In 1829, Petr Chaadeav began to write his Philosophical letters. He initiated Russia’s search for national identity. He was a major figure in the development of Russian intellectual history. The impact of the letter shook and changed the thinking of Russia. It argued that Russia was worthless and socially behind. Chaadeav was very harsh in his letter and appears to be bias. He made valid points but they are not entirely true. The evidence shows that Russia was indeed a bit imitative but they were not the only country in search for national identity. Though Chaadeav’s letter was very harsh, it gave Russia a sense of originality. Russia established their identity and is distinguished by their culture. Russia’s literature and art was big contribution to the world’s progress though they were seen to be unoriginal.
Petr Chaadeav summarized his nation’s history as “a brutal barbarism to begin with, followed by an age of gross superstition, then by a ferocious and humiliating foreign domination. ” He continued by sayong “we are alone in the world, we have given nothing to the world, we have taught it nothing. We have not added a single idea to the sum total of human ideas; we have not contributed to the progress of the human spirit. ” The Letter electrified Russian creativity: Many called Chaadeav insane, but he was very intellectual.
Chaadeav’s statement about law codes “No one has a fixed sphere of existence; there are no proper habits, no rules that govern anything ” insisted that Russia’s law codes were non-existent. This is not entirely true. As stated in the previous paragraphs, the Table of Ranks is a prime example implemented by Peter the Great. Laws made by Catherine and the “Russkaia Pravda ” are also great examples of law...
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... country in history is truly original. Every country has taken ideas from another. Whether its religion, law codes, slaves, etc.no idea truly belongs to on country.
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Historically, Russia has always been a country of perplexing dualities. The reality of Dual Russia, the separation of the official culture from that of the common people, persisted after the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. The Czarist Russia was at once modernized and backward: St. Petersburg and Moscow stood as the highly developed industrial centers of the country and two of the capitals of Europe, yet the overwhelming majority of the population were subsistent farms who lived on mir; French was the official language and the elites were highly literate, yet 82% of the populati...
In the early eighteenth-century, a letter from Peter the Great’s court was sent to Russian publishers declaring that all material must be printed with the intention to maintain “The glory of the great sovereign and his tsardom and for the general usefulness and profit of the nation” (The Cambridge History of Russia). The effects of this proclamation reverberated throughout Russia for centuries and laid the foundation on which future rulers such as Catherine the Great and later Alexander III fortified the position of the censor. The strengthening of the Russian censor, consequently, manipulated and stifled the country’s most influential wordsmiths. No Russian writer was safe from the censor, not even a master like Leo Tolstoy. Specifically,
Moss, W., 2014. A History of Russia Volume 2: Since 1855. 1st ed. London, England: Anthem Press London, pp.112-113.
Though the book has no footnotes, it was researched methodically through documents and the work of other scholars. It is very detailed and specific for such a short book. The information about the foreign policy of Russia under Catherine’s rule, and her various wars and military maneuvers, helped explain some of the issues Russian is currently undergoing today in Crimea, the Ukraine and with Turkey. The central theme of reform was also examined in depth, and given the time in which she ruled, and the size of the country, it astonishes me the undertaking Catherine had in front of her. It could take 18 months for an imperial order to reach the far eastern side of Russia, then 18 more months for a reply to get back to her at the
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While most of Europe had develop strong central governments and weakened the power of the nobles, Russia had lagged behind the times and still had serfs as late as 1861. The economic development that followed the emancipation of peasants in the rest of Europe created strong industrial and tax bases in those nations. Russian monarchs had attempted some level of reforms to address this inequality for almost a century before, and were indeed on their way to “economic maturity” (32) on par with the rest of Europe. But they overextended themselves and the crushing defeats of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and the First World War in 1917 lost them the necessary support from their subjects and created “high prices and scarcity” which were by far “the most obvious factors in the general tension”
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When Russians talk about the war of 1812 they do not mean the war in which Washington was burned by the British, but the war in which, apparently, the Russians burned Moscow. This war between the French republican empire and the Russian Tsarist Empire was as remarkable a high - spot in the history of the latter as it was a low - spot in the history of Napoleon. For Russia, it was one of those rare moments in history when almost all people, serfs and lords, merchants and bureaucrats, put aside their enmities and realized that they were all Russians. Russia, sometimes called ‘a state without a people’, seemed to become, for a few precious months, one people, and never quite forgot the experience.
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Stalin’s hunger for power and paranoia impacted the Soviet society severely, having devastating effects on the Communist Party, leaving it weak and shattering the framework of the party, the people of Russia, by stunting the growth of technology and progress through the purges of many educated civilians, as well as affecting The Red Army, a powerful military depleted of it’s force. The impact of the purges, ‘show trials’ and the Terror on Soviet society were rigorously negative. By purging all his challengers and opponents, Stalin created a blanket of fear over the whole society, and therefore, was able to stay in power, creating an empire that he could find more dependable.
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Russia had been defeated in all except the war with Turkey and its government and economy had the scars to prove it. A severe lack of food and poor living conditions amongst the peasant population led firstly to strikes and quickly escalated to violent riots. Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia with an iron hand while much of Europe was moving away from the monarchical system of rule. All lands were owned by the Tsar’s family and Nobel land lords, while the factories and industrial complexes were owned by the capitalists’. There were no unions or labour laws and the justice system had made almost all other laws in favour of the ruling elite.