Ideas of masculinity, hostility and agression in “a view from the bridge”.

During the 19th century, Russia's population, resources, international diplomacy, and military forces made it one of the most powerful states in the world. Russia was the world's largest empire in area in 1890, comprising one sixth of the planet's surface. By 1900 there were about 129 million people within the Russian empire. Russia's size might appear to be strength, it also has its weakness.One of them was the difficulty of communication. Orders from the government in the capital, St Petersburg, often never found their way to remote corners of the empire. Russia was essentially an agricultural country, which in many areas had still not had an agricultural revolution. Most peasants belong to a serf owner, land was collectively and not individually held. There was too many peasants andnot enough land to go round. The solution to the agricultural problems were for Russia to industrialise. Russia was an autocracy. The tsar held total power, Russia had the dubious distinction of being one of the only three European countries without a parliament. The tsar ruled with the assistance of his personally chosen ministers, a large army, a secret police and the support of the Orthodoxchurch. However from the 1800s it developed its own political and cultural identity. Russian's main enemies during the 19th century, were the British, the French and the Turkish. Russian society was essentially aristocratic, with privileged landowners supported by serfs. However advances in education saw the development of a politically aware middle class, many of whom wanted an end to the tsar'sautocratic rule and wished to reshape Russia as a Western monarchy. As West European economic growth accelerated during the industrial revolution, which had begun in the second half of the 18th century, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, creating new problems for the empire as a great power. While the British and French Empire declined in the 20th century, the Russian Empire kept a largeproportion of its territory. In those western European empires, serfdom was abolished much earlier than in the Russian empire. Serfdom was abolished in Western Europe mainly due to rebellions such as the French revolution in 1789. It is the key to modernise empires, which Russia understood after a few centuries. Base on these criteria, this essay will examine the reigns of three tsars in particular,namely Nicholas I, Alexander II and Nicholas II in order to attempt an assessment as to which tsar was most successful in achieving his aims.
{text:soft-page-break} Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, he was known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. He was a very conservative tsar which we will see later on, held to the 1848 revolutions an even more, theCrimean War opposing Russia to France, Great-Britain and Ottoman empire (Turkey). At the time of Nicholas I reign, Russia was allied with other conservative countries, such as Austria and Prussia but they were touch by student revolutions similar to the French revolution. Austria and Prussia were then forced to change regime and politics, which was not well seen from Nicholas I point of view.However the most negative point about those changes for Nicholas I, was that a Slav congress was held in Prague discussing about liberating all non-Russian Slavs ( Slavic Peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in eastern and central Europe) in Austria, which was an important confrontation to the Russian repression of Poland. Unfortunately Hungary got itsindependence after the revolution of Budapest, Nicholas I was scared that this kind of revolution could spread over the Russian empire and he then decided to prepare his army for any kind of rebellions. However fortunately for him, the liberal experiments crushed and only held in Hungary but no where else, which was good news. Russia had always wanted to control the Holy Places (Christian shrines...