Dniester to the Kuban (Treaties of Küçük Kaynarca 1774 and Jassy 1792).
Valuable new Black Sea ports and passage through the Bosporus assured by treaty
gave Russia the foundations for a booming export trade economy.
Russia accomplished all this territorial expansion by doggedly mobilizing and
controlling resources and taking advantage of regional opportunities. Perhaps
William Butler Yeats’s renowned line,“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,”puts into sharp relief the stakes that Russia
navigated. In these centuries the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and to some
extent the Ottoman empire as well,“fell apart”: central control weakened, resources
fell into local hands, reforms stalled, regional competitors outpaced them in
modern state building. But Russia’s rulers ensured that their center did“hold”by
balancing tradition and change in imperial ideology, administration, governance,
and culture.
18 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801