Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/86

Rh 70 RUSSIA [ADMINISTRATION OF Of the areas given in the table, the following (298,636 square miles) are occupied by internal waters (larger lakes and estuaries) : European Russia 25,804 square miles. Poland 141 Finland 18,471 Caucasus 1,628 Siberia. 18,864 Turkestan 4,511 Kirghiz Steppes 14,888 ,. Transca-spiim region...... 465 Sea of Azuff, Caspian Sea, Lake Aral 213,874 ,. The islands included in the above statement have the following .areas (total 91,182 square miles) : n the White Sea 191 square miles. Barents Sea 88,540 Baltic Sea (Russian) 1,579 (Finnish) 2,000 Black Sea 21 Sea of Azoff 41 ., Caspian Sea 551 ,. Siberian Arctic Ocean 16,496 Pacific 81,763 labdi- The Russian empire falls into two great subdivisions, ision.s the European and the Asiatic, the latter of which, representing an aggregate of nearly 6,500,000 square miles, with a population of only 16 million inhabitants, may be considered as held by colonies. The European dominions comprise European Russia, Finland, which is in fact a separate nationality treated to some extent as an allied state, and Poland, whose very name has been erased from official documents, but which nevertheless continues to pursue its own development. The Asiatic dominions comprise the following great subdivisions : CAUCASIA (q.v.), under a separate governor-general; the Transcaspian region, which is under the governor-general of Caucasus ; the Kirghiz Steppes ; TURKESTAN (q.v.), under separate governors-general; Western Siberia and Eastern Siberia (see SIBERIA) ; and the Amur region, which last comprises also the Pacific coast region and Kamchatka (see KAMCHATKA and MARITIME PROVINCE). The administrative sub- divisions, with their populations, as estimated for 1882 for European Russia, Poland, and Caucasus, 1881 for Finland, and 1878-82 for the remainder (no regular census having been taken since 1858), are shown above in Table II. Sties. The empire contains only twelve cities with a population exceeding 100,000: St Petersburg, 929,090 (1881); Mos- cow, 753,469 (1884); Warsaw, 406,260 (1882); Odessa, 217,000(1882); Riga, 169,330 (1881); Kharkoff, 159,660 (1883); Kazan, 140,730 (1883); Kishineff, 130,000; Kieff, 127,250 (1874); Lodz, 113,146, in Poland (1884); Saratoff, 112,428 (1882); Tiflis, 104,020 (1883); and Tashkend, 100,000. According to the most recent returns Vilna, Orel, Rostoff, Astrakhan, Nikolaieff,Dunaburg,Tula, Samara, Taganrog, Kherson, Nijni-Novgorod, Berditcheff, Bobruisk, Zhitomir, Minsk, Vitebsk, Elisabetgrad, Reval, and Voronezh had from 94,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, while 61 towns more in European Russia, Finland, and Poland, and 20 in the Asiatic dominions, had from 50,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. The number of towns above 10,000 is con- siderable, but they are mostly mere administrative centres ; many villages have greater importance. Only 9,263,000 (or 9 per cent.) of the aggregate popu- lation of Russia inhabit towns, the number of which is 601 in the 50 Russian governments. The great number of the Russian towns are mere villages ; their inhabitants depend on agriculture, and the houses are mostly built of wood, only 127,000 out of about 787,000 houses in towns being built of stone. Of the 68,600,000 who in 1882 formed the rural population of European Russia the greater part were settled in 555,278 villages, almost entirely built of wood ; nearly one-seventieth of the houses are destroyed by fire yearly (164,400 out of 10,649,000 in 1882). Govern- Russia is an absolute and strongly centralized monarchy. ment The primary unit of state organization is the village com- munity, or mir. A number of such communities are united into voloste, whose peasant inhabitants elect an elder (volost- noy starshina) and a peasants' tribunal (volostnoy sud). Placed, however, under the uncontrolled rule of a state official the mirovoy posrednik and of the police, the elder of the volost and his clerk have become mere organs of the local police and tax-gatherers, while the tribunal of the volost is at the mercy both of influential land-proprietors and of the wealthier peasants or merchants. The system of local self-government is continued in the elective district and provincial assemblies the zemstvo on the one hand, and on the other in the elective justices of the peace (miro- voy sudia), whose periodical gatherings (mirovoy syezd) are courts of appeal against the decisions of the individual justices. But neither of these institutions and least of all the zemstvo is capable of acquiring the necessary inde- pendence. The zemstvos one for each district, and an- other for the province consist of a representative assembly (zeinskoye sobraniye) and an executive (zemskaya itprava) nominated by the former. The sobraniye consists of three classes of delegates : the landed proprietors (all nobles possessing more than 590 acres, and delegates from the remainder, along with delegates from the clergy in their capacity of landed proprietors) ; representatives of the mer- chants, artisans, and urban population ; and representatives of the peasants, indirectly elected, matters being usually so adjusted that this class is less numerous than the aggre- gate of the other two. In theory the zemstvos have large powers in relation to the incidence of taxation, as well as in matters affecting education, public health, roads, &c. But in reality they are for the most part compelled to limit themselves to the adjustment of the state taxation, which is so high that new taxes for education, sanitary purposes, and so on, must necessarily be very limited. Moreover, the decisions of the zemstvos are jealously con- trolled by the representative of the central Government, the governor, and promptly annulled whenever they manifest a different spirit from that prevailing for the time at the court. Disobedience is punished by dissolution, sometimes by administrative exile. These circumstances have helped to eliminate from the zemstvos the better elements which at first entered into their composition. The greater number of them are inspired now with the same red-tapeism as the ministerial chancelleries, or are refuges for proprietors in search of a salary. Still, in several provinces a good deal of most useful work has been done, especially educational, by those zemstvos in which the peasants are in a majority or the proprietors are inspired with a more liberal spirit ; while several other zemstvos have recently made extensive and most valuable inquiries into the condition of agriculture, industry, fec. Since 1870 the municipalities have had institutions like those of the zemstvos. All owners of houses, and tax-paying merchants, artisans, and workmen, are enrolled on lists in a descending order according to their assessed wealth. The total valuation is then divided into three equal parts, each of which elects an equal number of repre- sentatives to the duma. The executive is in the hands of an elective mayor and an uprava which consists of several members elected by the duma. Both are, in fact, function- aries under the governor, and the municipal institutions have no real independent life. 1 The organs of the central government in the provinces are the nryadniks (a kind of gardes-champetres) in the villages, the stanovoys and ispravniks (chiefs of the police) in the districts, and the governors (a kind of Napoleonic prefect) in each government all invested, the uryadniks i See" Golovatchoff, Ten Tears of Reforms in Russia ; The Finances of the Zemtfcos (official publication); Dityatin, Municipal Self -Government in Russia, 2 vols.; and very numerous and valuable papers in the reviews Vyeftnik Evropy, Oletchestvennyya Zapisii, Russkaya Mysl, Ac.