Russia: Marx, Lenin, and the Death of an Illusion - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 133

European intellectuals, built beautiful palaces, and most important, embarked on a success-
ful military campaign to extend Russia's domain south into the Caucasus. Alexander I dealt
Napoleon a near-fatal defeat. (Of Napoleon's army of 600,000 who invaded Russia in 1812,
only 40,000 lived to return to their homes.) And when the war was done, Alexander stood
firm as pivot of the Holy Alliance, dedicated to using the continent's kings to stamp out
democratic reforms in Europe.
THE OLD RUSSIA DIES
As the nineteenth century sped to its end, France, England, and Germany became rich
through industrialization. Steam power was their great achievement—railroads and steam-
ships for transport, along with factories that raised living standards and brokered the rise
of a middle class. Russia remained on the fringes of European prosperity and technology.
When war with Japan erupted, Russia suffered a series of stunning defeats. At the battle
of the Tsushima Strait in 1904, the Japanese captured and sank eight battleships and nine
Russian cruisers, killing 4,000 Russians and capturing more than 7,000 sailors, a prologue
to what lay ahead.
Figure 9.4. Czar Nicholas II
The last Czar, Nicholas II, was poorly suited to be an autocrat. His wife Alexandra
came under the spell of a mystic monk, Rasputin, whose habits and behavior were less than
holy. When the First World War revealed Russia's armies to be miserably equipped, its in-