Russia

Russia. Physical Aspects. The vast extent of the Russian Empire is a favourite theme of the geographers. The British Empire alone, in modern or ancient times, has outmatched its prodigious bulk. Stretching across the north of Europe and Asia - from the Baltic and the borders of Sweden, Prussia, Austria, and Roumania in the W. to Behring Strait and the Seas of Okhotsk and Japan in the E. - and from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, Asiatic Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan Eastern Turkestan, and China in the S., it has an area (nearly 9 million square miles) equal, as the present Emperor once boasted, to one-sixth part of the land-surface of the globe. Its physical characteristics are in proportion, with two important exceptions. It has few mountains, and these only on its borderlands - in the Caucasus and in Central and Eastern Asia. In deference to custom we treat Asiatic Russia separately [SIBERIA.], but Nature makes no such distinction. the Urals, a line of low rounded ridges, the highest summitis of which are only 3,932 ft, and 4,875 ft., and through which a railway is easily carried, do not constitute a natural frontier, and in no way interrupt the fauna and flora of the vast plains which roll eastward and westward from them. In the second place, European Russia has, in proportion to her bulk, a very small coast line, and even of this little all the northern parts are ice-bound for the greater part of the year. Even the northern Black Sea ports are frozen in winter, and in the Baltic, Libau alone is almost always open, [PETERSBURG, RIGA, ODESSA; WHITE SEA, BALTIC, BLACK SEA, CASPIAN.] Lacking mountains and valleys, coast-line, and a Gulf Stream, Russia lacks most of the climatic influences as well as the scenic effects which the smaller countries of Europe enjoy. Apart from the regular seasonal changes, there is a, likeness of condition in her various latitudes - from the land of the reindeer to that of the camel-which gives some ground for the declaration that Russia was "created for unity," Almost everywhere the extremes of heat in summer and cold in winter are experienced. The west and south winds avail little against those of the icy north and the arid east; and their burden of moisture is soon lost. There is but a small rainfall. Only in the Southern Crimea and beneath the towering bulwark of the Caucasus (q.v.) is there a southern climate as we understand it. The sudden break-up of the long winter frost in a short raw unpleasant spring has given native poets one of their best subjects. Hardly less striking is the sudden lapse into the idle indoor life of winter, with doors and windows hermetically sealed and the great stove ever hot; or the sleighing, the sport, the skates, and the ice-hills.

Setting apart the moss-covered deserts or tundras of the far north, where the few half-savage hunters and fishermen [SAMOYEDES] maintain a precarious existance, two natural regions differentiate themselves amid the general uniformity of the landscape, giving a key to racial differences and the historical developments we have presently to trace. The northern and slightly larger zone, that of the forests and lakes, extends from the 65th southward to the 53rd degree of latitude - say, from Archangel to Kieff. Immense forests, mainly of birch, pine, and fir, spring out of the boggy and occasionally sandy, always comparatively sterile, plain. The overplus of water gathers itself into broad marshes, rivers, and lakes varying in size from the eleven hundred of Archangel to, Ladoga and Onega, tbe largest in Europe. Here is the only noticeable elevation of the central plateau, the Valdai Hills, where the Volga and other great southern rivers rise.

[DWINA, WESTERN and NORTHERN.] Throughout this region agriculture is pursued among most unpromising conditions, and only in the few industrial centres, especia1ly about Moscow, and the mines of the Ural, is there any concentration of population or growth of prosperity.

The second zone, that of the Steppes (q,v.), occupies the southern half of the country, broadening as it sweeps eastward into the still drearier plains, of Asia. Through its interminable prairies the great rivers pursue their unbroken and unlovely course, carrying the needed wood and water of the north in exchange for the grain of the south. [VOLGA, DNIEPER, DNIESTER, DON, URAL.] The network of canals which joins many of the Russian rivers completes the list of the magnificent waterways which are her great compensation for her isolated position and climatic disadvantages. Over the upper part of this zone, treeless as it is, in the north by man's extravagant folly and in the south by nature's parsimony, there lies a rich soil, the famous chernoziom or black mould, which makes it preminently the granary of Europe. In the south this rich belt merges first into the fertile steppe, a virgin prairie covering another three or four hundred thousand square miles in the Cossack country and along the lower course of the great rivers, and then into the barren sandy or saline wastes of the Uralo-Caspian depression.

History. The making of the Russian State began, no doubt, in the belligerent impulses which brought Scandinavian freebooters down upon all Europe about the same time (Finnish, Ruotsi; Rotgsnenn or rothskarler="rovers," "seafarers"). It proceeded afterwards from the natural exigencies of the situation. A glance at the ethnographical map of Russia in the 9th century shows that of the three main racial groups [SLAVS, FINNO-TATARS, TURKS], the barbarians of Turanian stock occupied by far the greater part of the country. Across the whole north were the Finnish tribes; in the east, the centre, and nearly the whole of the south Finns and Turks mixed; and south-east of the Volga and the Urals more Turks, especially Bashkirs (q.v.) and Khazars. These last, the most powerful and civilised of these peoples, then masters of the Steppes, though troublesome themselves, proved to be the best rampart against the mountaineers and Greeks of the south, and at a later time against the Tatars, Mongols, Kirgiz, and Kalmuks (q.v.) of the east. On the other hand, the Slavs spread down the west-centre from Novgorod to Kief and the mouth of the Dnieper, and westward thence into Poland and Pomerania, having Lithuanians (q.v.) as neighbours on the middle Baltic coast. These peaceful Slavs of the north-west already had some cities, notably Novgorod (q.v.), Kieff (q:v.), and Pskof, the first-named already an important commercial centre, but were otherwise living in a simple agrarian communism. Either as mere robbers or invaders, or, if we follow the oldest Russ tradition, by invitation to protect the native Slavs from the outer barbarian and to settle their internal differences (very much as Hengist and Horsa came to Britain), there came to Novgorod in 862 Rurik (q.v.) and several other Varangian adventurers, into whose commissions he soon entered. The monarchy Rurik founded had at first a minimum of organisation and authority, but Oleg, the guardian of his son, was strong enough to capture Kief, to reduce all the Slav tribes to the mouth of the Dnieper, and even to successfully assault Byzantium (q.v.) itself. The Greeks had their reveuge for this indignity. Olga, the militant widow of Igor and the first of many striking female figures in Russian history, went to Constantinople in 955, and was there baptised as a Christian. Two generations later Vladimir, after deliberately examining Islamism, Judaism, and the Latin and Greek forms of Christianity, chose to adopt the last. Thus, without difficulty or disturbance, Byzantinism, with all it implied - alphabet, ideas of civil government, all the main features of Greek civilisation - was accepted by the Eastern, as Romanism had already been accepted by the Western, Slavs, a division which was to be the cause of endless strife in succeeding centuries. By his marriage with the sister of the Byzantine emperor, Vladimir sealed this destiny, at the same time making himself a more powerful and imposing figure. His son Yaroslav, "The Wise," did various peaceful works, of which the first Russian code of law is the most important.

The Scandinavian adventurers, having done their pioneering work, having founded a military state upon the important commercial line from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, were quickly lost in the all-absorbing Slavic environment. A period of active colonisation was now opening, and the danger was that unity would go with the simple military rule they had established. Under the system of multiple-heritage there grew up during the two centuries after the death of Yaroslav (1054) over sixty great and little principalities. appanages, which had in that time nearly three hundred sovereigns. In this period the old primary liberties and privileges were generally maintained, the principalities being really free republics, the princes soldiers of fortune, easily attracted and easily removed, interfering but little with the power in local affairs of the mir and vetche. Slavery existed, however, and the class of boyars (nobles) was becoming an important social unit with which both prince and people must reckon. For a time the elder princes, the grand-kniazes of the line of Vladimir and Yaroslav, kept their moral superiority, thanks to their special ecclesiastical sanctions, their foreign relationships, and the close connection between their grand capital, Kief, and Byzantium, some of whose fading glory she temporarily caught; but this supremacy did not last. Colonisation proceeded steadily on the north and east. On this hardier soil, with more mixed racial elements - half-Slav, half-Finnish - the princes bad a freer scope. Feuds multiplied, and the next genetations saw much bloodshed, the princes fighting for their own hands here much as the feudal barons in the West. Gradually the elder-brotherly authority was thrown off. In the middle of the 12th century a prince of Suzdal took the title of Grand-Kniaz. and then proceeded to attack and pillage Kief, which forthwith lost its old supremacy. In 1224, four years after the foundation of Nizhni (or Lower) Novgorod, there came upon the scene a new force which was to turn with violent hand the whole destiny of the country.

There were really three contemporary invasions, not one only; but two of these we can barely mention. On the north-west the Teutonic Knights (q.v.) and the Sword-bearers, two orders of northern crusaders, in subjecting the heathen tribes of Prussia and Lithuania and the Finns of Livonia and Esthonia to German rule, reducing them at once to Christianity and servitude, impinged seriously upon Polotsk, Novgorod, and Pskof. Later on a Lithuanian chief, Guedimin (1315-40), was able to stop the Teuton incursions and, by repeated conquests among the chaotic Russian principalities, to lay the foundation of that Lithuanian principality which, becoming unified later on with the independently-founded Polish state, ultimately extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea, covering all White and Little Russia and effectively cutting off the Slavs of the forest region from civilised Enrope.

But the Mongol-Tatar invasion is the cardinal fact of Russian history. This was the northern edge of that vast crescent-shaped wave of Ottoman frenzy which had swept victoriously round the eastern and southern Mediterranean, and, which - while the West Christian barons were plundering the Eastern Empire instead of carrying out their precious Fourth Crusade - was preparing a still fuller revenge for the past aggressions of Roman and Byzantine Emperors. Zinghis Khan (q.v.), aueady conqueror of Northern China, Afghanistan, part of India, and Persia. sent an expedition to reduce the tribes around the Caspian. The Tatar forces were attacked (1224) by the combined Russian princes, but after a temporary check were completely victorious. During a thirteen years' respite the Russian princes learned nothing. Then the Tatars reappeared in enormous numbers, swept away the Finnish Bulgars of the Volga, overran Riazan, Moscow, and Vladimir, burning and massacring everywhere. Kief was destroyed; Silesia was overrun, and for the moment even Rome and Germany were threatened. The invaders pressed far into the north. Novgorod alone, then at the height of its prosperity, was spared, but had to pay tribute. [ALEXANDER NEVSKOI.] The Khans of Sarai, forced all the southern and eastern princes to offer homage in person and then to pay poll-tax to duly-commissioned agents, the prince being held directly responsible. Every insubordination was terribly punished. The notable thing, however, is that the subject races were left their social structure, especially their religion, which thus became identified with all patriotic hopes and efforts. The next century is full of squalid evidence of the utter demoralization of the Russian princes. Moscow; hitherto a mere village, innocent of the old Slavic liberties, customs, and traditions; now began to rise into importance, mainly by providing the ablest, and most unscrupulous agents to the Mongol Khans. By this connection and by intermarriage the Muscovite nobility became partly Tatarised and the Oriental element already introduced through Byzantium was revived and intensified. The use of the knout and the plet began at this Time. The former was only abolished under Nicholas (1845), while the latter has survived until more recent years. By securing the removal to Moscow of the religious authority and by getting himself appointed collector of tribute, Ivan I. (died 1340) managed to greatly strengthen and extend the new state. It was not till after another century, during which there was an outburst against the Mongols under Dimitri Donskoi and another bloody vengance, that the long tyranny may be considered come to an end. In 1478 - the interval being filled by constant struggles for the princely succession - Ivan III., the Great, forcibly annexed not only Viatka, Tver, and other principalities, but also Novgorod, which never recovered its unique position as a trade centre. Ivan endeavoured to check disintegrating tendencies by ending the system of divided sovereignties and by increasing the power of the grand-kniaz as against the petty princes and boyars. He also defeated the Lithuanians, and, finally turning against the now divided khans, routed them and so threw off the crushing yoke of 240 years. The Mongols were often troublesome afterwards, but they never again threatened the integrity of the empire. The extent of the influence of their cruel domination upon the heretofore mild and generous spirit of the pastoral Slavs is a difficult and delicate question; but its main direction cannot be doubted, and its depth is testified still, after the lapse of four centuries, by the survival of their double legacy, a united Russia under an absolute despotism.

We are now to see the rapid growth of the sovereign power and the proportions of the state. The fall of the Eastern Empire opportunely suggested a new set of pretensions to the ambitious Muscovites, pretensions which fell in admirably with the idea of a monarchy supreme in Church and State. Ivan III. had married the niece of the last Greek Emperor, and had assumed the imperial arms, the double eagle. The title of Tsar, (Caesar) was fully adopted by Ivan IV., the Terrible. The extraordinary career of this ruler - recalling now Nero, now Louis XI., and again our own Henry VIII. - has already been briefly summarised. His unspeakable cruelties, his treachery and superstition, make his name a byword; but it is to be said for him that under his rule the power of the boyars was still further curtailed; the civil code revised, and an ecclesiastical code laid down; the bounds of the empire extended by conquest especially on the east and south, the Mussulman kingdoms of Kazan and Astrakan and the native tribes of the Volga and Don being conquered; the colonisation of Siberia begun under the Cossack Yermak; English and other foreign traders welcomed; and the arts encouraged in a small way. Ere any further considerable national development could occur, it was necessary to win a place upon the Baltic and the Black Sea, and so to open communications with the west and south. But these ways were blocked, the one by Sweden and Poland and the other by the Turks and the Free Cossacks of the sonth. Nothing could seem more improbable than any achievement in these direqtions during the veritable "period of troubles," as the Russian historians call it, which makes up the greater put of the 17th century. The episode of the false Demetrius (q.v.) reminds us of our own Perkin Warbeck just a century earlier. The fraud assumed larger proportions, however, by reason of the deeper ignorance of the Russian people, the more complete isolation of their communities, and, still more perhaps, the selfish designs of native and foreign princes, and the anxiety, especially at the Polish Court, to bring Russia into the Latin communion; Boris Gudonof, regent for Theodor and himself Tsar after the murder of the true Dimitri, is mainly noteworthy as the practical founder of serfdom by his temporary measure, afterwards to become permanent, attaching the too-nomadic peasant to the soil. The Polish invasion was temporarily successful, and for a time the country was overrun by Poles, Swedes, Cossacks, Tatars, and other marauders. The rally under the first Romanoff Tsar, Michael, elected and supported by a national council (Sobor) in 1613, shows how persistent was the Russian national feeling and the hold of the Orthodox faith. For a time the influence of the nobles revived, and there was a growth of Western influences. Under Alexis the precursor of Peter, further progress was made, although the condition of the peasants was so desperate that they were driven into repeated revolts. In this reign the Dnieper Cossacks transferred their allegiance from Poland to Russia, securing by compact, however, their autonomy, and the innovations of the patriarch Nicon, which were regarded as arbitrary, caused the great religious disruption to which the chief Dissenting sects (raskolniks) trace their origin.

Peter the Great (q.v.) opened the third, which may be called the European, period of Russian history. It is impossible here to do justice to his reign. He made his country a European state. He gave her a standing army, a navy on the Baltic, the embryo of a modern administration, a diplomatic service, and a financial organisation. He made canals, encouraged industry, literature, and art. The heart of Russia might remain at Moscow, but henceforth it was to have also a head that looked out westward from the Neva. On the other hand, Peter increased taxation; his cruelty was Oriental, and serfdom under him became more and more extensive. The Court annals of the next century present an extraordinary succession of foreign adventurers, female rulers, palace plots, exiles, vulgar orgies, crimes of violence, and all manner of baseness. [MENSCHIKOFF.] Anna(q.v.) (1730-40) gave the unhappy country up to her German favourites. A second attempt (counting the charter between the Sobor and Michael Romanoff as the first) to obtain a constitution failed at her accession. Under Elizabeth the southern part of Finland was obtained from Sweden by treaty; and in the Seven Years' War (g.v.) Russia came into contact with Prussia under Frederick the Great. In internal politics this reign is noted for the growing oppressiveness of serfdom. In the milder reign of Peter III. German influences revived; this, his confiscation of Church property, and his severe military discipline, led to his downfall. Catherine II. conquered and annexed the whole Crimea and the seaboard between the Bug and Dniester, Russian fleets now appearing for the first time in the Mediterranean. In the three partitions of Poland [POLAND, SUVAROF, KOSCIUSKO], in 1772, 1793, 1795, Russia obtained two-thirds of that country, together with the province of Courland, so that the whole Baltic provinces [COURLAND, PETERSBURG, LIVONIA, ESTHONIA] were now Russian. The pretender Pugachev raised a fierce agrarian jacquerie (1773), but the victories of Michelson broke his forces, and with his capture the revolt ended. Catherine, although reactionary at the end of her reign, carried on many of Peter's reforms, and thoroughly established Russia as a European power. To her, however, the Ukraine owes its serfdom, as also very heavy burdens in taxation and in the increase of the arbitrary power of the serf-holders. Paul was eccentric to the point of insanity. He established a severe press censorship, reorganised the secret_police, settled the succession on the sovereign's eldest son, was now a pro- and then an anti-Bonapartist, and was assassinated in 1801. Alexander I. (q.v.) renewed the friendship with England, joined the third coalition against Napoleon, and - the tempting prospect of a Franco-Russian partition of Europe opened out at Tilsit (q.v.) having faded away - was again compelled to withstand the conqueror of Austria and Prussia. [NAPOLEON.] Two years after the occupation of Moscow the Russians stood with the Allies in Paris. The jealousy of the Allies prevented Alexander from taking the whole of Poland. Meanwhile Georgia (q.v.) and nearly the whole of the Circassian provinces had been incorporated, Finland (q.v.) with the greater part of Bothnia ceded by Sweden in 1809, and Bessarabia (q.v.) taken from Turkey in 1812. The various reactionary measures of Alexander's later years provoked much discontent, which at his death culminated in a third futile effort to obtain a constitution. [DECEMBRISTS.] Nicholas made no pretence of satisfying the demands of reform; but in the role of liberator of the faithful in the south he joined the Allies in securing Greek independence, and by further aggression in Turkey got more territory on the east coast of the Black Sea and the left bank of the Danube and became protector of Moldavia and Wallachia. A protectorate was imposed upon Khiva, and the Kirghiz submitted. In Siberia the far eastern seaboard was now reached. In the next reign Turkestan was conquered; Khiva, Khokan, and Samarkand were annexed; and Bokhara became a vassal state.

Thus we see completed the Slavic revenge for the Mongol invasion. It is impossible here to indicate the full ethnological significance of these long centuries of colonisation and absorption; but the separate articles on SLAVS, FINNISH TRIBES, MONGOLS, TATARS, COSSACKS, POLES, CAUCASIANS, etc., should be consulted. The Great Russians have become the backbone of the nation, constituting nearly half of the total population of the empire and occupying, all the central part of European Russia from the White Sea to a line roughly drawn from Smolensk to the point where the Don most nearly approaches the Volga. Little and White Russians [UKRAINE] to the number of 15 millions share the west-centre with Lithuanians (q.v.) on the Baltic shore to the north and Poles on their west. On the south~east are the Turko-Tatar races -Kalmuks, Bashkirs, and Kirghiz (g.v.). In Lapland, Finland, and the North Ural region are the Finnish races. Scattered about are colonies of Jews, Germans, Swedes, and Southern Slavs.

The futile insurrection of the Poles in 1830~31 led to the revocation of all their liberties. Nicholas now aided Turkey against the Khedive and Austria against the Magyars, this last action depriving him of the sympathy of Western Europe. The campaign against Turkey, which ended in the Crimean War (q.v.), brought Russia great loss and bitter disappointment. Nicholas died before it ended. It seemed at first that by timely measures of reform Alexander II. (q.v.), a well~meaning but weak ruler, would restore the shaken confidence of his people. The emancipation of 23 millions of serfs in 1861 is the great measure of the reign and indeed of the century. The land_ of nearly half the peasantry (the other half, the already "free" Crown peasantry, were differently treated) was handed over to the village communities (mir), subject to a payment for 49 years of redemption dues of 6 per cent. on the amount of the purcbase money. The 1-1/2 millions of domestic serfs simply got their liberty. Unfortunately, Alexander, wanting to satisfy everybody and fearful of the work into which necessity had driven him) entrusted the scheme to alien and unfriendly hands. Alexander III. abolished the old poll-tax in 1886, and in some places reduced the redemption dues; but the burden of taxes and dues is still excessive, and the condition of the peasantry is generally so wretched that they fall an easy prey to the famines and epidemics of cholera and other diseases which have devastated the country in recent years. Alexander III died in 1894, and was succeeded by his son, Nicholas II., who, in 1899, startled the world with his famous Peace Conference. The same year, however, saw the Russification of Finland.

The second Polish insurrection (1863). Yas mainly responsible for the backward turn of the Tsar-Liberator's policy. For a time the crusade against the Turks (1876-8) [TURKEY, BALKANS, SKOBELEF] drew attention away from domestic affairs; but the victorious issue brought Russia nothing more than Bessarabia, a part of Armenia, and a ful1er conviction of the corruption and incompetence of her administration. From this time dates the active revolutionary movement misnamed Nihilism. In its first period, under the inspiration Of Herzen, Bakunin in his rational period, and Tchernishevski, it took the form of a secret propaganda with the object of securing freedom of speech and press; public justice; personal security, the abolition of administrative exile, and the calling of a national assembly. In 1878 the propagandists were driven into a terrorist policy, which culminated in the assassination of the Tsar in 1881. The vengeance of the Government was swift and terrible. Thousands of persons were arrested and imprisoned or exiled without trial. The struggle continued for some time, and then the revolutionary parties subsided again into a policy of propaganda and preparation. Some of their leaders, notably Sergius Stepniak, Felix Volkhovsky and Prince Peter Krapotkin, having escaped from prison or exile, are endeavouring by a foreign propaganda to sap the external resources of the autocracy; and quite a literature is now devoted to the shocking condition of the Russian prisons, the brutal treatment of prisoners, the corruption of the administration, persecutions of Jews and Stundists (q.v.), the horrors of Siberian exile, and the absence of all public and private liberty. Within the empire there have lately been university riots, peasant disturbances, sedition in the army, and labour strikes. Famine and financial embarrassments have. had even a greater effect in hastening the crsis which seems inevitable.

Government and Institutions. The Russian Government is a pure autocracy (sometimes miscalled paternal) with a hererhtary succession, the emperor being also supreme head of the Orthodox Russian Church. There is no constitution in our sense, no parliament, no responsible ministers. The Tsar is aided by a Holy Synod of eight prelates and a Procuror-General; by ten independent ministries, a Department of General Control, an advisory Council of the Empire, and a Senate which has practically become a high court of justice. "Laws" in Russia simply mean decrees of the emperor. Judicial procedure is in a very backward state, and the criminal system is full of anomalies and inhumanities. Some concessions to the demand for reform have lately been cancelled; the Zemstvos or local boards have, for instance, been reduced to complete impotence, and the elective justices of the peace replaced by police officers uppointed by the Crown (Zemski natchalniki). Autocracy penetrates almost to the bottom of the social structure. The bureaucracy is elaborately divided into 40 ranks (tchin). The nobles have never as a class had the power which feudalism gave their fellows in the West, and Russia has perhaps lost as much as she has gained by having no political aristocracy. Military service was made obligatory in 1874. The army numbers, on a peace footing, about 800,000 but it is calculated that 5-1/2 millions of men could be called to arms. The navy has grown rapidly in late years. The clergy are black (regular) or white (secular), the parish popes being of the latter class. There, are, besides the Orthodox Church [GREEK CHURCH], many reugious sects. The Finnish, German, and Swedish Protestants, the Polish and Lithuanian Romanists, the few Uniates of White Russia, and the Tatar, Bashkir, and Kirghiz Mohammedans, enjoy full liberty of worship, but, not of preaching or proselytism. The various bodies of Dissenters sprung from orthodoxy have hardly ever had more than a varying degree of toleration; of late the Government policy towards some of these and the Jews has changed for the worse, and active persecution has lately caused much suffering, especially among the Stundists. There is a sort of petty commercial nobility and at the bottom the peasantry with their ancient mir, the only relic of the original Slavic democracies. Education is far in arrear, being harassed by constant. arbitrary interference in the supposed interests of the state, and a stern press censorship is maintained.

Literature and the Arts. Apart from the bilini or poetical folk-tales of legendary and historic heroes, the early proverbs and love songs, and a single surviving poem of the twelfth century narrating the expedition of Igor against the Polovtsi, there is little of popular interest in Russian literature till the time of the national revival under Peter I. Then Lomonosof (1711-65), poet, grammarian, and scientist, though a narrow chauvinist and coarse like most of his contemporaries, gave a new impulse to native thought. For a time, however, nothing better than Court poetry resulted. Through the solemn bombast of Derzhavin (1743-1816) and the German romanticism of Zhukovsky (1783-1852), we come to the period of Pushkin (q.v.) and Gogol (g.v.). In Pushkin the many-sided poetic spirit of the Slav finds free and vigorous utterance. Lermontof (1814-41) breathed in during his repeated exiles to the Caucasus a vaster inspiration, and came more nearly to the height of Byron's achievement. Gogol, turning his back upon romanticism, brought to bear in The Revisor and Dead Souls, the scourge of his wit and a scathing satire upon the hollow society about him. Karamsin (1765-1826) is remembered not only as the great modern historian of Russia, but as a literary forerunner of the Slavophil or Panslavist school, of which Aksakof and Katkof (q.v.) were the moving spirits. Solovief (1829-79) and Kostomarov are the next great historians. Krilof's fables are widely known. Bielinsky (1801-48) proclaimed a return to realism; and Dostoieffsky (q.v.) (1822-81) with tragic intensity and Tourgenief (q.v.) (1818-83) with more classic art and a soberer philosophy have worked in the same spirit in fiction, as Nekrasof in poetry and Verestchagin, Hay, and Repin in painting, producing many sombre and harrowing pictures as well as some bright ones of the life of their countrymen. Count Leo Tolstol (q.v.) has pushed even farther the analysis of the human soul, measuring its every weakness by the inexorable standard of an ascetic Christianity. Goncharov pomted out to the Russians in his Oblomov one of their chief weaknesses. Shevchenko (1814-61), the greatest poet of Little Russia, suffered bitterly at the hands of those in authority, as most of the intellectual leaders we have named have done. Schedrin's social satires and the grim realism of the unhappy Garshin must be mentioned, while among living novelists Korolenko and Potapenko are now well represented in English. As to the very characteristic music of Russia we can do no more than refer the reader to the separate notices of RUBINSTEIN apd TCHAIKOVSKY. In science Mendelief the chemist, Kovalevsky and Metchnikof the comparative embryologists, Chebychef the mathematician, Krapotkin the geographer and mathematician, have international reputations, and Paul Vinogradoff has done as much as any living man to clear up the early history of land~tenures especially in England.