Thehistory of Russia begins with the histories of theEast Slavs.[1][2] The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of theRus' state in the north in the year 862, ruled byVarangians.[3][4] In 882, PrinceOleg of Novgorod seizedKiev, 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 stateadopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis ofByzantine,Slavic andScandinavian cultures that definedRussian culture for the next millennium.Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state due to theMongol invasions in 1237–1240. After the 13th century,Moscow emerged as a significant political and cultural force, driving theunification of Russian territories.[5] By the end of the 15th century, many of thepetty principalities around Moscow had been united with theGrand Duchy of Moscow, which took full control of its own sovereignty underIvan the Great.
The first human settlement on the territory of Russia dates back to theOldowan period in the earlyLower Paleolithic. About 2 million years ago, representatives ofHomo erectus migrated from Western Asia to the North Caucasus (archaeological site ofKermek [ru] on theTaman Peninsula[7]). AtBogatyri/Sinyaya balka [ru], in a skull ofElasmotherium caucasicum, which lived 1.5–1.2 million years ago, a stone tool was found.[8] 1.5-million-year-oldOldowan flint tools have been discovered in theDagestan Akusha region of the north Caucasus, demonstrating the presence of early humans in the territory of present-day Russia.[9]
The first trace ofHomo 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 ofanatomically modern humans found anywhere in Europe was reported in 2007 from theKostenki archaeological site near theDon River in Russia (dated to at least 40,000 years ago[14]) and atSungir (34,600 years ago). Humans reached Arctic Russia (Mamontovaya Kurya) by 40,000 years ago.
In the later part of the 8th century BC, Greek merchants broughtclassical civilization to the trade emporiums inTanais andPhanagoria.[19]Gelonus was described byHerodotus as a huge (Europe's biggest) earth- and wood-fortifiedgrad inhabited around 500 BC by Heloni andBudini. In 513 BC, the king of theAchaemenid Empire,Darius I, launched a military campaign around theBlack Sea into Scythia, modern-day Ukraine, eventually reaching the Tanais river (now known as theDon).
Greeks, mostly from the city-state ofMiletus, would colonize large parts of modern-day Crimea and theSea of Azov during the seventh and sixth centuries BC, eventually unifying into theBosporan Kingdom by 480 BC, and would be incorporated into the largeKingdom of Pontus in 107 BC. The Kingdom would eventually be conquered by theRoman Republic, and the Bosporan Kingdom would become a client state of theRoman Empire. 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 ofOium existed in Southern Russia until it was overrun byHuns. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom was also overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions,[20] led by warlike tribes which would often move on to Europe, as was the case with theHuns andTurkish 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 theKhanty people originated in the south Ural steppe and moved northwards into their current location about 500 AD.
From the 7th century onwards, East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia[27] and slowly conquered and assimilated the nativeFinnic andBaltic tribes, such as theMerya,[28] theMuromians,[29] and theMeshchera.[30]
There existed a political hierarchy north of the middleDnieper as early as 825-850, and perhaps even earlier. Indeed, according to theAnnales Bertiniani, some Rhōs (as they were known by the Byzantines) accompanied a Byzantine embassy to the court of theFrankish king,Louis the Pious, 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.[31]
Thus, the first East Slavic state,Rus', emerged in the 9th century along the Dnieper River valley.[36] A coordinated group of princely states with a common interest in maintaining trade along the river routes, Kievan Rus' controlledthe trade route for furs, wax, and slaves between Scandinavia and theByzantine Empire along theVolkhov and Dnieper Rivers.[36]
By the end of the 10th century, the minorityNorse military aristocracy had merged with the native Slavic population,[39] which also absorbedGreek Christian influences in the course of the multiplecampaigns to lootTsargrad, orConstantinople.[40] One such campaign claimed the life of the foremost Slavicdruzhina leader,Svyatoslav I, who was renowned for having crushed the power of theKhazars on the Volga.[41]
Rus' in 1054 in the year ofYaroslav the Wise's death (dark green) and tribute-paying dependencies (light green)Kievan Rus' after theCouncil of Liubech in 1097
Kievan Rus' is important for its introduction of aSlavic variant of theEastern Orthodox religion,[36] dramatically deepening a synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next thousand years. The regionadopted Christianity in 988 by the official act of publicbaptism of Kiev inhabitants byPrince Vladimir I.[42] Some years later the first code of laws,Russkaya Pravda, was introduced byYaroslav the Wise.[43] From the onset, the Kievan princes followed the Byzantine example and kept the Church dependent on them.[44]
By the 11th century, particularly during the reign ofYaroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus' displayed an economy and achievements in architecture and literature superior to those that then existed in the western part of the continent.[45] Compared with the languages of European Christendom, theRussian language was little influenced by theGreek andLatin of early Christian writings.[36] This was becauseChurch Slavonic was used directly inliturgy instead.[46]A nomadic Turkic people, theKipchaks (also known as the Cumans), replaced the earlierPechenegs 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 asZalesye.[citation needed]
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 ofVladimir-Suzdal in the north-east,Novgorod in the north, andHalych-Volhynia in the south-west. Conquest by theMongolGolden Horde in the 13th century was the final blow. Kiev was destroyed.[47] Halych-Volhynia would eventually be absorbed into thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth,[36] while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and independentNovgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, would establish the basis for the modern Russian nation.[36]
The invadingMongols accelerated the fragmentation of theRus'. In 1223, the disunited southern princes faced a Mongol raiding party at theKalka River and were soundly defeated.[48] In 1237–1238 the Mongols burnt down the city ofVladimir (4 February 1238)[49] and other major cities of northeast Russia, routed the Russiansat the Sit' River,[50] and then moved west intoPoland andHungary. By then they had conquered most of the Russian principalities.[51] Only theNovgorod Republic escaped occupation and continued to flourish in the orbit of theHanseatic League.[52]
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,[47] the new cities of Moscow,[53]Tver[53] andNizhny Novgorod[54] began to compete for hegemony in the Mongol-dominatedRus' principalities under the suzerainty of theGolden Horde. Although a coalition of Rus' princes led byDmitry Donskoy defeated Mongol warlordMamai atKulikovo in 1380,[55] forces of the new khanTokhtamysh and his Rus' allies immediatelysacked Moscow in 1382 as punishment for resisting Mongol authority.[56] Mongol domination of the Rus' principalities, along with tax collection by various overlords such as theCrimean Khans, continued into the early 16th century, despite later claims of Muscovite bookmen that theindecisive standoff at the Ugra in 1480 had signified "the end of the Tatar yoke" and the "liberation of Russia".[57]
The Mongols dominated the lower reaches of the Volga and held Russia in sway from their western capital atSarai,[58] one of the largest cities of the medieval world. The princes had to pay tribute to the Mongols of the Golden Horde, commonly calledTatars;[58] 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,[58] while the Russian Orthodox Church 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.[36]
Daniil Aleksandrovich, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, founded theprincipality of Moscow (known as Muscovy in English),[53] 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 avassal 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 Russian Orthodox Church. Its head, theMetropolitan, fled from Kiev toVladimir 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 theMongol yoke. In 1380, atBattle of Kulikovo on theDon River, the Mongols were defeated,[55] and although this hard-fought victory did not end Tatar rule of Russia, it did bring great fame to the Grand PrinceDmitry Donskoy. 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.
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 wasIvan III,[53] who laid the foundations for a Russian national state. Ivan competed with his powerful northwestern rival, theGrand Duchy of Lithuania, for control over some of the semi-independentUpper Principalities in the upperDnieper andOka River basins.[59][60]
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.[61] As a result, theGrand Duchy of Moscow tripled in size under his rule.[53] During his conflict with Pskov, a monk namedFilofei (Philotheus of Pskov) composed a letter to Ivan III, with the prophecy that the latter's kingdom would be theThird Rome.[62] TheFall of Constantinople and the death of the last Greek Orthodox Christian emperor contributed to this new idea ofMoscow asNew Rome and the seat of Orthodox Christianity, as did Ivan's 1472 marriage to Byzantine PrincessSophia Palaiologina.[53]
Grand Duchy of Moscow (Territorial expansion between 1300 and 1547)
Under Ivan III, the first central government bodies were created in Russia:Prikaz. TheSudebnik was adopted, the first set of laws since the 11th century. The double-headed eagle was adopted as thecoat 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 decliningGolden Horde, now divided into severalKhanates and hordes. Ivan and his successors sought to protect the southern boundaries of their domain againstattacks of theCrimean Tatars and other hordes.[63] To achieve this aim, they sponsored the construction of theGreat 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. Varioussemi-independent princes still claimed specific territories,[60] 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" wasIvan IV.[53]
Ivan III tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of theGolden Horde over the Rus', renovated theMoscow 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."[64]
The development of the Tsar's autocratic powers reached a peak during the reign ofIvan 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.[65][66] Nevertheless, Ivan is often seen as a farsighted statesman who reformed Russia as he promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550),[67] established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor), curbed the influence of the clergy,[68] and introduced local self-management in rural regions.[69] Tsar also created the first regular army in Russia:Streltsy.
His longLivonian War (1558–1583) for control of the Baltic coast and access to the sea trade ultimately proved a costly failure.[70] Ivan managed to annex theKhanates of Kazan,Astrakhan, andSiberia.[71] These conquests complicated the migration of aggressive nomadic hordes from Asia to Europe via the Volga andUrals. Through these conquests, Russia acquired a significant Muslim Tatar population and emerged as amultiethnic andmulticonfessional state. Also around this period, the mercantileStroganov family established a firm foothold in the Urals and recruited RussianCossacks to colonise Siberia.[72]
Khanates ofCrimea,Astrakhan andKazan in 1550, before the expansion of Ivan IV, which established Russian power over the entire length of theVolga.
In the later part of his reign, Ivan divided his realm in two. In the zone known as theoprichnina, Ivan's followers carried out a series of bloody purges of the feudal aristocracy (whom he suspected of treachery after princeAndrey Kurbsky's betrayal), culminating in theMassacre of Novgorod in 1570. This combined with the military losses, epidemics, and poor harvests so weakened Russia that theCrimean Tatars were able to sack central Russian regions andburn down Moscow in 1571.[73] However, in 1572 the Russians defeated the Crimean Tatar army at theBattle of Molodi and Ivan abandoned theoprichnina.[74][75]
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.[76]
The death of Ivan's childless sonFeodor was followed by a period of civil wars and foreign intervention known as theTime of Troubles (1606–13).[53] Extremely cold summers (1601–1603) wrecked crops,[77] which led to theRussian 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 thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.[78]During thePolish–Muscovite War (1605–1618), Polish–Lithuanian forces reached Moscow and installed the impostorFalse Dmitriy I in 1605, then supportedFalse Dmitry II in 1607. The decisive moment came when a combined Russian-Swedish army was routed by the Polish forces underhetmanStanisław Żółkiewski at theBattle of Klushino on 4 July [O.S. 24 June] 1610. As the result of the battle, theSeven Boyars, a group of Russian nobles, deposed the tsarVasily Shuysky on 27 July [O.S. 17 July] 1610, and recognized the Polish princeWładysław IV Vasa as the Tsar of Russia on 6 September [O.S. 27 August] 1610.[79][80] ThePoles occupied Moscow on 21 September [O.S. 11 September] 1610. Moscow revolted but riots there were brutally suppressed and the city was set on fire.[81][82][83]
The crisis provoked a patriotic national uprising against theinvasion, both in 1611 and 1612. A volunteer army, led by the merchantKuzma Minin and princeDmitry Pozharsky, expelled the foreign forces from the capital on 4 November [O.S. 22 October] 1612.[84][85][86]
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.[53] However, the Time of Troubles caused the loss of much territory to thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth inthe Russo-Polish war, as well as to theSwedish Empire in theIngrian War.
The immediate task of the new monarch was to restore peace. Fortunately for Moscow, its major enemies, thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth andSweden, 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 theKhmelnitsky Uprising (1648–1657) in Ukraine against Polish rule brought about theTreaty of Pereyaslav between Russia and theUkrainian Cossacks. In the treaty, Russia granted protection to theCossacks state inLeft-bank Ukraine, formerly under Polish control. This triggered a prolongedRusso-Polish War (1654–1667), which ended with theTreaty of Andrusovo, where Poland accepted the loss of Left-bank Ukraine,Kiev andSmolensk.[53]TheRussian 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 explorerSemyon Dezhnev, discovered the strait between Asia and America. Russian expansion in the Far East faced resistance fromQing China. After the war between Russia and China, theTreaty 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 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.[87]
Riots among peasants and citizens of Moscow at this time were endemic and included theSalt Riot (1648),[88]Copper Riot (1662),[88] and theMoscow Uprising (1682).[89] By far the greatest peasant uprising in 17th-century Europe erupted in 1667. As the free settlers of South Russia, theCossacks, reacted against the growing centralization of the state, serfs escaped from their landlords and joined the rebels. The Cossack leaderStenka Razin led his followers up the Volga River, inciting peasant uprisings and replacing local governments with Cossack rule.[53] 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 anotherrevolt in Astrakhan, ultimately subdued.
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in thefirst Russian colonisation of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, theRusso-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.[90]
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.[92] 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.[93] 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.[94]
Peter reformed theRussian army and created theRussian navy. Peter's first military efforts were directed against theOttoman Turks. His aim was to establish a Russian foothold on the Black Sea bytaking the town ofAzov.[95] His attention then turned to the north. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport except atArchangel on theWhite 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 thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark against Sweden resulting in theGreat Northern War.
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 theSilent 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 theRussian Empire in 1721.
Peter re-organized his government based on the latest Western models, molding Russia into anabsolutist state. He replaced the oldboyarDuma (council of nobles) with aSenate, in effect a supreme council of state. The countryside was also divided into newprovinces and districts. Peter told the senate that its mission was to collect taxes. In turn tax revenues tripled over the course of his reign.[96]
AdministrativeCollegia (ministries) were established in St. Petersburg, to replace the old governmental departments. In 1722, Peter promulgated his famousTable 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 thepatriarchate and replaced it with a collective body, theHoly 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 PersianSafavid Empire to the south was heavily declining. Taking advantage, Peter launched theRusso-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 theCaucasus 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 geniusNader Shah, as part of theTreaty of Resht andTreaty of Ganja and the Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire,[97] 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 (1725–1727), who was merely a figurehead for a powerful group of high officials, then by his minor grandson,Peter II (1727–1730), then by his niece,Anna (1730–1740), daughter of TsarIvan V. Theheir to Anna was soon deposed in a coup andElizabeth, daughter of Peter I, ruled from 1741 to 1762. During her reign, Russia took part in theSeven Years' War.
Nearly 40 years passed before a comparably ambitious ruler appeared.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.[98][99] Catherine enthusiastically supported the ideals ofThe Enlightenment, thus earning the status of anenlightened despot. She patronized the arts, science and learning.[100] She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great. Catherine promulgated theCharter 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.[101]
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 theTargowica 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 majorpeasant uprising in 1773. Inspired by a Cossack namedYemelyan 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.[102]
Catherine successfully waged two wars (1768–1774,1787–1792) against the decaying Ottoman Empire[103] and advanced Russia's southern boundary to the Black Sea. In 1775 sheliquidated the Zaporozhian Sich, and on the former lands of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the places of theirs settlements was createdNovorossiya Governorate, in which new cities were formed:Yekaterinoslav (1776),Yelisavetgrad,Kherson (1778),Odessa (1794).[104][105][106][107] Russiaannexed Crimea in 1783 and created the Black Sea fleet. Then, by allying with the rulers ofAustria andPrussia, she incorporated the territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where after a century of Russian rule non-Catholic, mainly Orthodox population prevailed[108] during thePartitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe.[109]
The Russian Empire in 1792
In accordance to Russia'streaty with the Georgians to protect them against any new invasion of their Persian suzerains and further political aspirations, Catherine waged a new waragainst Persia in 1796 after they had again invaded Georgia and established rule over it about ayear prior, and had expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in theCaucasus.
Russian emperors of the 18th century professed the ideas ofEnlightened 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 ofserfdom. Powerful Russians resented their[whose?] 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".[110]The mid-18th century was marked by the emergence of higher education in Russia. The first two major universitiesSaint Petersburg State University andMoscow 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 theFirst Russian circumnavigation. In 1819–1821, Russian sailors discovered Antarctica during anAntarctic 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".[111]
By the time of her death in 1796, Catherine's expansionist policy had made Russia a major European power.Alexander I continued this policy, wresting Finland from the weakened kingdom of Sweden in 1809 andBessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812. His key advisor was a Polish noblemanAdam Jerzy Czartoryski.[112]
After Russian armies liberated alliedGeorgia from Persian occupation in 1802, theyclashed with Persia over control and consolidation over Georgia, as well as the Iranian territories that comprise modern-dayAzerbaijan andDagestan. They also became involved in theCaucasian War against theCaucasian Imamate andCircassia. In 1813, the war with Persia concluded with a Russian victory, forcingQajar Iran to cede swaths of its territories in the Caucasus to Russia,[113] which drastically increased its territory in the region. To the south-west, Russia tried to expand at the expense of theOttoman Empire, using Georgia at its base for the Caucasus and Anatolian front.
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".[114] Schroeder says Poland was the root cause of the conflict but Russia's refusal to support the Continental System was also a factor.[115]
The entry of Russian troops intoParis in 1814, headed by the EmperorAlexander I
Theinvasion of Russia was a catastrophe for Napoleon and his 450,000 invasion troops. One major battle was fought atBorodino; 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 bycapturing 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 theBattle of the Nations and finally captured Paris.[116][117] Of a total population of around 43 million people,[118] 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.[119]
After the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander presided over the redrawing of the map of Europe at theCongress of Vienna (1814–1815), which made him the king ofCongress Poland. He formed theHoly Alliance with Austria and Prussia, to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe that he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He helped Austria'sKlemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements.[120]
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.
Russia's great power status obscured the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic backwardness.[121] Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I was willing to discuss constitutional reforms, and though a few were introduced, no thoroughgoing changes were attempted.[122]
The tsar was succeeded by his younger brother,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 theDecembrist 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".[123]
In 1826–1828, Russia fought another waragainst 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 1828Treaty of Turkmenchay, Russia gainedArmenia,Nakhchivan,Nagorno-Karabakh,Azerbaijan, andIğdır.[124] In the 1828–1829Russo-Turkish War Russia invaded northeasternAnatolia and occupied the strategic Ottoman towns ofErzurum andGümüşhane and, posing as protector and saviour of theGreek Orthodox population, received extensive support from the region'sPontic 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.[125]
In 1831, Nicholas crushed theNovember 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.[126] The resultingJanuary 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.[127] Poland was punished by losing its distinctive political and judicial rights, with Russianization imposed on its schools and courts.[128]
TsarNicholas I (reigned 1825–1855) lavished attention on his army.[129] 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.[130] 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.[131]
Finally theCrimean 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.[132]
The early 19th century is the time whenRussian 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 bySlavophiles, who heaped scorn on the "decadent" West. The Slavophiles were opponents of bureaucracy and preferred thecollectivism of the medieval Russianmir, orvillage community, to the individualism of the West.[133] A forerunner of the Westernizer movement wasPyotr Chaadayev. He exposed the cultural isolation of Russia, from the perspective of Western Europe, in hisPhilosophical 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.[134][135]Vissarion Belinsky[136] andAlexander Herzen were prominent Westernizers.[137]
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 Tsarsent 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.[138] The Tsar cracked down on any signs of internal unrest.[139]
The eleven-monthsiege of a Russian naval base atSevastopol during the Crimean War
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 theCrimean 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.[140][141]
HistorianOrlando 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.[142]
WhenAlexander II came to the throne in 1855, the demand for reform was widespread. The most pressing problem confronting the Government wasserfdom. In 1859, there were 23 millionserfs (out of a total population of 67 million).[143] In anticipation of civil unrest that could ultimately foment a revolution, Alexander II chose to preemptively abolish serfdom with theemancipation 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 themir, the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised the various holdings.[144][145][146]
The Russian Empire in 1867
Alexander was responsible for numerous reforms besides abolishing serfdom.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.[147]
In foreign policy, hesold 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.[148]
The Russian and Bulgariandefence of Shipka Pass against Turkish troops was crucial for the independence of Bulgaria
In the late 1870s Russia and the Ottoman Empire again clashed in the Balkans.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:Romania,Serbia,Montenegro. In addition,Bulgaria de facto became independent. However, the war increased tension withAustria-Hungary, which also had ambitions in the region. The Tsar was disappointed by the results of theCongress of Berlin in 1878, but abided by the agreement.[149]
During this period Russiaexpanded its empire into Central Asia, conquering the khanates ofKokand,Bukhara, andKhiva, as well as theTrans-Caspian region.[150] 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.[151]
Russian society in the second half of 19th century
In the 1860s, a movement known asNihilism developed in Russia. A term originally coined byIvan Turgenev in his 1862 novelFathers 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 theintelligentsia. The Nihilists questioned all old values and shocked the Russian establishment.[152] 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.[153] Russian nihilists created the manifestoCatechism of a Revolutionary.
After the Nihilists failed to convert the aristocracy and landed gentry to the cause of reform, they turned to the peasants.[154] Their campaign became known as theNarodnk ("Populist") movement. It was based on the belief that the common people had the wisdom and peaceful ability to lead the nation.[155]As theNarodnik 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.[155] One after another, prominent officials were shot or killed by bombs. This represented the ascendancy ofanarchism 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.[156]
The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th is known as theSilver Age of Russian culture. The Silver Age was dominated by the artistic movements ofRussian Symbolism,Acmeism, andRussian Futurism, many poetic schools flourished, including theMystical Anarchism tendency within the Symbolist movement. TheRussian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of modern art that flourished inRussian Empire andSoviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960.
Unlike his father, the new tsarAlexander III (1881–1894) was throughout his reign a staunch reactionary who revived the maxim of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and National Character".[157] 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 theunion 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 wasKonstantin 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.[158] Under Pobedonostsev, revolutionaries were hunted down[159] and a policy ofRussification was carried out.[160]
Alexander was succeeded by his sonNicholas 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 theConstitutional Democratic party orKadets in 1905. Followers of the Narodnik tradition established theSocialist-Revolutionary Party orEsers in 1901, advocating the distribution of land among the peasants who worked it. A third radical group founded theRussian Social Democratic Labour Party orRSDLP in 1898; this party was the primary exponent ofMarxism in Russia. Gathering their support from the radical intellectuals and the urban working class, they advocated complete social, economic and political revolution.[161]
In 1903, the RSDLP split into two wings: the radicalBolsheviks, led byVladimir Lenin, and the relatively moderateMensheviks, 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.[162]
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 theintervention 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, theRusso-Japanese War began, which ended extremely unfavourably for Russia.
The disastrous performance of the Russian armed forces in theRusso-Japanese War was a major blow to the Russian State and increased the potential for unrest.[163]
In January 1905, an incident known as "Bloody Sunday" occurred whenFather Gapon led an enormous crowd to theWinter Palace inSaint Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar. When the procession reached the palace, Cossacks opened fire, killing hundreds.[163] The Russian masses were so aroused over the massacre that a general strike was declared demanding a democratic republic. This marked the beginning of theRussian Revolution of 1905.Soviets (councils of workers) appeared in most cities to direct revolutionary activity.[164]
In October 1905, Nicholas reluctantly issued theOctober Manifesto, which conceded the creation of a national Duma (legislature) to be called without delay.[163] The right to vote was extended, and no law was to go into force without confirmation by the Duma. The moderate groups were satisfied;[163] 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.[165]
On 28 June 1914, Bosnian Serbsassassinated 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.[166] 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 theJuly crisis".[167] 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 andAustria-Hungary.[168]
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 theBattle 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 theBrusilov offensive.
By 1915, morale was worsening.[169] 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 manGrigori Rasputin.[170] More than two million refugees fled.[171]Repeated military failures and bureaucratic ineptitude soon turned large segments of the population against the government.[163] The German and Ottoman fleets prevented Russia from importing urgently needed supplies through the Baltic and Black seas.[163] 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.[172] 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.[163]
In late February (3 March 1917), a strike occurred in a factory in the capitalPetrograd (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 theFebruary Revolution, especially when soldiers sided with the strikers. On 2 March, Nicholas II abdicated.[173][174]
To fill the vacuum of authority, the Duma declared aProvisional Government, headed byPrince Lvov, which was collectively known as theRussian Republic.[175] 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.[175]
In July, following a series of crises that undermined their authority with the public, the head of the Provisional Government resigned and was succeeded byAlexander 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.[176]
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.[177] In April 1917 Germany provided a special sealed train to carryVladimir 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 theOctober Revolution.[178]
Bolshevik figures such asAnatoly Lunacharsky,Moisei Uritsky andDmitry 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.[179]
When thenational 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 harshTreaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) with Germany. Russia lost much of her western borderlands. However, when Germany was defeated the Soviet government repudiated the Treaty.[180]
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-BolshevikWhite movement, and large numbers of peasants. At the same time theAllied 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, theMoldavian Democratic Republic (which elected to unite withRomania), and Poland (with whom they had fought thePolish–Soviet War).[181] Finland also annexed theregion Pechenga of the RussianKola Peninsula; Soviet Russia and allied Soviet republics conceded the parts of its territory to Estonia (Petseri County andEstonian Ingria), Latvia (Pytalovo), and Turkey (Kars). Poland incorporated the contested territories ofWestern Belarus andWestern Ukraine, the former parts of the Russian Empire (exceptGalicia) east toCurzon Line.[180]
Both sides regularly committed brutal atrocities against civilians. During the civil war era for example, Petlyura andDenikin's forces massacred 100,000 to 150,000 Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia.[182] Hundreds of thousands of Jews were left homeless and tens of thousands became victims of serious illness. These massacres are now referred to as theWhite Terror (Russia).
Estimates for the total number of people killed during theRed Terror carried out by the Bolsheviks vary widely. One source asserts that the total number of victims could be 1.3 million,[183] whereas others give estimates ranging from 10,000 in the initial period of repression[184] to 140,000[185][186] and an estimate of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922.[187] The most reliable estimations for the total number of killings put the number at about 100,000,[188] whereas others suggest a figure of 200,000.[189]
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 the1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying oftyphus 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.[190] Another one to two million people, known as theWhite émigrés, fled Russia, many wereevacuated 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.
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 thePolitburo from Moscow.
The period from the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1921 is known as the period ofwar communism.[193] Land, all industry, and small businesses werenationalized, and the money economy was restricted. Strong opposition soon developed.[193] 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 theNew Economic Policy (NEP).[193] 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, orkulaks, who benefited from the NEP, the program proved highly beneficial and the economy revived.[193] The NEP would later come under increasing opposition from within the party following Lenin's death in early 1924.[193]
Soviet poster from 1932 symbolizing the reform of "old ways of life", dedicated to liberation of women from traditional roles
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.[194]
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.[195]Divorce no longer required court procedure,[196]and to make women completely free of the responsibilities of childbearing, abortion was made legal as early as 1920.[197] 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, massiveurbanization began. In the field of national policy in the 1920s, theKorenizatsiya was carried out. However, from the mid-30s, the Stalinist government returned to the tsarist policy ofRussification of the outskirts. In particular, the languages of all the nations of the USSR were transcribed into the Cyrillic alphabet in the process known asCyrillization.
The years from 1929 to 1939 comprised a tumultuous decade in Soviet history—a period of massive industrialization and internal struggles asJoseph 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, especiallyLeon Trotsky's. By 1928, with theTrotskyists either exiled or rendered powerless, Stalin was ready to put a radical programme of industrialisation into action.[198]
In 1929, Stalin proposed thefirst five-year plan.[193] 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, thecollectivization of agriculture, and the restricted manufacture ofconsumer goods.[193] 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).[199] 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.[200] The combination of bad weather, deficiencies of the hastily established collective farms, and massive confiscation of grain precipitated a serious famine,[199] and several million peasantsdied of starvation,mostly in Ukraine,Kazakhstan and parts of southwestern Russia.[199] 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.
TheNKVD gathered in tens of thousands of Soviet citizens to face arrest,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 theGreat Purges.[201] 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 theMoscow trials. The NKVD under the leadership of Stalin's commissarNikolai Yezhov carried out a series ofmassive 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 thelabor camps of theGulag system became an important component of the industrialization effort, especially inSiberia.[202][203] An estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system, and perhaps another 15 million had experience of some other form of forced labor.[204][205]
After the partition of Poland in 1939, the NKVD executed 20,000 captured Polish officers in theKatyn massacre. In the late 30s - first half of the 40s, the Stalinist government carried outmassive deportations of various nationalities. A number of ethnic groups were deported from their settlement to Central Asia.
In 1938, Germanyannexed Austria and, together with major Western European powers, signed theMunich 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, theWestern 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 theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact: a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany dividing Eastern Europe into two separate spheres of influence.[211] Following the pact, the USSR normalizedrelations with Nazi Germany and resumed Soviet–German trade.[212]
On 17 September 1939, theRed Armyinvaded eastern Poland, stating as justification the "need to protect Ukrainians and Belarusians" there, after the "cessation of existence" of the Polish state.[213][214] 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 originalCurzon line. In the meantime negotiations withFinland over a Soviet-proposed land swap that would redraw the Soviet-Finnish border further away fromLeningrad failed, and in December 1939 the USSR invaded Finland, beginning a campaign known as theWinter War (1939–1940), with the goal of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union.[215][216] The war took a heavy death toll on theRed Army and the Soviets failed to conquer Finland, but forced Finland to sign theMoscow Peace Treaty and cede theKarelian Isthmus andLadoga Karelia.[217][218] In summer 1940 the USSR issued anultimatum to Romania forcing it to cede the territories ofBessarabia andNorthern Bukovina. At the same time, the Soviet Union also occupied the threeformerly independent Baltic states (Estonia,Latvia andLithuania).[219][220][221]
Soviet soldiers during theBattle of Stalingrad, the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, the turning point on theEastern Front and in the entire WWII
The peace with Germany was tense, as both sides were preparing for the military conflict,[222][223] and abruptly ended when theAxis forces led by Germanyswept across the Soviet border on 22 June 1941. By the autumn theGerman army hadseized Ukraine, laid asiege of Leningrad, andthreatened to capture the capital, Moscow, itself.[224][225][226] Despite the fact that in December 1941 the Red Armythrew 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 theVolga and theCaucasus. However, two major German defeats inStalingrad andKursk proved decisive and reversed the course of the entireWorld 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.[227] By the end of 1943, the Red Army had broken through the German siege of Leningrad andliberated much of Ukraine, much of Western Russia andmoved into Belarus.[228] During the 1944 campaign, the Red Army defeated German forces in a series of offensive campaigns known asStalin'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,capturing Berlin in May 1945.[229] The war with Germany thus ended triumphantly for the Soviet Union.
Although the Soviet Union was victorious in World War II, the war resulted in around 26–27 million Soviet deaths (estimates vary)[231] and had devastated the Soviet economy in the struggle. Some 70,000 settlements were destroyed.[232] The occupied territories suffered from the ravages of German occupation and deportations ofslave labor by Germany.[233] 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.[234][235][236][237]The Holocaust, carried out by GermanEinsatzgruppen along with local collaborators, resulted in almost complete annihilation of the Jewish population over the entire territory temporarily occupied by Germany andits allies.[238][239][240][241] During the occupation, the Leningrad region lost around a quarter of its population,[237] Soviet Belarus lost from a quarter to a third of its population, and 3.6 million Sovietprisoners of war (of 5.5 million) died in German camps.[242][243][244]
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 theUN and apermanent member of the UN Security Council. However, the conflict between Soviet and U.S. national interests, known as theCold War, came to dominate the international stage.
The Cold War emerged from a conflict between Stalin and U.S. PresidentHarry Truman over the future of Eastern Europe during thePotsdam Conference in the summer of 1945.[245] Stalin's goal was to establish a buffer zone of states between Germany and the Soviet Union.[246] Truman charged that Stalin had betrayed theYalta agreement.[247] With Eastern Europe under Red Army occupation, Stalin was also biding his time, as his ownatomic bomb project was steadily and secretly progressing.[248][249]
In April 1949 the United States sponsored theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact. The Soviet Union established an Eastern counterpart to NATO in 1955, dubbed theWarsaw Pact.[250][251][252] 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 ofa Soviet bomb and theCommunist takeover inChina.
The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy were the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance ofhegemony over Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union maintained its dominance over the Warsaw Pact through crushing theHungarian Revolution of 1956,[253] suppressing thePrague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and supporting the suppression of theSolidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s. The Soviet Union opposed the United States in a number ofproxy conflicts all over the world, including theKorean War andVietnam War.
As the Soviet Union continued to maintain tight control over its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the Cold War gave way toDétente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in the 1970s. Thenuclear 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 twosuperpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons in treaties such asSALT I,SALT II, and theAnti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
U.S.–Soviet relations deteriorated following the beginning of the nine-yearSoviet–Afghan War in 1979 and the1980 election of Ronald Reagan, a staunchanti-communist, but improved as thecommunist 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.
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.[259][260]
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 PremierAlexei Kosygin told the head of oil and gas production, "things are bad with bread. Give me 3 million tons [of oil] over the plan."[261] Former prime ministerYegor Gaidar, an economist looking back three decades, in 2007 wrote:
The hard currency from oil exports stopped the growing food supply crisis, increased the import of equipment and consumer goods, ensured a financial base for the arms race and the achievement of nuclear parity with the United States, and permitted the realization of such risky foreign-policy actions as the war in Afghanistan.[262]
TheSoviet space program, founded bySergey Korolev, was especially successful. On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the firstsatellite,Sputnik.[263] On 12 April 1961,Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in the Soviet spaceshipVostok 1.[264] Other achievements of Russian space program include: the first photo of thefar side of the Moon; exploration ofVenus; the firstspacewalk byAlexei Leonov; first female spaceflight byValentina Tereshkova. In 1970 and 1973, the world's first planetary rovers were sent to the moon:Lunokhod 1 andLunokhod 2. More recently, the Soviet Union produced the world's first space station,Salyut, which in 1986 was replaced byMir, the first consistently inhabited long-term space station, that served from 1986 to 2001.
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 ofYuri Andropov andKonstantin Chernenko,Mikhail Gorbachev implementedperestroika in an attempt to modernize Soviet communism, and made significant changes in the party leadership.[265][266] However, Gorbachev's social reforms led to unintended consequences. His policy ofglasnost 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,[267] and many constituent republics, especially theBaltic republics,Georgian SSR andMoldavian SSR, sought greater autonomy, which Moscow was unwilling to provide. In therevolutions 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 ongoingwar in Afghanistan, and outdated industry and pervasive corruption, the Sovietplanned economy proved to be ineffective, and by 1990 the Soviet government had lost control over economic conditions. Due toprice 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 andBoris Yeltsin.[268] 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.[269] In a remarkable reversal of fortunes, he gained election as chairman of the Russian republic's new Supreme Soviet in May 1990.[270]
Priority over Soviet Union laws and negotiations on a new Treaty
The following month, Yeltsin secured legislationgiving 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.[citation needed] In thefirst Russian presidential election in 1991 Yeltsin became president of the Russian SFSR. At last Gorbachevattempted to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. However, on 19 August 1991, acoup 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 theSoviet Union 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.[271]
Soviet coup attempt, the Transition Period and the end of the Soviet Union
TheCommunist Party of the Soviet Union was banned in Russia in 1991, although nolustration 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 SecretaryGennady 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.[272] 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.[273]
As theKommersant newspaper wrote on 7 October 1991, a series of conflicts occurred in theRSFSR government during preparations for the signing of theTreaty 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 andKonstantin Kagalovsky were named as the developers of the statement made by Burbulis. In the same time, a group of "isolationist patriots" consisting ofMikhail Maley,Nikolai Fedorov,Alexander Shokhin,Igor Lazarev andMikhail Poltoranin criticizedIvan Silaev andYevgeny Saburov for wanting to preserve the Soviet Union.[274]
TheTreaty 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.[275][276]
By December 1991, the shortages had resulted in the introduction of foodrationing in Moscow and Saint Petersburg for the first time since World War II. Russia received humanitarian food aid from abroad. After theBelavezha Accords, theSupreme Soviet of Russia withdrew Russia from the Soviet Union on 12 December. The Soviet Union officially ended on 25 December 1991,[277] and theRussian Federation (formerly theRussian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic)[278] took power on 26 December.[277] The Russian government lifted price control on 2 January 1992. Prices rose dramatically, but shortages disappeared.
Although Yeltsin came to power on a wave of optimism, he never recovered his popularity after endorsingYegor Gaidar's "shock therapy" of ending Soviet-era price controls, drastic cuts in state spending, and an open foreign trade regime in early 1992 (seeRussian 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.[284]Hyperinflation hit the ruble, due tomonetary 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 theSeptember–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 theRussian 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 thecurrent 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 ofChechnya attempted to break away, leading to theFirst andSecond Chechen Wars.
Economic reforms also consolidated a semi-criminal oligarchy with roots in the old Soviet system. Advised by Western governments, theWorld Bank, and theInternational Monetary Fund, Russia embarked on the largest and fastestprivatization ever to reform the fullynationalized 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 tycoons) in league withcriminal mafias or Western investors.[285]Corporate raiders such asAndrei Volgin engaged inhostile takeovers of corrupt corporations by the mid-1990s.
By the mid-1990s Russia had a system of multiparty electoral politics.[286] 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 thefinancial 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 MinisterVladimir Putin.[287]
In 2000, the new acting president won the presidential election on 26 March and won in a landslide four years later.[288] 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 ofguided 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.[289] In 2008,Dmitri Medvedev, Putin's head of staff, was elected president. In 2012, Putin became president again, promptingmassive protests in Moscow.
Russia's long-term problems include a shrinking workforce, rampant corruption, and underinvestment in infrastructure.[290] Nevertheless, reversion to asocialistcommand economy seemed almost impossible.[291] The economic problems are aggravated by massive capital outflows, as well as extremely difficult conditions for doing business, due to pressure from the security forcesSiloviki and government agencies.
Due to high oil prices, from 2000 to 2008, Russia's GDP at PPP doubled.[292] 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.[290] Russia is well ahead of most other resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of education, science, and industry.[293] Russia hosted the2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.[294]
On 4 December 2011,elections to the State Duma were held, as a result of whichUnited Russia won for the third time in a row. The official voting results causedsignificant protests in the country; a number of political scientists and journalists noted various falsifications on election day.[298] In 2012, according to another pre-election agreement, a "castling" took place;[299] 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.[300]
^Hosking, Geoffrey; Service, Robert, eds. (1998).Russian Nationalism, Past and Present. Springer. p. 8.ISBN9781349265329.
^Grey, Ian (2015).Russia: A History. New Word City. p. 5.ISBN9781612309019.
^Ketola, Kari; Vihavainen, Timo (2014).Changing Russia? : history, culture and business (1 ed.). Helsinki: Finemor. p. 1.ISBN978-9527124017.
^Curtis, Glenn Eldon (1998).Russia: A Country Study. Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. p. 12.ISBN978-0-8444-0866-8.Muscovy gained full sovereignty over the ethnically Russian lands... by the beginning of the sixteenth century virtually all those lands were united
^Matthew Warren, «Mum's a Neanderthal, Dad's a Denisovan: First discovery of an ancient-human hybrid - Genetic analysis uncovers a direct descendant of two different groups of early humans»,Nature, vol. 560, 23 August 2018, pp. 417-418.
^abBelinskij, Andrej; H. Härke (March–April 1999)."The 'Princess' of Ipatovo".Archeology.52 (2). Archived fromthe original on 10 June 2008. Retrieved26 December 2007.
^Drews, Robert (2004).Early Riders: The beginnings of mounted warfare in Asia and Europe. New York: Routledge. p. 50.ISBN0-415-32624-9.
^Dr. Ludmila Koryakova,"Sintashta-Arkaim Culture" - The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN). Retrieved 20 July 2007.
^Esther Jacobson,The Art of the Scythians: The Interpenetration of Cultures at the Edge of the Hellenic World, Brill, 1995, p. 38.ISBN90-04-09856-9.
^Peter Turchin,Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. 185–186.ISBN0-691-11669-5.
^abDavid Christian,A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Blackwell Publishing, 1998, pp. 286–288.ISBN0-631-20814-3.
^Frank Northen Magill,Magill's Literary Annual, 1977 Salem Press, 1977, p. 818.ISBN0-89356-077-4.
^André Wink,Al-Hind, the Making of an Indo-Islamic World, Brill, 2004, p. 35.ISBN90-04-09249-8.
^András Róna-Tas,Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History, Central European University Press, 1999, p. 257.ISBN963-9116-48-3.
^Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman,History of Jewish Philosophy, Routledge, 1997, p. 196.ISBN0-415-08064-9.
^For a discussion of Slavic origins, see Paul M. Barford,The Early Slavs, Cornell University Press, 2001, pp. 15–16.ISBN0-8014-3977-9.
^Jonathan Shepard, "The Origins of Rus' (c. 900–1015)," inThe Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 1, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 49-51.
^Particularly among the aristocracy. SeeWorld History. Retrieved 22 July 2007.
^See Dimitri Obolensky, "Russia's Byzantine Heritage," inByzantium & the Slavs, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1994, pp. 75–108.ISBN0-88141-008-X.
^Serhii Plokhy,The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 13.ISBN0-521-86403-8.
^SeeThe Christianisation of RussiaArchived 27 July 2007 at theWayback Machine, an account of Vladimir's baptism, followed by the baptism of the entire population of Kiev, as described inThe Russian Primary Chronicle.
^Gordon Bob Smith,Reforming the Russian Legal System, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 2–3.ISBN0-521-45669-X.
^P. N. Fedosejev,The Comparative Historical Method in Soviet Mediaeval Studies, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1979. p. 90.
^Russell Bova,Russia and Western Civilization: Cultural and Historical Encounters, M.E. Sharpe, 2003, p. 13.ISBN0-7656-0976-2.
^Timothy Ware:The Orthodox Church (Penguin, 1963; 1997 revision) p. 74
^abIn 1240. See Michael Franklin Hamm,Kiev: A Portrait, 1800–1917, Princeton University Press, 1993.ISBN0-691-02585-1
^Sergey Solovyov. History of Russia... Vol. 8, p. 847
^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,ISBN0-271-02074-1
^For a discussion of the development of the class structure in Tsarist Russia seeSkocpol, Theda.States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
^abJarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe,Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia, Routledge, 2004, p. 264.ISBN0-415-30751-1.
^Brian Catchpole,A Map History of Russia (1974) pp 8–31; Martin Gilbert,Atlas of Russian history (1993) pp. 33–74.
^Brian Catchpole,A Map History of Russia (1974) p. 25, and Martin Gilbert ,Atlas of Russian history (1993) p.74.
^James Cracraft,The Revolution of Peter the Great (2003)
^Basil Dmytryshyn, "Russian expansion to the Pacific, 1580–1700: a historiographical review."Slavic Studies 25 (1980): 1–25.onlineArchived 25 September 2019 at theWayback Machine.
^Балабанова Д. А., Веприцкая В. Н. Становление адвокатуры в Южноукраинских губерниях Российской империи в первой половине XIX века (на примере Одессы) // Раціональний та почуттєво-емоційний аспекти правосвідомості та поведінки суб’єктів права. — 2012.
^According to Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: 1891 Grodno province – Catholics 384,696, total population 1,509,728[1]Archived 30 September 2007 at theWayback Machine; Curland province – Catholics 68,722, total population 555,003[2]Archived 30 September 2007 at theWayback Machine; Volyhnia Province – Catholics 193,142, total population 2,059,870[3]
^Thomas McLean,The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Imagining Poland and the Russian Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) pp. 14-40.
^Alfred J. Rieber, "Persistent factors in Russian foreign policy: an interpretive essay". In Hugh Ragsdale, ed.,Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (1993), p. 328.
^Stephen R. Burant, "The January Uprising of 1863 in Poland: Sources of Disaffection and the Arenas of Revolt."European History Quarterly 15#2 (1985): 131–156.
^Olga E. Maiorova, "War as Peace: The Trope of War in Russian Nationalist Discourse during the Polish Uprising of 1863."Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6#3 (2005): 501–534.
^Norman Davies:God's Playground: A History of Poland (OUP, 1981) vol. 2, pp. 315–333, 352-363
^John Shelton Curtiss, "The Army of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character,"American Historical Review, 63#4 (1958), pp. 880-889onlineArchived 27 July 2021 at theWayback Machine
^Edgar Melton, "Enlightened seigniorialism and its dilemmas in serf Russia, 1750-1830."Journal of Modern History 62.4 (1990): 676–708.
^E. Willis Brooks, "Reform in the Russian Army, 1856–1861."Slavic Review 43.1 (1984): 63-82onlineArchived 28 July 2021 at theWayback Machine.
^Chapman, Tim (2001).Imperial Russia: 1801–1905. Routledge. pp. 60–65.ISBN978-0415231091.
^Janko Lavrin, "Chaadayev and the West."Russian Review 22.3 (1963): 274–288onlineArchived 25 March 2020 at theWayback Machine.
^Raymond T. McNally, "The Significance of Chaadayev's Weltanschauung."Russian Review 23.4 (1964): 352–361.onlineArchived 31 May 2022 at theWayback Machine
^Neil Cornwell, "Belinsky and V.F. Odoyevsky."Slavonic and East European Review 62.1 (1984): 6–24.onlineArchived 31 May 2022 at theWayback Machine
^Emmons, Terence, ed. (1970).Emancipation of the Russian Serfs. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.ISBN9780030773600.
^David Moon,The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia: 1762-1907 (Routledge, 2014).
^Evgeny Finkel, Scott Gehlbach, and Tricia D. Olsen. "Does reform prevent rebellion? Evidence from Russia's emancipation of the serfs."Comparative Political Studies 48.8 (2015): 984-1019.onlineArchived 1 August 2020 at theWayback Machine
^W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (1990).
^Mosse, W. E. (1958).Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia.
^Waldron, Peter (2006)."Alexander II".Europe 1789–1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire.1: 40.Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved23 July 2019 – via GALE World History in Context.
^Robert F. Byrnes, "Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought" inPolitical Science Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 3 (September 1970), pp. 528–530.
^Arthur E. Adams, "Pobedonostsev's Religious Politics" inChurch History, Vol. 22, No. 4 (December 1953), pp. 314–326.
^Hugh Seton-Watson,The Russian Empire 1801–1917 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (1967), pp. 598–627
^For an analysis of the reaction of the elites to the revolutionaries see Roberta Manning,The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government. (1982).
^Orlando Figes,Revolutionary Russia, 1891–1991: A History (2014) pp. 1–33
^Figes,Revolutionary Russia, 1891–1991: A History (2014) pp. 33–43
^Levy, Jack S.; Mulligan, William (2017). "Shifting power, preventive logic, and the response of the target: Germany, Russia, and the First World War".Journal of Strategic Studies.40 (5):731–769.doi:10.1080/01402390.2016.1242421.S2CID157837365.
^Clark, Christopher (2013). The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. HarperCollins.ISBN978-0-06-219922-5. p. 509.
^W. Bruce Lincoln,Passage Through Armageddon: The Russians in War and Revolution, 1914–1918 (1986)
^Allan K. Wildman,The End of the Russian Imperial Army (Princeton University Press, 1980) pp 76–125.
^Nicholas Riasanovsky,A History of Russia (4th ed. 1984) pp. 418-20
^Rinke, Stefan; Wildt, Michael (2017).Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: 1917 and Its Aftermath from a Global Perspective. Campus Verlag. pp. 57–58.ISBN978-3593507057.
^The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia. Bailey Stone. Cambridge University Press, 25 November 2013. p. 335
^"The Russian Revolution", Richard Pipes, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 13 July 2011, p. 838
^Lincoln, W. Bruce (1989).Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War. Simon & Schuster. p. 384.ISBN0671631667....the best estimates set the probable number of executions at about a hundred thousand.
^Lowe, Norman (2002).Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History. Palgrave. p. 151.ISBN9780333963074.
^Baten, Jörg; Behle, Dominic (2010). "Regional Determinants of Firm Creation in the Russian Empire. Evidence from the 1870 Industrial Exhibition".Russian Economic History Yearbook.01 – via ResearchGate.
^Viola, Lynne.Peasant Rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.ISBN0-19-513104-5.
^Payne, Stanley G.The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.ISBN0-300-10068-X.
^Radosh, Ronald, Mary Habeck & Grigory Sevostianov (eds.).Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.ISBN0-300-08981-3.
^Coox, Alvin D.The Anatomy of a Small War: The Soviet-Japanese Struggle for Changkufeng/Khasan, 1938. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977.ISBN0-8371-9479-2.
^Coox, Alvin D.Nomonhan: Japan against Russia, 1939. 2 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.ISBN0-8047-1835-0.
^Ericson, Edward E.Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941. New York: Praeger, 1999.ISBN0-275-96337-3.
^Gross, Jan Tomasz.Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 2nd ed.ISBN0-691-09603-1.
^Zaloga, Steven & Victor Madej.The Polish Campaign 1939. 2nd ed. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1991.ISBN0-87052-013-X.
^Manninen, Ohto (2008).Miten Suomi valloitetaan: Puna-armeijan operaatiosuunnitelmat 1939–1944 [How to Conquer Finland: Operational Plans of the Red Army 1939–1944] (in Finnish). Edita.ISBN978-951-37-5278-1.
^Clemmesen, Michael H.; Faulkner, Marcus, eds. (2013).Northern European Overture to War, 1939–1941: From Memel to Barbarossa. Brill.ISBN978-90-04-24908-0.
^Vehviläinen, Olli.Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia. New York: Palgrave, 2002.ISBN0-333-80149-0
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^Misiunas, Romuald J. & Rein Taagepera.The Baltic States: The Years of Dependence, 1940–90. 2nd ed. London: Hurst & Co, 1993.ISBN1-85065-157-4.
^А. В. Десять мифов Второй мировой. – М.: Эксмо, Яуза, 2004,ISBN5-699-07634-4
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^Clark, Alan.Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941–1945. New York: Harper Perennial, 1985.ISBN0-688-04268-6.
^This is far higher than the original number of 7 million given by Stalin, and, indeed, the number has increased under various Soviet and Russian Federation leaders. See Mark Harrison,The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 291 (ISBN0-521-78503-0), for more information.
^As evidenced at the post-warNuremberg Trials. See Ginsburg, George,The Nuremberg Trial and International Law, Martinus Nijhoff, 1990, p. 160.ISBN0-7923-0798-4.
^"Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century", Greenhill Books, London, 1997, G. F. Krivosheev
^Christian Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941–1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978),ISBN3-8012-5016-4
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^Mastny, Vojtech, Malcolm Byrne & Magdalena Klotzbach (eds.).Cardboard Castle?: An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005.ISBN963-7326-08-1.
^Holloway, David & Jane M. O. Sharp.The Warsaw Pact: Alliance in Transition? Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.ISBN0-8014-1775-9.
^Litvan, Gyorgy, Janos M. Bak & Lyman Howard Legters (eds.).The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt and Repression, 1953–1963. London – New York: Longman, 1996.ISBN0-582-21504-8.
^ab"Leonid Brezhnev, 1906–1982".The History Guide.Archived from the original on 13 September 2018. Retrieved22 July 2007.During the 1970s Brezhnev attempted to normalize relations betweenWest Germany and theWarsaw Pact and to ease tensions with the United States through the policy known as détente. At the same time, he saw to it that the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex was greatly expanded and modernized.", "After his death, he was criticized for a gradual slide in living standards, the spread of corruption and cronyism within the Sovietbureaucracy, and the generallystagnant and dispiriting character of Soviet life in the late 1970s and early '80s.
^James W. Cortada, "Public Policies and the Development of National Computer Industries in Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, 1940—80."Journal of Contemporary History (2009) 44#3 pp. 493–512, especially pp. 509-510.
^Cain, Frank (2005). "Computers and the Cold War: United States Restrictions on the Export of Computers to the Soviet Union and Communist China".Journal of Contemporary History.40 (1):131–147.doi:10.1177/0022009405049270.JSTOR30036313.S2CID154809517.
^Steve Garber (19 January 2007)."Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age".NASA.Archived from the original on 20 May 2020. Retrieved22 July 2007.History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite...
^Neil Perry (12 April 2001)."Yuri Gagarin".The Guardian. UK.Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved22 July 2007.12 April 2001 is the fortieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space, the first time a human left the planet
^David Pryce-Jones (20 March 2000)."Boris on a Pedestal".National Review. Archived fromthe original on 2 June 2007. Retrieved22 July 2007.In the process he engaged in a power struggle with Mikhail Gorbachev...
^"Boris Yeltsin". CNN. Archived fromthe original on 13 June 2008. Retrieved22 July 2007.The first-ever popularly elected leader of Russia, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a protégé of Mikhail Gorbachev's.
^"Government".Country Studies.Archived from the original on 20 May 2018. Retrieved22 July 2007.Because of the Russians' dominance in the affairs of the union, the RSFSR failed to develop some of the institutions of governance and administration that were typical of public life in the other republics: a republic-level communist party, a Russian academy of sciences, and Russian branches of trade unions, for example.
^ab"Timeline: Soviet Union".BBC. 3 March 2006.Archived from the original on 28 August 2017. Retrieved22 July 2007.1991 25 December – Gorbachev resigns as Soviet president; US recognises independence of remaining Soviet republics
^"Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic".The Free Dictionary. Archived fromthe original on 12 January 2012. Retrieved22 July 2007.The largest republic of the former Soviet Union; it became independent as the Russian Federation in 1991
^"Putin's hold on the Russians".BBC. 28 June 2007.Archived from the original on 17 December 2017. Retrieved22 July 2007.In the 2000 election, he took 53% of the vote in the first round and, four years later, was re-elected with a landslide majority of 71%.
^"Putin's hold on the Russians".BBC. 28 June 2007.Archived from the original on 17 December 2017. Retrieved22 July 2007.But his critics believe that it has come at the cost of some post-communist democratic freedoms.", "2003: General election gives Putin allies control over parliament"
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