The Romanovs: Their Empire, Their
Books.
The Political, Religious, Cultural, and Social Life of Russia's Imperial House
Case
3: Empire
During the 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty,
their realm kept expanding. The tsars and emperors
acquired (in modern terminology) Ukraine and Crimea,
the Baltic States, most of Poland, Belarus', the
Caucasus, Central Asia, the Maritime Territory
in the Pacific, and Russian America. It was not
easy to have complete knowledge and understanding
of the extremely varied physical features of this
empire, whose contours and limits were the object
of constant explorations. This was also the case
for its economic resources and for its numerous
peoples, differing in looks, speech, religion,
and traditions.
In an effort to reaffirm the legitimacy of this
vast and ethnically diverse empire, the Romanovs
sought to underline continuity with the past, and
thereby foster a sense of stability and identity
among the population. For the Romanovs, this meant
promoting awareness of the earliest periods when
Christianity was introduced in Kievan Rus' during
the tenth century, and the Russian frontier town
of Moscow grew into a large sixteenth-century tsardom
that eventually became the "All-Russian (Vserossiiskaia)
Empire."
Next Section: Case
4: War
