The Empire of the Tsars

"...in studying contemporary Russia we should forget the past? By no means: the past everywhere shows through the present. All the institutions, all the characteristics peculiar to Russia, all that makes her different from Western Europe, has deep roots which must be exposed to the light, or the troubles under which she labors will remain incomprehensible. Whatever violence the hand of a despot gifted with genius may seemingly have done to her destiny, her people were not exempted from the laws which regulate the growth of every society." - Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu

"If we look only at European Russia, from the Glacial Ocean down to the Caucasus, we ask ourselves: Does this country really belong to Europe? Are only the proportions laid out on a larger scale and is nothing changed but these? or is not rather this prodigious expanding of land sufficient to separate Russia from Western Europe?... The contrast of size alone would make out between Old Europe and Russia a difference of capital importance, but is this difference the only one? Do not other and no less important contrasts flow from this primeval contrast?" - A.L.B.

Contents: Nature, Climate, and Soil. Races and Nationality. The National Temperament and Character. History and the Elements of Civilization. The Social Hierarchy: the Towns and Urban Classes. Nobility and Tchin. The Peasant and the Emancipation. Mir, Family, and Village Communities.