[1721 - 1917] The Russian Empire

We begin in the year 1721. The Great Northern War is over, and an ambitious, towering figure named Peter the Great proclaims his Tsardom of Muscovy the Russian Empire. This is not merely a change of name; it is a declaration of intent. Russia, for centuries a vast, inward-looking land of onion domes and suspicion of the outside world, is to be wrenched into the modern age. Peter’s new capital, St. Petersburg, rises from the swamps of the Neva River delta, a meticulously planned city of canals and baroque palaces, a “window to the West.” Its stone embankments and European-style facades stand in stark defiance to the endless birch forests and wooden villages of Old Russia. Peter’s reforms are as brutal as they are transformative. He establishes the Table of Ranks, compelling the old nobility, the Boyars, to serve the state in the military or civil service to maintain their status. He imposes a tax on beards, literally forcing the Western look upon his courtiers. The sounds of shipyards and foundries echo where once there was only the murmur of prayer, as Peter builds a modern army and a formidable navy from scratch.

The death of the colossus in 1725 leaves a power vacuum, ushering in an age of palace coups where the throne is often seized by those with the most loyal palace guards. A succession of powerful women, often propped up by their noble lovers, rule the Empire. Peter's own wife, a former Lithuanian peasant, becomes Catherine I. His niece, Anna, rules with an iron fist. Finally, Peter’s daughter, Elizabeth, seizes power and presides over an era of incredible opulence. The court glitters with French fashion and language. The Winter Palace is expanded into the magnificent green, white, and gold edifice we know today, a structure with over 1,500 rooms. Elizabeth reportedly owned over 15,000 gowns, a testament to an imperial treasury that seemed limitless, but which was built upon the backs of millions.

Then comes another woman, a German princess named Sophie who, through sheer intelligence and ruthless ambition, would become Russia’s most famous empress: Catherine the Great. After orchestrating a coup to depose her unpopular husband, Peter III, in 1762, Catherine reigns for 34 years. She presents herself as an “Enlightened despot,” corresponding with Voltaire and Diderot, and founding the Hermitage Museum to house a growing collection of European art. She expands the empire’s borders south and west, absorbing the Crimea and large parts of Poland. Yet, for all her enlightened posturing, Catherine deepens the chasm between the Westernized elite and the vast peasant population. During her reign, the institution of serfdom reaches its zenith. Over half the population are serfs, treated as property, bought and sold with the land. This simmering injustice explodes in 1773 with the Pugachev Rebellion, a massive peasant uprising led by a Cossack who claimed to be the deposed Tsar Peter III. The revolt sweeps across the Ural and Volga regions, terrifying the nobility before it is brutally crushed. In response, Catherine tightens, rather than loosens, the chains of serfdom, cementing the autocracy’s reliance on an oppressed peasant class.

The 19th century dawns with the shadow of Napoleon Bonaparte falling across Europe. In 1812, he leads his Grande Armée, a force of over 600,000 men, into the heart of Russia. The campaign is a catastrophe. The Russian army, under Tsar Alexander I, employs a scorched-earth strategy, retreating deeper into the vastness of the country and leaving nothing for the invaders. Moscow itself is set ablaze. Defeated not by a single decisive battle but by starvation, disease, and the merciless Russian winter, Napoleon’s army disintegrates during its horrific retreat. Fewer than 100,000 soldiers straggle out of Russia. This victory elevates Tsar Alexander to the status of “savior of Europe” and makes the Russian Empire a dominant power on the world stage. But this triumph abroad masks deep tensions at home. Officers exposed to liberal ideas in Europe return with revolutionary aspirations. Their ambitions culminate in the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, a failed attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy. The new Tsar, Nicholas I, crushes the revolt and responds with a reign of rigid control defined by “Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality,” enforced by a notorious secret police, the Third Section.

Change, however, is inevitable. The Crimean War (1853-1856) reveals Russia’s backwardness, as its serf-army is defeated by the more modern forces of Britain and France. The shock of this defeat compels Nicholas’s successor, Alexander II, to enact the “Great Reforms.” The most momentous of these is the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861. On paper, 23 million people are freed. In reality, their liberation is incomplete. They are granted land, but forced to pay the state “redemption payments” for it over 49 years, tying them to village communes and economic hardship. At the same time, Russia begins to industrialize. Factories emerge in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and a monumental engineering project begins: the Trans-Siberian Railway. Stretching for over 9,000 kilometers, it is a steel artery intended to bind the immense empire together. Peasants, fleeing rural poverty, flood into the cities, finding work in squalid, dangerous factories, forming a new, volatile urban working class, the proletariat.

Alexander II, the “Tsar Liberator,” is assassinated by revolutionaries in 1881. His son, Alexander III, blames his father’s liberal reforms and embarks on a course of harsh reaction. The final act of the empire falls to his son, Nicholas II, a devoted family man wholly unsuited for the challenges of his time. His reign is plagued by crisis. A disastrous war with Japan in 1904-05 ends in a humiliating defeat, shattering the image of Russian might and sparking a revolution. On “Bloody Sunday” in January 1905, troops fire on peaceful protestors marching to the Winter Palace, killing hundreds. The massacre destroys the centuries-old bond between the Tsar and his people. A wave of strikes and uprisings forces Nicholas to grant a constitution and an elected parliament, the Duma, but he does everything in his power to limit its authority. The final blow comes in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. Initial patriotism sours as Russia suffers staggering losses, with millions killed or wounded. At home, food shortages lead to starvation, and the government, now heavily influenced by the Empress Alexandra and the mystic Grigori Rasputin, descends into chaos and disrepute. In February 1917, bread riots in the capital, now named Petrograd, escalate. When soldiers are ordered to fire on the crowds, they refuse, turning their bayonets instead on their officers and joining the revolution. On March 15, 1917, aboard a train car stuck on a siding, Tsar Nicholas II signs the instrument of abdication. After 304 years, the Romanov dynasty was over. The Russian Empire, which began with the grand ambition of Peter the Great, had collapsed into dust, leaving a power vacuum that would soon be filled by forces more radical and ruthless than the tsars had ever been.