MARCH OF THE TITANS - A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE
Chapter Forty
The Russian Empire: 862 AD to 1917 AD
The land which ultimately compromised the Russian Empire (which lasted for 1055 years before transforming itself into the Soviet Union) was hugely significant for three major reasons:
• it included the Caucasus area, the original source of the Indo-European peoples;
• it was the White peoples of this area who bore the brunt of the great Asiatic invasions of Europe; and
• it was this region which was the first important power to be seized by the Communists, which had ramifications far beyond Russia itself.
For these reasons alone, an understanding of the origins and tribulations of this great nation are vital to any understanding of world history.
Ancient Russia
The south of Russia, in the region between the Black and Caspian sea, has the distinction of being the original source of the Nordic Indo-European peoples who came to dominate Europe and much of the world. Unfortunately, the great Asiatic invasions which swept up out of the east overran this region, starting during the time of the Western Roman Empire, and most traces of this original White homeland were destroyed by the Mongolian invaders.
Nonetheless, the name often used to describe Whites: Caucasians; is derived from the Caucasus mountains in this region and serves as a constant reminder of this first and original Nordic homeland.
Indo-European Tribes
Amongst the Indo-European tribes who made up the early inhabitants of the vast stretches of Russia were the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians, as well as the easternmost branch of the great Celtic peoples, the Slavs. All of these groupings were overwhelmingly Nordic in sub-racial make-up, although in scattered regions mixing did take place with some Old European types who had established small Neolithic settlements, mainly in the south.
Indo-European Colonies
Some of the Indo-European tribes who settled in Greece and who established the Classical Grecian culture, themselves created isolated colonies back up into the Black Sea region and on the Crimean peninsula. One of the last great Indo-European tribes to emerge from southern Russia were the Goths, who established their first state, on the Black Sea Coast.
Detail of pectoral from Ordzhonikidze, Russia, circa 350 BC. Historical Museum, Kiev.
Asiatic Invasions
The 4th century AD invasion by the Nonwhite Asiatic Huns destroyed the Black Sea Gothic state, pushing the survivors westwards where they were eventually to sack Rome and settle Spain. The Huns pushed as far west as Vienna before turning back, but continued to occupy a large part of southern and central Russia for several hundred years.
After the Huns, came further Asiatic invasions, including the Avars, Magyars, and the Khazars - the last of whom converted to Judaism and provided many of the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia and then, after a further period of assimilation with the Europeans, many European Jews.
By the time of the Asiatic invasions, most of Russia's White population in the south had been either killed or absorbed into the waves of Asians: in the north the Slavs and other Indo-European tribes existed as vassals, paying annual tributes to the Huns in the south.
It is unknown how many Whites perished - either through being killed or being absorbed into the Asiatic gene pool through this invasion: but it was certainly hundreds of thousands, if not millions; bearing in mind that the original source of the Indo-European peoples in the south, which had produced almost all the people of Europe, was extinguished in the course of the Mongol invasion.
It was perhaps the single most important racial genocide in history.
Vikings
An attack by the Khazars upon the Slavic tribes led the latter to call upon their Nordic Scandinavian cousins for help. In 856 AD, Rurik, ruler of Southern Jutland and Friesland in Denmark, answered the call and came to his racial cousins' aid, warding off the Khazar attack.
By 862, Rurik had become ruler of the city of Novgorod; and with two other Vikings, Dir and Askold, gained the kingship of the city of Kiev and successfully organized the defense of the territories belonging to these two city states.
The name Russia came from a tribe incorporated into the tenuous unity of these city states, called the Rukhs-As. This tribe was the very last Indo-European tribe (also called the Alans) who emerged from the Caucasus region just before it was overrun and destroyed by the Mongols.
Seated goat herd, Russia, 527 AD Now in the St. Petersburg Museum.
Oleg and Igor
Rurik was succeeded in by one Oleg (who ruled as regent for Rurik's underage son, Igor). Oleg led the city of Novgorod into an expansionist phase, with the first major acquisition being the ancient Indo-European city of Kiev, which was incorporated into a new united state in 882.
Oleg also subdued and incorporated many neighboring tribes, launching raids into the Mongol held territory in the south and penetrated as far as Constantinople in 911, where a trading treaty was signed with the rulers of the city in that year. Igor took the throne in 912, but died in 945, and was succeeded by his widow Olga. She became the first Christian ruler in Russia in 955. In 964, Olga abdicated in favor of her son, Svyatoslav, the first prince of the house of Rurik to have a Slavic name.
Svyatoslav Attacks the Khazars, Pechenegs and Bulgars
Svyatoslav devoted much of his time to recapturing the south of Russia from the Mongols and Asiatics, who still held large stretches of the land: he attacked and decimated the Jewish Khazars, scattering their survivors all over central and western Russia.
Svyatoslav then turned his attention to the remaining Asiatics who had occupied land along the Danube River. In 967, he overran the last of these Asiatic tribes, incorporating large areas of Bulgaria into Russia in the process.
Svyatoslav then hurried back to Kiev where the city was under attack from a new Nonwhite attack led by Patzinak Turks: eventually he would be killed in an engagement with the Turks in 972.
Vladimir the Great
Upon Svyatoslav's death, his empire passed to his youngest son, Vladimir, who converted to Christianity in 988, and declared that religion the official state religion of the growing Russian Empire. After divorcing his several pagan wives, Vladimir cemented the links between Byzantine and Russia by marrying the sister of one of Byzantine Emperors, Basil II.
Yaroslav the Wise
Vladimir's death caused a period of bloody internecine conflict in his family over succession to the throne: his eldest son, Svyatopolk The Accursed, took the throne after murdering his brothers Boris and Gleb, but was deposed by his younger brother Yaroslav.
In 1017, Yaroslav launched a race war against a renewed attack by the Nonwhite Pechenegs, who had once again invaded Russian territory from the south. Yaroslav decisively defeated the Nonwhites in that same year, and to celebrate this great victory, the St. Sophia's church in central Kiev was built, a magnificent edifice which still stands to this day. Yaroslav became a Russian hero for this deed, and was given the name Yaroslav the Wise as a result of adulation accorded to him.
The Dispersion of the Russian Empire
The unity Yaroslav had worked so hard to achieve was broken up upon his death, when the empire was divided up amongst his sons, none of whom wanted to submit their territory to the rule of another. The state was then broken up into a number of principalities and duchies, all of whom competed with each other on a commercial and some times military level, for importance. Eventually one duchy came to dominate: the Duchy of Moscow.
Genghis Khan
In 1223, the Nonwhite Mongol armies of Genghis Khan invaded the southeast of Russia. With the last of the Hunnish outposts only having been crushed a short while prior to the Khan's attack, a number of Russian principalities banded together in a military alliance to try and ward off the new Asiatic invasion.
In 1223, the united White Russian army met the Nonwhite Mongols at the Battle of the Kalka River (now Kal'mius River) - and the Whites were utterly defeated. Routed, the Russians fell back and awaited the worst - which then seemed not to come.
The Mongol armies came to a standstill while a new leader was elected after the early death of Genghis: only in 1237, under the leadership of Genghis' grandson, Batu, did they advance into Russia again.
Kiev Sacked
Marching northwards, Batu attempted to break through into northern Russia and destroy the stock of Indo-European peoples residing there: a combination of unfavorable terrain and determined resistance halted his progress.
Turning westwards, Batu then sacked the ancient city of Kiev in 1240, despite a desperate defense of the city by the White Russians. Batu pushed on into Poland and Hungary before returning to southern Russia, where he established his capital on the lower Volga River, near the present day city of Volgograd (also called Stalingrad in the 20th century). There, Batu founded an Asiatic empire known as the Khanate of the Golden Horde, which was virtually independent of the Mongol Empire.
Racial Effect of the Khanate
The destructive effect of this powerful Nonwhite invasion upon the development of Russia cannot be overemphasized: the seizure by Mongols of large areas of Russia destroyed the elements of self-government by representative assembly that had developed in some Russian cities, arrested the progress of industry and culture, and kept Russia more than two centuries behind the countries of western Europe in terms of technological and philosophical development.
The Mongols devastatingly proved the principle that the people who occupy a region determine the society or civilization in that region.
In southern Russia the nature of the society was changed from that a budding White civilization to that of a full blown Asiatic society through the replacement of the White population by an Asiatic population.
Massive slices of Russia were depopulated: the region around Kiev, one of the oldest Indo-European cities in Russia, was emptied due to the large scale massacres of Whites carried out by the Asiatics and the resultant mass fleeing of the survivors. Groups of survivors moved further westwards: one such large group, culturally influenced by the Poles and Lithuanians, eventually became known as Belorussians, or White Russians. A second group, formed of the Slavic population from the region of Kiev and adjacent regions, became known as Little Russians, or Malorussians.
The region of Kiev, influenced by foreign languages and customs that were superimposed on the traditions of the old Rus, came to be called Ukraine. In northern Russia, the inhabitants became the principal group of Russian Slavs known as the Great Russians.
Invasion from the West
As if the occupation of southern Russia by the Asiatics was not enough, the Swedes and the bloodthirsty Christian missionaries, the Teutonic Knights from the Baltic, then started penetrating the northernmost parts of Russia.
In 1240, a Swedish army landed on the banks of the Neva River with the intention of seizing the only city of any size not destroyed by the Mongols, Novgorod. The Prince of Novgorod, Alexander Yaroslavevich formed a Russian army against the Swedes: he so utterly defeated the Swedes that he was given the name Alexander Nevsky, meaning "of the Neva."
Two years later the Teutonic Knights, a religious military order established to crush pagans in the Baltic (they physically exterminated thousands of non-Christian Whites who refused to convert to Christianity), also saw fit to push eastward: Alexander led his troops to meet the Germans, crossing the frozen Lake Peipus, and routed them.
On 5 April 1242, the Russian Alexander Nevsky and his troops defeated the German Christian Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Lake Peipus. In this photo, a still taken from a Soviet anti-German documentary film of 1938, Nevsky is depicted in personal combat with a Teutonic Knight.
Submission to the Khanate
The northern parts of Russia were in an invidious position: on the one hand, the southernmost parts of their land had been overrun by murderous Asiatics who for the moment were not directly threatening northern Russia: while in the west, bands of crazed White Christians were seizing every opportunity to invade and extend their power.
Picking the best of two evils, Alexander engaged in a skillful diplomatic play: he lowered the risk of attack from the south even further by agreeing to pay an annual tribute to the Asiatic Khanate, an example which was soon followed by the other major principalities in northern Russia.
In this way a measure of stability was restored to northern Russia and the states became powerful enough to prevent further incursions from the West.
The Growth of Moscow
In 1263, Alexander Nevsky gave the duchy of Moscow to his younger son, Daniel, whose descendants closely adhered to the policy of keeping peace with the Mongols whilst at the same time extending their own territories in the north and center of Russia.
By 1328, one these descendants, Ivan I, had persuaded the Russian Orthodox Church to take up residence in Moscow. The new status given to Moscow accordingly filtered through to all the remaining Russian principalities: beginning with Ivan, the dukes of Moscow styled themselves princes "of all Russia."
St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow: the center of the Russian Orthodox Church.
War Against the Mongols
By the mid 1300s, the Mongol Khanate had come under pressure from internal dissension: new invasions from other Mongolian tribes weakened the Golden Horde and parts of the Asiatic Empire began to fall away. Seizing the opportunity, Dimitry Donskoy, the then Duke of Moscow, launched the first successful revolt against the Mongols in 1380, by defeating a Mongol army at Kukikovo, on the banks of the Don River.
The Czars
After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Russian Orthodox church openly declared itself to be the successor to Byzantine Christianity: to emphasize this, the double headed eagle, symbol of the Byzantine Emperors, was incorporated into the Muscovite arms. Increasingly the Dukes of Moscow began to present themselves as Czars, or "Caesars".
Ivan III Vasilyevich
The case of Ivan III Vasilyevich became a case in point: he married the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, who had been killed during the seizure of Constantinople by the Nonwhite Ottoman Turks. Ivan III extended the power of Moscow significantly: he incorporated the long independent states of Novgorod (1478) and Tver' (1485).
However, Ivan III's greatest achievement came in 1480, when he became the first Russian ruler since Alexander Nevsky to refuse to pay the annual tribute to the Mongols in the south. The Mongols were too disorganized to enforce payment, and this act is formally taken to date the time when Mongol domination ended.
In reality the Mongols remained present: their descendants went on to mix with certain Slavic elements to make up the distinctly mixed race populations of many of the southernmost states such as Kazakhstan, Azijerbajain and others.
Westward Expansion
No longer fearing any resistance from the south, Ivan III turned his attention to the White Christian Teutonic Knight trouble makers in the west: Lithuania was invaded in 1492 and 1500; at the end of hostilities in 1503, Moscow controlled much new territory. Ivan III's successors kept up the aggressive westward expansion, with the regions of Pskov being seized in 1510, followed by Smolensk in 1514.
Ivan the Terrible
Ivan IV Vasilyevich, called The Terrible, inherited the throne in 1533 at the age of three and assumed the throne when he was 17, in 1547. His ascension ceremony marked the first time that a Duke of Moscow was formally called Czar of Russia. In the same year he married Anastasia Romanovna, a member of the noble Romanov family.
The White Cossacks and the Recolonization of the South
Starting in 1552, the southernmost parts of Russia were recolonized by Whites: in that year White Muscovite armies conquered and annexed the Mongol kingdom of Kazan'; in 1556, another Mongol region, Astrakhan, was also annexed.
The colonization and clearing of central and southern Russia was undertaken by rough and ready White adventurers from the north of Russia, who became known as Cossacks: more often than not they were peasants who had fled the feudal serfdom of the principalities in the north to seek their freedom and wealth elsewhere.
The Cossacks came to be concentrated around the Don River basin and the lower Volga, where they played a major role in either killing off the remaining Mongols in the region or dispersing them further eastward and southward. Cossacks also inadvertently caused the annexation of Siberia to the growing Russian state when in 1581, an independent Cossack group settled the region across the Ural mountains (which had always marked the easternmost point of White Russia.) In that year, the partly Mongol tribes of Siberia were subdued by the Cossacks and Ivan then formally annexed the region.
Although Ivan gained his name "the Terrible' because of the autocratic and harsh nature of his rule, he helped Russia make up a substantial amount of lost ground caused by the Mongol invasion: he paid for the importation of many West European technical experts to modernize Russia, a policy which was followed by almost all of his successors.
Smutnoye Vremya - the Time of Troubles
Ivan III's death was followed by a period of serious civil unrest in Russia, caused by conflict between the peasantry and the nobility and numerous succession crises. After a long period of confusion a Polish army entered Moscow, setting itself up as the power in Russia: the entire country then descended into a state of anarchy.
The Poles were only expelled in 1612 by an alliance of northern Russian principalities. In 1613, Michael Romanov, great-nephew of Anastasia Romanovna, was finally selected as czar, starting the rule of the house of Romanov which would last until 1917.
The Peasant Uprisings
In 1543, a law had been passed legalizing serfdom and ensuring that the peasant class were trapped into this exploitative system: this had been one of the major causes of the runaway peasant movement which had later transformed itself into the Cossacks.
This legal situation was confirmed in 1649, with a new law, which then led to an even greater number of runaway peasants joining the freer Cossack settlements in the south of the country. By 1670, the first great peasant revolt had taken place along the lower Volga, Dnieper and Don Rivers against the cruel feudal system which had been imposed by the Russian nobility.
The uprising was suppressed by government troops: but no reforms were introduced, and a long running social conflict between landowners and peasants was created which would eventually be capitalized upon by the Communists.
Territorial Expansion
The Russian state continued however to expand: in 1654, the Cossacks who had settled in the Ukraine overthrew the Poles who were still occupying the area and were incorporated into the Russian state. This led to a Russian-Polish War which ran from 1654 to 1657, which was won by Russia, resulting in the regaining of the old Russian cities of Smolensk and Kiev, both of which had been lost during the Polish invasion of 1611.
The period from 1682 to 1762, was marked by the continued expansion of Russia, starting with the modernization of the state under Peter the Great.
Peter the Great
The accession of Peter I to the czardom in 1682, marked the beginning of a period during which Russia became a major European power. He changed the face of Russia through a series of decrees to adopt Western European culture and science: to a large degree he was successful, and much of Russia was transformed in this way.
Peter also launched a successful war against the Swedes in what became known as the Great Northern War which ran from 1700 to 1721, at the end of which large parts of the Baltic were seized from the Swedes.
In 1703, Peter began construction of a new capital city on territory seized from the Swedes: the city was eventually to be known as Saint Petersburg (or in the 20th century, Leningrad). In 1714, the seat of government was formally moved to St. Petersburg, away from Moscow.
Peter III
After Peter the Great's death, the Russian throne passed through the hands of a number of incompetents, often placed on the throne as a result of intrigues and conspiracies. Finally Elizabeth Petrovna, the youngest daughter of Peter the Great, ascended to the throne: under her rule from 1741 to 1762, another war with Sweden (1741-1743) saw a part of Finland being added to the Russian territory.
Russia also joined with Austria and France in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) against Prussia. It was Elizabeth's successor and nephew, Peter III, who saved the Prussian king Frederick the Great's bacon by withdrawing from the conflict at a crucial point when Prussia was about to be crushed. Peter III was an admirer of Frederick and concluded a pact with the Prussians virtually immediately upon his coronation.
However, the intrigues within the Russian state had not subsided: Peter was murdered in the same year he came to the throne (1762) and was succeeded by his German born wife, Catherine, who became known as Catherine the Great.
Catherine, the German born empress of Russia.
Catherine the Great
The ascension of the German born Catherine to the Russian throne marked a new period of great expansion for Russia, starting with a racial war against the Nonwhite Ottoman Empire in the south.
The first Russo-Turkish War broke out in 1768; by the time it ended in 1774, Catherine had seized the Crimea in the Black Sea from Turkish rule, giving Russia its first all year round ice free harbor which allowed for the creation of a standing Russian navy.
The next Russo-Turkish War started in 1787, and by its end in 1792, Catherine had seized all the territory west to the Dniester River. In the west, Catherine also expanded Russian territory: as a result of the partitioning of Poland Russia gained substantial portions of that country by 1795.
Catherine also recognized the potential long term problems caused by the abuses of serfdom in Russia: in 1767, she issued an outline of proposed legal and administrative reforms, particularly in regard to serfs, but they were not carried out because of the opposition of the nobility - a move which would dramatically affect Russian and then world history in time to come.
A Cossack rebellion in 1774, persuaded Catherine herself that liberal reforms would only encourage rebellion: after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1798, she abandoned all attempts to reform the feudal system in Russia.
The Napoleonic Wars
The internal affairs of Russia then were forced to take a back seat by the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. In 1805, Russia joined Britain, Austria, and Sweden in the Third Coalition against Napoleon I, but after French armies beat the Prussians at the Battle of Jena in October 1806 and defeated Russia at Friedland in June 1807, Russia did a somersault and allied itself to Napoleon with the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit.
In terms of this agreement, Russia bought the neutrality of France in Russian dealings with Sweden and Turkey: a new Russo-Turkish war had stated in 1806, and when Russia was assured that it would no longer be in conflict with France, it turned all its forces south to deal with the Nonwhite Ottomans: the war ended in 1812, with the annexation of Bessarabia from Turkey.
War with Sweden also broke out in 1808: this too ended triumphantly for Russia with the occupation of all of Finland.
In 1813, as a result of war with Iran following the Russian annexation of Georgia in 1801, Russia also acquired Dagestan and other areas.
The French Invasion
Relations with the French gradually deteriorated, and in 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia. The campaign was a disaster for the French emperor. His troops entered Moscow in September that year after losing three quarters of their starting strength of 422,000 men.
The city had however been razed by the Russians before the French got there: starved out, the French were forced to fall back in a retreat which became a rout. Exposed to hunger, cold, and constant guerrilla attacks, only some 10,000 French soldiers made it back to their jump off points.
Russia's prestige in the west grew after this victory - the first major land defeat suffered by Napoleon - and the Russian Czar, Alexander, played an important role in the 1815 Congress of Vienna which settled the territorial issues raised at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In terms of this congress, the duchy of Warsaw was added to the throne of the Czar, although in practice this did not seriously impinge on that duchy's independence.
Nicholas I
After Alexander's death in 1825, the throne passed to his youngest brother, Nicholas I. His first act was to violently suppress a revolt amongst Russian army officers - known as the Decembrists - who conspired to create a constitutional monarchy.
Nicholas then instituted a number of repressive decrees designed to crush all further potential opposition, including the creation of a secret police and the imposition of complete censorship of all publications.
However, the centuries long repression of the peasant class was now beginning to create its predictable backlash: large masses of people became understandably receptive to radical political propaganda and activists promising them freedom from the thralls of serfdom.
Amongst the Russians who suffered under Nicholas' repressive measures: (which increased in severity after the 1848 revolutions which shook Europe); was the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was exiled and sentenced to hard labor.
Territorial Acquisitions
At the same time Nicholas acquired more territory for Russia: a new war with Iran in 1826 ended two years later with the Russian acquisition of part of Armenia; and a Russian fleet joined the British and French vessels that destroyed the Turkish fleet in the Battle of Navarino on 20 October 1827.
In the resulting Russo-Turkish War of 1828, Turkey was routed by the now far more technologically advanced Russians: the 1829 Treaty of Adrianople which ended that war saw Russia acquire the Caucasus region (the first time since the age of Atilla the Hun that the original Indo-European homeland was once again in White hands) and the establishment of a Russian protectorate over the south eastern European territories of Moldavia and Walachia.
In 1830, a major Polish revolt against the Russians began: this was crushed by Russian troops in the following year.
The Crimean War
The seemingly endless list of Russian military victories and acquisitions caused great concern amongst the other European powers: this fear of a growing Russian threat was as good as confirmed by the posting of Russian troops in the Dardanelles at the mouth of the Black Sea after Russia signed an agreement with the Ottomans in 1833.
While visiting England in 1844, Czar Nicholas referred to Turkey as a "dying man" and proposed that England join with Russia in finally destroying the Ottoman Empire. The British refused, suspecting that Nicholas' real aim was the expansion of Russian influence down into the Mediterranean - a perception which was based in reality.
Britain, France and Prussia then formed an alliance which openly declared itself opposed to further Russian expansion into the south eastern parts of Europe or Asia Minor (Turkey). When Russia duly invaded the Turkish provinces along the Danube River in 1853, the alliance declared war on Russia: to Nicholas' astonishment, a combined force of French, British and Turkish troops landed in the Crimea in 1854, starting what became known as the Crimean War.
The Crimean War was marked by a number of events that became legendary:
• it was this war which gave fame to the British nurse Florence Nightingale who tended wounded soldiers day and night, carrying her famous lamp to light the way;
• also during the Crimean War the famous "Charge of the Light Brigade" took place, when a small lightly armed British detachment charged a very heavily defended Russian position, being virtually wiped out in the process; and
• it was after the Crimean War that the British first started handing out the Victoria Cross medals to British servicemen for bravery in action - named after the British queen of the time, the first Victoria Crosses were made out of smelted down Russian cannons seized in Crimea.
By September 1855, after a siege lasting several months, the Russian fortress city of Sevastopol fell to the invading forces: the scale of the defeat forced Russia to surrender. The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1856, which formally ended the war, declared the Black Sea as a neutral area and forbade the Russians from building forts or naval bases in the region.
Expansion in the East
Nicholas died in 1855, but his son and successor, Alexander II, undeterred by the set back in the West, continued his father's policy of expansion, this time switching to the Far East at the expense of the Japanese.
In 1855, the northern half of the island of Sakhalin was occupied; in 1858, the coast south to the city of Vladivostok (which was founded in 1860) was annexed. In central Asia the Russian state was extended almost to the border of India, with the annexations of Toshkent (1865), Bokhara (1866), Samarqand (1868), Khiva (1873), and Kokand (1876).
Another Russo-Turkish War
When the Franco-Prussian war saw Napoleon III beaten and deposed by the Germans, the Russians surmised that the Western European powers' will to resist further Russian aggression against the Turks would dissipate: they were correct in this assumption, as Napoleon III had been the prime mover behind the earlier clash over the ongoing Russo-Turkish wars.
When Serbia and Montenegro revolted against Turkey in 1876, Russia intervened on their behalf, sparking off the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and 1878. Although Russian territorial gains were made, they were largely negated by the dictates of the Treaty of Berlin which ended that war, in which the European powers once again imposed restrictions on Russian power in the Dardanelles.
Internal Russian Dissent
By the mid 1800s, Russia internally was a hotbed of discontent and radicalism. Centuries of despotic rule, originated by the political developmental setback suffered by the very first Asiatic invasion of Russia, combined with an intransigent nobility, combined to give Russia some of the most appalling working class living standards in the European world.
The large scale industrialization of Russia during the 19th century aggravated matters further, with the workers of the big cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg living under conditions which made even the Victorian slums of industrial England look luxurious.
Under these conditions it was little wonder that pressure for major reform started building up, and the most extreme social revolutionaries of the time, the Communists, started to attract significant support. The Russian czars responded to the growing dissent by ever increasing repression: this led to the 1881 assassination of czar Alexander II by a bomb throwing revolutionary.
Russian Jews
Since the time of the slave trading Jewish Khazar Empire, Jews in Russia had always been the subject of intense anti-Semitic sentiment and as such became one of the most alienated elements of Russian society.
Accused of all manner of crimes, mostly concentrated on financial malpractices and usurious money lending, the Jews were expelled from Russia three times, in 1727, 1738 and 1742. In 1762, Catherine the Great forbade Jews from living in Russia: still unable to get rid of them she then in 1791, limited Jews to living in an area of land to the west of the country known as the Pale of Settlement.
Tsar Alexander I expelled 20,000 Jews from the province of Vitebsk and Mohilev in 1824, and in 1891, popular anti-Jewish riots took place in Moscow which led to the expulsion of Jews from that city.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was then one of the most thoroughly anti-Jewish countries in the world: it was therefore unsurprising that an overwhelming number of Jews were active in the revolutionary anti-Czar movements: a preponderance which ironically fed the anti-Semitism of the Russian state as it found itself struggling with Communist revolutionaries who more often than not were Jews.
From this time the association of Jews with Communism was to take hold and spread over much of Europe, fed by the fact that the originator of the ideology, Karl Marx, was himself a German Jew.
The Communist revolutionaries were aided immensely by the refusal of the Russian nobility and Czar to bring about reforms to alleviate the conditions of the Russian peasants: the mass of receptive ears combined with skillful revolutionary activists propelled Russia ever further down the road to outright revolution.
Nicholas II and Rasputin
Nicholas II, eldest son of Alexander III, took the throne in 1894, destined to become the last ever Czar of Russia. His reign, with regards to his personal and public life together, was a disaster. On a personal level, Alexander III's only son, Alexis, was a hemophiliac (common amongst the royal houses of Europe, due to centuries of too close familial marriages).
In his vain attempts to cure Alexis, Nicholas and his wife Alexandra employed all manner of quacks and religious fanatics, the most important being the Siberian monk, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin. Eventually Rasputin was to achieve such a dominant role in Nicholas' affairs that he ended up almost running the Russian state, issuing orders in the absence of Nicholas: this outrageous situation was ended when Rasputin was murdered in 1916 by Russian nobles objecting to the extent of his control over Nicholas.
Russo-Japanese War
In foreign affairs, Nicholas tried to continue the expansion of Russian territory in the Far East: a venture into Manchuria led to a clash with the newly industrialized Japan in February 1904. This war went disastrously for the Russians, with the Japanese seizing the strategically vital harbor of Port Arthur on the Chinese coast from the Russians in 1904. Russia was humiliated and forced to sue for peace the next year. For Japan this was a significant victory, its first over a major White power.
January 1905: the Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg.
The Revolution of 1905
The military crisis assumed even more serious domestic proportions when a feeble attempt at social reform at a government sponsored congress in 1905 in St. Petersburg, ended with Russian police shooting down a crowd of demonstrators.
This incident, known as Bloody Sunday, resulted in hundreds of deaths and served as a signal for revolution across the well organized underground revolutionary structure in Russia's major cities. Only by 1906, had the government managed to restore some semblance of control, but by then the die had been cast, and it was only a matter of time before a revolution even more far reaching than the French Revolution, would engulf Russia.
World War I
The outbreak of World War I in 1914, put a temporary halt to the revolutionary movement: Russia, as an ally of Serbia, declared war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Russian army, crippled from the beginning by revolutionaries, poor supply lines and incompetent leadership, fared disastrously against the Germans. By the time that an armistice was declared with Germans in 1917, massive stretches of Russia, which included most of the Ukraine, had been ceded to the Germans.
Abdication
Domestically the situation reached a crisis point. Finally in March 1917, Nicholas abdicated and the country fell into a period of anarchy culminated by the Communist Revolution of October that year. The abdication of Nicholas marks the formal end of the Russian Empire: the Communist revolution and its consequences for world history are the subject of a following chapter.
Racial Overview
When the Russian Empire was at its greatest height, just prior to the First World War, it encompassed 22 million square kilometers (8.5 million square miles) of territory, fully one-sixth of the land area of the earth.
This was divided into four regions: Russia proper, comprising the easternmost part of Europe and including the Grand Duchy of Finland and most of Poland; the Caucasus; all of northern Asia, or Siberia; and Russian central Asia, divided into the regions of the Steppes, in the southwest; and western Turkistan in the southeast.
Only the first two of these regions contained majority White populations: the rest was (and still is) inhabited by Mongol racial types, all of whom settled the region after the great Hunnish invasion of Europe. The subsequent absorption of the Mongols produced the mixed race population in the vast regions of southern and eastern Russia which to the present day characterize that part of the world.
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