RUSSIA. 



695 



pire. An instruction, issued in May to the 

 officials of the newly-formed educational dis- 

 trict of Orenburg, describes with much detail 

 the policy of the Government in this matter. 

 The above district comprises the provinces of 

 Perm, Ufa, and Orenburg, whose inhabitants 

 are mostly of Asiatic origin, there being up- 

 ward of two millions of Bashkirs, Kirgheez, 

 Mordvins, Tchouvaschcs, Tcheremisses, etc., 

 nearly all either Mohammedans or pagans. 

 The Government directs that by means of the 

 schools " the various parts of the empire shall 

 be so unified that all may be penetrated with 

 the same ideas and feelings toward the state, 

 and that the principles hostile to the Russian 

 Empire, which are based on the blindness of 

 ignorance or on obstinate isolation, may totally 

 disappear." The chief object of the schools in 

 districts inhabited by non-Russian nationalities 

 is "to prevent those who are not Russians 

 from giving themselves up to the dangerous 

 isolation of narrow national tendencies and to 

 religious intolerance; in a word, to convert an 

 inaccessible and reserved mass of people into 

 citizens of the Russian state, with a warm 

 sympathy for its interests." There is to be no 

 compulsion as to the abandonment of religious 

 doctrines or national peculiarities; but the 

 Government considers it has an " undoubted 

 right " to require a knowledge of Russian from 

 all its subjects; "Russian must become not 

 only an object of study, but a means of study." 

 The official estimate of revenue and expendi- 

 ture for the years 1875-'76 is as follows (value 

 expressed in rubles, one ruble = $0.772) : 



RECAPITULATION. 



The annexation of Khokan, which was com- 

 pleted in the early part of 1876, added 28,270 

 square miles and 800,000 inhabitants to the 

 Russian Empire. 



The Russian Government is more determined 

 than ever to spread the Russian language and 

 Russian institutions over the whole of the em- 



The public debt of Russia, on January 1, 

 1875, amounted to 2,409,579,986 rubles. This 

 sum includes advances made to railroad com- 

 panies, to cities, and other corporations, to the 

 amount of 634,489,942 rubles. Deducting this 

 amount, the real public debt would be 1,775,- 

 090,044 rubles. 



The movement of commerce in the years 

 1872 and 1873 was as follows (expressed in 

 thousands of rubles) : 



