Читаем Russia полностью

By 1800 Poland was erased from the map of Europe, the greatest part of it swallowed by her age-long antagonist, and Russia had also pushed out her frontiers in Central Asia, acquired a bridgehead in North America, taken the Crimea, established itself on the Danube estuary, and become a power in the Mediterranean as well as the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Pacific.

And, despite Peter’s efforts, all this was accomplished by a state which was regarded as institutionally ramshackle as well as financially weak. As Edward Finch, Britain’s envoy in St Petersburg, reported in 1741,

Not to be trifled with: President Putin in uniform brandishing a model of the Molnia spacecraft

Completing the furnaces for the Soviet Union’s largest steel plant at Magnitogorsk (early 1930s). Photograph from W. Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age (London, 1935)

Barracks for Gulag prisoners cutting the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 1933. Photograph from W. Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age (London, 1935)

Poster celebrating the completion of the Dnieper Dam (early 1930s). From W. Chamberlin, Russia’s Iron Age (London, 1935)

Circassian princes arriving for a conference, 1836. Stone lithograph from E. Spencer, Travels in Circassia, Krim Tartary (London, 1837)

Imperial diplomacy: Persians paying Russian representatives an indemnity in bullion under the terms of the Treaty of Turkmanchai, 1828. Engraving by K. Beggrov, after V.I. Moshkov

Engravings from W. Miller, Costume of the Russian Empire (London, 1803)

A Russian embassy approaches the Great Wall of China, 1693. From E. Ysbrants Ides, Three Years Travels from Moscow Over-land to China (London, 1706)

Bashkirs. Soft-ground etching from John Atkinson and James Walker, A Picturesque Representation of the Manners, Customs and Amusements of the Russians (London, 1803)

Woodcut showing a Lapp shaman’s view of the world

Access to Japan, Alaska and the Pacific: SS Peter and Paul, Kamchatka, in the late 1770s Engraved drawing by John Webber, RA, artist with Captain Cook on his last voyage

A Yakut shaman treating a patient. Engraving from G. Sarychev’s Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia (London, 1806)

Kalmyks. From E. Ysbrants Ides, Three Years Travels from Moscow Over-land to China (London, 1706)

The Darial Pass: Russia’s gateway to Georgia and the Near East. From an 1837 drawing by Captain R. Wilbraham, in his Travels in the Trans Caucasian Provinces of Russia (London, 1839)

A Tatar encampment. Soft-ground etching from John Atkinson and James Walker, A Picturesque Representation of the Manners, Customs and Amusements of the Russians (London, 1803)

Tiflis, one of the Romanov Empire’s multicultural cities. Lithograph from the Chevalier Gamba’s Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale (Paris, 1826)

A ceremonial show of force to greet the submission of an important chief. From a drawing by Juan van Halen in his Memoirs (London, 1830)

Right: Punishments for recalcitrant natives. From the Remezov Chronicle (Mirovich version)

Below: Reindeer-power in Okhotsk. After a drawing by W. Alexander in M. Sauer, An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia (London, 1802)

Left: Portrait of Ivan III. Sixteenth-century woodcut by Hirschvogel

Below: Russian cavalryman of the sixteenth century. Woodcut by Hirschvogel

The construction of Moscow’s Kremlin (1491) Chronicle. Litsevo Manuscript Codex miniature from the Shumilov

Emperor Constantine VII receives Princess Olga at his palace during her visit to Constantinople, c. 955-7. Reconstruction of a fresco in Kiev’s St Sophia Cathedral

Model of the St Sophia Cathedral, Kiev, as it would have looked in the eleventh century

Saints Boris and Gleb: their martyrdom in 1015 was used to legitimate the Grand Princes of Kiev. Fourteenth-century icon of the Suzdal School

After all the pains which have been taken to bring this country into its present shape … I must confess that I can yet see it in no other light, than as a rough model of something meant to be perfected hereafter, in which the several parts do neither fit nor join, nor are well glewed [sic] together, but have been only kept so first by one great peg and now by another driven though the whole, which peg pulled out, the whole machine immediately falls to pieces. ³

Peter himself had served as the first peg. But who now could keep the Empire from crumbling?