^ FEATURES OF THE GEOPOLITICAL POSITION IN TIME

2. 1. Features of the position of Russia

during the period of IX - XVII centuries.

The combination of favorable natural conditions, the development of crafts, trade and transport, military affairs, the establishment of stable trade routes on the territory of the East European Plain and the Black Sea region from ancient and early medieval times contributed to the emergence and development of statehood here. On the lands of the European part of Russia, Scythia, the Bosporan Kingdom, Sarmatia, Alania, the Turkic Khaganate, Great Bulgaria, the Khazar Khaganate, the Volga Bulgaria and a number of other state formations existed at different times. More detailed and more voluminous than other historians, the process of formation of the main features of the Russian people was shown by L. Gumilyov, who, following the Russian Eurasians, emphasized the radical difference between Muscovite Rus in ethical, ethnic, cultural and social terms, both from other Slavic formations, and from Kievan Rus, which remained an ordinary provincial Eastern European state without any special Eurasian geopolitical features.

The Russian state was founded in the 9th century, when the lucrative Volga trade of Khazaria attracted the attention of the Varangians, who founded a number of fortresses along the Gulf of Riga, around Ladoga and in the Volga-Oka interfluve, on the way "from the Varangians to the Greeks." In 882, the Varangian prince Oleg gathered under his command two terminal points of the Greek-Varangian route - Kholmgard (Novgorod) and Konugard (Kyiv). But at the end of the 10th century, in the heat of a dispute over control over the only group of Slavs that still paid tribute to the Khazars, the Kiev prince Svyatoslav destroyed the capital of the Khazar Khaganate in the Volga delta and opened the way to the Black Sea steppes for hostile Turkic tribes. The Pechenegs and Polovtsy, who attacked the trade caravans going along the Volga, gradually brought to naught the trade between Kiev and Tsargrad (Constantinople). The importance of Kyiv fell, and its devastation by the Tatar-Mongols in 1240 only emphasized this crisis.

The Russian state arose in a very complex region. The difficulties that awaited Russia were twofold, natural-geographical and historical-political. Nowhere, with the exception of the northern polar regions, did the country have natural boundaries that could serve as its natural boundaries and at the same time obstacles to external threats. Moreover, in the west and south, the Baltic and the Black Sea were excellent springboards for foreign aggression, while in the east the Great Steppe continued to be a source of constant military danger. In different periods, Kievan Rus faced various geopolitical tasks. During the period of centralization, the main geostrategic directions of Rus''s foreign policy were:

● Southern Byzantine with the task of achieving the most profitable trade agreement with Byzantium and at the same time to increase its political weight;

● Western European with the task of keeping the border with Hungary and Poland and wresting Galician Rus from the influence of the latter;

● Eastern European with the task of crushing the Volga Bulgaria and the Khazar Khaganate and taking possession of the Volga route to the East (Persia, the Arab Caliphate);

● North in order to hold back the onslaught of the Normans (Varangians);

● North-East for the purpose of developing new territories and controlling the peoples living there (Permian, Samoyeds).

After their first devastating raid on Rus', the Mongols began to rule the Russian lands from their capital, Saray, on the Volga. To avoid Mongol domination, the Western Russian princes entered into an alliance with Lithuania and recognized the authority of the Catholic Church. The Eastern princes, on the contrary, saw loyalty to the Mongol khans as the only way to protect the Russian lands and the Orthodox faith. The Moscow princes were able to gradually win the special favor of the Great Khan. They faithfully served him as tribute collectors, simultaneously interfering in the affairs of neighboring Russian principalities. While the wealth and political prestige of the Moscow principality increased, the Golden Horde was weakening more and more due to internal turmoil. The Moscow prince Vasily I received the great reign of Vladimir according to his father’s will, as “his fatherland”, and after that the Horde khans stopped issuing labels to any other (non-Moscow) princes. During the reign of Ivan III, dependence on the Horde (g.) was eliminated and the unification of Russian lands around Moscow was completed. After the overthrow of the Horde yoke, Russia faced the following geopolitical problems:

● Strengthening the eastern border and advancing to the Volga region, to the Urals, and then to Siberia;

● Expansion of access to the Baltic Sea (from the Treaty of Stolbovsky in 1617 - the reconquest of the lost exit to the Baltic);

● Fight against Poland and Lithuania for Western Russian lands and reunification of Ukraine and Belarus with Russia;

● Defense of the southern borders and subsequent advance to the Black Sea.

In 1480, under Ivan III, Moscow became an independent state. Ivan III laid claim to the former lands of Kievan Rus, which Lithuania received, gained control of the strategic Smolensk passage into the lands of the Commonwealth, and conquered rich merchant Novgorod with its huge colonial hiterland, providing access to the Baltic coast and Siberia.

Since the time of Ivan IV, our state has found itself in the face of three major geopolitical problems, without the solution of which the very existence of Russia turned out to be impossible. This:

● The need to provide the Russian state with free access to the Baltic. Breakthrough of the "cordon sanitaire" around Russia in a westerly direction;

● The need to have a convenient military and commercial access to the Black Sea. Breakthrough of the "cordon sanitaire" around Russia in a southerly direction;

● The need to ensure the security of the Caucasian-Central Asian strategic direction, the boundaries of which coincide with the civilizational fault between the Slavic-Orthodox and Turkic-Muslim civilizations.

The primary importance of precisely these tasks was dictated by the fact that Moscow's geopolitical opponents initially sought to lock it in the continental expanses of Eurasia, depriving it of access to the seas. Therefore, the main task of Russian geopolitics, the task set before us by nature itself, was the achievement by the Russian state of its natural borders, which made it possible to ensure the security and viability of the country.

In the first half of the 17th century, after the conquest of the Astrakhan and Kazan khanates, the colonization of Siberia began with the campaign of Yermak Timofeevich in 1584. In 1649 the Russians reached the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The Russian zone of influence in the Far East, officially recognized by the Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689, was limited to a forest belt, since its expansion in the south was held back by China and its Buryat vassals. Stanovoy Ridge became the border between Russian and Chinese zones of influence. This "leap" to Siberia, which took only 75 years, was Russia's decisive step towards the status of a great power.

^ 2. 3. External priorities of the Russian Empire.

The history of the Russian Empire is the next stage in the history of Russia. This is a three-hundred-year history of a country that has gone through a difficult historical path. Russia can rightfully be considered a great power, because there has never been such a huge, majestic country in the world that could unite the countless variety of cultures, traditions and peoples that are completely different from each other. The Russian Empire was formed on the basis of the Russian centralized state, which in 1721 Peter I declared an empire. The Russian Empire included the Baltic States, Right-Bank Ukraine, Belarus, part of Poland, Bessarabia, and the North Caucasus. Since the 19th century, the empire also included Finland, Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia and the Pamirs. The official vassals of the Russian Empire were the Bukhara and Khiva khanates. In 1914, the Uryankhai Territory was taken under the protectorate of the Russian Empire (see Appendix IV, VI).

This “Petersburg” period, when the Romanovs, beginning with Peter the Great, formally anathematized the “old way of life” and the “old faith”, turned to the West, renounced the fulfillment of the Eurasian mission proper and doomed the people to a veiled, but no less heavy “Romano-Germanic yoke” "(in the words of Prince N.S. Trubetskoy), nevertheless carried the trends laid down in Moscow. Albeit at a different level, but the connection with the cradle of national statehood has never been broken. If St. Petersburg was the embodiment of Russian "Westernism", the capital as close as possible to the West, then Moscow remained a symbol of the Eurasian, traditional beginning, embodying the heroic holy past, loyalty to the roots, the pure source of state history.

The territorial growth of Russia was perceived with caution by many European powers. These fears are embodied in a forged document " Testament of Peter the Great”, in which Peter I allegedly outlines to his successors a program to seize world domination. British Prime Minister Disraeli warned of "great, gigantic, colossal, growing Russia, sliding like a glacier towards Persia, the borders of Afghanistan and India, as against the greatest danger that the British Empire may ever face".

It is known that in Russia there was no division, typical for multinational Western empires, into a metropolis (nation state) and a colonial periphery as a donor. On the contrary, the colonial nature of the expansion of the Russian Empire contributed to the formation of the "center - province - borderland" system. As a rule, passionate people concentrated not in overseas colonies, but in the capitals and on the dynamic border of the state (frondir, "zasechnye" and other fortified lines). There was a redistribution of material and spiritual (passionate) forces from the center and provinces to the borderlands.

XVIII century. A distinctive feature of Russia in the 18th century was its high geopolitical activity. The almost continuous wars waged by Peter I in the first quarter of the century were aimed at solving the main national problem - gaining Russia the right to access the sea. The geopolitical component of Peter's reforms looked like a transition from a state of economic autarchy and socio-ethnic self-development to a state of active interaction with developed European countries, borrowing from them the highest achievements of culture (primarily in the field of science, technology, education).

The first independent foreign policy action of Peter I was an attempt to achieve Russia's access to the southern seas - the so-called. Azov passages.

The Baltic direction of Russia's foreign policy took shape. However, going to war with a military power like Sweden alone was just as unrealistic as it was with Turkey. Diplomatic sounding allowed Peter I to identify possible allies. The primary goal of the tsar in the Northern War (1700-1721) with Sweden was to seize the lands once lost by Russia in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland (the so-called Ingria) with Noteburg (Oreshok) and Narva ( Rugodiv). As a result of the war, Ingria, Karelia, Estonia, Livonia and the southern part of Finland (up to Vyborg) were annexed, Saint Petersburg.

Russia also sought to establish closer ties with Central Asia and India. However, the expedition against Khiva was destroyed by the Khan's troops, after which the Central Asian direction was abandoned for 150 years.

Under Catherine II, Russia's international influence increased even more, and its main opponents became increasingly weak. The internal crisis intensified in Poland, Sweden lost its former power and thoroughly depleted its modest resources in endless wars, the Ottoman Empire suffered from conservatism and economic stagnation. sea, Turkey also hoped to expand its possessions in the Black Sea region and the Caucasus and capture Astrakhan. The war was preceded by a complex European diplomatic game, which was waged against each other by Russia and France, political crisis in Poland. Following the war Crimean Khanate formally gained independence under the protectorate of Russia, and Turkey paid an indemnity to Russia and ceded the northern coast of the Black Sea. Russia received Greater and Lesser Kabarda, Azov, Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn, the adjacent steppe between the Dnieper and Bug.

The geopolitical competition of Russia with Lithuania and Poland begins long before the formation of the Russian Empire; back in the XIV-XV centuries, these powers captured a number of western principalities of the disintegrated Kievan Rus. By the XVIII, the Commonwealth was in decline, caused by interethnic strife and unsuccessful wars. The steadily increasing pressure on the Commonwealth from Russia and Prussia ends with three sections of 1772-1795. During the partitions, the vassal Duchy of the Commonwealth also became part of the Russian Empire. Courland and Semigallia. Russia, as a result of the divisions, includes Belarus, part of Lithuania, part of Ukraine and part of the Baltic lands.

Russia begins to play an active role in Georgia only in the reign of Catherine II, with the beginning of the Russo-Turkish wars. IN that time the king of the largest Georgian state signs Georgievsky treatise about a Russian protectorate in exchange for military protection.

Back in the second half of the 17th century, official relations were established between Russia and China, according to which the Russian Empire was recognized as subordinate (barbarian) in relation to the Celestial Empire. Between the states there were "unoccupied blank spots" (according to both Russian and Chinese historians), which were then "peacefully" annexed by the Chinese. According to the Nerchinsk Treaty, all adjacent territories and rivers flowing into the Amur are recognized as Chinese. Under this treaty, Russia lost not only the main territories of the Amur region suitable for agriculture in the Far East, but also the most convenient means of communication with its eastern lands. Such a concession can be explained by the fact that in those years Russia had a different vector - Europe. To establish relationships with her and to benefit from her culture, at that time, money was required. The economic benefits from the treaty exceeded the loss of land, the real ownership of which was not yet felt in the country.

In the Far East, Russian influence spread to Alaska, where the Russian-American Company founded small fortified settlements (Novoarkhangelsk, Sitka, Fort Ross, etc.), whose inhabitants were mainly engaged in the profitable trade of sea animals.

XIX century. At the beginning of XIX century, under Alexander I , Russia reached its highest point of development when it was an empire. The process of increasing the territory due to settlement in the east and conquests in the west continues. The Empire restored good relations with Britain and Austria. The new Anglo-French war of 1803 and the declaration of Napoleon as emperor forced Alexander to support a third coalition, the core of which was an alliance with the "sea" power, England. At least two geopolitical competitors were completely crushed with the decisive participation of Russia: Sweden and the Commonwealth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century. two geopolitical directions of Russia were clearly defined: the Middle East (struggle for strengthening its positions in Transcaucasia, the Black Sea and the Balkans) and European (Russia's participation in coalition wars against Napoleonic France).

The voluntary annexation of Georgia to Russia in 1801 caused an aggravation of Russian-Iranian relations. In 1804, Iran began military operations against Russia. The war, which turned out to be protracted, ended successfully for Russia, to which Northern Azerbaijan and Dagestan were ceded. In 1806, Ottoman Turkey, supported by France, launched a war against Russia. In 1812, as a result of the war, Bessarabia ceded to Russia and the right of merchant shipping along the entire Danube was secured. Russia also achieved the granting of internal self-government to Serbia.

At the beginning of 1808 (by this time Russia had joined the continental blockade of England), Napoleon proposed a joint campaign to India, similar to that planned under Paul I. At the same time, the issue of dividing the Ottoman Empire was discussed. Russia was promised the Danubian provinces and northern Bulgaria, France laid claim to Albania and Greece. However, the fate of Constantinople and the Black Sea straits became a stumbling block, and it was not possible to reach an agreement on this issue. Russia's accession to the "continental blockade" led to enmity with England. Almost the only ally of England on the continent remained Sweden. The threat of an attack by the Swedes and, most importantly, pressure from Napoleon forced Alexander I to declare war on Sweden (1808-1809). Russia's desire to inflict a final defeat on the old enemy and secure St. Petersburg forever was also important. After the victory, Russia forced Sweden to give up all of Finland and the Åland Islands. Thus, as a result of the war, the entire Gulf of Finland became Russian. Alexander I granted autonomy to Finland (it had not used it before), Vyborg was included in Finland.

It would be wrong to imagine that Russia's role was reduced to a policy of containing Napoleon's aggressive plans. Her own foreign policy attitudes at that time were of a similar nature. The “Greek project” and the plans for the capture of Constantinople connected with it, the creation of a kind of “Slavic empire” in the Balkans under the patronage of Russia, were not forgotten. The existence of an independent Polish state did not suit Russia at all, in connection with which the annexation of the Duchy of Warsaw to Russia became an important foreign policy goal. But in all these directions, Napoleon had his own interests, including views of Constantinople; he was not going to give up the independence of Poland and hoped to use the alliance with Russia primarily to fight England. Thus, France and Russia became rivals in the struggle for world domination. In early 1811, in response to the deterioration of Russian-French relations, Napoleon annexed Oldenburg, whose sovereign was Alexander's brother-in-law, and in June 1812 invaded Russia. The Russian campaign of 1812 (in the Western name) received the name Patriotic in Russia. At the Congress of Vienna, Alexander received most of the Duchy of Warsaw as the constitutional Kingdom of Poland.

In 1821 Greek patriots revolted against Turkey. The support that Russia gave them led to a new Russo-Turkish war. It proceeded successfully for Russia, which received the mouth of the Danube, territories along the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, and also increased its influence in Moldavia and Wallachia. The capture of Mingrelia and Imeretia led in 1804-1813 to a new war with Iran, which brought Russia a large part of Eastern Transcaucasia along the Kura and Araks rivers, as well as the right to strengthen its Caspian fleet. A little later, Iran denounced the peace treaty, but was again defeated and also lost the Khanate of Nakhichevan and Persian Armenia, centered in Erivan. Although formally the annexation of the Caucasus ended, the war with the highlanders of Chechnya and Dagestan continued for another 30 years. In 1877, after a new defeat of Turkey, Russia received its last conquests in Transcaucasia - the cities of Kars, Ardagan and Batum.

The policy of the Holy Alliance, pursued with such stubbornness by the Russian government, led to the fact that the “gendarme of Europe”, as Russia was dubbed, hated the entire civilized world, not only liberal Great Britain or France, but even very reactionary Prussia and Austria. Meanwhile, the UK stepped up its diplomatic efforts, seeking to seize the favorable moment to finally oust Russia from the Balkans and the Middle East. The so-called Eastern Question escalated again. Russian influence in Europe, which reached its apogee in 1848, after the suppression of revolutions in Hungary and Romania, declined sharply after the Crimean War (1854-1856). The dispute with France and Turkey over control of the holy places in Jerusalem was accompanied by the demands of Nicholas I for guarantees not only for the Orthodox Church, but for the entire Orthodox population of Turkey. Nikolay hoped for a peaceful outcome of the dispute and did not expect an outbreak of Russophobic sentiments in France and Britain. The West sought to put an end to our domination of the Black Sea and to the possibility of our fleet passing through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to the Mediterranean. For the first time in Russian history, the geographic factor worked against Russia. She hardly repelled numerous blows even from the Far East coast. What geopolitical goals did the anti-Russian bloc of powers set for itself? There are two documents, one is ours, the other is English. Their comparison allows us to fully understand the goals of the all-European campaign against Russia. The first document is Nicholas's manifesto of April 11, 1854 declaring war on England and France: “Finally, discarding all pretense, England and France announced that our disagreement with Turkey was a secondary matter in their eyes; but that their common goal is to weaken Russia, tear away part of its Regions from it and bring down our Fatherland from the degree of power to which it was raised by the Most High Right Hand ... " The second document is a letter from longtime British Prime Minister Henry Palmerston to the English politician John Russell. So, Palmerston sketched out, as he said, "the beautiful ideal of war." “The Åland Islands and Finland are returned to Sweden. Part of the German provinces of Russia in the Baltic is ceded to Prussia. The independent Kingdom of Poland is restored as a barrier between Germany and Russia. Moldavia and Wallachia and the mouth of the Danube are transferred to Austria ... Crimea, Circassia and Georgia are torn out of Russia and transferred to Turkey, and Circassia is either independent or associated with the Sultan, as with a suzerain. It is easy to understand that what was at stake was the dismemberment of historical Russia and its “reorganization” on principles completely alien to us. For example, the ancient Russian lands on the shores of the Baltic Sea were declared "German", and the Crimea, where for centuries there was a nest of the Crimean Tatars, who devastated the entire south of Russia with their raids, was intended to be handed over again to the Turks. By "Circassia" the British understood the eastern coast of the Black Sea approximately from Anapa to Sukhumi. The war, which ended in Russia's defeat, entailed the cession of Bessarabia, the neutralization of the Black Sea, and Russian guarantees of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire. However, the West was dissatisfied with the outcome of the war.

Among the main reasons for the rapid expansion of the possessions of the Russian Empire in Central Asia in the second half of the 19th century were the occupation of the “natural borders” of Russia, the reconciliation of civil strife and the cessation of “robber raids” that caused disturbances on border lines and trade routes, the desire to civilize the backward Asian peoples, and to join them to the blessings of world civilization. The further advance of the Russians into the desert and semi-desert regions between the Caspian and the Aral began in the 1820s. In 1853, the Ak-Mechet fortress on the Syr Darya was captured, along which a chain of forts was built. Verny (Alma-Ata) was founded in the east. Russia's next step was to attack the Kokand and Khiva khanates and the Emirate of Bukhara, with which they already had trade ties. The Turkestan campaigns, as it were, completed the task of Russia, which first stopped the expansion of nomads into Europe, and with the completion of colonization, finally pacified the eastern lands. The confrontation between the Russian and British empires for control of India and Central Asia in the 19th century received the name "Great Game" in history. Another of its active participants was China, while other states were only exchange pieces in this battle. In 1881, the Turkmen capital Geok-Tepe was captured by Russia. This step, together with the capture of Merv, caused concern in Britain, and she insisted on a joint delimitation of the Russian-Afghan border with Russia. As a result, a long but very narrow strip of Afghan territory remained between Russia and British India, called the Zulfikara (Vakhsh) pass. The establishment of control over the high-mountainous Pamirs in 1895 completed the expansion of the Russians in a southerly direction.

In 1850 and 1854 the cities of Khabarovsk and Nikolaevsk were founded on the Amur. Russia annexed the northern bank of the Amur and laid claim to the Ussuri basin, while China ceded both of these territories to it. Vladivostok, founded in the same year, has become a symbol of Russian power in the Pacific. In 1852 - 1853, the Russians occupied northern Sakhalin and ruled the island jointly with Japan until 1875, when, in exchange for the recognition of Japanese sovereignty over the Kuriles, all of Sakhalin went to Russia. At the end of the 19th century, in connection with the beginning of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the peasant colonization of Siberia and the ambitious plans of the Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte ( 1849 - 1915) on economic penetration into China, Russia's interest in the Far East increased. Under the Russian-Chinese treaty of 1896, Russia gained control over the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), which significantly shortened the route to Vladivostok. In 1899, Russia acquired in a 25-year concession the Liao-Dun Peninsula with Port Arthur, its first ice-free port in the Pacific Ocean and a railway with access to the CER in Harbin, founded by Russians and then becoming the largest city in Asia with a Russian population. Since 1808, the capital of Russian America has been Novoarkhangelsk. In fact, the management of the American territories is carried out Russian-American company with headquarters in Irkutsk. The southernmost point in America where Russian colonists settled was Fort Ross, 80 km north of San Francisco in California. Spanish and then Mexican colonists prevented further advance to the south. In 1816, a protectorate was established over Hawaii, but a year later the company left the island due to the aggressive actions of American entrepreneurs and sailors, whose side was also taken by the local royal government. Hudson's Bay Companies. Since Russia has developed a relationship of acute geopolitical rivalry, and sometimes open hostility with british empire, the border required constant care and protection in the event of a military clash between the two great powers. In 1867, Alaska was sold to the United States for $7.2 million. This sale, made at 0.0004 cents per square meter, is the cheapest land sale of all time. Nevertheless, the US Senate expressed doubts about the advisability of such a onerous acquisition, especially in a situation where the country had just ended Civil War. The expediency of acquiring Alaska became apparent thirty years later, when the Klondike was discovered gold.

So, we can assume that the Russian expansion was a search for access to warm ports, but it can also be said that there was a need for the empire to reach strategic frontiers in order to control all of Eurasia. By the end of the 19th century, the two largest empires in the world, British and Russian, had created a mutually acceptable system for dividing spheres of influence in Asia, although trying to avoid direct confrontation, but nevertheless exerting a strong indirect influence on each other. This mutual deterrence is now called the Victorian Cold War. It should be noted that most of the Russian conquests were remote, poorly accessible and economically unattractive territories. In fact, Russia seized what others did not claim. Where there was a sharp colonial rivalry, Russia's chances would not be regarded very high. But be that as it may, by the beginning of the 20th century, in the west, Russia owned Poland and Finland, in the south the Lesser Caucasus and Pamir separated its territory from Turkey, Persia and British India, in the east it bordered China along the Amur and Ussuri with possessions in Manchuria , and in the north - with the Arctic Ocean.

XX century. The main directions of Russian geopolitics were formed long before the accession to the throne of Nicholas II. In the European direction, Nicholas inherited from Alexander III the Franco-Russian alliance, which Alexander considered the cornerstone of the security system in Europe. In the first decade of the reign of Nicholas II, although Russia did not depart from the alliance with France, but, largely under the influence of the personal views of the emperor, began to draw closer to Germany. With the latter, Russia had no territorial or other disputes, and the emperors of Russia and Germany were cousins. Germany acted during this period as the main troublemaker in Europe. Having seriously decided to take part in the redistribution of the world, Germany began to build a huge fleet, comparable in power to the British. In London, this caused almost a panic. Great Britain assessed the extent of the danger and decided to get out of the "brilliant isolation" that has already become traditional for British diplomacy. The southern direction (the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and the Straits), which was a priority under Alexander III, receded into the background under Nicholas II. The "status quo" in the south and southwest gave Russia the opportunity to actually curtail the efforts of Russian diplomacy in this direction for 10 years and shift all efforts to the third - the Far East, recognized as the main one. The beginning of Russia's active intervention in the affairs of the Far East is associated with the events of the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895. This war was caused by the desire of Japan, which claimed the status of a regional superpower, to establish a protectorate over Korea, which was under Chinese control. China was completely defeated in 1895 and recognized the independence of Korea (which, of course, fell under the Japanese protectorate), ceded to Japan the Kwantung Peninsula with Port Arthur, Taiwan and paid a huge indemnity. Russia faced a dilemma - whether to agree with Japan on the division of spheres of influence in Northern China, or to counteract any attempts to penetrate Japanese influence on the mainland. The Foreign Ministry insisted on a cautious line with regard to Japan and believed that the main thing was not to harm Russian-Japanese relations. However, Witte considered it necessary to play the role of China's defender and in return to extort a number of concessions from him. Seeing Russia's intractability, and realizing that delay would only lead to the final loss of positions in Korea, Japan, pushed by Great Britain and, in part, the United States, made a choice in favor of war. For Japan, it was fundamentally important to seize dominance at sea for the unhindered landing of its troops on the mainland. Therefore, the fighting began with a sudden attack by the Japanese fleet on the Pacific squadron of Port Arthur. The Russo-Japanese War (1904 - 1095) was unsuccessful for Russia, costing her the loss of southern Sakhalin and all Chinese concessions. This defeat, which seemed unexpected and accidental to many, actually meant something much more - the end of Russian territorial expansion and the beginning of the reduction of the territory of the empire.

The First World War, which broke out in August 1914, meant such a test of strength that the empire could no longer withstand. Although her military successes alternated with setbacks, Russia remained loyal to the anti-German coalition and by its struggle weakened the German onslaught on the western front. Russia's military goals were the annexation of East Prussia and the reunification of ethnic Poland under the Russian scepter. The entry of Turkey into the war on the side of the Middle Powers made it possible for Russia to demand the annexation of Constantinople and the straits, with which Britain and France, despite their traditional policy, were forced to agree.

Analyzing the strategic expediency of Russia's war in a bloc with England against Germany, Russian geopoliticians studied in detail the experience of their Western colleagues (the works of Ratzel, Kjellen, Mahan, and others). They were well aware of the strategy of the Anglo-Saxons: not to allow the predominance of any power on the European continent. Russian geostrategists were aware of the anaconda rings policy. The “directive” of the British General Staff was also known, according to which three-quarters of the entire burden of the war on land against Germany was assigned to Russia. As then correctly noted A.E. Vandam, “As soon as our Pacific tragedy was over, as with the speed of a conjurer, putting on a mask of friendliness and friendliness, England immediately grabbed our arm and dragged us from Portsmouth to Algeziras, so that, starting from this point, by common efforts to push Germany out of the Atlantic ocean and gradually throw it to the east, into the sphere of interests of Russia". Military tension was one of the causes of the February Revolution of 1917. After the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, the Provisional Government confirmed its allied obligations within the framework of the new concept without annexations and indemnities. But political and military problems multiplied, and Prime Minister A.F. Kerensky's attempt to continue the war became one of the main reasons for the October coup.

The First World War radically changed the geopolitical balance of power. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Turkish empires collapsed, formerly powerful political centers. On the ruins of these mighty states, several small states appeared, which the authors of the Versailles system (Entente) believed to include in their sphere of influence. The war, which was accompanied by large territorial and human losses and economic degradation for the Russian Empire, caused a general crisis of power in Russia, which led to a revolution, the abolition of the monarchy and the temporary collapse of Russian statehood. The latter led to a series of coups, the intensification of separatism in a number of territories, the Civil War and outside intervention. The period ended with the reformatting of the empire into the Soviet Union, the expulsion of the interventionists, the gradual international recognition of the USSR and the renegotiation of international treaties, taking into account new realities.

One of the most important conditions for the development of modern Russia is its historical past, in particular the historical and geographical features of the formation of the country. For a long time of the country's existence, the name, ethnic composition, occupied territory, the main geopolitical vectors of development and the state structure have repeatedly changed. As a result, several periods of the historical and geographical formation of Russia can be distinguished.

The first period - the formation and development of the ancient Russian state of Kievan Rus (IX-12th century). This state developed along the trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, which was the easternmost “link” between the states of Baltic, or Northern, Europe (Sweden, etc.) and Mediterranean, or Southern, Europe (Byzantium, etc.). Accordingly, it had two main centers: Kyiv, through which the main trade with Byzantium went, and Novgorod, which was the main center for relations with the northern European countries. Naturally, the main ties (not only economic, but also cultural, political, etc.) of Kievan Rus were directed to Europe, of which it was an integral part. But the territorial development of the state proceeded in the northern and eastern directions, since there were territories inhabited by small and peaceful Finno-Ugric peoples (Muroma, Merya, Chud, etc.). At that time, relatively densely populated territories of European states (Poland, Hungary, etc.) were already located in the West, and in the southeast - steppe territories inhabited by warlike nomadic peoples (Pechenegs, Polovtsy, etc.), against whom it was necessary to build defensive lines on the border of steppes and forest-steppes.

In the XII century. it was to the northeast of Kievan Rus that the main economic center of the state moved (the cities of Suzdal, Ryazan, Yaroslavl, Rostov, Vladimir, etc.), tied to a new important trade route between the countries of Europe and Asia, laid along the Volga with tributaries and further along the Caspian Sea . In 1147, the city of Moscow was mentioned in this territory for the first time in chronicles. By the end of the period, the territory of the state was about 2.5 million km 2.

The second period is the disintegration of Kievan Rus into separate principalities and the Mongol-Tatar conquest (XIII-XV centuries). Already in the XII century. Kievan Rus began to disintegrate into separate specific principalities that were at enmity with each other. The main (capital) of them was originally considered Kiev, then Vladimir-Suzdal, but this was only formal supremacy. In practice, specific princes, as a rule, did not obey the main (great) princes, and, if possible, tried to capture the capitals (Kiev or Vladimir) and declare themselves on this basis the grand princes of all Russia. A special situation developed in Novgorod and nearby Pskov, where not principalities, but “veche republics” were formed, where all important issues were resolved by the wealthiest merchants, but with the formal consent of the majority of citizens, who spoke at a general meeting (veche).

The development of new territories during this period was possible only in the northern direction. Russian settlers moved here, quickly reaching the shores of the White and then the Barents Seas. Over time, people who settled on the coast of these seas became the basis for the formation of a special Russian sub-ethnos - Pomors. The territory of all Russian lands by the end of the period was about 2 million km 2.

The third period is the formation and development of the Russian centralized state (XVI-XVII centuries). Already from the XIV century. The Moscow principality began to play a special role among other Russian lands. Due to its geographical location (in the center of the most populated Volga-Oka interfluve) and outstanding rulers (Ivan Kalita and others), it was this principality that gradually became the main one in economic, political and religious relations among others subordinate to the Golden Horde state created by the Mongol-Tatars.

By the middle of the XVI century. The Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan IV (the Terrible), who later assumed the title of Tsar of All Rus', united under his dominion all the Russian principalities that had previously been subordinate to the Mongol-Tatars, and began a further offensive against the remnants of the Golden Horde. In 1552, after a long war, he annexed the Kazan Khanate to the Moscow State, and in 1556, the Astrakhan Khanate. This led to the inclusion in the Russian state of territories inhabited by representatives of other ethnic groups and religions (Tatars, Maris, Bashkirs, etc.), which dramatically changed the ethnic and confessional composition of the population of a mono-ethnic and Orthodox country before that. Although individual Tatar princes, together with their subjects, transferred to the service of the Moscow principality even before that (Yusupovs, Karamzins, etc.).

After that, Ivan IV tried to expand the territory of the state to the west, attacking the weak by that time German religious knightly orders in the Baltic states (Livonsky and others). But as a result of the unleashed Livonian War, the lands of the orders went to Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian state of the Commonwealth, and the country lost access to the Finnish Sea in the Baltic Gulf. The main reason for the defeats is that during the long Mongol-Tatar domination, the Russian state lost cultural ties with Europe. Therefore, the Russian army turned out to be weakly armed from a technical point of view, while it was the perfection of technology that decided the outcome of wars in Europe at that time.

After the defeats in the west, the development vector of the Russian state headed east and south. In 1586 the cities of Tyumen (the first Russian city in Siberia), Voronezh (the largest Russian city in the Chernozem region), Samara (the first Russian city in the Volga region), Ufa (the first Russian city in the Southern Urals) were founded. The advance to the south into the steppe regions was carried out with the help of zasechny lines (lines of prisons connected by rows of fallen trees), under the protection of which the agricultural development of the most fertile black earth territories took place from nomadic raids. In the east, by 1639, Russian settlers (Cossacks) reached the coast of the Pacific Ocean (Sea of ​​Okhotsk), having built in 1646 the prison of Okhotsk. The Cossacks moved along the rivers of the taiga zone, building prisons in the most advantageous places for control over the surrounding territories (Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk, Turukhansk, etc.). The main stimulus for their movement was the preparation of furs - the main product of Russian export to Europe at that time. Furs were harvested both by the settlers themselves and by local residents, who gave it to the Cossacks in the form of tribute (yasak). At the same time, in general (with the exception of some cases), the annexation of Siberia took place peacefully. By the end of the period, the area of ​​the state reached 7 million km2.

The fourth period is the formation of the Russian Empire (XVIII - early XIX century). Already from the middle of the XVII century. the vector of Russian geopolitics again began to unfold in a westerly direction. In 1654, by the decision of the Pereyaslav Rada, the Left-Bank Ukraine (the territory along the Dnieper and to the east of it) united with Russia, which, as a result of the military actions of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, left the subordination of the Commonwealth.

But especially great efforts to recognize Russia as a European state were made by Peter I. At the beginning of the 18th century. As a result of the many years of the Northern War with Sweden, Russia gained access to the Baltic Sea, taking possession of the mouth of the Neva and the territories of modern Estonia and Latvia. In 1712, St. Petersburg, founded on the coast of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, became the capital of Russia, which greatly facilitated Russia's ties with European countries. In 1721 Russia proclaimed itself an empire. In the second half of the 18th century, after three partitions of the Commonwealth, the lands of Lithuania, Belarus and Right-Bank Ukraine became part of Russia. In the same period, as a result of victories over the Ottoman Empire, the coast of the Black and Azov Seas (Novorossiya) became part of the state. At the beginning of the XIX century. there was an accession to the Russian Empire of Finland, part of Poland and the territory between the rivers Dniester and Prut (Bessarabia). By the end of the period, the area of ​​the Russian Empire exceeded 16 million km2.

The fifth period is the development and collapse of the Russian Empire (mid-19th - early 20th centuries). Further territorial expansion in the western direction became more and more difficult, as it met with the resistance of the developed European states. Therefore, gradually the vector of Russian geopolitics again became southern, southeastern and eastern. In 1800, at the request of the Georgian kings, Georgia became part of the Russian Empire. The territory of Armenia also peacefully became part of Russia, since Christian Armenians were threatened with the complete annihilation of attacks from the neighboring Ottoman Empire and Persia. At the beginning of the XIX century. As a result of the war with Persia (Iran), the territory of modern Azerbaijan was included in Russia. The most difficult thing in the Caucasus turned out to be to annex the lands of the North Caucasian peoples, who resisted joining the Russian Empire for more than 50 years. Finally, the mountainous regions of the North Caucasus became part of Russia only at the end of the 19th century.

The main vector of the expansion of the territorial possessions of the state in the XIX century. became Central Asian. Ever since the 18th century. the process of entry into Russia of the Kazakh tribes, united in the Senior, Middle and Small zhuzes, which at that time did not have a single state, began. First, the territory of the Younger Zhuz (Western and Northern Kazakhstan), then the Middle (Central Kazakhstan) and finally the Senior Zhuz (South Kazakhstan) was annexed. The main Russian center on the territory of Kazakhstan was the Vernaya fortress founded in 1854 (later - the city of Alma-Ata). In the presence of separate local conflicts in general, the Kazakhs voluntarily became part of Russia.

The accession of Central Asia: the Bukhara, Khiva khanates and other Central Asian lands to Russia - took place at the end of the 19th century. and already had the character of a conquest. The numerous local population did not want to recognize the new government, and resisted the newcomers of other faiths. An exception is the peaceful entry of the Kirghiz into Russia. As a result, the borders of the Russian Empire in this region were expanded to the borders of Persia and Afghanistan.

The third vector of the country's expansion during this period is the eastern one. First, at the beginning of the XVIII century. the territories of Alaska, located on the North American continent, were annexed. In the second half of the XIX century. The Russian Empire annexed the lands of the Amur and Primorye, taking advantage of the weakness of China, weakened by civil strife and defeats from the British and French. Prior to this, the Chinese Empire objected to the annexation of these territories to Russia, although it did not develop them itself. Thus, in order to avoid a new rejection in the future, these lands needed to be settled and developed. But the military, economic and demographic potential of the country was no longer enough to develop all Russian lands. And in 1867, Russia had to sell Alaska to the United States, which was the first major territorial loss of the Russian Empire. The reduction of the area of ​​the state began, which reached 24 million km 2.

A new confirmation of the weakness of the state was the defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, after which Russia lost South Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and was forced to stop further territorial expansion in China. The final disintegration of the Russian Empire came in 1917, when the hardships of the hardest external war developed with internal contradictions that led to revolutions and civil war. Independence treaties were signed with Finland and Poland. In fact, the territories occupied by German and Romanian troops, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, Bessarabia, were separated from the state. In the rest of the territory, centralized state administration was violated.

The sixth period is Soviet (1917-1991). At the end of 1917, the formation of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was proclaimed in most of the territory of the Russian Empire, the capital of which was moved to Moscow. Later, as a result of the military successes of the Soviet Red Army, Soviet socialist republics were proclaimed in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Transcaucasia. In 1922, these four republics united into a single state - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In the 1920s, administrative reforms were carried out in the USSR, as a result of which the republics of Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Tajik separated from the RSFSR, and the Transcaucasian Republic was divided into Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan.

During the Second World War and following its results (1939-1947), the USSR first included Bessarabia (on the territory of which the Moldavian SSR was formed), the Baltic states (Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR), Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, as well as southeastern part of Finland (Vyborg and environs), and then Tuva. After the war, the USSR included South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, the Kaliningrad region and the northeastern part of Finland (Pechenga) - into the RSFSR, as well as Transcarpathia - into the Ukrainian SSR. After that, there were only changes in the borders between individual union republics, the most significant of which was the transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to Ukraine in 1954. At the end of the period, the area of ​​the state amounted to 22.4 million km2.

The seventh period is the modern development of the country (the post-Soviet period, starting from 1992). At the end of 1991, the USSR disintegrated into 15 newly independent states, the largest of which was the Russian Federation. Moreover, the territory and borders of the country actually returned to the turn of the XVII-XVIII centuries. But this confirms the fact that modern Russia is not an empire that forcibly subjugated many surrounding territories, but a historically formed polyethnic and polyconfessional state that has prospects for its further socio-economic and cultural development.

The area of ​​modern Russia is about 17.1 million km2. At the same time, initially many neighboring states had territorial claims against the Russian Federation, the presence of which in itself speaks of the instability and illegality of the inclusion of certain territories in the country. The most serious were the claims from China and Japan, which could not be resolved during the Soviet era. At the same time, disagreements with China over the past 10 years have been completely

settled. And today the entire Russian-Chinese border is confirmed by interstate agreements and delimited - for the first time in several centuries of political relations between Russia and China. Differences between Russia and Japan over the southern Kuril Islands remain unresolved, which hinders the development of economic, social and other ties between our countries. The claims of the newly independent states were quite different. During the existence of the USSR, the borders between the RSFSR and other republics were purely administrative in nature. More than 85% of the borders were not demarcated. Even in the documented periods of the country's development, these borders changed repeatedly in one direction or another and often without observing the necessary legal formalities. Thus, the claims of Estonia and Latvia to part of the territories of the Leningrad and Pskov regions are substantiated by agreements of the 1920s. But before that, Estonia and Latvia as independent states never existed. And also in the XII century. the territories of modern Estonia and Latvia were subordinate to the Russian principalities. From a historical point of view, this allows Russia to claim all the territories of Estonia and Latvia.

Since the end of the XVIII century. Western and Northern Kazakhstan was part of the Russian state. Until the end of the 1920s Kazakhstan and Central Asia were part of the RSFSR. Naturally, under such conditions, Russia has more historical grounds for annexing part of the territory of Central Asia than Kazakhstan for annexing part of the territory of Russia. Moreover, in the northern part of Kazakhstan, the majority of the population is made up of Russians and other peoples close to them in culture, and not Kazakhs.

The situation is similar with the borders in the Caucasus, where they often changed depending on specific historical conditions. As a result, today the population of some parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan (Abkhazia, etc.) wants to join Russia, while these states, in turn, make territorial claims against the Russian Federation and support the separatists on the territory of our country.

Conclusion

Thus, the economic and geographical position of Russia is characterized, first of all, by its position between the two centers of modern world development - Western Europe and the rapidly growing countries of Asia - Japan, China, South Korea. Being, as it were, a land bridge between them, Russia at the previous stages of its development more often divided than connected Western and Eastern civilizations.

TOPIC 3. NATURAL RESOURCE POTENTIAL OF RUSSIA, ITS COMPOSITION, ASSESSMENT AND USE

Introduction

Mankind has always developed in close interaction with nature, from which it emerged and of which it is a part. Nature, acting as a geographical basis, environment and resource for the development of human society, is not a passive participant in this interaction. Creating opportunities and conditions for its development, at certain stages, it also puts visible restrictions on one or another direction of society's activity. Therefore, different stages of human development are determined by the different nature of its relationship with nature, and the transition from one stage to another is largely associated with emerging natural restrictions.

Main part

The formation of a single centralized state required the organization and introduction of a unified management system for its individual territories, or the establishment of administrative unification (uniformity). It cannot be said that this process was carried out as if from scratch. Russia had historically established territories with an already established system of governance. Therefore, the existing local control system was not subjected to breaking without good reason.

The official office work of the 17th century, the most complete and consistent for its time, divided the territory of the Russian state into parts (regions), then called "cities". When assigning certain territories to the "city", the historical-geographical principle was affirmed. Such administrative-territorial units as Ryazan, Seversky, Zamoskovny, Perm and other "cities" are well known.

The lower link of the division were counties, volosts and camps. From the 13th century, a county was recognized as a set of volosts that gravitated towards any center. As a rule, the city (that is, the city-point, in contrast to the above-mentioned city-region) acted as the administrative center of the county. The counties were subdivided into volosts and camps. The volost organization arose, as is believed, from the peasant community. The center of the volost was, as a rule, a village (a large rural settlement), uniting several villages. In some cases, the camp supplanted the volost division.

Stan - the place of residence of officials of the feudal administration, where tribute was collected and the court was carried out over the surrounding population. The establishment of such camps, according to a legend recorded in the 11th century, dates back to the reign of Princess Olga (mid-10th century). Initially, representatives of the feudal authorities appeared at the camps periodically, in time for the payment of duties by the population. In the XIV-XV centuries, the camp was also called the territory under the jurisdiction of these representatives of the princely power, and the camp turned into an administrative-territorial unit. Stans as territorial units existed in Russia until the beginning of the 20th century.

One way or another, but by the beginning of the 18th century, the most established unit of a cumbersome and unstable administrative-territorial structure was the county. For the purposes of recruiting, the country was divided into ranks. Later, the old system of division ceased to meet the new needs. The new provincial structure served as the administrative basis for streamlining recruiting.

In 1708, Peter I established eight provinces, which also solved the problems of taxation and police-bureaucratic administration. These were rather large formations (for example, the Urals and all of Siberia were part of one province - Siberian), and their management turned out to be inconvenient and ineffective. At the same time, the old, lower county division of provinces was preserved, which made it necessary to look for and create an intermediate link - provinces.

Thus, in the first quarter of the 18th century, the country was divided into eight provinces: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Arkhangelsk, Smolensk, Kazan, Azov and Siberia. At the head of the provinces were governors who were in charge of the troops and administration of subordinate territories. Each province occupied a vast territory, and therefore, was divided into provinces. There were 50 of them. A regiment of soldiers was stationed in each province, which made it possible to quickly send troops to suppress popular movements. Provinces, in turn, were divided into counties. Counties - on volosts and camps.

To ensure the preservation of the power of the nobility and landlords and to strengthen the tax pressure, it was necessary to bring the military-police and fiscal apparatus as close as possible to the tax-paying population. This goal was achieved by "crushing" the provinces and counties, the number of which almost doubled. As the empire grew territorially, the number of provinces (and, accordingly, counties) increased. By 1917, there were 78 of them. At the same time, the "Catherine" administrative-territorial division was in its own way normative: a territory with a population of 300-400 thousand souls was considered optimal for the formation of a province, and with a population of 20-30 thousand male souls - for a county.

Of course, such a division, in essence, had nothing to do with the economy, natural and historical originality, or the national composition of the population.

The administrative-territorial delimitation of the "united and indivisible" Russia was carried out in such a way that the territories of compact national settlement were fragmented. Thus, the territory of Georgia was divided between four provinces, Belarus and Tataria - between five provinces. Thus, along with the former functions, the administrative-territorial division began to perform new - "anti-autonomous" functions, clearly counteracting the separatist and national liberation movements.

The administrative network of tsarist Russia was poorly linked to the processes of the territorial division of labor, to the historical and natural conditions of the vast country, and, by and large, served the cause of implementing the imperial principle of "divide and rule."

Great Russia as a state and as a nation has been formed for centuries, albeit with interruptions, on the basis of a multinational community of people as part of a single state. The nature of the Russian state in modern conditions should be enriched by great historical experience, which, as the real practice of federal construction shows, is priceless. For the authorities and society in the new historical conditions, it is necessary to learn how to rationally and effectively manage the multinational potential of Russian society so that every person, regardless of nationality, feels protected and secured in his rights in the Russian Federation. This is what the history of Russia teaches us.

By the beginning of the 19th century, Russia was a huge continental country that occupied the vast territory of Eastern Europe, Northern Asia (Siberia and the Far East) and part of North America (Alaska). By the 60s of the XIX century, its territory increased from 16 to 18 million square meters. km. due to the accession of Finland, the Kingdom of Poland, Bessarabia, the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan, the Amur Region and Primorye.

The European part of Russia by the beginning of the 19th century administratively consisted of 41 provinces and two regions (Tauride and the Don Army Region). Subsequently, the number of provinces and regions increased both due to the annexation of new territories and the administrative transformation of the former ones. By the middle of the XIV century, Russia consisted of more than 50 provinces and regions.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, in the context of the aggravation of national relations in Russia, the issue of its structure was discussed in the State Duma, many publications appeared on the problems of autonomy and federation. With some differences in argumentation, in general, the idea of ​​transition to a federal form of government and the creation of regional and national autonomies within its framework prevailed.

Culturally, Rus' was the heir of Byzantium, from where Orthodoxy came to Rus' and with it the ideas and methods of ruling the Byzantine semi-eastern rigidly centralized statehood were inherited.

The stability of the Russian Empire for a number of years was maintained precisely thanks to such a variety of legal, state administrative forms (unions and protectorates, the special status of the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Kingdom of Poland, the general government, vicegerency, province, region, township, separately organized administratively management of the Cossack settlement).

In 1821-1825, two political programs of revolutionary transformations in Russia were created - "Russian Truth" by P.I. Pestel and the Constitution Nikita Muraviev. The Decembrist projects for the political and social reorganization of Russia were based on the principles of "natural law" developed by the thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment - Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, Holbach, whose works the authors of the Decembrist constitutions were well acquainted with. By "natural law" was meant: inviolability of the individual, freedom of speech and conscience, equality of all before the law, non-recognition of class differences, guarantees for the protection of private property, and in political terms - the introduction of a representative form of government with the separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial. When developing his projects, P.I. Pestel and N. Muravyov relied on the constitutional experience of other European and American states.

The Russian Empire was a form of territorial organization of a large geopolitical space, ensuring peace and harmony between peoples and nationalities. In the course of centuries of development in Russia, large territorial communities (regions) have developed, many of which had a special political and socio-economic appearance. Such regional self-identification was, as a rule, supra-ethnic. character and was determined not by nationality, but by territorial affiliation. The ideas of the separation of powers in Russian scientific thought in the 19th-20th centuries were outlined in the works of M.M. Speransky, M.M. Kovalevsky, A.I. Elistratova, B.N. Chicherina, M.A. Bakunin and others.

A.I. Herzen and N.G. Chernyshevsky were also supporters of the federal structure. The Free Democratic Federation was seen by them as an alternative to European statehood and bureaucratic centralization.

Autocratic integrity and centrifugal factors, elements of asymmetry in public administration, community traditions, the experience of zemstvo urban self-government were the basis on which, starting from the 19th century. formulated the ideas of Russian federalism.

Disputes about the historical roots of Russian federalism are not uncommon today. Sometimes they are seen already in the process of unification of principalities, lands, kingdoms and khanates in distant centuries, when the Russian state was taking shape. This process went in different ways, including voluntary alliances and saving accessions, but not excluding conquest campaigns. Over time, Russia has become a state, welded together not only by the common historical path of peoples, but also by common interests - economic, social, cultural, political. However, Russia was created and developed as a centralized unitary state. The stronger the tsarist power, the clearer the ideas of a united and indivisible Russia took state forms.

Federalism in the official circles of tsarist Russia was never supported or recognized. Of course, the country's governance system could not but reflect the peculiarities of the situation in a number of regions. This system was by no means as primitive as it has often been portrayed in the recent past. Elements of autonomy could be found in Finland and Poland.

The situation that had developed on the territory of tsarist Russia, however, required radical solutions: the central government had to fight for its survival, and the strengthening of separatism and nationalism led to the fact that all new regions fell away from the former "one and indivisible". Poland and Finland finally withdrew from Russia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia acquired state independence, the possibility of separation of Ukraine and Belarus became real, not to mention Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Under these conditions, the slogans of federalism became salutary for the preservation of a large state.

Lecture, abstract. Russian Empire by the beginning of the 19th century, territory, population, socio-economic development of the country. - concept and types. Classification, essence and features. 2018-2019.

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1. Russian Empire by the beginning of the 19th century, territory, population, socio-economic development of the country.
2. Decomposition and crisis of the feudal-serf system in Russia in the first half of the 19th century.
3. Industrial Revolution in Russia
4. Paul I: the main directions and results of domestic and foreign policy.
5. Palace coup on March 11, 1801 and its features.
6. Liberal period of the reign of Alexander I
7. The project of state reforms M.M. Speransky.
8. Domestic policy of Russia in 1801-1825.
9. Decembrist movement
10. Socio-political thought in Russia in the second quarter of the 19th century: conservative and liberal trends.
11. Revolutionary social thought of "Nikolaev" Russia. Slavophiles and Westernizers
12. Socio-political life of Russia in the second quarter of the 19th century in the assessments of domestic and foreign historiography.
13. The main directions and results of Russia's foreign policy in the first quarter of the 19th century.
14. Patriotic War of 1812: cause, course, results, historiography.
15. Caucasian problem in Russian politics of the 19th century.
16. Crimean War 1853-1856
17. "Nikolaev Russia": features of internal political development.
18. Foreign policy of Nicholas I: Eastern and European direction.
19. Peasant question in Russia in the first half of the 19th century.
20. The abolition of serfdom in Russia
20.1 Results and consequences of the abolition of serfdom
21. Zemstvo and city self-government reforms in Russia and their results
22. Judicial reform: preparation, ideas, results.
23. Military reforms of the 70s of the 19th century in Russia.
24. Peasant reform of 1861 in domestic and foreign historiography.
25. Socio-economic development of the Russian empire in the post-reform period.
26. Socio-political movement in the post-reform period.
27. Domestic policy of the Russian Empire in 1881-1894. Alexander III and his assessments in historiography.
28. Foreign policy of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878.
29. Foreign policy of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. Central Asian and Far Eastern regions.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire included the Baltic States, Belarus, most of Ukraine, the wall strip, including the Black Sea and Crimea, the mountainous regions of the North Caucasus, the northern part of Kazakhstan, the entire vast expanse of Siberia and the entire polar zone of the Far North.
At the beginning of the XIX century. The territory of Russia was 16 million km2. During the first half of the XIX century. Russia included Finland (1809), the Kingdom of Poland (1815), Bessarabia (1812), almost all of Transcaucasia (1801-1829), the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus (from the mouth of the Kuban River to Poti - 1829).
In the 60s. The Ussuri Territory (Primorye) was assigned to Russia, the process of incorporation into Russia of most of the Kazakh lands, which began in the 30s 18th century By 1864, the mountainous regions of the North Caucasus were finally conquered.
In the mid 70's - early 80's. a significant part of Central Asia became part of the territory of the Russian Empire, and a protectorate was established over the rest of its territory. In 1875, Japan recognized Russia's rights to Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands were transferred to Japan. In 1878, small lands in Transcaucasia were annexed to Russia. Russia's only territorial loss was the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, together with the Aleutian Islands (1.5 million km2), as a result of which it "left" the American continent.
In the 19th century the process of formation of the territory of the Russian Empire was completed and the geopolitical balance of its borders was achieved. By the end of the XIX century. its territory was 22.4 million km2. (The territory of the European part of Russia remained unchanged compared to the middle of the century, while the territory of the Asian part increased to 18 million km2.)
The Russian Empire included lands with an amazing variety of landscape and climate. Only in the temperate zone, there were 12 climatic regions. Natural-climatic and physical-geographical conditions, the presence of river basins and waterways, mountains, forests and steppe spaces influenced the settlement of the population, determined the organization of the economy and lifestyle.
In the European part of the country and in southern Siberia, where more than 90% of the population lived, the conditions for farming were much worse than in the countries of Western Europe. The warm period during which agricultural work was carried out was shorter (4.5-5.5 months versus 8-9 months), severe frosts were not uncommon in winter, which had a bad effect on winter crops. Precipitation was one and a half to two times less. In Russia, droughts and spring frosts often occurred, which almost never happened in the West. The average annual precipitation in Russia was about 450 mm, in France and Germany - 800, Great Britain - 900, in the USA - 1000 mm. As a result, the natural yield of biomass from one site in Russia was two times less. Natural conditions were better in the newly developed regions of the steppe zone, Novorossia, Ciscaucasia and even in Siberia, where virgin forest-steppe areas were plowed up or deforestation was carried out.
Poland, which received a constitution in 1815, lost its internal autonomy after the suppression of the national liberation uprisings of 1830-1831 and 1863-1864.
The main administrative-territorial units of Russia before the reforms of 60-70 years. 19th century there were provinces and counties (in Ukraine and Belarus - povets). In the first half of the XIX century. There were 48 provinces in Russia. On average, there were 10-12 counties per province. Each county consisted of two camps headed by police officers. Part of the newly annexed territories on the outskirts of the empire was divided into regions. The regional division also spread to the territory of some Cossack troops. The number of regions was constantly changing, and some of the regions were transformed into provinces.
Some groups of provinces were united into governor-generals and governorships. In the European part of Russia, three Baltic provinces (Estland, Livonia, Courland), Lithuanian (Vilna, Kovno and Grodno) provinces with a center in Vilna and three Right-Bank Ukraine (Kiev, Podolsk and Volyn) with a center in Kiev were united into governor-generalships. The governor-generals of Siberia in 1822 were divided into two - East Siberian with the center in Irkutsk and West Siberian with the center in Tobolsk. The governors exercised power in the Kingdom of Poland (from 1815 to 1874) and in the Caucasus (from 1844 to 1883). In total, in the first half of the XIX century. there were 7 governor-generals (5 on the outskirts and 2 in the capital - St. Petersburg and Moscow) and 2 governorships.
Since 1801, the governors-general were subordinate to the Minister of the Interior. From the second half of the XIX century. it was widely practiced to appoint military governors instead of ordinary civilian governors, to whom, in addition to the local administration and the police, military institutions and troops stationed on the territory of the province were subordinate.
In Siberia, the management of non-Russian peoples was carried out on the basis of the “Charter on Foreigners” (1822), developed by M.M. Speransky. This legislation took into account the peculiarities of the social structure of local peoples. They enjoyed the right to govern and judge according to their customs, their elected tribal elders and ancestors, and the general courts had jurisdiction only for grave crimes.
At the beginning of the XIX century. a number of principalities in the western part of Transcaucasia had a kind of autonomy, where former feudal rulers - princes ruled under the supervision of commandants from Russian officers. In 1816, Tiflis and Kutaisi provinces were formed on the territory of Georgia.
In the middle of the XIX century. The entire Russian Empire consisted of 69 provinces. After the reforms of the 60-70s. basically the old administrative-territorial division continued to exist. By the beginning of the XX century. in Russia there were 78 provinces, 18 regions, 4 townships, 10 governor-generals (Moscow and 9 on the outskirts of the country). In 1882, the West Siberian Governor General was abolished, and the East Siberian in 1887 was renamed Irkutsk, from which in 1894 the Amur Governor General was separated, consisting of the Transbaikal, Primorsky and Amur regions and Sakhalin Island. The status of governor-generals remained with the capital provinces - St. Petersburg and Moscow. After the abolition of the position of viceroy in the Kingdom of Poland (1874), the Warsaw General Government was created, which included 10 Polish provinces.
On the territory of Central Asia included in Russia, the Steppe (with the center in Omsk) and the Turkestan Governor-General (with the center in Verny) were created. The latter in 1886 was transformed into the Turkestan region. The protectorates of Russia were the Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara. They retained internal autonomy, but did not have the right to pursue an independent foreign policy.
In the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Muslim clergy used great real power, which, guided in their life by Sharia, preserved traditional forms of government, elected elders (aksakals), etc.
Population The population of the entire Russian Empire At the end of the 18th century. was 36 million people (1795), and at the beginning of the XIX century. - 41 million people (1811). In the future, until the end of the century, it constantly grew. In 1826, the number of inhabitants of the empire was 53 million, and by 1856 it had increased to 71.6 million people. This amounted to almost 25% of the population of all of Europe, where by the mid-50s. there were about 275 million inhabitants.
By 1897, the population of Russia reached 128.2 million people (in European Russia - 105.5 million, including in Poland - 9.5 million and in Finland - 2.6 million people). This was more than in England, Germany and France (without the colonies of these countries) combined and one and a half times more than in the United States. Over the entire century, the proportion of the population of Russia to the total population of the whole world increased by 2.5% (from 5.3 to 7.8).
The increase in the population of Russia throughout the century was only partially due to the annexation of new territories. The main reason for the demographic growth was the high birth rate - 1.5 times higher than in Western Europe. As a result, despite the rather high mortality, the natural increase in the population of the empire was very significant. In absolute terms, this increase in the first half of the century ranged from 400 to 800 thousand people annually (average 1% per year), and by the end of the century - 1.6% per year. Average life expectancy in the first half of the XIX century. was 27.3 years, and at the end of the century - 33.0 years. Low life expectancy rates were due to high infant mortality and periodic epidemics.
At the beginning of the century, the regions of the central agricultural and industrial provinces were the most densely populated. In 1800, the population density in these areas was about 8 people per 1 km2. Compared to Western Europe, where at that time the population density was 40-49 people per 1 km2, the Central part of European Russia was "sparsely populated". Beyond the Ural Range, the population density did not exceed 1 person per 1 km2, and many areas of Eastern Siberia and the Far East were generally deserted.
Already in the first half of the XIX century. the outflow of the population from the central regions of Russia to the Lower Volga region and Novorossia began. In the second half of the century (60-90s), along with them, Ciscaucasia became the arena of colonization. As a result, the population growth rate in the provinces located here became much higher than in the central ones. So, over the course of a century, the population in the Yaroslavl province increased by 17%, in Vladimir and Kaluga - by 30%, in Kostroma, Tver, Smolensk, Pskov and even in the black earth Tula provinces - hardly by 50-60%, and in Astrakhan - by 175%, Ufa - 120%, Samara - 100%, Kherson - 700%, Bessarabia - 900%, Tauride - 400%, Yekaterinoslav - 350%, etc. Among the provinces of European Russia, only the capital provinces stood out with high population growth rates. In the Moscow province during this time, the population increased by 150%, and in St. Petersburg by as much as 500%.
Despite a significant outflow of population to the southern and southeastern provinces, the center of European Russia and by the end of the 19th century. remained the most populous. Ukraine and Belarus caught up with him. The population density in all these regions ranged from 55 to 83 people per 1 km2. In general, the uneven distribution of the population throughout the country and at the end of the century was very significant.
The northern part of European Russia remained sparsely populated, while the Asian part of the country was still almost deserted. In the vast expanses beyond the Urals in 1897, only 22.7 million people lived - 17.7% of the population of the Russian Empire (5.8 million of them in Siberia). Only since the late 1990s. Siberia and the Steppe Territory (Northern Kazakhstan), as well as partially Turkestan, became the main areas of resettlement.
The vast majority of Russians lived in rural areas. At the beginning of the century - 93.5%, in the middle - 92.0%, and at the end - 87.5%. An important characteristic of the demographic process has become the ever-accelerating process of outstripping growth of the urban population. For the first half of the XIX century. the urban population increased from 2.8 million to 5.7 million people, i.e. more than doubled (while the total population grew by 75%). In the second half of the XIX century. the entire population grew by 52.1%, the rural population by 50%, and the urban population by 100.6%. The absolute number of the urban population increased to 12 million people and amounted to 13.3% of the total population of Russia. For comparison, the proportion of the urban population at that time in England was 72%, in France 37.4%, in Germany 48.5%, in Italy 25%. These data indicate a low level of urban processes in Russia at the end of the 19th century.
A territorial-administrative structure and a system of cities was formed - metropolitan, provincial, county and so-called provincial (not the center of a province or county) - which existed throughout the 19th century. In 1825 there were 496, in the 60s. - 595 cities. Cities according to the number of inhabitants were divided into small (up to 10 thousand people), medium (10-50 thousand) and large (over 50 thousand). The middle city was the most common throughout the century. With the quantitative predominance of small towns, the number of towns with a population of over 50 thousand people increased. In the middle of the XIX century. 462 thousand people lived in Moscow and 540 thousand people lived in St. Petersburg. According to the 1897 census, 865 cities and 1,600 urban-type settlements were registered in the empire. In cities with a population of over 100 thousand inhabitants (there were 17 of them after the census), 40% of the townspeople lived. The population of Moscow was 1,038,591 and that of St. Petersburg was 1,264,920. At the same time, many cities were large villages, most of whose inhabitants were engaged in agriculture on the lands allotted to the cities.
Ethnic The ethnic composition of Russia's population was extremely diverse and confessional. It was inhabited by more than 200 peoples and ethnic groups. The multi-ethnic state composition of the nation-state was formed as a result of the complex irony of the process, which cannot be unequivocally reduced to "voluntary reunification" or "forced accession". A number of peoples ended up as part of Russia due to geographical proximity, common economic interests, and long-standing cultural ties. For other peoples involved in ethnic and religious conflicts, this path was the only chance for salvation. At the same time, part of the territory became part of Russia as a result of conquests or agreements with other countries.
The peoples of Russia had a different past. Some used to have their own statehood, others for quite a long time were part of other states and cultural and historical regions, and others were at the pre-state stage. They belonged to different races and language families, differed from each other in religion, national psychology, cultural traditions, forms of management. The ethno-confessional factor, as well as the geographical one, largely determined the originality of the Royian history. The most numerous peoples were Russians (Great Russians), Ukrainians (Little Russians) and Belarusians. Until 1917, the common name for these three peoples was the term "Russians". According to information collected in 1870, the “tribal composition of the population” (as demographers then put it) in European Russia was as follows: Russians - 72.5%, Finns - 6.6%, Poles - 6.3%, Lithuanians - 3.9%, Jews - 3.4%, Tatars - 1.9%, Bashkirs - 1.5%, other nationalities - 0.45%.
At the end of the XIX century. (according to the 1897 census) more than 200 nationalities lived in Russia. Great Russians were 55.4 million people (47.8%), Little Russians - 22.0 million (19%), Belarusians - 5.9 million (6.1%). Together they made up the majority of the population - 83.3 million people (72.9%), i.e. their demographic situation in the last third of the 19th century, despite the annexation of new territories, practically did not change. Of the Slavs, Poles, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Czechs lived in Russia. In second place were the Turkic peoples: Kazakhs (4 million people) and Tatars (3.7 million). The Jewish diaspora was numerous - 5.8 million (of which 2 million lived in Poland). Six peoples had a population of 1.0 to 1.4 million people each: Latvians, Germans, Moldovans, Armenians, Mordovians, Estonians. 12 peoples with more than 1 million people made up the bulk of the population of the empire (90%).
In addition, a large number of small nationalities lived in Russia, numbering only a few thousand or even several hundred people. Most of these peoples settled in Siberia and the Caucasus. Living in remote closed areas, family marriages, and the lack of medical assistance did not contribute to an increase in their numbers, but these ethnic groups did not die out either.
Ethnic diversity was complemented by confessional differences. Christianity in the Russian Empire was represented by Orthodoxy (including its Old Believer interpretations), Uniatism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and numerous sects. Part of the population professed Islam, Judaism, Buddhism (Lamaism) and other religions. According to the data collected in 1870 (for an earlier period there are no data from religion), 70.8% of Orthodox, 8.9% of Catholics, 8.7% of Muslims, 5.2% of Protestants, 3.2% of Jews lived in the country, 1.4% of Old Believers, 0.7% of "idolaters", 0.3% of Uniates, 0.3% of Armenians - Gregorians.
The Orthodox majority of the population - "Russians" - was characterized by maximum contact with representatives of other faiths, which was of great importance in the practice of large-scale migration movements and the peaceful colonization of new territories.
The Orthodox Church had state status and enjoyed all kinds of support from the state. With regard to other confessions, in the policy of the state and the Orthodox Church, religious tolerance (the law on religious tolerance was adopted only in 1905) was combined with infringement of the rights of individual religions or religious groups.
Sects - Khlysts, eunuchs, Dukhobors, Molokans, Baptists - were subjected to persecution. At the beginning of the XIX century. these sects were given the opportunity to move from the inner provinces to the outskirts of the empire. Until 1905, the rights of the Old Believers were limited. Starting from 1804, special rules determined the rights of persons of the Jewish faith (“Pale of Settlement”, etc.). After the Polish uprising in 1863, the Theological College was created to manage the Catholic Church, and most of the Catholic monasteries were closed, the unification (“reverse union” of 1876) of the Uniate and Orthodox churches was carried out.
By the end of the XIX century. (1897) 87.1 million people professed Orthodoxy (76% of the population), Catholics accounted for 1.5 million people (1.2%), Protestants 2.4 million (2.0%). Persons of non-Christian religions were officially called "foreigners". These included 13.9 million Muslims (11.9%), 3.6 million Jews (3.1%). The rest professed Buddhism, shamanism, Confucianism, Old Believers, etc.
The multinational and multi-confessional population of the Russian Empire was united by a common historical destinies, ethnic, cultural and economic ties. The constant movements of the population, which intensified in the last decades of the 19th century, led to a wide territorial mixing of ethnic groups, to the blurring of ethnic boundaries, and to numerous interethnic marriages. The policy of the Russian Empire in the national question was also variegated and varied, just as the population of the empire was variegated and diverse. But the main goal of politics was always the same - the exclusion of political separatism and the establishment of state unity throughout the empire.