the cambridge history of russia - ii - imperial russia 1689-1917

RU S S I AThe second volume of The Cambridge History of Russia covers the imperial period 1689–1917.. The volume’s seven chapters on diplomatic and military history, and on Russia’s evol

RU S S I A

The second volume of The Cambridge History of Russia covers the

imperial period (1689–1917) It encompasses political, economic, social, cultural, diplomatic and military history All the major Rus- sian social groups have separate chapters and the volume also includes surveys on the non-Russian peoples and the government’s policies towards them It addresses themes such as women, law, the Orthodox Church, the police and the revolutionary movement The volume’s seven chapters on diplomatic and military history, and on Russia’s evolution as a great power, make it the most detailed study of these issues available in English The contributors come from the USA, UK, Russia and Germany: most are internationally recognised as leading scholars in their fields, and some emerg- ing younger academics engaged in a cutting-edge research have also been included No other single volume in any language offers

so comprehensive, expert and up-to-date an analysis of Russian history in this period.

d o m i n i c l i e v e n is Professor of Russian Government at the don School of Economics and Political Science His books include

Lon-Russia’s Rulers under the Old Regime (1989) and Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (2000).

RU S S I AThis is a definitive new history of Russia from early Rus’ to the successor states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union Volume I encompasses developments before the reign of Peter I; volume II covers the ‘imperial era’, from Peter’s time to the fall of the monarchy in March 1917; and volume III continues the story through to the end of the twentieth century At the core of all three volumes are the Russians, the lands which they have inhabited and the polities that ruled them while other peoples and territories have also been give generous coverage for the periods when they came under Riurikid, Romanov and Soviet rule The distinct voices

of individual contributors provide a multitude of perspectives on Russia’s diverse and controversial millennial history.

Volumes in the series Volume I

From Early Rus’ to 1689

Edited by Maureen Perrie Volume II

Imperial Russia, 1689–1917

Edited by Dominic Lieven Volume III

The Twentieth Century

Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny

Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521815291

C

 Cambridge University Press 2006 This publication is in copyright Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2006 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

i s b n -13 978-0-521-81529-1 hardback

i s b n -10 0-521-81529-0 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external

or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any

content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

List of plates ix List of maps xi Notes on contributors xii

Acknowledgements xvi

Note on the text xvii

List of abbreviations in notes and bibliography xviii

16· Gender and the legal order in Imperial Russia 326

27· The navy in 1900: imperialism, technology and class war 575

The plates can be found after the Index

1 Imperial mythology: Peter the Great examines young Russians returning from

study abroad From Russkii voennyi flot, St Petersburg, 1908.

2 Imperial grandeur: the Great Palace (Catherine Palace) at Tsarskoe Selo Author’s collection.

3 Alexander I: the victor over Napoleon From Russkii voennyi flot, St Petersburg,

8 The Conservatoire in St Petersburg Author’s collection.

9 Count Muravev (Amurskii): imperial pro-consul By A.V Makovskii (1869–1922) Reproduced courtesy of John Massey Stewart Picture Library and Irkutsk Fine Arts Museum.

10 Imperial statuary: the monument to Khmel’nitskii in Kiev Reproduced courtesy

of John Massey Stewart Picture Library.

11 Tiflis: Russia in Asia? Reproduced courtesy of John Massey Stewart Picture Library.

12 Nizhnii Novgorod: a key centre of Russian commerce Reproduced courtesy of John Massey Stewart Picture Library.

13 Rural life: an aristocratic country mansion Author’s collection.

14 Rural life: a central Russian village scene Author’s collection.

15 Rural life: the northern forest zone Author’s collection.

16 Rural life: the Steppe Author’s collection.

17 Naval ratings: the narod in uniform From Russkii voennyi flot, St Petersburg, 1908.

18 Sinews of power? Naval officers in the St Petersburg shipyards Russkii voennyi flot,

St Petersburg, 1908.

19 The battleship Potemkin fitting out Russkii voennyi flot, St Petersburg, 1908.

20 Baku: the empire’s capital of oil and crime Reproduced courtesy of John Massey Stewart Picture Library.

21 Alexander III: the monarchy turns ‘national’ From Russkii voennyi flot, St

1 The provinces and population of Russia in 1724 Used with permission

from The Routledge Atlas of Russian History by Martin Gilbert. xxiv

2 Serfs in 1860 Used with permission from The Routledge Atlas of Russian

3 Russian industry by 1900 Used with permission from The Routledge Atlas

4 The provinces and population of European Russia in 1900 Used with

permission from The Routledge Atlas of Russian History by Martin Gilbert. xxvii

5 The Russian Empire (1913) From Archie Brown, Michael Kaser and G S.

Smith (eds.) Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia (1982). xxviii

n i k o l a i a f o n i n is a former Soviet naval officer and an expert on navaltechnology and naval history He has contributed many articles to journals onthese subjects.

b o r i s a n a n i c his an Academician and a Senior Research Fellow at the SaintPetersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well

as a Professor of Saint Petersburg State University His works include Rossiia

i mezhdunarodnyi kapital, 1897–1914 (1970) and Bankirskie doma v Rossii 1860–

1914 Ocherki istorii chastnogo predprinimatel’stva (1991).

j o r g b a b e r o w s k iis Professor of East European History at the Humboldt

University in Berlin His books include Der Feind ist Uberall Stalinismus im

Kaukasus (2003) and Der Rote Terror Die Geschichte des Stalinismus (2004).

r o s a m u n d b a r t l e t tis Reader in Russian at the University of Durham Her

books include Wagner and Russia (1995) and Chekhov: Scenes from a Life (2004).

m a r k b a s s i n is Reader in Cultural and Political Geography at University

College London He is the author of Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination

and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East 1840–1865 (1999) and the

editor of Geografiia i identichnosti post-sovetskoi Rossii (2003).

v l a d i m i r b o b r o v n i k o v is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Oriental

Studies in Moscow He is the author of Musul’mane severnogo Kavkaza: obychai,

pravo, nasilie (2002) and ‘Rural Muslim Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus:

The Case of Daghestan’, in M Gammer (ed.), The Caspian Region, Vol II: The

Caucasus (2004).

pau l b u s h k o v i t c h is Professor of History at Yale University His books

include Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power 1671–1725 (2001) and Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1992).

j o n at h a n w d a ly is Assistant Professor of History at the University of

Illinois at Chicago His works include Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and

Opposition in Russia 1866–1905 (1998).

b a r b a r a a l p e n e n g e lis a Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder

Her works include Between the Fields and the City: Women, Work and Family in

Russia, 1861–1914 (1994) and Women in Russia: 1700–2000 (2004).

c at h e r i n e e v t u h o vis Associate Professor at Georgetown University Her

books include The Cross and the Sickle: Sergei Bulgakov and the Fate of Russian

Religious Philosophy, 1890–1920 (1997) and (with Richard Stites) A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces (2004).

g r e g o r y l f r e e z eis Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of History

at Brandeis University His books include The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in

the Eighteenth Century (1997) and the Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia

(1983)

w i l l i a m c f u l l e r , j r is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College

and the author of Civil–Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (1985) and Strategy and Power in Russia 1600–1914 (1992).

g a r y m h a m b u r g is Otho M Behr Professor of History at Claremont

McKenna College and the author of Boris Chicherin and Early Russian

Liber-alism (1992) and, with Thomas Sanders and Ernest Tucker, of Russian–Muslim Confrontation in the Caucasus: Alternative Visions of the Conflict between Imam Shamil and the Russians, 1830–1859 (2004).

j a n e t m h a r t l e yis Professor of International History at the London School

of Economics and Political Science Her books include A Social History of the

Russian Empire 1650–1825 (1999) and Charles Whitworth: Diplomat in the Age of Peter the Great (2002).

l i n d s e y h u g h e s is Professor of Russian History in the School of Slavonicand East European Studies, University College London Her books include

Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (1998) and Peter the Great: A Biography (2002).

d o m i n i c l i e v e nis Professor of Russian Government at the London School

of Economics and Political Science His books include Russia’s Rulers under the

Old Regime (1989) and Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (2000).

e r i c l o h r is Assistant Professor of History, American University He is the

author of Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens

during World War I (2003) and the co-editor (with Marshall Poe) of The Military and Society in Russia 1450–1917 (2002).

m i c h e l l e l a m a r c h e m a r r e s e is Assistant Professor at the University of

Toronto and the author of A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of

Property in Russia, 1700–1861 (2001).

a l e x a n d e r m m a r t i n is Associate Professor of History at Oglethorpe

University and the author of Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian

Con-servative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I (1997) and the editor

and translator of Provincial Russia in the Age of Enlightenment: The Memoirs of a

Priest’s Son by Dmitri I Rostislavov (2002).

d a v i d m o o n is Reader in Modern European History at the University of

Durham His books include The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made (1999) and The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia, 1762–1907 (2001).

b e n j a m i n n at h a n s is Associate Professor of History at the University of

Pennsylvania and the author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with

Late Imperial Russia (2002) and editor of the Russian-language Research Guide to Materials on the History of Russian Jewry (Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries)

in Selected Archives of the Former Soviet Union (1994).

h u g h r a g s d a l e is Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama, and is the

editor of Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (1993) His authored books include The

Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War II (2004).

d a v i d s c h i m m e l p e n n i n c k va n d e r o y eis Associate Professor of History

at Brock University He is the author of Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of

Empire and the Path to War with Japan (2001) and co-editor (with Bruce Menning)

of Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the

Great to the Revolution (2004).

z h a n d p s h a k i b i is a Fellow at the London School of Economics and

Political Science and the author of The King, The Tsar, The Shah and the Making

of Revolution in France, Russia, and Iran (2006).

t i m o t h y s n y d e r is Associate Professor of History at Yale University and

the author of Nationalism, Marxism and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of

Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998) and The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (2003).

p e t e r wa l d r o nis Professor of History at the University of Sunderland and

the author of Between Two Revolutions: Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in

Russia (1998) and The End of Imperial Russia (1997).

t h e o d o r e r w e e k s is Associate Professor of History at Southern Illinois

University at Carbondale He is the author of Nation and State in Late Imperial

Russia (1996) and From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The ‘Jewish Question’ in Poland, 1850–1914 (2006).

e l i s e k i m e r l i n g w i r t s c h a f t e ris Professor of History at California State

Polytechnic University in Pomona and the author most recently of The Play

of Ideas in Russian Enlightenment Theater (2003) and Social Identity in Imperial Russia (1997).

l a r i s a z a k h a r o va is Professor of History at Moscow Lomonosov State

University She is the author of Samoderzhavie i otmena krepostnogo prava (1984) and the editor (with Ben Eklof and John Bushnell) of Russia’s Great Reforms,

1855–1881 (1994).

r e g i n a l d e z e l n i kwas Professor of History at the University of California

at Berkeley His books included Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia: The Factory

Workers of St Petersburg, 1855–1870 (1971) and he was also the editor and

trans-lator of A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich

Kanatchikov (1986).

I cannot pretend that editing this volume and simultaneously serving as head

of a large and complicated department has always been a joy Matters werenot improved by a variety of ailments which often made it impossible to spendany time at a computer screen I owe much to Isabel Crowhurst and MinnaSalminen: without the latter the bibliography might never have happened

My successor, George Philip, and Nicole Boyce provided funds to find me

an assistant at one moment of true emergency: for this too, many thanks.The volume’s contributors responded very kindly to appeals for informationand minor changes, sometimes of an entirely trivial and infuriating nature.Jacqueline French and Auriol Griffith-Jones coped splendidly with the hugejobs respectively of copy-editing the text and compiling the index John MasseyStewart spent hours showing me his splendid collection of postcards and slides:

I only regret that due to strict limitations on space I was able to reproducejust a few of them in this volume All maps are taken, by permission, from

The Routledge Atlas of Russian History by Sir Martin Gilbert Isabelle

Dambri-court at Cambridge University Press had to spend too much time listening to

me wailing in emails When editing a volume of this scale and running thedepartment got too exciting, my family also spent a good deal of effort trying

to keep me happy, or at least sane My thanks to everyone for their patience.This volume is dedicated to the memory of Professor Petr AndreevichZaionchkovskii (1904–83)

The system of transliteration from Cyrillic used in this volume is that of theLibrary of Congress, without diacritics The soft sign is denoted by an apos-trophe but is omitted from place-names (unless they appear in transliteratedtitles or quotations); English forms of the most common place-names areused (e.g Moscow, St Petersburg, Yalta, Sebastopol, Archangel) In a number

of cases (e.g St Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad-St Petersburg) the names ofcities have been changed to suit political circumstances On occasion this hasmeant substituting one ethnic group’s name for a city for a name in anotherlanguage (e.g Vilna-Vilnius-Wilno) No attempt has been made to impose asingle version on contributors but wherever doubts might arise as to the iden-tity of a place alternative versions have been put in brackets The same is true

as regards the transliteration of surnames: for example, on occasion names arerendered in their Ukrainian version with a Russian or Polish version in brackets.Where surnames are of obvious Central or West European origin then theyhave generally been rendered in their original form (e.g Lieven rather than theRussian Liven) Anglicised name-forms are used for tsars (thus ‘Alexander I’)and a small number of well-known figures retain their established Westernspellings (e.g Fedor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Herzen), even thoughthis may lead to inconsistencies Russian versions of first names have generallybeen preferred for people other than monarchs, though some freedom hasbeen allowed to contributors in this case too Translations within the text arethose of the individual contributors to this volume unless a printed source

is quoted All dates are rendered in the Julian calendar, which was in force

in the Russian Empire until its demise in 1917 The only exceptions occur inchapters where the European context is vital (e.g when discussing Russianforeign policy) In these cases dates are often rendered in both the Julian andthe Gregorian forms The Gregorian calendar was eleven days ahead in theeighteenth century, twelve days in the nineteenth and thirteen days in thetwentieth

a r c h i v e c o l l e c t i o n s a n d v o l u m e s o f l a w s

GARF Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiisko Federatsii (State Archive of the

Russian Federation)

GIAgM Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv gorod Moskvy (Moscow

State Historical Archive)

OR RGB Otdel rukopisei: Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka

(Manuscript section: Russian State Library)

OPI GIM Otdel pis’mennikh istochnikov: gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii

muzei (Manuscript section: State Historical Museum)

PSZ Pol’noe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (Complete Collection of

Laws of the Russian Empire)

RGADA Russkii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (Russian State

Archive of Ancient Acts)

RGAVMF Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv voenno-morskogo flota

(Russian State Naval Archive)

RGIA Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State

Historical Archive)

RGVIA Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian

State Military-Historical Archive)

SZ Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (Code of Laws of the Russian

Empire)

j o u r n a l s

AHR American Historical Review

CASS Canadian American Slavic Studies

CMRS Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique

JfGO Jahrb¨ucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas

JMH Journal of Modern History

JSH Journal of Social History

ZGUP Zhurnal grazhdanskogo ugolovnogo prava

ZMI Zhurnal Ministerstva Iustitsii

LGU Leningrad State University

SGECR Study Group on Eighteenth-Century RussiaSpbU St Petersburg State University

st stat’ia (article)

1689 overthrow of regency of Tsarevna Sophia

1697–8 Peter I in Western Europe

1709 Battle of Poltava: defeat of Swedes and Ukrainian Hetman

Mazepa

1717 formation of administrative colleges

1721 foundation of the Holy Synod: disappearance of the

patriarchate

1721 Treaty of Nystadt ends Great Northern War: Baltic

provinces gained

1725 death of Peter I Accession of Catherine I

1727 death of Catherine I Accession of Peter II

1730 death of Peter II Accession of Anna Failed attempt to limit

autocracy

1740 death of Anna Accession of Ivan VI

1741 overthrow of Ivan VI Accession of Elizabeth

1753 abolition of internal customs duties

1761 death of Elizabeth Accession of Peter III

1762 ‘emancipation’ of the nobility from compulsory state service

1762 overthrow of Peter III Accession of Catherine II

1767 Catherine II’s Nakaz (Instruction) and Legislative

Commission

1768 war with Ottoman Empire

1774 Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji: victory over Ottomans

1775 reform of provincial administration

1790 publication of Radishchev’s Journey from St Petersburg to

Moscow

1796 death of Catherine II Accession of Paul I

1797 new succession law: male primogeniture established

1801 overthrow of Paul I Accession of Alexander I

1815 constitution for Russian Kingdom of Poland issued

1825 death of Alexander I Accession of Nicholas I Decembrist

revolt

1830–1 rebellion in Poland

1836 first performance of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar

1836 Chaadaev’s First Philosophical Letter

1847–52 publication of Turgenev’s Zapiski okhotnika (A Huntsman’s

Sketches)

1854 French, British and Ottomans invade Crimea

1855 death of Nicholas I Accession of Alexander II

1862 foundation of Saint Petersburg Conservatoire

1864 local government (zemstvo) and judicial reforms introduced

1865–6 publication begins of Tolstoy’s Voina i mir (War and Peace)

1866 Karakozov’s attempt to assassinate Alexander II

1866 foundation of Moscow Conservatoire

1866 publication of Dostoevsky’s Prestuplenie i nakazanie (Crime

and Punishment)

1874 introduction of universal military service

1874 first performance of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov

1875 the ‘To the People’ movement goes on trial

1877–8 war with Ottoman Empire Treaty of Berlin

1878 formation of ‘Land and Freedom’ revolutionary group

1880 publication of Dostoevsky’s Brat’ia Karamazovy (The Brothers

Karamazov)

1881 assassination of Alexander II Accession of Alexander III

1881 introduction of law on ‘states of emergency’

1884 Plekhanov publishes Nashi raznoglasiia (Our Differences)

1891 construction of Trans-Siberian railway begins

1894 Franco-Russian alliance ratified

1894 death of Alexander III Accession of Nicholas II

1898 first congress of the Social Democratic party

1899 foundation of journal Mir iskusstva (World of Art)

1901 formation of the Socialist Revolutionary party

1902 Lenin publishes Chto delat’? (What Is to Be Done?)

1904 assassination of Plehve: Sviatopolk-Mirsky’s ‘thaw’ begins

1905 ‘Bloody Sunday’ ushers in two years of revolution

1905 defeats at battles of Mukden and Tsushima

1905 Treaty of Portsmouth (September) ends war with Japan

1905 October 17 Manifesto promises a constitution

1906 First Duma (parliament) meets and is dissolved

1906 Stolypin heads government: agrarian reforms begin

1907–12 Third Duma in session

1912 Lena goldfields shootings: worker radicalism re-emerges

1913 first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

1915 Nicholas II assumes supreme command and dismisses

S M O L E N S

K

0 300 miles

Archangel

White Sea

St Petersburg Novgorod

Samara Simbirsk

Orenburg

Ural

C O

S

S A C

S

Kazan

K A Z A N

Viatka Vologda

Kostroma

Nizhnii Novgorod

B

U R G

iaS e a

Russia's frontiers by 1725

Provinces established by Peter the Great

Area with over 20 inhabitants in every square

verst (One verst = two-thirds of a mile)

Area with between 10 and 20 inhabitants per

square verst

Russian territory with less than 10 inhabitants

per square verst is not shaded

Map 1 The provinces and population of Russia in 1724 Used with permission from The Routledge Atlas of Russian History by Martin Gilbert.

TIFLIS KUBAN

DON KHERSON

S IM B IR S

i a n S e a

V TULA

R IA Z

A

K A L

VLADIMIR TVER

S O W

NOVGOROD

KOSTROMA

PERM VOLOGDA

P O

K

KOVNO

P O

SM O N

Y O S V

N G

O

N IZ

H N II

White Sea

Provinces where over half of

the peasants were serfs

Provinces where 36% to 55%

of the peasants were serfs

Provinces where 16% to 35%

Map 2 Serfs in 1860 Used with permission from The Routledge Atlas of Russian History by

Martin Gilbert.

l l l

l

l I

l l I I

l l

l I

I

I

I I I

I I

l I

I

I I

I I I I

l I

C a

p

i a n S

a

Aral Sea

U ral

Saratov Penza

Samara Ufa

Kostroma Y

E at ino slav

V ite sk

The Russian frontier 1815–1914

Railways by 1900 Many of these were

financed by French money There was

also high French investment in Russia's

industrial development, especially in

southern Russia.

Important manufacturing centres

Heavy industry, principally iron, steel

and metalworks.

Textiles

Manufactured food, principally sugar

Areas with the greatest influx of workers

from other regions

Ports with flourishing import and export

MITAU

RIGA PERNOV

TRANS-CAUCASIAN PROVINCES

KUBAN

DON KHERSON

S IM B IR S

i a n S e a

N IG O

V TULA

R IA Z

A

K A L

VLADIMIR TVER

S O W

NOVGOROD

KOSTROMA

PERM VOLOGDA

P O

Y O S V

N G

O

N IZ

H N II

White Sea

MAIN NATIONAL & ETHNIC GROUPS

Map 4 The provinces and population of European Russia in 1900 Used with permission

from The Routledge Atlas of Russian History by Martin Gilbert.

d o m i n i c l i e v e n

The second volume of the Cambridge History of Russia covers the ‘imperial

era’, in other words the years between Peter I’s assumption of power and therevolution of 1917

As is true of almost all attempts at periodisation in history, this division hasits problems For example, peasants were the overwhelming majority of theempire’s population in 1917, as in 1689 The history of the Russian peasantryobviously neither began in 1689 nor ended in 1917 The enserfment of thepeasantry was largely concluded in the century before Peter’s accession Thedestruction of the peasant world as it had existed in the imperial era came less

in the revolution of 1917 than during Stalin’s era of collectivisation and ruthlessindustrialisation

Nevertheless, if one is to divide up Russian history into three volumes thendefining the dates of volume two as 1689 to 1917 is much the best option In

formal terms, this volume’s title (Imperial Russia) accurately defines the period

between Russia’s proclamation as an empire under Peter I and the fall of theRomanov dynasty and empire in March 1917 More importantly, this era isunited by a number of crucial common characteristics Of these, the mostsignificant were probably the empire’s emergence as a core member of theEuropean concert of great powers and the full-scale Westernisation of thecountry’s ruling elites These two themes are the great clich´es of modern Rus-sian history-writing: like most such clich´es they are broadly true in my opinion

In editing this volume, I have made only a limited effort to impose myown conception of Russian history on the volume’s shape, let alone on howindividual contributors approach their topics Readers who wish to gain a sense

of my own overall understanding of the imperial era will find this in chapter i,

on Russia as empire and European periphery They will be wise to rememberthat, like most academics, I see my own myopic obsessions – currently empireand peripherality – as the key to understanding the whole period to which thisvolume and my scholarly life has been devoted

As editor, however, my key belief has been that a Cambridge History must beboth comprehensive and diverse The Russian Empire between 1689 and 1917was a very diverse and complex society, which can and should be understoodand studied from a great many different angles To take but one example: it is

in the nature of the Cambridge History as fundamentally a work of referencethat most of its chapters have to be broad surveys of key themes in Russianhistory But in some ways the micro-history of a single Great Russian village

in a single year in the eighteenth century would provide more insights intocrucial aspects of Russian history than a handful of general chapters, howeverwell informed

Even more important than diversity is comprehensiveness I have tried toedit a volume from which the teacher of an MA programme in Russian historyand her or his students can draw a rich and detailed understanding of Russianhistory in the imperial era Very few people will read this volume as a wholeand at one ‘sitting’ But they will need to find within it detailed, scholarlycoverage of a very broad range of themes ‘Coherence’, though important, istherefore less of an issue than comprehensiveness This volume covers politicsand government: foreign policy and military history; economic and financialaffairs; the history of all the key social groups in Russia, as well as of womenand of the empire’s non-Russian minorities; the legal and judicial system, thepolice and the revolutionary movement; Russian intellectual history and thehistory of Russian high culture

To fit all this into a single volume has not been easy but in my view ithas been essential For example: in order to concentrate more space on otherissues, I was urged at one point to drop the two chapters on Russian culturalhistory on the grounds that this subject is amply covered in histories of Russianliterature, music and art It seemed to me, however, that this volume wouldapproach these subjects from a different angle to the ones most common inhistories of Russian literature or the arts Moreover, in some respects the vastand unexpected contribution made to European and world culture by Russianwriters, musicians and artists is the most significant and exciting element inthe history of Imperial Russia To ignore it would therefore be a touch bizarre

In addition, Russians’ understanding of themselves and their place in Europe,the world and the cosmos was so totally intertwined with literature, musicand art that to leave out these themes would seriously distort the history ofImperial Russia

In my opinion, the only way to address the requirements of the CambridgeHistory given the 228 years covered by this volume and the nature of theexisting literature was thematic Most chapters in this volume are therefore

broad thematic surveys To cover the vast range of necessary topics and dojustice to the existing literature, in most cases I was only able to allow con-tributors roughly 7,000 words each It is immensely difficult for scholars whohave devoted their lives to detailed study of topics to compress a lifetime’sinsights into so short a space I was very grateful to contributors for theirwillingness to do this and vastly impressed by the outstanding skill with whichthey addressed this challenge.

Most themes chose themselves To take the most obvious examples, youcannot have a history of Russia without a chapter on the Orthodox Church

or the peasantry A generation ago you not only could but would have had

a volume without a chapter on Russian women Barbara Engel’s splendidlycomprehensive and thought-provoking piece on a vast subject which is verydifficult to define or confine shows just how much genuine progress has beenmade in this area over the last thirty years

But if I have exercised some editorial influence in the selection of chapters

it has been on the whole in what many will consider a conservative sense.This volume is based overwhelmingly on American and British scholarship.For all its excellence, this scholarship has tended at times to concentrate on

a narrow range of fashionable topics Traditional core topics such as foreignpolicy or the history of Russia’s economy, financial, fiscal and military systemshave been extremely unfashionable among Anglophone historians in recentdecades For example, there are no standard histories of Russian foreign pol-icy or of the empire’s fiscal and financial systems written in the last thirtyyears which one could confidently assign to Anglophone graduate students.This volume gives what I conceive to be appropriate weight to these crucialbut unfashionable topics This is of course a matter of my own judgementand responsibility But my sense that this was necessary was strengthened bytalking to Russian historians of Russia In my view, to justify the work thatgoes into a volume of the Cambridge History that volume must be respectedand legitimate in Russian eyes, as well as those of the Anglophone academiccommunity

Although the thematic structure of this book is in my view essential andinevitable, it does create some problems as regards chronology and the inte-gration of the various themes Ideally, two volumes on this period would haveallowed one to concentrate on periods and another on thematic topics Giventhe requirement of one volume, I have concentrated on themes but included

a number of chapters either on overall contexts (for instance chapters 3 and 1

by Mark Bassin and myself respectively) or on specific periods (the chapters

by Paul Bushkovitch, Larisa Zakharova and Eric Lohr)

As already noted, historical truths and insights come from many ent angles Had space permitted, I would have indulged my commitment tomicro-history more fully I have, however, sought to lace the volume’s surveychapters with a small number of much narrower and more detailed vignettes.These are in a sense almost literally verbal illustrations attached to groups ofthematic chapters Thus Catherine Evtuhov’s chapter on Nizhnii Novgorod

differ-is designed to complement and illustrate the chapters on Russia’s ‘middleclasses’, economy and Church: Michelle Marrese’s chapter links but also illus-trates the survey chapters on law and women by Jorg Baberowski and BarbaraEngel, not least by showing graphically that for all its imperfections law made

a hugely important impact on eighteenth-century Russian life; Alex Martin’schapter on 1812’s impact on Russian identities encapsulates a key theme in thebroader chapters on Russian culture and political thinking; Nikolai Afonin’schapter on the navy in 1900 plays the same role in linking the chapters on Rus-sian empire and power to themes of economic development and revolution

If these vignettes have allowed the inclusion of younger scholars among the

contributors to the Cambridge History, that is an additional bonus.

Although, as noted above, I expect only the occasional martyr to read thisbook from cover to cover, I have nevertheless conceived of it as a coherentwhole Perhaps more significantly, I see the book as comprising a number ofgroups of chapters which can profitably be read together at a single sitting.The table of contents shows how I see these groupings to work

The first three chapters introduce the overarching theme of empire fromdifferent perspectives: in comparative and geopolitical perspective (Lieven),

as it managed the minority peoples (Weeks) and as empire affected Russianconceptions of their own identity and that of their polity (Bassin) The next fourchapters are all linked to Mark Bassin’s theme of Russian perceptions of theirnation and its ideals They are followed by three chapters on the non-Russians(Poles and Ukrainians; Jews; Muslims), which ought to be read in conjunctionwith Theodore Weeks’s Chapter 2 After this come nine chapters on Russiansociety, three on domestic government (Shakibi, Hartley, Waldron) and five ondiplomatic and military affairs Larisa Zakharova’s excellent chapter illustratesthe close link between failure in war and radical domestic political change inthe mid-nineteenth century This leads logically to the volume’s last threechapters, which tell the story of the regime’s struggle with revolution and theempire’s ultimate collapse in the midst of global war

A word is needed about the bibliography This has been a major nightmarefor me since in principle it could have been longer than the rest of the vol-ume The first section of the bibliography is a very limited guide to the most

important published ‘official histories’, primary sources, collections of uments and guides to archival holdings The rest of the bibliography coverssecondary sources I have divided this into themes in order to make the bookmore friendly to teachers and students I have also given strong priority tobooks over articles I did this partly because I needed some principle whichwould allow me to confine the bibliography to manageable limits and partlybecause the majority of these books themselves contain bibliographies whichwill provide the reader with a guide to further reading I have included nomemoirs in the bibliography, because this would open the floodgates, butdraw readers’ attention to Petr Zaionchkovsii’s exceptionally valuable multi-volume guide to memoirs which is listed in Section one Given this volume’sreadership, it seemed sensible to give priority firstly to books in English andthen to works in the Russian language.

doc-Two final points are required in this introduction

Shortly after writing his chapter for this volume Professor Reggie Zelnikwas killed in an accident The community of historians of Russia thereby lostnot only a fine scholar but also a human being of great generosity and warm-heartedness These qualities are recalled not only by his books but also in thememory of his friends and his former students

For technical and financial reasons, this volume is based overwhelmingly onAnglophone scholarship This is in no way an assertion that this scholarship

is superior to that of our continental European or Russian comrades-in-armsand colleagues One of the great joys of travelling to Russia at present is thatone meets a wide range of excellent and enthusiastic young Russian historians.Given the frequent poverty and material challenges that these young peopleface, their commitment and enthusiasm is humbling Even more humbling isrecollection of the courage and integrity with which the best Russian scholars

of the older generations sustained academic standards amidst the frustrations,dangers and temptations of the Soviet era By dedicating this volume to Pro-fessor Petr Zaionchkovskii of Moscow University I wish to pay tribute not just

to an outstanding scholar and human being but also to the many other Russianhistorians during the Soviet era to whom our profession owes a great debt

E M P I R E

Russia as empire and periphery

d o m i n i c l i e v e n

Empire is one of the most common types of polity in history.1

It existed fromancient times into the twentieth century Among its core characteristics wererule over many peoples and huge territories, the latter being a great challenge

in the era of pre-modern communications Military power was crucial tothe creation and maintenance of empire but long-term survival also requiredeffective political institutions.2

Most empires were ruled by some combination

of a theoretically autocratic monarch and a warrior-aristocratic class, though insome cases large and sophisticated bureaucracies greatly enhanced an empire’sstrength and durability.3

In the long term the most interesting and importantempires were those linked to the spread of some great high culture or universalreligion

Tsarist Russia was a worthy member of this imperial ‘club’ If its long-termhistorical significance seems somewhat less than that of Rome, of the HanChinese empire or of the Islamic tradition of empire, its achievements werenevertheless formidable This is even more the case when one remembersRussia’s relatively unfavourable location, far from the great trade routes andthe traditional centres of global wealth and civilisation.4

The tsarist regimedirected one of the most successful examples of territorial expansion in history.Until the emergence of Japan in the twentieth century, it was the only exam-ple of a non-Western polity which had challenged effectively the might of the

1 For a historical survey of types of empire within a comparative study of polities see

S Finer, A History of Government, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Also

M Duverger (ed.), Le Concept d’Empire, (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1980).

D Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (London: John Murray, 2000) discusses

many of the themes of this chapter at length and contains a full bibliographical essay.

2 On ‘bureaucratic thresholds’ and the institutionalisation of empire, see e.g M Doyle,

Empires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), especially chapter 5.

3 S N Eisenstadt, The Political System of Empires, new edn (New Brunswick and London:

Transaction Publishers, 1992).

4 J Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250–1350 (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1989), pp 156–7 Russia earns one paragraph in a book devoted

to the world system of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

European great powers Moreover, in the nineteenth century, this empire’s ing elites spawned a musical and literary high culture which made an immensecontribution to global civilisation.

rul-Tsarist history belongs not just to the overall history of empire but also,more specifically, to the modern story of the expansion of Europe To a greatextent Russian expansion depended on imported European institutions, tech-nologies and even cadres, both military and civil Its ‘victims’, often nomadicand Islamic, had many similarities with the peoples conquered by other Euro-pean empires Increasingly the ideology which justified expansion was that ofEuropean civilising mission In this sense matters did not even change after

1917 Marxism was a Western, racially blind but culturally arrogant theory ofhistorical development whose optimism and commitment to one unilinearpath of development had much in common with Macaulay and nineteenth-century liberal champions of empire

As is true of most empires, the tsarist empire was made up of radicallydiffering lands and peoples which it acquired and used for a variety of purposes.Initially it was furs which drew the Russians into Siberia, the early period

of Russian empire beyond the Urals thereby having something in commonwith the French fur-based empire in Canada The cotton-based empire in latenineteenth-century Central Asia had parallels with the cotton economy ofBritish Egypt, though central Asia (like Egypt) had also been acquired as part

of the Anglo-Russian struggle for geopolitical advantage in Asia Finland wasannexed to enhance the security of St Petersburg, and military and geopoliticalfactors were also behind the initial Russian decision to jump the Caucasus rangeand incorporate Georgia into the empire

The three most crucial acquisitions in the imperial era were the Balticprovinces, Ukraine and Poland The first was vital because it opened updirect trade routes to Europe, which contributed greatly to the growth ofthe eighteenth-century economy By the end of the nineteenth century ‘NewRussia’ and the southern steppe territories were the core of Russian agricul-ture and of its coal and metallurgical industries: without them Russia wouldcease to be a great power Expansion into Ukraine and the ‘empty’ steppewas Russia’s equivalent to the ‘New Worlds’ conquered and colonised by theBritish and Spanish empires Odessa, founded in 1794, had a population of

630,000 by 1914 and was one of the world’s great grain-exporting ports MarkTwain commented that it ‘looked just like an American city’.5

Of all Russia’s

5P Herlihy, Odessa: A History 1794–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1986 ), p 13.

imperial acquisitions, Poland proved to be the biggest thorn in Petersburg’sflesh in the nineteenth century, though it made a considerable contribution

to the imperial economy and its territory was a useful glacis against invasionfrom the West Poland’s initial division between Russia, Austria and Prussiahad something in common with the ‘Scramble for Africa’ a century later Itwas a product of great-power rivalry and bargaining, a convenient compromisewhich aggrandised the great powers and lessened tensions between them atthe expense of weaker polities

Being recognised as the rulers of a European great power and empire (to aconsiderable extent the two concepts were seen as identical) was central to theRomanovs’ self-esteem and identity, not to mention to the raison d’ˆetre andlegitimacy of their regime At the same time, in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies there were excellent objective reasons for wishing to be a great powerand an empire In an era when a small group of predator states – Britain, France,Spain, the United States and (later) Germany – were subjecting most of theglobe to their direct or indirect dominion, the alternative to being a greatimperial power was unappetising

Russia was a more successful European great power in the first half of theimperial period than in the second The obvious dividing line was the CrimeanWar of 1854–6, though the reasons for failure in that war could be traced backtwo generations at least

From 1700 until 1815, the key to being a European great power, apart fromhaving the basic human and economic resources, was the creation of an effec-tive military and fiscal state apparatus This Peter I and his successors achieved.Without belittling the achievement of two outstanding monarchs and theirlieutenants in ‘catching up with Louis XIV’, they did enjoy certain advantages

A key impediment to maximising the effectiveness of the European absolutistmilitary-fiscal state was the various territorial and corporate institutions andprivileges inherited from the feudal era These had never been so deeply rooted

in the Muscovite frontier lands of Europe, and where they had existed theywere uprooted by tsars in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Moreover,Russia like Prussia, belonging to the second wave of European absolutist state-building, was not lumbered by outdated and venal fiscal and administrativeinstitutions, and the vested interests which grew around them.6

The tsarist

6See e.g chapter 1 of T Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval

and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and chapter 11 by

Richard Bonney, ‘The Eighteenth Century II: The Struggle for Great Power Status and

the End of the Old Fiscal Regime’, in R Bonney (ed.), Economic Systems and State Finance

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).