THE TSAR NICHOLAS
THE TSARINA
KALKSTRASSE AND PROMENADE, RIGA

_THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE_

_PRINCE KROPOTKINE_

The Russian Empire is a very extensive territory in eastern Europe
and northern Asia, with an area exceeding 8,500,000 square miles,
or one-sixth of the land surface of the globe (one twenty-third
of its whole superficies). It is, however, but thinly peopled on
the average, including only one-fourteenth of the inhabitants of
the earth. It is almost entirely confined to the cold and temperate
zones. In Nova Zembla (Novaya Zemlya) and the Taimir peninsula, it
projects within the Arctic Circle as far as 77 deg. 2' and 77 deg. 40' N.
latitude; while its southern extremities reach 38 deg. 50' in Armenia,
about 35 deg. on the Afghan frontier, and 42 deg. 30' on the coasts of the
Pacific. To the West it advances as far as 20 deg. 40' E. longitude
in Lapland, 18 deg. 32' in Poland, and 29 deg. 42' on the Black Sea; and
its eastern limit--East Cape in the Bering Strait--extends to 191 deg.
E. longitude.

The Arctic Ocean--comprising the White, Barents, and Kara Seas--and
the northern Pacific, that is the Seas of Bering, Okhotsk, and
Japan, bound it on the north and east. The Baltic, with its two
deep indentations, the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, limits it
on the north-west; and two sinuous lines of frontier separate it
respectively from Sweden and Norway on the north-west, and from
Prussia, Austria and Roumania on the west. The southern frontier is
still unsettled. In Asia beyond the Caspian, the southern boundary
of the empire remains vague; the advance into the Turcoman Steppes
and Afghan Turkestan, and on the Pamir plateau is still in progress.
Bokhara and Khiva, though represented as vassal khanates, are in
reality mere dependencies of Russia. An approximately settled
frontier-line begins only farther east, where the Russian and Chinese
empires meet on the borders of eastern Turkestan, Mongolia and
Manchuria.

Russia has no oceanic possessions, and has abandoned those she
owned in the last century; her islands are mere appendages of the
mainland to which they belong. Such are the Aland archipelago,
Hochland, Tuetters, Dagoe and Osel in the Baltic Sea; Nova Zembla,
with Kolgueff and Vaigatch, in the Barents Sea; the Solovetsky
Islands in the White Sea; the New Siberian archipelago and the
small group of the Medvyezhii Islands off the Siberian coast; the
Commandor Islands off Kamchatka; the Shantar