On the day following the fete, meat-pies, confections, and use were served out to over 400,000 of the million persons estimated to be present, but gesticulatory manifestations were not tolerated, the loyal mujiks even, being forbidden to toss their caps for fear they might conceal infernal machines. On the return to St. Petersburg, no demonstrations whatever were permitted, the royal couple arrived secretly, and were hurried with little outward ceremony into the penitential seclusion of the Peterhoff palace.
The militant Muscovites who constituted the war-party, which stood nearest to Alexander, now showed signs of aggressive activity, the pacific mission of M. de Giers to the European courts alone allaying the distrust of the foreign governments. In an imperial message addressed to this plenipotentiary, the Emperor wrote:—
"The great glory and power which, thanks to Providence, have been acquired by Russia, the extent of her Empire, and her numerous population, leave no room for any idea whatever of further conquests. His solicitude is exclusively devoted to the peaceable development of the country and its prosperity, to the preservation of its friendly relations with foreign powers on the basis of existing treaties, and the maintenance of the dignity of the Empire."
The Panslavists still agitated in the Balkan, and though the friendly visits of many European sovereigns "proved a counter-check to a war-like policy," the spirit of territorial aggrandizement, despite the disclaimer of "further conquests," was not yet extinguished, for the recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Kilia branch of the Danube, was gained at the London conference, through English support. While General Ignatieff was fond of insisting that Russia did not want to see another yard of land added to the Empire, but that what she desired most was to "develop her resources and let time do the rest,"—his presentation of the case was neither in keeping with tradition, history, nor current fact. For a better understanding of Russia's inflexible policy of occupation, a reference to her masterful acquisition of outside territory will be necessary. "From the moment that Tartar rule was over-thrown," says Boniton, "then commenced Russian expansion."
Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible annexed Kazan and Astrachan. Fedor acquired all of Siberia, south of the 50th degree of latitude to the Arctic circle. Michael Romanoff added the Ural district, and a vast slice of Northwestern Asia, from the Yenissei River to Behring's Strait and the Sea of Okhotsk. Alexis annexed Little Russia and the Cossacks of the Ukraine. Peter the Great conquered the Baltic provinces, and the peninsula of Khamschatka. Empress Anna stole from the Turks the district between the Dneiper and the Bug, and absorbed the Kirghiz Tartars on the Caspian. Elizabeth appropriated a strip of Finland. Catherine II. deprived Turkey of the Crimea and the shores of the Sea of Azof, a part of Poland, and a belt of the Baltic lands from Liban to the Black Sea. Paul I. coveted "his neighbor's vineyard" in the Province of Georgia—and took it. Alexander I. relieved Sweden of the custody of what remained of Finland, another slice of Poland, and appropriated Bessarabia in spite of Turkey's protest. In Asia he occupied the entire country extending from the Sea of Aral to Lake Balkhash. Nicholas cast an evil eye on Persia and promptly acquired two whole provinces in Trans-Caucasia. After his defeat, however, in the Crimea, he unwillingly ceded Bessarabia to Roumania. Alexander II., subsequently, under the Treaty of Berlin, re-acquired it by purchase, obtaining at the same time from Turkey, Kars, Batoum, a nearly limitless stretch of Black Sea littoral, and all of the Eastern coast of the Caspian. In Asia he absorbed Khokand, and extended Russian dominion to Khiva and Bokhara. He also annexed the region of the Amur on the Pacific; which included the whole coast line up to the Korean frontier, and a long line of coast on the Sea of Japan; but after the Crimean war he forfeited Russia's right to maintain a fleet upon the waters of the Black Sea.
While amnesty was extended to many prisoners after the coronation, Alexander excluded all Nihilists from the benefits of participation, and their acts continued to he regarded by a vast number of the middle and upper classes with malicious satisfaction. But the press was shackled as never before, information regarding any important event being wholly suppressed. In response to the demand of the mercantile class, whose interests were menaced by the imposition of a three percent income tax, the depreciation of the paper rouble and a commercial crisis, a new department, that of commerce and manufactures was established, with Ignatieff in control.
Though the fair held at Nijni-Novgorod was a failure as regards attendance, the great Industrial Exhibition at Moscow had demonstrated that while the United States and India would rob Russia of her importance as the granary of Europe, the industries of Central Russia were shown to be susceptible of unlimited expansion. Russian roads, however, are deplorably bad, and though the magnificent river system, with its extensive canals, offers extraordinary transportation facilities through tributary districts, vast tracts of arable lands lie fallow, awaiting the advent of the railway.
Seventy-six percent of the whole of the population of Russia is engaged in agricultural pursuits. The Cossack Dons on the Volga cultivate, in some individual instances, thirty thousand acres of wheat, own stud-farms comprising five hundred horses, besides herds numbering a million head of sheep. The taxes paid into the treasury by the Russian peasantry, have amounted annually to nearly one hundred and twenty million roubles, one third of which is applied to the repayment of the debt on the land, which was charged against the serfs at the time of their emancipation. This tax was substantially diminished by ukase of Alexander on his accession to the throne. On the rich "black lands" of Southern Russia, English farm machinery is now utilized, "where it is no unusual thing," says Morfill, "to see one proprietor with as much as fourteen thousand acres under crop with white Turkish wheat." Out of the one hundred and twenty-four million of Russia's population to-day not twenty millions live in the towns. "It is not among the palaces of St. Petersburg," writes Stead, "nor amid the glories of the Kremlin that you find the real Russian, but in the villages." Of these villages there are more than half a million, and from these, which "nestle like so many flocks of little brown sheep" on the immeasurable pasture lands of the Czar, a constant but unanswered prayer ascends to the imperial head shepherd at remote Gatschina, for better railway facilities and some more practical display of the milk of human kindness.
In 1883, a relaxation of existing decrees against the dissenters from the Orthodox creed, of whom there were over twelve millions, was shrewdly encouraged by the Emperor, but the Mennonites, whose religious tenets would not allow them to bear arms, were expelled from the country and sought refuge in the United States and Canada. The Poles were conciliated by the establishment of a modus vivendi with the Vatican, and the Archbishop of Warsaw, and other offending prelates, were pardoned upon the guarantee of clerical loyalty, and the teaching of Russian in the schools. The Russification of the Baltic provinces, however, presented greater difficulties, and the agitation in Livonia and Estonia developed into a battle of languages. The Slavic idioms versus the Muscovite dialect.
Educational revolts occurred among the students at Nova Alexandria on the Polish border, one hundred and forty-three of whom were expelled, the disaffection extending to the colleges at Kazan and St. Petersburg. Youths under sixteen were prohibited from reading any work without permission of their teachers, and the curriculum was restricted to the sterile fields of grammar. "The history and literature of Greece and Rome were tabooed, and petitions for schools of technology rejected." The rectors of universities were clothed with autocratic authority, extreme discipline was enforced, and an outbreak resulted at Kiev in September. Such obstacles to the cause of education were clearly inopportune. Existing educational facilities were, at the best, gravely inadequate. Instead of there being "a little red schoolhouse" in every one of the half million villages, there were but thirty thousand in all Russia, and only two million, four hundred and forty thousand scholars, and of the sixty million women and girls, only three hundred thousand were attending the elementary classes. Though every year over four million children were being born in Russia, the problem of the education of the masses gave the imperial government but little concern.