Page 1647 : RUSSIA
compulsory, service beginning at 21 and extending to the close of the 43rd year. The peace-strength of the army is 1,200,000 and the war-footing about 4,000,000.
Navy. Russia’s navy was largely destroyed in the war with Japan. The present strength includes 6 battleships, with 4 building and 2 projected, 14 cruisers, 7 torpedo-gunboats, 66 destroyers and 33 building, 50 torpedo-boats and 22 submarines.
Government. The government is a constitutional, hereditary monarchy, but in fact the whole power is united in the emperor whose will alone is law. On Aug. 6, 1905, however, an elective state-council (Duma) was created, and a law was promulgated granting to the people the firm foundations of public liberty,based on principles of the inviolability of person and freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association, and providing that no law shall come into effect without the approval of the Duma. The Duma consists of members elected for five years and representing the provinces and the greatest cities: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Kiev, Lodz, Odessa and Riga (law of 1907). Under a manifesto and ukases, published in March of 1906, the Council of the Empire consists of an equal number of elected members and members nominated by the emperor. The Council of the Empire and the Duma have equal legislative powers and the same right of initiative in legislation and of addressing questions to the minsters.
The administration of the empire is still intrusted to four boards or councils. These are (1) the Council of the Minsters, which consists of a president and an unlimited number of members appointed by the emperor, which has advisory power in matters of legislation but no power to change laws of the realm; (2) the Ruling Senate, which promulgates the laws and also is the high court of justice for the empire; (3) the Holy Synod, to which is committed the superintendence of religious affairs; and (4) the Committee of Ministers, which consists of all the ministers or heads of departments and other functionaries, and of which the privy councilor is president.
Russia is divided into governments, each ruled by a governor; Finland alone has a representative government. But in most parts of Russia there is considerable local self-government. Peasants make four fifths of the whole population. The other classes are burghers, merchants, the clergy and the military. Among the peasants of Great Russia, the mir, made up of all the village householders, distributes in allotments the land, which is held in common, buys farm-machinery, and hires doctors, teachers etc. Taxes are mainly in the hands of the zemstvos or district-assemblies, elected by nobles, clergy, town-householders, peasants and landowners, but their rights were greatly curtailed in 1890.
Though Russia has trial by jury, it does not apply to political cases, and every year from 15,000 to 20,000 prisoners are exiled to Siberia, many without trial.
History. The Russians are Slavs, and conquered Russia from the west, fighting eastward from the Baltic. However, the name of Russes was first given to Norse warriors who yearly passed through these Slav lands on their way to enter the Byzantine emperor’s service at Constantinople. These captains seem to have been asked to protect the Slavs, and one of them, Rurik, with three of his brothers, settled there. Vladimir (980–1015) was baptized a Christian, and soon after his death Kieff, the “mother of the Russian towns,” rivaled Constantinople in greatness. Under Yaroslav, who gained control of most of the Russian towns and died in 1054, the first written Russian law was compiled. During the next 200 years the Russians steadily conquered eastward. Towns and colonies were founded, which in reality were free republics, the only bonds between the different cities being those of language, race, religion and the unwritten law that the prince who was asked to defend a town should be a descendant of Yaroslav. In this period the trading cities of Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk rose to importance. Slavery existed, though the workers of the soil were its owners, the slaves either being prisoners of war or those who remained in a servant’s position for more than a year. In these years also the boyars, the chief warriors, began to gain power, settling the peasants on free lands and making themselves their landlords. Andrei Bogalubski (1157–74) was the prince who changed the center of gravity of Russia from Kieff to the region where Moscow was afterwards founded. He built the city of Vladimir, and plundered and burnt Kieff in 1169. Soon Nijni-Novgorod was founded as a rival of Novgorod, and this region, the home of the Great Russians, grew powerful.
In 1224 the Mongols and Tartars, who under Genghis Khan had conquered Manchuria, North China, Turkestan and Bokhara, won a decisive battle against the Russians on Kalka River. Prom this time Russian princes paid tribute to the khan; their courts, which now had an eastern appearance, were surrounded by Tartars and Mongols; and it was with Mongol help and armies that the rich rulers of Moscow reduced to their rule the formerly independent principalities around them. The Mongol conquest threw Russia 200 years behind the civilization of the rest of Europe, and gave Poland, Lithuania and Livonia a chance to rise into power.
It was in the 14th century under the leadership of Moscow that the Russians
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