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Russia fought the Crimean War (1853-56) with the largest standing army in Europe, and its population was greater than that of France and Britain combined, but in that war it failed to defend its territory from attack mainly by the British and French -- in the Crimea. This failure shocked the Russians and demonstrated to them the inadequacy of their weaponry and transport and their economic backwardness relative to the British and French.
Being unable to defend one's realm from foreign attack was a great humiliation for Tsar Nicholas I, who died in 1855, toward the end of the war. He was succeeded that year by his eldest son, Alexander II, who had to be careful not to offend the Russian people while seeking an inglorious end to the war. The best he could do was an humiliating treaty, the Treaty of Paris -- signed on March 30, 1856. The treaty forbade Russian naval bases or warships on the Black Sea, leaving the Russians without protection from pirates or whomever along its 1,000 miles of Black Sea coastline, and leaving unprotected merchant ships that had to pass through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. The treaty removed Russia's claim of protection of Orthodox Christians within the Ottoman Empire, and it allowed the Turks to make the Bosporus a naval arsenal and a place where the fleets of Russia's enemies could assemble to intimidate Russia.
In his manifesto announcing the end of the war, Alexander II promised reform, and it was welcomed by the people. Those in Russia who read books other than the Holy Bible were eager for reform, some of them with a Hegelian confidence in historical development. These readers were more Russian-oriented, from Russia-oriented literature, than Russian intellectuals had been in the early years of the century. Russians were less devoted to the French language and to literature from Britain and Germany. Russians had been developing their own literature, with authors such as Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), Nicolai Gogol (1809-62), Ivan Turgenev (1818-83) and Feodor Dostoievski. (1821-81). And Russian literature had been producing a greater recognition of serfs as human beings.
In addition to a more productive economy, many of Russia's intellectuals hoped for more of a rule of law and an advance in rights and obligations for everyone under the rule of the tsar -- the continuation of autocracy but less arbitrary. And from among these intellectuals also came an appeal for freer universities, colleges and schools and a greater freedom of the press. "It is not light which is dangerous, but darkness," wrote Russia's official historian, Mikhail Pogodin.
And on the minds of reformers was the abolition of serfdom. In Russia were more the 22 million serfs, compared to 4 million slaves in the United States. They were around 44 percent of Russia's population, and described as slaves. They were the property of a little over 100,000 land owning lords (pomeshchiki). Some were owned by religious foundations, and some by the tsar (state peasants). Some labored for people other than their lords, but they had to make regular payments to their lord, with some of the more wealthy lords owning enough serfs to make a living from these payments.
Russia's peasants had become serfs following the devastation from war with the Tartars in the 1200s, when homeless peasants settled on the land owned by the wealthy. By the 1500s these peasants had come under the complete domination of the landowners, and in the 1600s, those peasants working the lord's land or working in the lord's house had become bound to the lords by law, the landowners having the right to sell them as individuals or families. Sexual exploitation of female serfs had become common.
It was the landowner who chose which of his serfs would serve in Russia's military -- for twenty-five years. In the first half of the 1800s, serf uprisings in the hundreds had occurred, and serfs in great number had been running away from their lords. But, in contrast to slavery in the United States, virtually no one in Russia was defending serfdom ideologically. There was to be no racial divide or Biblical quotation to argue about. Those who owned serfs defended that ownership merely as selfish interest. Public opinion overwhelmingly favored emancipation, many believing that freeing the serfs would help Russia advance economically to the level at least of Britain or France. Those opposed to emancipation were isolated -- among them the tsar's wife and mother, who feared freedom for so many would not be good for Russia.
In 1856, Tsar Alexander II spoke before the gentry of Moscow and asked them to consider emancipation of the serfs, adding that it would be better to begin to abolish serfdom from above rather than wait for a rising from below. Preparing the way for the more liberal and self-regulating society that was a part of the economically advanced societies in the West, Alexander described his government's new policy of glasnost (openness), greater freedom of the press and thought. Censorship was to remain, and Alexander announced the need to exercise "judicious vigilance," but, he said, it ought not "inhibit thinking."
In 1858, committees of gentry gathered in Russia's various provinces, and, representing the gentry in general, nine met in what was called a Main Committee, at St. Petersburg, and agreed to the abolition of serfdom should the tsar decide to do so. In March 1861, on the same day that Abraham Lincoln took his oath office, Alexander issued his Emancipation Manifesto. In charge of the program of emancipation was the adjutant-general, Count Panin, who had owned 20,000 serfs. The lords were to receive compensation in the form of treasury bonds, and the freed serfs were to pay for their freedom not as individuals but collectively. Except in the Ukraine and a few other areas, lands were distributed to communities of former serfs, communities called communes, the government hoping that a commune of freed serfs would be more responsible than scattered individuals, and the government hoping to prevent the creation of numerous isolated persons without property. It was the commune that was to be responsible for distributing land to the former serfs, for collecting taxes, providing recruits for the military and other obligations.
Payments by freed serfs were to be annual, to the government, for forty-nine years, while the lords for the time being were to keep title to their lands, including that portion -- perhaps half -- given to the serf commune.
Many freed serfs, especially in the fertile agricultural regions in the southern provinces, felt that they did not get all the land that had been promised them. Some serf communities failed to receive forested areas or access to a river and were forced to bargain with their former lords for access to these. According to one source, the former serfs received 18 percent less land than they had been promised, and 42 percent of the former serfs received allotments of land insufficient to maintain their families. [note]
Some former serfs rioted, including some who believed that the real emancipation decree was being kept from them by their former lord. Some of Russia's intelligencia considered the emancipation reform inadequate. Many former serfs accepted their situation with what a Russian prince, Peter Kropotkin, described as their "inborn good nature." Kropotkin described their servility toward the lords as disappearing rapidly and the former serfs talking to their masters as equals.
Alexander II, meanwhile, had earned the title Tsar-Liberator.
Alexander was preparing to abandon rule of all of vast Russia form his central bureaucracy by giving the Russians some local control. In 1864 he created a district assembly for rural areas called the zemstvo. In these, both the local gentry and common peasants had representation, the two forced to work together and occasionally to compromise. The zemstvo was responsible for education, medical care, veterinary service, insurance, local roads and the storage of food reserves. Medical care was communal -- socialized medicine. The zemstvo attracted teachers, doctors, veterinary surgeons, bookkeepers and other professionals.
The legal system was also reformed in 1864. The judiciary became an independent branch of government and a single unified system. Bureaucratic secrecy was replaced by a new openness as to what the courts were doing. Favor under the law for the wealthy and upper classes was replaced by what was supposed to be equality before the law. Trial by jury was created for serious criminal offenses, and for minor civil and criminal cases justices of the peace were created.
In 1870, cities and towns were given powers similar to the zemstvo - power to pursue municipal economic development and to look after the welfare of its inhabitants. A limited democracy of sorts was created in the form of town councils, its members elected by property owners and taxpayers.
Alexander reformed the military, reducing duty from twenty-five years to six, with recruits drawn by lot and people from all classes obliged to serve, with exemptions for hardship cases. For the military, corporal punishment was abolished, and an effort was made to improve the professionalism of the officer corps. In the military all who lacked an elementary education were to receive it. And Alexander put his army into more comfortable uniforms.
Under Alexander, the system for state finances was improved, laying a foundation for industrial expansion. That expansion had begun in the same way that it was in Western Europe and the United States, with the expansion of rail lines. The growth in rail lines enabled farmers to send their crops to consumers farther away, and to sell their crops at a more stable price. Railway expansion increased Russia's ability to export grain, providing Russia with money to invest in more industrialization. Railway expansion allowed for a growth in the mining of minerals. The coal, iron and steel industries were growing, as was the railway-equipment industry. There was more demand for rails, locomotives and other goods, stimulating the economy. Industrial suburbs appeared around Moscow and St. Petersburg and industrial workers grew in number. In the early 1860s the Russian Empire had about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of railroad track. By 1880 it was to have about 24,000 kilometers (15,500 miles) of track.
Traders and settlers in Siberia, said to be around 0.9 million in 1800, had increased to 2.7 million by 1850, most of them in the western part of Siberia. During the reign of Alexander II, Russia expanded in the Siberian Far East. Russia had founded a penal colony in 1857 in the north of Sakhalin Island. In 1858, the Russians took advantage of China's weakness and signed, with the Manchu dynasty ruling China, the Treaty of Aigun. In this treaty, Russia gained 600,000 square kilometers of territory on left bank of the Amur River (which now separates China from Russia) -- a gain in territory almost the size of California and Oregon combined. In 1860, in the Treaty of Beijing, Russia gained territory south from the Amur River along the East Sea (Sea of Japan) to Korea -- territory approximately the size of California. In the south of that region, in 1860, the Russians founded the port city of Vladivostok.
In the Caucasus, Russia had been facing the "holy wars" of Islamic mountain peoples. In 1857, with the Crimean War over, the Russians launched a new offensive there. The mountaineers grew tired of fighting and the Russians captured the legendary Shamil, leader of the resistance to Russia. In the Caucasus, the Christian Armenian and Georgians looked to the Russians for protection against the threat from the Turks as well as attacks by Muslim mountaineers, while some Muslims, rather than be ruled by the Christian Russians, migrated to Turkey.
And beginning in 1863, Russia sent military expeditions into Central Asia -- between the Caspian Sea and China, north of Afghanistan. Here the population was sparse and largely tribal and Islamic. Largely they were mobile herders. Resistance to the Russians was armed with little more than a few antiquated firearms. The United States was Russia's primary source of cotton, and when this supply was curtailed during the U.S. Civil War the growing of cotton in Central Asia became of greater importance for Russia. The Russians captured the city of Tashkent in June 1865, and Tashkent became a Russian administrative center. Russian settlers began moving into the conquered areas, with the Russian army defending the settlers against attacks by local natives, which led to further Russian expansion.
In 1867, Alexander's government moved toward a greater consolidation of the frontier of its empire by selling to the United States all its "territory and dominion" on the continent of North America, namely Alaska, and adjacent islands - a continuation of a pull back from Fort Ross in northern California, in 1841. In 1875, Russia pulled back from the Kurile Islands (historically islands that belonged to the Ainu people), Russia acknowledging Japan's control there, receiving in exchange from Japan, recognition of its control over the southern half of Sakhalin Island, giving all of Sakhalin, for the time being, to Russia.
Meanwhile, Alexander's Russia had regained some of its standing in the Western world. In 1870, Alexander repudiated that section of the 1866 Treaty of Paris that prevented Russia from having a naval force in the Black Sea. A conference of European powers, held in 1871, sanctioned Russia reestablishing a naval force in the Black Sea but reaffirmed the right of the Turkish sultan to close the Dardanelles and the Bosporus to war vessels.
Concerning the western frontier of Russia's empire, by now Pan-Slavism among the Russians -- a point-of-view that had risen with the decline of Russia's international standing from its loss of the Crimean War. The Pan-Slavists held that if Slavic and Orthodox Christian peoples other than Russians associated with Russia's empire, it would give Russia more power and influence in world affairs. Some Pan-Slavists believed that the old seat of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Constantinople, was or should be Russian. Some devout Pan-Slavic Orthodox Christians believed that Russia's empire should include lands from the Volga River to the Euphrates, from the Ganges River to the Danube, as, they believed, Daniel had prophesied. They credited Russia with the highest achievements: the religion of the Hebrews, the culture of the Greeks (who were also Eastern Orthodox) and the political order of ancient Rome. And following Prussia's unification of Germany's in 1871, Pan-Slavists saw their point-of-view as a check on German expansion in Central and Eastern Europe. Pan-Slavism, they believed, was essential if Russia being a great power.
Russia created an alliance with Prussia and Austria-Hungary, called the Three Emperor's League. Russia joined other Christian powers in trying to impose on the Ottoman Empire a program of reforms and to eliminate grievances among Christians within the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. In Russia, public opinion rose in support of a spontaneous rising against Turkish rule in the Balkans, the Russians siding with their fellow Eastern Orthodox Christians, whom they saw as suffering under Muslim rule. Public opinion goaded Alexander into going to war against the Turks, and on April 24, 1877, Russia declared war on the Ottoman sultan - the Islamic ruler in Turkey. Alexander appeased Austria, lest Austria oppose his move against the Turks, and he did so by offering Austria the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (helping to lay the ground for World War in 1914).
Russia's successful armies stopped short of capturing Constantinople, threatened with war by an aroused Britain if it did so. Russia made peace with Turkey, at San Stefano (or San Stephano). But Britain and other European powers were opposed to any increase in Russia's influence in the Balkans. At a conference of the major powers at Berlin in 1878 -- called the Congress of Berlin -- the map of the Balkans was redrawn with what appeared to be a diplomatic defeat for Russia, to which Russian public opinion reacted with bitterness.
The Russians had to be satisfied with their gains in Siberia and Central Asia. By 1876 the Russians had conquered or had made a protectorate of all of what is today Uzbekistan. Also in 1876 they occupied the north of present-day Kyrgyzstan. By 1881 present-day Kyrgyzstan was a part of the Russian Empire. And in 1881 the Russians overcame the fierce resistance of Turkmen tribes, capturing the Dengil-Tepe fortress, near Ashgabad, putting present-day Turkmenistan under Russian control.
In their 19th century conquest of Central Asia, the Russians had lost perhaps less than a thousand soldiers. The Russians encouraged local semi-nomadic peoples to develop agriculture, while not interfering with local law and other customs of the conquered Islamic peoples, and Russia was to receive from Central Asia cotton and other raw materials. In the conquered territories the Russians sold tobacco, manufactured goods and, with devastating consequences, vodka. The Russian spread syphilis. Merchants bought up land and then leased the land back to local peoples at extortionate rates. And the Russians taxed local peoples.
Among the conquered peoples of Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, only the Yakuts in the northeast of Siberia managed to adapt well to Russian dominance, the Yakuts, at least their elite, preserving their language and, under a Christian veneer, their shamanist tradition.
In 1795, Poland, largely Roman Catholic, had been divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria and had ceased to exist as an independent kingdom. With the international agreement at Vienna in 1815, the Russian tsar, Alexander I, expanded his hold over Polish lands, but these lands were given a degree of self-government. In 1830, a year of upheaval across Europe, the Poles rebelled against the Russians, seeking full independence and nationhood, and 1835, in response, Tsar Nicholas I abrogated the Polish constitution of 1815 and made Poland an indivisible part of the Russian Empire. He closed Polish institutions of higher learning and secularized lands of the Catholic Church. The Russian language was forced upon the Poles in secondary schools, and the works of leading Polish authors were banned. Then in the late 1850s, with Tsar Alexander II in power and moving in the direction of reforms, amnesty was granted to those Poles who had resisted the Russians. The Poles were granted municipal elections and Poles replaced Russian officials in subordinate governmental offices. There were demonstrations by the Poles in 1860, on the anniversary of the Warsaw uprising of 1830, and another demonstration in 1861 in which Russians fired into the crowd, killing several demonstrators. Alexander was hesitant concerning his policy toward the Poles, but by 1862, he had restored all that Nicholas I had taken away, including the restoration of Catholic bishoprics and the right of Poles to elect provincial and local assemblies -- everything except the right to convoke a national assembly (diet or parliament).
In London and Paris, meanwhile, were Polish exiles organizing resistance to Russian rule over the Poles. And landowning Polish nobles were happy about Tsar Alexander's favoritism toward the common peasants in land reform. Another uprising against the Russians began in January 1863, when young Poles protesting conscription into the Russian army were joined by various others, including high ranking Polish officers serving in Russia's army. The rebellion spread to the Lithuanians (who were mostly Roman Catholics) and to the Byelorussians (who were mostly Eastern Orthodox). A lack of military strength forced the rebels to resort to guerrilla warfare. With hundreds of thousands of troops, the Russians crushed the resistance in the summer of 1864. Alexander II ended Polish autonomy again. There were public executions of 128 rebels and deportations of 12,000 to Siberia. Property of the Catholic Church was confiscated. The Polish language was banned at official places. Poles were forbidden from acquiring landed estates. Teachers, Orthodox priests and landlords from Russia moved in among the Byelorussians. Money confiscated as penalties from the conquered helped finance in the conquered territory the construction of Orthodox churches and to support Orthodox priests.
In the early 1860s, Russia had fewer university students than did France or Britain, but in considerable number Russia's students believed that governmental reforms were inadequate, and they were hostile toward Alexander's authoritarianism regarding the universities. Disturbances erupted on university campuses in '61 and '62, coinciding with discontent over dissatisfaction with the emancipation of serfs.
Numerous fires were set in St. Petersburg in 1862 and in cities along the Volga River. Leaflets urging revolution were distributed. The government filled the jail cells at St. Petersburg's Peter and Paul fortress and nearby Kronstadt naval base with university students. The authorities closed the universities, but then reopened them again in August 1863, under a new minister of education, bent on placating the students with a more liberal policy and freer university.
Political activism was prestigious among the students, as was the activist's way of looking at the world. The activists were interested in the utilitarianism positivism and materialism that had been more common in Britain. They extolled science in what they believed was the new age of science. They were in rebellion against the metaphysics, religion and romantic poetry the parent's generation. They were hostile toward family control and school discipline. They were described by the Russian novelist Alexander Turgenev as nihilists, because of their rejection of authority and old values, and the label stuck.
In 1866, in an individual action a student tried to assassinate the Tsar Alexander, and the government became more hostile to all students. A new minister of education took charge of the universities and applied stricter controls.
In 1873, students studying in Switzerland were ordered to return to Russia, and returning students launched what was called the "To the People" movement, which they hoped would revolutionize Russia. They wanted to change Russia by mixing with and passing along their ideas to the common people in rural areas - Russia being predominately rural -- and to serve the common people in various ways, as teachers, doctors or scribes. They were only a couple of thousand in a sea of perhaps nearly 100 million people, and the social change they hoped for did not appear on the mass scale they hoped for. Some peasants looked with hostility upon the "nihilist" views of some within the movement, saw them as outsiders and as troublemakers and reported them to the police. Arrests and trials of nearly 250 marked the end of the "To the People" movement, which was followed by something more radical.
In 1876 a group called "Land and Liberty" was founded -- a secret organization to avoid the police, their purpose being propaganda among "the people" and political organizing. In early 1878, a non-student worker-activist but member of "Land and Liberty, Vera Zasulich, sought revenge for the beating that one of her activist friends received in prison. She shot and wounded the military governor of St. Petersburg and was tried by a jury, which failed to convict her. The government responded by ending jury trials for people charged with politically motivated crimes. The government also stepped up its arrest and exile of persons suspected of sedition.
In 1879, St. Petersburg had its first significant strike by industrial workers. And that year, from the "Land and Liberty" activists emerged an impatient group that advocated terrorism to accomplish their goals, a group that called itself the "Will of the People." Their goals were democracy, worker ownership of mines and factories, lands to peasants, complete freedom of speech and association, a classless society and people's militias replacing the army. Some believed that if Tsar Alexander II were assassinated he might be replaced with a new ruler who would create a liberal constitution -- which they saw as an improvement although of more benefit to the bourgeoisie than to the masses. Some others believed that the assassination of prominent officials and Alexander II could spark a popular uprising.
In 1879 several attempts were made to kill Alexander. In 1880 they blew up the dining room at the tsar's Winter Palace, killing eleven and injuring fifty-six but missing the tsar, who had been late to dine. The police were able to track down and arrest many members of the "Will of the People," almost destroying the organization.
In March, 1881, the police were aware that another attempt was afoot to assassinate Alexander. The police warned Alexander to remain secluded, but Alexander ignored the warning, and, on March 13, a bomb was thrown beneath his carriage, wounding some in his entourage. The entourage stopped -- as the assassins had planned. Alexander emerged from his carriage, feeling obliged to be with the wounded. A 26-year-old Polish member of the conspiracy, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, approached within a few steps of Alexander and tossed a package that landed at the feet of Alexander, the package exploding and ripping apart Alexander's legs. Alexander's entourage fled in panic, leaving the tsar to bleed alone on the icy ground. Passers-by found Alexander, but he died a few hour later.
Alexander III, thirty-six years-old when he ascended the throne, the second son of Alexander II, associated the assassination of his father with liberal reforms -- instead of seeing the assassination as a security failure. He claimed that parliamentary institutions and the liberalism of Western Europe were inappropriate for Russia and that Russia could be saved from the revolutionaries only by the traditional authoritarian rule of his family -- the Romanov's -- including adherence to the faith of the Orthodox Christian Church, of which he was head.
The Russian writer, Count Leo Tolstoy, appealed to Alexander III to spare his father's murders and "to meet his enemies on the field of ideas." The terrorists had ideals, said Tolstoy, and he advised Alexander to counter their ideals with "another ideal, higher than theirs, greater and more generous."
Tsar Alexander III was closer to the ideology of his former tutor, Konstantine Pobedonostsev -- since 1880 lay head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Pobedonostsev argued against parliamentary government, declaring against "the dexterous manipulators of votes." They, he claimed, " ... rule the people as any despot or military dictator might rule it." He described elected representatives as defending the interests of narrow constituencies. A monarch alone, he said, embodies the common interest. Pobedonostsev saw liberal ideas as a threat to Romanov authority and claimed that all opposition to Romanov authority should be ruthlessly crushed.
Pobedonostsev, moreover, viewed Jews as the killers of Christ -- that somehow the actions of a few Jews more than eighteen hundred years before were the responsibility of all Jews then and down through the ages -- collective guilt. An association was made between the assassins of Alexander II and "the Jewish plague," and the assassination of Alexander II was followed by a string of pogroms against the Jews, by attacks on Jewish communities, the property of Jews, including some killing of Jews. To many Russian peasants, and many who had migrated to the cities, the Jews were extortionists -- the same bleeding the peasants with high interest rates with which some German peasants had characterized Jews.
Jews had already been restricted to towns and smaller settlements inhabited by merchants and craftsmen, within what was called the Pale, and not allowed in the countryside alongside non-Jews. A few Jews had managed to surmount these restrictions, while only a small percentage were allowed to study at a university. At the bottom of his order, in 1887, to restrict the number of Jews at universities, Alexander III wrote "Let us never forget that it was the Jews who crucified Jesus."
Many Jews had been invited to settle in Poland before the Russians had taken control of Polish lands, and now many from Russia-controlled Poland and from western Russia would be among those "Eastern Europeans" who migrated to the United States. Between 1881 and 1914 nearly two million Jews would arrive in the United States, mostly from Eastern Europe.
During the rule of Alexander III, the central government's police (now called the Okhrana), made no distinction between terrorists and activists of the non-violent variety. Censorship was tightened, and publishers and writers with liberal ideas were harassed. Activists were arrested, imprisoned, commonly tried by courts-martial and ex-communicated. Thousands were exiled to Siberia and in some cases hanged. But opposition to monarchical rule was not eliminated. It was merely forced underground.
With new property requirements for voting, the electorate of St. Petersburg decreased from around 21,000 to around 8,000, and the electorate of Moscow decreased from around 20,000 to around 7,000. [note] Only the Orthodox Church was allowed to proselytize, and the Catholic and Protestant churches in the empire were subject to surveillance. The involvement of the Orthodox Church in primary education was increased, parish schools increasing from 4,500 in 1882 to around 32,000 by 1894. Higher education for women became more restricted. University autonomy was abolished. Students were prohibited from forming organizations, and teachers were appointed by the Ministry of Education rather than elected by their colleagues as before. Universities in Poland and the Baltic provinces were obliged to use the Russian language, and this was applied also in Finland, then a part of the Russian Empire.
Several attempts were made to assassinate Alexander III, but, in 1894, after months of illness, he died of disease of the kidneys -- one of which had been injured in a train derailment. His eldest son, Nicolas II, at age of twenty-six, became tsar -- the tsar whose decisions would change the world in the years 1914 to 1916.
Nicholas complained that he was not ready to be tsar and, it is said, burst into tears. He had little interest in ideas, but he began to model his rule after that of his father and to adhere to ritual and ceremony.
A few days after the coronation of Nicholas, a part of the continued celebration was the setting out of presents from the tsar -- trinkets and such -- at a field on the outskirts of Moscow. As the crowd surged toward the gifts over a thousand of them were trampled to death, the beginning of tragedy in the reign of Nicholas II.
The main interest of Nicholas was devotion to God and an undisturbed family life. He believed the Romanov claim that rule by the Romanov family was from and guided by the will of God. And, like his father, he too was the head of Russia's Eastern Orthodox Church. Under Nicholas II, Moscow was still seen at the new city of Constantine, the "Third Rome" (since the 15th century). At church services Nicholas II was described as "'The Most Devout." Those devoted to the Church and to Nicholas were to describe the Church as having reached its fullest development and power under Nicholas.
Nicholas visited churches across his land, venerating saints, and where he appeared, devout Russians followed the custom of falling to their knees at the sight of him and his entourage -- a moment of silence usually followed by roaring cheers. Those allowed close enough to him and allowed to address him would, on their knees, kiss his hand with fervent expressions of loyalty.
Capitalists continued to seek gains and workers to seek work, and Russia continued to advance technologically. The industrial sector of Russia's economy had begun booming in the mid-1880s -- similar to the booms taking place in the West, including the United States. Russia's rail track, around 1,600 kilometers in 1860, was around 53,000 kilometers by the end of the century, when the great trans-Siberia railway, begun in 1892, was almost finished. From Moscow, the hub of Russia's rail lines, track extended to the Far East, westward to Warsaw and the Baltic Sea, north to St. Petersburg and to Archangel, south to the Black Sea, and southeast to the shore of the Caspian Sea and to Samarkand and the Afghan border.
Food production was keeping pace with population growth. Since 1860, farm production had been increasing at an annual rate of 1.5 to 1.9 percent per year - partly because of the increase in the area farmed. From the late 1860s to 1914 the number of horses in Russia rose by 38 percent and the number of cattle rose by 46 percent. [note]
Russia's population reached 135.6 million at the end of the century -- compared to 41.1 million for Britain, 56 million for Germany, and 75.9 million for the United States. [note] Its armed forces had 1,162,000 personnel, compared to Germany's 524,000 and 96,000 for the United States. [note] But Russia remained predominately rural. Approximately 80 percent of Russia's working population was associated with agriculture. Its per capita manufacturing output was only 15 percent of Britain's - compared to the 65 percent of Britain's per capita output in the United States. [note]
The century ended with many Russians holding a romantic notion of the expansion to the Siberian Far East -- which had become a part of Russia proper. In a popular book entitled The Conquest of Siberia, the author, Ermak, described the people migrating into Siberia as "strong, with a powerful spirit." Life in Siberia, he wrote, was tough. While people in Western Europe viewed expansion by Russians as sinister, Russians commonly viewed their expansion as glorious and the product of bravery and fortitude.
Russia's wealthy merchants did not lobby for a voice in government as had merchants in the West. Many of them were from the "Old Believer" families, risen from poverty and frugal, not unlike some successful entrepreneurs in the United States. Largely they accepted the policies of their tsar, aiming their hostilities instead at would-be business competition from Western Europeans, from Poles and Jews. They remained actively associated with the Orthodox Church and supported, or at least did not criticize, Russia's imperialism.
Dissent was strongest among intellectuals with an anti-capitalist bent. And, among those wanting the overthrow of the monarchy, atheism was fervent. Fervor was a counter force also politically. Despite tsarist rule's hostility toward revolutionary activity, it was Russia that was producing the most revolutionaries - more so, for example, than was liberal Britain or the United States.
In the Russia of tsar Nicholas II, the word student became synonymous with revolutionary. Arguments among the revolutionaries were vociferous, including exiles, described by one author as follows:
So great was the turmoil and the chatter, so unearthly the hours kept, so furious the quarrels, that it became commonplace in hospitable Geneva and Zurich to see advertisements reading: "Roomers Wanted, No Russians." [note]
Russia's revolutionaries were divided between anarchists, populists (narodniki) and Marxists. The narodniks were anti-city, socialist and interested in organizing Russia's majority rural folks. The Marxists believed that industrialization and urbanization was in Russia's future and that socialism would follow more capitalist development. They saw Russia's village communes as decaying and peasants increasingly joining the urban poor.
The most influential Marxist was George Plekhanov, living in exile in Switzerland. He became one of the founders of the League for the Emancipation of Labor -- the beginnings of what became Russia's organization of Social Democrats. Plekhanov criticized anarchists, narodniks and Blanquists for not understanding that socialism could not be superimposed upon the present but instead would need to wait for more capitalist and industrial development.
In 1900, Plekhanov began publishing the Socialist newspaper Iskra (spark), with a rising star among the Russian Marxists, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, to be known to the world as V.I. Lenin. Lenin believed that a revolutionist party in Russia should be clandestine and limited to professional revolutionaries who could take their reasoning to common working folks rather than waiting for the "working class" to spontaneously develop an interest in socialist revolution. In 1903 he led a split among the Social Democrats, his group called the Bolsheviks.
Additional Online Reading
"Saint or Fool?" by Turgenev ...
Recommended Books
A History of Russia, by Nicholas V Riasanovsky.
Russia, People and Empire, 1552-1917, by Geoffrey Hosking, Harvard Univ Press 1997.
An Economic History of Russia 1856 -- 1911, by W E Mosse, 1996.
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