40 



KTSSIA 



the had a network measuring 20,115 miles, ">it 

 of which 1166 miles are in Finland and 890 in 

 the Transcaspian region. Thi-. extensive system 

 (exclusive of tin- Finnisli and Transcaspian rail 

 ways) has cost more than 300,000,000, nine tent li- 

 of which has been supplied by the state by mean* 

 of loans. Besides paying a high interest for these 

 loans, the state has also bound itself to guarantee 

 to moat railway companies a revenue of five per 

 cent, upon the capital employed, which capital, as 

 a rule, very greatly exceeded the real expenses. 

 Thus the state pays every year to the railway com- 

 panies sums vary in- from 700,000 to 6,500,000. 

 Several lines of railway have recently IKMMI l>ouglit 

 by the state, which now owns, in Russia proper 

 and Poland, 5426 miles. A little over 40 million 

 passengers are transported every year by rail. Corn 

 is the chief item in the nearly 55 million tons of 

 goods carried every year. A long series of railwax - 

 now being laid is to reach right across Siberia (q. v. ), 

 from the Urals to the Pacific, 



Pott and Telegraph. An extensive organisation 

 of nearly 4220 stations and 38,400 post-horses 

 is maintained by the state between all the towns 

 of the empire not yet connected by rail, for 

 the conveyance of the post and passengers. The 

 total length of this ]H>st system is over 100,000 

 miles. The 5881 post-offices of the empire trans- 

 mitted in 1892 no less than 260,000,000 letters and 

 post-cards ; and in the same year 4200 telegraph- 

 offices transmitted 12,785,000 telegrams. Tim 

 length of the state telegraph lines attained at the 

 same time 88,280 miles. 



Architecture. Russian architecture is direct ly 

 descended from the Byzantine (q.v.), but modilicil 

 by native and Asiatic influences. The lirst church- 

 building tsars, such as Vladimir (981-1015), em- 

 ployed Greek architects ; but their churches were 

 mainly of wood and have disappeared. The usual 

 Russian church has a central dome, surrounded by 

 four (or more) smaller cupolas, whose form has 

 been, under Tartar influence, changed to the onion- 

 shape that appears in Mongol-Indian mosques on 

 the Ganges. In the famous cathedral of St Basil, 

 of which an illustration is given at Musrcixv, the 

 central tower is surrounded ay eight smaller ones, 

 crowned by various bizarre cupolas, and painted 

 with the most brilliant colours. This church was 

 built by Ivan the Terrible about 1554. After the 

 time of Peter the Great the native type gave way 

 to reproductions -often bad of various classical 

 models; the architecture of St Petersburg is char- 

 acterised at RENAISSANCE, Vol. VIII. p. 644. 



ilixt'iry. The Slays were not the primitive in- 

 habitants of the plains of eastern Europe; in the 

 first centuries of our era their abodes were on the 

 Danube, the Kll>e, and the south shore of the 

 Baltic Sea, and they entered what is now Ku--ia 

 from the west. 'the southern Slavonians took 

 poKsesHion of the upper Bug, Dniester, and Dnieper, 

 while the northern Slavs occupied the lake-region 

 of Pskov and Novgorod. The date of that immi- 

 gration is not known, lint it is certain that in the 

 9th century their small tribes occupied besides 

 part of what ix now Poland a territory stretchi n^ 

 north and south from lakes I'eipus and 1 1 men to the 

 mouth of the Dniester. Various Finnish tribes 

 were then living in Finland, and the basins of the 

 hwina, Pi-tchora. ami upper Volga; the space 

 between the Diina and the Vistula was inhabited 

 by the Lithuanian*; while several Finno-Turki-h 

 tribes, mostly nomads, had taken possession of the 

 southern slo|w of the central plateau : the Bulgars 

 were at Kazan; the Monlvins. the Mc-chcryaks, 

 the Tchuvashes, and the Tcheremisses on the 

 middle Volga; and the K bazars in the south'-in 

 Steppes. Finally, the Turkish stems of the 

 Polortey, the Petcbenegs, and the Turks camped 



in the Caspian Steppes to the east of the Volga. 

 Already at that time the Sla\- were agriculturi-t-. 

 and their country was dotted with mi ..... runs small 

 forts. Like all primitive inhabitants of I'.ui. .).., 

 they were organised in '-cute- the family mice 

 having been matriarchal. The land wa- held in 

 I inmoii b\ rach clan anil trilic, ami the common 

 affairs were decided at folkmotes, or assemblies of 

 the clan, the tribe, or the -land. < and 



Tacitus found the same organisation among the 

 ancient Germans. 



The territory of the eastern Slav- was the great 

 highway from Scandinavia to Greece; mid cara- 

 vans of Scandinavian merchant- followed the route 

 from Novgorod to Kiel! on their frequent jouii 

 to Constantinople. Tin- -ame mute nrai followed 

 by the Norman warriors ( Varingiiir. Vary agues, 

 \arangians), who, reinforced by Slav adventi.' 

 used to engage in the service of the Creek cmpe> 

 The Greeks used to call them KO--C- or Itusses, but 

 it remains uncertain whether the name was lior- 

 rowed from some locality in Scandinavia ( Ros, 

 Roslagen ; Ruotei Swedes), or, what seems more 

 probable if Arab ic-timon\ is taken into account, 

 from a territory on the Uniejier. It is more' than 

 probable that from a remote antiquity the Slavs 

 used to apply to leaders of such military bands for 

 protection, and the oldest Russian chronicle, known 

 a- Nestor's (it was probably compiled from older 

 chronicles and epic traditions about 1115, by the 

 Kietl' monk Sylvester), says that the folkmotes of 

 the northern Slavs, after having sent away in 859 

 the Varangians to whom they paid a tribute, sum- 

 moned again the Varangian rulers in 862 ' from 

 beyond tne sea,' 'to command and jud^e them 

 according to law.' The first historians of llu ia, 

 who used to interpret facts of a remote past accord- 

 ing to modern conceptions, were disposed to regard 

 the Varangian dukes as a sort of modern kings, and 

 spared no effort in tracing a ' Rurik dynasty ' down 

 to our own times. But it has now been proved 

 by careful research (by Professors Kostomaroff, 

 Solovieff, Sergueeviteh, Byelyaeff, Bestuzhef- 



Riumin, and many others) that the supposed kin-- 

 were simply military chiefs, to whom tne military 

 defence of the cities was entrusted, like the podesta 

 of the Italian cities in the 15th century. 



Three brothers, Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor, were 

 thus invited, according to tradi. , and they 

 settled respectively in Ladoga, i.jvlozersk, and 

 Izborsk i.e. on the l>ord<'rs of a ti rritory which 

 had to be defended against the I inn- and the 

 Lithuanians. They and their successors built new 

 forte, and took part in wars, the description of 

 which in Nestor's chronicle has all the characters 

 of an epic poem. Hurik's brother, Oleg, is said 

 to have imposed his authority upon Kiel!' and 

 Smolensk; he, as well as RuriVs son Igor, made 

 campaigns against Constantinople ; and Oleg's 

 widow, Olga, who ruled after his death, was 

 baptised in the Greek capital. Vars were waged, 

 under Svyatoslav's leadership, i linst the Khazars 

 and the Greeks. Thelln ian-. liquored Bulgaria, 

 took possession of all its fortresses, and nearly 

 captured Constantinople. The campaign (fully de- 

 sciibcd by liy/aiitine historians! ended, however, 

 in a disaster. The times of the Sunny Vladimir' 

 (980-1015) are the heroic ' epoch of early lln ian 

 history, and the feats and feasts of Vladimir and 

 his i/rujina ('war companions') have Ix-en handed 

 down through ages in legend and song ; while his 

 conversion to Christianity made him the hero of 

 the annals written by monks. Hi- ami his t/rujina 

 were baptised at Kieff in 988, and the people of 

 KiefTsoon followed him. The first half of the llth 

 century, during which Varoslav the Wise was grand 

 prince at Kieff, while hi- brothers and nephews 

 ruled at Novgorod, Polotsk, Murom, Vladimir in 



