.

From the fourth generation, Russia established an autocratic system marked by the rule of the Tsar. The tradition of the Rick dynasty continued to conquer cities and plunder land and expand greatly. After each Tsar ascended the throne, he became a miracle. He seized the Baltic Sea in the north, took the Azov Sea in the south, fought fiercely in Vladivostok, and was involved in Lushunkou. It can be said that the war continued. From the Livonian War, the Northern War, the Russian-Turkey War, the Russian-French War, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, and until World War I. Russia finally became a great power with territory spanning Eurasia. However, this great power was just a giant with a strong outside and a strong outside.

After all, Russia is part of Europe, and the Russians are a nation of Europe. However, Russia is located on the edge of Europe and is composed of a large buffer zone between Europe and Asia. Due to this location, the historical experience of the Russians is completely different from that of other Europeans, and the cultures they developed are also correspondingly different. Therefore, Russian thinkers bother themselves from generation to generation with the basic issue of national direction and national goals.

Russia's relationship with the West has usually been a passively accepted relationship. At least in the previous period, Europe's influence on Russia was much greater than that of Russia's influence on Europe, and this influence has always been a major factor in Russia's development.

The first Russian state developed in the 9th century AD with the Principality of Kiev, and then, another development in cutting off Russia's ties with the West was the invasion of the 1237 Mongols (see Chapter 8 Section 2). The Mongols did not interfere in their affairs as long as their Russian subjects recognized the sovereignty of Khan and paid tribute to Khan every year.

However, the Mongol rule cut off most of the remaining links between Russia and the rest of Europe. This severance of links has been around for two centuries of the Mongol rule, and it came when the West was experiencing the Renaissance, Reformation, overseas expansion and commercial revolution.

But undamaged Russia is essentially kept out of influence by these far-reaching economic and cultural movements. There are no scholars in the Orthodox East who resemble Erasmus or Vinci, no families that are very similar to the Fury or Medici family, nor cities that are exactly the same as Lisbon or Antwerp.

In addition, the Mongols left their own mark on Russian society. Their thinking and management methods paved the way for the later Russian Sands to establish semi-Oriental autocratic rule. At the end of the 1st century, about 17% of the upper class in Moscow had non-Russian or Eastern origins; this was not meaningless at all.

The Moscow people are the enemies of all freedom in the world. As the outside world brings them more and more, their power is becoming increasingly powerful. The outside world brings them not only goods, but also weapons that they did not know before, and even brought them skilled craftsmen, the maker of such weapons. By their means they used to make themselves powerful enough to conquer all other people.

After successfully replacing the most outstanding ruler (Mongols) of the barbaric era, Russia has developed barbarism to the extreme. If there is no accident, the country will collapse within decades, with the same fate as those barbaric countries without civilization as their connotation.

But God was fair to the Russians, and Tsar Peter the Great (reigned from 1682 to 1725) greatly accelerated this Westernization process. With his steel will and extremely great enthusiasm, he promulgated more than 3,000 decrees, many of which were formulated by him with his decrees. He reformed his administrative organs and army in the Western way, established an industry to support his army, introduced thousands of experts of all kinds, and sent groups of young Russians to study abroad.

. And established many schools - all of which have a pragmatic nature: schools of mathematics and nautical, naval schools, army schools, computation schools and the highest-ranking academic academies. Peter also broke all precedents, traveled to Western Europe, and learned directly from foreign institutions and practices. He had no interest in French culture and the British Parliamentary system, but he worked in shipyards in Britain and the Netherlands like an ordinary labourer, in order to understand what seemed most useful to his country.

Through all these means, Peter largely achieved what he called the goal of opening a "window facing the West". In addition, in a strict sense, he opened this window by defeating Sweden and obtaining the Baltic coast; on the Baltic coast, he established the new capital St. Petersburg, a symbol of New Russia, just as Moscow was the symbol of Old Russia. However, these changes were accomplished under fierce opposition from a large number of people of all residents. Peter's father, Tsar Alexey, had defended this kind of conviction;

The man had to give up his efforts to establish a permanent theater and relax the prohibition of foreign costumes. Similarly, Peter had to fight not only the indifference and suspicion of the masses throughout his reign, but also the open or covert opposition of the conservative great nobles and priests. Even some of the changes he had indeed caused were limited in two important aspects: these changes were, by nature, basically military, economic and technological changes, and, in addition, they affected only some of the consented members of the upper class, a small number of people among the entire inhabitants.

Peter's work continued by the talented and compelling Emperor Ekaterina the Great (1762-reign). Ekaterina believed that she and her court were the medium of Russian Europeanization. She was much more knowledgeable than the arbitrary Peter and actively sponsored literature, art, drama and newspapers. Although she was not a creative thinker, she was willing to absorb the thoughts of others, especially those of philosophers.

thing

She prides herself on being an enlightened and authoritarian monarch and often quotes. During her reign, the Russian high nobles had begun to Europeanize to the point of being separated from national traditions. During Peter's reign, the nobles who had bearded and wore drifting oriental robes imitated the Versailles' court in their words, clothing, residences and social responsibilities. During this period, the children of the nobles were educated by French tutors. First, they learned French as their native language. Then they picked up a small amount of Russian that was only enough to manage their servants.

Therefore, Russian Europeanization is no longer limited to technical aspects, although it continues to be limited to the upper class. In fact, the gap between the Europeanized upper class and the peasant masses bound in the manor as serfs is becoming wider and more exciting. This separation is reflected in the following description of the arrogant, extravagant and lewd ruling class supported by serf labor:

It must be remembered that in those days a wealthy Russian noble retained his own tailor, shoemaker, saddleman, carpenter, groomer, gambler, milk farm worker, pharmacist, musician, actor, poet, architect, painter and a whole group of more close servants such as chef, baker, cake maker, dishwashers, women workers, men servants, servants in charge of wine and meals, meat cutters, coffee brewers, maids, entourages and all others in this category. Usually, each of these workplaces was done by several people, and they were equipped with the big and small assistants to assist them. Moreover, with most of the wealthy nobles not only owned many homes, but also countless estates in the countryside, each residence was fully equipped with a service team.

A gentleman arranged 17 male servants in the vestibule of his residence. They had to go to pick up a pipe for his master, and the other was ready to go to Rui for a glass of water. The third was ready to get a book, and so on. The other gentleman kept 300 servants. In his residence, the established rituals included a meal of forty dishes a day. Each dish was served by a chef in a white apron and a tall hat. He had to put the dishes on the table, lift the hat, bowed deeply and then retreat, while the 12 servants in charge of the meal and the meat-cutters were wearing powdered wigs. They were waiting at the table. By the way, the gentleman also had seven cats, and these cats were tied to a seven-legged table at night. If one of the cats happened to break free, all the maids who were specializing in the care of the cats would be severely punished.

Every "denominee" feels a snobbish pride in inventing some new type of entertainment for its guests or providing some special, new dishes... Almost overnight, turning a field into a lake or a mountain, and building a pavilion or a tower or an arc of triumphal or other architectural decorations in a few hours is a popular pastime. There is a gentleman famous for his "Isle of Love". On this island, he gives the most beautiful girls selected from the village to his guests; another gentleman provides the best entertainment in art and music.

The significance of these basic differences between Russia and the West is to divide Russian thinkers into two factions - Western Europeans and Slavics. Western Europeans regret the above differences and regard them as a product of Russia's slow development. Therefore, their hero is Peter the Great, and they strongly advocate that other rulers should make great efforts like Peter to drive Russia to catch up with the West.

However, the Slavs denied the basic view of the Western Europeans that human civilization is unity. They insisted that each country embodies and expresses the special national spirit of its people, and that if one country tries to imitate another, the inevitable result will be contradictions and inconsistencies.

They believed that the difference between Russia and the West was fundamental and internal, reflecting deep differences in national spirit rather than in the degree of progress. Therefore, the Slavs idealized the harmonious and consistent Russian society of St. Peter in the previous period and regarded Peter as the main enemy of Russian civilization and national unity. They did not think that Western society was better at all, they did not accept Western society, believed that it was materialistic, unfaithful, torn apart by conflict and revolution.

"In contrast to the power of Russia, unity and harmony," wrote a member of the Slavic faction, "there are only quarrels, divisions and weaknesses, and in the face of these things, our greatness is more prominent - just as the light faces the shadows..." Therefore, a member of the Western European faction, standing on the opposition, retorted:

"West Europe" civilization is all the fruits of labor; science and technology have taken so many generations of sweat! If you lose superstition, if you abandon prejudice, if you don't fear losing your barbaric past, if you don't boast about your ignorance for thousands of years, if you are determined to possess the fruits of all nations and the wealth gained by the human spirits around the world, then all will be your land."

This prophecy of the Western Europeans proved to be correct in every way. Russia was defeated, and this failure played a role in exposing the corruption and backwardness of the old system. Russian soldiers fought as bravely in 1855 as in 1812. However, the situation was desperately unfavorable to the Russian soldiers: the range of the rifles they used was only one-third of the range of the rifles of the Western army. They had to deal with British and French steamboats with sailboats. They had no real medical services or military rations supply services. Due to the lack of railways on the Crimean Peninsula, they had to use large chariots to pull military supplies and had to walk hundreds of miles before reaching the front line. In short, the war failed, and the reason was as Western Europeans noticed, "Europe has been moving steadily on the road of progress, but we have been halting."

old

The bankruptcy revealed that led to the changes of the old system. The first was that liberation had been extremely unstable before the war. In fact, 500 peasant uprisings broke out between the 30 years of Nicholas I's reign between 1825 and 1855. With the disaster in the Crimean region, the rising pressure of serfs became irresistible, and Nicholas' successor Alexander II regarded the liberation of serfs as the only way to replace the revolutionary land. Alexander made this decision and was encouraged by many nobles who agreed to liberation of serfs in order to take advantage of the growing demand for grain in Europe. They found that as long as all the land was allocated to serfs, they could not produce large quantities.

The surplus grain for export was, because the serfs had grown food that could give the noble landlords only a small part after barely meeting their own needs. Therefore, the more visionary nobles agreed to liberate agriculture and herdsmen from the land contracts that had always bound them to small plots of land. In this way, the nobles planned to combine small plots of land, adopt effective, large-scale agricultural techniques, and hire only those whose labors actually do the serfs they needed in fact. In this way, they did not have to support the entire rapidly growing population of serfs. In other words, the reason why the progressive Russian nobles favored the liberation of serfs was the same as the reason why the British nobles supported and implemented land enclosures in the first three centuries.

As a result of these circumstances, Alexander II was able to promulgate the decree of the serfdom on March 1, 1861. Under the terms of the decree, all farming and herding were declared free, and the land cultivated by the serfs was distributed between the serfs and the aristocratic landlords. The aristocratic landlords received long-term treasury bills paid by the government because the land was allocated to the farmers. In return, the farmers had to pay a redemption fee of <9 years to repay the government.

This is a major turning point in Russian history, even more important than the Liberation Declaration in American history. In the United States, the Liberation Declaration only relates to a few blacks, while in Russia, the decree to abolish serfdom involves an overwhelming majority of the population. The impact of liberating serfs was so profound that a series of other reforms proved inevitable, including reforms from the court system and local governments.

In the decades after the Crimean War, Western Europe further weakened the old Russian system by decisively promoting Russian industrialization. The number of factory workers rose from 1865 to 162,000 in 1890, and then to 3,000,000 in 1898. Russia produced as much iron as France, and Russia produced three-quarters of the coal produced by France.

This rapid development of industrialization in the half century before World War I was not just due to Western aid. The Tsarist regime took various measures to accelerate industrialization, including provision of allowances and imposition of protection tariffs. However, the significance of the contribution made by the West can be seen from the fact that in 1899, more than one-third of the total £500 million invested in Russian industry was composed of foreign investment. Foreign capital controlled 50% of coal and oil production, 60% of copper and iron ore production and 80% of coke production.

These developments mean that Russia in 1900 is much similar to: Europe. However, these growing similarities, as warned by the Slavic Party, have caused certain divisions and conflicts in Russian society. One of them is the increasing upheaval and growing political awareness of the peasant masses.

They were by no means satisfied with the provisions of the decree to abolish serfdom, which they felt that they left too much of the land to the nobles. In the following decades, as the number of farmers increased rapidly, their desire for land increased accordingly, becoming increasingly unsatisfied with the status quo. Another source of peasant dissatisfaction was the unbearable heavy tax burden.

Not only did they receive various local taxes for them in 1861. In addition, they also had to bear most of the costs of Russian industrialization, because the high protection tariffs caused the costs of the finished products they purchased. The scope and intensity of peasant dissatisfaction became apparent with the increasing frequent resistance of peasants to landlords and unpopular government officials. The events described in the following passage occurred in 1902, but many other events of similar nature occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

On a major September 1902, on the side of a road in the central prairie in the south, a man climbed up a telephone post and cut off a detailed communication line connecting the manor's residence on the north horizon with the city along the railway line to the south, the police station and the barracks. In a sense, the manor's residence was very lonely at this time, but this was not true, because there were several farms where the garden where the residence was seen. Therefore, the two components - the peasant and the landlord - were temporarily in a state of isolated function. Within a few hours, the manor was looted, and the house was trapped in the flames, and somewhere within the flames, the owner of the zodiac brother died there.
Chapter completed!