[Frontispiece: Peter the Great.]
A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA
BY
MARY PLATT PARMELE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1907
Copyright, 1899, 1904, 1906,
BY MARY PLATT PARMELE
PREFACE.
If this book seems to have departed from the proper ideal of historicnarrative—if it is the history of a Power, and not of a People—itis because the Russian people have had no history yet. There has beenno evolution of a Russian nation, but only of a vast governing system;and the words "Russian Empire" stand for a majestic world-power inwhich the mass of its people have no part. A splendidly embroideredrobe of Europeanism is worn over a chaotic, undeveloped mass ofsemi-barbarism. The reasons for this incongruity—the naturalobstacles with which Russia has had to contend; the strange ethnicproblems with which it has had to deal; its triumphant entry into thefamily of great nations; and the circumstances leading to thedisastrous conflict recently concluded, and the changed conditionsresulting from it—such is the story this book has tried to tell.
M. P. P.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Natural Conditions
Greek Colonies on the Black Sea
The Scythians
Ancient Traces of Slavonic Race
CHAPTER II.
Hunnish Invasion
Distribution of Races
Slavonic Religion
Primitive Political Conceptions
CHAPTER III.
The Scandinavian in Russia
Rurik
Oleg
Igor
Olga's Vengeance
Olga a Christian
Sviatoslaf
Russia the Champion of the Greek Empire in Bulgaria
Norse Dominance in Heroic Period
CHAPTER IV.
System of Appanages
Vladimir the Sinner Becomes Vladimir the Saint
Russia Forcibly Christianized
Causes Underlying Antagonism Between Greek and Latin Church
Russia Joined to the Greek Currents and Separated from the Latin
CHAPTER V.
Principalities
Headship of House of Rurik
Relation of Grand Prince to the Others
Civilizing Influences from Greek Sources
Cruelty not Indigenous with the Slavs
How and Whence it Came
Primitive Social Elements
The Drujina
End of Heroic Period
Andrew Bogoliubski
New Political Center at Suzdal
CHAPTER VI.
The Republic of Novgorod
Invasion of Baltic Provinces by Germans