Popularly, however, the emperor is known by his old Russian title of tsar.
The lines which existed under the old Russian Empire were converted by the Germans during their occupation from Russian 5-ft.
Gedymin still further extended the limits of Lithuania by annexing Kiev, Chernigov and other old Russian principalities.
Two-thirds of the grandduchy consisted of old Russian lands inhabited by men who spoke the Ruthenian language and professed the Orthodox Greek religion, while in the north were the Lithuanians proper, semisavage and semi-catholic, justly proud of their heroic forefathers of the house of Gedymin, and very sensitive of the pretensions of Poland to the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia, the fruits of Lithuanian valour.
His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, belonged to the old Russian nobility; his mother, the daughter of a general in the Russian army, had remarkable literary and liberal tastes.