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About Catherine the Great CK_5_TH_HG_P104_230.QXD 2/14/06 2:23 PM Page 213 Peter then set his sights on land along the Baltic Sea. He declared war on Sweden in 1700 and ultimately won his warm-water port. He built St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic, and moved the capital there from Moscow. His new city was as grand as any capital in western Europe. It is called Peter’s “Window on the West,” not only because it was a port that allowed Peter to trade with the west year-round, but also because the city was built in the European style, with canals and stately palaces like the ones Peter had seen on his trips to western Europe. Peter encouraged western Europeans to come to Petersburg and required many Russians nobles to build houses in his new capital. Ever since Peter the Great, Russians have often found themselves divided between two groups. One group, the so-called “westernizers,” has argued, in the tradition of Peter the Great, that Russia needs to be more like the countries of western Europe. On the other side are the “Slavophiles,” who think Russia is bet- ter than western Europe and should stick to its traditional Slavic ways. For the most part, the westernizers have gravitated to St. Petersburg, with its European style, while Slavophiles have preferred Moscow, built in the old Russian style. Catherine the Great Catherine the Great was actually not Russian, but German. She was chosen to marry Peter, Duke of Holstein, a grandson of Peter the Great. As Czar Peter III, the Duke initiated a series of policies that angered powerful nobles. He entered into an alliance with Prussia, a long-time rival, expanded religious freedom, and closed down the secret police. Catherine and the czar were not well suited for each other and theirs was an unhappy marriage. Catherine—who had become thoroughly Russian after almost twenty years in Russia—joined in a plot against Peter. The con- spirators removed him from the throne and made Catherine sole ruler. Catherine greatly expanded Russian territory, adding more of the Baltic region and Ukraine. She also warred against the Ottoman Turks and seized por- tions of their empire. When European powers partitioned Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, she gained the largest part for Russia. It was during her reign that Russian exploration and colonization of Alaska began. Like Peter the Great, Catherine was interested in the west. When she began her reign, she intended to make a number of reforms to ease the life of serfs (peas- ants), promote education, and limit land acquisitions by nobles. However, the Catherine the Great peasant revolt led by Pugachev [POO-ga-chov] between 1773 and 1775 and the French Revolution soon caused Catherine to become as autocratic as earlier czars. The peasant uprising was a bloody and brutal revolt that resulted in the death of Teaching Idea thousands of wealthy Russian landowners, priests of the Russian Orthodox Compare the lives of peasants in Church, and merchants. Not wishing to antagonize the nobility, Catherine Russia, slaves in the colonies, and increased the privileges of the nobility and decreased the freedom of peasants. serfs in the Middle Ages. What made Reforms of Peter and Catherine and the Peasants serfdom in Russia different? The reforms of Peter and Catherine had little effect on the peasants—except to bind them to the land as serfs. By the time of Peter, many peasants already had no personal freedom of movement. A peasant family could not decide to move from one landed estate to another because the second landowner offered better working terms. History and Geography: World 213 CK_5_TH_HG_P104_230.QXD 2/14/06 2:23 PM Page 214 VI. Russia: Early Growth and Expansion During Peter’s reign, peasants became chattel, the property of the landhold- ers on whose estate they worked. They could, therefore, be bought and sold. After the peasant uprising during Catherine’s reign, she allowed the nobles to continue the process of turning peasants into serfs. The word serf is from the Latin word for slave; however, the status of the serf was somewhere in between that of a slave and a free person. Serfs were the property of nobles, yet they had certain rights. They were required to give certain payments to and perform specific services for their owner. On the other hand, a serf was usually given a house, a plot of land on which to grow crops, and some animals. Serfs were required to give some of Teaching Idea what they grew to their noblemen masters. In addition, serfs were required to Create an overhead of Instructional work the noble’s land. Master 26, Russia, and use it to orient Serfdom—the agricultural system based on the ownership of serfs—had students to the physical features and existed in Russia for centuries. In western Europe, the actual bonding of the peas- cities discussed in this section. Have ant to the soil had largely ended by the 1400s and 1500s. By contrast, in Russia, students use the distance scale to com- serfdom was gaining strength. In the 1700s, during the reign of Peter and pute distances (for example, the length Catherine, while the Industrial Revolution was getting underway in Great Britain, and width of Siberia, or the distance the restrictive powers of serfdom reached their height. Serfdom was not abolished from Moscow to St. Petersburg). in Russia until 1861—four years before the United States abolished slavery. B. Geography Name Date Background Russia Study the map. Use it to answer the questions below. Russia stretches across two continents, Europe and Asia. Much of the early U.S.A. ARCTIC OCEAN history of Russia occurred in the European section as people there traded with NORWAY N EDE SW A D E AN S NL IC FI the Vikings, Byzantines, and later western Europeans. T AL B EST. LAT.LAT. a i RUSSIARUSSIA LITH.LITH. St.St. PetersburgPetersburg S r BELARUSBELARUS N e I i b A S EUROPEEUROPE T MoscowMoscow N UKRAINEUKRAINE U OdessaOdessa RUSSIA O r e r M v e i Riv B R a L lg L A D o C on V A K R YekaterinburgYekaterinburg Cities Trans-Siberian ASIA S U E Railroad A Novosibirsk GA.GA. A E KhabarovskKhabarovsk ARM.ARM. S IrkutskIrkutsk AZER.AZER. N KAZAKHSTAN A I P S T U A UR Z C K B M E E K MONGOLIA Moscow I N S Vladivostok IS T T A A N KYRGYZSTANKYRGYZSTAN N CHINA NORTHNORTH KOREAKOREA IRAN N SOUTH AFGHANISTAN JAPAN W E 0 300 600 miles KOREA Moscow is located in west central Russia—European Russia—on the Moscow 0 300 600 kilometers S 1. What is the distance between Moscow and St. Petersburg? River and is the capital of modern Russia. Ivan IV made it the capital of Russia in the about 400 miles 1400s, and it also became the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church. Peter the Great 2. What is the distance between Moscow and Vladivostok? about 4,000 miles transferred the capital from Moscow to the new city of St. Petersburg in 1712. The e Knowledge Foundation capital was returned to Moscow in 1918 during the Russian Revolution. Purpose: To read and interpret a map of Russia Copyright ©Cor Master 26 Grade 5: History & Geography Today, Moscow is the largest city in Russia (with a metropolitan area popula- tion of over 13 million), an important inland port, and the seat of Russia’s gov- Use Instructional Master 26. ernment. The Kremlin, meaning walled center of a city, is the heart of Moscow. Here the czars built their palaces, Communist leaders reviewed thousands of sol- diers marching through Red Square, and today, the national government uses a Teaching Idea former palace for the legislature. The Kremlin is also the site of St. Basil’s Cathedral, once the center of the Russian Orthodox Church and now a national Moscow and St. Petersburg are very museum. St. Basil’s is built in the traditional Russian style, with several onion different cities. To give students a feel- domes reaching up to the sky. From the Kremlin, wide boulevards extend through ing for the differences, share pictures the city in all directions. A person from Moscow is called a Muscovite. of key buildings and streets in each city (e.g., the Kremlin and St. Basil’s in St. Petersburg Moscow, and the Hermitage and other St. Petersburg is Russia’s second-largest city (population 5 million) and is palaces in St. Petersburg). located in northwestern European Russia on the Gulf of Finland. Peter the Great built it in the western European style, with canals and glittering palaces, after 214 Grade 5 Handbook.
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