Russia

by Donald Mackenzie Wallace

Donald Mackenzie Wallace, a Scottish journalist and scholar, spent six years in Russia in the early 1870s, learned the language and traveled widely, and his Russia, first published in 1877, became the standard English account of the country. This revised and enlarged edition of 1905 begins with his travels in the northern forests, his stay with a village priest and a peasant family of the old type, and his study of the mir, or village community. He goes on to describe Finnish and Tartar villages, the Cossacks, the dissenters, the nobility, the towns and the administration, then the emancipation of the serfs, the new courts and the zemstvos, and finally the revolutionary movement, industry and foreign policy. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.