The Russian Empire: 1721-1917 (Part V)
Language, Literature, and Writing
The Russian Empire used the Cyrillic alphabet that was based on the Greek script of the 9th century. Peter the Great (r.1694-1725) modified this alphabet, when he simplified certain letters and introduced Latin ones. In 1710, this modified alphabet became mandatory for all publications except for religious ones.
Peter also established printing presses and newspapers during his reign, with other forms of publications – journals, plays, short stories, novels, and histories – following and flourishing for the next 200 years of the empire’s existence. As literacy grew among the upper and middle classes, a literate culture emerged that centered on the intellectual, philosophical, and religious debates of the period. However, the state supervised and censored this literate culture by suppressing anti-government publications.
Of the writers of the early 18th-century Classical School, Russian poet and grammarian Michael Lomonosov (1711-65) was the best known for his poetry and his defense of the Russian language as equal to its European counterparts. Other notable classical writers were Denis Fonvizin, Nicholas Novikov, and Fyodor Emin whose novels, plays, and fables reflected the power and majesty of the Empire at that time. At the end of the 18th century, there was a transition from Classicalism to Sentimentalism: the emphasis from reason, harmony, and balance to feelings, beauty, and nature. The poets Gavrila Derzhavin and Nicholas Karamzin are the best representatives of this school of Sentimentalism.
The greatest Russian poet of the Russian Empire was Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) whose technical mastery and versatility of themes were evident in such works like Yevgeny Onegin (1823-31) and The Bronze Horseman (1833). Michael Lermontov, the other major poet of the early 19th century, became better known for his novel, A Hero of Our Times (1840) that reflected the influence of Romanticism in Russian literature. Realism replaced Romanticism – the depiction of life as it were and not life as imagined – with the works of Nicholas Gogol, whose devastating satire of Russian society had an extraordinary impact on the Russian upper class: The Government Inspector (1836), Dead Souls (1842), and The Overcoat (1842).
Fyodor Dostoevsky continued in Realism with his great novels, Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868-69), The Devils (1871-72), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). He took the Slavophile position, and supported the conservative, religious, and nationalist features of Russian society. On the other side was Ivan Turgenev who supported the Westerners, as written in his novels, A Sportman’s Sketches (1852) and Fathers and Sons (1862). Standing aloft of these ideological debates were Leo Tolstoy who wrote his two great novels, War and Peace (1865-69) and Anna Karenina (1875-77), Ivan Goncharov who wrote Oblomov (1859), and Anton Chekhov, whose short stories and particularly his plays – The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1897), Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1903-04) – made Russian literature internationally known. The novels of these authors, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, rank among the greatest ever written, and Russian literature of this period is perhaps the empire’s most enduing legacy.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian poetry returned to a place of prominence, although novelists such as Maxim Gorky and Boris Pasternak also made important contributions to Russian literature. Alexander Blok was the best representative of the Symbolist School – the world was a system of symbols expressing metaphysical realities – while Anna Akhmatova’s lyricism and clarity acted as a counterpoint in a movement known as Acemism. But the most revolutionary poetic movement of the period was Futurism, which Velimir Khlebnikov founded in 1910: the language of the common man or of the streets should replace the artificial and complex forms of previous poetry.
Laws, Ethics, and Human Rights
The Russian Empire of the early 18th to early 20th century was an autocracy: the Empire’s subjects absolutely obeyed their ruler. The ideas of human rights or ethical treatment did not exist in the Russian Empire, and the persecution of minorities, especially Jews, occurred without official objection—and sometimes with encouragement. For example, the Russian Empire officially adopted an anti-Semitic policy from 1881 to 1917 and tolerated pogroms – a mob attack against Jews condoned by the state – such as the 1903 pogrom in Moldavia where in two days 45 Jews were killed, nearly 600 wounded, and 1,500 Jewish homes had been pillaged. Those responsible for inciting the outrages were not punished.
The two rulers who had the most influence on Russian law was Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. Peter the Great (r. 1694-1725) crowned himself Emperor in 1721 modeled after European autocrats: the Emperor was the head of the state and not the patrimonial owner of the land and father of his subjects, as he had been under Muscovite czars. Peter also introduced the primogeniture, increased taxes on the peasantry, and implemented his Table of Ranks (1722), which established a caste-like system for members of society in their position, status, and obligations to the state. For her part, Catherine the Great (r. 1762-96) created a commission in 1767 that drew from most classes to codify the Empire’s laws modeled after European legal thought and practices. Although the Empire did not implement its recommendations, the Commission’s influence stimulated the modernization of the Russian Empire’s legal system.
Russian politician and advisor Michael Speransky spearheaded another attempt at constitutional and legal reform, but Alexander I (r. 1801-25) dismissed him in 1812. Another political advisor to the Emperor, Nicholas Novosiltsev, also proposed constitutional reform in 1819, but Alexander I also dismissed his ideas. The Empire’s defeat in the Crimean War in 1855 led Alexander II (r. 1855-81) to implement his Great Reforms in the emancipation of serfs and the reorganization of government, education, and the military, with the judiciary system modeled after French and German law. Still, the Ministry of Interior had the power to banish anyone whom it considered politically subversive, regardless of what the courts ruled. At the local level, the central government created legislative bodies (dumas) responsible for education, health, safety, and food, although later the central government restricted the powers of these dumas, who eventually served mostly a consultative role in the functioning of government.
The 1905 Revolution changed the Empire’s fundamental laws to include a national Duma and basic civil liberties for most citizens. The Russian Empire still was an autocracy, but the word “unlimited” was removed, and no law could be implemented without the consent of the Duma. However, the Emperor retained the power to appoint his government and dismiss the Duma at any time and to pass emergency decrees when they were not in session. In practice, the divided nature of the Duma allowed Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917) to govern as he wished until the Revolution of 1917 forced his abdication and brought the empire to an end.
Medicine
Catherine the Great (r. 1762-96) issued the Province Reform in 1775, which placed the health of non-serfs into the hands of the Health Commission. This imperial bureaucracy directed health and medicine in the hospitals, mental institutions, and schools. Hospitals often lacked proper sanitation, were short of equipment, and provided low wages to physicians. If they could, people avoided hospitalization and enlisted the care of private physicians. In the countryside, it was worse, with the rural population receiving little medical support except for those who lived there and may have known a little about medicine.
Shortly before the onset of the Russian Empire in 1721, medical students established schools in Moscow (1706) and St. Petersburg (1709) modeled after the schools in Europe, but graduates sometimes were unemployed because older physicians refused to retire. The assignment of physicians to parts of the Empire often was a waste of resources, with too many physicians in one province and not enough in another. With Alexander II’s (r. 1855-81) Great Reforms, physicians started to work in the countryside for the local government (zemstva) where the pay and conditions were slightly better. Still, by the end of 1914, only 30 percent of physicians practiced in rural areas, while 80 percent of the population lived there.
Migration
Because of the rigid nature of its social structure, the Russian Empire of the early 18th to early 20th century did not experience massive migrations within its borders; rather, Russians migrated outwards as the Empire continued to expand, especially into non-Russian and non-Slavic territories. The some exceptions like the 18th-century massive influx of Germans into the Volga region and, after 1861, the movement of newly liberated serfs to urban areas in the search for work. This migration caused the number of the proletariat to increase exponentially and become fertile ground for revolutionary ideas and organization. There also was a migration of 40,000 Russian Jews to Palestine in the late nineteenth century, with the first Jewish settlements from Russia in 1882.