ABSTRACT
In 1900 central and eastern Europe were governed by empires, but there were constitutional limitations on the power of the German emperor, of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and the person who was both emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, of the Habsburgs. The Ottoman sultan and Russian emperor were autocrats. Autocracy and serfdom were the chief evils of tsarism, as far as the opponents of the regime were concerned; Alexander II, the Tsar-Liberator, had swept away serfdom. Ukrainian intellectuals, who were permitted a degree of cultural freedom in neighboring Austrian Galicia, demanded similar or wider privileges from the Russian tsar. Russia emerged from the Revolution of 1905 with several important reforms, some of them promulgated during the period of struggle and almost ignored at the time. While the Western powers operated in overseas areas, Russian imperialism was concerned with contiguous territory.
