Russia is the largest country in the world. During the Reign of the Romanov Dynasty Imperial Russia covered over 22 million square kilometres. It comprised of a sizeable portion covering two continents, Europe and Asia.
Under the reign of Peter the Great and later his wife Catherine the Great, the Russian Empire changed geographically. Russian territory expanded and spread East to the Pacific, into Ukraine and south into Central Asia. However, controlling and governing the area was not simple and was at times problematic for the Tsars as the lengths of Russia's borders are around 40 thousand miles. Much of Russia's land is wasteland and this could be primarily due to the country's climate. In some areas particularly the North and some of the East was very hard to produce, work and live on. In some instance weather in the North reached -68 degrees. This is why primarily the population of Russia resided in the West. During the region of Alexander III and Nicholas II (1881-1914) the population of Russia rose from 40 million to 165 million. This could also be related to the location of the country within Europe. Russia's location allowed for the Tsars to be involved with industrialisation revolution in Europe. Both these Tsars allowed some modern industrialisation to occur in Russia. |
Demographics
January 1897 was the first time Imperial Russia conducted it's census, under the leadership of P.P. Semenov.
The data collected from this census determined that:
- Census registered 125.6 million inhabitants in Russian Empire, of whom 13.4% lived in cities. So mainly Russia was an agrarian country with 86% of population living in small villages.
- Literacy rate was 21.1%. Among men the rate was significantly higher than among women (29.3% and 13.1% respectively).
- By religion: Orthodox – 69.3% , Muslims – 11.1% , Roman Catholic 9.1% – and Jews – 4.2%.
- By native language – the largest language group was Russians – 44.3%, then Ukrainians – 17.8%, Poles – 6.3%, Belarusians – 4.3%, Jews – 4.0 %.
- By class – the peasantry – 77.5% , meschanins – 10.7% , foreigners – 6.6% , the Cossacks – 2.3%, noblemen ( hereditary and personal ) – 1.5% , clergy – 0 , 5%, honorary citizens (hereditary and personal ) – 0.3% , merchants – 0.2% other – 0.4%.