Tsar Peter I carried out radical changes in the state’s domestic and foreign policy . As a result of the Northern War of 1700-1721, the Swedish army was defeated, in the Battle of Gangut under the leadership of General Admiral Fyodor Apraksin and with the personal participation of Peter the Great, the first naval victory in Russian history was won, on 10 ( 21 ) September 1721 , Nishtadt peace was concluded contract and returned to the Russian lands, captured by Sweden at the end of the XVI century, Russia received access to the Baltic Sea, and Estland , Livonia , Ingermanland were annexed. The result of the Persian campaign (1722–1723) was the Petersburg peace treaty , according to which the cities of Derbent , Baku , Resht and the provinces of Shirvan , Gilan , Mazandaran and Astrabad were ceded to Russia . According to the results of the Northern War, to adapt the royal title under the system of titulatry adopted in Europe and as a symbol of raising the international status of Russia, Peter I assumed the titles of Emperor All-Russian and Father of Fatherland from senators, the Russian state began to be called the Russian Empire [1] .
The port city of St. Petersburg was built at the mouth of the Neva, where the capital of Russia was moved in 1712. In 1703 the Kronstadt fortress was founded. January 1 ( 11 ), 1700 , the decree of Peter I introduced the Julian calendar in Russia [2] . The Russian kingdom in 1721 became the Russian Empire , led by the all-Russian emperor .
Education of the Russian Empire
The first Emperor All-Russian Peter I undertook a number of reforms . He carried out a reform of state administration, a transformation in the army, a military fleet was created, a reform of church administration was carried out, aimed at eliminating the autonomous state church jurisdiction and subordinating the Russian church hierarchy to the Emperor. A financial reform was also carried out, and measures were taken to develop industry and commerce. St. Petersburg was founded in 1703, and in 1712 it became the capital of the state instead of Moscow .
After returning from the Great Embassy, Peter I led a struggle against the external manifestations of an “outdated” way of life (the most famous ban on beards ), but no less paid attention to the introduction of the nobility to education and secular Europeanized culture. Secular educational institutions began to appear, the first Russian newspaper was founded [3] , translations of many books into Russian appeared. Success in the service of Peter made the nobility dependent on education.
In 1699, Peter I established the first Russian Order [4] of St. Andrew the First-Called . The first cavalier of the highest award of the Russian Empire was Chancellor Fyodor Golovin , who saved Peter I during the rifle rebellion, admiral, including Russian diplomacy, the creator of an extensive network of diplomatic missions abroad. In 1722, Peter I introduced the Table of Ranks , enabling individual members of the lower classes to receive nobility for special services.
During the reign of Peter I, the state concept of the triune Russian people as an aggregate of Great Russians , Little Russians and Belarusians began to emerge , associated with the name of the Archimandrite of Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Zakharia Kopystnsky (1621) , later on the concept was developed in the writings of Peter I’s associate, Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich . Azov campaigns of Peter I as a continuation of the war begun by princess Sofia with the Ottoman Empire and the Crimea for access to the Black Sea ended with the capture of the fortress of Azov , the founding of the city of Taganrog as a harbor for the home fleet; the conclusion of the Treaty of Constantinople (1700) , but Russia has so far failed to secure access to the Black Sea. For the capture of the city of Azov, the commander of the land forces of voivode Alexei Shein became the first Generalissimo in the history of Russia.
Peter clearly recognized the need for enlightenment, and undertook a series of drastic measures for this purpose. On January 14 ( 25 ), 1701 a school of mathematical and navigation sciences was opened in Moscow. In 1701–1721, artillery, engineering, and medical schools in Moscow, an engineering school and a maritime academy in St. Petersburg, and a mining school at the Olonets and Ural factories were opened. In 1705, the first gymnasium in Russia was opened. The goals of mass education were to serve digital schools in provincial cities, created by decree of 1714, designed to “ teach children of every order to read and write, tsifir and geometry ”. It was supposed to create two such schools in each province, where education was supposed to be free. Garrison schools were opened for soldiers' children, a network of theological schools was created in 1721 to train priests. Peter’s decrees introduced compulsory education for nobles and clergy, but a similar measure for the urban population met with fierce resistance and was abolished. Peter’s attempt to create an all-class primary school failed (the creation of a network of schools ceased after his death, most of the digital schools under his successors were converted into class schools to train the clergy), but nevertheless, his reign laid the foundations for the spread of education in Russia. [five]
Peter created new printing houses in which over the years 1700-1725, 1312 titles of books were printed (two times more than in the entire previous history of Russian typography ). Thanks to the rise of typography, paper consumption increased from 4-8 thousand sheets at the end of the XVII century, to 50 thousand sheets in 1719. [6]
There were changes in the Russian language, which included 4.5 thousand new words, borrowed from European languages . [7]
In 1724, Peter approved the charter of the Academy of Sciences organized (opened in 1725 after his death).
The increase in military spending led to a financial crisis and a sharp increase in the number of taxes, a state monopoly was introduced on a number of goods with an increase in their price, a head-tax file was introduced, instead of a house tax, and the number of tax-paying individuals increased, [8] the peasants were equated with privately owned slaves , who also began to pay tax for the first time, which led, in turn, to the mass flight of the serfs to the Don and the Bulavin uprising . The reign of Peter I was marked by widespread hard labor .
The financial reform of Peter I based on the concept of mercantilism consisted in the development of manufactories and mining; the introduction of many new taxes; systematization of tax collection through the organization of the Town Hall , Chamber Chambers and States-Bureau-collegiums ; coinage of foreign coins; new denominations of coins and loose copper coins were introduced, the weight and trial of coins were reduced.
The development of industry and commerce , including state-owned and private metalworks, contributed to the fact that Russia began to send iron for export from 1716. In 1725, the largest blast furnace in the world at that time was commissioned at the Nizhny Tagil plant of Akinfiy Demidov .
Of particular importance was the construction of stone Petersburg, in which foreign architects took part and which was carried out according to the plan developed by the tsar . He created a new urban environment with previously unfamiliar forms of life and pastime (theater, masquerades). The interior of the houses, the way of life, the composition of food, etc. have changed.
A special decree of the king in 1718 introduced assemblies representing a new form of communication between people for Russia. At the assemblies, the nobles danced and communicated freely, in contrast to the previous feasts and feasts. The reforms undertaken by Peter I affected not only politics, economics, but also art. Peter invited foreign artists to Russia and at the same time sent talented young people to study "arts" abroad. In the second quarter of the XVIII century. "Peter's retirees" began to return to Russia, bringing with them a new artistic experience and acquired skills.
The reforms of Peter I were aimed at improving the manageability and efficiency of state structures, contributed to modernization: the army - the role of regular units increased, the army became permanent and did not dissolve after military campaigns, the soldiers broke away from their families and were engaged only in military craft; State apparatus - people from non-noble estates could theoretically reach the highest ranks, the governing senate became the highest state body, orders were replaced by boards , Russia was divided into provinces, provinces and counties; and education - a civil font was introduced, a vocational education system emerged: navigation , pushkar, hospital schools, etc. were opened, education for the nobility became compulsory, Petersburg University was opened, the first museum in Russia , the first library in Russia , the first Russian printed newspaper . [9] In 1724, the decree of Peter I founded the Petersburg Academy of Sciences .
December 30, 1701 ( January 10, 1702 ), Peter issued a decree, which was instructed to write in petitions and other documents the names completely instead of derogatory names (Ivashka, Senka, etc.), do not fall on their knees in front of the king, in winter in the cold In which is the king, do not take off. He explained the need for these innovations in the following way: “Less vileness, more zeal for service and loyalty to me and the state - this is characteristic of the king ...” [10]
Peter I issued a series of decrees [11] [12] against discrimination of illegitimate babies and following the example of the Novgorod bishop Job (who founded Russia's first educational house in 1706 - a haven for foundlings and illegitimate monasteries) created a number of shelters for such children.
Peter tried to change the position of women in Russian society. He, by special decrees (1700, 1702 and 1724), forbade forced marriage and marriage. It was prescribed that between engagement and the wedding was not less than a six-week period, "so that the bride and groom could recognize each other." If during this time, it was said in the decree, “the bride will not take the bridegroom's groom, or the bride will not go and marry the bridegroom,” no matter how the parents insist, “there must be freedom in that.” From 1702, the bride (and not only her relatives) was granted the formal right to terminate the betrothal and upset the conspired marriage, and neither of the parties had the right to "beat a penalty with a penny." Legislative regulations of 1696-1704 on public celebrations introduced the obligatory participation in the celebrations and festivals of all Russians, including the "female". [13]
In general, Peter's reforms were aimed at strengthening the state and introducing the elite to European culture, while simultaneously strengthening absolutism . In the course of the reforms, the technical and economic backwardness of Russia from a number of other European states was overcome, an outlet to the Baltic Sea was conquered, and transformations were carried out in many areas of Russian society. Gradually, among the nobility , a system of values , world perception, aesthetic ideas was formed, which radically differed from the values and world outlook of the majority of the rest of the classes. At the same time, the people's forces were extremely exhausted, the prerequisites (Decree of succession) were created for the crisis of the supreme power, which led to the " era of palace coups ".
The transformation of the era of Peter I led to the strengthening of the Russian state, the creation of a modern European army, the development of industry and the spread of education among the upper classes of the population. An absolute monarchy was established headed by the emperor , to whom the church was also subordinate (through the chief procurator of the Holy Synod ). The boyars lost an independent role in governing the state and began to converge on the situation with the service nobility .
Great Northern War
After Peter's return from the Great Embassy, the king began to prepare for war with Sweden for access to the Baltic Sea . In 1699, the Northern Union was created against the Swedish king Charles XII , which in addition to Russia included Denmark , Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , headed by the Saxon Elector and the Polish King Augustus II . The driving force of the union was the aspiration of Augustus II to take Livonia away from Sweden; for his help, he promised Russia to return the lands formerly owned by the Russians (Ingria and Karelia).
To enter the war, Russia needed to make peace with the Ottoman Empire . After reaching a truce with the Turkish Sultan for a period of 30 years, Russia declared war on Sweden on August 19 ( 30 ), 1700 , under the pretext of avenging the offense against Tsar Peter in Riga [14] .
Charles XII’s plan was to smash opponents one by one with the help of the Anglo-Dutch fleet. Soon after the bombing of Copenhagen, Denmark, on August 8 ( 19 ), 1700 , emerged from the war, even before Russia entered it. The attempts of Augustus II to seize Riga failed.
The attempt to seize the fortress of Narva ended in defeat of the Russian army. On November 19 ( 30 ), 1700 , Charles XII, with 8500 soldiers, attacked the camp of the Russian troops and completely defeated the 35-thousand Russian army that was not strong. Peter I himself left the troops in Novgorod 2 days before.
Considering that Russia is weakened enough, Karl XII went to Livonia to direct all forces against the main, as it seemed to him, enemy - Augustus II.
However, Peter, hastily reorganizing the army on the European model, resumed hostilities. Already on October 11 ( 22 ), 1702 , Russia seized the Noteburg fortress (renamed Shlisselburg ), and in the spring of 1703, the Nyenskans fortress at the mouth of the Neva . Here, on May 16 ( 27 ), 1703 , construction of St. Petersburg began , and the base of the Russian fleet, the Kronshlot fortress (later Kronstadt ), was located on Kotlin Island. In 1704, Narva and Derpt were taken, Russia firmly established in the Eastern Baltic. On the offer to make peace, Peter I was refused.
After the deposition of Augustus II in 1706 and the replacement of him by the Polish king Stanislav Leschinsky, Karl XII began a fatal campaign for him on Russia. Capturing Minsk and Mogilev , the king did not dare to go to Smolensk . Enlisting the support of the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa , Karl moved the troops south for food considerations and with the intention of strengthening the army with supporters of I. Mazepa. On September 28 ( October 9 ), 1708 , in the village of Lesnoy, the Swedish Corps of Levengaupt , which was marching to join the army of Charles XII from Livonia , was defeated by the Russian army under the command of A. D. Menshikov . The Swedish army lost reinforcements and wagons with military supplies. Later, Peter I celebrated the anniversary of this battle as a turning point in the Northern War.
In the Battle of Poltava on June 27 ( July 8 ), 1709 , the army of Charles XII suffered a decisive defeat; the Swedish king with a small garrison of soldiers fled to the Ottoman Empire.
In 1710, Turkey intervened in the war. After the defeat in the Prut campaign of 1711, Russia returned Azov to it and destroyed Taganrog , but due to this it was possible to conclude another truce with the Turks.
Thanks to the domination of Sweden at sea, the Northern War was prolonged until 1721 .
Among the most striking battles on the sea, one can single out the battle at Cape Gangut on June 27 ( July 8 ), 1714 , and at the island of Grengam in July 1720 . In both battles, the Russian fleet won. [ neutrality? ]
On August 30 ( September 10 ), 1721 , the Nishtadt Peace was concluded between Russia and Sweden, through which Russia received access to the Baltic Sea, annexed the territory of Ingria , part of Karelia , Estland and Livonia .
Russia became a great European power . Peter I took the title "Great" and " Father of the Fatherland " from the Senate , he was proclaimed emperor , and Russia - the empire .
The era of palace coups
The era of palace coups - the successive seizure of power in the 18th century by various representatives of the Romanov dynasty in the absence of clear rules for the succession of the throne. The conditions for the instability of the transfer of the supreme power were created after the death of Peter I, who published in 1722 the “Charter on the heritage of the throne”, in which he secured the autocrat the right to appoint himself any successor at his discretion. Under Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, power in Russia gained stability, and politics acquired predictability for 20 years. Moscow University was founded. The Russian army conducted a series of successful battles against Prussia in the Seven Years' War ( 1756 - 1763 ), but the death of the Empress again sharply turned the policy of the empire.
Ekaterina Alekseevna
Peter I died early in the morning of January 28 ( February 8 ) of 1725 , without having had time to name a successor and not leave his sons. The people's majority was for the only male representative of the dynasty - Grand Duke Peter Alekseevich , grandson of Peter I from the eldest son Alexei who was killed during interrogations. Count Tolstoy, Prosecutor General Yaguzhinsky, Chancellor Count Golovkin and Prince Menshikov, at the head of the service nobility, could not hope to retain the power received from Peter I under Peter Alekseevich. When Catherine saw that there was no longer any hope for her husband's recovery, she instructed Menshikov and Tolstoy to act in favor of their rights. Guard was betrayed by the dying emperor; she transferred this attachment to Ekaterina Alekseevna.
On January 28 ( February 8 ), 1725 , Catherine I ascended the throne of the Russian empire thanks to the support of the guards and nobles who rose under Peter.
The actual power in the reign of Catherine concentrated prince and field marshal Menshikov , as well as the Supreme Privy Council . Catherine relied in matters of government on their advisers. She was interested only in the affairs of the fleet — Peter’s love for the sea also touched her.
On the initiative of Count Peter Tolstoy, in February 1726, a new state authority, the Supreme Privy Council, was created, where a narrow circle of chief dignitaries could govern the Russian Empire under the formal presidency of the empress. The Council included Field Marshal Prince Alexander Menshikov, General-Admiral Count Fedor Apraksin , Chancellor Count Gabriel Golovkin , Count Peter Tolstoy, Prince Dmitry Golitsyn , Vice-Chancellor Baron Johann Osterman . Of the six members of the new institution, only Prince Golitsyn was a native of the noble nobles. In April, the young Prince Ivan Dolgoruky was admitted to the Supreme Secret Council.
The activities of the Yekaterininsky government were limited mainly to petty matters, while embezzlement, outrage and abuse flourished. [ neutrality? ] . There was no talk of any reforms and transformations, there was a struggle for power inside the Council.
During the two years of the reign of Catherine I, Russia did not lead large wars, only in the Caucasus there was a separate corps under the authority of Prince Dolgorukov .
Peter II
Peter II came to the throne under the will of Catherine I on May 6 (17), 1727 , when he was only 11 years old, and died at 14 years of smallpox . Peter did not have time to show interest in government affairs and did not actually rule the rules. The real power in the state was in the hands of the Supreme Privy Council, and especially the favorites of the young emperor, first A.D. Menshikov , and after his exile in September 1727 - Dolgorukov .
After the repression of the time of Peter the Great, a relief from monetary obligations and recruitment sets was given, and on April 4 ( 15 ), 1729 , the punitive authority, the Preobrazhensky order , was liquidated.
Anna Ivanovna
After the death of Peter II at 1 o'clock in the morning of January 19 (30), 1730, the highest ruling body, the Supreme Privy Council , began to deliberate on the new sovereign. The future of Russia was determined by 7 people: Chancellor Golovkin , 4 representatives of the clan Dolgorukikh and two Golitsyn . Vice Chancellor Osterman declined to discuss.
The question was not simple - there were no direct descendants of the Romanovs' house along the male line.
The members of the Council interpreted the following candidates: Tsesarevna Elizabeth (daughters of Peter I ), queen-grandmother Evdokia Lopukhina (1st wife of Peter I), Duke of Golshtinsky (married to the daughter of Peter I Anna, ), Princess Dolgorukoy (was engaged to Peter II) . Catherine I in her will called Elizabeth the heir to the throne in the event of the death of Peter II childless, but this was not remembered. Elizabeth scared away the old nobles with her youth and unpredictability, and the well-born nobility in general disliked the children of Peter I from former maidservants and foreigners Catherine Alekseevna.
Then, at the suggestion of Prince Golitsyn, they decided to turn to the senior line of Tsar John Alekseevich , who until 1696 was the nominal co-ruler with Peter I.
Rejecting the married eldest daughter of Tsar Ivan Alekseevich , Ekaterina , 8 members of the Council chose the kingdom by 8 o'clock in the morning on January 19 (30), his youngest daughter Anna Ioannovna, who had been living in Courland for 19 years and had no leaders in Russia, and therefore arranged for all. Anna seemed to the nobles obedient and controlled, not prone to despotism. Taking advantage of the situation, the leaders decided to limit the autocratic power in their favor, demanding that Anna sign certain conditions, the so-called " Conditions ". According to the “ Conditions ”, the real power in Russia passed to the Supreme Privy Council , and the role of the monarch was reduced to representative functions.
On January 28 ( February 8 ), 1730, Anna signed the “ Conditions ”, according to which, without the Supreme Privy Council, she could not declare war or make peace, introduce new taxes and taxes, spend the treasury at her own discretion, produce ranks above the colonel, pay for patrimonies, to deprive a nobleman of life and property without a court, to marry, to appoint an heir to the throne.
On February 15 (26), 1730, Anna Ivanovna solemnly entered Moscow, where the troops and the highest officials of the state in the Assumption Cathedral swore allegiance to the empress. In the new form of the oath, some of the old expressions meaning autocracy were excluded, but there were no expressions that would mean a new form of government, and, most importantly, the rights of the Supreme Privy Council and the conditions confirmed by the Empress were not mentioned. The change was that they swore allegiance to the empress and the fatherland.
The struggle of the two parties in relation to the new state structure continued. The leaders wanted to convince Anna to confirm their new powers. Supporters of autocracy ( A.I. Osterman , Feofan Prokopovich , P.I. Yaguzhinsky, A.D. Kantemir ) and the broad circles of the nobility wanted a revision of the "Standards" signed in Mitau. The ferment was primarily due to discontent with the strengthening of a narrow group of members of the Supreme Privy Council .
On February 25 ( March 7 ), 1730, a large group of nobility (according to various sources from 150 to 800), including many guards officers, came to the palace and gave petition to Anna Ioannovna. The petition was requested by the empress, together with the nobility, to reconsider the form of government that would be pleasing to all the people. Anna hesitated, but her sister Ekaterina Ivanovna decisively forced the empress to sign a petition. The representatives of the nobility briefly deliberated and, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, they submitted a new petition, in which they asked the empress to accept complete autocracy, and to destroy the “Condition” items.
When Anna asked approval from the bewildered senior officials for new conditions, they only nodded their heads in agreement. As a contemporary notes: “ Their happiness, that they did not move then; if they showed even the slightest disapproval of the nobility’s sentence, the guardsmen would have thrown them out the window ” [15] . In the presence of the nobility, Anna Ivanovna broke off the “ Condition ” and her letter of acceptance.
On March 1 (12), 1730, the people for the second time took the oath to Empress Anna Ioannovna under conditions of complete autocracy.
Anna was constantly afraid of conspiracies that threatened her rule, therefore political repressions were widely used during her life. A special resonance in society was carried out by reprisals with the nobles: the princes Dolgorukiy and the cabinet minister Volynsky . Former favorite of Peter II , Prince Ivan Dolgoruky , wheeled in November 1739 ; two other Dolgoruky was beheaded. The head of the family, Prince Alexei Grigorievich Dolgoruky, died earlier in exile in 1734. Volynsky was sentenced for bad reviews about the Empress in the summer of 1740 to be impaled, but then they cut out the tongue and just cut off the head.
Patriotic representatives of the 19th century Russian society began to connect all abuses of power under Anna Ioannovna with the so-called dominance of the Germans in the Russian court, calling Bironovna named after Anna Ioannovna’s favorite Ernst Johann Biron .
In 1735, the war began with Turkey. In the summer of 1736, the fortress of Azov was successfully captured by Russian troops. In 1737, managed to take the fortress Ochakov . In 1736-1738 the Crimean Khanate was defeated. In September 1739, the Belgrade Peace Treaty was signed, under which Russia received Azov, a small territory in Right-Bank Ukraine was ceded to it, and the Big and Small Kabarda to the North. The Caucasus and a large area south of Azov were recognized as "a barrier between the two empires."
In 1731-1732, a Russian protectorate was established over the Kazakh Junior Zhuz .
Ivan VI
After the death of Empress Anna Ioannovna, the son of Anna Leopoldovna (Anna Ioannovna's niece) and Prince Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Bevern-Luneburg , two-month-old Ivan Antonovich was proclaimed emperor during the regency of the Duke of Biron, the Duke of Courland.
Two weeks after the infant's accession to the country, there was a coup, as a result of which the guardsmen , led by Field Marshal Munnich , arrested Biron and removed him from power. Anna Leopoldovna, the emperor's mother, was declared a new regent. Unable to rule the country and Anna, who lives in illusions, gradually transferred all her power to Minikh, and after her Osterman , who had sent field marshal to resign, took possession of it.
Elizaveta Petrovna
In November 1741, as a result of a coup d'état, the young Tsar Ivan VI and his relatives were sent to custody, the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna came to power, during which the power in Russia stabilized.
The main principles of domestic and foreign policy, Elizabeth proclaimed a return to Peter's transformations. It abolished the state institutions that emerged after the death of the father (the Cabinet of Ministers, etc.), restored the role of the Senate , the collegiums, the Chief Magistrate. Abolished the death penalty ( 1756 ); the ultimate punishment was eternal hard labor [16] . Eliminated domestic customs. In 1754 she created the Laid Commission to draft a new set of laws. The commission developed reform projects aimed at the secularization of church lands, the legislative formulation of noble privileges, etc. In general, Elizaveta Petrovna’s domestic policy was characterized by stability and focus on the growth of authority and power of state power. For a number of signs, it can be said that the course of Elizaveta Petrovna was the first step towards the policy of enlightened absolutism, which was then carried out under Catherine II .
The first Russian banks were founded: Merchant, Dvoryansky and Medny. On the basis of the project of Mikhail Lomonosov and under the supervision of Ivan Shuvalov , the Moscow University was founded by the decree of the empress; 1747 - Decree on expanding the network of primary schools; 1756 - The Imperial Theater was created; 1757 - the Academy of Arts was founded [16] . The head of government, Peter Shuvalov , initiated a general land survey , abolished internal customs duties, and introduced a new customs charter [17] .
Elizabeth's foreign policy was also active. In the course of the Russian-Swedish war of 1741-1743, Russia received a significant part of Finland . Trying to resist the increased power of Prussia , Elizabeth abandoned traditional relations with France and concluded an anti-Prussian alliance with Austria . Russia under Elizabeth successfully participated in the Seven Years War . After the capture of Königsberg, Elizabeth issued a decree on the annexation of East Prussia to Russia as her province. August 12 ( 23 ), 1759 - the victory of the Russian army in the Battle of Kunersdorf . The culmination of Russia's military glory under Elizabeth was the capture of Berlin in 1760 .
The Empress attached great importance to the development of Russian culture, education, science. In 1755, by her order, the first in the country Moscow University was opened. The Academy of Arts was founded, outstanding cultural monuments were created ( Tsarskoye Selo Catherine Palace , etc.). She supported Mikhail Lomonosov and other representatives of Russian science and culture. In the last period of her reign, she was less concerned with issues of public administration, entrusting him with P. I. and I. I. Shuvalov, M. I. and R. I. Vorontsov, and others.
The period of the reign of Elizabeth - a period of luxury and excesses. At the court, masquerade balls were constantly held, which thoroughly devastated the treasury, and often the ladies dressed up in men's suits, and the men climbed into women's dresses. Elizabeth Petrovna herself set the tone and was a trendsetter. The empress's wardrobe numbers up to 12 thousand dresses.
The official heir to the throne, Elizabeth, soon after her accession to the throne, appointed her nephew (Anna's sister's son), the Duke of Golshtinskogo Peter Ulrich ( Peter Fedorovich ).
Peter III
The reign of Emperor Peter III was marked by the abolition of the Secret Chancellery , the beginning of the process of secularization of church lands, the decree on freedom of foreign trade, the decree on the landlords' lifelong exile for the murder of serfs, the Manifesto on the freedom of the nobility , thanks to which the nobility was freed from compulsory public service while maintaining all its privileges also received the right to almost free departure from the country; the sole duty of the nobility was to receive a decent education. Peter III on May 25 ( June 5 ), 1762 , established the first State Bank in the history of the Russian Empire to issue bank notes [18] . The bank existed only de jure , de facto it was not created, because 34 days after the issuance of the decree establishing the bank, Peter III was overthrown as a result of a palace coup . The cessation of the war with Prussia based on the tsar’s personal sympathies and the conclusion of a separate Petersburg peace that was extremely unprofitable for Russia, the return of the conquered East Prussia, which for four years was part of the Russian Empire, was rejected by Prussia as a result of all the gains of the Seven Years War . a miracle , but in the circles of the Russian nobility as a national betrayal, which was one of the reasons for the overthrow of Peter III and his subsequent murder.
Catherine II the Great
Catherine II Alekseevna Velikaya by birth Sofia Frederik Augusta, daughter of Princess Elizabeth Holstein-Gottorp and Prince Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst . She was born in the city of Stettin , which she left at the age of 14 and never returned to it.
In 1744, the Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, along with her mother, was invited to Russia for the subsequent combination of marriage with Peter Fedorovich Romanov, the future emperor Peter III and her second cousin. On August 21 ( September 1 ), 1745, at the age of sixteen, Catherine was married to Peter Feodorovich, who was 17 years old. The first years of his life, Peter was not at all interested in his wife, and there was no marriage between them. So necessary boy dynasty Catherine gives birth only on the 9th year of marriage.
After the death of December 25, 1761 ( January 5, 1762 ) of Elizabeth Petrovna, the new Emperor Peter III negates the results of the seven-year war - he offers friendship to Prussia (after taking Berlin) and decides to fight against Denmark, an ally of Russia. Catherine has long been preparing a plot and in a hurry to take advantage of the resulting discontent
On the night of June 29 ( July 10 ), 1762 , while Peter III was in Oranienbaum , Catherine secretly arrived in St. Petersburg , where she was sworn in allegiance to the guards. Five days after Peter III’s abdication from the throne, they would strangle him in a suburban palace in Ropsha , an apoplexy attack would be called the cause of death.
On September 2 (13), 1762, Ekaterina Alekseevna was crowned in Moscow and became the All-Russian empress with the name "Catherine II". Catherine is the leader among all Russian emperors in terms of life expectancy and duration of government. The period of her rule is often considered the “golden age” of the Russian Empire. The Senate of the Russian Empire gave her the epithets of "Catherine the Great" and "Mother of the Fatherland". Under her, the Russian Empire expanded significantly at the expense of victorious wars with Turkey for access to the Black Sea and partitions of Poland .
In 1769, paper money (banknotes) appeared in Russia [19] . Their immoderate emission, extravagance of Catherine II [20] [21] and her ineffective financial and economic policies in general led to a complete collapse of the financial system: if at the beginning of her reign the government’s debt was about 1 million rubles, then by the end of her reign huge for those times the amount of 205 million rubles [22] . A stable state financial system was established only in the middle of the XIX century. External loans of Catherine II and the interest accrued on them were fully repaid only in 1891 [23] .
Catherine II and Princess Catherine Dashkova founded the Russian Academy , a center for the study of Russian language and literature; one of the first public libraries in Eastern Europe was founded in 1795; began the development of America .
During the US war of independence, Russia declared armed neutrality (1780), trading directly and in fact supporting the American colonies in their struggle against Britain . The Declaration of Armed Neutrality put forward by Russia (developed with the direct participation of Catherine II and Count Alexander Bezborodko ) was of epochal significance for the formation of a system of international legal norms in the field of maritime trade and naval warfare; The Declaration was first supported by Denmark, Prussia and Sweden (1800), then after the Congress of Vienna (1815) the principles of the Declaration became universal, and in 1856, based on the Russian Declaration of 1780, the Declaration on the Law of the Sea War, which was signed by 49 states, was proclaimed in Paris , including its original adversary England [24] .
Cancellation of the Cossack chieftains, undermining the Cossack economy with the introduction of the state monopoly on salt, the hard work of assigned peasants in state-owned and private factories for a meager payment without the right to dismissal, strengthening the serfdom , selling and resale serfs, often impoverished landowners and impunity of landlords, decree Catherine II of August 22 ( September 2 ) 1767 , on the prohibition of peasants complain of the landowners - has led to the largest of several centuries uprising led by Pugachev [25] , oh ativshemu large territory of the Russian Empire.
Russian-Turkish Wars
The Russian-Turkish war of 1768–1774 was one of the key wars between the Russian and Ottoman empires , as a result of which southern Ukraine and then also the Crimea and Kuban became part of Russia ( Crimea joined the Russian empire ).
In 1782 an uprising of the Nogais began in the Kuban because of plans to resettle them beyond the Urals and in the Tambov and Saratov governorship . October 1, near the fortress Kermenchik (on the river Laba , 12 versts from its confluence with the Kuban [26] ) A.V. Suvorov completely defeated the Nogai forces. In one day, 5000-7000 Nogai were killed. As a result, the majority of Murz expressed obedience to Suvorov and recognized the annexation of the Crimea and the Nogai lands to the Russian Empire ( 8 ( 19 ) April 1783 , Catherine II issued a manifesto on which Crimea, Taman and Kuban became Russian possessions). During 1783, Suvorov made expeditions against individual Nogai detachments [27] [28] .
Starting in 1787 a new war with Russia , the Ottoman Empire planned in this war to reclaim the lands that had been ceded to Russia during the Russian-Turkish war of 1768-1774 , as well as the later joined Crimea. The war ended with the victory of Russia and the conclusion of the Yassy peace .
Sections of Poland
Until the middle of the 12th century, a significant part of the territory that had become part of the Russian Empire was part of the Old Russian state , and after its collapse belonged to various principalities: Galitsky , Volynsky , Kiev , Polotsky , Lutsky , Terebovlsky , Turovo-Pinsky , etc. Most of these lands were terribly ruined during the Tatar-Mongol invasion . Some lands in the Dnieper for many years lose the Russian sedentary population and become so-called. Wild Field , such as the territory of Pereyaslavl principality .
From the XIII century, this territory became the object of expansion of the Kingdom of Poland and the Principality of Lithuania. In the first half of the 14th century, Kiev, the Dnieper region, and also the Pripyat and Western Dvina interfluves were seized by Lithuania, and in 1352 the lands of the Galician-Volyn principality were divided between Poland and Lithuania. In 1569 , in connection with the Union of Lublin between Poland and Lithuania, the majority of Russian lands, which belonged to the possessions of Lithuania, were transferred to the power of the Polish crown. Serfdom is spread on these lands, Catholicism is being planted. For the most part, the local aristocracy becomes polonized, a cultural, linguistic and religious gap arises between the upper and lower strata of society. The combination of social oppression with linguistic, religious, and cultural disunity leads to devastating popular uprisings of the mid-seventeenth century and bloody revolts of the 1760s.
- The first section of the Commonwealth
On July 25 ( August 5 ), 1772 , a convention was signed by Russia , Prussia and Austria in St. Petersburg , according to which Eastern Belorussia and part of Livonia retreated to the Russian Empire; Warmia, the Pomorskie, Malbork, and Helmini voivodships, the majority of the Inowroclaw, Gniezno and Poznań voivodeships retreated to Prussia; and the princes of Auschwitz and Zatorskoe, the southern part of the Krakow and Sandomierz voivodeships, the Russian and Belz voevodships, retreated to Austria.
- The second section of the Commonwealth
On January 12 ( 23 ), 1793 , 20 years after the first section, Poland gathers forces, government reform, economic growth, the constitution (one of the first in the world) - not everyone is happy with it, again the confederation , again against the king, but now for intervention Russia with the call of the Russian troops. A considerable part of the territory of present-day Western Belarus and Western Ukraine is moving to Russia, and to Prussia - Gdansk and Torun, almost all of Poland, part of Mazovia and Krakow voivodship.
- The third section of the Commonwealth
On October 13 ( 24 ), 1795 , the third convention was signed, according to which the lands to the east of the Bug River and the Neman River were ceded to Russia; Most of the Mazovian Voivodship with Warsaw, part of the Troka, Podlaskie and Ravsko voivodeships went to Prussia; to Austria - the provinces of Krakow, Sandomierz, Lublin, part of the Mazovian, Podlaskie, Kholmsky and Brest-Litovsk provinces.
As a result of the three sections of the Commonwealth, Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian lands passed to Russia. Indigenous Polish lands were divided between Prussia and Austria. On January 15 ( 26 ), 1797 , the last convention was signed, which approved the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which abolished Polish citizenship and completely eliminated the remnants of Polish statehood. The convention of 1795 was attached to this convention by the abdication of the Polish king Stanislav August Poniatowski from the throne.
Russian America
On August 3 ( 14 ), 1784 , Shelikhov's expedition arrived on the island of Kodiak ( Bay of Three Saints ). Shelikhovtsy (Northeastern Company) are beginning to intensively develop the island, subordinating local Eskimos ( konyags ), promoting the spread of Orthodoxy among the natives and introducing a number of crops ( potatoes , turnips ). In 1788, the Russian possessions in Alaska suffered from a powerful tsunami . The settlement on the island of Kodiak had to be moved in 1792 to a new place, the city received the name of Pavlovsk harbor . [29] . In 1795, Russian industrialists under the leadership of Baranov managed to advance to Yakutat .
In parallel with the company Shelikhov Alaska mastered the competing company of the merchant Lebedev-Lastochkina. The haloot “ St. George ” (Konovalov) equipped with them arrived in 1791 in the Gulf of Cook , and his crew founded the Nikolaev Redoubt . In 1792, the Lebedevites founded a settlement on the shores of Lake Iliamna and outfitted Vasily Ivanov’s expedition to the banks of the Yukon River . However, the company Lebedeva-Lastochkina by 1798 suffered a fiasco, unable to withstand competition with the Shelikhivites, due to the lack of a good supply with the metropolis in Siberia and the revolt of the Atna Indians.
In 1799 the Mikhailovsky Fortress ( Sitka ) was founded. From 1808 Novo-Arkhangelsk became the center of Russian America. In fact, the management of American territories was carried out by a Russian-American company , the board of which was located in Irkutsk , officially Russian America was incorporated into the first Siberian general governorship , and after its division in 1822 into Western and Eastern, into the Eastern Siberian general governorship .
Paul I
Pavel I went to a revolutionary step for his time, for the first time since the introduction of serfdom, restricting the privileges of the nobility: corporal punishments were introduced for the nobles for serious crimes, the nobles began to pay tax, noble provincial assemblies were abolished, nobles were to avoid military and public service put on trial; proclaiming the manifesto of the three-day serfdom , Paul I for the first time restricted the work of the peasants to the landowner for three days and forbade the landowner to recruit peasants to work on Sunday; implementation of the manifesto was almost universally sabotaged by landowners, but later this manifesto served as one of the legislative foundations for the abolition of serfdom in Russia. In noble circles, dissatisfaction with the policies of Paul I grew, which led to his assassination in 1801, which prevented Paul’s plan for invading British India and ousting England from Napoleon Bonaparte ; Russian troops sent to the border of India returned.
XIX century
Alexander I
Alexander I Pavlovich Blessed - the eldest son of Emperor Paul I.
At the beginning of the government, he conducted moderately liberal reforms developed by the Private Committee and M. M. Speransky . In foreign policy, maneuvered between Great Britain and France .
In 1801, Alexander signed the “Manifesto on the establishment of a new government in Georgia, ” according to which the Kartli-Kakheti kingdom was part of Russia. In 1803, Megrelia and the Imeretian kingdom joined Russia.
In 1805-1807, Russia participated in anti-French coalitions and Russian troops participated in the war of the third coalition and the war of the fourth coalition . In 1807–12, he temporarily became close to France.
Successful wars were held for Russia with Turkey (1806–1812), as a result of which Bessarabia was annexed to the empire, with Persia (1804–1813), as a result of which Azerbaijan was annexed, and with Sweden (1808–1809), the result of which Finland was annexed.
As a result of the invasion of Russia by the Great Army of Napoleon in June 1812, the Patriotic War of 1812 began . Despite Napoleon's capture of Moscow, the war ended in the complete defeat of his half-million army.
After the Patriotic War of 1812, Alexander headed the sixth anti-French coalition of the European powers in 1813–1814, ending Napoleon. Alexander was one of the participants of the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815, according to the results of which the Kingdom of Poland was annexed to Russia, and the organizers of the Holy Alliance .
In the field of education, free tuition was introduced at its lowest levels, new universities were founded: Derpt, Vilna, Kharkov and Kazan; The first University Charter in Russia (1804) was created, giving universities considerable autonomy; in 1804 the first censorship charter appeared; in 1801 the right to purchase land was granted to citizens, including state peasants; The decree on free bread growers (1803), giving the right to the peasants to free themselves from serfdom for ransom and with the consent of the landowner . This opportunity could take advantage of only 1.5% of serfs. Serf peasants could be sold to anyone who wanted them, including to the East, where he lived as a slave. The right of landowners to exile peasants to Siberia was abolished in 1809 and restored in 1816; in 1809 diplomatic relations were established with the United States; in November 1815, Alexander I granted the constitution to the Kingdom of Poland .
Alexander I was the initiator of the creation of military settlements , the system of organization of troops (1810-1857), combining military service with productive labor, mainly agricultural, with the aim of preparing a trained reserve of troops without increasing the cost of armed forces; cancellation of the recruitment ; creating a source of income for retired soldiers. Count Alexei Arakcheev , who is credited with this idea, initially spoke out against these settlements; upon reaching 45 years of age or disability, military settlers received a salary and provisions from the treasury. Military settlements had low efficiency, as the soldiers did not have sufficient agricultural knowledge.
Some researchers [30] believe that the active efforts of Alexander I for logistic support, re-equipment and changes in the organizational structure of the Russian army (the formation of large operational-tactical formations on a permanent basis: corps and armies) contributed to a significant increase in the combat capability of the Russian army and served as the basis for its subsequent victories .
During the reign of Alexander I, 1815, the first ship in Russia was built at the factory of Charles Byrd . In January 1820, Russian navigators Thaddeus Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev during the first Russian round-the-world Antarctic expedition saw for the first time in history the ice shelves of Antarctica .
In the last years of his life, Alexander often spoke of his intention to abdicate the throne and "retire from the world", which after his unexpected death from typhoid fever in Taganrog gave rise to the legend of "old man Fyodor Kuzmich ".
Nicholas I
Between the death of Alexander I and the accession of Nicholas I, remaining childless, Alexander I designed the transfer of the throne by the second brother Constantine , also childless, to the third brother, Nicholas. The royal manifesto was secretly kept in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin and officially Nicholas I was not considered the heir to the throne. Therefore, at first, after the news of Alexander's death in Taganrog reached Petersburg, Nicholas I refused to recognize the testament of Alexander I and all of Petersburg, the Senate , the troops and Nikolai themselves swear allegiance to Konstantin I , even managed to coin a profile with Konstantin Pavlovich.
Grand Prince Konstantin Pavlovich lives and serves in Warsaw , representing the House of the Romanovs in Poland . In 1823, Prince Konstantin Pavlovich, referring to the morganatic marriage , orders to save him from the royal burden and asks him to leave him in a happy Warsaw distance . Only after Constantine had already reaffirmed his refusal from the succession to the throne, Nicholas decides to take power. On December 14 (26) a resignation is announced.
The very first day of the reign of Nicholas was marked by tragic events on the Senate Square. The uprising of the Decembrists left a deep imprint in the soul of the emperor and instilled in him a fear of any manifestation of free-thinking. The uprising was crushed, and five of its leaders were executed ( 1826 ). Nikolai was a deep conservative and did not change his course for thirty years.
Nicholas I continued his activities towards the abolition of serfdom ( Kiselev's reform ): it was forbidden to give peasants to work at mining factories, the sale of people from public bargaining and the sale of families was forbidden [31] , peasant self-government was introduced in the villages; the construction of schools (parish schools), hospitals in the countryside (1838–3; 1866–269); the decision to relocate the peasants to vacant land in other parts of the country; the replacement of state capitals with a land tax with a land tax depending on the size of the land plot; peasants got the right to choose governors and courts; Inventory reform - a legal basis has been created for relations between peasants and landowners, and legislative restrictions on the arbitrariness of landowners in the western provinces of the Russian Empire; possibility of deprivation for abuses of landowners [32] . By the end of the reign of Nicholas I, the share of the most powerless landlord serfs fell to 35–45% .
In order to prevent the spread of revolutionary sentiment, travel abroad was restricted, children were banned from studying abroad from 10 to 18 years of age, censorship was tightened, the formal reduction in the number of death sentences was compensated by an increase in the number of deaths from corporal punishment and as a result of a reference to penal servitude [33 ] , the secret police was strengthened, the network of military schools was expanded, the theory of official nationality was introduced, since 1849 a restriction on the number of students in universities has been introduced: no more than 300, progressive g the urn, tolerance was abolished, persecution of schismatics and Uniates began [34] . The exams for the assignment of rank were abolished, the nobility became a more closed class, the influx of citizens from other classes was sharply limited [35] . On the other hand, during this period, the number of "rampant" landlords killed by peasants increased [36] .
At the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I, in 1826, the non-Euclidean geometry of Lobachevsky was created by the mathematician and public figure Nikolai Lobachevsky , who accomplished a scientific revolution in mathematics, which had great global importance and opened new perspectives for the study of physical processes. In 1838, the Russian scientist Boris Jacobi, for the first time in the world, created the electroplating process, this scientist also has the priority in creating the first electric motor in the world.
In 1828, the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology was founded; 1834 - Kiev University was founded. In 1837 the first railway in Russia was opened (the sixth in the world); 1851 - the end of the construction of the Nikolaev railway , connecting St. Petersburg and Moscow, the first double-track road in Russia; the construction of the New Hermitage , the first Russian building specially built for the public museum, was completed. During the reign of Nicholas I, on the initiative of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna , the Holy Cross Church of the Sisters of Charity was opened, the world's first female medical unit to assist the wounded during the war, a prototype of the international Red Cross movement .
Russo-Persian War
On July 16 ( 28 ), 1826 , the Persian army, without a declaration of war, crossed the border in the Miraka area and invaded the territory of the Transcaucasus into the territory of the Karabakh and Talysh khanates .
September 3 (15), 1826, the Battle of Shamkhor took place . The Russian detachment under the command of V. G. Madatov defeated the 18,000-strong avant-garde of the Persian army, heading for Tiflis . On September 13 (25), a separate Caucasian corps commanded by General I. F. Paskevich in the battle of Elizavetpol defeated the 35,000 men (of which 15,000 regular infantry) with 24 guns, the Iranian army, having only 10 319 soldiers and 24 guns at its disposal. By the end of October, Iranian troops were driven back over Araks .
On October 1 (13), 1827, General Paskevich took Erivan and entered Iranian Azerbaijan ; On October 14 (26), the detachment of K.E. Eristova captured Tabriz .
Military failures forced the Persians to go to peace negotiations. On February 10 (22), 1828, the Turkmanchaysky peace treaty (in the village of Turkmanchay near Tabriz) was signed between the Russian and Persian empires, under which Persia reaffirmed all the conditions of the Gulistan peace treaty of 1813 , recognized the transition to Russia of a part of the Caspian coastline before r. Astara , Eastern Armenia [37] [38] [39] (On the territory of Eastern Armenia, a special administrative entity was created - the Armenian region , with the resettlement of Armenians there from Iran) [40] [41] [42] . The border between the states became Araks .
Russian-Turkish War (1828–1829)
The military conflict between the Russian and Ottoman Empire , which began in April 1828 due to the fact that the Port after the Battle of Navarino (October 1827 ), in violation of the Akkerman Convention, closed the Bosphorus Strait . In a broader context, this war was the result of the struggle between the great powers caused by the Greek War of Independence ( 1821 - 1830 ) from the Ottoman Empire. During the war, Russian troops carried out a series of campaigns in Bulgaria , in the Caucasus, and in the northeast of Anatolia , after which the Port requested peace.
Polish uprising
November 29 ( December 11 ), 1830 , an uprising began against the power of the Russian Empire in the territory of the Kingdom of Poland , Lithuania , partly Belarus and Right-Bank Ukraine . The uprising was conducted under the slogan of restoring the "historic Commonwealth" in the borders of 1772 .
By October 1831, the uprising was crushed by Russian troops. In February 1832, the Organic Statute was issued, according to which the Kingdom of Poland was declared a part of Russia, the Sejm and the Polish army were abolished. The old administrative division into voivodship was replaced by division into provinces. In fact, this meant the adoption of a policy of turning the Kingdom of Poland into a Russian province — the monetary system, the system of weights and measures, which were valid throughout Russia, spread to the territory of the Kingdom.
After the suppression of the uprising, the Russian authorities began a policy of converting Belarusian Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy. By 1839, threats and ecclesiastical punishments from the majority of Greek Catholic priests received subscriptions of consent to conversion to Orthodoxy with the condition of a lump-sum cash allowance and the preservation of former rites and customs. On February 12 ( 24 ), 1839 , a council headed by Greek Catholic bishops Iosif Semashko , Anthony Zubko and Vasily Luzhinsky gathered in Polotsk. The Council decided to recognize the accession of the Belarusian dioceses to the Orthodox Church. [43]
Bosporus Expedition
Fearing the division of the Ottoman Empire and the growing influence of France and Britain in the region, Russian Emperor Nicholas I offered military assistance to the Turkish Sultan Mahmoud II to fight the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali .
In April 1833, Russian troops created a bridgehead north of Istanbul . In July, the Unkar-Iskelesi Treaty between the Russian and Ottoman empires was signed, obliging the two states to come to each other’s assistance in the event of war.
Railway Construction
With the reign of Nicholas I begins the construction and development of railways in Russia. The construction of the first railways was initially proposed by Russian engineers, but only Austrian professor Franz Gerstner achieved agreement on construction.
The emperor allows the construction of an experimental line St. Petersburg - Tsarskoye Selo - Pavlovsk . Construction begins May 1 ( 13 ), 1836 . Gerstner personally runs the construction, and after a year and a half, the construction of 25 miles of a single track with a single turn was completed.
The ceremonial opening of the movement on the site took place on October 30 ( November 11 ), 1837 . Franz Gerstner himself became the driver of the first train. The trip from Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo took 35 minutes, and the return trip took 27 minutes, three times faster than on horseback.
The first railway will not be considered something special, it will become country entertainment. The terminal station in Pavlovsk will be called as an entertainment institution in England - the station . This word has absolutely nothing to do with trains, but henceforth all railway stations in Russia will be called that way.
The second and most important railway of the country will be built only 15 years after the construction of the first one. The construction of the Petersburg-Moscow road will be headed by engineer Petr Melnikov . In 1851, construction will be completed.
In Russia, during the construction of the Nikolaev railroad, a “Russian gauge” of 1524 mm was approved. Perhaps this was due to the fact that consultants from America and, above all, George W. Whistler worked at the construction site (at that time this gauge was popular in the southern states of the USA ). It is also possible that Russian engineers P. P. Melnikov and N. O. Kraft , who visited America before the construction of the Nikolaev Railway, suggested using this gauge. In addition, this gauge had the advantage that it fit into a whole number of feet (5 feet). Perhaps the military aspect also played a role — a width different from the European one would make it difficult for a hypothetical enemy to supply troops in the event of an invasion of Russia. After the First World Russian gauge in 1524 mm will become the standard for the construction of all new railway lines in the USSR.
Nicholas I will divide the technical staff serving the railways into companies and from August 6, 1851 railway troops will appear. According to the decree of the emperor, 14 separate military workers were formed, two conductor and “telegraphic” companies with a total number of 4,340 people, which marked the beginning of the formation of the first military-railway units. They were instructed to maintain the railway track in good condition, ensuring the uninterrupted operation of the stations for the protection of bridges and railway crossings. From August 6, 1851, and until today, they celebrate the day of the railway troops.
Caucasian war
In an effort to establish a normal communication with Georgia , which entered Russian citizenship in 1801, Russia took up a long war against the Caucasian highlanders, known as the Caucasian War .
Crimean War
By the middle of the XIX century, the Ottoman Empire was in a state of deep decline, and only direct military assistance from Russia, England, France and Austria allowed the sultan to twice prevent the seizure of Constantinople by the recalcitrant vassal Muhammad Ali of Egypt . This led to the emergence of plans by the Russian emperor Nicholas I in the 1840s for the division of the Ottoman Empire. [44] Nicholas I, however, was unable to agree on the division of the Ottoman Empire with England, which was categorically opposed to such a development of events [45] , and decided to force the events by direct military pressure on Turkey. Britain and France, for their part, contributed to the escalation of the conflict, hoping to weaken Russia on the Black Sea and permanently remove the threat to the existence of the Ottoman Empire from Russia.
In the course of the ensuing hostilities, the allies managed, using the technological backwardness of the Russian army and navy, to make a successful landing in the Crimea of the landing corps, inflict a number of defeats on the Russian army and after a year-long siege to seize Sevastopol - the main base of the Russian Black Sea fleet. On the Caucasian front, Russian troops managed to inflict a series of defeats on the Turkish army and capture Kars . However, diplomatic isolation forced Russia to capitulate. The Paris Peace Treaty signed in 1856 demanded that Russia hand over the concessions of the Ottoman Empire to southern Bessarabia and the mouth of the Danube River . Proclaimed neutralization of the Black Sea .
Culture
The 1st half of the XIX century is the time when Russian literature becomes an independent and very bright phenomenon; This is the time when the laws of the Russian literary language are formed. The reasons for such a rapid development of Russian literature during this period are rooted both in the intra-literary processes and in the social and political life of Russian society. Ascended the throne in 1801, Alexander I, at the initial stage of his reign, strove to become an emperor, who would make a fresh impetus to the life of the Russian Empire. He brought closer to himself people who could, one way or another, reform the country. One of the emperor's henchmen was N. M. Karamzin , already known by this time as a writer, a reformer of the language. It was Karamzin who in his works tried to bring together literary and spoken languages.
For twenty years (1820–30s), romanticism became the dominant style, relying mainly on the author’s imagination and his dream. In this direction, worked AS Pushkin , M. Yu. Lermontov , K. F. Ryleyev , V. A. Zhukovsky , D. V. Venevitinov , I. I. Kozlov , A. I. Odoyevsky , E. A. Baratynsky , V. K. Kuchelbecker , A. A. Delvig , F. I. Tyutchev .
In the second quarter of the 19th century, the process of the development of Russian literature continued, but the conditions for its development were tightened. Nicholas I , frightened by the performance of the Decembrists , does not recognize any free-thinking. The Third Division of His Majesty’s Chancellery, headed by A. H. Benkendorf, was established to oversee the order. In 1826, a new censorship charter came into force, which contemporaries called the "cast iron". It was so tough that after two years it had to be partially softened. In 1832, Count Uvarov proposed the formula “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” , which was adopted as the official ideology. Education is built on this basis, many magazines are being closed, and all those who, one way or another, do not agree with the existing order are being pursued. Both in literature and in public life in the 1840s, two camps arise: Westerners ( N. V. Stankevich , T. N. Granovsky , A. I. Herzen , N. P. Ogarev ) and Slavophiles ( I. V. Kireevsky , K.S. Aksakov , A.S. Khomyakov , M.P. Pogodin ).
In the 1840s, a natural school appeared , the main distinguishing feature of which was the narrative of the glaring contradictions of urban and rural life. N. A. Nekrasov , D. V. Grigorovich , V. I. Dal , I. I. Panayev , I. S. Turgenev , M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin , V. A. Sollogub , A. V. Druzhinin , A.I. Herzen , I.A. Goncharov . To a certain extent, the natural school has consolidated the triumph of realism in Russian literature.
This period includes the first literary experiments of F. M. Dostoevsky , I. S. Turgenev , N. A. Nekrasov , the flowering of creativity by N. V. Gogol . Among the prose writers of the 2nd quarter of the 19th century , VF Odoyevsky , A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky , N. F. Pavlov also played a significant role, among the poets P. A. Vyazemsky , E. A. Baratynsky , N. M. Yazykov , A.I. Polezhaev , V.G. Benediktov , A.V. Koltsov .
The outstanding artists of the first half of the XIX century were O. A. Kiprensky , K. P. Bryullov , A. A. Ivanov .
Russian architecture then rose to an all-time high level. In St. Petersburg, Moscow and other cities, magnificent buildings and entire ensembles were erected, which significantly changed the appearance of cities. The architects A. D. Zakharov , A. N. Voronikhin , T. de Thomon , C. Rossi gave solemn majesty to Russian architecture.
Formation of the Russian intelligentsia and the emergence of a civil society
In the 18th century, as a result of European cultural influence, liberal ideas began to find support in the Russian empire as a result of European cultural influence. In the 19th century, a stable diverse group of people arose who received an education, the income of which became the means from intellectual labor. This group formed its own type of diverse culture [46] , in many respects opposite to the type of aristocratic noble culture and fighting for domination in Russian society. A group of intellectuals of a different origin accumulated, and subsequently began to generate liberal and democratic values, ideas of restricting autocracy , the formation of an enlightened monarchy , which resulted in the emergence of a raznochintsy movement in Russia, later called the intelligentsia . The most prominent representatives of commoners were Vissarion Belinsky , Nikolai Chernyshevsky , Nikolai Dobrolyubov , Dmitry Pisarev . The books of these and other authors transferred a wide range of ideas of a just social order into Russian society and created the prerequisites for the revolutionary transformation of the Russian state that occurred in the 20th century.
Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX century
Alexander II
Under Emperor Alexander II, in 1861, serfdom was abolished in Russia and a number of liberal reforms were carried out, the purpose of which was the final liquidation of feudal remnants. By speeding up the modernization of the country, the reforms of the 1860s – 1870s proved the fruitfulness of the peaceful transformations in Russia that were initiated by the authorities. However, these reforms were initiated only by part of the elite and did not have mass support. They took into account the interests of landowners, not peasants, which predetermined the preservation of remnants of serfdom (large noble land tenure, land disorder of peasants, a labor system resembling serfdom, redemption payments, community) and elements of traditional structures, in particular autocracy.
In October 1863, Russia acted as one of the organizers of the international charity for helping the wounded of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement . The XIX century was the century of the unprecedented flourishing of culture in Russia, the golden age of Russian culture , which reached the world level in all its areas [47] .
Abolition of serfdom
The first steps towards the abolition of serfdom were made by Alexander I in 1803 by the signing of the “ Ordinance of Free Plowmen ”, which spelled out the legal status of the peasants being released.
In the Baltic ( Ostsee ) provinces of the Russian Empire ( Estland , Courland , Livonia ) serfdom was abolished as early as 1816-1819 .
Contrary to the existing opinion that the overwhelming majority of the population of pre-reform Russia consisted in serfdom, in reality the percentage ratio of serfs to the entire population of the empire remained almost unchanged (45%) from the second to the eighth revision (that is, from 1747 to 1837 ), and to 10 Revision ( 1857 ), this share fell to 37%. According to the census of the population of 1857-1859 , 23.1 million people (of both sexes) out of 62.5 million people inhabiting the Russian Empire were in serfdom. Of the 65 provinces and regions that existed in the Russian Empire in 1858, in the three above-mentioned Ostsee provinces, in the Land of the Black Sea Army , in the Primorye Region , the Semipalatinsk Region and the Siberian Kirgiz Region , in the Derbent Province (with the Pre-Caspian Region ) and the Erivana Province, the fortress was in the province of Derbent. at all; in 4 more administrative units ( Arkhangelsk and Shamakhi provinces , Trans-Baikal and Yakutsk regions ) there were also no serfs, with the exception of a few dozen courtyards (servants). In the remaining 52 provinces and regions, the share of serfs in the population ranged from 1.17% ( Bessarabian Region ) to 69.07% ( Smolensk Province ).
In 1861, a reform was carried out in Russia, which abolished serfdom in Russia and marked the beginning of the capitalist formation in the country. The main reason for this reform was the crisis of the serf system. In an atmosphere of peasant unrest, especially intensified during the Crimean War , the government went to the abolition of serfdom.
The program of the government was set out in the rescript of Emperor Alexander II on November 20 ( December 2 ), 1857 to Vilna Governor-General V.I. Nazimov . It envisaged: the destruction of the personal dependence of the peasants while preserving all the land owned by the landowners ; giving the peasants a certain amount of land for which they will be obliged to pay dues or serve the serfdom , and with time - the right to buy out the farmsteads (dwelling house and outbuildings). In 1858, provincial committees were formed to prepare for peasant reforms, within which the struggle for measures and forms of concessions between liberal and reactionary landowners began. The fear of the all-Russian peasant revolt forced the government to change the government program of the peasant reform, whose projects were repeatedly changed due to the rise or decline of the peasant movement. In December 1858, a new program of peasant reform was adopted: providing peasants with the opportunity to buy out land and the creation of peasant public administration. In March 1859, editorial commissions were created to review the projects of the provincial committees and develop the peasant reform. The project, drafted by the editorial commissions at the end of 1859, differed from that proposed by the provincial committees by an increase in land allotments and a decrease in duties. This caused discontent of the local nobility, and in 1860, allotments and duties were somewhat reduced in the project. This direction in the change of the project has been preserved both when it was considered in the Main Committee on Peasant Affairs at the end of 1860, and when it was discussed in the State Council in the beginning of 1861 .
February 19 ( March 3 ) in 1861 in St. Petersburg, Alexander II signed a manifesto on the abolition of serfdom and the Regulation on peasants, leaving the serfdom , consisting of 17 legislative acts.
The peasantry, dissatisfied with the enslaving conditions of reform, responded to it with mass unrest. The largest of these were the Bezdnenskoe speech and the Kandievsky speech .
End of the Caucasian War
In 1856 - 1858, Russian troops won a number of victories over the mountaineers. Shamil fled to his last refuge on Mount Gunib . On August 25 ( September 6 ), 1859 , Gunib was taken by assault , and Shamil himself was captured.
The Western Caucasus, where the Adyg tribes lived, remained unconquered . They had to submit and move to the places indicated by him on the plain; otherwise, they were pushed further into the barren mountains, and the lands they left were settled by Cossack villages; finally, after they were expelled from the mountains to the seashore, they had to either go to the plain, or move to Turkey, where they were supposed to provide them with possible assistance. Since the summer of 1863, many of them began to move to Turkey or to the southern slope of the ridge; most of them resigned, so that by the end of the summer the number of people who had been installed on the plane, along the Kuban and Labe, reached 30 thousand people. At the beginning of October, the Abadzekh elders appeared and signed a contract, according to which all their fellow tribesmen, who wanted to accept Russian citizenship, undertook not later than February 1 ( 13 ) of 1864 to start moving to the places indicated to them; the rest was given a 2.5-month period for eviction to Turkey. Many mountaineers were pushed aside to the seashore and the Turkish ships arrived in Turkey were taken to Turkey. On May 21 ( June 2 ), 1864 , a prayer service was served on the occasion of the end of the Caucasian War.
Polish uprising of 1863-64
On January 22 ( February 3 ), 1863 , a new Polish national liberation uprising began in the territory of the Kingdom of Poland , Lithuania , Belarus, and Right-Bank Ukraine , in which a certain part of Belarusians and Lithuanians also took part.
By May 1864, the uprising was crushed by Russian troops. 128 people were executed for involvement in the uprising; 12,500 were sent to other localities (some of them subsequently raised the Circum-Baikal Uprising of 1866 ), 800 were sent to penal servitude. The uprising accelerated the implementation of peasant reform in the affected regions, and on more favorable conditions for the peasants than in the rest of Russia. The authorities took measures to develop the primary school in Lithuania and Belarus, hoping that the enlightenment of the peasantry in the Russian Orthodox spirit would entail a political and cultural reorientation of the population. Also measures were taken for the Russification of Poland .
Judicial Reform
Since 1864, a jury trial has appeared in Russia. Also in 1864, the bar was introduced in Russia as an independent legal institution, which indicates the beginning of positive changes in the legal industry and the adoption of positive experience from jurisprudence in Western Europe.
Zemsky reform
In the course of the Zemstan reform of 1864, provincial and district assemblies of Zemstvo and Zemstvo administrations were created - both those and other elective ones, on the basis of impersonality. Zemsky assemblies and councils were in charge of local economic affairs: the content of communication lines; building and maintaining schools and hospitals ; hiring doctors and medical assistants; device courses for training the population and the device of the sanitary part in cities and villages; "Care" about the development of local trade and industry, the provision of national food (the device of grain warehouses, seed depots); care for livestock and poultry; taxation on local needs, etc.
Zemsky reform was carried out not everywhere and not at the same time. By the end of the 1870s, zemstvos were introduced in 34 provinces of European Russia, in Bessarabia and in the region of the Don Army (where they were liquidated in 1882 ). Later, the provincial organs appeared on the outskirts: in the Stavropol , Astrakhan , Orenburg provinces. Many national and other areas of the Russian Empire did not have zemstvos. The law on zemstvos in the western provinces was adopted only in 1911.
The conquest of Central Asia
In 1860, the West Siberian authorities equipped, under the command of Colonel Zimmerman , a small detachment that destroyed the Kokand fortifications Pishpek and Tokmak [48] . The Kokand Khanate declared a holy war ( Gazavat ) and in October 1860 concentrated, among 20,000 people, at the Uzun-Agach fortification (56 versts from Verny), where they were defeated by Colonel Kolpakovsky , who later took Pishpek , who was resumed by Kokands, where this time was left. there was a Russian garrison; At the same time, the small fortresses of Tokmak and Kostek were occupied.
In 1864, it was decided that two detachments, one from Orenburg, the other from western Siberia, would head towards each other, the Orenburg - up the Syrdarya to the city of Turkestan , and the West Siberian - along the Alexander ridge . The Western Siberian detachment, 2500 people, under the command of Colonel Chernyaev , left Vernyi, on 5 ( 17 ) June 1864 , stormed the Aulie-Ata fortress, and Orenburg, 1,200 people under the command of Colonel Verevkin , moved from Fort Perovsky to the city of Turkestan, which was taken by trenching work June 12th.
In 1865, the Turkestan region was formed from the newly occupied territory, with the annexation of the territory of the former Syrdarya line, Chernyaev was appointed military governor.
Rumors that the emir of Bukhara was going to seize Tashkent prompted Chernyaev to besiege and take Tashkent after a three-day assault (June 15-17).
On May 8 ( 20 ), 1866 , the first major clash of Russians with the Bukharians, called the Battle of the Irjars, took place . This battle was won by Russian troops. The victory opened the way for Khojent and Dzhizak , which were taken in the same 1866, to the Russian army.
Cut off from Bukhara, Khudoyar-Khan accepted in 1868 a trade agreement offered to him by adjutant-general von Kaufman , by which Russians in the Kokand Khanate and Kokands in the Russian possessions acquired the right of free stay and travel, caravan-sheds , content of trading agencies ( caravan bashi), duties could be charged at the rate of no more than 2½% of the value of the goods.
In June 1871, Russian troops under the command of Major-General Kolpakovsky invaded the territory of the Ili Sultanate . The official reason was the refusal to extradite the volost ruler of the Kazakh family of the Albanians Tazabek and his associates, who migrated to the territory of the sultanate. As a result of the conflict, the weakly armed and unorganized troops of the Sultanate were defeated. As a result, the Ili Sultanate fell under the jurisdiction of the Russian Empire.
In 1875, Kipchak Abdurakhman-Avtobachi , the son of the executed Muslim Khudoyar, (autobachi is a court title in the Khanate hierarchy), a consistent opponent of the Kokand transition under Russian rule, joined him and all opponents of the Russians and clergy.
But their rebellion was crushed by Russian troops . On September 22, Kaufman signed an agreement with Nasir ud-Din-Khan, by virtue of which Khan recognized himself as a servant of the Russian Tsar, pledged to pay an annual tribute of 500 thousand rubles . and conceded all the lands north of Naryn ( Namangan Bekstvo on the right bank of the Syr Darya); of them, the Namangan department was formed. The agreement was drawn up according to the type of agreements with Bukhara and Khiva. He envisaged the refusal of the Khan from direct diplomatic agreements with any power other than Russia.
But as soon as the Russian troops withdrew, a new uprising flared up in the Khanate. It was also suppressed and on February 19 ( March 2 ), 1876 , the Highest order took place on the annexation of the entire territory of the Kokand Khanate and the formation of the Ferghana region from it. Despite this, the uprising of the Kirghiz people living on Alai , that is, on a high plateau formed by two parallel ridges closing the Fergana valley from the south, lasted another six months.
Almost simultaneously with the Russian-Kokand wars, the fighting with the Bukhara emirate began. This was facilitated by territorial disputes between Kokand and Bukhara. Nasr-Ulla-Khan , who died in 1860 after thirty-four years of reign, was succeeded by his son Seyid-Mozaffar-Eddin-Khan, during which the Bukhara Emirate lost its final value and independence, falling into vassal dependence on Russia. Mozaffar Khan , who, like his father, was at enmity with Kokand, at the same time supported the party of Khudoyar Khan there . This circumstance led Mozaffar Khan to clash with Russia, which at that time had already conquered the city of Turkestan , Shymkent , took Tashkent and in general took firm positions on Syr-Darya , on lands formerly owned by Kokand.
The arrogant mode of action of the Emir of Bukhara, demanding the cleansing by Russia of the conquered territory and the confiscation of the property of the Russian merchants living in Bukhara, as well as insulting the Russian mission sent for negotiations to Bukhara, led to a final break and war.
The Emir of Bukhara was defeated in this war and was forced to ask Russia for peace. According to the peace treaty of June 23 ( July 5 ), 1868 , the Bukhara Khanate was to cede Russia Samarkand , Katta-Kurgan , Pendzhetskoye and Urgut Bekstva, of which the first two represent the best places and lands of the blooming Zeravshan valley. In addition, the Emir of Bukhara undertook to pay 500,000 rubles of military remuneration, give Russian merchants freedom to trade in the Khanate, protect their property and personal security, allow the establishment of trade agencies in all cities, levy a duty on imported Russian goods not more than 2½% of their value and provide Russian merchants free passage through the Khanate to other lands.
The Iskander-Kul expedition of 1870 annexed the territories of the mountain fields of Matchinsky , Falgorsky , Farabsky , Magiansky and Kshtutsky (244,000 sq. Miles, with 31,500 inhabitants) to Russia.
In 1873, the Khiva campaign was carried out under the command of General Kaufman . Khiva Khan was defeated and was forced to submit to Russia. Since the plans of the Russian government did not include the annexation of the entire Khiva khanate , the khan was left with the right to rule the country. Under him, a special council was formed, entrusted with the provision of food for the Russian troops and the liberation of the Persians - slaves , which numbered up to 15 thousand in the Khanate.
In 1876, due to the support of Russia, Bukhara returned Gissar and Kulyab fallen beck , and in 1877 spread its limits further to the south-east, conquered, after insignificant resistance, Darvaz and Karategin . Emir Mozaffar , after his death, was succeeded in 1885 by his son, Emir Seyid-Abdul-Akhat-Khan .
In February 1881, the Treaty of Iliysky Krai was concluded between Russia and China, which passed the Iliysky Krai (with the exception of a small region) to China.
- Accession of Turkmenistan
In Turkmenistan, 80-90 thousand Tekins lived in the Akhal-Teke oasis. These were natural, brave warriors. All expeditions against them until 1879 were unsuccessful. In January 1880, General Mikhail Skobelev was appointed commander of the military expedition against the Tekints , who carried out the Akhal-Teke expedition , taking Dengil-Tepe ( Geok-Tepe ) fortress in January 1881.
Shortly after the capture of Geok-Tepe, Skobelev detachments were sent under the command of Colonel Kuropatkin; one of them occupied Askhabad , and the other went more than 100 miles to the north , disarming the population, returning it to the oases and distributing the appeal with the aim of quickly appeasing the land. And soon peace was established in the Transcaspian possessions of the Russian Empire .
General Komarov , being the head of the entire Transcaspian region (present-day Turkmenistan), drew attention to Merv as “a nest of robbery and destruction that hampered the development of almost all of Central Asia.” At the end of 1883, he sent the head captain Alikhanov and the Tekin major Major Makhmut-Kuli Khan with a proposal to the Mervians to accept Russian citizenship. On January 25, 1884, a Mervtsi deputation arrived in Askhabad and gave Komarov a petition addressed to the emperor to take Merv into Russian citizenship and took an oath.
Alaska Sale
Alaska was the only overseas colony of Russia , but it was not profitable and easily manageable. The journey from St. Petersburg lasted about six months. The area of the territory was about 1,600,000 km², and it was practically uninhabitable. At the beginning of the 19th century, Alaska brought revenues to the Russian-American company at the expense of the fur trade, but by the middle of the century it became obvious that the expenses of the military to maintain and protect this colonial territory would outweigh the potential profits.
The lands of the British Hudson's Bay Company stretched directly to the east of Alaska. Since Russia has developed a relationship of acute geopolitical rivalry, and sometimes open hostility with the British Empire (see: Crimean War , Great Game , Eastern Question ) [49] , the border required constant care and protection in case of a military clash between the two great powers.
To replenish the state treasury after the lost Crimean War , Emperor Alexander II agreed with the agreement, which his ambassador to the US , Baron Edward Stekl , signed on March 30 ( April 11 ), 1867 in the presence of US Foreign Secretary William Seward in Washington . The transaction value was $ 7.2 million.
This sale, made at the rate of 0.0004 cents per square meter, is the cheapest transaction for the sale of land of all time. Nevertheless, the US Senate expressed doubts about the advisability of such a burdensome acquisition, especially in a situation where a civil war had just ended in the country. The deal was approved by a margin of only one vote.
On October 18 ( 30 ), 1867 , Alaska was officially transferred: the Russian flag was changed to the American flag and the Gregorian calendar was entered. It so happened that the people of Alaska went to bed on October 6 and woke up on October 18. [ significance of fact? ] The feasibility of acquiring Alaska became apparent thirty years later, when gold was discovered on the Klondike .
Russian-Turkish War
As a result of the Russian-Turkish war ( 1877 - 1878 ), the Russian army helped Bulgaria liberate Bulgaria from the centuries-old Turkish yoke. In connection with the war in 1877, a major uprising occurred in Chechnya and Dagestan , which was brutally suppressed.
Revolutionary Movement
From the end of the 1860s, the ideology of “populism” began to acquire popularity among the liberal intelligentsia and, above all, the student youth (in the official and right-wing environment it was usually called “ nihilism ”). A propaganda student circle existed at Kharkov University (1856-1858), in 1861 the propaganda circle of P.E. Agriropulo and P.G. Zaichnevsky was established in Moscow. Its members considered it necessary to overthrow the monarchy by revolution. The political structure of Russia was represented by them in the form of a federal union of regions headed by an elected national assembly.
In 1861-1864, the most influential secret society of St. Petersburg was the first " Land and Freedom ". Its members (A. A. Sleptsov, N. A. Serno-Solov'evich , A. A. Serno-Solov'evich , N. N. Obruchev, V. S. Kurochkin, N. I. Utin, S. S. Rymarenko), inspired by the ideas of A. I. Herzen and N. G. Chernyshevsky, they dreamed of creating "conditions for revolution". They were waiting for her by 1863 - after the signing of the statutes of the peasants to the land was completed.
In 1863–1866, the secret revolutionary society of N. A. Ishutin (“Ishutintsev”), whose goal was to prepare the peasant revolution by conspiracy of intellectual groups, grew out of the circle adjacent to “Earth and Will”. By the beginning of 1866, there was already a rigid structure in the circle - a small but cohesive central leadership (“Hell”), a secret society proper (“Organization”), and legal “Societies of Mutual Aid” adjacent to it. The activity of the “Ishutins” was interrupted on April 4 by the attempt of one of the members of the circle, D.V. Karakozov , who was not coordinated with the comrades, to Alexander II. In the “case of the regicide,” more than 2,000 populists were brought under investigation; 36 of them were sentenced to various penalties.
In 1869, the organization of the “People’s Redemption” began in Moscow and St. Petersburg (77 people headed by S. G. Nechaev ). Its aim was also the preparation of the “peasant people's revolution”. Members of the organization were victims of blackmail and intrigue of its leader. When student I.I. Ivanov, a member of the “Narodnaya Killing”, spoke out against her leader, he was accused of treason by Nechaev and killed. The police uncovered this crime, the organization was crushed, Nechaev himself fled abroad, but was arrested there, extradited to the Russian authorities and tried as a criminal.
Since the end of the 1860s, several dozen populist circles have operated in the large cities of Russia. One of them, created by S. L. Perovsky (1871), joined the “Big Society of Propaganda,” headed by N. V. Tchaikovsky . Such famous revolutionaries as M. A. Natanson , S. M. Kravchinsky , P. A. Kropotkin , F. V. Volkhovsky, S. S. Sinegub , N. A. Charushin and others took part in the Tchaikovs circle.
In the spring and summer of 1874, the Tchaikovites, and after them the members of other circles (especially the Big Society of Propaganda), went to conduct propaganda in the villages of the Moscow, Tver, Kursk and Voronezh provinces. This movement received the name of the "volatile action", and later - the "first going to the people." Going from village to village, hundreds of students, high-school students, young intellectuals, dressed in peasant clothes and trying to talk like peasants, handed out literature and convinced people that tsarism "cannot be tolerated anymore." But the peasants were wary of strangers, their appeals were regarded as strange and dangerous. By the fall of 1874, "going to the people" began to decline, followed by government repression. By the end of 1875, more than 900 participants in the movement (out of 1000 activists), as well as about 8,000 sympathizers and followers, were arrested and convicted, including in the most notorious case, the “ Process of 193's ”.
At the end of 1874, a group called the All-Russian Social Revolutionary Organization was created in Moscow. After the arrests and trials of 1875 - the beginning of 1876, it entered entirely into the new, the second “Earth and the Will” created in 1876 (named so in memory of its predecessors). M. A. and O. A. Natanson (husband and wife), G. V. Plekhanov , L. A. Tikhomirov , O. V. Aptekman , A. A. Kvyatkovsky , D. A. Lizogub , A. D. Mikhailov , later - S. L. Perovskaya, A. I. Zhelyabov , V. I. Figner, and others insisted on observing the principles of conspiracy and the subordination of the minority to the majority. The organization's program envisaged the implementation of the peasant revolution, the principles of collectivism and anarchism were declared the foundations of government along with the socialization of the land and the replacement of the state by a federation of communities.
Some supporters of propaganda work insisted on moving from “flying propaganda” to the settlement of revolutionaries in the village for a long time to conduct propaganda (this movement received the name “second going to the people” in literature). At this time, propagandists first mastered crafts that were to be useful in the countryside, became doctors, medical assistants, clerks, teachers, blacksmiths, woodcutters. Sedentary propagandist settlements arose first in the Volga region (center - Saratov province), then in the Don region and some other provinces. A “working group” was also created to continue the agitation at the factories and enterprises of St. Petersburg, Kharkov and Rostov. "Land and Freedom" organized the first demonstration in the history of Russia - December 6 ( 18 ), 1876 at the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. A banner with the slogan “Earth and Freedom” was deployed on it, and G.V. Plekhanov delivered a speech.
Populists of the South of Russia embarked on the path of terrorism , presenting it as acts of self-defense and revenge for what they considered to be atrocities of the tsarist government. In February 1878, V.I. Zasulich attempted to assassinate the mayor of St. Petersburg F.F. Trepov, who ordered the student political prisoner to be whipped out. In the same month, V. N. Osinsky's circle - D. A. Lizogub, who acted in Kiev and Odessa, organized the killing of police agent A. G. Nikonov, gendarme colonel G. E. Gaiking (initiator of the expulsion of revolutionary-minded students) and the Kharkov general - Governor D. N. Kropotkin. 4 ( 16 ) August 1878 C. M. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky stabbed the St. Petersburg chief of the gendarmes N. A. Mezentsev with a dagger in response to his signing the sentence about the execution of the revolutionary Kowalsky. On March 13 ( 25 ), 1879 , an attempt was made on his successor, General A. R. Drentheln.
The response to the attacks of landowners began repression. In Russia, there were a dozen demonstrative political trials with sentences of 10–15 years in prison for print and verbal propaganda, 16 death sentences were issued (1879) only for “belonging to a criminal community” (this was judged by the proclamations found in the house transfer of money to the revolutionary treasury, etc.). Under these conditions, the preparation of A.K. Solovyov of an attempt on the emperor on April 2 ( 14 ), 1879 was interpreted ambiguously by many members: some of them protested against the terrorist act, believing that he would destroy the cause of revolutionary propaganda.
In May 1879, terrorists created the Freedom or Death group. On June 15, supporters of action gathered in Lipetsk to develop addenda to the organization’s program and a common position. On June 19-21, at the congress in Voronezh, the landowners tried to resolve the contradictions between the terrorists and the propagandists and preserve the unity of the organization, but failed: on August 15, the “Earth and the Will” fell apart.
Those who considered it necessary to abandon the methods of terror (G. V. Plekhanov, L. G. Deich , P. B. Axelrod , Zasulich, and others) united in a new political entity, calling it “ Black Redistribution ” (meaning redistribution land on the basis of peasant customary law, "black").
Supporters of terror created the organization " Narodnaya Volya ". On August 26 ( September 7 ), 1879 , the Executive Committee of the “ Narodnaya Volya ” decided to kill Alexander II. Two unsuccessful attempts on the life of Alexander II were made by the People of the Population (an attempt to blow up the imperial train near Moscow on November 19, an explosion in the Winter Palace by S. N. Khalturin 5 [17] February 1880 ). For the protection of public order and the fight against the revolutionary movement, a Supreme Administrative Commission was created. But this could not prevent the emperor's violent death.
On March 1 (13), 1881, Alexander II was mortally wounded on the embankment of the Catherine Canal in St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by the People's Will Ignatii Grinevitsky ; died that day. The implementation of the “Constitutional Project” by M. T. Loris-Melikov was unfinished.
Alexander III
Alexander III, the second child in the family, became the heir to the throne at 20, when his elder brother Nikolai suddenly died; inherit the throne prepared Nicholas, who received the appropriate education.
After the murder of Alexander II on March 1 ( 13 ), 1881 , Alexander III ascended the throne. On March 3, P. A. Valuev proposed that the Tsar appoint a regent for fear of the murder of Alexander III. On March 14 ( 26 ), 1881 , Alexander III appointed Grand Prince Vladimir Alexandrovich as Regent.
The very killing of the emperor-reformer proved to the prevailing conservative right-wing forces the destructiveness of the reforms. On the initiative of K.P. Pobedonostsev, on April 29 ( May 11 ), 1881 , the most recent “ manifesto on the inviolability of the autocracy ” was issued. The manifesto urged "all faithful subjects to serve faithfully for the eradication of vile seditions that dishonor the Russian land, for the establishment of faith and morality, for the good education of children, for the destruction of untruth and theft, for the establishment of order and truth in the actions of all institutions." . Soon after the publication of the manifesto, the liberal ministers (Loris-Melikov, Milutin, Konstantin Nikolaevich) were forced to resign.
“The decree on measures to preserve state order and public peace and conduct certain areas in a state of enhanced protection ”, issued on 14 ( 26 ) August 1881 , granted the right of the political police in 10 provinces of the Russian Empire to act in accordance with the situation, not obeying the administration and courts. When introducing this legislation, the authorities could, without trial, expel undesirable persons, close educational institutions, press organs, and trade and industrial enterprises. In fact, a state of emergency was established in Russia, which existed, despite the temporary nature of this law, until 1917.
Since then, the main state tasks, bequeathed by the transformational era, have not been put on the queue in their entirety. The spread of new institutions to areas still under the influence of the pre-reform order continued, gradually seizing the distant outskirts of the empire; but at the same time, the transformed institutions were subjected to new processing, on bases that did not conform to the traditions of the transforming era.
Russian researcher Alexander Popov conducted one of the world's first tests of a radio transmitter (1895) and is considered the inventor of the radio . In 1884, Russian mathematician and mechanic Sofia Kovalevskaya became the first woman in the world to be a professor of mathematics.
During the reign of Alexander III, mandatory factory legislation and factory inspection began to take shape in Russia: the law approved by the emperor from June 1 ( 13 ), 1882 , restricted the working hours of pregnant women and young children under 12 years old [50] . The decline in wages and huge fines, the general deterioration of the social status of workers in 1885 led to one of the largest strikes in the history of the Russian Empire: the Morozov strike [51] .
Rivalry with Britain in Central Asia and the establishment of Russian control over the Pamirs
The fears of the British for the superiority of their influence in Afghanistan , which provoked the Afghans to invade the disputed territories south of Merv , led to the battle at Kushka on March 18 ( 30 ), 1885 . This international incident was actively exaggerated in the European press and, as they thought at that time, put Russia on the brink of war with Britain.
Emir Abdur-Rahman , who at that time was in a meeting with Lord Dufferin in Rawalpindi , tried to hush up the incident as a minor border misunderstanding. Lord Ripon insisted that any concession on the part of the British would encourage open Russian intervention in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the war was averted by the efforts of diplomats; the British received assurances of intent to respect the territorial integrity of Afghanistan in the future.
To resolve the incident, a Russian-British border commission was established, which determined the present northern border of Afghanistan. Представители эмира в её работе не участвовали. Уступки российских представителей были минимальны. Россия сохранила отвоёванный Комаровым клочок земли, на которой был впоследствии основан город Кушка . Он был самым южным населённым пунктом как Российской империи, так и СССР .
В 1890—1894 годах происходило соперничество российской и британской империй за контроль над Памиром . После экспедиций российских войск под командованием М.Ионова было заключено российско-британское соглашение, по которому часть Памира отошла к Афганистану, часть — к России, а часть — к Бухарскому эмирату , подконтрольному России. На этом экспансия России в Средней Азии завершилась.
Русский капитализм
В начале 1860-х годов русская промышленность пережила серьёзный кризис и в целом в 1860—1880-е годы её развитие резко замедлилось. В последующие годы периоды роста перемежались с периодами спадов. В целом экономические историки характеризуют период с 1860 по 1885—1888 годы, пришедшийся в основном на царствование Александра II , как период экономической депрессии и промышленного спада. [52]
После прихода к власти Александра III , начиная с середины 1880-х годов, правительство вернулось к протекционистской политике, проводившейся при Николае I. В течение 1880-х годов было несколько повышений импортных пошлин, а начиная с 1891 г. в стране начала действовать новая система таможенных тарифов, самых высоких за предыдущие 35-40 лет. По мнению учёных той эпохи ( М. Ковалевский ) и современных экономических историков (Р. Портал, П. Байрох) проведение политики протекционизма сыграло важную роль в резком ускорении промышленного роста в России в конце XIX в. Всего лишь за 10 лет (1887—1897 гг.) промышленное производство в стране удвоилось. За 13 лет — с 1887 г. по 1900 г. — производство чугуна в России выросло почти в 5 раз, стали — также почти в 5 раз, нефти — в 4 раза, угля — в 3,5 раза, сахара — в 2 раза. [53]
Активно шло строительство железных дорог, что способствовало развитию промышленности. Построенные в это время дороги были как казёнными ( Николаевская , Московско-Нижегородская , Петербурго-Варшавская), так и частными ( Рязано-Уральская ). В 1887 году началось строительство наиболее грандиозной дороги — Транссиба , соединившего европейскую часть страны и Урал с Дальним Востоком.
Характерной чертой индустриализации 1890-х годов стала быстрая монополизация ведущих отраслей промышленности . Например, синдикат «Продамет» в начале XX века контролировал более 80 % всего российского производства готовых металлических изделий, синдикат Кровля — более 50 % всего выпуска листового железа, подобная же картина была в других отраслях, где были созданы «Продвагон», «Продуголь» и другие монополистические объединения. [54] В табачной отрасли был создан Табачный трест — его создали англичане, скупившие все русские табачные компании. [55] Это приводило к все большей концентрации производства в промышленности, превосходившей даже тот уровень концентрации, который складывался в Западной Европе. Так, на крупных предприятиях с числом рабочих более 500 человек в России в начале XX века работало около половины всех промышленных рабочих, такой высокий показатель в Европе был лишь в Германии, в других странах этот показатель был намного ниже. [56]
Земские учреждения
Земские учреждения — выборные органы местного самоуправления (земские собрания, земские управы) в России . Введены земской реформой 1864 года. Ведали просвещением , здравоохранением , строительством дорог и т. д. Контролировались министерством внутренних дел и губернаторами , имевшими право отмены постановлений земств.
Массовое начальное образование в неграмотной стране поднимают тысячи Земских начальных школ , в которых учились всего три года. Земства создадут участковую медицину, действие которых сохранились до сих пор. Лечение и обследование в больницах было бесплатным, работу в Земстве считали гражданским долгом, а не актом благотворительности.
Сфера деятельности и права земских собраний постоянно урезалась правительством Александра III (см.: Земские учреждения ). Работая в Земстве можно было дослужиться до статского советника и получить даже потомственное дворянство .
Технологический прогресс
Телеграф
Телеграф в России строился с активным участием компании Siemens :
- 1851: Поставка 75 пишущих телеграфных аппаратов для линии Москва — Санкт-Петербург.
- 1853—1855: Прокладка телеграфных линий Москва — Киев — Одесса — Севастополь, Санкт-Петербург — Кронштадт, Санкт-Петербург — Гельсингфорс — Або, Санкт-Петербург — Варшава.
Общая протяжённость телеграфных линий в России составила 9000 км.
Телефонизация
В 1881 году международное телефонное общество Белла заключило с Россией контракт на устройство и эксплуатацию телефонных сетей в Санкт-Петербурге, Москве, Варшаве, Одессе, Риге и Лодзи сроком на 20 лет.
В 1893 году компания «Л. М. Эриксон и Ко.» открыла свою первую станцию — в Киеве. В 1900 году Эриксон построил свою первую зарубежную фабрику — в Санкт-Петербурге.
Electrification
At the end of the XIX century, by the highest decree, the “Society of Electric Lighting 1886” was organized, the founder of which was the Russian branch of Siemens. Other well-known companies, Shukker & Co., Universal Electricity Company ( AEG ), Helios, began to form their representative offices in Russia.
The construction of power plants began on a new type of fuel - peat. [57]
Nicholas II
The coronation of Nicholas II took place on May 14 (26), 1896 (for the victims of coronation celebrations in Moscow, see: Crush on the Khodynka Field ).
The first of the major foreign policy actions of Nicholas II was the Triple Intervention . At the ministerial meeting of 5 ( 17 ) December 1896 , under the chairmanship of Nicholas II, a plan was observed for the landing of a Russian landing force on the Bosphorus . At the last moment it was decided to abandon the operation. In March 1897, Russian troops took part in a non-combat operation in Crete , which became an international protectorate after the Greek-Turkish war . In December 1897, with the help of the Russian military squadron, pressure was exerted on China and, as a result, Russia leased the ports of Port Arthur and Dalny .
In 1897, the first All-Russian population census was conducted. According to the census, the population of the Russian Empire was 125 million. Of these, 84 were native Russian languages. Literacy among the population of Russia was 21%, among persons aged 10-19 years - 34%. In the same year, a monetary reform was carried out, setting the gold standard of the ruble.
On June 2 ( 14 ), 1897 , a law on limiting working hours was issued. They set a maximum working day limit of no more than 11.5 hours on ordinary days, and 10 hours on Saturday and pre-holiday days, or if at least part of the working day fell at night. A special tax on landowners of Polish origin in the Western Territory, imposed as a punishment for the Polish uprising of 1863, was abolished.
Beginning of XX century
In 1900, Nicholas II sent the Russian troops to suppress the Ichetuan uprising, together with the troops of other European powers, Japan and the United States.
The lease of the Liaodun Peninsula to the Russian Empire, the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway and the establishment of the Port Arthur naval base, the growing influence of the Russian Empire in Manchuria caused the attack in Japan in 1904, which also claimed Manchuria.
The Russo-Japanese War began on January 27 ( February 9 ), 1904 , when eight Japanese destroyers attacked Russian ships in the harbor of Port Arthur without declaring war. [58]
The border battle on the Yalu River was followed by the battles near Liaoyan , on the River Shahe and near Sandepa . In 1905, after a major battle, the Russian army left Mukden .
The outcome of the war was decided by the sea battle at Tsushima , which ended with the complete defeat of the Russian fleet. The war ended with the Portsmouth Peace of 1905, according to which the Russian Empire recognized Korea as the sphere of influence of Japan, ceded Japan South Sakhalin and the rights to the Liaodong peninsula with the cities of Port Arthur and Dalny . For wide sections of the population, the war went almost unnoticed, and only one tenth of the country's military might was used. [59]
However, a cruel and humiliating defeat in the Russian-Japanese war was one of the reasons for the start of the first Russian revolution . The impetus for the start of mass demonstrations under political slogans was the shooting of a demonstration in St. Petersburg on January 9 ( 22 ), 1905 (the so-called “ Bloody Sunday ”).
The main political outcome of the revolution was the publication of the manifesto of October 17, 1905 . A Russian parliament was created - the State Duma of the Russian Empire . The manifesto also bestowed civil liberties: real personal integrity, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly, and unions. Professional and professional-political unions arose, the Social Democratic Party and the Socialist Revolutionary Party were strengthened, the Constitutional Democratic Party , the Union of October 17 , the Union of the Russian People and others were created. Autocracy was forced to create a parliamentary representation and the beginning of reform (see: Stolypin agrarian reform ).
The dissolution of the emperor on the initiative of the Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin of the 2nd State Duma with a parallel change in the electoral law (the Third June coup dated 1907 ) meant the end of the revolution.
However, after the end of the revolution, social peace in the Russian Empire did not come. In 1912, Lensky was shot , about 2,000,000 people took part in proletarian strikes, in 1914 1,500,000 workers went on strike only in the first half of the year, and in July 1914 it reached the barricades in the capital. [60]
On August 18 ( 31 ), 1907 , an agreement was signed with Great Britain on the delimitation of spheres of influence in China, Afghanistan and Iran . This was an important step in the formation of the Entente . On 17 ( 30 ) June 1910 , after lengthy disputes, a law was passed restricting the rights of the Sejm of the Grand Duchy of Finland (see Russification of Finland ).
In 1909, due to the unstable political situation in Persia (Iran), Russian troops were sent there. In 1911, the Russian contingent in Persia was strengthened.
In 1912 Mongolia became the de facto protectorate of the Russian Empire, gaining independence from China as a result of the revolution that took place there. A contingent of Russian troops was sent to Mongolia [61] [62] . After the revolution in China in 1912-1913, the Tuva noyons appealed several times to the tsarist government with the request to accept Tuva under the protectorate of the Russian Empire . On April 17 ( 30 ), 1914 , Nicholas II signed a decree establishing a protectorate of the Russian Empire over the Uryanhai region . He was incorporated into the Yenisei province with the transfer of political and diplomatic affairs to the Irkutsk Governor-General in Tuva.
In connection with the First Balkan War, Austria-Hungary carried out a partial mobilization of its army, and in this connection in November 1912, at a meeting with the emperor, the question of mobilizing the troops of the three Russian military districts was considered. The Minister of War V.Sukhomlinov spoke for this measure, but the Prime Minister V.Kokovtsov managed to convince the emperor not to make such a decision, which threatened to drag the Russian Empire into the war. [63] [64]
Economic situation
The undoubted fact is the slowdown of the industrial growth of the Russian Empire on the eve of the First World War compared with the end of the XIX century. In the years 1901-1903 there was a drop in production. But even in the years 1905-1914, the rate of increase in industrial production was several times lower than in the 1890s. [65] .
On the eve of World War I, coal and oil production [66] , industrial and agricultural production, the length of railways, and the number of students increased significantly (for example, from 1905 to 1913 the number of students in men's gymnasiums increased by 531% [67] ). By 1913, the Russian Empire accounted for 5.3% of world industrial production (US - 35.8%, Germany - 15.7%, Great Britain - 14%, France - 6.4%) [68] . In 1913, when exporting basic grain crops [69] to 495,000 pounds (1 place in the world), domestic consumption was 18 pounds per capita. The consumption of basic grain crops per capita in other countries in 1913 was: in the USA - 43.7 pounds, in Great Britain - 16.7 pounds, in Japan - 3.6 pounds, in France - 19.1 pounds, in Italy - 16 , 2 pounds, in Argentina - 17.0 pounds, in Sweden - 15.2 pounds [70] . There was an increase in the wages of workers. The average annual wage of workers for all groups of industries in 1910 was 243 rubles, and in 1913 it was 264 rubles [71] .
But in many respects, the Russian Empire continued to yield to other countries. In 1915, for the production of grain per capita, the Russian Empire was almost four times lower than Canada, three times Argentina, and twice the United States [72] . In the total number of cattle, horses and pigs per 100 population, the Russian Empire was almost 2 times lower than the United States. Translated into cattle: in the Russian Empire 99,647 heads (1914) —57.3 per 100 people; in the USA 110,508 heads (1916) —1119 per 100 people (here the main role was played by the large number of pigs in the USA which surpassed the population in the Russian Empire by 4.25 times [73] . Coal mining is more than 17 times, oil [74] is more than tripled, steel has become more than 7 times. By the length of railways - more than 6 times, by the number of students - almost three times and this is without recalculation per capita [65] .
A number of industries in the Russian Empire were developed fairly well: metallurgy, steam locomotive construction, and textile industry, but even in the development of basic industries, Russia lagged far behind the leading European countries. For example, the production of metal in the Russian Empire in 1912 was 28 kg per person, and in Germany - 156 kg, that is 5.5 times more [75] . As for the more complex and knowledge-intensive industries, there was a much larger backlog.
From 70% to 100% of production capacity in most industries on the eve of World War I controlled foreign capital, to a large extent - French [76] .
By the average annual growth rate of industrial production, Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was ahead of Great Britain and Germany, but lagged behind Japan, which, like Russia, tried to catch up with the development of the Western countries. [77]
As of 1912, only 190 out of 1078 settlements with a population of more than 10 thousand people had a water supply system, and only 58 of them had filters or other devices for purifying water. Meanwhile, at the same time in Germany in cities with a population of over 20 thousand inhabitants there was a water supply system in 98 settlements out of 100, in cities with a population of 5 to 20 thousand people there were water supply systems in 74 out of 100 cities. This was the reason why in England, Germany, France, Sweden and Norway the number of deaths from infectious diseases in 1909–10. did not exceed 100 cases per 100 thousand population per year, whereas in the Russian Empire the death rate from infectious diseases (not counting cholera and plague ) in the years 1906–10 was 529 cases per year per 100 thousand population. In 1910, a cholera epidemic engulfed 78 provinces and regions of the Russian Empire. [78]
World War I
In general, in 1914, Russia was not ready for war, and this circumstance was realized at the government level [79] .
The immediate pretext for the war was the Sarajevo assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a 19-year-old Serbian student, Gavrila Princip , who was a member of the secret organization Mlada Bosna fighting for the unification of all South Slavic peoples in one state on June 28 ( July 11 ) 1914 . Since Serbia was implicated in the murder, after a while Austria-Hungary presented the July ultimatum to Serbia, and although it was accepted with the only reservation, was not satisfied with the answer and declared war to Serbia. The Russian Empire, in response to this, declared a general mobilization on July 17 ( 30 ), 1914 . On 18 (July 31) Germany , an ally of Austria-Hungary, declared war on the Russian Empire.
In 1914, there were two major battles on the Eastern Front of the First World War : the East Prussian operation , which ended in the defeat of the Russian troops, and the Battle of Galicia , which ended in their victory.
On October 29 and 30 ( November 12 ), 1914 , the Turkish fleet under the command of German admiral V. Sushona fired at Sevastopol , Odessa , Feodosia and Novorossiysk . On November 2, the Russian Empire declared war against Turkey . Appeared Caucasian front . In December 1914 - January 1915, during the Sarykamysh operation, the Russian Caucasian army stopped the advance of the Turkish troops on Kars , and then defeated them and launched a counter-offensive.
At the beginning of 1915, Germany decided to deliver the main blow on the eastern front, trying to bring the Russian Empire out of the war. During the August operation (the name of the city, and not by the month), also called the winter battle in Mazuria, the German troops managed to dislodge the 10th Russian army from East Prussia and surround the 20th corps of this army. The subsequent German offensive in the Prasnysh area (see: the Prasnysh operation ) suffered a serious setback - in the battle, German forces were defeated and thrown back into East Prussia. In the winter of 1914-1915, there was a battle between the Russians and the Austrians for the passes in the Carpathians (see: Carpathian operation ). On March 10 ( 23 ), 1915 , the siege of Przemysl ended - an important Austrian fortress with a garrison of 115 thousand people capitulated.
In May, the German-Austrian troops, concentrating superior forces in the area of Gorlice , managed to break through the Russian front (see: Gorlitsky Breakthrough ). After this, the general strategic retreat of the Russian army from Galicia and Poland began. On August 23 ( September 5 ), 1915 , Nicholas II assumed the rank of Supreme Commander, appointing Nikolai Nikolayevich commander of the Caucasian Front. M.V. Alekseev was appointed the chief of staff of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander. Front managed to stabilize. A German occupation administration was created on the captured Russian territory.
In June 1916, a major offensive operation of the Russian army began, called the Brusilov breakthrough by the name of the front commander A. A. Brusilov. As a result of the offensive operation, the South-Western Front inflicted a serious defeat on the Austro-Hungarian troops in Galicia and Bukovina .
By the summer of 1916, on the Caucasian front, Russian troops occupied most of Western Armenia .
On June 25 ( July 8 ), 1916 , a decree was issued on the so-called “requisition of foreigners” to half a million people for logistical work, which led to an armed uprising in Turkestan and in the Seven Rivers . The suppression of the uprising took considerable time - the last remnants of resistance in the Transcaspian region were suppressed at the end of January 1917, and the Kazakh insurgents Amangeldy Imanov and Alibi Dzhangildin in the steppes of Turgay continued fighting later.
In the summer of 1917, the last Tsarist Interior Minister, A. D. Protopopov, showed the Emergency Investigation Commission of the Provisional Government about the state of the country by the winter of 1916/1917 [80] :
Finances are upset, the turnover is broken, labor productivity is on a huge decline ... The ways of communication are in complete disarray, which extremely complicated the economic and military situation ... The sets deserted the village (the 13th million was taken), stopped the land-processing industry. A village without husbands, brothers, sons and even teenagers was unhappy. The cities were starving, the village was crushed, constantly under the fear of requisition ... There was little goods, prices grew, taxes developed the sale "from under the floor", looting happened ... Art, literature, scholarly work were oppressed ... There was no one to order it. There were many bosses, but there was no directing will, plan, or system. The supreme power has ceased to be a source of life and light.
February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution
In February 1917 in Petrograd , events occurred as a result of which the monarchy was de facto overthrown in Russia and the dual power of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet was established . The February Revolution was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. It occurred in the then capital of the country - Petrograd (present - day St. Petersburg ) in March (at the end of February according to the Julian calendar ). Its immediate result was the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II , the end of the Romanov dynasty and the end of the Russian Empire . The emperor was replaced by the Provisional Government of Russia under the chairmanship of Prince George Lvov appointed by him. The Provisional Government was the result of an alliance between liberals and socialists who wanted political reform. They intended to create democratically elected executive bodies and convene a Constituent Assembly . At the same time, the socialists also formed the Petrograd Soviet , which, along with the Provisional Government, became an authority, creating a situation called diarchy .
Notes
- ↑ Ageeva O. G. The title “emperor” and the concept “empire” in Russia in the first quarter of the XVIII century // World of History: Russian electronic journal, 1999, No. 5.
- ↑ The Julian calendar was introduced in Russia . Calend.ru The date of circulation is July 1, 2017.
- ↑ Rokhlenko D., B. The First Russian Printed Newspaper / Science and Life. Number 3, 2007.
- ↑ The first highest award of Russia, the Russian heroic calendar
- ↑ Paul Dukes. The Making of Russian Absolutism, 1613-1801; Lyubavskiy M.K. The course of lectures on Russian history of the XVII XVIII centuries
- ↑ James Cruycraft. Peter's revolution: buildings, images, words. // Collection “Peter the Great” / Edited by E. V. Anisimov. 2007. p. 84
- ↑ James Cruycraft. Peter's revolution: buildings, images, words. P. 87
- ↑ Tax reforms of Peter I // A short course of lectures on the subject "Theory and history of taxation"
- ↑ Educational reform of Peter the Great and the first decades after Peter the Great Archival copy of July 1, 2017 on the Wayback Machine // Museum “History of Russian education in school history”
- ↑ M. Bykov. Tale about the decree Archival copy from June 15, 2013 on the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Peter I. On the establishment in all provinces hospitals // Complete Collection of the laws of the Russian Empire , since 1649. - SPb. : Printing house II of the Department of His Own Imperial Majesty's Chancellery , 1830. - V. IV. 1700-1712. No. 2477 . - p . 791 .
- ↑ Peter I. On the transaction in the cities at the churches of the hospitals for the reception and maintenance of illegitimate children // The complete collection of the laws of the Russian Empire , since 1649. - SPb. : Printing house II of the Department of His Own Imperial Majesty's Chancellery , 1830. - V. 1717-1719. No. 2953 . - p . 181 .
- ↑ The private life of a Russian woman: the bride, wife, mistress. X - the beginning of the XIX century
- ↑ Riga Governor Dahlberg did not allow Peter I in 1697 to inspect the fortifications of Riga.
- ↑ “La cour de la Russie il y a cent ans”, 37. Depeche Manyan
- ↑ 1 2 10 facts about Elizabeth I, who continued Petrine reforms, Culturology. RF
- ↑ Shuvalov, Peter Ivanovich, “History of Russia”
- ↑ On the establishment of the State Bank // Full Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire from 1649. - SPb. : Printing house of the II department of His Own Imperial Majesty's Chancellery , 1830. - V. XV, 1758—1762, No. 11550 . - pp . 1021-1023 .
- ↑ The Manifesto of December 29, 1768 ( January 9, 1769 ) “On the Establishment of State Banks in St. Petersburg and Moscow for the Exchange of Bills”, The Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire , Collection of 1649–1825, No. 13219.
- ↑ Troyan A. Catherine the Great. Moscow, 2007, p. 409.
- ↑ Pavlenko N. And. Catherine the Great. Moscow, 2006, p. 389.
- ↑ Chechulin N. D. Essays on the history of Russian finance in the reign of Catherine II. St. Petersburg, 1906. p. 43, 61, 87, 323, 364, 373, 374.
- ↑ L. Muravyova. Catherine II's Credit Policy // Finance and Credit: Journal. - 2010. - № 13 . - p . 78 .
- ↑ Are you exactly human? CyberLeninka. The date of circulation is July 1, 2017.
- ↑ Mayul V. Ya. The sociocultural space of the Russian revolt: based on materials of the Pugachev rebellion, doctoral dissertation abstract, Tomsk, 2005
- ↑ Pictures of battles and portraits of the Generalissimo
- ↑ SUVOROV AND DON COSSACKS Unsolved (inaccessible link) . The date of circulation is July 25, 2014. Archived December 27, 2013.
- ↑ V. B. Vinogradov. The average Kuban. Countrymen and neighbors. Nogais
- ↑ Kodiak (Alaska). The first Russian settlement in the United States (1784) (Inaccessible link) . The date of circulation is September 13, 2014. Archived March 4, 2013.
- ↑ Sharov D.M. Emperor Alexander I activity to strengthen the Russian army , Abstract of dissertation, Conclusion, Moscow, 2009
- ↑ dr . Nazarov O. Tale about how serfdom was abolished in Russia, Solidarity, √6, 02/16/2011
- П. P. D. Ruzhitskaya, P. D. Kiselev, Chief of Staff for the Peasant Part, Enlightened Bureaucracy (1800–1860s), Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences , 2009. ISBN 978-5-8055-0212-6
- ↑ Shabanov M. Link and hard labor in Western Siberia at the end of the XVI - the end of the XIX centuries, Abstract of dissertation, Kemerovo, 1998
- ↑ Rakhmatullin M. The Emperor Nicholas I and His Reign : Part I / Doctor of Historical Sciences M. Rakhmatullin // Science and Life. - 2002. - No. 2. (Tested on October 7, 2017)
Emperor Nicholas I and his reign : Part 2 // Science and Life. - 2002. - № 3. (Tested on October 7, 2017) - ↑ dr . N. Troitsky. Russia in the 19th Century: Lectures, & Nikolaev Russia, Nicholas I Reforms, M., 1999 ISBN 5-06-003210-8
- ↑ Zhirnov E. The case of the murder of a sadistic chief, Kommersant.ru, 07/04/2011
- ↑ Encyclopedia "Krugosvet"
- ↑ TSB
- ↑ History of Russia from ancient times to 1917. Archival copy of February 18, 2010 on the Wayback Machine Study Guide for students, the authors are members of the Department of National History and Culture of the IPEU
- ↑ A. S. Griboedov. Collected cit. V. 2. - P. 94
- ↑ I. K. Enikolopov. Griboedov and East. - Yerevan, 1954.
- ↑ Text of the Turkmenchay Treaty
- ↑ Priest Sergiy Golovanov. Bridge between east and west. Greek Catholic Church of the Kiev tradition from 1596 to our time
- ↑ Nicholas I attributed to numerous sources a comparison of the Ottoman Empire with the “sick man of Europe”, which he repeatedly used to communicate with foreign diplomats in 1830 - early 1850s; See, for example: Tarle E. V. The Crimean War
- ↑ See excerpts from the conversation of February 20 ( March 4 ) of 1853 with the English ambassador in St. Petersburg Seymour. Nicholas I: “I’m not particularly interested in what happens when the bear (Turkey) dies ... since I, along with England, decide how to act when this event occurs.” Seymour’s response was: “We see no reason to think that the bear is dying ... and we are interested in him continuing to live ... Turkey will live for many more years, unless some unforeseen crisis happens ... in which Her Majesty’s Government is counting on Your assistance. // Great Crimean War, 1854-1856 By TREVOR ROYLE, St. Martin's press
- ↑ Doronina M. V. Culture of the everyday life of the Russian diverse intellectuals in the second half of the 19th century: the ratio of the “ideal” and “real”, Abstract of dissertation, Conclusion , M., 2004
- ↑ Seregina A.Yu. Culture of Russia. XIX century. (1801-1914) , Historical portal "Culture of Russia"
- ↑ Description of hostilities in the Trans-Ili region in 1860
- ↑ James Oliver. The Bering Strait Crossing. ISBN 0-9546995-6-4 . P. 91-95.
- ↑ Bogdan V. Formation and development of factory legislation of the Russian Empire in the late XIX - early XX century: historical and legal research, dissertation Author's abstract, Conclusion, M., 2002
- ↑ History of Russia. Preparing for the exam. Chronological reference. Based on materials: Zemtsov B., Shubin A., Danilevsky I. History of Russia (for students of technical universities), St. Petersburg, 2013 ISBN 978-5-496-00153-3
- ↑ Portal R. The Industrialization of Russia. Cambridge, 1965, Volume VI, Part 2, pp. 822–823
- ↑ See: Kuzovkov Y. History of Corruption in Russia M., 2010, p. 17.1
- ↑ Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Cambridge, 1965, Volume VI, Part 2. P. 849
- ↑ Miller M. The Economic Development of Russia, 1905-1914. With special reference to Trade, Industry and Finance. London, 1967. P. 239
- ↑ N. Rozhkov. Russian history in comparative historical coverage (fundamentals of social dynamics). L. —M., 1926–1928, t. 11. P. 243
- ↑ Bunkovsky (Bogorodskaya) district power station
- ↑ Starikov N. Who killed the Russian empire? M .: Publishing house Yauza; publishing house Eksmo. 2006. p. 33.
- ↑ British Encyclopedia . Quote from the book by E.E. Alfereyev. Emperor Nicholas II as a man of strong will. Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NI, 1983.
- ↑ V.Loginov. "Unhappy story"
- ↑ and Mongolia at the beginning of the 20th century. DIPLOMACY, ECONOMY, SCIENCE
- ↑ Tales of Siberian arrows
- ↑ Vladimir Kokovtsov. From my past
- ↑ S. D. Sazonov (Minister of Foreign Affairs 1910-1916)
- ↑ 1 2 N. Rozhkov. Russian History in Comparative Historical Illumination (Fundamentals of Social Dynamics). Leningrad - Moscow, 1926-1928, Vol. 12, p. 161
- ↑ The Donets Basin has become the center of heavy industry.
- ↑ Prosveshenie. Education. The science. Print // Russia 1913 - Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Russian History. SPb, 1995. Table 8
- ↑ Folke H. Industrialization and Foreign Trade. Geneva, 1945. H. 13; Rather S., Soltow JH, Sylla R. The Evolution of the American Economy. New York, 1979. R. 385.
- ↑ Wheat, rye, barley and corn
- ↑ Field cultivation // Russian Empire 1913 - Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Russian History. SPb, 1995. Table 4
- ↑ The standard of living of the population // Russia 1913 - Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Russian History. SPb., 1995. Table 12
- ↑ III
- ↑ Collection of statistical and economic information on agriculture of the Russian Empire and foreign countries. Tenth year. Pg., 1917. pp. 259, 260.
- ↑ For oil see also: http://www.mil.ru/viz-1-06-36-39.pdf (inaccessible link)
- ↑ Miller M. The Economic Development of Russia, 1905-1914. With special reference to Trade, Industry and Finance. London, 1967, p.256
- ↑ N. Rozhkov. Russian History in Comparative Historical Illumination (Fundamentals of Social Dynamics) Leningrad - Moscow, 1926-1928, vol. 12, pp. 166-167
- ↑ A.Vishnevsky Serp and Ruble
- From the “Explanatory Note to the State Control Report on the Execution of State Painting and Financial Estimates for 1911”
- ↑ " At the Special Meeting on February 8, 1914, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers V.N. Kokovtsov declared -" war is the greatest disaster for Russia ", the minister of the sea I.K. Grigorovich testified:" a delay in the coming years of Russia is desirable ". Meeting materials indicate a desire to delay the impending conflict as long as possible. ”
For the Balkan fronts of the First World War / resp. ed. V.N. Vinogradov. M., Publishing House Indrik, 2002. p.12 - ↑ FROM A.D. PROTOPOPOV'S INDICATIONS
Links
Literature
- Некрич А. М. , Геллер М. Я. История Российской империи.