Imperial Russian

The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the third-largest empire in history, behind only the British and Mongol empires. It also colonized Alaska between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity.

From the 10th to 17th centuries, the Russians had been ruled by a noble class known as the boyars, above whom was the tsar, an absolute monarch. The groundwork of the Russian Empire was laid by Ivan III (), who greatly expanded his domain, established a centralized Russian national state, and secured independence against the Tatars. His grandson, Ivan IV (), became in 1547 the first Russian monarch to be crowned tsar of all Russia. Between 1550 and 1700, the Russian state grew by an average of per year. Peter I transformed the tsardom into an empire, and fought numerous wars that turned a vast realm into a major European power. He moved the Russian capital from Moscow to the new model city of Saint Petersburg, and led a cultural revolution that introduced a modern, scientific, rationalist, and Western-oriented system. Catherine the Great () presided over further expansion of the Russian state by conquest, colonization, and diplomacy, while continuing Peter's policy of modernization. Alexander I () helped defeat the militaristic ambitions of Napoleon and subsequently constituted the Holy Alliance, which aimed to restrain the rise of secularism and liberalism across Europe. Russia further expanded to the west, south, and east, strengthening its position as a European power. Its victories in the Russo-Turkish Wars were later checked by defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856), leading to a period of reform and conquests in Central Asia. Alexander II () initiated numerous reforms, most notably the 1861 emancipation of all 23 million serfs.

By the start of the 19th century, Russian territory extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, and from the Baltic Sea in the west to Alaska, Hawaii, and California in the east. By the end of the 19th century, Russia had expanded its control over the Caucasus, most of Central Asia and parts of Northeast Asia. Notwithstanding its extensive territorial gains and great power status, the empire entered the 20th century in a perilous state. The devastating Russian famine of 1891–1892 killed hundreds of thousands and led to popular discontent. As the last remaining absolute monarchy in Europe, the empire saw rapid political radicalization and the growing popularity of revolutionary ideas such as communism. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Tsar Nicholas II authorized the creation of a national parliament, the State Duma, although he still retained absolute political power.

When Russia entered the First World War on the side of the Allies, it suffered a series of defeats that further galvanized the population against the emperor. In 1917, mass unrest among the population and mutinies in the army culminated in the February Revolution, which led to the abdication of Nicholas II, the formation of the Russian Provisional Government, and the proclamation of the first Russian Republic. Political dysfunction, continued involvement in the widely unpopular war, and widespread food shortages resulted in mass demonstrations against the government in July. The republic was overthrown in the October Revolution by the Bolsheviks, who proclaimed the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and whose Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended Russia's involvement in the war, but who nevertheless were opposed by various factions known collectively as the Whites. After emerging victorious in the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union across most of the Russian territory; Russia was one of four continental European empires to collapse as a result of World War I, along with Germany, Austria–Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.

History

The foundations of a unified Russian state were laid in the 15th century under Ivan III. Moscow came to dominate the region known as Great Russia, and by the early 16th century, the Russian states were united with Moscow. The subjects of the Muscovite ruler were overwhelmingly Great Russian in ethnicity and Orthodox in religion. As Moscow was the only independent Orthodox power following the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, its rulers had already taken symbolic steps toward becoming an empire by marrying into the Byzantine imperial dynasty, adopting the double-headed eagle as their symbol, and the title of tsar (''caesar'').

During the reign of Ivan IV, the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan were conquered by Russia in the mid-16th century, marking the beginning of the transformation from an almost mono-ethnic realm into a multi-ethnic empire. The Russians began to expand into Siberia, initially in pursuit of the region's profitable furs. Following the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century, the traditional alliance of autocratic monarchy, church, and aristocracy was seen as the only basis for preserving social order and Russian statehood, which legitimized the rule of the Romanov dynasty.

Peter the Great (1682–1725)

The foundations of the Russian Empire were laid during Peter I's reforms, which altered Russia's political and social structure, and as a result of the Great Northern War which strengthened Russia's world standing.
Peter I (), played a major role in introducing the European state system into Russia. While Russia's vast lands had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those in the West. Nearly the entire population was devoted to agriculture, with only a small percentage living in towns. The class of ''kholops'', whose status was close to that of slaves, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter converted household kholops into house serfs, thus counting them for poll taxation. Agricultural kholops had been converted into serfs in 1679. They were largely tied to the land, in a feudal sense, until the late 19th century.

Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Empire. His attention then turned north; Russia lacked a secure northern seaport, except at Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, where the harbor was frozen for nine months a year. Access to the Baltic Sea 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 Saxony, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Denmark-Norway against Sweden; they conducted the Great Northern War, which ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden asked for peace with Russia. On , the day of the announcement of the Treaty of Nystad, the Governing Senate and Synod invested the tsar with the titles of Peter the Great, '' Pater Patriae'' (father of the fatherland), and ''Imperator'' of all Russia. The adoption of the title of ''imperator'' by Peter I is seen as the beginning of "imperial" Russia.

As a result of the war with Sweden, Peter acquired four provinces situated south and east of the Gulf of Finland, securing access to the sea. There he built Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, on the Neva river in 1703, to replace Moscow, which had long been Russia's cultural center. This relocation expressed his intent to adopt European elements for his empire. Many of the government and other major buildings were designed under Italianate influence.

Peter reorganized his government based on the latest political models, molding Russia into an absolutist state. The Military Regulations recognised the autocratic nature of the regime. Peter replaced the old Boyar Duma (council of nobles) with a nine-member Senate, in effect a supreme council of state. The vestiges of the independence of the boyars were lost. The countryside was divided into new provinces and districts. Peter informed the Senate that its mission was to collect taxes, and tax revenues tripled over his reign. Peter continued and intensified his predecessors' requirement of state service from all nobles, in the Table of Ranks and equated the ''votchina'' with an estate. Russia's modern fleet was built by Peter, along with an army reformed in a European style and educational institutions (the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences). Civil lettering was adopted during Peter I's reign, and the first Russian newspaper, ''Vedomosti'', was published. Peter I promoted science, particularly geography and geology, trade, and industry, including shipbuilding, as well as the growth of the educational system. Every tenth Russian acquired an education during his reign, when there were 15 million Russians.

As part of Peter's reorganization, he enacted a church reform. The Russian 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 Most Holy Synod, which was led by a government official.

The concept of the triune of the Russian people, composed of the Great Russians, the Little Russians, and the White Russians, was introduced under Peter I, and it was associated with the name of Archimandrite Zacharias Kopystensky (1621), the Archimandrite of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra and expanded upon in the writings of an associate of Peter I, Archbishop Professor Theophan Prokopovich. Several of Peter I's associates include Alexander Menshikov, Jacob Bruce, Mikhail Golitsyn and Anikita Repnin. During Peter's reign serf labor played a significant role in the growth of industry, reinforcing traditional socioeconomic structures. International trade increased as a result of Peter I's industrial reforms. However, imports of goods overtook exports, strengthening the role of foreigners in Russian trade, particularly the British.

In 1722, Peter turned his aspirations toward increasing Russian influence in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea at the expense of the weakened Safavid Persians. He made Astrakhan the base of military efforts against Persia, and waged the first full-scale war against them in 1722–23. Peter the Great temporarily annexed areas of Iran to Russia, which after his death were returned in the 1732 Treaty of Resht and 1735 Treaty of Ganja as a deal to oppose the Ottomans.

Peter died in 1725, leaving an unsettled succession. After a short reign by his widow, Catherine I, the crown passed to Empress Anna. She slowed reforms and led a successful war against the Ottoman Empire. This resulted in a significant weakening of the Crimean Khanate, an Ottoman vassal and long-term Russian adversary. The next emperor, the infant Ivan VI was deposed and killed. The discontent over the dominant positions of Baltic Germans in Russian politics resulted in Peter I's daughter Elizabeth being put on the Russian throne. Elizabeth supported the arts, architecture, and the sciences (for example, the founding of Moscow University). But she did not carry out significant structural reforms. Her reign, which lasted nearly 20 years, is also known for Russia's involvement in the Seven Years' War, where it was successful militarily, but gained little politically.

Catherine the Great (1762–1796)

Catherine the Great was a German princess who married Peter III, the German heir to the Russian crown. After the death of Empress Elizabeth, Catherine came to power after she effected a coup d'état against her very unpopular husband. She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great, abolishing State service and granting them control of most state functions in the provinces. She also removed the Beard tax instituted by Peter the Great.

Catherine extended Russian political control over the lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, supporting the Targowica Confederation. However, the cost of these campaigns further burdened the already oppressive social system, under which serfs were required to spend almost all of their time laboring on their owners' land. A major peasant uprising took place in 1773, after Catherine legalized the selling of serfs separate from land. Inspired by a Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev and proclaiming "Hang all the landlords!", the rebels threatened to take Moscow before they were ruthlessly suppressed. Instead of imposing the traditional punishment of drawing and quartering, Catherine issued secret instructions that the executioners should execute death sentences quickly and with minimal suffering, as part of her effort to introduce compassion into the law.

She furthered these efforts by ordering the public trial of Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova, a high-ranking noblewoman, on charges of torturing and murdering serfs. Whilst these gestures garnered Catherine much positive attention from Europe during the Enlightenment, the specter of revolution and disorder continued to haunt her and her successors. Indeed, her son Paul introduced a number of increasingly erratic decrees in his short reign aimed directly against the spread of French culture in response to their revolution.

In order to ensure the continued support of the nobility, which was essential to her reign, Catherine was obliged to strengthen their authority and power at the expense of the serfs and other lower classes. Nevertheless, Catherine realized that serfdom must eventually be ended, going so far in her ''Nakaz'' ("Instruction") to say that serfs were "just as good as we are" – a comment received with disgust by the nobility. Catherine advanced Russia's southern and western frontiers, successfully waging war against the Ottoman Empire for territory near the Black Sea, and incorporating territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Partitions of Poland, alongside Austria and Prussia. As part of the Treaty of Georgievsk, signed with the Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, and her own political aspirations, Catherine waged a new war against Persia in 1796 after they had invaded eastern Georgia. Upon achieving victory, she established Russian rule over it and expelled the newly established Persian garrisons in the Caucasus.

Catherine's expansionist policy caused Russia to develop into a major European power, as did the Enlightenment era and the Golden age in Russia. But after Catherine died in 1796, she was succeeded by her son, Paul. He brought Russia into a major coalition war against the new-revolutionary French Republic in 1798. Russian commander Field Marshal Suvorov led the Italian and Swiss expedition,—he inflicted a series of defeats on the French; in particular, the Battle of the Trebbia in 1799.

State budget

Russia was in a continuous state of financial crisis. While revenue rose from 9 million rubles in 1724 to 40 million in 1794, expenses grew more rapidly, reaching 49 million in 1794. The budget allocated 46 percent to the military, 20 percent to government economic activities, 12 percent to administration, and nine percent for the Imperial Court in St. Petersburg. The deficit required borrowing, primarily from bankers in Amsterdam; five percent of the budget was allocated to debt payments. Paper money was issued to pay for expensive wars, thus causing inflation. As a result of its spending, Russia developed a large and well-equipped army, a very large and complex bureaucracy, and a court that rivaled those of Versailles and London. But the government was living far beyond its means, and 18th-century Russia remained "a poor, backward, overwhelmingly agricultural, and illiterate country".

Population

Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian colonization of the Pacific, the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) which led to the incorporation of left-bank Ukraine, and the Russian conquest of Siberia. Poland was partitioned by its rivals in 1772–1815, most of its land and population taken under Russian rule. Most of the empire's growth in the 19th century came from gaining territory in central and eastern Asia south of Siberia. By 1795, after the Partitions of Poland, Russia became the most populous state in Europe, ahead of France.

First half of the 19th century

In 1801, over four years after Paul became the emperor of Russia, he was killed in Saint Michael's Castle in a coup. Paul was succeeded by his 23-year-old son, Alexander. Russia was in a state of war with the French Republic under the leadership of the Corsica-born First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte. After he became the emperor, Napoleon defeated Russia at Austerlitz in 1805, Eylau and Friedland in 1807. After Alexander was defeated in Friedland, he agreed to negotiate and sued for peace with France; the Treaties of Tilsit led to the Franco-Russian alliance against the Coalition and joined the Continental System. By 1812, Russia had occupied many territories in Eastern Europe, holding some of Eastern Galicia from Austria and Bessarabia from the Ottoman Empire; from Northern Europe, it had gained Finland from the war against a weakened Sweden; it also gained some territory in the Caucasus.

Following a dispute with Emperor Alexander I, in 1812, Napoleon launched an invasion of Russia. It was catastrophic for France, whose army was decimated during the Russian winter. Although Napoleon's Grande Armée reached Moscow, the Russians' scorched earth strategy prevented the invaders from living off the country. In the harsh and bitter winter, thousands of French troops were ambushed and killed by peasant guerrilla fighters. Russian troops then pursued Napoleon's troops to the gates of Paris, presiding over the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna (1815), which ultimately made Alexander the monarch of Congress Poland. The "Holy Alliance" was proclaimed, linking the monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

Although the Russian Empire played a leading political role in the next century, thanks to its role in defeating Napoleonic France, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress to any significant degree. As Western European economic growth accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, creating new weaknesses for the empire seeking to play a role as a great power. Russia's status as a great power concealed the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic and social backwardness. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I had been ready to discuss constitutional reforms, but though a few were introduced, no major changes were attempted.

The liberal Alexander I was replaced by his younger brother Nicholas I (1825–1855), who at the beginning 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 travelled in Europe in the course of 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), which was the work of a small circle of liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brother Constantine as a constitutional monarch. The revolt was easily crushed, but it caused Nicholas to turn away from the modernization program begun by Peter the Great and champion the doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.

In order to repress further revolts, censorship was intensified, including the constant surveillance of schools and universities. Textbooks were strictly regulated by the government. Police spies were planted everywhere. Under Nicholas I, would-be revolutionaries were sent off to Siberia, with hundreds of thousands sent to katorga camps. The retaliation for the revolt made "December Fourteenth" a day long remembered by later revolutionary movements.

The question of Russia's direction had been gaining attention ever since Peter the Great's program of modernization. Some favored imitating Western Europe while others were against this and called for a return to the traditions of the past. The latter path was advocated by Slavophiles, who held the "decadent" West in contempt. The Slavophiles were opponents of bureaucracy, who preferred the collectivism of the medieval Russian ''obshchina'' or ''mir'' over the individualism of the West. More extreme social doctrines were elaborated by such Russian radicals on the left, such as Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin.

Foreign policy (1800–1864)

After Russian armies liberated the Eastern Georgian Kingdom (allied since the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk) from the Qajar dynasty's occupation of 1802, during the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813), they clashed with Persia over control and consolidation of Georgia, and also became involved in the Caucasian War against the Caucasian Imamate. At the conclusion of the war, Persia irrevocably ceded what is now Dagestan, eastern Georgia, and most of Azerbaijan to Russia, under the Treaty of Gulistan. Russia attempted to expand to the southwest, at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, using recently acquired Georgia at its base for its Caucasus and Anatolian front. The late 1820s were successful years militarily. Despite losing almost all recently consolidated territories in the first year of the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, Russia managed to favorably bring an end to the war with the Treaty of Turkmenchay, including the formal acquisition of what are now Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iğdır Province. In the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War, Russia invaded northeastern Anatolia and occupied the strategic Ottoman towns of Karin and Gümüşhane

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