--over the
Caucasus, over Central Asia, and in the Far East.

Before this advance, the huge Russian Empire had been (everywhere
except on the west, in the region of Poland) marked off by very clearly
defined barriers. The Caucasus presented a formidable obstacle between
Russia and the Turkish and Persian Empires; the deserts of Central Asia
separated her from the Moslem peoples of Khiva, Bokhara and Turkestan;
the huge range of the Altai Mountains and the desert of Gobi cut off
her thinly peopled province of Eastern Siberia from the Chinese Empire;
while in the remote East her shores verged upon ice-bound and
inhospitable seas. Hers was thus an extraordinarily isolated and
self-contained empire, except on the side of Europe; and even on the
side of Europe she was more inaccessible than any other state, being
all but land-locked, and divided from Central Europe by a belt of
forests and marshes.

The part she had played in the Napoleonic Wars, and in the events which
followed them, had brought her more fully into contact with Europe than
she had ever been before. The acquisition of Poland and Finland, which
she obtained by the treaties of 1815, had increased this contact, for
both of these states were much influenced by Western ideas. Russia had
promised that their distinct national existence, and their national
institutions, should be preserved; and this seemed to suggest that the
Russian Empire might develop into a partnership of nations of varying
types, not altogether unlike the form into which the British Empire was
developing. But this conception had no attraction for the Russian mind,
or at any rate for the Russian government; and the reactionary or
pure-Russian school, which strove to exclude all alien influences, was
inevitably hostile to it. Hence the period of reaction, and of eastward
conquest, saw also the denial of the promises made in 1815. Poland
preserved her distinct national organisation, in any full degree, only
for fifteen years; even in the faintest degree, it was preserved for
less than fifty years. Finland was allowed a longer grace, but only,
perhaps, because she was isolated and had but a small population: her
turn for 'Russification' was to come in due course. The exclusion of
Western influence, the segregation of Russia from the rest of the
world, and the repudiation of liberty and of varieties of type thus
form the main features of the reactionary periods which filled the
greater part of thi