganda.secret societies, but therewere many small groups, composed chiefly of male and femalestudents of the universities and technical schools, which workedindependently for a common purpose. Finding that the wallsof autocracy could not be overturned by blasts of revolutionarytrumpets in the periodical press and in clandestinely printedseditious proclamations, the young enthusiasts determined toseek the support of the masses, or, as they termed it, “to goin among the people” (idti v naròd). Under the disguise ofdoctors, midwives, school teachers, governesses, factory handsor common labourers, they sought to make proselytes amongthe peasantry and the workmen in the industrial centres byrevolutionary pamphlets and oral explanations. For a timethe propaganda had very little success, because the uneducatedpeasants and factory workers could not understand thephraseology and abstract principles of socialism; but when thepropagandists descended to a lower platform and spread rumoursthat the tsar had given all the land to the peasants, and wasprevented by the proprietors and officials from carrying outhis benevolent intentions, there was a serious danger of agrariandisorders, and energetic measures were adopted by the authorities.Wholesale arrests were made by the police, and manyof the accused were imprisoned or exiled to distant provinces,some by the regular tribunals, and others by so-called “administrativeprocedure” without a formal trial. The activity ofthe police and the sufferings of the victims naturally producedintense excitement and bitterness among those who escapedarrest, and a secret organization calling itself the ExecutiveCommittee announced in its clandestinely printed organs thatthe functionaries who distinguished themselves in the suppressionof the propaganda would be “removed.” A numberof prominent officials were accordingly condemned to deathby this secret terrorist tribunal, and in some cases the sentenceswere carried out. General Mezentsov, the head of the politicalpolice, was assassinated in broad daylight in one of the principalstreets of St Petersburg, and in the provinces a good manyofficials of various grades shared the same fate. As these actsof terrorism had quite the opposite of the desired effect, repeatedattempts were made on the life of the emperor, and atlast the carefully laid plans of the conspirators were successful.On the 13th of March 1881, when returning from a militaryparade to the Winter Palace, Alexander II. was terribly woundedby the explosion of a bomb, and died shortly afterwards. (Fordetails of this revolutionary movement, seeNihilism.)

In respect of foreign policy the reign of Alexander II. differedwidely from that of Nicholas. The Eastern Colossus no longerinspired respect and fear in Europe. Until the countryhad completely recovered from the exhaustion of theCrimean War the government remained in the backgroundof European politics. Its attitude was graphicallydescribed in the famous declarationForeign policy.of Prince Gorchakov:“La Russie ne boude pas; elle se recueille.” On one point,however, this description was not accurate; Russia sulkedso far as Austria was concerned, for she could not forget thatthe emperor Francis Joseph, by his wavering and unfriendlyconduct towards her during the Crimean War, had ill repaid herassistance to the Habsburg Monarchy in 1849, and had fulfilledthe cynical prediction of Prince Schwarzenberg that his countrywould astonish the world by her ingratitude. It was notwithout secret satisfaction, therefore, that Prince Gorchakovwatched the repeated defeats of the Austrian army in theItalian campaign of 1859, and he felt inclined to respond to theadvances made to him by Napoleon III.; but the germs of aRusso-French alliance, which had come into existence immediatelyafter the Crimean War, ripened very slowly, and they werecompletely destroyed in 1863 when the French emperor woundedRussian sensibilities deeply by giving moral and diplomaticsupport to the Polish insurrection. On that occasion Bismarckhelped Gorchakov to ward off the threatened intervention ofFrance and England, and he thereby founded the cordialrelations which subsisted between the cabinets of Berlin andSt Petersburg down to 1878, and which contributed powerfullyto the creation of the German empire by defending the Prussiancabinet against the jealousy and enmity of Austria and France.In return for these services Bismarck helped Russia to recovera portion of what she had lost by the Crimean War, for it wasthanks to his connivance and diplomatic support that she wasable in 1871 to denounce with impunity the clauses of thetreaty of Paris which limited Russian armament in the BlackSea. Had the tsar been satisfied with this important success,which enabled him to rebuild Sevastopol and construct a BlackSea fleet, his reign might have been a peaceful and prosperousRusso-Turkish War of 1877–78.one, but he tried to recover the remainder of whathad been lost by the Crimean War, the province ofBessarabia and predominant influence in Turkey.To effect this, he embarked on the Turkish War of1877–78, which ended in disappointment. Though the campaignenabled him to recover Bessarabia at the expense of hisRumanian ally, it did not increase Russian prestige in the East,because the Russian army was repeatedly repulsed by theTurks, and when at last it reached Constantinople, it was preventedfrom entering the city by the threatening attitude ofEngland and Austria. In the field of diplomacy there was likewisedisappointment. The concessions extorted from the Portein the preliminary treaty of San Stefano (March 3, 1878) wererevived and considerably modified in favour of Turkey by thecongress of Berlin (June 13–July 13, 1878); seeEurope:history.

Much greater success attended the efforts of Russian diplomacyand Russian arms in Asia. By the treaty of Aigun (May 28,1858), and without any military operations, thecession of a great part of the basin of the Amur wasobtained from China. Six years later began therapid expansion of Russia in Central Asia, and at the endRussian expansion
in Asia. ​of Alexander II.’s reign her domination had been firmlyestablished throughout nearly the whole of the vast expanseof territory lying between Siberia on the north and Persia andAfghanistan on the south, and stretching without interruptionfrom the eastern coast of the Caspian to the Chinese frontier.The greater part of the territory was formally incorporatedinto the empire, and the petty potentates, such as the khan ofKhiva and the amir of Bokhara, who were allowed to retaina semblance of their former sovereignty, became obsequiousvassals of the White Tsar.

The assassination of Alexander II. by the terrorists made aprofound impression on his son and successor, and determinedthe general character of his rule. Alexander III.(1881–94), who had never sympathized with liberalismin any form, entered frankly on a reactionary policy,which was pursued consistently during the whole of hisreign. He could not, of course, undo the great reforms ofhis predecessor, but he amendedAlexander III., 1881–94.

Reaction under Alexander III.them in such a wayas to counteract what he considered the exaggerationsof liberalism. Local self-government in the villagecommunes, the rural districts and the towns wascarefully restricted, and placed to a greater extent under thecontrol of the regular officials. The reformers of the previousreign had endeavoured to make the emancipated peasantryadministratively and economically independent of the landedproprietors; the conservatives of this later era, proceedingon the assumption that the peasants did not know how tomake a proper use of the liberty prematurely conferred uponthem, endeavoured to re-establish the influence of the landedproprietors by appointing from amongst them “land-chiefs,”who were to exercise over the peasants of their district a certainamount of patriarchal jurisdiction. The reformers of theprevious reign had sought to make the new local administration(zemstvo) a system of genuine rural self-government and a basisfor future parliamentary institutions; these later conservativestransformed it into a mere branch of the ordinary state administration,and took precautions against its ever assuming apolitical character. Even municipal institutions, which hadnever shown much vitality, were subjected to similar restrictions.In short, the various forms of local self-government, which wereintended to raise the nation gradually to the higher politicallevel of western Europe, were condemned as unsuited to thenational character and traditions, and as productive of disorderand demoralization. They were accordingly replaced, in greatmeasure by the old autocratic methods of administration, andmuch of the administrative corruption which had been cured,or at least repressed, by the reform enthusiasm again flourishedluxuriantly.

In a small but influential section of the educated classes therewas a conviction that the revolutionary tendencies, whichculminated in Nihilism and Anarchism, proceeded from theadoption of cosmopolitan rather than national principles in allspheres of educational and administrative activity, and thatthe best remedy for the evils from which the country wassuffering was to be found in a return to the three great principlesof Nationality, Orthodoxy and Autocracy. This doctrine, whichhad been invented by the Slavophils of a previous generation,was early instilled into the mind of Alexander III. byPobêdonostsev(q.v.), who was one of his teachers, and later his mosttrusted adviser, and its influence can be traced in all the moreimportant acts of the government during that monarch’s reign.His determination to maintain autocracy was officially proclaimeda few days after his accession. Nationality andEastern Orthodoxy, which are so closely connected as to bealmost blended together in the Russian mind, received not lessattention. Even in European Russia the regions near thefrontier contain a great variety of nationalities, languagesand religions. In Finland the population is composed ofFinnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking Protestants; theBaltic provinces are inhabited by German-speaking, Lett-speakingand Esth-speaking Lutherans; the inhabitants ofthe south-western provinces are chiefly Polish-speaking RomanCatholics and Yiddish-speaking Jews; in the Crimea and onthe Middle Volga there are a considerable number of Tatar-speakingMahommedans; and in the Caucasus there is aconglomeration of races and languages such as is to be foundon no other portion of the earth’s surface. Until recent timesthese various nationalities were allowed to retain unmolestedthe language, religion and peculiar local administration oftheir ancestors; but when the new nationality doctrine cameinto fashion, attempts were made to spread among them thelanguage, religion and administrative institutions of thedominant race. In the reigns of Nicholas I. and Alexander II.these attempts were merely occasional and intermittent;under Alexander III. they were made systematically andwith very little consideration for the feelings, wishes andinterests of the people concerned. The local institutionswere assimilated to those of the purely Russian provinces;the use of the Russian language was made obligatory in theadministration, in the tribunals and to some extent in theschools; the spread of Eastern Orthodoxy was encouraged bythe authorities, whilst the other confessions were placed undersevere restrictions; foreigners were prohibited from possessinglanded property; and in some provinces administrative measureswere taken for making the land pass into the hands of OrthodoxRussians. In this process some of the local officials displayedprobably an amount of zeal beyond the intentions of the government,but any attempt to oppose the movement was rigorouslypunished. Of all the various races the Jews were the mostseverely treated. The great majority of them had long beenconfined to the western and south-western provinces. In therest of the country they had not been allowed to reside in thevillages, because their habits of keeping vodka-shops andlending money at usurious interest were found to demoralizethe peasantry, and even in the towns their numbers and occupationshad been restricted by the authorities. But, partly fromthe usual laxity of the administration and partly from thereadiness of the Jews to conciliate the needy officials, the ruleshad been by no means strictly applied. As soon as this factbecame known to Alexander III. he ordered the rules to bestrictly carried out, without considering what an enormousamount of hardship and suffering such an order entailed. Healso caused new rules to be enacted by which his Jewish subjectswere heavily handicapped in education and professionaladvancement. In short, complete Russification of all non-Russianpopulations and institutions was the chief aim of thegovernment in home affairs.

In the foreign policy of the empire Alexander III. likewiseintroduced considerable changes. During his father’s reignits main objects were: in the west, the maintenanceof the alliance with Germany; in south-eastern Europe,the recovery of what had been lost by the Crimean War,the gradual weakening of the Sultan’s authority, and theincrease of Russian influence amongForeign policy. the minor Slav nationalities;in Asia, the gradual but cautious expansion ofRussian domination. In the reign of Alexander III. the firstof these objects was abandoned. Already, before his accession,the bonds of friendship which united Russia to Germany hadbeen weakened by the action of Bismarck in giving to the cabinetof St Petersburg at the Berlin congress less diplomatic supportthan was expected, and by the Austro-German treaty of alliance(October 1879), concluded avowedly for the purpose of opposingRussian aggression; but the old relations were partly re-establishedby secret negotiations in 1880, by a meeting of theyoung tsar and the old emperor at Danzig in 1881, and by themeeting of the three emperors at Skierniewice in 1884, by whichthe Three Emperors’ League was reconstituted for a term ofthree years (seeEurope:History). Gradually, however, agreat change took place in the tsar’s views with regard to theGerman alliance. He suspected Bismarck of harbouring hostiledesigns against Russia, and he came to recognize that thepermanent weakening of France was not in accordance withRussian political interests. He determined, therefore, tooppose any further disturbance of the balance of power in favour ​of Germany, and when the treaty of Skierniewice expired in1887 he declined to renew it. From that time Russia gravitatedslowly towards an alliance with France, and sought to createa counterpoise against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austriaand Italy. The tsar was reluctant to bind himself by a formaltreaty, because the French government did not offer the requisiteguarantees of stability, and because he feared that itmight be induced, by the prospect of Russian support, to assumean aggressive attitude towards Germany. He recognized,however, that in the event of a great European war the twonations would in all probability be found fighting on the sameside, and that if they made no preparations for concerted militaryaction they would be placed at a grave disadvantage in comparisonwith their opponents of the Triple Alliance, who werebelieved to have already worked out an elaborate plan ofcampaign. In view of this contingency the Russian and Frenchmilitary authorities studied the military questions in common,and the result of their labours was the preparation of a militaryconvention, which was finally ratified in 1894. During thisperiod the relations between the two governments and thetwo countries became much more cordial. In the summer of1891 the visit to Kronstadt of a French squadron under AdmiralGervais was made the occasion for an enthusiastic demonstrationin favour of a Franco-Russian alliance; and two years later(October 1893) a still more enthusiastic reception was given tothe Russian Admiral Avelan and his officers when they visitedToulon and Paris. But it was not till after the death of Alexander III.that the word “alliance” was used publicly byofficial personages. In 1895 the term was first publicly employedby M. Ribot, then president of the council, in the Chamberof Deputies, but the expressions he used were so vague that theydid not entirely remove the prevailing doubts as to the existenceof a formal treaty. Two years later (August 1897), duringthe official visit of M. Félix Faure to St Petersburg, a littlemore light was thrown on the subject. In the complimentaryspeeches delivered by the president of the French Republic andthe tsar, France and Russia were referred to as allies, and theterm “nations alliées” was afterwards repeatedly used onoccasions of a similar kind.

In south-eastern Europe Alexander III. adopted an attitudeof reserve and expectancy. He greatly increased and strengthenedhis Black Sea fleet, so as to be ready for any emergencythat might arise, and in June 1886, contrary to the declarationmade in the Treaty of Berlin (Art. 59), he ordered Batum to betransformed into a fortified naval port, but in the Balkan Peninsulahe persistently refrained, under a good deal of provocation,from any intervention that might lead to a Europeanwar. The Bulgarian government, first under Prince Alexanderand afterwards under the direction of M. Stamboloff, pursuedsystematically an anti-Russian policy, but the cabinet of St Petersburgconfined itself officially to breaking off diplomaticrelations and making diplomatic protests, and unofficially togiving tacit encouragement to revolutionary agitation.

In Asia, during the reign of Alexander III. the expansion ofRussian domination made considerable progress. A few weeksafter his accession he sanctioned the annexation of the territoryof the Tekke Turkomans, which had been conquered by GeneralSkobelev, and in 1884 he formally annexed the Merv oasis withoutmilitary operations. He then allowed the military authoritiesto push forward in the direction of Afghanistan, until in March1885 an engagement took place between Russian and Afghanforces at Panjdeh. Thereupon the British government, whichhad been for some time carrying on negotiations with thecabinet of St Petersburg for a delimitation of the Russo-Afghanfrontier, intervened energetically and prepared for war; but acompromise was effected, and after more than two years ofnegotiation a delimitation convention was signed at St Petersburgon 20th July 1887. The forward movement of Russiawas thus stopped in the direction of Herat, but it continuedwith great activity farther east in the region of the Pamirs,until another Anglo-Russian convention was signed in 1895.During the whole reign of Alexander III. the increase ofterritoryin Central Asia is calculated by Russian authorities at429,895 square kilometres.

On 1st November 1894 Alexander III. died, and was succeededby his son, Nicholas II., who, partly from similarity of characterand partly from veneration for his father’s memory,continued the existing lines of policy in home andforeign affairs. The expectation entertained in manyquarters that great legislative changes would at oncebe made in a liberal sense wasDeath of Alexander III.; accession of Nicholas II.not realized. Whenan influential deputation from the province of Tver,which had long enjoyed a reputation for liberalism, ventured tohint in a loyal address that the time had come for changesin the existing autocratic régime, they received a replywhich showed that the emperor had no intention of makingany such changes. Private suggestions in the same sense,offered directly and respectfully, were no better received, andno important changes were made in the legislation of the precedingreign. But a great alteration took place noiselessly inthe manner of carrying out the laws and ministerial circulars.Though resembling his father in the main points of his character,the young tsar was of a more humane disposition, and he wasmuch less of a doctrinaire. With his father’s aspiration ofmaking Holy Russia a homogeneous empire he thoroughlysympathized in principle, but he disliked the systematic persecutionof Jews, heretics and schismatics to which it gave rise,and he let it be understood, without any formal order or proclamation,that the severe measures hitherto employed wouldnot meet with his approval. The officials were not slow to takethe hint, and their undue zeal at once disappeared. Nicholas II.showed, however, that his father’s policy of Russification wasneither to be reversed nor to be abandoned. When an influentialdeputation was sent from Finland to St Petersburg torepresent to him respectfully that the officials were infringingthe local rights and privileges solemnly accorded at the time ofthe annexation, it was refused an audience, and the leaders ofthe movement were informed indirectly that local interestsmust be subordinated to the general welfare of the empire. Inaccordance with this declaration, the policy of Russification inFinland was steadily maintained, and caused much disappointment,not only to the Finlanders, but also to the other nationalitieswho desired the preservation of their ancient rights.

In foreign affairs Nicholas II. likewise continued the policyof his predecessor, with certain modifications suggested by thechange of circumstances. He strengthened the cordial understandingwith France by a formal agreement, the terms of whichwere not divulged, but he never encouraged the French governmentin any aggressive designs, and he maintained friendlyrelations with Germany. In the Balkan Peninsula a slightchange of attitude took place. Alexander III., indignant atwhat he considered the ingratitude of the Slav nationalities,remained coldly aloof, as far as possible, from all interventionin their affairs. About three months after his death, de Giers,who thoroughly approved of this attitude, died (26th January1895), and his successor, Prince Lobanov, minister of foreignaffairs from 19th March 1895 to 30th August 1896, endeavouredto recover what he considered Russia’s legitimate influencein the Slav world. For this purpose Russian diplomacy becamemore active in south-eastern Europe. The result was perceivedfirst in Montenegro and Servia, and then in Bulgaria. PrinceFerdinand of Bulgaria had long been anxious to legalize hisposition by a reconciliation, and as soon as he got rid of Stamboloffhe made advances to the Russian government. Theywere well received, and a reconciliation was effected on certainconditions, the first of which was that Prince Ferdinand’s eldestson and heir should become a member of the Eastern OrthodoxChurch. As another means of opposing Western influence insouth-eastern Europe, Prince Lobanov inclined to the policy ofprotecting rather than weakening the Ottoman empire. Whenthe British government seemed disposed to use coercive measuresfor the protection of the Armenians, he gave it clearly tobe understood that any such proceeding would be opposed byRussia. After Prince Lobanov’s death and the appointment ​of Count Muraviev as his successor in January 1897, thistendency of Russian policy became less marked. In April 1897,it is true, when the Greeks provoked a war with Turkey, theyreceived no support from St Petersburg, but at the close of thewar the tsar showed himself more friendly to them; and afterwards,when it proved extremely difficult to find a suitableperson as governor-general of Crete (seeCrete), he recommendedthe appointment of his cousin, Prince George of Greece—aselection which was pretty sure to accelerate the union ofthe island with the Hellenic kingdom. How far the recommendationwas due to personal feeling, as opposed to politicalconsiderations, it is impossible to say.

In Asia, after the accession of Nicholas II., the expansionof Russia, following the line of least resistance and stimulatedby the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway,took the direction of northern China and the effetelittle kingdom of Korea. A great part of the easternsection of the railway was constructed on Chineseterritory, and elaborate preparationsRussia and Japan in the Far East.were made for bringingManchuria within the sphere of Russian influence. Withthis view, the cabinet of St Petersburg, at the close of theChino-Japanese War in 1895, objected to all annexations byJapan in that quarter, and insisted on having the treaty ofShimonoseki modified accordingly. Subsequently, by obtainingfrom the Tsungli-Yaman a long lease of Port Arthurand Talienwan and a concession to unite those ports withthe Trans-Siberian by a branch line, she tightened her holdon that portion of the Chinese empire and prepared to completethe work of aggression by so-called “spontaneous infiltration.”From Manchuria, it was assumed, the political influence andspontaneous infiltration would naturally spread to Korea, andon the deeply indented coast of the Hermit Kingdom mightbe constructed new ports and arsenals more spacious andstrategically more important than Port Arthur.

This grandiose project was unexpectedly destroyed by theenergetic resistance of Japan, who had ear-marked the HermitKingdom for herself, and who declared plainly that she wouldnever tolerate the exclusive influence of Russia in Manchuria.In vain the Russian diplomatists sought to overcome heropposition by dilatory negotiations, in the firm convictionthat a small island kingdom in the Pacific would never havethe audacity to attack a power which had conquered andabsorbed the whole of Northern Asia. Their calculations provederroneous. Convinced that the onward march of the Colossuscould not be permanently arrested by mere diplomatic conventions,the cabinet of Tokio suddenly broke off diplomaticrelations and commenced hostilities (February 8, 1904). ForRussia the war proved a series of uninterrupted reverses bothon land and on sea, until it was terminated by the treaty ofPortsmouth in October 1905 (seeRusso-Japanese War).

What contributed powerfully to the conclusion of peacewas the fact that the Russian government was hampered byinternal troubles. The old Liberal movement and theterrorist organizations which had been suppressed byAlexander III. were being resuscitated, and the liberaland revolutionary leaders, taking advantage of theunpopularity of the war, were agitating for the convocationof a Constituent Assembly, which should replace the hatedbureaucratic régime by democratic institutions. With greatreluctance the tsar consented to convoke a consultative chamberof deputies as a sop to public opinion, but that concessionstimulated rather than calmed public opinion, andshortly after the conclusion of peace the Liberals and theRevolutionaries, combining their forces, brought about ageneral strike in St Petersburg together with the stoppage ofrailway communication all over the empire. Panic-strickenfor a moment, the government issued a manifesto proclaimingLiberal principles and promising in vague language all mannerof political reforms (October 30, 1905), and when the inordinateexpectations created by this extraordinary document were notat once realized, preparations were made for overthrowingthe existing régime by means of an armed insurrection. Manybelieved that the end of autocracy had come, and an extemporizedCouncil of Labour Deputies, anxious to play the partof aComité de Salut Public, was ready to take over the supremepower and exercise it in the interests of the proletariat. Inreality the revolutionary movement was not so strong andthe government not so weak as was generally supposed.Mutinies occurred, it is true, during the next few weeks inKronstadt and Sevastopol, and in December there was street-fightingfor several days in Moscow, but such serious disorderswere speedily suppressed, and thereafter the revolutionarymanifestations were confined to mass meetings, processionswith red flags, attempts on the lives of officials and policemen,robberies under arms and agrarian disturbances.

Notwithstanding the unsatisfactory results of the Octobermanifesto the tsar kept his promise of convoking a legislativeassembly, and on the 10th of May 1906 the first Duma wasopened by his majesty in person; but it was so systematicallyand violently hostile to the government and so determinedto obtain executive, in addition to its legislative, functions,that it was dissolved on the 23rd of July without any legislativework being accomplished. The second Duma, which met onthe 5th of March 1907, avoided some of the mistakes. of itspredecessor, but as a legislative assembly it showed itselfequally incompetent, and a large section of its members wereimplicated in a well-organized attempt to spread sedition inthe army by revolutionary propaganda. It was dissolved,therefore, on the 16th of June 1907, and the electoral lawwhich had given such unsatisfactory results was modified byimperial ukase.

The third Duma was subsequently convoked for the 14th ofNovember 1907. (D. M. W.) 

Development of the Russian Constitution.—At the end of 1910the Russian revolution, which seemed at one time to promisean overturn as complete as that of theancien régime in France,would seem to have entered on a path of orderly and conservativedevelopment, and it is possible, now that the smoke of combathas cleared away, to form some estimate of the forces throughthe interplay of which this result has been achieved. At theoutset the superficial resemblance between the revolutionaryThe Russian revolution.movement in Russia and that of 1789 in France wasstriking: there was the same breakdown of the Russiantraditional machinery of government, the same generaloutcry for control by a representative national assembly,the same gradual and reluctant concessions wrung from thecrown under pressure of disaffection in the army, popularémeutes, the assassination of unpopular officials, and the burningof country houses by organized bands of peasants. Similar, too,was the revelation, when freedom of speech was at last allowed,of the unhappy effect of the long divorce of the intellect of thecountry from any experience of practical politics. But here theanalogy breaks down. France in 1789, though its ancient provincialboundaries survived, had long since been welded intoa nation conscious of its common interests; Russia remains avast empire, composed of the most heterogeneous, sometimeseven mutually hostile, elements, whose antagonisms were boundto be an element of weakness in any assembly truly representativeof all sections of the people. In France the Revolution hadbeen the work of the middle classes; in Russia an indigenousmiddle class has, comparatively speaking, no existence, thepeasants forming the overwhelming majority of the population.^[48]The supreme peril to the autocracy in Russia lay in the genuinegrievances of the peasants, less political than economic, whichhad opened their minds to revolutionary propaganda. Thesegrievances once removed, and their legitimate land-hungersatisfied, the peasants would become a bulwark of the establishedorder, whatever that might be, as had happened in similarcircumstances in Austria in 1849. As for the revolutionary“intellectuals,” without the lever of agrarian discontent they ​were practically powerless, the more so as their political activityconsisted mainly in “building theories for an imaginary world.”Thebourgeois revolutionists of France had all beenphilosophes,but their philosophy had at least paid lip-service to “reason”;the Russian revolutionists who formed the majority of the firstand second Dumas, as though inspired by the exalted nonsensepreached by Tolstoi,^[49] subordinated reason to sentiment, until—theirimpracticable temper having been advertised to all theworld—it became easy for the government to treat them as amere excrescence on the national life, a malignant growth to beremoved by a necessary operation. In 1909 the number ofexiles for political reasons from Russia was reckoned at 180,000;but the third Duma, purged and packed by an ingenious franchisesystem, was in its third year passing measures of beneficentlegislation, in complete harmony with the government. It isproposed to trace briefly the steps by which this result wasobtained.

In order to explain the course of the revolution which came to ahead in 1905 it is necessary to say a few words about constitutionalplans and liberal experiments, initiated fromabove, which had preceded it. Of the ancientzemskisobor (assembly of the country) it is unnecessary here tosay much, though Nicholas II. was pressed by the more reactionaryelements to model his parliamentPrevious reforms.on this rough equivalent ofthe Western states-general. Thezemski sobor, which had playeda considerable part in the struggle of the tsars against the greatboyars in the 17th century, had met but once since the days ofPeter the Great.^[50] The origin of the present constitution ofRussia must be sought, not in this ancient and obsolete institution,but in the artificial constitution elaborated byMikhailSperanski (q.v.) in 1809 at the instance of the emperor Alexander I.Of Speranski’s plan only the establishment of the ImperialCouncil (January 1st, 1810) was realized in his lifetime.^[51] In1864, however, the emperor Alexander II. carried the schemea step further by the creation of elected provincial assemblies(zemstvos), to which in 1870 elected municipal councils (dumas)were added. The opportunity thus given for debate naturallystimulated the movement in favour of constitutional government,which received new impulses from the sympathetic attitudeof the emperor Alexander II., his grant in 1879 of a constitutionto the liberated principality of Bulgaria, and the multiplicationof Nihilist outrages which pointed to the necessity of conciliatingLiberal opinion in order to present a united front against revolutionaryagitation. In January 1881 Count Loris-Melikov,minister of the interior, proposed to convene a “general commission”to examine legislative proposals before these were laidbefore the Imperial Council; this commission was to consist ofmembers elected by thezemstvos and the larger towns, andothers nominated in the provinces having nozemstvos. Theplan was approved by Alexander II. on the very morning ofhis assassination (February 17th, 1881), but it was never promulgated.The new tsar, Alexander III., was an apt pupil of histutorPobedonostsev (q.v.), the celebrated procurator of theReaction under Alexander III.Holy Synod, for whom the representative system was“a modern lie,” and his reign covered a period of frankreaction, during which there was not only no question ofgranting any fresh liberties but those already conceded(e.g. the principle of the separation of the administrative andjudicial functions) were largely curtailed. The result of thispolicy of repression, associated as it was with gross incompetenceand corruption in the organs of the administration,was the rapid spread of the revolutionary movement, whichgradually permeated the intelligent classes and ultimatelyaffected even the stolid and apparently immovable masses ofthe peasantry.

The movement came to a head, as a result of the disastersof the war with Japan, in 1904. The assassination of theminister of the interior Plehve, on the 14th of July,by the revolutionist Sazonov was remarkable as asymptom mainly owing to the widespread sympathyof the European press of all shades of opinion withthe motives of the assassin.Influence of the Japanese War.

Meeting of zemstvos.It was clear that the system withwhich the murdered minister’s name had been associated stoodall but universally condemned, and in the appointment ofthe conciliatory Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski as his successorthe tsar himself seemed to concede the necessity for a changeof policy.^[52] In November, with the tacit consent ofthe police, a private assembly of eminent memberslocalzemstvos and municipaldumas was heldin St Petersburg to discuss the situation. The majority ofthis decided to approach the crown with a suggestion fora reform of the Russian system on the basis of a nationalrepresentative assembly, an extension of local self-government,and wider guarantees for individual liberty. The day onwhich the deputation laid these views before Prince Mirskiwas hailed by public opinion as recalling the 5th of May 1789,the date of the meeting of the French states-general atVersailles. The emperor, however, whatever his own views,was surrounded by reactionary influences, of which the mostpowerful were the empress-mother, Pobedonostsev the procuratorof the Holy Synod, Count Muraviev and the Grand-dukeSergius. The imperialukaz of the 12th of Decemberenunciating reforms affecting the peasants, workmen andlocalzemstvos failed to satisfy public opinion; for there wasno word in it of constitutional government. Petitions continuedto flow in to the emperor’s cabinet, praying for a nationalrepresentation, from thezemstvos, from the noblesand from the professional classes, and their moralwas enforced by general agitation, by partial strikes,and by outrages which culminated at Moscow in themurder of the Grand-duke Sergius (February 4th, 1905). InAgitation
and
outrages.the imperial counsels the resisting forces still seemed to havethe upper hand. Prince Mirski resigned, his resignation beingimmediately followed by a reactionary imperial manifestoreaffirming the principle of autocracy (February 18th).Bulygin, Mirski’s successor, had no knowledge of this untilafter its publication; he hastened to the tsar and obtainedthe issue on the same day of a rescript which, while reservingthe “fundamental laws of the empire” inviolate, stated theemperor’s intention of summoning the representatives of thepeople to aid in “the preparation and examination of legislativeproposals.” A commission of inquiry, under the emperor’spresidency, was now established to elaborate the means forcarrying this promise into effect. On the 6th of June, in replyto a deputation of the second congress ofzemstvos headed byPrince Trubetzkoi, the emperor promised the speedy convocationof a National Assembly. When, however, on the 6th ofAugust, the new law was promulgated, it was found that the“Imperial Duma”^[53] was to be no more than a consultativebody, charged with the examination of legislative proposalsbefore these came before the Imperial Council, the dutyand right of passing them into law being still reserved for theautocrat alone. The members of the Duma, moreover, wereplaced at the mercy of the government by a clause empoweringthe Directing Senate to suspend or deprive them. Thepromulgation of this truncated constitution was greeted by afurious agitation, culminating in September in a general strike,rightly described as the most remarkable political phenomenonof modern times. For days the whole mechanism ofcivilized existence in Russia was at a standstill, all intercourse ​Constitutional mandate of October 17/30, 1905.with the outside world cut off; until at last the governmentwas forced to yield, and on the 17/30th ofOctober 1905 the tsar issued the famous manifestomanifesto promising to Russia a constitution based on themain principles of modern Liberalism: nationalrepresentation, freedom of conscience and opinion,guarantees for individual liberty.

The enormous programme of constitutional reform foreshadowedin the manifesto had to be elaborated in haste byCount Witte, the minister of the interior, under circumstancesby no means promising. The organs of government seemedparalysed by the repudiation of the principle on which theirauthority was based, and the empire to be in danger of fallinginto complete anarchy. The revolutionary terrorists tookadvantage of the situation to multiply outrages; popularagitation was fomented by a multitude of new journals preachingevery kind of extravagant doctrine, now that the censor noThe “Union of the Russian People.”longer dared to act; in December the troubleculminated in a formidable rising in Moscow. Therevolutionary terrorists were countered by theterrorists of the reaction who, under the name of“the Union of the Russian People,” began anorganized extermination of the elements supposed to behostile to the traditional regime. The “black band” (chernayasotnia), or “black hundreds,” as they were branded by publicopinion, directed their attacks especially against the Jews,andpogroms,^[54]i.e. organized wholesale robbery and murderof Jews, occurred in many places, it was believed with theconnivance of the police and veiled approval in exaltedquarters.

Meanwhile the political parties which were to divide thenew Duma had taken shape. Apart from the extremists onone side or the other, frank reactionaries on theRight and Socialists on the Left, two main divisionsof opinion revealed themselves in the congresses ofthezemstvos that met at Moscow in September andNovember. In the former thereDevelopment of political parties.had been a fusion between theRadicals, supporters of the autonomy of Poland and a federalconstitution for the empire, and the Independence party(Osvobozhdenya) formed by political exiles at Paris in 1903,the fusion taking the name of Constitutional Democrats, known(from a word-play on the initials K.D.) as “Cadets.” Themore moderate elements found a rallying cry in the manifestoof October, took the name of “the Party of 17 October,” andbecame known as “Octobrists” In thezemstvo congress ofNovember the “Cadets” protested against the “grant” ofa constitution already elaborated, and demanded the convocationof a Constituent Assembly. The Octobrists, on theother hand, supported Count Witte’s moderate programme,the most important provisions of which were the extension(11 December 1905) of the suffrage under the stillborn constitutionof August, and (20 February 1906) the reorganizationof the Duma as the Lower House, and of the Imperial Council(half of which was to be elective) as the Upper House^[55] in thenew parliament.

The elections were held in March 1906, and on the 27th ofApril the emperor Nicholas II. solemnly opened the first Dumaof the Empire. The “Cadets” commanded an overwhelming majority in the Lower House, and theirintractable temper and ignorance of affairs became atonce apparent. The address in reply to the speech from thethrone, voted after a debate in which abstract theories hadtriumphed over common sense,The first Duma.demanded universal suffrage,the establishment of pure parliamentary government, theabolition of capital punishment, the expropriation of the landlords,a political amnesty, and the suppression of the ImperialCouncil. When the minister of the interior, M. Goremykin,who had succeeded Witte at the head of the government, metthese preposterous demands with a flat refusal, the House voted,on the motion of M. Kuzmin-Karaviev, for an appeal to thepeople (July 4).^[56] Four days later the government dissolved theDuma, M. Goremykin at the same time being replaced by M. Stolypin.The “Cadets” refused to accept this action and, inimitation of the famous meeting in the tennis-court at Versailles,The Vyborg manifesto.adjourned to Vyborg in Finland, where, under the ex-presidentof the Duma, M. Muromtsov, they drew upand issued a manifesto calling on the Russian peopleto refuse taxes and military service. Its sole result,apart from the punishment which afterwards fell on its authors,^[57]was to show how little the majority of the dissolved Duma hadrepresented the Russian people. Isolated mutinies in the armyfollowed, and terrorist outrages here and there—notably, inAugust, the dastardly bomb outrage in the Isle of Apothecariesat St Petersburg, which seriously injured one of M. Stolypin’slittle daughters; but the mass of the nation and of the armyremained wholly unmoved, while the repetition of troubles wasmade more difficult by the establishment of field courts martialwith summary powers.

The second Duma met on the 6th of March 1907. M. Stolypinhad not ventured to alter the electoral law without parliamentaryconsent, but with the aid of a complaisant Senate theprovisions of the existing law were interpreted in restrictivesense for the purpose of influencing the elections. Theresult was, however, hardly more satisfactory to the government.The “Cadets,” it is true, lost manyThe second Duma.seats both to the Socialistsand to the extreme Right, but they held the balance of the House,of which the Octobrists and the Right together only constitutedone-fifth, and their leader, M. Golovin, was elected president ofthe House. The temper of the second Duma, was, indeed, evenmore democratic than that of the first; but M. Stolypin did hisbest to work in harmony with it, realizing that under theexisting law another dissolution could but lead to a like result,and shrinking from the only alternative—an alteration of the lawby acoup d’état, a course which could only be justified on the pleaof extreme necessity. On the 19th of March he laid before theHouse his programme of reforms, which included the emancipationof the peasants from the control of the communes and thehanding over to them of the crown lands and imperial estates.The majority, however, refused to be reconciled. The abolitionof the field courts martial was demanded; on the 13th of Aprila bill for the expropriation of landlords was carried by a two-thirdsmajority,^[58] and the 30th the Army Bill would have beenlost but for the Polish vote. The crisis came with the discoveryof a treasonable plot for the subornation of the army, in whichmany Socialist members of the Duma were involved. On the14th of June Stolypin’s proposal for the arrest of 16 members andthe indictment of 55 was shelved by being referred to a committee.Alteration by ukaz of the electoral law.The excuse for which the government had been waitingwas thus provided, and two days later the Duma wasdissolved. An imperialukaz fixed the new elections of thefor the 14th of September, and the meeting of thethird Duma for the 14th of November; at the sametime, in violation of the October manifesto, the electoral lawwas altered, so as to secure a representation at once moreRussian and more conservative. The non-Russian frontierprovinces (okrainas) had even before been under-represented(one member for every 350,000 inhabitants, as against one forevery 250,000 in the central provinces); the members returned byPoland, the Caucasus and Siberia were now reduced from 89 to39, those from the Central Asian steppes (25) were swept awayaltogether; the total number of deputies was reduced from 524to 442. Even more drastic were the changes in the electoralmachinery, by far the most complicated in Europe, establishedby the law of 1905.^[59] This was based on the principle of indirect ​election, through a series of electoral colleges. It was a simplematter to manipulate these so as to throw the effective powerinto the hands of the propertied classes without ostensiblyThe third Duma.depriving any one of the vote.^[60] The result was thatin the third Duma, which met on the 15th of November1907, the conservative Right preponderated as muchas the Left had done in its two predecessors. Its president,M. Khomiakov, had been one of the founders of the “Unionof 17 October,” but even the Octobrists formed but a third ofthe House and were compelled to act with the reactionariesof the Right; and the vice-president, Prince Volkonsky, was amember of the Union of the Russian People.

On the whole, the new Duma was fairly representative of thechanged temper of the Russian people, disillusioned and wearyof anarchy. The government had done wisely in obscuringthe passion for democratic ideals by an appeal to Russianchauvinism, an appeal soon to bear fruit in disuniting therevolutionary parties. The congress ofzemstvos, hitherto thefocus of Liberalism, had petitioned the government, before theopening of the third Duma, to take measures for the restorationof order. The authorities began to exhibit something of theirold spirit. M. Dubrovin, president of the Union of the RussianPeople and organizer ofpogroms, having written a letter of congratulationto the tsar on the occasion of thecoup d’état, receiveda gracious reply; the hideous reign of terror of the “BlackHundred” in Odessa did not prevent the Grand-duke Constantinefrom accepting the badge of membership of the Union.The ordinary laws, too, had been suspended; the fining andconfiscation of newspapers had been resumed, and the “Cadets”had been forbidden to hold a congress. All this, however,did not argue an intention on the part of the government torevert to the autocraticstatus quo. M. Stolypin indeed defendedthecoup d’état in the Duma on the ground that the autocrathad merely altered what the autocrat had originally granted;but, while laying stress on the necessity for restoring order inthe body politic, he announced a long programme of reforms,including agrarian measures, reform of local government andits extension in the frontier provinces, and state insurance ofworkmen. The most far-reaching of these reforms, carried inthe first session of the third Duma, was the partial abolitionof the communal and family ownership of land, which involvedthe establishment of a class of true peasant-proprietors.^[61] Besidesthis, the Duma had passed before its adjournment on the28th of October 1908 much useful legislation, some 300 bills inall, including two for the building of important railways on theAmur and in Siberia. Nor had it exhibited by any meansa wholly docile spirit. On the 7th of June, for instance, M.Guchkov attacked the maladministration in the navy, pointingout that no reforms were possible so long as grand-dukes wereat the head of its departments. The Duma endorsed this allbut unanimously, and as the result the Grand-dukes Peter andSergius resigned their posts of inspector-general of Engineersand Ordnance respectively, and the Grand-duke Nicholas hischairmanship of the Committee of National Defence. A yearlater the Duma again came into collision with the governmentin a matter highly illuminating of the struggle between theancient traditions and the new ideas in Russia. On the14th of June 1909 a bill was passed removing the disabilitieshitherto attaching to some 15,000,000 of Old Believers. In spiteof strenuous government opposition, inspired by the authoritiesof the Orthodox Church, amendments were carried allowing dissidentministers to assume ecclesiastical titles and to preach, andpermitting Christians to join non-Christian religions or even todescribe themselves as unbelievers. Thus a step forward was madein securing the freedom of conscience proclaimed in the Octobermanifesto and denounced by a synod of Orthodox bishops at Kievin 1908, though the rights granted by the Duma were seriouslycurtailed in the Imperial Council, and have been largelyrendered a dead letter by the action of the administration.

Meanwhile the pan-Russian movement had been gainingapace. At first it had seemed that the new birth of Russiawould lead to a revival of pan-Slavism, directed not,as in the middle of the 19th century, against Austriabut against Germany. In May 1908 a deputation of Russianthe Slav members of the AustrianReichsrat paid aceremonial visit to the Duma atNeo-Slav and pan-Russian movements.St Petersburg, and inthis “neo-Slav” demonstration M. Dmowski, leader of the Polishparty in the Duma, took part. In the following year, however,the situation was completely altered, a result due to the growinganti-Polish feeling in the Duma and, more especially, to thesupport given by the Austrian Slavs to the annexation of Bosniaand Herzegovina. This event caused the utmost excitement inRussia; the crown prince of Servia, who arrived in St Petersburgon the 28th of October to ask for the armed assistance ofthe tsar, was received with enthusiasm by all classes of thepeople; and, though armed intervention was impossible, M. Isvolskytook the lead in the abortive demand for a Europeanconference (seeEurope:History). Neo-Slav dreams were nowreplaced by a passionate desire to consolidate the Russianempire on a purely Russian basis. Even the remnant of the“Cadets” had by this time renounced their sympathy withPolish aspirations, and in the matter of Finland the Dumaproved itself even more imperial than the emperor himself.The Finnish question is dealt with elsewhere (seeFinland:History). Here it may suffice to mention, as illustrating theThe Duma and Finland.changed temper of the Russian national assembly,that the Russian majority of the Duma includedamong the imperial questions in Finland which theFinnish diet ought to refer to the imperial legislature notonly all military matters—as the tsar demanded (Rescriptof October 14)—but the question of the use of the Russianlanguage in the grand-duchy, the principles of the Finnishadministration, police, justice, education, formation of businesscompanies and of associations, public meetings, the press, thecustoms tariff, the monetary system, means of communication,and the pilot and lighthouse system. The old tendency illustratedby the outcome of the revolutionary movements of 1848was once more in evidence—the tendency of merely artificialtheories of democratic liberty to succumb to the immemorialinstinct of race and race ascendancy.

As an international force Russia had been, of course, all butcompletely crippled by the outcome of the Japanese War andthe subsequent revolution. Her recovery, however,revealed the immense reserves of her strength. Onthe 30th of July 1907 she signed a convention withJapan of mutual respect for treaty and territorialrights, and guaranteeing the integrityInternational position of Russia.of China. On the 31stof August of the same year the long period of mutualsuspicion between Great Britain and Russia was closed bya convention for an amicable settlement of all questions likelyto disturb the relations of the two Powers in Asia generally,including the demarcation of Persia into spheres of influence(seePersia:History). This newentente with Great Britain,cemented by a visit paid by King Edward VII. to the tsar atReval on the 9th June 1908, helped to knit close once more theloosened alliance with France, and so to preserve the threatenedbalance of Europe. That in the work of restoring its militaryposition the Russian government had the support of the Russianparliament was proved by a subsidy of £11,000,000 voted by theDuma, on the 30th of December 1909, for the special service ofthe reorganization and redistribution of the army. (W. A. P.)