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1 results

  • 1 - Russia as empire and periphery

  • from Part I - Empire
  • Edited by Dominic Lieven, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    17 August 2006, pp 7-26

  • Summary

    Empire is one of the most common types of polity in history. In the long term the most interesting and important empires were those linked to the spread of some great high culture or universal religion. Tsarist Russia was a worthy member of this imperial club. The three most crucial acquisitions in the imperial era were the Baltic provinces, Ukraine and Poland. The first was vital because it opened up direct trade routes to Europe, which contributed greatly to the growth of the eighteenth-century economy. By the end of the nineteenth century New Russia and the southern steppe territories were the core of Russian agriculture and of its coal and metallurgical industries: without them Russia would cease to be a great power. Expansion into Ukraine and the empty steppe was Russia's equivalent to the New Worlds conquered and colonised by the British and Spanish empires.