Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/88

Rh 72 RUSSIA [EUROPEAN RUSSIA. also are those of the recently founded Moscow Society of Friends of Natural Science, the Chemico-Physical Society, and various medical, educational, and other societies. The work achieved by Russian savants, especially in biology, physiology, and chemistry, and in the sciences descriptive of the vast territory of Russia, are well known to Europe. Finance. The finances of the empire are in a most unsatisfactory condition. Although the revenue has doubled since 1856, and had reached 697,980,983 roubles (69, 798,098) x in 1883, the expenditure, which was estimated at 721,337,844 roubles the same year, is always in excess of the income. The national debt is rapidly augmented both by loans and by issues of paper money so depreciated as to be worth only about 60 to 63 per cent, of its nominal value. On January 1, 1884, no less than 1,085,000,000 paper roubles were in circulation ; and the national debt, the paper-money included, reached about 578,000,000, inclusive of the railway debt. The great defect of Russian finance is that its direct taxes are chiefly paid by the peasantry (91 per cent, of the whole), and the revenue is chiefly based on excise duties (direct taxes, 136, 105, 320 roubles ; excise duties on spirits, 250,291,380 ; duties on tobacco and sugar, 28,569,500 ; import duties, 101,053,000). Of the yearly revenue no less than 436,000,000 roubles are spent in interest and sinking fund on the debt, and for war purposes. 2 The zemstvos, which have an aggregate yearly income of about thirty million roubles, have also a yearly deficit of from three to five million roubles. The municipalities had in 1882 an income of only 40,076,748 roubles, there being only nine cities which had a budget of more than 500,000 roubles, and five above one million. Axmy. The Russian army has been completely reorganized since the Crimean War, and compulsory military service was introduced in 1874. In 1884 the strength of the army on a peace footing was 532,764 men serving with the colours, 68,786 reserve troops, 55,599 Cossacks and irregulars, 72,626 local, depot, and instruction troops, 27,468 oflBcers, 129,736 horses, and 1844 guns. On a war footing there were 986,000 in the active army, 563,373 in the reserve, 148,057 Cossacks and irregulars, 178,450 local, dep6t, and instruction troops, 41,551 oflBcers, 366,354 horses, and 3778 guns ; that is, about 1,300,000 men in field, to which number 1,000,000 untrained militia could be added in case of need. These high figures, ought, however, to be much reduced on account of the deficiencies of mobilization. The irregular troops consist of ten voiskos Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, Orenburg, Ural, West Siberia, Semiryetchensk, Trans- baikalia, and Amur. All the men of these voiskos between sixteen and forty-one years of age are bound to be ready for service in turn in time of peace, and to equip themselves at their own expense, train and artillery being provided by Government. In their twofold capacity as peasant settlers and a military force, these men have contributed much to the conquest of Asia. Since 1878 compulsory military service has been introduced in Finland. The Finnish troops (nine battalions of 4833 riflemen) must be employed, as a rule, for the defence of their own country. Navy. Notwithstanding large recent outlays, the Russian navy is by no means adapted to the exigencies of modern warfare ; much stress is therefore laid on the good organization of the torpedo flotilla. The navy consists of 358 vessels, of 196,575 tons, carrying 24,500 men and 671 guns. Only 40 of these are armoured ships, the remainder being unannoured frigates, corvettes, and cruisers, or torpedo boats (119), while a great number are mere transports and small craft. For- The extensive frontier is defended by many fortresses, chiefly on tresses, the west. Poland to the west of the Vistula remains quite unpro- tected, fortifications being only now in course of construction in the south-west ; but the Vistula is defended by the first-class fortresses of Modlin (Novogeorgievsk), Warsaw, and Ivangorod, with Brest- Litovsk in the rear. For protecting this line in rear new fortifica- tions are being erected. The space between Poland and the Diina is protected only by the citadel of Vilna and the marshes of the Pripet. The second line of fortresses has been erected on the Diina and Dnieper, Riga, Diinaburg, Vitebsk, Bobruisk, and Kieff. The south-western frontier is under the protection of the advanced works of Bendery and Akerman, while the Black Sea coast is defended by Kinburn and Otchakoff at the entrances of the Dnieper and the Bug, Sevastopol in the Crimea, batteries at Odessa and NikolaiefT, and a series of minor fortifications. Formidable defen- sive works have been erected on the Baltic at Dunamiinde, Reval, Narva, Cronstadt, Wiborg, Frederikshamn, Rohtensalm, Sveaborg, Hangb'udd, and in the Aland Islands. A great number of minor forts are scattered throughout Caucasia, Transcaucasia, and Turkestan ; but the Pacific coast has only earth-works at Vladi- vostok and Nikolaievsk. 1 Unless metallic or silver roubles are expressly mentioned, the rouble Is to be taken throughout, the present article as the paper rouble, the recent average value of which has been 2s. sterling. The metallic rouble (277-71 grains of pure silver) Is equivalent to 38-046 pence sterling; but the paper rouble has gradually declined from 94-5 per cent, of its nominal value in 1861-65 to 60 per cent, in 1882 (see below, p. 86). 2 Sbornik Stedeniy on European Russia ; Brzeski, State Debit of Ruttia, 18S4. PART II. EUROPEAN RUSSIA GEOGRAPHY. The administrative boundaries of European Russia, apart from Bound- Finland and Poland, broadly coincide on the whole with the ;ll -i es natural limits of the East-European plains, where they suddenly take, eastward of the Baltic Sea, a great extension towards the north. In the north it is bounded by the Arctic Ocean ; the islands of Nova Zembla, Kolguelf, and Vaigatch also belong to it, but the Kara Sea is reckoned to Siberia. To the cast it has the Asiatic dominions of the empire, Siberia and the Kirghiz Steppe, from both of which it is separated by the Ural Mountains, the Ural river, and the Caspian the administrative boundary, how- ever, partly extending into Asia on the Siberian slope of the Urals. To the south it has the Black Sea and Caucasia, being separated from the latter by the double valley of the two Manytches a channel which in Post- Pliocene times connected the Sea of Azof!' with the Caspian. The western boundary is purely conventional : it crosses first the peninsula of Kola from the Varanger Fiord to the northern extremity of the Gulf of Bothnia, making an arbitrary deflexion towards the west ; thence it runs to the Kurische 11 all in the southern Baltic, and thence to the mouth of the Danube, taking a great circular sweep to the west to embrace Poland, and separating Russia from Prussia, Austrian Galicia, and Roumania. Of this immense frontier line less than one-half is bordered by seas nearly all of thcni inland seas. For it is a special feature of Russia a feature which has impressed a special character on its history that she has no free outlet to the high seas except on the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean. Even the White Sea is merely a ramified gulf of that ocean. Another warmer gulf of the Arctic Ocean the Varanger Fiord separated from Russia by the uninhabitable plateaus of the peninsula of Kola, has been abandoned to Norway. The deep indentations of the Gulf of Bothnia and Finland wash the shores of Finnish territory, and it is only at the very head of the latter gulf that the Russians happen to have taken a firm foothold by erecting their capital on the marshes at the mouth of the Neva. The Gulf of Riga and the south-eastern Baltic belong also to territory which is not inhabited by Slavonians, but by Finnish stems, and by Germans. It is only very recently, within the last hundred years, that the Russians definitively took possession of the northern shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azoff. The eastern coast of the Black Sea belongs properly to Transcaucasia, a great chain of mountains separating it from Russia. But even this sea is an inland one, the only outlet of which, the Bosphorus, is in foreign hands, while the Caspian is but an immense shallow lake, bordered mostly by deserts, and possessing more importance as a link between Russia and her colonies than as a channel for intercourse with other countries. The great territory occupied by European Russia 1600 miles in Configu- length from north to south, and nearly as much from west to east ration. is on the whole a broad elevated plain, ranging between 500 and 900 feet above sea-level, deeply cut into by river-valleys, and bounded on all sides by broad hilly swellings or mountains : the lake plateaus of Finland and the Maanselka heights in the north- west ; the Baltic coast-ridge and spurs of the Carpathians in the west, with a broad depression between the two, occupied by Poland ; the Crimean and Caucasian mountains in the south ; and the broad but moderately high swelling of the Ural Mountains in the east. From a central plateau which comprises Tver, Moscow, Smolensk, and Kursk, and projects eastwards towards Samara, attaining an average height of 800 to 900 feet above the sea, the surface gently slopes in all directions to a level of from 300 to 500 feet. Then it again gently rises as it approaches the hilly tracts enclosing the great plain. This central swelling may be considered a continua- tion towards the east-north-east of the great line of upheavals of western Europe ; the heights of Finland would then appear as continuations of the Seaman plateaus, and the northern mountains of Finland as continuations of the Kjblen, while the other great line of upheaval of the old continent, which runs north-west and south-east, would bo represented in Russia by the Caucasus in the south and the Timan ridge of the Petchora basin in the north. The hilly aspects of several parts of the central plateau are not due to foldings of the strata, which for the most part appear to bo horizontal, but chiefly to the excavating action of rivers, whose valleys are deeply dug out in the plateau, especially on its borden. The round flattened summits of the Valdai plateau do not rise above 1100 feet, and they present the appearance of mountains only in consequence of the depth of the valleys the levels of the rivers which flow towards the depression of Lake 1 Yipus being only from 200 to 250 feet above the sea. The case is similar with the plateaus of Livonia, " Wendish Switzerland," and Kovno, which do not exceed 1000 feet at their 'highest points ; so also with the eastern spurs of the Baltic coast-ridge between Grodno and Minsk. The same elevation is reached by a very few flat summits of the plateau about Kursk, and farther east on the Volga about Kamyshin, where the valleys are excavated in the plateau to a depth of from 800 to 900 feet, giving quite a hilly aspect to the country. It is only in the south-west, where spurs