476 RUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



the uprava, or administrative committee, and the mayor {golova, or "head "). The 

 latter, being intrusted with the executive, has powers superior to those of the body 

 naming him. 



The new judicial organization is considered as the most liberal of all the 

 reforms introduced since the emancipation, and in certain respects this is the case. 

 Hitherto the courts, and especially the juries, have given proof of that clemency 

 which is so characteristic of the nation. During the trials the accused are not 

 bound to incriminate themselves, and the procurator, or president, generally sums 

 up with great impartiality. Nevertheless the direct interference of the State 

 is already making itself felt, and the procedure followed in political cases has 

 been frequently modified since the first of these charges was heard in 1871. 



No definite law regulates the press, which is still mostly subject to the 

 provisional enactment of 1865. Preventive censure has been abolished in the two 

 capitals in favour of certain original works, translations, journals, and compilations, 

 authorised to appear after depositing from 3,000 to 5,000 roubles as a security for 

 their good behaviour. 



The Church. — Army and Navy. — Finance. 



The Czar is not, as is generally supposed, the spiritual head, but onlj^ the pro- 

 tector, of the Grœco-Russian Church. Of all the Czars Paul I. alone attempted to 

 assume the priestly functions, and even to say mass. But he was prevented from 

 doing so by the remark that he had been twice married. According to the Pussian 

 catechism the only head of the Church is Jesus Christ. Nor can the legislative 

 and executive departments be united in one person, the first being expressly 

 reserved to the councils, the second to the national synods and the bishops. Since 

 the time of Peter the Great the government of the Church, formerly intrusted to a 

 patriarch, has been confided toa"MostHoly Synod," appointed, however, by theCzar. 

 This assembly, presided over by the St. Pe'ersburg and Novgorod Metropolitan, is 

 composed of a few prelates, succeeding each other by rotation ; but a lay procurator, 

 sometimes a general named by the Czar, is the medium of the sovereign pleasure, 

 proposes and promotes all questions, sees to the execution of all decisions. No 

 synodal act is valid without his confirmation, and he further possesses, the right of 

 veto against all decrees of the assembly opposed to the will of the prince. Under 

 such an administration the Russian Church has been thoroughly centralized. The 

 bishops have become simple ecclesiastical prefects, proposed by the Synod — that is, 

 the imperial procurator — and named by the Emperor from a list of three candidates, 

 the first of whom is nearly always chosen. Each bishop is, moreover, assisted by 

 a diocesan consistory, whose members are appointed by the Synod. To facilitate 

 the action of the central power the Church has been divided into eparchies, or 

 bishoprics,, whose limits nearly always coincide with those of the civil govern- 

 ments. Of the sixty eparchies those of St. Petersburg-Novgorod, Kiev, and Moscow 

 alone bear the title of metropolis, nineteen that of archbishoprics. The " popes," or 

 priests, are allowed to marry but once only, and widowers mostly retire from the 



