The vast, cold, autocratic realm that grew from a Moscow principality into the largest contiguous land empire of its age, dragged itself toward Western power by force from above, rested on the bound labor of its serfs, and collapsed in 1917 under the weight of all it had refused to reform.
At its height the Russian Empire covered a sixth of the dry land on earth, and a single message from the tsar in St. Petersburg might take weeks to reach his own border. This was a realm that could not decide what it was. Its rulers built a glittering capital in the Western style, spoke French at court, and imported Europe's art and ideas, while the great majority of their subjects were serfs bound to the land in a condition close to slavery, governed by a tsar who answered to no parliament and no law but his own will. For two centuries Russia reached for European greatness and clung to autocratic power at the same time, and the strain between those two things never eased. In 1917, after a war it could not win, the whole structure came apart, and the tsars were swept away for good.