The Russian Empire and Czarism

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV Russianisation--(Continued) Pan-Slavist or Slavophile theories.--The Pan-Slavists.--M. Pobiedonostsef and Holy Russia.--The Jewish Pale.--The Israelitish proletariat.--Crowding and Famine.--Extortions and pogromes.--The Ritual murder.--Limitations to entering the universities.--The Bund.--Finland: Svecomaniacs and Fiunomaniacs.--The constitutional regime.--Russifying enterprises.--Passive resistance and assassinations.--Bobrikof and Johnson.--Finnish prosperity and Czardom.--Active resistance.--The Armenians.--The property of the Armenian Church.--Mussulmans and Christians in the Caucasus.--The massacres of Baku. There might have been some excuse for the Russianisiug policy in Poland in the memories of old time wars and repeated insurrections which had threatened the security and the existence even of Russian communities, together with the integrity of the Russian Empire. But what pretext, what extenuating circumstances could a Russianising Czar urge in dealing with the other peoples of the annexed frontier country, the Baltics, the Finns, the Jews or the Armenians? Until 1881 the policy of toleration adopted by Alexander I had been continued by two Czars, Nicholas I and Alexander II, the one most reactionary, the other most liberal in his views. But between 1870 and 1881 Pan-German self-assertiveness alarmed St. Petersburg. From 1881 onward, during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II, it gave the dragooning and marauding bureaucracy an opportunity and an excuse to extend their profitable operations to the Baltic provinces, and later to the Jews, the Finns and finally the Armenians. Not yet has the balance sheet been made out to show the cost to Europe and humanity of the triumph of Prussian philology. Having annexed his...