If you trace the process of the emergence of empiresEuropean continent over the past 500-600 years, then you can see the primary role of military expansion. The territories of neighboring and remote states were seized by the militant rulers, the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, acted on the scorched earth method, destroying everyone and everything; the British, in the absence of foreign territories nearby, swam away from their homeland and engaged in expansion there. The Roman Empire was formed at the expense of the occupied lands, which were urgently joined, and then Roman laws were introduced for the people and all civil rights were granted to the people. The Romans tried to make the enslaved peoples not feel so.
Russian Empire in the early 20th century and earlier
Russia did not wage wars of conquest.However, it had huge territories, mostly undeveloped, and these vast expanses had great political significance. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Northern War began in Europe, in which, on the one hand, Sweden was playing, and on the other, the coalition union of the northern states, including Russia. The war lasted 20 years and ended in the defeat of Sweden. According to the results of the Northern War, Tsar Peter I, by decision of the Senate, was granted the title of All-Russian Emperor. In 1721, Emperor Peter I proclaimed the Russian Empire.
Having existed for nearly two centuries, the Russianthe empire at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries ended its history as a result of a coup d'état. Perhaps the October revolution of the Bolsheviks was the result of the difficulties, economic and political, that the Russian Empire experienced in the early 20th century. The spirit of autocracy, absolute monarchy did not go in favor of a country that was economically backward and politically dependent on Western countries. The tough tax policy imposed by the autocratic king forced the peasantry, on whom the main burden of taxes lay, to “go underground,” to hide agricultural products in order to somehow survive and not die of starvation.
There were political debates all over Europe aboutthat the Russian empire at the beginning of the 20th century was no longer as powerful as it had been in the last hundred and fifty years of its history. The then Minister of Finance S.Yu. Witte. He managed to convince Tsar Nicholas II of the need to adopt a tough program of industrial development of the country. It was proposed to close the path to protectionism, which brought together Russia's industrial assets with foreign ones, in favor of the latter. A monetary reform was carried out in 1897, which significantly strengthened the Russian ruble, which soon became a reliable European currency, because it was provided with gold.
At the same time on the European continentthe political situation was heating up. The strike movement widened, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were heard, and a new Russian empire loomed on the threshold of history. The economy is already closely intertwined with the political aspirations of the masses. Being monolithic earlier, the Russian empire at the beginning of the 20th century was shaken and cracks began to follow it. Autocracy has lost its inviolability. The Council of Ministers, which had previously been submissive to the royal will, ceased to be an unquestioning political entity, and its decisions were already in the nature of state responsibility. Then, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian empire experienced another shock - the First World Civil War, which brought the end of the empire closer.
