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 articles: History of Russia
The Russian Empire was a natural successor to the
Tsardom of Muscovy. Though the empire was only officially proclaimed by Tsar
Peter I following the
Treaty of Nystad (1721), some historians would argue that it was truly born when Peter acceeded to the throne in early 1682.
The eighteenth century
Main articles: Russian history, 1682-1796
Peter I, the Great (1672–1725), consolidated autocracy in Russia and played a major role in bringing his country into the European state system. From its modest beginnings in the 14th century principality of Moscow, Russia had become the largest state in the world by Peter's time. It spanned the Eurasian landmass from the
Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Much of its expansion had taken place in the 17th century, culminating in the
first Russian settlement of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the
reconquest of Kiev, and the
pacification of the Siberian tribes. However, this vast land had a population of only 14 million. Grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling almost the entire population to farm. Only a small fraction of the population lived in the towns.
Slavery remained a major institution in
Russia until the 1723, when the
Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house
serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into
serfs earlier in 1679.
[1] 
Peter the Great officially proclaimed the existence of the Russian Empire in 1721.
Peter was deeply impressed by the advanced technology, warcraft, and statecraft of the West. He studied Western tactics and fortifications and built a strong army of 300,000 made up of his own subjects, whom he conscripted for life. In 1697-1698, he
became the first Russian prince to ever visit the West, where he and his entourage made a deep impression. In celebration of his conquests, Peter assumed the title of emperor as well as tsar, and Muscovite Russia officially became the Russian Empire late in 1721.
Peter's first military efforts were directed against the
Ottoman Turks. His attention then turned to the north. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport except at
Archangel on the
White Sea, whose harbor was frozen nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by
Sweden, whose territory enclosed it on three sides. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him in 1699 to make a secret alliance with the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and
Denmark against Sweden, resulting in the
Great Northern War. The war ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden sued for peace with Russia. Peter acquired four provinces situated south and east of the Gulf of Finland, thus securing his coveted access to the sea. There he built Russia's new capital,
St. Petersburg, as a "window opened upon Europe" to replace Moscow, long Russia's cultural center.
Peter reorganized his government on the latest Western models, molding Russia into an
absolutist state. He replaced the old ''boyar''
Duma (council of nobles) with a nine-member senate, in effect a supreme council of state. The countryside was also divided into new provinces and districts. Peter told the senate that its mission was to collect tax revenues. In turn tax revenues tripled over the course of his reign. As part of the government reform, the Orthodox Church was partially incorporated into the country's administrative structure, in effect making it a tool of the state. Peter abolished the patriarchate and replaced it with a collective body, the
Holy Synod, led by a lay government official. Meanwhile, all vestiges of local self-government were removed, and Peter continued and intensified his predecessors' requirement of state service for all nobles.
Peter died in 1725, leaving an unsettled succession and an exhausted realm. His reign raised questions about Russia's backwardness, its relationship to the West, the appropriateness of reform from above, and other fundamental problems that have confronted many of Russia's subsequent rulers. Nevertheless, he had laid the foundations of a modern state in Russia.
Nearly forty years were to pass before a comparably ambitious and ruthless ruler appeared on the Russian throne.
Catherine II, the Great, was a German princess who married the German heir to the Russian crown. She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great. State service had been abolished, and Catherine delighted the nobles further by turning over most government functions in the provinces to them.
Catherine the Great extended Russian political control over the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with actions including the support of the
Targowica confederation, although the cost of her campaigns, on top of the oppressive social system that required lords' serfs to spend almost all of their time laboring on the lords' land, provoked a major peasant uprising in 1773, after Catherine legalized the selling of serfs separate from land. Inspired by another Cossack named
Pugachev, with the emphatic cry of "Hang all the landlords!" the rebels threatened to take Moscow before they were ruthlessly suppressed. Catherine had Pugachev drawn and quartered in
Red Square, but the specter of revolution continued to haunt her and her successors.
While suppressing the Russian peasantry, Catherine
successfully waged war against the decaying
Ottoman Empire and advanced Russia's southern boundary to the
Black Sea. Then, by plotting with the rulers of
Austria and
Prussia, she incorporated territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the
Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. By the time of her death in 1796, Catherine's expansionist policy had made Russia into a major European power. This continued with
Alexander I's wresting of
Finland from the weakened kingdom of
Sweden in 1809 and of
Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812.
First half of the nineteenth century
Main articles: Russian history, 1796-1855
Napoleon made a major misstep when he invaded Russia after a dispute with Tsar Alexander I and launched an
invasion of the tsar's realm in 1812. The campaign was a catastrophe. Although Napoleon's
Grand Armee made its way to Moscow, the Russians'
scorched-earth strategy prevented the invaders from living off the country. In the bitterly
cold Russian weather, thousands of French troops were ambushed and killed by peasant guerrilla fighters. As Napoleon's forces retreated, the Russian troops pursued them into Central and Western Europe and to the gates of Paris. After Russia and its allies defeated Napoleon, Alexander became known as the 'savior of Europe,' and he presided over the redrawing of the map of Europe at the
Congress of Vienna (1815), which made Alexander the monarch of
Congress Poland.
Although the Russian Empire would play a leading political role in the next century, secured by its defeat of Napoleonic France, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant degree. As West European economic growth accelerated during the
Industrial Revolution, which had begun in the second half of the 18th century, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, creating new problems for the empire as a great power. Russia's great power status obscured the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic backwardness. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I had been ready to discuss constitutional reforms, but though
a few were introduced, no thoroughgoing changes were attempted.
The relatively liberal tsar was replaced by his younger brother,
Nicholas I (1825–1855), who at the onset of his reign was confronted with an uprising. The background of this revolt lay in the Napoleonic Wars, when a number of well-educated Russian officers traveled in Europe in the course of the military campaigns, where their exposure to the liberalism of Western Europe encouraged them to seek change on their return to autocratic Russia. The result was the
Decembrist Revolt (December 1825), the work of a small circle of liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brother as a constitutional monarch. But the revolt was easily crushed, leading Nicholas to turn away from the Westernization program begun by Peter the Great and champion the maxim "
Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Respect to the People."
After the Russian armies occupied the allied
Georgia in 1802, they
clashed with Persia over control of
Azerbaijan and got involved into the
Caucasian War against mountaneers, which would lumber on for half a century. Russian tsars had also to deal with two uprisings in their newly acquired territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the
November Uprising in 1830 and the
January Uprising in 1863.
The harsh retaliation for the revolt made "December Fourteenth" a day long remembered by later revolutionary movements. In order to repress further revolts, schools and universities were placed under constant surveillance and students were provided with official textbooks. Police spies were planted everywhere. Would-be revolutionaries were sent off to Siberia; under Nicholas I hundreds of thousands were sent to
katorga there.
The question of Russia's direction had been gaining steam ever since Peter the Great's programme of Westernization. Some favored imitating Europe while others renounced the West and called for a return of the traditions of the past. The latter path was championed by
Slavophiles, who heaped scorn on the "decadent" West. The Slavophiles were opponents of bureaucracy, preferred the
collectivism of the
mediaeval Russian ''
mir'', or
village community, to the
individualism of the West. Alternative social doctrines were elaborated by such Russian radicals as
Alexander Herzen,
Mikhail Bakunin, and
Peter Kropotkin.
Second half of the nineteenth century
Main articles: Russian history, 1855-1892
Tsar Nicholas died with his philosophy in dispute. One year earlier, Russia had become involved in the
Crimean War, a conflict fought primarily in the
Crimean peninsula. Since playing a major role in the defeat of Napoleon, Russia had been regarded as militarily invincible, but, once pitted against a coalition of the great powers of Europe, the reverses it suffered on land and sea exposed the decay and weakness of Tsar Nicholas' regime.
When
Alexander II came to the throne in 1855, desire for reform was widespread. A growing humanitarian movement, which in later years has been likened to that of the
abolitionists in the
United States before the
American Civil War, attacked serfdom. In 1859, there were more than 23 million serfs living under conditions frequently worse than those of the peasants of
western Europe on 16th century
manors. Alexander II made up his own mind to abolish serfdom from above rather than wait for it to be abolished from below through revolution.
The
emancipation of the serfs in 1861 was the single most important event in 19th century Russian history. It was the beginning of the end for the landed aristocracy's monopoly of power. Emancipation brought a supply of free labor to the cities, industry was stimulated, and the middle class grew in number and influence; however, instead of receiving their lands as a gift, the freed peasants had to pay a special tax for what amounted to their lifetime to the government, which in turn paid the landlords a generous price for the land that they had lost. In numerous instances the peasants wound up with the poorest land. All the land turned over to the peasants was owned collectively by the ''mir'', the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised the various holdings. Although serfdom was abolished, since its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants, revolutionary tensions were not abated, despite Alexander II's intentions.
In the late 1870s Russia and the Ottoman Empire again clashed in the Balkans. From 1875 to 1877, the Balkan crisis escalated with rebellions against Ottoman rule by various Slavic nationalities, which the Ottoman Turks suppressed with what was seen as great cruelty in Russia. Russian nationalist opinion became a serious domestic factor in its support for liberating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule and making
Bulgaria and
Serbia independent. In early 1877, Russia intervened on behalf of Serbian and Russian volunteer forces when it
went to war with the Ottoman Empire. Within one year, Russian troops were nearing Constantinople, and the Ottomans surrendered. Russia's nationalist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II to force the Ottomans to sign the
Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating an enlarged, independent Bulgaria that stretched into the southwestern Balkans. When Britain threatened to declare war over the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, an exhausted Russia backed down. At the
Congress of Berlin in July 1878, Russia agreed to the creation of a smaller Bulgaria. As a result,
Pan-Slavists were left with a legacy of bitterness against Austria-Hungary and Germany for failing to back Russia. The disappointment as a result of war stimulated revolutionary tensions in the country.
A provincial Russian town in winter.
Following Alexander II's assassination by the
Nihilists in 1882, the throne passed to his son
Alexander III (1881–1894), a staunch reactionary who revived the maxim of "
Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Respect to the People" of Nicholas I. A committed Slavophile, Alexander III believed that Russia could be saved from chaos only by shutting itself off from the subversive influences of Western Europe. In his reign Russia concluded the
union with republican France to contain the growing power of
Germany, completed the conquest of
Central Asia and exacted important territorial and commercial concessions from
China.
The tsar's most influential adviser was
Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, tutor to Alexander III and his son Nicholas, and procurator of the Holy Synod from 1880 to 1895. He taught his royal pupils to fear freedom of speech and press and to hate democracy, constitutions, and the parliamentary system. Under Pobedonostsev, revolutionaries were hunted down and a policy of
Russification was carried out throughout the empire.
Early twentieth century
Main articles: Russian history, 1892-1917
Alexander was succeeded by his son
Nicholas II (1894–1917). The
Industrial Revolution, which began to exert a significant influence in Russia, was meanwhile creating forces that would finally overthrow the tsar. The liberal elements among the industrial capitalists and nobility believed in peaceful social reform and a constitutional monarchy, forming the Constitutional Democrats, or
Kadets. Social revolutionaries combined the Narodnik tradition and advocated the distribution of land among those who actually worked it—the peasants. Another radical group was the Social Democrats, exponents of
Marxism in Russia. Gathering their support from the radical intellectuals and the urban working class, they advocated complete social, economic and political revolution.
In 1903 the party split into two wings—the
Mensheviks, or moderates, and the
Bolsheviks, the radicals. The Mensheviks believed that Russian socialism would grow gradually and peacefully and that the tsar’s regime should be succeeded by a democratic republic in which the socialists would cooperate with the liberal bourgeois parties. The Bolsheviks, under
Vladimir Lenin, advocated the formation of a small elite of professional revolutionists, subject to strong party discipline, to act as the vanguard of the proletariat in order to seize power by force.
[2]
The disastrous performance of the Russian armed forces in the
Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was a major blow to the Tsarist regime and increased the potential for unrest. In January 1905, an incident known as "
Bloody Sunday" occurred when
Father Gapon led an enormous crowd to the
Winter Palace in
St. Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar. When the procession reached the palace, Cossacks opened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. The Russian masses were so aroused over the massacre that a general strike was declared demanding a democratic republic. This marked the beginning of the
Russian Revolution of 1905.
Soviets (councils of workers) appeared in most cities to direct revolutionary activity. Russia was paralyzed, and the government was desperate.
In October 1905, Nicholas reluctantly issued the famous
October Manifesto, which conceded the creation of a national Duma (legislature) to be called without delay. The right to vote was extended and no law was to go into force without confirmation by the Duma. The moderate groups were satisfied; but the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes. By the end of 1905, there was disunity among the reformers, and the tsar's position was strengthened for the time being.
Tsar Nicholas II and his subjects entered
World War I with enthusiasm and patriotism, with the defense of Russia's fellow Orthodox Slavs, the
Serbs, as the main battle cry. In August 1914, the Russian army entered Germany to support the French armies. However, the weaknesses of the Russian economy and the inefficiency and corruption in government were hidden only for a brief period under a cloak of fervent nationalism. Military reversals and the government's incompetence soon soured much of the population. German control of the Baltic Sea and German-Ottoman control of the Black Sea severed Russia from most of its foreign supplies and potential markets.
By the middle of 1915 the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties were staggering, and inflation was mounting. Strikes increased among low-paid factory workers, and the peasants, who wanted land reforms, were restless. Meanwhile, public distrust of the regime was deepened by reports that a semiliterate mystic,
Grigory Rasputin, had great political influence within the government. His assassination in late 1916 ended the scandal but did not restore the autocracy's lost prestige.
On
March 3,
1917, a strike occurred in a factory in the capital
Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg). Within a week nearly all the workers in the city were idle, and street fighting broke out. When the tsar dismissed the Duma and ordered strikers to return to work, his orders triggered the
February Revolution.
The Duma refused to disband, the strikers held mass meetings in defiance of the regime, and the army openly sided with the workers. A few days later a
provisional government headed by
Prince Lvov was named by the Duma. The following day the tsar abdicated. Meanwhile, the socialists in Petrograd had formed a
Soviet (council) of workers and soldiers' deputies to provide them with the power that they lacked in the Duma. The Russian Empire was pronounced dead.
Territory
Boundaries
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.
Geography
Main articles: Geography of Russia
By the end of the 19th century the size of the empire was about 22,400,000 square kilometers (almost 1/6 of the Earth's landmass); its only rival in size at the time was the
British Empire. However, at this time, the majority of the population lived in European Russia. More than 100 different
ethnic groups lived in the Russian Empire, with ethnic
Russians comprising about 45% of the population.
Territory development
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.
Imperial external territories
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.
[3]
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.
Government and administration
Russian Empire in 1912
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."
The emperor
Main articles: Tsar#Russia
Peter the Great changed his title from
Tsar in 1721, when he was declared ''Emperor of all Russia.'' While subsequent rulers kept this title, the ruler of Russia was commonly known as ''Tsar'' or ''Tsaritsa'' until the fall of the Empire during the
February Revolution of 1917.
The power of emperor before the October Manifesto was limited by two liabilities: the emperor and his consort must belong to the
Russian Orthodox Church and to obey the
laws of succession, established by
Paul I.
[4] On
17 October 1905, the situation has changed, the emperor voluntarily limited his legislative power by decreeing that no measure was to become law without the consent of the Imperial Duma, a freely elected national assembly. In addition to mentioned moral liabilities appeared new juridical, amplified with the
Organic law of
28 April 1906.
Imperial Council
Main articles: State Council of Imperial Russia
By the law of the
20 February 1906, the Council of the Empire was associated with the Duma as a legislative
Upper House; and from this time the legislative power has been exercised normally by the emperor only in concert with the two chambers.
The Council of the Empire, or Imperial Council, as reconstituted for this purpose, consisted of 196 members, of whom 98 were nominated by the emperor, while 98 were elective. The ministers, also nominated, were ''
ex officio'' members. Of the elected members, 3 were returned by the "black" clergy (the monks), 3 by the "white" clergy (seculars), 18 by the corporations of nobles, 6 by the academy of sciences and the universities, 6 by the chambers of commerce, 6 by the industrial councils, 34 by the governments having zemstvos, 16 by those having no
zemstvos, and 6 by Poland. As a legislative body the powers of the Council were coordinate with those of the Duma; in practice, however, it has seldom if ever initiated legislation.
The Duma and electoral system
Main articles: State Duma of the Russian Empire
The Duma of the Empire or Imperial Duma (Gosudarstvennaya Duma), which formed the
Lower House of the Russian parliament, consisted (since the ukaz of
2 June 1907) of 442 members, elected by an exceedingly complicated process, so manipulated as to secure an overwhelming preponderance for the wealthy, and especially the landed classes, and also for the representatives of the Russian as opposed to the subject peoples. Each province of the empire, except of
Central Asian, returned a certain proportion of members (fixed in each case by aw in such a way as to give a preponderance to the Russian element), in addition to those returned by certain of the great cities. The members of the Duma are elected by electoral colleges in each government, and these in their turn are elected, like the zemstvos, by electoral assemblies chosen by the three classes of landed proprietors, citizens and peasants. In these assemblies the large proprietors sit in person, being thus electors in the second degree; the lesser proprietors are represented by delegates, and therefore elect in the third degree. The urban population, divided into two categories according to their taxable wealth, elects delegates direct to the college of the
Governorates, and is thus represented in the second degree; but the system of division into categories, according not to the number of taxpayers but to the amount they pay, gives a great preponderance to the richer classes. The
peasants are represented only in the fourth degree, since the delegates to the electoral college are elected by the
volosts. The
workmen, finally, are specially treated. Every industrial concern employing fifty hands or over elects one or more delegates to the electoral college of the government, in which, like the others, they form a separate ''curia''.
In the college itself the voting—secret and by ballot throughout—is by majority; and since this majority consists, under the actual system, of very conservative elements (the
landowners and urban delegates having fifths of the votes), the progressive elements—however much they might preponderate in the country—would have no chance of representation at all save for the curious provision that one member at least in each government must be chosen from each of the five classes represented in the college. For example, were there no reactionary peasant among the delegates, a reactionary majority might be forced to return a
Social Democrat to the Duma. As it is, though a fixed minimum of peasant delegates must be returned, they by no means probably represent the opinion of the peasantry. That in the Duma any Radical elements survive at all is mainly due to the peculiar franchise enjoyed by the seven largest towns —
Saint Petersburg,
Moscow,
Kiev,
Odessa,
Riga and the Polish cities of
Warsaw and
Łódź. These elect their delegates to the Duma direct, and though their votes are divided into two curias (on the basis of taxable property) in such a way as to give the advantage to wealth, each returning the same number of delegates, the democratic colleges can at least return members of their own complexion.
Council of Ministers
Main articles: Russian Council of Ministers
By the law of
18 October 1905, to assist the emperor in the supreme administration a Council of Ministers (Sovyet Ministrov) was created, under a ''minister president'', the first appearance of a
prime minister in Russia. This council consists of all the ministers and of the heads of the principal administrations. The ministries were as follows:
★ of the Imperial Court, to which the administration of the apanages, the chapter of the imperial orders, the imperial palaces and theatres, and the
Academy of Fine Arts are subordinated;
★
Foreign Affairs;
★
War and Marine;
★
Finance;
★ Commerce and Industry (created in 1905);
★
Interior (including police, health, censorship and press, posts and telegraphs, foreign religions, statistics);
★ Agriculture;
★ Ways and Communications;
★
Justice;
★
National Enlightenment.
Most Holy Synod
The Senate and Synod headquarters on
Senate Square in St. Petersburg.
The Most Holy Synod (established in 1721) was the supreme organ of government of the Orthodox Church in Russia. It was presided over by a lay procurator, representing the emperor, and consists, for the rest, of the three metropolitans of
Moscow, St Petersburg and Kiev, the archbishop of
Georgia, and a number of bishops sitting in rotation.
Senate
Main articles: Governing Senate
The Senate (Pravitelstvuyushchi Senat, i.e. directing or governing senate), originally established during the
Government reform of Peter I, consisted of members nominated by the emperor. Its functions, which were exceedingly various, were carried out by the different departments into which it is divided. It was the supreme court of cassation; an audit office, a high court of justice for all political offenses; one of its departments fulfilled the functions of a heralds' college. It also had supreme jurisdiction in all disputes arising out of the administration of the empire, notably differences between the representatives of the central power and the elected organs of local self-government. Lastly, it examined into registers and promulgated new laws, a function which, in theory, gives it a power, akin to that of the
Supreme Court of the United States, of rejecting measures not in accordance with the fundamental laws.
Provincial administration
Residence of the Governor of
Moscow (1778-82)
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.
Judicial system
Main articles: Judicial system of the Russian Empire
The
judicial system of the Russian Empire, existed from the mid-19th century, was established by the "tsar emancipator"
Alexander II, by the
statute of 20 November 1864 (''
Sudebni Ustav''). This system — based partly on
English, partly on
French models — was built up on certain broad principles: the separation of the judicial and administrative functions, the independence of the judges and courts, the publicity of trials and oral procedure, the equality of all classes before the law. Moreover, a
democratic element was introduced by the adoption of the
jury system and—so far as one order of tribunal was concerned—the election of judges. The establishment of a judicial system on these principles constituted a fundamental change in the conception of the Russian state, which, by placing the administration of justice outside the sphere of the executive power, ceased to be a despotism. This fact made the system especially obnoxious to the
bureaucracy, and during the latter years of Alexander II and the reign of Alexander III there was a piecemeal taking back of what had been given. It was reserved for the third Duma, after the
revolution, to begin the reversal of this process.
[5]
The system established by the law of 1864 was remarkable in that it set up two wholly separate orders of
tribunals, each having their own
courts of appeal and coming in contact only in the senate, as the
supreme court of cassation. The first of these, based on the English model, are the courts of the elected
justices of the peace, with jurisdiction over petty causes, whether civil or criminal; the second, based on the French model, are the ordinary tribunals of nominated judges, sitting with or without a jury to hear important cases.
Local administration
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''.
Municipal dumas
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.
Baltic provinces
Main articles: Baltic governorates
The formerly Swedish controlled Baltic provinces (
Courland,
Livonia and
Esthonia) were incorporated into the Russian Empire after the defeat of Sweden in the
Great Northern War. Under the
Treaty of Nystad of 1721, the
Baltic German nobility retained considerable powers
of self-government and numerous privileges in matters affecting education, police and the administration of local justice. After 167 years of German language administration and education, laws were promulgated in 1888 and 1889 where the rights of police and
manorial justice were transferred from
Baltic German control to officials of the central government. Since about the same time a process of rigorous
Russification was being carried out in the same provinces, in all departments of administration, in the higher schools and in the
university of Dorpat, the name of which was altered to
Yuriev. In 1893 district committees for the management of the peasants' affairs, similar to those in the purely Russian governments, were introduced into this part of the empire.
Religions
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''.
| Religion | Count of believers[6] |
|---|
| Orthodox[7] | 87,123,604 |
| Muslims | 13,906,972 |
| Roman Catholics | 11,467,994 |
| Jews | 5,215,805 |
| Lutherans[8] | 3,572,653 |
| Old Believers | 2,204,596 |
| Armenian Apostolic | 1,179,241 |
| Buddhists and Lamaists | 433,863 |
| Other non-Christians | 285,321 |
| Reformed | 85,400 |
| Mennonites | 66,564 |
| Armenian Catholics | 38,840 |
| Baptists | 38,139 |
| Karaite Jews | 12,894 |
| Anglicans | 4,183 |
| Other Christians | 3,952 |
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.
Society
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).
Serfdom
Main articles: Serfdom in Russia
The serfdom which had sprung up in Russia in the 16th century, and became consecrated by law in 1649, taking, however, nearly one hundred and fifty years to attain its full growth, was
abolished in 1861. This act liberated the serfs from a yoke that was terrible, even under the best landlords, and from this point of view it was obviously an immense benefit.
[9] But it was far from securing corresponding economic results.
The household
servants or dependents attached to the personal service of their masters were merely set free; and they entirely went to reinforce the town proletariat. The peasants proper received their houses and orchards, and allotments of arable land. These allotments were given over to the rural commune (''
mir''), which was made responsible, as a whole, for the payment of taxes for the allotments. For these allotments the peasants had to pay, as before, either by personal labor or by a fixed rent. The allotments could be redeemed by them with the help of the crown, and then they were freed from all obligations to the landlord. The crown paid the landlord in obligations representing the capitalized rent, and the peasants had to pay the crown, for forty-nine years, 6% interest on this capital. The redemption was not calculated on the value of the allotments of land, but was considered as a compensation for the loss of the compulsory labor of the serfs; so that throughout Russia, with the exception of a few provinces in the S.E., it was—and still remains, notwithstanding a very great increase in the value of land—much higher than the market value of the allotment. Moreover, many proprietors contrived to curtail seriously the allotments which the peasants had possessed under serfdom, and frequently they deprived them of precisely the parts which they were most in need of, namely, pasture lands around their houses, and forests. The effect of this, craftily calculated beforehand, was to compel the peasants to rent pasture lands from the landlord at any price.
Peasants
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.
Landowners
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 (610,000 km²); during the following four years an additional were sold; and since then the sales have gone on at an accelerated rate, until in 1903 alone close upon 2,000,000 acres (8,000 km²) 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 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
★
National emblems of the Russian Empire
Notes
1. Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to History
2. For an analysis of the reaction of the elites to the revolutionaries see Manning, Roberta. ''The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government''. Princeton University Press, 1982.
3. Грибовский, p.35
4. Грибовский, p.24
5. An ukaz of 1879 gave the governors the right to report secretly on the qualifications of candidates for the office of justice of the peace. In 1889 Alexander III abolished the election of justices of the peace, except in certain large towns and some outlying parts of the empire, and greatly restricted the right of trial by jury. The confusion of the judicial and administrative functions was introduced again by the appointment of officials as judges. In 1909 the third Duma restored the election of justices of the peace.
6. Results of the Russian Empire Census of 1897, Table XII (Religions)
7. The census did not differentiate between different branches of Orthodoxy.
8. The Lutheran Church was the dominant faith of the Baltic Provinces, of Ingria, and of the Grand Duchy of Finland
9. It was only as late as 1904, however, that the landed proprietors were forbidden by law to inflict corporal punishment upon the peasants.
References and further reading
★
Library of Congress Country Studies:
Russia
★ Hingley, Ronald. ''The Tsars, 1533–1917''. Macmillan, 1968.
★
★ Warnes, David. ''Chronicle of the Russian Tsars: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Russia''. Thames & Hudson, 1999.
★ Грибовский В.М. Государственное устройство и управление Российской империи, 1912.
Photocopy of pages
★ Первая Всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. Под ред. Н.А.Тройницкого. т.I. Общий свод по Империи результатов разработки данных Первой Всеобщей переписи населения, произведенной 28 января 1897 года. С.-Петербург, 1905. Таблица XII. Распределение населения по вероисповеданиям.
[1]
★
External links
★
The Empire that was Russia: color photographs from
Library of Congress
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