Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
empire. The year 1605 began a Time of Troubles with many rivals claiming
the crown, and the Poles invading. In 1612 the Poles were expelled, and
Michael Romanov became czar, beginning a dynasty lasting until 1917.
Peter the Great, who reigned from 1689 to 1725, sought to Europeanize
Russia. He created a modern army and navy, curbed the power of the
nobles, modernized finance and administration, encouraged education,
and promoted industry. His masterpiece was to build the entirely new
capital on the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, named for his patron
saint, Saint Petersburg. It was constructed in the Western style by archi-
tects brought from Italy, France, and the Netherlands. At the same time,
Peter continued exploiting the peasants, half of whom were serfs, bound to
the land, and little more than slaves. Russia developed a dual society with
cities on the European pattern of aristocrats, an educated class who were
thoroughly modern, and countryside dwellers tied to the traditional ways.
In the early 19th century, the Romantic Movement swept in from
Germany, England, and France. Leaders were Alexander Pushkin and
Mikhail Lermontov. Lermontov, who lived in the Caucasus Mountains as
a boy and later returned as an army officer, wrote poems glorifying the
beauty of the region. During this period, the champions of moderniza-
tion were countered by Slavophiles who wanted to maintain the nation
in its traditional manner. They celebrated the countryside and its whole-
some peasants. Westernized elites were limited chiefly to St. Petersburg,
Moscow, and a few other places. Lermontov wrote this poem:
I come out to the path, alone,
Night and wildness are referred to God,
Through the mist, the road gleams with stone,
Stars are speaking in the shining lot.
There is grave and wonderful in heaven;
Earth is sleeping in a pale-blue light…
Russia was late to industrialize, hence spared much of the pollution night-
mare of the 19th century. It remained largely a rural agricultural society,
where peasants lived according to the annual cycle of nature, existing
in harmony with it, or at least lacking the capacity to do it much harm.
A  proto-environmental group was the Society for the Acclimatization
of Animals and Plants, which began in 1858. By that time scientists and
hunters were voicing alarm about the decline of wildlife. For instance,
the auroch was extinct by then, and on the Pacific Coast, the Steller sea
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