The effects of emigration and immigration cannot be estimated
with accuracy, because only those who cross the frontier with
passports are taken account of. The statistics of these show that there
was during the thirty-two years, 1856–88, an excess of emigration
over immigration of 1,146,052 in the case of Russians, and a surplus
of immigration of 2,304,717 foreigners. On the other hand, in the
six years, 1892–97, the excess of Russian emigration over immigration
was 207,353, as compared with an excess of foreign immigration
over emigration of only 136,740. During the years 1900–4 inclusive
the total emigrants from Russia numbered 2,358,539, of whom
1,144,246 were Russians; while the immigrants numbered 2,333,053,
of whom 1,432,057 were foreigners. It is also known that the
number of Russian immigrants into the United States in 1891–1902
was 742,869, as compared with 313,469 in 1873–90, or a grand total
since 1873 of 1,056,338. By far the greater part of these were
Jews. The emigration to Siberia varies much from year to year.
It was 26,129 in 1888, and 60,000 in 1898. During the two following
years it amounted to an average of over 160,000, but in the years
1901–3 to an average of 84,638 per annum. Altogether some
800,000 peasants are estimated to have settled in Siberia during
the period 1886–96, but during the years 1893–1905 no less than
four millions in all. There is also some emigration from central
Russia to the S. Urals, as well as to some of the steppe governments.
Within the empire a very great diversity of nationalities is
comprised, due to the amalgamation or absorption by the Slav race of a
variety of Ural-Altaic stocks, of Turko-Tatars, Turko-Mongols and
various Caucasian races. In some cases their ethnical relations have
not yet been completely determined. According to the results
obtained by the census committee of 1897, working on a linguistic
basis, the distribution of races was as given in the table oppositebelow:[1]—
Taken as a whole, only 13% of the population of Russia lived in towns in 1897, but in the years 1857–60 less than 10% was urban. In Russia proper less than 2% emigrated from the villages to the towns during the forty years ending 1897. The following table shows the urban population in the various Cities. divisions of the empire in 1897:—
| Urban Population. |
Percentage of Total. | |
| European Russia | 12,027,038 | 12·8 |
| Poland | 2,055,892 | 21·7 |
| Finland | 281,216 | 11·0 |
| Caucasia | 1,010,615 | 10·9 |
| Siberia | 473,796 | 9·3 |
| Central Asia | 936,655 | 12·0 |
| Russian Empire | 16,785,212 | 13·0 |
There were in European Russia and Poland only twelve cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in 1884; in 1900 there were sixteen, namely, St Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa, Lódz, Riga, Kiev, Kharkov, Vilna, Saratov, Kazañ, Ekaterinoslav, Rostov-on-the-Don, Astrakhan, Tula and Kishinev. In other parts of the empire there were four cities each having over 100,000 inhabitants in that year, namely, Baku, Tiflis, Tashkent and Helsingfors. While only three of these are in middle Russia (Moscow, Tula and Kazañ), eight are in S. Russia. There are thirty-four cities in European Russia and Poland, and forty in the entire empire, with from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants each. The rural population live for the most part in villages, not as a rule scattered about the country. In the inclement regions of the N. and in the N. parts of the forest zone the villages are very small. They are larger, but still small, in White Russia, Lithuania and the region of the lakes; but in the steppe governments they are very appreciably bigger, some of the Cossack stanitsas or settlements exceeding 20,000, and many of them numbering more than 10,000 inhabitants each. The houses are generally built of wood and wear a poverty-stricken aspect. Owing to the great risks from fire the villages usually cover a large area of ground, and the houses are scattered and straggling. The mortality in most towns is so great that during the last ten years of the 19th century, in a very great number of cities, the deaths exceeded the births by 1 to 4 in the thousand. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)
Government and Administration.—Russia was described in the Almanach de Gotha for 1910 as “a constitutional monarchy under an autocratic tsar.” This obvious contradiction in terms well illustrates the difficulty of denning in a single formula the system, essentially transitional and meanwhile sui generis, established in the Russian empire since October 1905. Before this date the fundamental laws of Russia described the power of the emperor as “autocratic and unlimited.” The imperial style is still “Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias”; but in the fundamental laws as remodelled between the imperial manifesto of 17/30 October and the opening of the first Duma on the 27th of April 1906, while the name and principle of autocracy was jealously preserved, the word “unlimited” vanished. Not that the régime in Russia had become in any true sense constitutional, far less parliamentary; but the “unlimited autocracy” had given place to a “self-limited autocracy,” whether permanently so limited, or only at the discretion of the autocrat, remaining a subject of heated controversy between conflicting parties in the state.[2] Provisionally, then, the Russian governmental system may perhaps be best defined—as M. Chasles suggests[3]—as “a limited monarchy under an autocratic emperor.”
At the head of the government is the emperor,[4] whose power is limited only by the provisions of the fundamental laws of the empire. Of these some are ancient and undisputed: the empire may not be partitioned, but descends entire in order of primogeniture, and by The emperor. preference to the male heir; the emperor and his consort must belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church; the emperor can wear no crown that entails residence abroad. By the manifesto of the 17/30th of October 1905 the emperor voluntarily limited his legislative power by decreeing that no measure was to become law without the consent of the Imperial Duma, a freely elected national assembly. By the law of the 20th of February 1906 the Council of the Empire was associated with the Duma as a legislative Upper House; and from this time the legislative power has been exercised normally by the emperor only in concert with the two chambers.
The Council of the Empire, or Imperial Council (Gosudarstvenniy
Sovyet), as reconstituted for this purpose, consists of 196
members, of whom 98 are nominated by the emperor,
while 98 are elective. The ministers, also nominated,
are ex officio members. Of the elected members
The Council of
the Empire.
3 are returned by the “black” clergy (the monks),
3 by the “white” clergy (seculars),[5] 18 by the corporations
of nobles, 6 by the academy of sciences and the universities,
6 by the chambers of commerce, 6 by the industrial councils,
34 by the governments having zemstvos, 16 by those having no
zemstvos, and 6 by Poland. As a legislative body the powers
of the Council are co-ordinate with those of the Duma; in
practice, however, it has seldom if ever initiated legislation.[6]
The Duma of the Empire or Imperial Duma (Gosudarstvennaya
Duma), which forms the Lower House of the Russian parliament,
consists (since the ukaz of the 2nd of June 1907)
of 442 members, elected by an exceedingly complicated
process, so manipulated as to secure an overwhelming
The Duma.
Electoral system.
preponderance for the wealthy, and especially the landed classes,
and also for the representatives of the Russian as opposed to
the subject peoples. Each province of the empire, except the
now disfranchised steppes of Central Asia,[7] returns a
certain proportion of members (fixed in each case by
law in such a way as to give a preponderance to the
Russian element), in addition to those returned by certain of
- ↑ See A. Aïtoff, Peuples et langages de la Russie (Paris, 1906), based on the report of the Russian Census Committee of 1897.
- ↑ M. Stolypin defended the ukaz of the 2nd of June 1907, which in flat contradiction of the provisions of the fundamental laws altered the electoral law without the consent of the legislature, on the ground that what the autocrat had granted the autocrat could take away. The members of the Opposition, on the other hand, quoting Art. 84 of the fundamental laws (“The empire is governed on the immutable basis of laws issued according to the established order”), argued that the emperor himself could only act within the limits of the order established by those laws. It is noteworthy that even the third Duma in its address to the throne, if it avoided the tabooed word “Constitution,” avoided also all mention of autocracy.
- ↑ Le Parlement russe, p. 151.
- ↑ Imperator is the official style. The Russian translation is Gosudar. Popularly, however, the emperor is known by his old Russian title of tsar (q.v.).
- ↑ This is the first time since Peter the Great that the clergy have been given a voice in secular affairs in Russia.
- ↑ The number of the council was formerly not fixed, and there are still honorary councillors who have no right to sit. Thus in 1910 the honorary president of the council was the grand-duke Michael Nicolaievich, the actual president M. G. Akimov. The judicial and administrative work of the old council was in 1906 assigned to separate committees.
- ↑ These returned 23 members in the first and second Dumas.
