ABSTRACT
Russia was at this time becoming ripe for the spread of Western European knowledge, science and technique. An increasing number of Russians, especially in the towns, were becoming aware of their country’s backwardness. The army had not the latest type of artillery, the few engineers were mostly foreigners and the number of people engaged in foreign trade were very small in comparison with potentialities. Byzantine theocratic tradition, reinforced by the Moscovite system of military centralisation, had now become an autocracy for the purpose of forcibly modernising the half-Asiatic Russian state. In Britain the use of the printing press and the discoveries of Isaac Newton had led to increased popular knowledge and the gradually expanding liberties of the common citizen. In Russia the application of these same discoveries and inventions led to precisely the opposite. Anti-religious movements in Russia can largely be traced back to this important historic fact.
