The history of Russia begins with the histories of the

East Slavs The East Slavs are the most populous subgroup of the Slavs. They speak the East Slavic languages, and formed the majority of the population of the medieval state Kievan Rus', which they claim as their cultural ancestor.John Channon & Robert Huds ...

. The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' state in the north in the year 862, ruled by

Varangians The Varangians ( ; ; ; , or )Varangian
," Online Etymology Dictionary were

Oleg of Novgorod Oleg (), Oleh (), or Aleh () is an Slavic peoples, East Slavic given name. The name is very common in Russia, Ukraine, and Belаrus. Origins ''Oleg'' derives from the Old Norse ''Helgi'' (Helge (name), Helge), meaning "holy", "sacred", or "ble ...

seized

Kiev Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

, uniting the northern and southern lands of the Eastern Slavs under one authority, moving the governance center to Kiev by the end of the 10th century, and maintaining northern and southern parts with significant autonomy from each other. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

, Slavic and Scandinavian cultures that defined

Russian culture Russian culture ( rus, Культура России, Kul'tura Rossii, kʊlʲˈturə rɐˈsʲiɪ) has been formed by the nation's history, its geographical location and its vast expanse, religious and social traditions, and both Eastern cultu ...

for the next millennium.

Kievan Rus' Kievan Rus', also known as Kyivan Rus,. * was the first East Slavs, East Slavic state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical At ...

ultimately disintegrated as a state due to the Mongol invasions in 1237–1240. After the 13th century,

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

emerged as a significant political and cultural force, driving the unification of Russian territories. By the end of the 15th century, many of the petty principalities around Moscow had been united with the

Grand Duchy of Moscow The Grand Principality of Moscow, or Muscovy, known as the Principality of Moscow until 1389, was a late medieval Russian monarchy. Its capital was the city of Moscow. Originally established as a minor principality in the 13th century, the gra ...

, which took full control of its own sovereignty under Ivan the Great.

Ivan the Terrible Ivan IV Vasilyevich (; – ), commonly known as Ivan the Terrible,; ; monastic name: Jonah. was Grand Prince of Moscow, Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia from 1533 to 1547, and the first Tsar of all Russia, Tsar and Grand Prince of all R ...

transformed the Grand Duchy into the

Tsardom of Russia The Tsardom of Russia, also known as the Tsardom of Moscow, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of tsar by Ivan the Terrible, Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721. ...

in 1547. However, the death of Ivan's son Feodor I without

issue Issue or issues may refer to: Publishing * ''Issue'' (company), a mobile publishing company * ''Issue'' (magazine), a monthly Korean comics anthology magazine * Issue (postal service), a stamp or a series of stamps released to the public * '' ...

in 1598 created a

succession crisis A succession crisis is a crisis that arises when an order of succession fails, for example when a monarch dies without an indisputable heir. It may result in a war of succession. Examples include (see List of wars of succession): * The Wars of Th ...

and led Russia into a period of chaos and civil war known as the

Time of Troubles The Time of Troubles (), also known as Smuta (), was a period of political crisis in Tsardom of Russia, Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Feodor I of Russia, Feodor I, the last of the Rurikids, House of Rurik, and ended in 1613 wit ...

, ending with the coronation of Michael Romanov as the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty in 1613. During the rest of the seventeenth century, Russia completed the exploration and conquest of Siberia, claiming lands as far as the Pacific Ocean by the end of the century. Domestically, Russia faced numerous uprisings of the various ethnic groups under their control, as exemplified by the

Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...

leader

Stenka Razin Stepan Timofeyevich Razin (, ; c. 1630 – ), known as Stenka Razin ( ), was a Don Cossack leader who led a major uprising against the nobility and tsarist bureaucracy in southern Russia in 1670–1671. Early life Razin's father, Timofey Ra ...

, who led a revolt in 1670–1671. In 1721, in the wake of the

Great Northern War In the Great Northern War (1700–1721) a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern Europe, Northern, Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the ant ...

, Tsar

Peter the Great Peter I (, ; – ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia, Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned j ...

renamed the state as the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

; he is also noted for establishing St. Petersburg as the new capital of his Empire, and for his introducing Western European culture to Russia. In 1762, Russia came under the control of

Catherine the Great Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...

, who continued the westernizing policies of Peter the Great, and ushered in the era of the Russian Enlightenment. Catherine's grandson,

Alexander I Alexander I may refer to: * Alexander I of Macedon, king of Macedon from 495 to 454 BC * Alexander I of Epirus (370–331 BC), king of Epirus * Alexander I Theopator Euergetes, surnamed Balas, ruler of the Seleucid Empire 150-145 BC * Pope Alex ...

, repulsed an invasion by the French Emperor Napoleon, leading Russia into the status of one of the

great power A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power ...

s. Peasant revolts intensified during the nineteenth century, culminating with Alexander II abolishing Russian serfdom in 1861. In the following decades, reform efforts such as the Stolypin reforms of 1906–1914, the constitution of 1906, and the

State Duma The State Duma is the lower house of the Federal Assembly (Russia), Federal Assembly of Russia, with the upper house being the Federation Council (Russia), Federation Council. It was established by the Constitution of Russia, Constitution of t ...

(1906–1917) attempted to open and liberalize the economy and political system, but the emperors refused to relinquish autocratic rule and resisted sharing their power. A combination of economic breakdown, mismanagement over Russia's involvement in World War I, and discontent with the autocratic system of government triggered the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

in 1917. The end of the monarchy initially brought into office a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists, but their failed policies led to the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

. In 1922,

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...

, along with the

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...

Byelorussian SSR The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and ...

, and Transcaucasian SFSR signed the

Treaty on the Creation of the USSR A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between sovereign states and/or international organizations that is governed by international law. A treaty may also be known as an international agreement, protocol, covenant, conventio ...

, officially merging all four republics to form the Soviet Union as a single state. Between 1922 and 1991 the history of Russia essentially became the

history of the Soviet Union The history of the Soviet Union (USSR) (1922–91) began with the ideals of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and ended in dissolution amidst economic collapse and political disintegration. Established in 1922 following the Russian Civil War, ...

. During this period, the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

was one of the victors in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

after recovering from a surprise invasion in 1941 by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

and its collaborators, which had previously signed a

non-aggression pact A non-aggression pact or neutrality pact is a treaty between two or more states/countries that includes a promise by the signatories not to engage in military action against each other. Such treaties may be described by other names, such as a t ...

with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's network of

satellite state A satellite state or dependent state is a country that is formally independent but under heavy political, economic, and military influence or control from another country. The term was coined by analogy to planetary objects orbiting a larger ob ...

s in Eastern Europe, which were brought into its

sphere of influence In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity. While there may be a formal a ...

in the closing stages of World War II, helped the country become a

superpower Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to Sphere of influence, exert influence and Power projection, project power on a global scale. This is done through the comb ...

competing with fellow superpower the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and other Western countries in the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. By the mid-1980s, with the weaknesses of Soviet economic and political structures becoming acute,

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

embarked on major reforms, which eventually led to the weakening of the communist party and

dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...

, leaving Russia again on its own and marking the start of the history of post-Soviet Russia. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic renamed itself as the

Russian Federation Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and became the primary successor state to the Soviet Union. Russia retained its

nuclear arsenal Nine sovereign states are generally understood to possess nuclear weapons, though only eight formally acknowledge possessing them. United Nations Security Council#Permanent members, Five are considered to be nuclear-weapon states (NWS) unde ...

but lost its

status. Scrapping the

central planning A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, ...

and state-ownership of property of the Soviet era in the 1990s, new leaders, led by President

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

, took political and economic power after 2000 and engaged in an assertive

foreign policy Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...

. Coupled with economic growth, Russia has since regained significant global status as a world power. Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula led to economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine led to significantly expanded sanctions. Under Putin's leadership,

corruption in Russia Corruption in Russia is considered a very serious problem, impacting various aspects of life, including the economy, business, politics, public administration, law enforcement, healthcare, and education. It hinders economic development, contrib ...

is rated as the worst in Europe, and Russia's human rights situation has been increasingly criticized by international observers.

Prehistory

The first human settlement on the territory of Russia dates back to the

Oldowan The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry during the early Lower Paleolithic spanning the late Pliocene and the first half of the Early Pleistocene. These early tools were simple, usually made by chipping one ...

period in the early

Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears ...

. About 2 million years ago, representatives of ''

Homo erectus ''Homo erectus'' ( ) is an extinction, extinct species of Homo, archaic human from the Pleistocene, spanning nearly 2 million years. It is the first human species to evolve a humanlike body plan and human gait, gait, to early expansions of h ...

'' migrated from Western Asia to the North Caucasus (archaeological site of on the Taman Peninsula). At , in a skull of '' Elasmotherium caucasicum'', which lived 1.5–1.2 million years ago, a stone tool was found. 1.5-million-year-old

flint tools have been discovered in the

Dagestan Dagestan ( ; ; ), officially the Republic of Dagestan, is a republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. It is located north of the Greater Caucasus, and is a part of the North Caucasian Fede ...

Akusha region of the north Caucasus, demonstrating the presence of early humans in the territory of present-day Russia. Fossils of

Denisovans The Denisovans or Denisova hominins ( ) are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower Paleolithic, Lower and Middle Paleolithic, and lived, based on current evidence, from 285 thousand to 25 thou ...

in Russia date to about 110,000 years ago. DNA from a bone fragment found in

Denisova Cave Denisova Cave () is a cave in the Altai Mountains, Bashelaksky Range of the Altai Mountains in Siberia, Russia. It is widely known for having provided items of great archaeology, paleoarchaeological and paleontology, paleontological interest. ...

, belonging to a female who died about 90,000 years ago, shows that she was a hybrid of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Russia was also home to some of the last surviving

Neanderthal Neanderthals ( ; ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or sometimes ''H. sapiens neanderthalensis'') are an extinction, extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, Middle to Late Plei ...

s - the partial skeleton of a Neanderthal infant in Mezmaiskaya cave in

Adygea Adygea ( ), officially the Republic of Adygea or the Adygean Republic, is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia. It is situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe. The republic is a part of the Southern Federal District, and covers an a ...

showed a carbon-dated age of only 45,000 years. In 2008, Russian

archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of

Novosibirsk Novosibirsk is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and the Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the 2021 Russian census, 2021 census, it had a population of 1,633,595, making it the most populous city in Siber ...

, working at the site of

in the

Altai Mountains The Altai Mountains (), also spelled Altay Mountains, are a mountain range in Central Asia, Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan converge, and where the rivers Irtysh and Ob River, Ob have their headwaters. The ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

, uncovered a 40,000-year-old small bone fragment from the fifth finger of a juvenile

hominin The Hominini (hominins) form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae (hominines). They comprise two extant genera: ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos), and in standard usage exclude the genus '' Gorilla'' ( gorillas) ...

, which DNA analysis revealed to be a previously unknown species of human, which was named the Denisova hominin. The first trace of ''Homo sapiens'' on the large expanse of Russian territory dates back to 45,000 years, in central Siberia ( Ust'-Ishim man). The discovery of some of the earliest evidence for the presence of

anatomically modern human Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science ...

s found anywhere in Europe was reported in 2007 from the Kostenki archaeological site near the Don River in Russia (dated to at least 40,000 years ago) and at

Sungir Sungir (, sometimes spelled Sunghir) is an Upper Paleolithic archaeological site in Russia and one of the earliest records of modern ''Homo sapiens'' in Eurasia. It is situated about east of Moscow, on the outskirts of Vladimir, near the Klyazm ...

(34,600 years ago). Humans reached Arctic Russia ( Mamontovaya Kurya) by 40,000 years ago. During the prehistoric eras the vast

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropica ...

s of Southern Russia were home to

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...

s of

nomadic pastoralists Nomadic pastoralism, also known as nomadic herding, is a form of pastoralism in which livestock are herded in order to seek for fresh pastures on which to graze. True nomads follow an irregular pattern of movement, in contrast with transhumance, ...

. (In classical antiquity, the

Pontic Steppe Pontic, from the Greek ''pontos'' (, ), or "sea", may refer to: The Black Sea Places * The Pontic colonies, on its northern shores * Pontus (region), a region on its southern shores * The Pontic–Caspian steppe, steppelands stretching from n ...

was known as "

Scythia Scythia (, ) or Scythica (, ) was a geographic region defined in the ancient Graeco-Roman world that encompassed the Pontic steppe. It was inhabited by Scythians, an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people. Etymology The names ...

".) Remnants of these long-gone steppe cultures were discovered in the course of the 20th century in such places as Ipatovo,

Sintashta Sintashta is an archaeological site in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is the remains of a fortified settlement dating to the Bronze Age, –1800 BC, and is the type site of the Sintashta culture. The site has been characterised as a "fortified met ...

, Arkaim, and Pazyryk.

Antiquity

In the later part of the 8th century BC, Greek merchants brought

classical civilization Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the interwoven civilization ...

to the trade emporiums in Tanais and Phanagoria. Gelonus was described by

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

as a huge (Europe's biggest) earth- and wood-fortified grad inhabited around 500 BC by Heloni and Budini. In 513 BC, the king of the

Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian peoples, Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, i ...

Darius I Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...

, launched a military campaign around the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

into Scythia, modern-day Ukraine, eventually reaching the Tanais river (now known as the Don). Greeks, mostly from the city-state of

Miletus Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, Mílētos) was an influential ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in present day Turkey. Renowned in antiquity for its wealth, maritime power, and ex ...

, would colonize large parts of modern-day Crimea and the

Sea of Azov The Sea of Azov is an inland Continental shelf#Shelf seas, shelf sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, and sometimes regarded as a northern extension of the Black Sea. The sea is bounded by Ru ...

during the seventh and sixth centuries BC, eventually unifying into the

Bosporan Kingdom The Bosporan Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus (; ), was an ancient Greco-Scythians, Scythian state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus, centered in the present-day ...

by 480 BC, and would be incorporated into the large

Kingdom of Pontus Pontus ( ) was a Hellenistic kingdom centered in the historical region of Pontus in modern-day Turkey, and ruled by the Mithridatic dynasty of Persian origin, which may have been directly related to Darius the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty. ...

in 107 BC. The Kingdom would eventually be conquered by the

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...

, and the Bosporan Kingdom would become a client state of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

. At about the 2nd century AD Goths migrated to the Black Sea, and in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, a semi-legendary Gothic kingdom of

Oium Oium was a name for Scythia, or a fertile part of it, roughly in modern Ukraine, where the Goths, under a legendary King Filimer, settled after leaving Gothiscandza, according to the ''Getica'' by Jordanes, written around 551. It is general ...

existed in Southern Russia until it was overrun by

Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was par ...

. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom was also overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions, led by warlike tribes which would often move on to Europe, as was the case with the

and Turkish Avars. In the second millennium BC, the territories between the Kama and the Irtysh Rivers were the home of a Proto-Uralic-speaking population that had contacts with Proto-Indo-European speakers from the south. The woodland population is the ancestor of the modern Ugrian inhabitants of Trans-Uralia. Other researchers say that the Khanty people originated in the south Ural steppe and moved northwards into their current location about 500 AD. A Turkic people, the

Khazars The Khazars ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a nomadic Turkic people who, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, a ...

, ruled the lower

Volga The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

basin

s between the Caspian and

s through to the 8th century.David Christian, ''A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia'', Blackwell Publishing, 1998, pp. 286–288. . Noted for their laws, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism, the Khazars were the main commercial link between the Baltic and the Muslim

Abbasid The Abbasid Caliphate or Abbasid Empire (; ) was the third caliphate to succeed the prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 C ...

empire centered in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

. They were important allies of the

Eastern Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

, and waged a series of successful wars against the

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

Caliphate A caliphate ( ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with Khalifa, the title of caliph (; , ), a person considered a political–religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of ...

s.Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, ''History of Jewish Philosophy'', Routledge, 1997, p. 196. .

Early history

Early Slavs

Some of the ancestors of the modern

Russians Russians ( ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. Their mother tongue is Russian language, Russian, the most spoken Slavic languages, Slavic language. The majority of Russians adhere to Eastern Orthodox Church ...

were the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the

Pripet Marshes __NOTOC__ The Pripet Marshes or Pripyat Marshes (), also known as Pinsk Marshes (), the Polesie Marshes, and the Rokitno Marshes, are a vast natural region of wetlands in Polesia, along the forested basin of the Pripyat River and its tributaries f ...

. The

Early East Slavs The early Slavs were speakers of Indo-European languages, Indo-European dialects who lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th centuries AD) in Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Ea ...

gradually settled

Western Russia European Russia is the western and most populated part of the Russian Federation. It is geographically situated in Europe, as opposed to the country's sparsely populated and vastly larger eastern part, Siberia, which is situated in Asia, encomp ...

in two waves: one moving from

(present-day

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

) towards present-day

Suzdal Suzdal (, ) is a Types of inhabited localities in Russia, town that serves as the administrative center of Suzdalsky District in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, which is located along the Kamenka tributary of the Nerl (Klyazma), Nerl River, north o ...

and

Murom Murom (, ) is a historical types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, which sprawls along the west bank of the Oka River. It borders Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and is situated from the administrative center Vladimir, ...

and another from

Polotsk Polotsk () or Polatsk () is a town in Vitebsk Region, Belarus. It is situated on the Dvina River and serves as the administrative center of Polotsk District. Polotsk is served by Polotsk Airport and Borovitsy air base. As of 2025, it has a pop ...

(present-day

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

) towards

Novgorod Veliky Novgorod ( ; , ; ), also known simply as Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the oldest cities in Russia, being first mentioned in the 9th century. The city lies along the V ...

and Rostov.David Christian, op cit., pp. 6–7. From the 7th century onwards, East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia and slowly conquered and assimilated the native Finnic and Baltic tribes, such as the Merya, the Muromians, and the Meshchera. Aleksandr Lʹvovich Mongaĭt, ''Archeology in the U.S.S.R.'', Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959, p. 335. There existed a political hierarchy north of the middle

Dnieper The Dnieper or Dnepr ( ), also called Dnipro ( ), is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately long, with ...

as early as 825-850, and perhaps even earlier. Indeed, according to the ''

Annales Bertiniani ''Annales Bertiniani'' (''Annals of Saint Bertin'') are late Carolingian, Frankish annals that were found in the Abbey of Saint Bertin, Saint-Omer, France, after which they are named. Their account is taken to cover the period 830-82, thus con ...

'', some Rhōs (as they were known by the Byzantines) accompanied a Byzantine embassy to the court of the

Frankish Frankish may refer to: * Franks, a Germanic tribe and their culture ** Frankish language or its modern descendants, Franconian languages, a group of Low Germanic languages also commonly referred to as "Frankish" varieties * Francia, a post-Roman ...

king,

Louis the Pious Louis the Pious (; ; ; 16 April 778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. As the only ...

, asking assistance in returning to their homeland. Their ruler was ascribed a title akin to the Khazars' (Chaganus; Khagan), but they yet claimed belonging to the 'people of the Swedes'. The specific facts related to this political hierarchy, however, are subject to numerous contradicting historical interpretations.Jonathan Shepard, "The Origins of Rus' (c. 900–1015)," in ''The Cambridge History of Russia'', vol. 1, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 49-51.

Kievan Rus' (862–1240)

Scandinavia Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...

n Norsemen, known as

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

in Western Europe and

Varangian The Varangians ( ; ; ; , or )Varangian
," Online Etymology Dictionary were

piracy Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...

and trade throughout Northern Europe. In the mid-9th century, they began to venture along the waterways from the eastern

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

to the

Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

and

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

s. According to the legendary

Calling of the Varangians The calling of the Varangians, calling of the (Varangian) princes or invitation to the Varangians (; ) is a legend about the origins of the Rus' people, the Rurik dynasty and the Kievan Rus' state, recorded in many divergent versions in various ma ...

, recorded in several

Rus' chronicle The Rus' chronicles, Russian chronicles or Rus' letopis () was the primary Rus' historical literature. Chronicles were composed from the 11th to the 18th centuries, generally written in Old East Slavic (and, later, Ruthenian language, Ruthenian ...

s such as the ''

Novgorod First Chronicle The Novgorod First Chronicle ( rus, Новгоро́дская пе́рвая ле́топись, Novgoródskaya pérvaya létopisʹ, nəvɡɐˈrot͡skəjə ˈpʲervəjə ˈlʲetəpʲɪsʲ, commonly abbreviated as NPL), also known by its 1914 Eng ...

'' and ''

Primary Chronicle The ''Primary Chronicle'', shortened from the common ''Russian Primary Chronicle'' (, commonly transcribed ''Povest' vremennykh let'' (PVL), ), is a Rus' chronicle, chronicle of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110. It is believed to have been or ...

'', the Varangians

Rurik Rurik (also spelled Rorik, Riurik or Ryurik; ; ; died 879) was a Varangians, Varangian chieftain of the Rus' people, Rus' who, according to tradition, was invited to reign in Veliky Novgorod, Novgorod in the year 862. The ''Primary Chronicle' ...

, Sineus and Truvor were invited in the 860s to restore order in three towns – either

(most texts) or

Staraya Ladoga Staraya Ladoga ( rus, Ста́рая Ла́дога, p=ˈstarəjə ˈladəɡə, r=Stáraya Ládoga, t=Old Ladoga), known as Ladoga until 1704, is a rural locality (a '' selo'') in Volkhovsky District of Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the ...

(''

Hypatian Codex The ''Hypatian Codex'', also known as Hypatian Letopis or Ipatiev Letopis, is a compendium of three Rus' chronicle, Rus' chronicles: the ''Primary Chronicle'', ''Kievan Chronicle'' and ''Galician-Volhynian Chronicle''. It is the most important sou ...

''); Beloozero; and Izborsk (most texts) or "Slovensk" (''Pskov Third Chronicle''), respectively.Kievan Rus' and Mongol Periods
, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), ''Russia: A Country Study'', Department of the Army, 1998. . Their successors allegedly moved south and extended their authority to

, which had been previously dominated by the Khazars. Thus, the first East Slavic state, Rus', emerged in the 9th century along the Dnieper River valley. A coordinated group of princely states with a common interest in maintaining trade along the river routes, Kievan Rus' controlled the trade route for furs, wax, and slaves between Scandinavia and the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...

along the

Volkhov Volkhov () is an industrial types of inhabited localities in Russia, town and the administrative center of Volkhovsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the river Volkhov (river), Volkhov east of Saint Petersburg, St. Petersbu ...

and Dnieper Rivers. By the end of the 10th century, the minority Norse military aristocracy had merged with the native Slavic population, which also absorbed

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Christian influences in the course of the multiple campaigns to loot

Tsargrad ''Tsarigrad'' or ''Tsargorod'', also ''Czargrad'' and ''Tzargrad'', is a Slavic name for the city or land of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul in Turkey), the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Variations The terms ''Tsargrad'', ''Tsarigrad ...

, or

Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...

. One such campaign claimed the life of the foremost Slavic druzhina leader, Svyatoslav I, who was renowned for having crushed the power of the

on the Volga. Kievan Rus' is important for its introduction of a Slavic variant of the

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, otherwise known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity or Byzantine Christianity, is one of the three main Branches of Christianity, branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholic Church, Catholicism and Protestantism ...

religion, dramatically deepening a synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next thousand years. The region adopted Christianity in 988 by the official act of public

baptism Baptism (from ) is a Christians, Christian sacrament of initiation almost invariably with the use of water. It may be performed by aspersion, sprinkling or affusion, pouring water on the head, or by immersion baptism, immersing in water eit ...

of Kiev inhabitants by Prince Vladimir I. Some years later the first code of laws, Russkaya Pravda, was introduced by

Yaroslav the Wise Yaroslav I Vladimirovich ( 978 – 20 February 1054), better known as Yaroslav the Wise, was Grand Prince of Kiev from 1019 until his death in 1054. He was also earlier Prince of Novgorod from 1010 to 1034 and Prince of Rostov from 987 to 1010, ...

.Gordon Bob Smith, ''Reforming the Russian Legal System'', Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 2–3. . From the onset, the Kievan princes followed the Byzantine example and kept the Church dependent on them. By the 11th century, particularly during the reign of

, Kievan Rus' displayed an economy and achievements in architecture and literature superior to those that then existed in the western part of the continent. Compared with the languages of European Christendom, the

Russian language Russian is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is ...

was little influenced by the

and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

of early Christian writings. This was because

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...

was used directly in

liturgy Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembra ...

instead. A nomadic Turkic people, the

Kipchaks The Kipchaks, also spelled Qipchaqs, known as Polovtsians (''Polovtsy'') in Russian annals, were Turkic nomads and then a confederation that existed in the Middle Ages inhabiting parts of the Eurasian Steppe. First mentioned in the eighth cent ...

(also known as the Cumans), replaced the earlier

Pechenegs The Pechenegs () or Patzinaks, , Middle Turkic languages, Middle Turkic: , , , , , , ka, პაჭანიკი, , , ; sh-Latn-Cyrl, Pečenezi, separator=/, Печенези, also known as Pecheneg Turks were a semi-nomadic Turkic peopl ...

as the dominant force in the south steppe regions neighbouring to Rus' at the end of the 11th century and founded a nomadic state in the steppes along the Black Sea (Desht-e-Kipchak). Repelling their regular attacks, especially in Kiev, was a heavy burden for the southern areas of Rus'. The nomadic incursions caused a massive influx of Slavs to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state because of in-fighting between members of the princely family that ruled it collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of

Vladimir-Suzdal The Principality of Suzdal, from 1157 the Grand Principality of Vladimir, commonly known as Vladimir-Suzdal, or simply Suzdalia, was a medieval principality that was established during the disintegration of Kievan Rus'. In historiography, the ...

in the north-east,

in the north, and Halych-Volhynia in the south-west. Conquest by the

Mongol Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family of M ...

Golden Horde The Golden Horde, self-designated as ''Ulug Ulus'' ( in Turkic) was originally a Mongols, Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the division of ...

in the 13th century was the final blow. Kiev was destroyed.In 1240. See Michael Franklin Hamm, ''Kiev: A Portrait, 1800–1917'', Princeton University Press, 1993. Halych-Volhynia would eventually be absorbed into the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (), was a federation, federative real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and independent

Novgorod Republic The Novgorod Republic () was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries in northern Russia, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east. Its capital was the city of Novgorod. The ...

, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, would establish the basis for the modern Russian nation.

Mongol invasion and vassalage (1223–1480)

The invading

Mongols Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China ( Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family o ...

accelerated the fragmentation of the Rus'. In 1223, the disunited southern princes faced a Mongol raiding party at the Kalka River and were soundly defeated. In 1237–1238 the Mongols burnt down the city of Vladimir (4 February 1238) and other major cities of northeast Russia, routed the Russians at the Sit' River, and then moved west into

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

and

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. By then they had conquered most of the Russian principalities. Only the

escaped occupation and continued to flourish in the orbit of the

Hanseatic League The Hanseatic League was a Middle Ages, medieval commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns in Central Europe, Central and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Growing from a few Northern Germany, North German towns in the ...

. The impact of the Mongol invasion on the territories of Kievan Rus' was uneven. The advanced city culture was almost completely destroyed. As older centers such as Kiev and Vladimir never recovered from the devastation of the initial attack, the new cities of Moscow,Muscovy
, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), ''Russia: A Country Study'', Department of the Army, 1998. .

Tver Tver (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative centre of Tver Oblast, Russia. It is situated at the confluence of the Volga and Tvertsa rivers. Tver is located northwest of Moscow. Population: The city is ...

and

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...

began to compete for hegemony in the Mongol-dominated Rus' principalities under the suzerainty of the

. Although a coalition of Rus' princes led by

Dmitry Donskoy Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy (; 12 October 1350 – 19 May 1389) was Prince of Moscow from 1359 and Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1363 until his death. He was the heir of Ivan II. He was the first prince of Moscow to openly challenge Mongol ...

defeated Mongol warlord

Mamai Mamai (Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet, Mongolian Cyrillic: Мамай, ; 1325?–1380/1381) was a powerful Turco-Mongol tradition, Turko-Mongol military commander in Beylerbey rank of the Golden Horde from Kiyat clan. Contrary to popular misconcep ...

at Kulikovo in 1380,. Retrieved 22 July 2007. forces of the new khan Tokhtamysh and his Rus' allies immediately sacked Moscow in 1382 as punishment for resisting Mongol authority. Mongol domination of the Rus' principalities, along with tax collection by various overlords such as the Crimean Khans, continued into the early 16th century, despite later claims of Muscovite bookmen that the indecisive standoff at the Ugra in 1480 had signified "the end of the Tatar yoke" and the "liberation of Russia". Novgorod1400

The Mongols dominated the lower reaches of the Volga and held Russia in sway from their western capital at Sarai, one of the largest cities of the medieval world. The princes had to pay tribute to the Mongols of the Golden Horde, commonly called

Tatars Tatars ( )Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary are a group of Turkic peoples across Eas ...

; but in return they received charters authorizing them to act as deputies to the khans. In general, the princes were allowed considerable freedom to rule as they wished, while the

Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

even experienced a spiritual revival. The Mongols left their impact on the Russians in such areas as military tactics and transportation. Under Mongol occupation, Muscovy also developed its postal road network, census, fiscal system, and military organization. At the same time, Prince of Novgorod,

Alexander Nevsky Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky (; ; monastic name: ''Aleksiy''; 13 May 1221 – 14 November 1263) was Prince of Novgorod (1236–1240; 1241–1256; 1258–1259), Grand Prince of Kiev (1249–1263), and Grand Prince of Vladimir (1252–1263). ...

, managed to Battle on the Ice, repel the offensive of the Northern Crusades against

from the West. Despite this, becoming the Grand Prince, Alexander declared himself a vassal to the Golden Horde, not having the strength to resist its power.

Grand Duchy of Moscow (1283–1547)

Rise of Moscow

Dmitry Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo

Daniil Aleksandrovich, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, founded the Grand Duchy of Moscow, principality of Moscow (known as Muscovy in English), which first cooperated with and ultimately expelled the Tatars from Russia. Well-situated in the central river system of Russia and surrounded by protective forests and marshes, Moscow was at first only a vassal of Vladimir, but soon it absorbed its parent state. A major factor in the ascendancy of Moscow was the cooperation of its rulers with the Mongol overlords, who granted them the title of Grand Prince of Moscow and made them agents for collecting the Tatar tribute from the Russian principalities. The principality's prestige was further enhanced when it became the center of the

. Its head, the Metropolitan bishop, Metropolitan, fled from Kiev to Vladimir-Suzdal, Vladimir in 1299 and a few years later established the permanent headquarters of the Church in Moscow under the original title of Kiev Metropolitan. By the middle of the 14th century, the power of the Mongols was declining, and the Grand Princes felt able to openly oppose the Mongol yoke. In 1380, at Battle of Kulikovo on the Don River, Russia, Don River, the Mongols were defeated, and although this hard-fought victory did not end Tatar rule of Russia, it did bring great fame to the Grand Prince

. Moscow's leadership in Russia was now firmly based and by the middle of the 14th century its territory had greatly expanded through purchase, war, and marriage.

Ivan III, the Great

In the 15th century, the grand princes of Moscow continued to consolidate Russian land to increase their population and wealth. The most successful practitioner of this process was Ivan III of Russia, Ivan III, who laid the foundations for a Russian national state. Ivan competed with his powerful northwestern rival, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, for control over some of the semi-independent Upper Principalities in the upper Dnieper River, Dnieper and Oka River basins.Ivan III
, ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 2007 Through the defections of some princes, border skirmishes, and a long war with the Novgorod Republic, Ivan III was able to annex Novgorod and Tver. As a result, the

tripled in size under his rule. During his conflict with Pskov, a monk named Filofei (Philotheus of Pskov) composed a letter to Ivan III, with the prophecy that the latter's kingdom would be the Third Rome.See e.g
Eastern Orthodoxy
, ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 2007. ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. The Fall of Constantinople and the death of the last Greek Orthodox Christian emperor contributed to this new idea of Moscow, third Rome, Moscow as ''New Rome'' and the seat of Orthodox Christianity, as did Ivan's 1472 marriage to Byzantine Princess Sophia Palaiologina. Muscovy 1390 1525

Under Ivan III, the first central government bodies were created in Russia: Prikaz. The Sudebnik of 1497, Sudebnik was adopted, the first set of laws since the 11th century. The double-headed eagle was adopted as the coat of arms of Russia. Ivan proclaimed his absolute sovereignty over all Russian princes and nobles. Refusing further tribute to the Tatars, Ivan initiated a series of attacks that opened the way for the complete defeat of the declining

, now divided into several Khanates and hordes. Ivan and his successors sought to protect the southern boundaries of their domain against Crimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe, attacks of the Khanate of Crimea, Crimean Tatars and other hordes. To achieve this aim, they sponsored the construction of the Great Abatis Belt and granted manors to nobles, who were obliged to serve in the military. The manor system provided a basis for an emerging cavalry-based army. In this way, internal consolidation accompanied outward expansion of the state. By the 16th century, the rulers of Moscow considered the entire Russian territory their collective property. Various List of tribes and states in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, semi-independent princes still claimed specific territories, but Ivan III forced the lesser princes to acknowledge the grand prince of Moscow and his descendants as unquestioned rulers with control over military, judicial, and foreign affairs. Gradually, the Russian ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic ruler, a tsar. The first Russian ruler to officially crown himself "Tsar" was Ivan IV. Ivan III tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the

over the Rus', renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Biographer Fennell concludes that his reign was "militarily glorious and economically sound," and especially points to his territorial annexations and his centralized control over local rulers. However, Fennell argues that his reign was also "a period of cultural depression and spiritual barrenness. Freedom was stamped out within the Russian lands. By his bigoted anti-Catholicism Ivan brought down the curtain between Russia and the west. For the sake of territorial aggrandizement he deprived his country of the fruits of Western learning and civilization."

Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721)

Ivan IV, the Terrible

The development of the Tsar's autocratic powers reached a peak during the reign of Ivan IV of Russia, Ivan IV (1547–1584), known as "Ivan the Terrible". He strengthened the position of the monarch to an unprecedented degree, as he ruthlessly subordinated the nobles to his will, exiling or executing many on the slightest provocation. Nevertheless, Ivan is often seen as a farsighted statesman who reformed Russia as he promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor), curbed the influence of the clergy, and introduced local self-management in rural regions. Tsar also created the first regular army in Russia: Streltsy. His long Livonian War (1558–1583) for control of the Baltic coast and access to the sea trade ultimately proved a costly failure. Ivan managed to annex the Khanate of Kazan, Khanates of Kazan, Khanate of Astrakhan, Astrakhan, and Siberia Khanate, Siberia. These conquests complicated the migration of aggressive nomadic hordes from Asia to Europe via the Volga and Urals. Through these conquests, Russia acquired a significant Muslim Tatar population and emerged as a multiethnic and wikt:multiconfessional, multiconfessional state. Also around this period, the mercantile Stroganov family established a firm foothold in the Urals and recruited Russian Cossacks to colonise Siberia. Crimean Khanate 1550

In the later part of his reign, Ivan divided his realm in two. In the zone known as the ''oprichnina'', Ivan's followers carried out a series of bloody purges of the feudal aristocracy (whom he suspected of treachery after prince Andrey Kurbsky's betrayal), culminating in the Massacre of Novgorod in 1570. This combined with the military losses, epidemics, and poor harvests so weakened Russia that the Crimean Tatars were able to sack central Russian regions and Russo–Crimean War (1571), burn down Moscow in 1571. However, in 1572 the Russians defeated the Crimean Tatar army at the Battle of Molodi and Ivan abandoned the ''oprichnina''. At the end of Ivan IV's reign the Polish–Lithuanian and Swedish armies carried out a powerful intervention in Russia, devastating its northern and northwest regions.

Time of Troubles

The death of Ivan's childless son Feodor I of Russia, Feodor was followed by a period of civil wars and foreign intervention known as the

(1606–13). Extremely cold summers (1601–1603) wrecked crops, which led to the Russian famine of 1601–1603 and increased the social disorganization. Boris Godunov's reign ended in chaos, civil war combined with foreign intrusion, devastation of many cities and depopulation of the rural regions. The country rocked by internal chaos also attracted several waves of interventions by the

. During the Polish–Muscovite War (1605–1618), Polish–Lithuanian forces reached Moscow and installed the impostor False Dmitriy I in 1605, then supported False Dmitry II in 1607. The decisive moment came when a combined Russian-Swedish army was routed by the Polish forces under hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski at the Battle of Klushino on . As the result of the battle, the Seven Boyars, a group of Russian nobles, deposed the tsar Vasily Shuysky on , and recognized the Polish prince Władysław IV Vasa as the Tsar of Russia on . The Polish–Lithuanian occupation of Moscow, Poles occupied Moscow on . Moscow revolted but riots there were brutally suppressed and the city was set on fire.George Vernadsky, "A History of Russia", Volume 5, Yale University Press, (1969)
Russian translation
The crisis provoked a patriotic national uprising against the invasion, both in 1611 and 1612. A volunteer army, led by the merchant Kuzma Minin and prince Dmitry Pozharsky, expelled the foreign forces from the capital on .Chester S L Dunning, ''Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty''
p. 434
Penn State Press, 2001, Troubles, Time of
." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006 The Russian statehood survived the "Time of Troubles" and the rule of weak or corrupt Tsars because of the strength of the government's central bureaucracy. Government functionaries continued to serve, regardless of the ruler's legitimacy or the faction controlling the throne. However, the Time of Troubles caused the loss of much territory to the

in Russo-Polish War (1605-1618), the Russo-Polish war, as well as to the Swedish Empire in the Ingrian War.

Accession of the Romanovs and early rule

In February 1613, after the chaos and expulsion of the Poles from Moscow, a Zemsky Sobor, national assembly elected Michael I of Russia, Michael Romanov, the young son of Patriarch Filaret (Feodor Romanov), Patriarch Filaret, to the throne. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia until 1917. The immediate task of the new monarch was to restore peace. Fortunately for Moscow, its major enemies, the

and Sweden, were engaged in a bitter conflict with each other, which provided Russia the opportunity to make peace with Sweden in 1617 and to sign a truce with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1619. Recovery of lost territories began in the mid-17th century, when the Chmielnicki Uprising, Khmelnitsky Uprising (1648–1657) in Ukraine against Polish rule brought about the Treaty of Pereyaslav between Russia and the Ukrainian Cossacks. In the treaty, Russia granted protection to the Cossack Hetmanate, Cossacks state in Left-bank Ukraine, formerly under Polish control. This triggered a prolonged Russo-Polish War (1654–1667), which ended with the Treaty of Andrusovo, where Poland accepted the loss of Left-bank Ukraine,

and Smolensk. The Russian conquest of Siberia, begun at the end of the 16th century, continued in the 17th century. By the end of the 1640s, the Russians reached the Pacific Ocean, the Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev, discovered the strait between Asia and America. Russian expansion in the Far East faced resistance from Qing China. After the war between Russia and China, the Treaty of Nerchinsk was signed, delimiting the territories in the Amur region. Rather than risk their estates in more civil war, the boyars cooperated with the first Romanovs, enabling them to finish the work of bureaucratic centralization. Thus, the state required service from both the old and the new nobility, primarily in the military. In return, the tsars allowed the boyars to complete the process of enserfing the peasants. In the preceding century, the state had gradually curtailed peasants' rights to move from one landlord to another. With the state now fully sanctioning Russian serfdom, serfdom, runaway peasants became state fugitives, and the power of the landlords over the peasants "attached" to their land had become almost complete. Together, the state and the nobles placed an overwhelming burden of taxation on the peasants, whose rate was 100 times greater in the mid-17th century than it had been a century earlier. Likewise, middle-class urban tradesmen and craftsmen were assessed taxes, and were forbidden to change residence. All segments of the population were subject to military levy and special taxes. Riots among peasants and citizens of Moscow at this time were endemic and included the Salt Riot (1648),Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe, ''Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia'', Routledge, 2004, p. 264. . Copper Riot (1662), and the Moscow Uprising of 1682, Moscow Uprising (1682). By far the greatest peasant uprising in 17th-century Europe erupted in 1667. As the free settlers of South Russia, the Cossacks, reacted against the growing centralization of the state, serfs escaped from their landlords and joined the rebels. The Cossack leader

led his followers up the Volga River, inciting peasant uprisings and replacing local governments with Cossack rule. The tsar's army finally crushed his forces in 1670; a year later Stenka was captured and beheaded. Yet, less than half a century later, the strains of military expeditions produced another Bulavin Rebellion, revolt in Astrakhan, ultimately subdued.

Russian Empire (1721–1917)

Population

Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the history of Siberia, first Russian colonisation of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) that incorporated left-bank Ukraine, and the Russian conquest of Siberia. Poland was divided in the 1790–1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, south of Siberia.

Peter the Great

(Peter I, 1672–1725) brought centralized autocracy into Russia and played a major role in bringing his country into the European state system. Russia was now the largest country in the world, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The vast majority of the land was unoccupied, and travel was slow. Much of its expansion had taken place in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian settlement of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the reconquest of Kiev, and the pacification of the Siberian tribes. However, a population of only 14 million was stretched across this vast landscape. With a short growing season, grain yields trailed behind those in the West and potato farming was not yet widespread. As a result, the great majority of the population workforce was occupied with agriculture. Russia remained isolated from the sea trade and its internal trade, communication and manufacturing were seasonally dependent. Peter reformed the Imperial Russian Army, Russian army and created the Imperial Russian Navy, Russian navy. Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Turks. His aim was to establish a Russian foothold on the Black Sea by Azov campaigns (1695–1696), taking the town of Azov. His attention then turned to the north. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport except at Arkhangelsk, Archangel on the White Sea, whose harbor was frozen nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by Sweden, whose territory enclosed it on three sides. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him in 1699 to make a secret alliance with the

and Denmark against Sweden resulting in the

. The war ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden sued for peace with Russia. Peter acquired four provinces situated south and east of the Gulf of Finland, thus securing his coveted access to the sea. There, in 1703, he had already founded the city that was to become Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg. Russian intervention in the Commonwealth marked, with the Silent Sejm, the beginning of a 200-year domination of that region by the Russian Empire. In celebration of his conquests, Peter assumed the title of emperor, and the Russian Tsardom officially became the

in 1721. Peter re-organized his government based on the latest Western models, molding Russia into an Absolutism (European history), absolutist state. He replaced the old ''boyar'' Duma (council of nobles) with a Governing Senate, Senate, in effect a supreme council of state. The countryside was also divided into new Guberniya, provinces and districts. Peter told the senate that its mission was to collect taxes. In turn tax revenues tripled over the course of his reign. Administrative Collegium (ministry), Collegia (ministries) were established in St. Petersburg, to replace the old governmental departments. In 1722, Peter promulgated his famous Table of ranks. As part of the government reform, the Orthodox Church was partially incorporated into the country's administrative structure, in effect making it a tool of the state. Peter abolished the patriarchate and replaced it with a collective body, the Holy Synod, led by a lay government official. Peter continued and intensified his predecessors' requirement of state service for all nobles. By then, the once powerful Persian Safavid Empire to the south was heavily declining. Taking advantage, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War (1722–1723), known as "The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great" by Russian histographers, in order to be the first Russian emperor to establish Russian influence in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region. After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over the territories to Russia. However, by 12 years later, all the territories were ceded back to Persia, which was now led by the charismatic military genius Nader Shah, as part of the Treaty of Resht and Treaty of Ganja and the Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire, the common neighbouring rivalling enemy. Peter the Great died in 1725, leaving an unsettled succession, but Russia had become a great power by the end of his reign. Peter I was succeeded by his second wife, Catherine I of Russia, Catherine I (1725–1727), who was merely a figurehead for a powerful group of high officials, then by his minor grandson, Peter II of Russia, Peter II (1727–1730), then by his niece, Anna of Russia, Anna (1730–1740), daughter of Tsar Ivan V. The Ivan VI of Russia, heir to Anna was soon deposed in a coup and Elizabeth of Russia, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I, ruled from 1741 to 1762. During her reign, Russia took part in the Seven Years' War.

Catherine the Great

Nearly 40 years passed before a comparably ambitious ruler appeared. Catherine II of Russia, Catherine II, "the Great" (r. 1762–1796), was a German princess who married the German heir to the Russian crown. Catherine overthrew him in a coup in 1762, becoming queen regnant. Catherine enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. She patronized the arts, science and learning. She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great. Catherine promulgated the Charter to the Gentry reaffirming rights and freedoms of the Russian nobility and abolishing mandatory state service. She seized control of all the church lands, drastically reduced the size of the monasteries, and put the surviving clergy on a tight budget. Catherine spent heavily to promote an expansive foreign policy. She extended Russian political control over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with actions, including the support of the Targowica Confederation. The cost of her campaigns, plus the oppressive social system that required serfs to spend almost all their time laboring on the land of their lords, provoked a major Pugachev's Rebellion, peasant uprising in 1773. Inspired by a Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev, with the emphatic cry of "Hang all the landlords!", the rebels threatened to take Moscow until Catherine crushed the rebellion. Like the other enlightened despots of Europe, Catherine made certain of her own power and formed an alliance with the nobility. Catherine successfully waged two wars (Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), 1768–1774, Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792), 1787–1792) against the decaying Ottoman Empire and advanced Russia's southern boundary to the Black Sea. In 1775 she Liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich, liquidated the Zaporozhian Sich, and on the former lands of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the places of theirs settlements was created Novorossiya Governorate, in which new cities were formed: Dnipro, Yekaterinoslav (1776), Kropyvnytskyi, Yelisavetgrad, Kherson (1778), Odessa (1794). Russia Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire, annexed Crimea in 1783 and created the Black Sea fleet. Then, by allying with the rulers of Austrian Empire, Austria and Prussia, she incorporated the territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where after a century of Russian rule non-Catholic, mainly Orthodox population prevailed during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. Russian Empire 1792 Map

In accordance to Russia's Treaty of Georgievsk, treaty with the Georgians to protect them against any new invasion of their Persian suzerains and further political aspirations, Catherine waged a new war Persian Expedition of 1796, against Persia in 1796 after they had again invaded Georgia and established rule over it about a Battle of Krtsanisi, year prior, and had expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus. In 1798–1799, Russian troops participated in the War of the Second Coalition, anti-French coalition, the troops under the command of Alexander Suvorov Italian and Swiss expedition, defeated the French in Northern Italy.

Ruling the Empire (1725–1825)

Russian emperors of the 18th century professed the ideas of Enlightened absolutism. However, Westernization and modernization affected only the upper classes of Russian society, while the bulk of the population, consisting of peasants, remained in a state of serfdom. Powerful Russians resented their privileged positions and alien ideas. The backlash was especially severe after the Napoleonic wars. It produced a powerful anti-western campaign that "led to a wholesale purge of Western specialists and their Russian followers in universities, schools, and government service". The mid-18th century was marked by the emergence of higher education in Russia. The first two major universities Saint Petersburg State University and Moscow State University were opened. Russian exploration of Siberia and the Far East continued. Great Northern Expedition laid the foundation for the development of Alaska by the Russians. By the end of the 18th century, Alaska became a Russian colony (Russian America). In the early 19th century, Alaska was used as a base for the First Russian circumnavigation. In 1819–1821, Russian sailors discovered Antarctica during an First Russian Antarctic Expedition, Antarctic expedition. Russia was in a continuous state of financial crisis. While revenue rose from 9 million rubles in 1724 to 40 million in 1794, expenses grew more rapidly, reaching 49 million in 1794. The budget was allocated 46% to the military, 20% to government economic activities, 12% to administration, and 9% for the Imperial Court in St. Petersburg. The deficit required borrowing, primarily from Amsterdam; 5% of the budget was allocated to debt payments. Paper money was issued to pay for expensive wars, thus causing inflation. 18th-century Russia remained "a poor, backward, overwhelmingly agricultural, and illiterate country".

Alexander I and victory over Napoleon

By the time of her death in 1796, Catherine's expansionist policy had made Russia a major European power.

continued this policy, wresting Finland from the weakened kingdom of Sweden in 1809 and Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812. His key advisor was a Polish nobleman Adam Jerzy Czartoryski. After Russian armies liberated allied History of Georgia (country), Georgia from Persian occupation in 1802, they Russo-Persian War (1804–1813), clashed with Persia over control and consolidation over Georgia, as well as the Iranian territories that comprise modern-day Azerbaijan and

. They also became involved in the Caucasian War against the Caucasian Imamate and Circassia. In 1813, the war with Persia concluded with a Russian victory, forcing Qajar dynasty, Qajar Iran to cede swaths of its territories in the Caucasus to Russia, which drastically increased its territory in the region. To the south-west, Russia tried to expand at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, using Georgia at its base for the Caucasus and Anatolian front. In European policy, Alexander I switched Russia back and forth four times in 1804–1812 from neutral peacemaker to anti-Napoleon to an ally of Napoleon, winding up in 1812 as Napoleon's enemy. In 1805, he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after the massive defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz he switched and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon's Continental System. He fought Anglo-Russian War (1807–1812), a small-scale naval war against Britain, 1807–1812. The alliance collapsed by 1810. Russia's economy had been hurt by Napoleon's Continental System, which cut off trade with Britain. As Esdaile notes, "Implicit in the idea of a Russian Poland was, of course, a war against Napoleon". Schroeder says Poland was the root cause of the conflict but Russia's refusal to support the Continental System was also a factor. Russparis

The Napoleon's invasion of Russia, invasion of Russia was a catastrophe for Napoleon and his 450,000 invasion troops. One major battle was fought at Battle of Borodino, Borodino; casualties were very high, but it was indecisive, and Napoleon was unable to engage and defeat the Russian armies. He tried to force the Tsar to terms by French occupation of Moscow, capturing Moscow at the onset of winter, even though he had lost most of his men. Instead, the Russians retreated, burning crops and food supplies in a scorched earth policy that multiplied Napoleon's logistic problems: 85%–90% of Napoleon's soldiers died from disease, cold, starvation or ambush by peasant guerrillas. As Napoleon's forces retreated, Russian troops pursued them into Central and Western Europe, defeated Napoleon's army in the Battle of the Nations and finally captured Paris. Of a total population of around 43 million people, Russia lost about 1.5 million in the year 1812; of these about 250,000 to 300,000 were soldiers and the rest peasants and serfs. After the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander presided over the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), which made him the king of Congress Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance with Austria and Prussia, to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe that he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements. Although the Russian Empire would play a leading role on behalf of conservatism as late as 1848, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant degree. As West European economic growth accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, sea trade and colonialism which had begun in the second half of the 18th century, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, undermining its ability to field strong armies.

Nicholas I and the Decembrist Revolt

Russia's great power status obscured the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic backwardness. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I was willing to discuss constitutional reforms, and though a few were introduced, no thoroughgoing changes were attempted. The tsar was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I of Russia, Nicholas I (1825–1855), who at the onset of his reign was confronted with an uprising. The background of this revolt lay in the Napoleonic Wars, when a number of well-educated Russian officers traveled in Europe in the course of the military campaigns, where their exposure to the liberalism of Western Europe encouraged them to seek change on their return. The result was the Decembrist Revolt (December 1825), the work of a small circle of liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brother as a constitutional monarch. But the revolt was easily crushed, leading Nicholas to turn away from liberal reforms and champion the reactionary doctrine "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality". In 1826–1828, Russia fought another war Russo-Persian War (1826-1828), against Persia. Russia lost almost all of its recently consolidated territories during the first year but regained them and won the war on highly favourable terms. At the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, Russia gained Armenia, Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Nakhchivan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, and Iğdır Province, Iğdır. In the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829), Russo-Turkish War Russia invaded northeastern Anatolia and occupied the strategic Ottoman towns of Erzurum and Gümüşhane and, posing as protector and saviour of the Greek Orthodox population, received extensive support from the region's Pontic Greeks. After a brief occupation, the Russian imperial army withdrew into Georgia. By the 1830s, Russia had conquered all Persian territories and major Ottoman territories in the Caucasus. In 1831, Nicholas crushed the November Uprising in Poland. The Russian autocracy gave Polish artisans and gentry reason to rebel in 1863 by assailing the national core values of language, religion, and culture. The resulting January Uprising was a massive Polish revolt, which also was crushed. France, Britain and Austria tried to intervene in the crisis but were unable. The Russian patriotic press used the Polish uprising to unify the Russian nation, claiming it was Russia's God-given mission to save Poland and the world. Poland was punished by losing its distinctive political and judicial rights, with Russianization imposed on its schools and courts.

Russian Army

RUS-2016-SPB-Monument to Nicholas I of Russia

Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, Nicholas I (reigned 1825–1855) lavished attention on his army. In a nation of 60–70 million people, it included a million men. They had outdated equipment and tactics, but the tsar took pride in its smartness on parade. The cavalry horses, for example, were only trained in parade formations, and did poorly in battle. He put generals in charge of most of his civilian agencies regardless of their qualifications. The Army became the vehicle of upward social mobility for noble youths from non-Russian areas, such as Poland, the Baltic, Finland and Georgia. On the other hand, many miscreants, petty criminals and undesirables were punished by local officials by enlisting them for life in the Army. Village oligarchies controlled employment, conscription for the army, and local patronage; they blocked reforms and sent the most unpromising peasant youth to the army. The conscription system was unpopular with people, as was the practice of forcing peasants to house the soldiers for six months of the year. Finally the Crimean War at the end of his reign showed the world that Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward, and administratively incompetent. Despite his ambitions toward the south and Ottoman Empire, Russia had not built its railroad network in that direction, and communications were poor. The bureaucracy was riddled with corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. The Navy was weak and technologically backward; the Army, although very large, was good only for parades, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, poor morale, and was even more out of touch with the latest technology. The nation's leaders realized that reforms were urgently needed.

Russian society in the first half of 19th century

The early 19th century is the time when Russian literature becomes an independent and very striking phenomenon. Westernizers favored imitating Western Europe while others renounced the West and called for a return of the traditions of the past. The latter path was championed by Slavophiles, who heaped scorn on the "decadent" West. The Slavophiles were opponents of bureaucracy and preferred the Collectivism and individualism, collectivism of the medieval Russian ''mir (social), mir'', or obshchina, village community, to the individualism of the West. A forerunner of the Westernizer movement was Pyotr Chaadayev. He exposed the cultural isolation of Russia, from the perspective of Western Europe, in his ''Philosophical Letters'' of 1831. He cast doubt on the greatness of the Russian past, and ridiculed Orthodoxy for failing to provide a sound spiritual basis for the Russian mind. He called on Russia to emulate Western Europe, especially in rational and logical thought, its progressive spirit, its leadership in science, and indeed its leadership on the path to freedom. Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen were prominent Westernizers.

Crimean War

Since the war against Napoleon, Russia had become deeply involved in the affairs of Europe, as part of the "Holy Alliance." The Holy Alliance was formed to serve as the "policeman of Europe." However, to maintain the alliance required large armies. Prussia, Austria, Britain and France (the other members of the alliance) lacked large armies and needed Russia to supply the required numbers, which fit the philosophy of Nicholas I. The Tsar Hungarian Revolution of 1848, sent his army into Hungary in 1849 at the request of the Austrian Empire and broke the revolt there, while preventing its spread to Russian Poland. The Tsar cracked down on any signs of internal unrest. Crimea Sevastopol Istorychny boulevard Memorial complex-54

Crimea Sevastopol Istorychny boulevard Memorial complex-54

Russia expected that in exchange for supplying the troops to be the policeman of Europe, it should have a free hand in dealing with the decaying Ottoman Empire—the "sick man of Europe." In 1853, Russia invaded Ottoman-controlled areas leading to the Crimean War. Britain and France came to the rescue of the Ottomans. After a grueling war fought largely in Crimea, with very high death rates from disease, the allies won. Historian Orlando Figes points to the long-term damage Russia suffered: :The demilitarization of the Black Sea was a major blow to Russia, which was no longer able to protect its vulnerable southern coastal frontier against the British or any other fleet.... The destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol and other naval docks was a humiliation. No compulsory disarmament had ever been imposed on a great power previously.... The Allies did not really think that they were dealing with a European power in Russia. They regarded Russia as a semi-Asiatic state....In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the countries defenses, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on....The image many Russians had built up of their country – the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world – had suddenly been shattered. Russia's backwardness had been exposed....The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia – not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways the accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.

Alexander II and the abolition of serfdom

When Alexander II came to the throne in 1855, the demand for reform was widespread. The most pressing problem confronting the Government was Russian serfdom, serfdom. In 1859, there were 23 million serfs (out of a total population of 67 million). In anticipation of civil unrest that could ultimately foment a revolution, Alexander II chose to preemptively abolish serfdom with the Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, emancipation reform in 1861. Emancipation brought a supply of free labor to the cities, stimulated industry, and the middle class grew in number and influence. The freed peasants had to buy land, allotted to them, from the landowners with state assistance. The Government issued special bonds to the landowners for the land that they had lost, and collected a special tax from the peasants, called redemption payments, at a rate of 5% of the total cost of allotted land yearly. All the land turned over to the peasants was owned collectively by the ''mir'', the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised the various holdings. Alexander was responsible for numerous reforms besides abolishing serfdom. Judicial reform of Alexander II, He reorganized the judicial system, setting up elected local judges, abolishing capital punishment, promoting local self-government through the zemstvo system, imposing universal military service, ending some of the privileges of the nobility, and promoting the universities. In foreign policy, he Alaska Purchase, sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. He modernized the military command system. He sought peace, and joined with Germany and Austria in the League of the Three Emperors that stabilized the European situation. The Russian Empire expanded in Siberia and in the Caucasus and made gains at the expense of China. Faced with an uprising in Poland in 1863, he stripped that land of its separate Constitution and incorporated it directly into Russia. To counter the rise of a revolutionary and anarchistic movements, he sent thousands of dissidents into exile in Siberia and was proposing additional parliamentary reforms when he was assassinated in 1881. In the late 1870s Russia and the Ottoman Empire again clashed in the Balkans. Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), The Russo-Turkish War was popular among the Russian people, who supported the independence of their fellow Orthodox Slavs, the Serbs and the Bulgarians. Russia's victory in this war allowed a number of Balkan states to gain independence: United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Romania, Principality of Serbia, Serbia, Principality of Montenegro, Montenegro. In addition, Principality of Bulgaria, Bulgaria de facto became independent. However, the war increased tension with Austria-Hungary, which also had ambitions in the region. The Tsar was disappointed by the results of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, but abided by the agreement. During this period Russia Russian conquest of Central Asia, expanded its empire into Central Asia, conquering the khanates of Khanate of Kokand, Kokand, Emirate of Bukhara, Bukhara, and Khanate of Khiva, Khiva, as well as the Transcaspian Oblast, Trans-Caspian region. Russia's advance in Asia led to British fears that the Russians planned aggression against British India. Before 1815 London worried Napoleon would combine with Russia to do that in one mighty campaign. After 1815 London feared Russia alone would do it step by step. However historians report that the Russians never had any intention to move against India.

Russian society in the second half of 19th century

In the 1860s, a movement known as Nihilism developed in Russia. A term originally coined by Ivan Turgenev in his 1862 novel ''Fathers and Sons (novel), Fathers and Sons'', Nihilists favoured the destruction of human institutions and laws, based on the assumption that they are artificial and corrupt. At its core, Russian nihilism was characterized by the belief that the world lacks comprehensible meaning, objective truth, or value. For some time, many Russian liberals had been dissatisfied by what they regarded as the empty discussions of the intelligentsia. The Nihilists questioned all old values and shocked the Russian establishment. They became involved in the cause of reform and became major political forces. Their path was facilitated by the previous actions of the Decembrists, who revolted in 1825, and the financial and political hardship caused by the Crimean War, which caused many Russians to lose faith in political institutions. Russian nihilists created the manifesto ''Catechism of a Revolutionary''. After the Nihilists failed to convert the aristocracy and landed gentry to the cause of reform, they turned to the peasants. Their campaign became known as the Narodnik, ''Narodnk'' ("Populist") movement. It was based on the belief that the common people had the wisdom and peaceful ability to lead the nation.Transformation of Russia in the Nineteenth Century
, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), ''Russia: A Country Study'', Department of the Army, 1998. . As the ''Narodnik'' movement gained momentum, the government moved to extirpate it. In response to the growing reaction of the government, a radical branch of the Narodniks advocated and practiced terrorism. One after another, prominent officials were shot or killed by bombs. This represented the ascendancy of anarchism in Russia as a powerful revolutionary force. Finally, after several attempts, Alexander II was assassinated by anarchists in 1881, on the very day he had approved a proposal to call a representative assembly to consider new reforms in addition to the abolition of serfdom designed to ameliorate revolutionary demands. The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th is known as the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, Silver Age of Russian culture. The Silver Age was dominated by the artistic movements of Russian Symbolism, Acmeism, and Russian Futurism, many poetic schools flourished, including the Mystical Anarchism tendency within the Symbolist movement. The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in

and

, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960.

Autocracy and reaction under Alexander III

Unlike his father, the new tsar Alexander III of Russia, Alexander III (1881–1894) was throughout his reign a staunch reactionary who revived the maxim of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and National Character". A committed Slavophile, Alexander III believed that Russia could be saved from chaos only by shutting itself off from the subversive influences of Western Europe. In his reign Russia concluded the Franco-Russian Alliance, union with republican France to contain the growing power of Germany, completed the conquest of Central Asia, and exacted important territorial and commercial concessions from China. The tsar's most influential adviser was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, tutor to Alexander III and his son Nicholas, and procurator of the Holy Synod from 1880 to 1895. He taught his royal pupils to fear freedom of speech and press and to hate democracy, constitutions, and the parliamentary system. Under Pobedonostsev, revolutionaries were hunted down and a policy of Russification was carried out.

Nicholas II and new revolutionary movement

Alexander was succeeded by his son Nicholas II of Russia, Nicholas II (1894–1918). The Industrial Revolution, which began to exert a significant influence in Russia, was meanwhile creating forces that would finally overthrow the tsar. Politically, these opposition forces organized into three competing parties: The liberal elements among the industrial capitalists and nobility, who wanted peaceful social reform and a constitutional monarchy, founded the Constitutional Democratic party or ''Kadets'' in 1905. Followers of the Narodnik tradition established the Socialist-Revolutionary Party or ''Esers'' in 1901, advocating the distribution of land among the peasants who worked it. A third radical group founded the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party or ''RSDLP'' in 1898; this party was the primary exponent of Marxism in Russia. Gathering their support from the radical intellectuals and the urban working class, they advocated complete social, economic and political revolution. In 1903, the RSDLP split into two wings: the radical Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the relatively moderate Mensheviks, led by Yuli Martov. The Mensheviks believed that Russian socialism would grow gradually and peacefully and that the tsar's regime should be succeeded by a democratic republic. The Bolsheviks advocated the formation of a small elite of professional revolutionaries, subject to strong party discipline, to act as the vanguard of the proletariat in order to seize power by force. At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia continued its expansion in the Far East; Chinese Manchuria was in the zone of Russian interests. Russia took an active part in the Boxer Rebellion, intervention of the great powers in China to suppress the Boxer rebellion. During this war, Russia occupied Manchuria, which caused a clash of interests with Japan. In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began, which ended extremely unfavourably for Russia.

Revolution of 1905

The disastrous performance of the Russian armed forces in the Russo-Japanese War was a major blow to the Russian State and increased the potential for unrest.The Last Years of the Autocracy
, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), ''Russia: A Country Study'', Department of the Army, 1998. . In January 1905, an incident known as "Bloody Sunday (1905), Bloody Sunday" occurred when Father Gapon led an enormous crowd to the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar. When the procession reached the palace, Cossacks opened fire, killing hundreds. The Russian masses were so aroused over the massacre that a general strike was declared demanding a democratic republic. This marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Soviet (workers council), Soviets (councils of workers) appeared in most cities to direct revolutionary activity. In October 1905, Nicholas reluctantly issued the October Manifesto, which conceded the creation of a national Duma (legislature) to be called without delay. The right to vote was extended, and no law was to go into force without confirmation by the Duma. The moderate groups were satisfied; but the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes. By the end of 1905, there was disunity among the reformers, and the tsar's position was strengthened.

World War I

On 28 June 1914, Bosnian Serbs Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary. Austro-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia, which it considered a Russian client-state. Russia had no treaty obligation to Serbia, and most Russian leaders wanted to avoid war. But in that crisis they had the support of France, and believed that supporting Serbia was important for Russia's credibility and for its goal of a leadership role in the Balkans. Tsar Nicholas II mobilised Russian forces on 30 July 1914 to defend Serbia. Christopher Clark states: "The Russian general mobilisation [of 30 July] was one of the most momentous decisions of the July crisis". Germany responded with its own mobilisation and declaration of War on 1 August 1914. At the opening of hostilities, the Russians took the offensive against both Germany and Austria-Hungary. The very large but poorly led and under-equipped Russian army fought tenaciously. Casualties were enormous. In the 1914 campaign, Russian forces defeated Austro-Hungarian forces in the Battle of Galicia. The success of the Russian army forced the German army to withdraw troops from the western front to the Russian front. However, victories in Poland by the Central Powers in the 1915 campaign, led to a major retreat of the Russian army. In 1916, the Russians again dealt a powerful blow to the Austrians during the Brusilov offensive. By 1915, morale was worsening. Many recruits were sent to the front unarmed. Nevertheless, the Russian army fought on, and tied down large numbers of Germans and Austrians. When the homefront showed an occasional surge of patriotism, the tsar and his entourage failed to exploit it for military benefit. The Russian army neglected to rally the ethnic and religious minorities that were hostile to Austria, such as Poles. The tsar refused to cooperate with the national legislature, the Duma, and listened less to experts than to his wife, who was in thrall to her chief advisor, the holy man Grigori Rasputin. More than two million refugees fled. Repeated military failures and bureaucratic ineptitude soon turned large segments of the population against the government. The German and Ottoman fleets prevented Russia from importing urgently needed supplies through the Baltic and Black seas. By mid-1915 the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties kept occurring, and inflation was mounting. Strikes increased among factory workers, and the peasants, who wanted land reforms, were restless. Meanwhile, elite distrust of the regime was deepened by reports that Rasputin was gaining influence; his assassination in late 1916 ended the scandal but did not restore the autocracy's prestige.

Russian Civil War (1917–1922)

Russian Revolution

In late February (3 March 1917), a strike occurred in a factory in the capital Petrograd (Saint Petersburg). On 23 February (8 March) 1917, thousands of female textile workers walked out of their factories protesting the lack of food and calling on other workers to join them. Within days, nearly all the workers in the city were idle, and street fighting broke out. The tsar ordered the Duma to disband, ordered strikers to return to work, and ordered troops to shoot at demonstrators in the streets. His orders triggered the February Revolution, especially when soldiers sided with the strikers. On 2 March, Nicholas II abdicated. To fill the vacuum of authority, the Duma declared a Russian Provisional Government, Provisional Government, headed by Georgy Lvov, Prince Lvov, which was collectively known as the Russian Republic.The Russian Revolution
in the History (U.S. TV channel), History Channel Encyclopedia. Meanwhile, the socialists in Petrograd organized elections among workers and soldiers to form a soviet (council) of workers' and soldiers' deputies, as an organ of popular power that could pressure the "bourgeois" Provisional Government. In July, following a series of crises that undermined their authority with the public, the head of the Provisional Government resigned and was succeeded by Alexander Kerensky, who was more progressive than his predecessor but not radical enough for the Bolsheviks or many Russians discontented with the deepening economic crisis and the war. The socialist-led soviet in Petrograd joined with soviets that formed throughout the country to create a national movement. The German government provided over 40 million gold marks to subsidize Bolshevik publications and activities subversive of the tsarist government, especially focusing on disgruntled soldiers and workers. In April 1917 Germany provided a special sealed train to carry Vladimir Lenin back to Russia from his exile in Switzerland. After many behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the soviets seized control of the government in November 1917 and drove Kerensky and his moderate provisional government into exile, in the events that would become known as the

. Bolshevik figures such as Anatoly Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky and Dmitry Manuilsky agreed that Lenin’s influence on the Bolshevik party was decisive but the October insurrection was carried out according to Trotsky’s, not to Lenin’s plan. When the Russian Constituent Assembly, national Constituent Assembly (elected in December 1917) refused to become a rubber stamp of the Bolsheviks, it was dissolved by Lenin's troops and all vestiges of democracy were removed. With the handicap of the moderate opposition removed, Lenin was able to free his regime from the war problem by the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (Russia–Central Powers), Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) with Germany. Russia lost much of her western borderlands. However, when Germany was defeated the Soviet government repudiated the Treaty.W. Bruce Lincoln, ''Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War, 1918–1921'' (1999)

Russian Civil War

The Bolshevik grip on power was by no means secure, and a lengthy struggle broke out between the new regime and its opponents, which included the Socialist Revolutionaries, the anti-Bolshevik White movement, and large numbers of peasants. At the same time the Allied intervention in Russia, Allied powers sent several expeditionary armies to support the anti-Communist forces in an attempt to force Russia to rejoin the world war. The Bolsheviks fought against both these forces and national independence movements in the former Russian Empire. By 1921, they had defeated their internal enemies and brought most of the newly independent states under their control, with the exception of Finland, the Baltic States, the Moldavian Democratic Republic (which elected to unite with Romania), and Poland (with whom they had fought the Polish–Soviet War). Finland also annexed the region Pechenga of the Russian Kola Peninsula; Soviet Russia and allied Soviet republics conceded the parts of its territory to Estonia (Petseri County and Leander Reijo, Estonian Ingria), Latvia (Pytalovo), and Turkey (Kars). Poland incorporated the contested territories of Western Belarus and Ukraine, Western Ukraine, the former parts of the Russian Empire (except Galicia (Central Europe), Galicia) east to Curzon Line. Both sides regularly committed brutal atrocities against civilians. During the civil war era for example, Petlyura and Denikin's forces massacred 100,000 to 150,000 Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were left homeless and tens of thousands became victims of serious illness. These massacres are now referred to as the White Terror (Russia). Estimates for the total number of people killed during the Red Terror carried out by the Bolsheviks vary widely. One source asserts that the total number of victims could be 1.3 million, whereas others give estimates ranging from 10,000 in the initial period of repression to 140,000The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia. Bailey Stone. Cambridge University Press, 25 November 2013. p. 335 and an estimate of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922. The most reliable estimations for the total number of killings put the number at about 100,000, whereas others suggest a figure of 200,000. The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded and machines damaged. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the Russian famine of 1921, 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war. Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia, many were Evacuation of the Crimea (1920), evacuated from Crimea in the 1920, some through the Far East, others west into the newly independent Baltic countries. These émigrés included a large percentage of the educated and skilled population.

Soviet Union (1922–1991)

Creation of the Soviet Union

19191107-lenin second anniversary october revolution moscow

The

, established in December 1922 by the leaders of the Russian Communist Party, was roughly coterminous with Russia before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (Russia–Central Powers), Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. At that time, the new nation included four constituent republics: the Russian SFSR, the

, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR. The constitution, adopted in 1924, established a federal system of government based on a pyramid of soviets in each constituent republic which culminated in the All-Union Congress of Soviets. However, while it appeared that the congress exercised sovereign power, this body was actually governed by the Communist Party, which in turn was controlled by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Politburo from Moscow.

War Communism and the New Economic Policy

The period from the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1921 is known as the period of war communism. Land, all industry, and small businesses were Nationalization, nationalized, and the money economy was restricted. Strong opposition soon developed. The peasants wanted cash payments for their products and resented having to surrender their surplus grain to the government as a part of its civil war policies. Confronted with peasant opposition, Lenin began a strategic retreat from war communism known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). The peasants were freed from wholesale levies of grain and allowed to sell their surplus produce in the open market. Commerce was stimulated by permitting private retail trading. The state continued to be responsible for banking, transportation, heavy industry, and public utilities. Although the left opposition among the Communists criticized the rich peasants, or kulaks, who benefited from the NEP, the program proved highly beneficial and the economy revived. The NEP would later come under increasing opposition from within the party following Lenin's death in early 1924.

Changes to Russian society

As the Russian Empire included during this period not only the region of Russia, but also today's territories of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Moldavia and the Caucasian and Central Asian countries, it is possible to examine the firm formation process in all those regions. One of the main determinants of firm creation for given regions of Russian Empire might be urban demand of goods and supply of industrial and organizational skill. While the Russian economy was being transformed, the social life of the people underwent equally drastic changes. The Family Code of 1918 granted women equal status to men, and permitted a couple to take either the husband or wife's name. Divorce no longer required court procedure, and to make women completely free of the responsibilities of childbearing, abortion was made legal as early as 1920. As a side effect, the emancipation of women increased the labor market. Girls were encouraged to secure an education and pursue a career. Communal nurseries were set up for child care, and efforts were made to shift the center of people's social life from the home to educational and recreational groups, the soviet clubs. The Soviet government pursued a policy of eliminating illiteracy (Likbez). After industrialization, massive urbanization began. In the field of national policy in the 1920s, the Korenizatsiya was carried out. However, from the mid-30s, the Stalinist government returned to the tsarist policy of Russification of the outskirts. In particular, the languages of all the nations of the USSR were transcribed into the Cyrillic alphabet in the process known as Cyrillization.

Industrialization and collectivization

The years from 1929 to 1939 comprised a tumultuous decade in Soviet history—a period of massive industrialization and internal struggles as Joseph Stalin established near total control over Soviet society, wielding virtually unrestrained power. Following Lenin's death Stalin wrestled to gain control of the Soviet Union with rival factions in the Politburo, especially Leon Trotsky's. By 1928, with the Trotskyists either exiled or rendered powerless, Stalin was ready to put a radical programme of industrialisation into action.I. Deutscher, ''Stalin: A Political Biography'', Oxford University Press, 1949, pp. 294–344. Famine en URSS 1933

In 1929, Stalin proposed the First five-year plan (Soviet Union), first five-year plan. Abolishing the NEP, it was the first of a number of plans aimed at swift accumulation of capital resources through the buildup of heavy industry, the Collectivisation in the USSR, collectivization of agriculture, and the restricted manufacture of consumer goods in the Soviet Union, consumer goods. For the first time in history a government controlled all economic activity. The rapid growth of production capacity and the volume of production of heavy industry was of great importance for ensuring economic independence from western countries and strengthening the country's defense capability. At this time, the Soviet Union made the transition from an agrarian country to an industrial one. As a part of the plan, the government took control of agriculture through the state and collective farms (''kolkhozes'').Conquest, Robert. ''The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. . By a decree of February 1930, about one million individual peasants (''kulaks'') were forced off their land. Many peasants strongly opposed regimentation by the state, often slaughtering their herds when faced with the loss of their land. In some sections they revolted, and countless peasants deemed "kulaks" by the authorities were executed. The combination of bad weather, deficiencies of the hastily established collective farms, and massive confiscation of grain precipitated a serious famine, and several million peasants Soviet famine of 1932-1934, died of starvation, Holodomor, mostly in Ukraine, Famine in Kazakhstan of 1932–33, Kazakhstan and parts of southwestern Russia. The deteriorating conditions in the countryside drove millions of desperate peasants to the rapidly growing cities, fueling industrialization, and vastly increasing Russia's urban population.

Stalinist repression

The NKVD gathered in tens of thousands of Soviet citizens to face arrest, population transfer in the Soviet Union, deportation, or execution. Of the six original members of the 1920 Politburo who survived Lenin, all were purged by Stalin. Old Bolsheviks who had been loyal comrades of Lenin, high officers in the Red Army, and directors of industry were liquidated in the Great Purges.Conquest, Robert. ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. . Purges in other Soviet republics also helped centralize control in the USSR. Stalin destroyed the opposition in the party consisting of the old Bolsheviks during the Moscow trials. The NKVD under the leadership of Stalin's commissar Nikolai Yezhov carried out a series of Mass operations of the NKVD, massive repressive operations against the kulaks and various national minorities in the USSR. During the Great Purges of 1937–38, about 700,000 people were executed. Penalties were introduced, and many citizens were prosecuted for fictitious crimes of sabotage and espionage. The labor provided by convicts working in the labor camps of the Gulag system became an important component of the industrialization effort, especially in

.Gregory, Paul R. & Valery Lazarev (eds.). ''The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag''. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003. .Ivanova, Galina M. ''Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System''. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. . An estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system, and perhaps another 15 million had experience of some other form of forced labor.Applebaum, Anne. ''Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps''. London: Penguin Books, 2003. . After the partition of Poland in 1939, the NKVD executed 20,000 captured Polish officers in the Katyn massacre. In the late 30s - first half of the 40s, the Stalinist government carried out Population transfer in the Soviet Union, massive deportations of various nationalities. A number of ethnic groups were deported from their settlement to Central Asia.

Soviet Union on the international stage

The Soviet Union viewed the 1933 accession of fervently anti-Communist Adolf Hitler, Hitler to power in Nazi Germany, Germany with alarm, especially since Hitler proclaimed the Drang nach Osten as one of the major objectives in his vision of the German strategy of Lebensraum.See, e.g. Mein Kampf The Soviets supported the republicans of Spain who struggled against fascist German and Italian troops in the Spanish Civil War. In 1938–1939, the Soviet Union successfully fought against Imperial Japan in the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts in the Russian Far East, which led to Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, Soviet-Japanese neutrality and the tense border peace that lasted until August 1945. In 1938, Germany Anschluss, annexed Austria and, together with major Western European powers, signed the Munich Agreement following which Germany, Hungary and Poland divided parts of Czechoslovakia between themselves. German plans for further eastward expansion, as well as the lack of resolve from Western powers to oppose it, became more apparent. Despite the Soviet Union strongly opposing the Munich deal and repeatedly reaffirming its readiness to militarily back commitments given earlier to Czechoslovakia, the Western Betrayal led to the end of Czechoslovakia and further increased fears in the Soviet Union of a coming German attack. This led the Soviet Union to rush the modernization of its military industry and to carry out its own diplomatic maneuvers. In 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact: a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany dividing Eastern Europe into two separate spheres of influence. Following the pact, the USSR normalized Germany–Soviet Union relations, 1918–1941, relations with Nazi Germany and resumed Soviet–German trade.

World War II

Second world war europe 1941-1942 map en

On 17 September 1939, the Red Army Soviet invasion of Poland, invaded eastern Poland, stating as justification the "need to protect Ukrainians and Belarusians" there, after the "cessation of existence" of the Polish state. As a result, the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet republics' western borders were moved westward, and the new Soviet western border was drawn close to the original Curzon line. In the meantime negotiations with Finland over a Soviet-proposed land swap that would redraw the Soviet-Finnish border further away from Leningrad failed, and in December 1939 the USSR invaded Finland, beginning a campaign known as the Winter War (1939–1940), with the goal of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union. The war took a heavy death toll on the Red Army and the Soviets failed to conquer Finland, but forced Finland to sign the Moscow Peace Treaty and cede the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia. In summer 1940 the USSR issued an June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum, ultimatum to Romania forcing it to cede the territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. At the same time, the Soviet Union also occupied the three occupation of Baltic states, formerly independent Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). The peace with Germany was tense, as both sides were preparing for the military conflict,А. В. Десять мифов Второй мировой. – М.: Эксмо, Яуза, 2004, and abruptly ended when the Axis forces led by Germany Operation Barbarossa, swept across the Soviet border on 22 June 1941. By the autumn the Wehrmacht, German army had Battle of Kiev (1941), seized Ukraine, laid a siege of Leningrad, and Battle of Moscow, threatened to capture the capital, Moscow, itself. Despite the fact that in December 1941 the Red Army Battle of Moscow, threw off the German forces from Moscow in a successful counterattack, the Germans retained the strategic initiative for approximately another year and held a deep offensive in the south-eastern direction, reaching the Volga and the Caucasus. However, two major German defeats in Battle of Stalingrad, Stalingrad and Battle of Kursk, Kursk proved decisive and reversed the course of the entire World War II, World War as the Germans never regained the strength to sustain their offensive operations and the Soviet Union recaptured the initiative for the rest of the conflict. By the end of 1943, the Red Army had broken through the German siege of Leningrad and Battle of the Dnieper, liberated much of Ukraine, much of Western Russia and Battle of Smolensk (1943), moved into Belarus. During the 1944 campaign, the Red Army defeated German forces in a series of offensive campaigns known as Stalin's ten blows. By the end of 1944, the front had moved beyond the 1939 Soviet frontiers into eastern Europe. Soviet forces drove into eastern Germany, battle of Berlin, capturing Berlin in May 1945. The war with Germany thus ended triumphantly for the Soviet Union. As agreed at the Yalta Conference, three months after the Victory Day (Eastern Europe), Victory Day in Europe the USSR launched the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, defeating the Japanese troops in neighboring Manchuria, the last Soviet battle of World War II. Raising a flag over the Reichstag - Restoration

Raising a flag over the Reichstag - Restoration

Although the Soviet Union was victorious in World War II, the war resulted in around 26–27 million Soviet deaths (estimates vary) and had devastated the Soviet economy in the struggle. Some 70,000 settlements were destroyed. The occupied territories suffered from the ravages of German occupation and deportations of slave labor by Germany. Thirteen million Soviet citizens became victims of the repressive policies of Germany and its allies in occupied territories, where people died because of mass murders, famine, absence of medical aid and slave labor.Рыбаковский Л. Великая отечественная: людские потери России
. Gumer.info. Retrieved 16 February 2011. The Holocaust, carried out by German ''Einsatzgruppen'' along with local collaborators, resulted in almost complete annihilation of the Jewish population over the entire territory temporarily occupied by Germany and Axis forces, its allies. During the occupation, the Leningrad region lost around a quarter of its population, Soviet Belarus lost from a quarter to a third of its population, and 3.6 million Soviet prisoners of war (of 5.5 million) died in German camps.

Cold War

Collaboration among the major Allies had won the war and was supposed to serve as the basis for postwar reconstruction and security. USSR became one of the founders of the UN and a Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, permanent member of the UN Security Council. However, the conflict between Soviet and U.S. national interests, known as the

, came to dominate the international stage. The Cold War emerged from a conflict between Stalin and U.S. President Harry Truman over the future of Eastern Europe during the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945. Stalin's goal was to establish a buffer zone of states between Germany and the Soviet Union. Truman charged that Stalin had betrayed the Yalta agreement. With Eastern Europe under Red Army occupation, Stalin was also biding his time, as his own Soviet atomic bomb project, atomic bomb project was steadily and secretly progressing. In April 1949 the United States sponsored the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact. The Soviet Union established an Eastern counterpart to NATO in 1955, dubbed the Warsaw Pact. The division of Europe into Western and Soviet blocks later took on a more global character, especially after 1949, when the U.S. nuclear monopoly ended with the testing of Joe-1, a Soviet bomb and the Communist Party of China, Communist takeover in China. The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy were the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance of Eastern Bloc, hegemony over Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union maintained its dominance over the Warsaw Pact through crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, suppressing the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and supporting the suppression of the Solidarity (Polish trade union), Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s. The Soviet Union opposed the United States in a number of proxy conflicts all over the world, including the Korean War and Vietnam War. As the Soviet Union continued to maintain tight control over its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the Cold War gave way to ''Détente'' and a more complicated pattern of international relations in the 1970s. The nuclear race continued, the number of nuclear weapons in the hands of the USSR and the United States reached a menacing scale, giving them the ability to destroy the planet multiple times. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two

s were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons in treaties such as SALT I, SALT II, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. U.S.–Soviet relations deteriorated following the beginning of the nine-year Soviet–Afghan War in 1979 and the 1980 U.S. presidential election, 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, a staunch anti-communist, but improved as the communist bloc started to unravel in the late 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia lost the superpower status that it had won in the Second World War.

De-Stalinization and the era of stagnation

Nikita Khrushchev solidified his position in a speech before the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956 detailing Stalin's atrocities. Carter Brezhnev sign SALT II

In 1964, Khrushchev was Impeachment, impeached by the Communist Party's Central Committee, charging him with a host of errors that included Soviet setbacks such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. After a period of collective leadership led by Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny, Brezhnev took Khrushchev's place as Soviet leader. Brezhnev emphasized heavy industry, instituted the Soviet economic reform of 1965, and also attempted to ease relationships with the United States. Soviet science and industry peaked in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. The world's first nuclear power plant was established in 1954 Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, in Obninsk, and the Baikal Amur Mainline was built. In the 1950s the USSR became a leading producer and exporter of petroleum and natural gas. In 1980 Moscow hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics, Summer Olympic Games. While all modernized economies were rapidly moving to computerization after 1965, the USSR fell behind. Moscow's decision to copy the IBM 360 of 1965 proved a decisive mistake for it locked scientists into an antiquated system they were unable to improve. They had enormous difficulties in manufacturing the necessary chips reliably and in quantity, in programming workable and efficient programs, in coordinating entirely separate operations, and in providing support to computer users. One of the greatest strengths of Soviet economy was its vast supplies of oil and gas; world oil prices quadrupled in 1973–1974, and rose again in 1979–1981, making the energy sector the chief driver of the Soviet economy, and was used to cover multiple weaknesses. At one point, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin told the head of oil and gas production, "things are bad with bread. Give me 3 million tons [of oil] over the plan." Former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, an economist looking back three decades, in 2007 wrote:

Soviet space program

The Soviet space program, founded by Sergey Korolev, was especially successful. On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik. On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in the Soviet spaceship Vostok 1. Other achievements of Russian space program include: the first photo of the far side of the Moon; exploration of Venus; the first Extra-vehicular activity, spacewalk by Alexei Leonov; first female spaceflight by Valentina Tereshkova. In 1970 and 1973, the world's first planetary rovers were sent to the moon: Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2. More recently, the Soviet Union produced the world's first space station, Salyut, which in 1986 was replaced by Mir, the first consistently inhabited long-term space station, that served from 1986 to 2001.

Perestroika and Glasnost

Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko,

implemented perestroika in an attempt to modernize Soviet communism, and made significant changes in the party leadership. However, Gorbachev's social reforms led to unintended consequences. His policy of ''glasnost'' facilitated public access to information after decades of government repression, and social problems received wider public attention, undermining the Communist Party's authority. ''Glasnost'' allowed ethnic and nationalist disaffection to reach the surface, and many constituent republics, especially the Baltic republics, Georgian SSR and Moldavian SSR, sought greater autonomy, which Moscow was unwilling to provide. In the revolutions of 1989 the USSR lost its allies in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev's attempts at economic reform were not sufficient, and the Soviet government left intact most of the fundamental elements of communist economy. Suffering from low pricing of petroleum and natural gas, the ongoing Soviet–Afghan War, war in Afghanistan, and outdated industry and pervasive corruption, the Soviet planned economy proved to be ineffective, and by 1990 the Soviet government had lost control over economic conditions. Due to price control, there were shortages of almost all products. Control over the constituent republics was also relaxed, and they began to assert their national sovereignty. The tension between Soviet Union and Russian SFSR authorities came to be personified in the power struggle between Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Squeezed out of Union politics by Gorbachev in 1987, Yeltsin, who represented himself as a committed democrat, presented a significant opposition to Gorbachev's authority. In a remarkable reversal of fortunes, he gained election as chairman of the Russian republic's new Supreme Soviet in May 1990.

Priority over Soviet Union laws and negotiations on a new Treaty

The following month, Yeltsin secured legislation Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, giving Russian laws priority over Soviet laws. Article 5 of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic establishes the full authority of the RSFSR, with the exception of those which it voluntarily transfers to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as the supremacy of the Constitution of the RSFSR and the laws of the RSFSR over the entire territory of the RSFSR. Acts of the Union of SSR which conflict with the sovereign rights of the RSFSR shall be suspended by the Republic on its territory. And also Yeltsin withholding two-thirds of the budget. In the 1991 Russian presidential election, first Russian presidential election in 1991 Yeltsin became president of the Russian SFSR. At last Gorbachev New Union Treaty, attempted to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. However, on 19 August 1991, a 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, coup against Gorbachev was attempted. The coup faced wide popular opposition and collapsed in three days, but disintegration of the Union became imminent. The Russian government took over most of the Soviet Union government institutions on its territory. Because of the dominant position of Russians in the Soviet Union, most gave little thought to any distinction between Russia and the

before the late 1980s. In the Soviet Union, only Russian SFSR lacked its own republic-level Communist Party branch, trade union councils, Academy of Sciences, and the like.

Soviet coup attempt, the Transition Period and the end of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was banned in Russia in 1991, although no lustration has ever taken place, and many of its members became top Russian officials. However, as the Soviet government was still opposed to immediate market reforms, the economic situation continued to deteriorate. On 24 September, RSFSR State Secretary Gennady Burbulis arrived to Boris Yeltsin, who was on vacation at the Black Sea coast. He brought a document “Russia's Strategy for the Transition Period”, which later received the unofficial name “Burbulis Memorandum”. The “memorandum” contained an analysis of the situation in the country, proposals on what should be done without delay, prepared by Yegor Gaidar's group. The document concluded that Russia should take the course of economic independence with a “soft”, “temporary” political alliance with other republics, i.e. to create not a declared, but a truly independent state of Russia. 30 years later, Burbulis recalled that the Burbulis Memorandum was the reform concept of Gaidar's group: There was not any secrecy. First Yegor Gaidar made a report at the State Council of the RSFSR, and then Burbulis spoke at the State Council and said he would make a report for Yeltsin. As the Kommersant newspaper wrote on 7 October 1991, a series of conflicts occurred in the RSFSR government during preparations for the signing of the Treaty on the Economic Community (post-Soviet states), Treaty on the Economic Community. In his speech to members of the Russian parliament, RSFSR State Secretary Gennady Burbulis declared Russia's special role as the legal successor to the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the ways of drafting agreements with the republics should be determined by the Russian leadership. Instead of the planned order, he suggested signing a political agreement first, followed by an economic one. The newspaper suggested that Burbulis' goal was to persuade Yeltsin not to sign the agreement as it stands at the time. Yegor Gaidar, Alexander Shokhin and Konstantin Kagalovsky were named as the developers of the statement made by Burbulis. In the same time, a group of "isolationist patriots" consisting of Mikhail Maley, Nikolay Fyodorov (politician), Nikolai Fedorov, Alexander Shokhin, Igor Lazarev and Mikhail Poltoranin criticized Ivan Silaev and Yevgeny Saburov for wanting to preserve the Soviet Union. RIAN archive 848095 Signing the Agreement to eliminate the USSR and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States

RIAN archive 848095 Signing the Agreement to eliminate the USSR and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States

The Treaty on Economic Community was signed in Moscow on 18 October 1991 in a single copy in the Russian language by the competent representatives, including Boris Yeltsin. By December 1991, the shortages had resulted in the introduction of food rationing in Moscow and Saint Petersburg for the first time since World War II. Russia received humanitarian food aid from abroad. After the Belavezha Accords, the Supreme Soviet of Russia withdrew Russia from the Soviet Union on 12 December. The Soviet Union officially ended on 25 December 1991, and the Russia, Russian Federation (formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) took power on 26 December. The Russian government lifted price control on 2 January 1992. Prices rose dramatically, but shortages disappeared.

Russian Federation (1991–present)

Independent country and the Commonwealth

Post-Soviet countries have signed a Succession, continuity and legacy of the Soviet Union, series of treaties and agreements to settle the legacy of the former Soviet Union multilaterally and bilaterally in particular status in international organizations, nuclear weapons and debts and assets and general agreements.

Liberal reforms of the 1990s

Although Yeltsin came to power on a wave of optimism, he never recovered his popularity after endorsing Yegor Gaidar's "shock therapy (economics), shock therapy" of ending Soviet-era price controls, drastic cuts in state spending, and an open foreign trade regime in early 1992 (''see'' Economy of Russia#History, Russian economic reform in the 1990s). The reforms immediately devastated the living standards of much of the population. In the 1990s Russia suffered an economic downturn that was, in some ways, more severe than the United States or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in the Great Depression. Hyperinflation hit the ruble, due to monetary overhang from the days of the planned economy. Meanwhile, the profusion of small parties and their aversion to coherent alliances left the legislature chaotic. During 1993, Yeltsin's rift with the parliamentary leadership led to the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, September–October 1993 constitutional crisis. The crisis climaxed on 3 October, when Yeltsin chose a radical solution to settle his dispute with parliament: he called up tanks to shell the White House of Russia, Russian White House, blasting out his opponents. As Yeltsin was taking the unconstitutional step of dissolving the legislature, Russia came close to a serious civil conflict. Yeltsin was then free to impose the constitution of the Russian Federation, current Russian constitution with strong presidential powers, which was approved by referendum in December 1993. The cohesion of the Russian Federation was also threatened when the republic of Chechnya attempted to break away, leading to the First Chechen War, First and Second Chechen Wars. BorisYeltsin and BillClinton 1999-11-18

Economic reforms also consolidated a semi-criminal oligarchy with roots in the old Soviet system. Advised by Western governments, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, Russia embarked on the largest and fastest privatization ever to reform the fully Nationalization, nationalized Soviet economy. By mid-decade, retail, trade, services, and small industry was in private hands. Most big enterprises were acquired by their old managers, engendering a new rich (Russian oligarch, Russian tycoons) in league with Russian Mafia, criminal mafias or Western investors. Corporate raiders such as Andrei Volgin (businessman), Andrei Volgin engaged in hostile takeovers of corrupt corporations by the mid-1990s. By the mid-1990s Russia had a system of multiparty electoral politics. But it was harder to establish a representative government because of the struggle between president and parliament and the anarchic party system. Meanwhile, the central government had lost control of the localities, bureaucracy, and economic fiefdoms, and tax revenues had collapsed. Still in a deep depression, Russia's economy was hit further by the 1998 Russian financial crisis, financial crash of 1998. At the end of 1999, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the government in the hands of the Prime Minister

Era of Putin

In 2000, the new acting president won the presidential election on 26 March and won in a landslide four years later. The Second Chechen war ended with the victory of Russia. After the 11 September terrorist attacks, there was a rapprochement between Russia and the United States. Putin created a system of guided democracy in Russia by subjugating parliament, suppressing independent media and placing major oil and gas companies under state control. International observers were alarmed by moves in late 2004 to further tighten the presidency's control over parliament, civil society, and regional officeholders. In 2008, Dmitri Medvedev, Putin's head of staff, was elected President. In 2012, Putin became president again, prompting 2011–2013 Russian protests, massive protests in Moscow. Russia's long-term problems include a shrinking workforce, rampant corruption, and underinvestment in infrastructure. Nevertheless, reversion to a Socialism, socialist command economy seemed almost impossible. The economic problems are aggravated by massive capital outflows, as well as extremely difficult conditions for doing business, due to pressure from the security forces ''Siloviki'' and government agencies. Due to high oil prices, from 2000 to 2008, Russia's GDP at PPP doubled. Although high oil prices and a relatively cheap ruble initially drove this growth, since 2003 consumer demand and, more recently, investment have played a significant role.CIA World Fact Book – Russia Russia is well ahead of most other resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of education, science, and industry. Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. In 2014, following a controversial 2014 Crimean status referendum, referendum, in which separation was favored by a large majority of voters according to official results, the Russian leadership announced the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation, thus starting the Russo-Ukrainian War. Following Russia's Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexation of Crimea and alleged Russian interference in the War in Donbas (2014–2022), war in eastern Ukraine, International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War, international sanctions were imposed on Russia. On 4 December 2011, 2011 Russian legislative election, elections to the State Duma were held, as a result of which United Russia won for the third time in a row. The official voting results caused 2011–2013 Russian protests, significant protests in the country; a number of political scientists and journalists noted various falsifications on election day. In 2012, according to another pre-election agreement, a "castling" took place; Putin again became president and Dmitry Medvedev took over as chairman of the government, after which the protests acquired an anti-Putin orientation, but soon began to decline. Since 2015, Russia has been conducting Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War, military intervention in Syria in support of the Bashar al-Assad regime. In 2018, Putin was re-elected for a fourth presidential term. In 2022, Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine, which was denounced by NATO and the

. They aided Ukraine and imposed massive International sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. A leading banker in Moscow said the damage might take a decade to recover, as half of its international trade has been lost. Despite international opposition, Russia officially annexed the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, along with most of the Kherson Oblast, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts on 30 September. The United Nations have reported that Russia has committed War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, war crimes during the invasion. In March 2023, Russia adopted a Eurasianism, Eurasianist, Anti-Western sentiment, anti-Western foreign policy strategy detailed in a document approved by Putin. The document defined Russia as a "unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power" that seeks to create a "Greater Eurasian Partnership" by pursuing close relations with China, India, countries of the Islamic world, Islamic World and rest of the Global South (Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa). On 23 June 2023, the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner Group rebellion, rebelled against the government. As of August 2023, the total number of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War, killed or wounded during the Russian invasion of Ukraine was nearly 500,000.

Historiography

References

External links

History of Russia: Primary Documents

Дневник Истории России
A historic project supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. * Henry Smith Williams, Williams, Henry Smith (Ed.) 1905
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 17: Switzerland (concluded), Russia and Poland
New York: The Outlook Company. {{Russia topics History of Russia,

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