Thursday, September 20, 2007


The Russian Empire (Pre-reform Russian: Pоссiйская Имперiя, Modern Russian: Российская империя, translit: Rossiyskaya Imperiya) was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest empires the world had seen. At one point in 1866, it stretched from eastern Europe, across northern Asia, and into North America. At the beginning of the 20th century, only the British Empire rivaled its size, and its ruler, the Russian Tsar, was the only absolute monarch left in Europe.

History

Main article: Russian history, 1682-1796 The eighteenth century

Main article: Russian history, 1796-1855 First half of the nineteenth century

Main article: Russian history, 1855-1892 Second half of the nineteenth century

Main article: Russian history, 1892-1917 Early twentieth century

Territory
The administrative boundaries of European Russia, apart from Finland, coincided broadly with the natural limits of the East-European plains. In the North it met the Arctic Ocean; the islands of Novaya Zemlya, Kolguyev and Vaigach also belonged to it, but the Kara Sea was reckoned to Siberia. To the East it had the Asiatic dominions of the empire, Siberia and the Kyrgyz steppes, from both of which it was separated by the Ural Mountains, the Ural River and the Caspian Sea — the administrative boundary, however, partly extending into Asia on the Siberian slope of the Urals. To the South it had the Black Sea and Caucasus, being separated from the latter by the Manych depression, which in Post-Pliocene times connected the Sea of Azov with the Caspian. The West boundary was purely conventional: it crossed the peninsula of Kola from the Varangerfjord to the Gulf of Bothnia; thence it ran to the Kurisches Haff in the southern Baltic, and thence to the mouth of the Danube, taking a great circular sweep to the West to embrace Poland, and separating Russia from Prussia, Austrian Galicia and Romania.
It is a special feature of Russia that it has no free outlet to the open sea except on the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean. Even the White Sea is merely a gulf of that ocean. The deep indentations of the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland were surrounded by what is ethnological Finnish territory, and it is only at the very head of the latter gulf that the Russians had taken firm foothold by erecting their capital at the mouth of the Neva. The Gulf of Riga and the Baltic belong also to territory which was not inhabited by Slavs, but by Finnish peoples and by Germans. The East coast of the Black Sea belonged properly to Transcaucasia, a great chain of mountains separating it from Russia. But even this sheet of water is an inland sea, the only outlet of which, the Bosphorus, was in foreign hands, while the Caspian, an immense shallow lake, mostly bordered by deserts, possessed more importance as a link between Russia and her Asiatic settlements than as a channel for intercourse with other countries.

1682-1796
1796-1855
1855-1892
1892-1917
1917-1927

  • Russian Revolution
    Civil War
    1927–1953
    1953–1985
    1985–1991 Boundaries

    Main article: Geography of RussiaImperial Russia Geography
    In addition to modern Russia, prior to 1917 the Russian Empire included most of Ukraine (Dnieper Ukraine and Crimea), Belarus, Moldova (Bessarabia), Finland (Grand Duchy of Finland), Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Russian Turkestan), most of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (Baltic provinces), as well as a significant portions of Poland (Kingdom of Poland) and Ardahan, Artvin, Iğdır, and Kars from Turkey. Between 1742 and 1867 the Russian Empire claimed Alaska as its colony.
    Following the Swedish defeat in the Finnish War and the signing of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn on September 17, 1809, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire as an autonomous grand duchy. The Tsar ruled the Grand Duchy of Finland as a constitutional monarch through his governor and a native Finnish Senate appointed by him.

    Territory development
    According to the 1st article of the Organic law, the Russian Empire was one indivisible state. In addition, the 26th article stated that "With the Imperial Russian throne are indivisible the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Finland". Relations with the Grand Duchy of Finland were also regulated by the 2nd article, "The Grand Duchy of Finland, constituted an indivisible part of the Russian state, in its internal affairs governed by special regulations at the base of special laws" and the law of 10 June 1910.
    In 1744–1867 the empire also controlled the so-called Russian America. With the exception of this territory (modern day Alaska), the Russian Empire was a contiguous landmass spanning Europe and Asia. In this it differed from contemporary, colonial-style empires. The result of this was that whilst the British and French Empire declined in the 20th century, the Russian Empire kept a large proportion of its territory, firstly as the Communist Soviet Union, and latterly as part of the present-day Russian Federation.
    Furthermore, the empire at times controlled concession territories, notably the port of Kwantung and the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, both conceded by imperial China, as well as a concession in Tientsin. See for these periods of extraterritorial control the relations between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire.

    Imperial external territories
    Russia was described in the Almanach de Gotha for 1910 as "a constitutional monarchy under an autocratic tsar." This obvious contradiction in terms well illustrates the difficulty of defining in a single formula the system, essentially transitional and meanwhile sui generis, established in the Russian empire since October 1905. Before this date the fundamental laws of Russia described the power of the emperor as "autocratic and unlimited." The imperial style is still "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias"; but in the fundamental laws as remodeled between the October Manifesto and the opening of the first Imperial Duma on 27 April 1906, while the name and principle of autocracy was jealously preserved, the word "unlimited" vanished. Not that the regime in Russia had become in any true sense constitutional, far less parliamentary; but the "unlimited autocracy" had given place to a "self-limited autocracy," whether permanently so limited, or only at the discretion of the autocrat, remaining a subject of heated controversy between conflicting parties in the state. Provisionally, then, the Russian governmental system may perhaps be best defined as "a limited monarchy under an autocratic emperor."

    Government and administration

    Main article: Tsar#Russia The emperor

    Main article: State Council of Imperial Russia Imperial Council

    Main article: State Duma of the Russian Empire Council of Ministers

    Main article: Most Holy Synod Most Holy Synod

    Main article: Governing Senate Senate
    Further information: History of the administrative division of Russia
    For purposes of provincial administration Russia was divided (as of 1914) into 81 provinces (guberniyas) and 20 regions (oblasts) and 1 district (okrug). Vassals and protectorates of the Russian Empire included the Emirate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva and, after 1914, Tuva (Uriankhai). Of these 11 Governorates, 17 provinces and 1 district (Sakhalin) belonged to Asiatic Russia. Of the rest 8 Governorates were in Finland, 10 in Poland. European Russia thus embraced 59 governments and 1 province (that of the Don). The Don province was under the direct jurisdiction of the ministry of war; the rest have each a governor and deputy-governor, the latter presiding over the administrative council. In addition there were governors-general, generally placed over several governments and armed with more extensive powers usually including the command of the troops within the limits of their jurisdiction. In 1906 there were governors-general in Finland, Warsaw, Vilna, Kiev, Moscow and Riga. The larger cities (St Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Sevastopol, Kerch, Nikolayev, Rostov) have an administrative system of their own, independent of the governments; in these the chief of police acts as governor.

    Provincial administration

    Main article: Judicial system of the Russian Empire Judicial system
    Alongside the local organs of the central government in Russia there are three classes of local elected bodies charged with administrative functions:

    the peasant assemblies in the mir and the volost;
    the zemstvos in the 34 Governorates of Russia;
    the municipal dumas. Local administration
    Since 1870 the municipalities in European Russia have had institutions like those of the zemstvos. All owners of houses, and tax-paying merchants, artisans and workmen are enrolled on lists in a descending order according to their assessed wealth. The total valuation is then divided into three equal parts, representing three groups of electors very unequal in number, each of which elects an equal number of delegates to the municipal duma. The executive is in the hands of an elective mayor and an uprava, which consists of several members elected by the duma. Under Alexander III, however, by laws promulgated in 1892 and 1894, the municipal dumas were subordinated to the governors in the same way as the zemstvos. In 1894 municipal institutions, with still more restricted powers, were granted to several towns in Siberia, and in 1895 to some in Caucasia.

    Municipal dumas

    Main article: Baltic governorates Baltic provinces
    The state religion of the Russian Empire was that of the Russian Orthodox Christianity. Its head is the tsar; but although he makes and annuls all appointments, he does not determine questions of dogmatic theology. The principal ecclesiastical authority was the Holy Synod, the head of which, the Procurator, is one of the council of ministers and exercises very wide powers in ecclesiastical matters. In theory all religions may be freely professed, except that certain restrictions, such as domicile, are laid upon the Jews; but in actual fact the dissenting sects are more or less severely treated. According to returns published in 1905, based of the Russian Empire Census of 1897, the adherents of the different religious communities in the whole of the Russian empire numbered approximately as follows, though the heading Orthodox includes a very great many Raskolniks or Dissenters.
    The ecclesiastical heads of the national Russian Orthodox Church consist of three metropolitans (St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev), fourteen archbishops and fifty bishops, all drawn from the ranks of the monastic (celibate) clergy. The parochial clergy must be married when appointed, but if left widowers may not marry again.

    Religions
    Subjects of the Russian Empire were segregated into sosloviyes, or social estates (classes) such as nobility (dvoryanstvo), clergy, merchants, cossacks and peasants. Native people of Siberia and Central Asia were officially registered as a category called inorodtsy (non-Slavic, literally: "people of another origin").
    The great mass of the people, 81.6%, belonged to the peasant order, the others were: nobility, 1.3%; clergy, 0.9%; the burghers and merchants, 9.3%; and military, 6.1%. Thus more than 88 millions of the Russians were peasants. Half of them were formerly serfs (10,447,149 males in 1858) – the remainder being " state peasants " (9,194,891 males in 1858, exclusive of the Archangel Governorate) and " domain peasants " (842,740 males the same year).

    Society

    Main article: Serfdom in Russia Serfdom
    After the Emancipation reform one quarter of peasants have received allotments of only 2.9 acres per male, and one-half less than 8.5 to 11.4 acres – the normal size of the allotment necessary to the subsistence of a family under the three-fields system being estimated at 28 to 42 acres. Land must thus of necessity be rented from the landlords at fabulous prices. The aggregate value of the redemption and land taxes often reaches 185 to 275% of the normal rental value of the allotments, not to speak of taxes for recruiting purposes, the church, roads, local administration and so on, chiefly levied from the peasants. The arrears increase every year; one-fifth of the inhabitants have left their houses; cattle are disappearing. Every year more than half the adult males (in some districts three-fourths of the men and one-third of the women) quit their homes and wander throughout Russia in search of labor. In the governments of the Black Earth Area the state of matters is hardly better. Many peasants took the "gratuitous allotments," whose amount was about one-eighth of the normal allotments.
    The average allotment in Kherson was only 0.90 acre, and for allotments from 2.9 to 5.8 acres the peasants pay 5 to 10 rubles of redemption tax. The state peasants were better off, but still they were emigrating in masses. It was only in the steppe governments that the situation was more hopeful. In Little Russia, where the allotments were personal (the mir existing only among state peasants), the state of affairs does not differ for the better, on account of the high redemption taxes. In the West provinces, where the land was valued cheaper and the allotments somewhat increased after the Polish insurrection, the general situation was better. Finally, in the Baltic provinces nearly all the land belonged to the German landlords, who either farmed the land themselves, with hired laborers, or let it in small farms. Only one quarter of the peasants were farmers, the remainder were mere laborers.

    Peasants
    The situation of the former serf-proprietors was also unsatisfactory. Accustomed to the use of compulsory labor, they have failed to accommodate themselves to the new conditions. The millions of rubles of redemption money received from the crown have been spent without any real or lasting agricultural improvements having been affected. The forests have been sold, and only those landlords are prospering who exact rack-rents for the land without which the peasants could not live upon their allotments. During the years 1861 to 1892 the land owned by the nobles decreased 30%, or from 210,000,000 to 150,000,000 acres; during the following four years an additional 2,119,500 acres were sold; and since then the sales have gone on at an accelerated rate, until in 1903 alone close upon 2,000,000 acres passed out of their hands. On the other hand, since 1861, and more especially since 1882, when the Peasant Land Bank was founded for making advances to peasants who were desirous of purchasing land, the former serfs, or rather their descendants, have between 1883 and 1904 bought about 19,500,000 acres from their former masters. There has been an increase of wealth among the few, but along with this a general impoverishment of the mass of the people, and the peculiar institution of the mir, framed on the principle of community of ownership and occupation of the land, was not conducive to the growth of individual effort. In November 1906, however, the emperor Nicholas II promulgated a provisional ukaz permitting the peasants to become freeholders of allotments made at the time of emancipation, all redemption dues being remitted. This measure, which was endorsed by the third Duma in an act passed on the 21 December 1908, is calculated to have far-reaching and profound effects upon the rural economy of Russia. Thirteen years previously the government had endeavored to secure greater fixity and permanence of tenure by providing that at least twelve years must elapse between every two redistributions of the land belonging to a mir amongst those entitled to share in it. The ukaz of November 1906 had provided that the various strips of land held by each peasant should be merged into a single holding; the Duma, however, on the advice of the government, left this to the future, as an ideal that could only gradually be realized.

    See also

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