Russian Empire

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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.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Periodization 2 Territory 2.1 Boundaries 2.2 Geography 2.3 Territory development 2.4 Imperial external territories 3 Government and administration 3.1 The emperor 3.2 Imperial Council 3.3 The Duma and electoral system 3.4 Council of Ministers 3.5 Most Holy Synod 3.6 Senate 3.7 Provincial administration 4 Judicial system 4.1 Law enforcement 5 Local administration 5.1 Municipal dumas 5.2 Baltic provinces 6 Religions 7 Society 7.1 Serfdom 7.2 Peasants 7.3 Landowners 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References and further reading 11 External links

History

Main article: History of Russia

The Russian Empire formed from the Tsardom of Russia, which was ruled by the successors of Ivan IV as Tsars. Though the empire was only officially proclaimed late in 1721 by Tsar Peter I, it was truly born when Peter became Tsar in early 1682. Peter was disgusted by what he saw as the backwardness of his kingdom, and so, after his gaining the throne, he travelled about Europe, working in various jobs and gaining the experience necessary to bring Muscovy into the then-present. Following a war in the Baltic in the early 1700s, Peter gained a foothold along the coastline, and founded the city that would be the capital of his empire for almost 200 years, Saint Petersburg.

After the overthrow of monarchy during the February Revolution of 1917 Russia was declared to be a republic by the Provisional Government.

Periodization

This period, together with overlaps with the preceding and subsequent periods, is covered in the following articles.

• Russian history, 1682-1796
• Russian history, 1796-1855
• Russian history, 1855-1892
• Russian history, 1892-1917

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 she has no free outlet to the open sea except on the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean. Even the White Sea is merely a gulf of that ocean. The deep indentations of the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland 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 article: 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 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.^[2]

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 Empires declined, the Russian Empire kept a large proportion of its territory, firstly as the Soviet Union, and latterly as part of the 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

Russia was described in the Almanach de Gotha for 1910 as "a constitutional monarchy under an autocratic tsar." This obvious contradiction in terms well illustrates the difficulty of defining in a single formula the system, essentially transitional and meanwhile sui generis, established in the Russian empire since October 1905. Before this date the fundamental laws of Russia described the power of the emperor as "autocratic and unlimited." The imperial style is still "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias"; but in the fundamental laws as remodelled between the 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

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.^[3] 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 article: 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 article: 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 fths 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 article: 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

Main article: Most Holy Synod

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 article: 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 offences; one of its departments fullfiled 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

Further information: History of the administrative division of Russia

For purposes of provincial administiation 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 article: 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.^[4]

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.

Law enforcement

Further information: Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs#Russian Empire

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 article: 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 Greek includes a very great many Raskolniks or Dissenters.

Religion	Count of believers[5]
Orthodox[6]	87,123,604
Muslims	13,906,972
Roman Catholics	11,467,994
Jews	5,215,805
Lutherans[7]	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 are celibate in so far as they 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 article: 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 which was really terrible, even under the best landlords, and from this point of view it was obviously an immense benefit.^[8] 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 region the state of matters is hardly better. Many peasants took the "gratuitous allotments," whose amount was about one-eighth of the normal allotments.

The average allotment in Kherson 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-fourth 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; 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

• National emblems of the Russian Empire

Notes

References and further reading

• Library of Congress Country Studies: Russia
• Hingley, Ronald. The Tsars, 1533–1917. Macmillan, 1968.
• Saunders, David (December 2000). "Regional Diversity in the Later Russian Empire". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 10: 143–163. ISSN 0080-4401. 
• Warnes, David. Chronicle of the Russian Tsars: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Russia. Thames & Hudson, 1999.
• (Russian) Грибовский В.М. Государственное устройство и управление Российской империи, 1912. Photocopy of pages
• (Russian) 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]
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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