What the Russian Empire Really Was

Creation of Russian Empire

In 1721, Russia became an empire as a result of the end of the Northern War (with the Swedes). The northern lands and access to the sea were conquered. Under the treaty of 1721, the Baltic Sea coast departed Russia. Peter 1 solemnly assumes the title of emperor. Peter understood the state as an organization that should serve the highest ideal, namely the public good. Peter tried to change the position of women in Russian society. He prohibited the forcible issuance of marriage and marriage by special decrees. In general, Peter's reforms were aimed at strengthening the state and joining the elite to European culture, while simultaneously strengthening absolutism.

What was the Russian Empire like?

The Russian Empire is the third largest empire in the world in terms of territory in all time. The empire has reached incredible proportions. This was due to the fact that at the beginning of its existence, the Russian Empire led a fairly peaceful policy and many countries entered on their own. Later, when the Empire became stronger, the expansion of territories often took place with the help of wars and threats. The occupied territories were considered part of the empire and were not recognized by individual countries, so that on the maps all the territories belonging to the Russians were designated as part of the Russian Empire. The Russian Empire had a centralized leadership. Although the controlled regions had their own rulers, they were forced to obey all the orders created by the Duma and the Emperor of the Russian Empire. With such a system, any unauthorized actions in the regions were quickly identified and negative actions in the form of uprisings and riots were easily prevented.

In the Russian Empire there was a monarchy peculiar to empires. At the beginning, the monarchs were fairly democratic and fair, but later they became more violent and they became less worried about the problems of the people, because of which a dictatorship appeared in the Empire. For a long time the State Duma existed, which was positioned as a way of expressing public opinion and as an element of democracy. Initially, in the Russian Empire, the voice of the people was important and strongly influenced government decisions, but later the Duma became blind and controlled by the emperor. Until 1917, the people were restrained by the army and promoted. The Russian Empire’s state religion was Orthodox Christianity. The religious heads of the national Russian Orthodox Church consisted of three metropolitans (Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev), fourteen archbishops and fifty bishops, all drawn from the ranks of the monastic clergy. The narrow-minded clergy had to be married when appointed, but it left widowers, not allowed to marry again; this rule continues to apply today.

The military of the Russian Empire consisted of the Imperial Russian Army and the Imperial Russian Navy. The poor performance during the Crimean War (between 1853-1856) caused great soul-searching and proposals for reform. However the Russian military fell further and further behind the technology, training, and organization of the French, German and particularly the British military. The Russian army performed poorly in WW1 and became a center of unrest. The fierce political struggles inside army unites, and the events of the revolution facilitated disintegration and made it irreversible. The economy of the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century was a complicated hybrid of modern industry and traditional peasant agriculture. The empire’s rapidly growing population was overwhelmingly rural. Only around 15% of the population lived in towns, and fewer than 10% worked in industry. Agriculture provided the livelihood for 80% of the population and was dominated by peasants, whose traditional household economies were extremely inefficient compared to agriculture in the United States or Western Europe.

When the empire first appeared, there was serfdom in it. It was a relatively modest variation of slavery. People were given land on which they lived and were engaged in cattle breeding and cultivation. Part of everything that was mined by people was given to their masters. Later, gradually, the emperors weakened the power of slave owners, but they tried to prevent it, because of which the final decree on the abolition of slavery was signed only in 1861 by Emperor Alexander 3. After that, slavery was eradicated in the Russian Empire. The Russian Empire often seized territories belonging to other countries. They often captured vassals and territories already captured by other countries. For example, they seized part of the territories of the Ottoman Empire, when it weakened. They also took many of the vassals of Persia. Such a system often saved from unnecessary wars, as countries quite often did not dare to start wars with a powerful empire because of territories that initially did not even belong to them and where people almost did not live from their country.

The Fall of Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was disbanded in 1917 due to the revolution. The revolution occurred due to the financial deficit and the authorities ignoring the problems of the population. Also, due to the crisis, communes and communist movements began to emerge, promoting their views and calling on the people to revolt. In 1917, one of these movements, reaching the maximum strength and support of the people, began an uprising which resulted in the overthrow of power and the change of monarchy to communism. Most of the countries that were previously under the control of the Empire decided to join the Communists, as their economy was also in a terrible state and if they tried to become autonomous countries, they would most likely have been expected to collapse or forcibly join the Soviet Union that emerged. As a result, the Russian Empire has existed for almost 200 years, having emerged as a democratic state with monarchs, for whom welfare was the main thing and collapsed because of the tyranny of ignoring the problems of the population.

To conclude, the Russian Empire is rightly called an empire, because it contains all the signs of an empire. The Russian Empire all the time of its existence was a monarchist State, the monarch had the title of Emperor, and the expansion of the territories was carried out by capturing foreign territories and conferring on them the title of vassals. The Russian Empire is a tellurocratic empire according to the classification of the classics of geopolitics by Karl Schmitt and Halford Mackinder, whose system is recognized by most historians. This means that the Empire developed by capturing nearby territories on the same continent as the empire. This system is more stable and as practice shows, more durable.