History of Russia#Muscovy

{{Further|Steppe nomads|Scythians|Scythia|Proto-Uralic|Paleo-Siberian|Pontic–Caspian steppe|Domestication of the horse|Kama culture|Pit–Comb Ware culture}}

File:IE expansion.png: South Russia as the urheimat of Indo-European peoples]]

The first human settlement on the territory of Russia dates back to the Oldowan period in the early Lower Paleolithic. About 2 million years ago, representatives of Homo erectus migrated from Western Asia to the North Caucasus (archaeological site of {{ill|Kermek|ru|Кермек (стоянка)}} on the Taman PeninsulaЩелинский В. Е. и др. [http://www.archaeolog.ru/media/ksia/ksia-239.pdf Раннеплейстоценовая стоянка Кермек в Западном Предкавказье (предварительные результаты комплексных исследований)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210321163415/https://www.archaeolog.ru/media/ksia/ksia-239.pdf |date=21 March 2021 }} // Краткие сообщения ИА РАН. Вып. 239, 2015.). At {{ill|Bogatyri/Sinyaya balka|ru|Богатыри/Синяя балка}}, in a skull of Elasmotherium caucasicum, which lived 1.5–1.2 million years ago, a stone tool was found.Щелинский В. Е. {{cite web | url = https://www.archaeolog.ru/media/ksia/ksia-254-redu.pdf#page=34 | title = Об охоте на крупных млекопитающих и использовании водных пищевых ресурсов в раннем палеолите (по материалам раннеашельских стоянок Южного Приазовья) | language = ru | website = www.archaeolog.ru | access-date = 17 December 2019 | archive-date = 7 June 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230607214948/https://www.archaeolog.ru/media/ksia/ksia-254-redu.pdf#page=34 | url-status = live }} // Краткие сообщения Института археологии. Вып. 254. 2019 1.5-million-year-old Oldowan flint tools have been discovered in the Dagestan Akusha region of the north Caucasus, demonstrating the presence of early humans in the territory of present-day Russia.{{cite web |last1= Chepalyga |first1= A.L. |last2= Amirkhanov |first2= Kh.A. |last3= Trubikhin |first3= V.M. |last4= Sadchikova |first4= T.A. |last5= Pirogov |first5= A.N. |last6= Taimazov |first6= A.I. |year= 2011 |title= Geoarchaeology of the earliest paleolithic sites (Oldowan) in the North Caucasus and the East Europe |url= http://paleogeo.org/article3.html |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130520090413/http://paleogeo.org/article3.html |archive-date= 20 May 2013 |access-date= 18 December 2013 |quote= Early Paleolithic cultural layers with tools of oldowan type was discovered in East Caucasus (Dagestan, Russia) by Kh. Amirkhanov (2006) [...]}}

Fossils of Denisovans in Russia date to about 110,000 years ago.[https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700186 A fourth Denisovan individual] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220815123645/https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700186 |date=15 August 2022 }}, 2017. DNA from a bone fragment found in Denisova Cave, belonging to a female who died about 90,000 years ago, shows that she was a hybrid of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.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. Russia was also home to some of the last surviving Neanderthals - the partial skeleton of a Neanderthal infant in Mezmaiskaya cave in Adygea showed a carbon-dated age of only 45,000 years.{{cite journal |last1= Igor V. Ovchinnikov |last2= Anders Götherström |last3= Galina P. Romanova |last4= Vitaliy M. Kharitonov |last5= Kerstin Lidén |last6= William Goodwin |date= 30 March 2000 |title= Molecular analysis of Neanderthal DNA from the northern Caucasus |journal= Nature |volume= 404 |issue= 6777 |pages= 490–493 |bibcode= 2000Natur.404..490O |doi= 10.1038/35006625 |pmid= 10761915 |s2cid= 3101375}} In 2008, Russian archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of Novosibirsk, working at the site of Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, uncovered a 40,000-year-old small bone fragment from the fifth finger of a juvenile hominin, which DNA analysis revealed to be a previously unknown species of human, which was named the Denisova hominin.{{Cite news |last= Mitchell |first= Alanna |date= 30 January 2012 |title= Gains in DNA Are Speeding Research into Human Origins |work= The New York Times |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/gains-in-dna-are-speeding-research-into-human-origins.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210/& |access-date= 27 February 2017 |archive-date= 12 September 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170912024249/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/gains-in-dna-are-speeding-research-into-human-origins.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210/& |url-status= live }}

The first trace of Homo sapiens on the large expanse of Russian territory dates back to 45,000 years, in central Siberia (Ust'-Ishim man). The discovery of some of the earliest evidence for the presence of anatomically modern humans found anywhere in Europe was reported in 2007 from the Kostenki archaeological site near the Don River in Russia (dated to at least 40,000 years ago{{cite web |last= K. Kris Hirst Archaeology Expert |title= Pre-Aurignacian Levels Discovered at the Kostenki Site |url= http://archaeology.about.com/od/earlymansites/a/kostenki.htm |access-date= 18 May 2016 |publisher= Archaeology.about.com |archive-date= 21 March 2021 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210321163447/https://www.thoughtco.com/kostenki-human-migrations-into-europe-171471 |url-status= dead }}) and at Sungir (34,600 years ago). Humans reached Arctic Russia (Mamontovaya Kurya) by 40,000 years ago.

During the prehistoric eras the vast steppes of Southern Russia were home to tribes of nomadic pastoralists. (In classical antiquity, the Pontic Steppe was known as "Scythia".{{cite journal |last1= Belinskij |first1= Andrej |last2= H. Härke |date= March–April 1999 |title= The 'Princess' of Ipatovo |url= http://cat.he.net/~archaeol/9903/newsbriefs/ipatovo.html |url-status= dead |journal= Archeology |volume= 52 |issue= 2 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080610043326/http://cat.he.net/~archaeol/9903/newsbriefs/ipatovo.html |archive-date= 10 June 2008 |access-date= 26 December 2007}}) Remnants of these long-gone steppe cultures were discovered in the course of the 20th century in such places as Ipatovo, Sintashta,{{cite book |last= Drews |first= Robert |title= Early Riders: The beginnings of mounted warfare in Asia and Europe |publisher= Routledge |year= 2004 |isbn= 0-415-32624-9 |location= New York |page= 50 |author-link= Robert Drews}} Arkaim,Dr. Ludmila Koryakova, {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20190228104055/http://www.csen.org/koryakova2/Korya.Sin.Ark.html "Sintashta-Arkaim Culture"]}} - The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN). Retrieved 20 July 2007. and Pazyryk.[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2517siberian.html 1998 NOVA documentary: "Ice Mummies: Siberian Ice Maiden"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110513234433/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2517siberian.html |date=13 May 2011 }} Transcript.

{{Further|Scythia|Bosporan Kingdom|Ancient Greek colonies|Goths|Huns|Turkic migration|Khazaria|History of Siberia}}

File:Grave stele 03 pushkin.jpg of the Bosporan Kingdom; from Taman Peninsula (Yubileynoe), southern Russia, 3rd quarter of the 4th century BC; marble, Pushkin Museum]]

In the later part of the 8th century BC, Greek merchants brought classical civilization to the trade emporiums in Tanais and Phanagoria.Esther Jacobson, The Art of the Scythians: The Interpenetration of Cultures at the Edge of the Hellenic World, Brill, 1995, p. 38. {{ISBN|90-04-09856-9}}. Gelonus was described by Herodotus as a huge (Europe's biggest) earth- and wood-fortified grad inhabited around 500 BC by Heloni and Budini. In 513 BC, the king of the Achaemenid Empire, Darius I, launched a military campaign around the Black Sea into Scythia, modern-day Ukraine, eventually reaching the Tanais river (now known as the Don).

Greeks, mostly from the city-state of Miletus, would colonize large parts of modern-day Crimea and the Sea of Azov during the seventh and sixth centuries BC, eventually unifying into the Bosporan Kingdom by 480 BC, and would be incorporated into the large Kingdom of Pontus in 107 BC. The Kingdom would eventually be conquered by the Roman Republic, and the Bosporan Kingdom would become a client state of the Roman 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 of Oium existed in Southern Russia until it was overrun by Huns. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom was also overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions,Peter Turchin, Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. 185–186. {{ISBN|0-691-11669-5}}. led by warlike tribes which would often move on to Europe, as was the case with the Huns and Turkish Avars.

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

A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas through to the 8th century.David Christian, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Blackwell Publishing, 1998, pp. 286–288. {{ISBN|0-631-20814-3}}. Noted for their laws, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism,Frank Northen Magill, Magill's Literary Annual, 1977 Salem Press, 1977, p. 818. {{ISBN|0-89356-077-4}}. the Khazars were the main commercial link between the Baltic and the Muslim Abbasid empire centered in Baghdad.André Wink, Al-Hind, the Making of an Indo-Islamic World, Brill, 2004, p. 35. {{ISBN|90-04-09249-8}}. They were important allies of the Eastern Roman Empire,András Róna-Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History, Central European University Press, 1999, p. 257. {{ISBN|963-9116-48-3}}. and waged a series of successful wars against the Arab Caliphates.Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, History of Jewish Philosophy, Routledge, 1997, p. 196. {{ISBN|0-415-08064-9}}. In the 8th century, the Khazars embraced Judaism.

{{Main|East Slavs|Rus' Khaganate}}

Some of the ancestors of the modern Russians were the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the Pripet Marshes.For a discussion of Slavic origins, see Paul M. Barford, The Early Slavs, Cornell University Press, 2001, pp. 15–16. {{ISBN|0-8014-3977-9}}. The Early East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia in two waves: one moving from Kiev (present-day Ukraine) towards present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk (present-day Belarus) towards Novgorod and Rostov.David Christian, op cit., pp. 6–7.

From the 7th century onwards, East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia and slowly conquered and assimilated the native Finnic and Baltic tribes, such as the Merya,Henry K Paszkiewicz, The Making of the Russian Nation, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963, p. 262. the Muromians,Ed. Timothy Reuter, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 3, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 494-497. {{ISBN|0-521-36447-7}}. and the Meshchera.Aleksandr Lʹvovich Mongaĭt, Archeology in the U.S.S.R., Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959, p. 335.

{{Main|Kievan Rus'}}

File:Варяги.jpg by Viktor Vasnetsov]]

Scandinavian Norsemen, known as Vikings in Western Europe and Varangians{{sfn|Magocsi|2010|p=55, 59–60}} in the East, combined piracy and trade throughout Northern Europe. In the mid-9th century, they began to venture along the waterways from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas.Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1994, p. 42. {{ISBN|0-88141-008-X}}. According to the legendary Calling of the Varangians, recorded in several Rus' chronicles such as the Novgorod First Chronicle and Primary Chronicle, the Varangians Rurik, Sineus and Truvor were invited in the 860s to restore order in three towns – either Novgorod (most texts) or Staraya Ladoga (Hypatian Codex); Beloozero; and Izborsk (most texts) or "Slovensk" (Pskov Third Chronicle), respectively.{{sfn|Martin|2009b|p=3}}{{sfn|Magocsi|2010|p=55, 59–60}}{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|p=38–39}}[http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Kievan.html Kievan Rus' and Mongol Periods] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927230631/http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Kievan.html |date=27 September 2007 }}, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), Russia: A Country Study, Department of the Army, 1998. {{ISBN|0-16-061212-8}}. Their successors allegedly moved south and extended their authority to Kiev,James Westfall Thompson, and Edgar Nathaniel Johnson, An Introduction to Medieval Europe, 300–1500, W. W. Norton & Co., 1937, p. 268. which had been previously dominated by the Khazars.David Christian, Op cit. p. 343.

Thus, the first East Slavic state, Rus', emerged in the 9th century along the Dnieper River valley. A coordinated group of princely states with a common interest in maintaining trade along the river routes, Kievan Rus' controlled the trade route for furs, wax, and slaves between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire along the Volkhov and Dnieper Rivers.

By the end of the 10th century, the minority Norse military aristocracy had merged with the native Slavic population,Particularly among the aristocracy. See {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20070718120101/http://history-world.org/BYZ4.htm World History]}}. Retrieved 22 July 2007. which also absorbed Greek Christian influences in the course of the multiple campaigns to loot Tsargrad, or Constantinople.See Dimitri Obolensky, "Russia's Byzantine Heritage," in Byzantium & the Slavs, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1994, pp. 75–108. {{ISBN|0-88141-008-X}}. One such campaign claimed the life of the foremost Slavic druzhina leader, Svyatoslav I, who was renowned for having crushed the power of the Khazars on the Volga.Serhii Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 13. {{ISBN|0-521-86403-8}}.

File:Kievan-rus-1015-1113-(en).png in 1097]]

Kievan Rus' is important for its introduction of a Slavic variant of the Eastern Orthodox religion, dramatically deepening a synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next thousand years. The region adopted Christianity in 988 by the official act of public baptism of Kiev inhabitants by Prince Vladimir I.See [http://www.dur.ac.uk/a.k.harrington/christin.html The Christianisation of Russia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070727221316/http://www.dur.ac.uk/a.k.harrington/christin.html |date=27 July 2007 }}, an account of Vladimir's baptism, followed by the baptism of the entire population of Kiev, as described in The Russian Primary Chronicle. Some years later the first code of laws, Russkaya Pravda, was introduced by Yaroslav the Wise.Gordon Bob Smith, Reforming the Russian Legal System, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 2–3. {{ISBN|0-521-45669-X}}. From the onset, the Kievan princes followed the Byzantine example and kept the Church dependent on them.P. N. Fedosejev, The Comparative Historical Method in Soviet Mediaeval Studies, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1979. p. 90.

By the 11th century, particularly during the reign of Yaroslav 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.Russell Bova, Russia and Western Civilization: Cultural and Historical Encounters, M.E. Sharpe, 2003, p. 13. {{ISBN|0-7656-0976-2}}. Compared with the languages of European Christendom, the Russian language was little influenced by the Greek and Latin of early Christian writings. This was because Church Slavonic was used directly in liturgy instead.Timothy Ware: The Orthodox Church (Penguin, 1963; 1997 revision) p. 74

A nomadic Turkic people, the Kipchaks (also known as the Cumans), replaced the earlier Pechenegs as the dominant force in the south steppe regions neighbouring to Rus' at the end of the 11th century and founded a nomadic state in the steppes along the Black Sea (Desht-e-Kipchak). Repelling their regular attacks, especially in Kiev, was a heavy burden for the southern areas of Rus'. The nomadic incursions caused a massive influx of Slavs to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state because of in-fighting between members of the princely family that ruled it collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod in the north, and Halych-Volhynia in the south-west. Conquest by the Mongol Golden Horde in the 13th century was the final blow. Kiev was destroyed.In 1240. See Michael Franklin Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800–1917, Princeton University Press, 1993. {{ISBN|0-691-02585-1}} Halych-Volhynia would eventually be absorbed into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and independent Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, would establish the basis for the modern Russian nation.

{{Main|Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus'|Great Troubles}}

File:Mongols vladimir.jpg by Batu Khan in February 1238]]

The invading Mongols accelerated the fragmentation of the Rus'. In 1223, the disunited southern princes faced a Mongol raiding party at the Kalka River and were soundly defeated.See David Nicolle, Kalka River 1223: Genghis Khan's Mongols Invade Russia, Osprey Publishing, 2001. {{ISBN|1-84176-233-4}}. In 1237–1238 the Mongols burnt down the city of Vladimir (4 February 1238)Tatyana Shvetsova, [http://www.vor.ru/English/homeland/home_004.html The Vladimir Suzdal Principality] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080320070136/http://www.vor.ru/English/homeland/home_004.html |date=20 March 2008 }}. Retrieved 21 July 2007. and other major cities of northeast Russia, routed the Russians at the Sit' River,{{sfn|Martin|2004|p=139}} and then moved west into Poland and Hungary. By then they had conquered most of the Russian principalities.{{cite web |url = https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/RussianHeritage/4.PEAS/4.L/12.III.5.html |title = The Destruction of Kiev |archive-url=https://archive.today/20110427075859/https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/RussianHeritage/4.PEAS/4.L/12.III.5.html |archive-date=27 April 2011 |url-status=dead}} Only the Novgorod Republic escaped occupation and continued to flourish in the orbit of the Hanseatic League.Jennifer Mills, [http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/hansa.html The Hanseatic League in the Eastern Baltic] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629134048/http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/hansa.html |date=29 June 2011 }}, SCAND 344, May 1998. Retrieved 21 July 2007.

The impact of the Mongol invasion on the territories of Kievan Rus' was uneven. The advanced city culture was almost completely destroyed. As older centers such as Kiev and Vladimir never recovered from the devastation of the initial attack, the new cities of Moscow,[http://countrystudies.us/russia/3.htm Muscovy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110920102514/http://countrystudies.us/russia/3.htm |date=20 September 2011 }}, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), Russia: A Country Study, Department of the Army, 1998. {{ISBN|0-16-061212-8}}. Tver and Nizhny NovgorodSigfried J. De Laet, History of Humanity: Scientific and Cultural Development, Taylor & Francis, 2005, p. 196. {{ISBN|92-3-102814-6}}. began to compete for hegemony in the Mongol-dominated Rus' principalities under the suzerainty of the Golden Horde. Although a coalition of Rus' princes led by Dmitry Donskoy defeated Mongol warlord Mamai at Kulikovo in 1380,{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20070607151328/http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/battles/Kulikovo/index.html The Battle of Kulikovo (8 September 1380)]}}. Retrieved 22 July 2007. forces of the new khan Tokhtamysh and his Rus' allies immediately sacked Moscow in 1382 as punishment for resisting Mongol authority.{{sfn|Halperin|1987|p=73–75}} Mongol domination of the Rus' principalities, along with tax collection by various overlords such as the Crimean Khans, continued into the early 16th century, despite later claims of Muscovite bookmen that the indecisive standoff at the Ugra in 1480 had signified "the end of the Tatar yoke" and the "liberation of Russia".{{sfn|Halperin|1987|p=77–78}}

File:Novgorod1400.png {{Circa|1400}}. Novgorod created a vast territorial empire and controlled much of the fur trade with Europe. The city was one of the main trading posts of the Hanseatic League.]]

The Mongols dominated the lower reaches of the Volga and held Russia in sway from their western capital at Sarai,{{cite web|url=http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa76|title=History of the Mongols|publisher=History World|access-date=26 July 2007|archive-date=28 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181028151842/http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa76|url-status=live}} one of the largest cities of the medieval world. The princes had to pay tribute to the Mongols of the Golden Horde, commonly called Tatars; but in return they received charters authorizing them to act as deputies to the khans. In general, the princes were allowed considerable freedom to rule as they wished, while the Russian Orthodox Church even experienced a spiritual revival.

The Mongols left their impact on the Russians in such areas as military tactics and transportation. Under Mongol occupation, Muscovy also developed its postal road network, census, fiscal system, and military organization.

At the same time, Prince of Novgorod, Alexander Nevsky, managed to repel the offensive of the Northern Crusades against Novgorod from the West. Despite this, becoming the Grand Prince, Alexander declared himself a vassal to the Golden Horde, not having the strength to resist its power.{{POV statement|date=November 2020}}

{{Main|Grand Duchy of Moscow}}

File:Dmitry Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo.jpg in the Battle of Kulikovo]] Daniil Aleksandrovich, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, founded the principality of Moscow (known as Muscovy in English), which first cooperated with and ultimately expelled the Tatars from Russia. Well-situated in the central river system of Russia and surrounded by protective forests and marshes, Moscow was at first only a vassal of Vladimir, but soon it absorbed its parent state.

A major factor in the ascendancy of Moscow was the cooperation of its rulers with the Mongol overlords, who granted them the title of Grand Prince of Moscow and made them agents for collecting the Tatar tribute from the Russian principalities. The principality's prestige was further enhanced when it became the center of the Russian Orthodox Church. Its head, the Metropolitan, fled from Kiev to Vladimir in 1299 and a few years later established the permanent headquarters of the Church in Moscow under the original title of Kiev Metropolitan.

By the middle of the 14th century, the power of the Mongols was declining, and the Grand Princes felt able to openly oppose the Mongol yoke. In 1380, at Battle of Kulikovo on the Don River, the Mongols were defeated, and although this hard-fought victory did not end Tatar rule of Russia, it did bring great fame to the Grand Prince Dmitry 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.

{{Main|Ivan III of Russia}}

File:Иван III Великий.JPG at the Millennium of Russia. At his feet, defeated: Tatar, Lithuanian and Baltic German.]]

In the 15th century, the grand princes of Moscow continued to consolidate Russian land to increase their population and wealth. The most successful practitioner of this process was Ivan III, who laid the foundations for a Russian national state. Ivan competed with his powerful northwestern rival, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, for control over some of the semi-independent Upper Principalities in the upper Dnieper and Oka River basins.[http://www.bartleby.com/65/iv/Ivan3.html Ivan III] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070806175518/http://bartleby.com/65/iv/Ivan3.html |date=6 August 2007 }}, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001–05.[https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-3598 Ivan III] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071215072314/http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-3598 |date=15 December 2007 }}, Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007

Through the defections of some princes, border skirmishes, and a long war with the Novgorod Republic, Ivan III was able to annex Novgorod and Tver.Donald Ostrowski in The Cambridge History of Russia, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 234. {{ISBN|0-521-81227-5}}. As a result, the Grand Duchy of Moscow tripled in size under his rule. During his conflict with Pskov, a monk named Filofei (Philotheus of Pskov) composed a letter to Ivan III, with the prophecy that the latter's kingdom would be the Third Rome.See e.g. [https://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-60463 Eastern Orthodoxy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071018051458/http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-60463 |date=18 October 2007 }}, Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica. The Fall of Constantinople and the death of the last Greek Orthodox Christian emperor contributed to this new idea of Moscow as New Rome and the seat of Orthodox Christianity, as did Ivan's 1472 marriage to Byzantine Princess Sophia Palaiologina.

File:Muscovy 1390 1525.png

Under Ivan III, the first central government bodies were created in Russia: Prikaz. The Sudebnik was adopted, the first set of laws since the 11th century. The double-headed eagle was adopted as the coat of arms of Russia.

Ivan proclaimed his absolute sovereignty over all Russian princes and nobles. Refusing further tribute to the Tatars, Ivan initiated a series of attacks that opened the way for the complete defeat of the declining Golden Horde, now divided into several Khanates and hordes. Ivan and his successors sought to protect the southern boundaries of their domain against attacks of the Crimean Tatars and other hordes.{{cite web |url=http://www.allempires.info/article/index.php?q=The_Crimean_Khanate |title=The Tatar Khanate of Crimea |access-date=12 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171108032646/http://www.allempires.info/article/index.php?q=The_Crimean_Khanate |archive-date=8 November 2017 |url-status=dead }} To achieve this aim, they sponsored the construction of the Great Abatis Belt and granted manors to nobles, who were obliged to serve in the military. The manor system provided a basis for an emerging cavalry-based army.

File:Autor nieznany (malarz z kręgu Lukasa Cranacha Starszego), Bitwa pod Orszą.jpg forces over the Muscovites at the Battle of Orsha in 1514]]

In this way, internal consolidation accompanied outward expansion of the state. By the 16th century, the rulers of Moscow considered the entire Russian territory their collective property. Various semi-independent princes still claimed specific territories, but Ivan III forced the lesser princes to acknowledge the grand prince of Moscow and his descendants as unquestioned rulers with control over military, judicial, and foreign affairs. Gradually, the Russian ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic ruler, a tsar. The first Russian ruler to officially crown himself "Tsar" was Ivan IV.

Ivan III tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde over the Rus', renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Biographer Fennell concludes that his reign was "militarily glorious and economically sound," and especially points to his territorial annexations and his centralized control over local rulers. However, Fennell argues that his reign was also "a period of cultural depression and spiritual barrenness. Freedom was stamped out within the Russian lands. By his bigoted anti-Catholicism Ivan brought down the curtain between Russia and the west. For the sake of territorial aggrandizement he deprived his country of the fruits of Western learning and civilization."J. L. I. Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (1961) p. 354

{{Main|Tsardom of Russia}}

File:Ivan IV the Terrible portrait by Weigel 1882.jpg was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, then "Tsar of All the Russias" until his death in 1584.]]

The development of the Tsar's autocratic powers reached a peak during the reign of Ivan IV (1547–1584), known as "Ivan the Terrible".{{cite book | first=Tim | last=McDaniel | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0yIABAAAQBAJ&pg=PA46 | title=Autocracy, Modernization, and Revolution in Russia and Iran | publisher=Princeton University Press | date=1991 | isbn=0-691-03147-9 | page=46}}{{cite book | first=Kevin | last=O'Connor | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b3b5nU4bnw4C&pg=PA23 | title=The History of the Baltic States | url-status=live | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221030013948/https://books.google.com/books?id=b3b5nU4bnw4C&pg=PA23& | archive-date=30 October 2022 | publisher=Greenwood Press | date=2003 | isbn=0-313-32355-0 | page=23}} He strengthened the position of the monarch to an unprecedented degree, as he ruthlessly subordinated the nobles to his will, exiling or executing many on the slightest provocation. Nevertheless, Ivan is often seen as a farsighted statesman who reformed Russia as he promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550),{{cite web|url=http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/russia/ivantheterrible.html|title=Ivan the Terrible|access-date=23 July 2007|work=Minnesota State University Mankato|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070718145812/http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/russia/ivantheterrible.html|archive-date=18 July 2007}} established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor), curbed the influence of the clergy,{{cite journal |last=Zenkovsky |first=Serge A. |author-link=Serge Aleksandr Zenkovsky |date=October 1957 |title=The Russian Church Schism: Its Background and Repercussions|journal=Russian Review |volume=16 |issue=4 |pages=37–58 |doi=10.2307/125748 |jstor=125748 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing}} and introduced local self-management in rural regions.Skrynnikov R., "Ivan Grosny", p. 58, M., AST, 2001 Tsar also created the first regular army in Russia: Streltsy.

His long Livonian War (1558–1583) for control of the Baltic coast and access to the sea trade ultimately proved a costly failure.{{cite web | work=Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences | title=The Origin of the Livonian War, 1558 | access-date=16 July 2023 | first=William | last=Urban | date=Fall 1983 | url=http://www.lituanus.org/1983_3/83_3_02.htm | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020530071736/http://www.lituanus.org/1983_3/83_3_02.htm | archive-date=30 May 2002}} Ivan managed to annex the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia.{{sfn|Martin|2004|p=395}} These conquests complicated the migration of aggressive nomadic hordes from Asia to Europe via the Volga and Urals. Through these conquests, Russia acquired a significant Muslim Tatar population and emerged as a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. Also around this period, the mercantile Stroganov family established a firm foothold in the Urals and recruited Russian Cossacks to colonise Siberia.Siberian Chronicles, Строгановская Сибирская Летопись. изд. Спаским, СПб, 1821

File:Crimean Khanate 1550.pngs of Crimea, Astrakhan and Kazan in 1550, before the expansion of Ivan IV, which established Russian power over the entire length of the Volga.]]

In the later part of his reign, Ivan divided his realm in two. In the zone known as the oprichnina, Ivan's followers carried out a series of bloody purges of the feudal aristocracy (whom he suspected of treachery after prince Andrey Kurbsky's betrayal), culminating in the Massacre of Novgorod in 1570. This combined with the military losses, epidemics, and poor harvests so weakened Russia that the Crimean Tatars were able to sack central Russian regions and burn down Moscow in 1571.Skrynnikov R. "Ivan Grozny", M, 2001, pp. 142–173 However, in 1572 the Russians defeated the Crimean Tatar army at the Battle of Molodi and Ivan abandoned the oprichnina.Robert I. Frost The Northern Wars: 1558–1721 (Longman, 2000) pp. 26–27{{cite web | url=http://www.economist.com/cities/printStory.cfm?obj_id=9141603&city_id=MCW | title=Moscow – Historical background | work=The Economist: City Guide | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011214606/http://www.economist.com/cities/printStory.cfm?obj_id=9141603&city_id=MCW | archive-date=11 October 2007}}

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.Skrynnikov. "Ivan Grozny", M, 2001, pp. 222–223

{{Main|Time of Troubles}}

File:Lissner.jpg to Prince Pozharsky in 1612]]

The death of Ivan's childless son Feodor was followed by a period of civil wars and foreign intervention known as the Time of Troubles (1606–13). Extremely cold summers (1601–1603) wrecked crops,Borisenkov E, Pasetski V. "The thousand-year annals of the extreme meteorological phenomena", {{ISBN|5-244-00212-0}}, p. 190 which led to the Russian famine of 1601–1603 and increased the social disorganization. Boris Godunov's reign ended in chaos, civil war combined with foreign intrusion, devastation of many cities and depopulation of the rural regions. The country rocked by internal chaos also attracted several waves of interventions by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.Solovyov. "History of Russia...", v.7, pp. 533–535, 543–568

During the Polish–Muscovite War (1605–1618), Polish–Lithuanian forces reached Moscow and installed the impostor False Dmitriy I in 1605, then supported False Dmitry II in 1607. The decisive moment came when a combined Russian-Swedish army was routed by the Polish forces under hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski at the Battle of Klushino on {{OldStyleDate|4 July|1610|24 June}}. As the result of the battle, the Seven Boyars, a group of Russian nobles, deposed the tsar Vasily Shuysky on {{OldStyleDate|27 July|1610|17 July}}, and recognized the Polish prince Władysław IV Vasa as the Tsar of Russia on {{OldStyleDate|6 September|1610|27 August}}.Lev Gumilev (1992), Ot Rusi k Rossii. Ocherki e'tnicheskoj istorii [From Rus' to Russia], Moscow: Ekopros.Michel Heller (1997), Histoire de la Russie et de son empire [A history of Russia and its empire], Paris: Plon. The Poles occupied Moscow on {{OldStyleDate|21 September|1610|11 September}}. Moscow revolted but riots there were brutally suppressed and the city was set on fire.George Vernadsky, "A History of Russia", Volume 5, Yale University Press, (1969). [http://www.spsl.nsc.ru/history/vernad/vol5/vgv522.htm Russian translation] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924105306/http://www.spsl.nsc.ru/history/vernad/vol5/vgv522.htm |date=24 September 2015 }}Mikolaj Marchocki "Historia Wojny Moskiewskiej", ch. "Slaughter in the capital", [http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/rus8/Marchockij/pred.phtml?id=902 Russian translation] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170704181638/http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/rus8/Marchockij/pred.phtml?id=902 |date=4 July 2017 }}Sergey Solovyov. History of Russia... Vol. 8, p. 847

The crisis provoked a patriotic national uprising against the invasion, both in 1611 and 1612. A volunteer army, led by the merchant Kuzma Minin and prince Dmitry Pozharsky, expelled the foreign forces from the capital on {{OldStyleDate|4 November|1612|22 October}}.Chester S L Dunning, Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty, [https://books.google.com/books?id=9NUYtSJaO8cC&pg=PA434 p. 434] Penn State Press, 2001, {{ISBN|0-271-02074-1}}[https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9073517 Troubles, Time of] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071218201128/http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9073517 |date=18 December 2007 }}." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006[http://www.bartleby.com/65/e-/E-Pozharsk.html Pozharski, Dmitri Mikhailovich, Prince] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211151400/http://www.bartleby.com/65/e-/E-Pozharsk.html |date=11 December 2008 }}", Columbia Encyclopedia

The Russian statehood survived the "Time of Troubles" and the rule of weak or corrupt Tsars because of the strength of the government's central bureaucracy. Government functionaries continued to serve, regardless of the ruler's legitimacy or the faction controlling the throne. However, the Time of Troubles caused the loss of much territory to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Russo-Polish war, as well as to the Swedish Empire in the Ingrian War.

File:Election of Michael I of Russia by A. Krivshenko.jpg, the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty]]

In February 1613, after the chaos and expulsion of the Poles from Moscow, a national assembly elected Michael Romanov, the young son of Patriarch Filaret, to the throne. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia until 1917.

The immediate task of the new monarch was to restore peace. Fortunately for Moscow, its major enemies, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden, were engaged in a bitter conflict with each other, which provided Russia the opportunity to make peace with Sweden in 1617 and to sign a truce with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1619.

Recovery of lost territories began in the mid-17th century, when the Khmelnitsky Uprising (1648–1657) in Ukraine against Polish rule brought about the Treaty of Pereyaslav between Russia and the Ukrainian Cossacks. In the treaty, Russia granted protection to the Cossacks state in Left-bank Ukraine, formerly under Polish control. This triggered a prolonged Russo-Polish War (1654–1667), which ended with the Treaty of Andrusovo, where Poland accepted the loss of Left-bank Ukraine, Kiev and Smolensk.

The Russian conquest of Siberia, begun at the end of the 16th century, continued in the 17th century. By the end of the 1640s, the Russians reached the Pacific Ocean, the Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev, discovered the strait between Asia and America. Russian expansion in the Far East faced resistance from Qing China. After the war between Russia and China, the Treaty of Nerchinsk was signed, delimiting the territories in the Amur region.

File:Соборное уложение глава 2.jpg was a legal code promulgated in 1649.]]

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.For a discussion of the development of the class structure in Tsarist Russia see Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Riots among peasants and citizens of Moscow at this time were endemic and included the Salt Riot (1648),Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe, Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Russia, Routledge, 2004, p. 264. {{ISBN|0-415-30751-1}}. Copper Riot (1662), and the Moscow Uprising (1682).{{in lang|ru}} [http://militera.lib.ru/common/solovyev1/13_03.html Moscow Uprising of 1682] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170701155153/http://militera.lib.ru/common/solovyev1/13_03.html |date=1 July 2017 }} in the History of Russia of Sergey Solovyov By far the greatest peasant uprising in 17th-century Europe erupted in 1667. As the free settlers of South Russia, the Cossacks, reacted against the growing centralization of the state, serfs escaped from their landlords and joined the rebels. The Cossack leader Stenka Razin led his followers up the Volga River, inciting peasant uprisings and replacing local governments with Cossack rule. The tsar's army finally crushed his forces in 1670; a year later Stenka was captured and beheaded. Yet, less than half a century later, the strains of military expeditions produced another revolt in Astrakhan, ultimately subdued.

{{Main|Russian Empire}}

Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian colonisation of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) that incorporated left-bank Ukraine, and the Russian conquest of Siberia. Poland was divided in the 1790–1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, south of Siberia.Brian Catchpole, A Map History of Russia (1974) pp 8–31; Martin Gilbert, Atlas of Russian history (1993) pp. 33–74.

File:Peter de Grote.jpg

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.James Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great (2003) 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.Basil Dmytryshyn, "Russian expansion to the Pacific, 1580–1700: a historiographical review." Slavic Studies 25 (1980): 1–25. [https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/5095/1/KJ00000113075.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190925140056/https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/5095/1/KJ00000113075.pdf |date=25 September 2019 }}. 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.{{cite web|url=http://bookz.ru/authors/milov-lv/milovlv01/1-milovlv01.html|title=Milov L.V. "Russian peasant and features of the Russian historical process", the research of Russian economic history of 15th–18th centuries.|access-date=6 August 2007|archive-date=18 April 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090418120252/http://bookz.ru/authors/milov-lv/milovlv01/1-milovlv01.html|url-status=dead}}

Peter reformed the Russian army and created the Russian navy. Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Turks. His aim was to establish a Russian foothold on the Black Sea by taking the town of Azov.Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (1979) p. 353. His attention then turned to the north. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport except at Archangel on the White Sea, whose harbor was frozen nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by Sweden, whose territory enclosed it on three sides. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him in 1699 to make a secret alliance with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark against Sweden resulting in the Great 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 the Silent Sejm, the beginning of a 200-year domination of that region by the Russian Empire. In celebration of his conquests, Peter assumed the title of emperor, and the Russian Tsardom officially became the Russian Empire in 1721.

Peter re-organized his government based on the latest Western models, molding Russia into an absolutist state. He replaced the old boyar Duma (council of nobles) with a Senate, in effect a supreme council of state. The countryside was also divided into new provinces and districts. Peter told the senate that its mission was to collect taxes. In turn tax revenues tripled over the course of his reign.{{cite book|first = Lindsey |last = Hughes|title = Russia in the Age of Peter the Great|date = 2000|publisher = Yale University Press|isbn =9780300082661}}

Administrative Collegia (ministries) were established in St. Petersburg, to replace the old governmental departments. In 1722, Peter promulgated his famous Table of ranks. As part of the government reform, the Orthodox Church was partially incorporated into the country's administrative structure, in effect making it a tool of the state. Peter abolished the patriarchate and replaced it with a collective body, the Holy Synod, led by a lay government official. Peter continued and intensified his predecessors' requirement of state service for all nobles.

File:'The Victory at Poltava' by Alexander Evstafyevich Kotzebue, 1862, Hermitage.JPG]]

By then, the once powerful Persian Safavid Empire to the south was heavily declining. Taking advantage, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War (1722–1723), known as "The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great" by Russian histographers, in order to be the first Russian emperor to establish Russian influence in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region. After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over the territories to Russia. However, by 12 years later, all the territories were ceded back to Persia, which was now led by the charismatic military genius Nader Shah, as part of the Treaty of Resht and Treaty of Ganja and the Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire,{{cite book|author=Stephen J. Lee|title=Peter the Great|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CXl-02q1YwsC&pg=PA31|year=2013|publisher=Routledge|page=31|isbn=9781136453250|access-date=25 October 2015|archive-date=22 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122071933/https://books.google.com/books?id=CXl-02q1YwsC&pg=PA31|url-status=live}} 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 Tsar Ivan V. The heir to Anna was soon deposed in a coup and Elizabeth, daughter of Peter I, ruled from 1741 to 1762. During her reign, Russia took part in the Seven Years' War.

File:Dmitry Levitsky - Екатерина II в виде Законодательницы в храме богини Правосудия - Google Art Project.jpg

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.{{cite book|first = John T. |last = Alexander|title = Catherine the Great: Life and Legend|date = 1988|url = https://archive.org/details/catherinegreatli0000alex|url-access = registration |publisher = Oxford University Press|isbn = 9780199878857}}{{cite book |first = Isabel |last = de Madariaga|title = Catherine the Great: A Short History|date = 2002|publisher = Yale University Press|isbn = 9780300097221}} Catherine enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. She patronized the arts, science and learning.Nancy Whitelaw, Catherine the Great and the Enlightenment in Russia (Morgan Reynolds, 2005) pp 33–34.[https://archive.org/details/catherinegreaten00nanc online] She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great. Catherine promulgated the Charter to the Gentry reaffirming rights and freedoms of the Russian nobility and abolishing mandatory state service. She seized control of all the church lands, drastically reduced the size of the monasteries, and put the surviving clergy on a tight budget.{{cite book|first =Isabel |last = de Madariaga|title = Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great|date = 2002|publisher = Phoenix|isbn = 9781842125113}}

Catherine spent heavily to promote an expansive foreign policy. She extended Russian political control over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with actions, including the support of the Targowica Confederation. The cost of her campaigns, plus the oppressive social system that required serfs to spend almost all their time laboring on the land of their lords, provoked a major peasant uprising in 1773. Inspired by a Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev, with the emphatic cry of "Hang all the landlords!", the rebels threatened to take Moscow until Catherine crushed the rebellion. Like the other enlightened despots of Europe, Catherine made certain of her own power and formed an alliance with the nobility.{{cite book|author=Campbell|title=Western Civilization|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A2JsBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA86|page=86|isbn=9781317452300|date=28 January 2015|publisher=Routledge|access-date=25 October 2015|archive-date=22 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122071933/https://books.google.com/books?id=A2JsBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA86|url-status=live}}

Catherine successfully waged two wars (1768–1774, 1787–1792) against the decaying Ottoman Empire{{cite web|url=http://www.parallelsixty.com/history-russia.shtml|title=History|work=Parallel 60|access-date=23 July 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100121024544/http://www.parallelsixty.com/history-russia.shtml|archive-date=21 January 2010|url-status=dead}} and advanced Russia's southern boundary to the Black Sea. In 1775 she liquidated the Zaporozhian Sich, and on the former lands of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the places of theirs settlements was created Novorossiya Governorate, in which new cities were formed: Yekaterinoslav (1776), Yelisavetgrad, Kherson (1778), Odessa (1794).К. М. Корольков «Столетний юбилей города Екатеринослава (1787 — 9-го мая — 1887)» (Екатеринослав, 1887).Місто і люди. Єлисаветград — Кіровоград, 1754—2004. Ілюстрована енциклопедія., Кіровоград:, «Імекс-ЛТД», 2004, 303 стор.Бобух А.І. Херсон: Путівник. — Херсон : Степ, 1994. — 60 с.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.  Russia annexed Crimea in 1783 and created the Black Sea fleet. Then, by allying with the rulers of Austria and Prussia, she incorporated the territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where after a century of Russian rule non-Catholic, mainly Orthodox population prevailedAccording to Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: 1891 Grodno province – Catholics 384,696, total population 1,509,728 [http://gatchina3000.ru/brockhaus-and-efron-encyclopedic-dictionary/031/31772.htm] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930185013/http://gatchina3000.ru/brockhaus-and-efron-encyclopedic-dictionary/031/31772.htm|date=30 September 2007}}; Curland province – Catholics 68,722, total population 555,003 [http://gatchina3000.ru/brockhaus-and-efron-encyclopedic-dictionary/057/57501.htm] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930201549/http://gatchina3000.ru/brockhaus-and-efron-encyclopedic-dictionary/057/57501.htm|date=30 September 2007}}; Volyhnia Province – Catholics 193,142, total population 2,059,870 [http://gatchina3000.ru/brockhaus-and-efron-encyclopedic-dictionary/022/22861.htm] during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe.Thomas McLean, The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Imagining Poland and the Russian Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) pp. 14-40.

File:Russian Empire 1792 Map.jpg in 1792]]

In accordance to Russia's treaty with the Georgians to protect them against any new invasion of their Persian suzerains and further political aspirations, Catherine waged a new war against Persia in 1796 after they had again invaded Georgia and established rule over it about a year prior, and had expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus.

In 1798–1799, Russian troops participated in the anti-French coalition, the troops under the command of Alexander Suvorov defeated the French in Northern Italy.

File:Московский университет и река Неглинная.jpg

Russian emperors of the 18th century professed the ideas of Enlightened absolutism. However, Westernization and modernization affected only the upper classes of Russian society, while the bulk of the population, consisting of peasants, remained in a state of serfdom. Powerful Russians resented their privileged positions and alien ideas. The backlash was especially severe after the Napoleonic wars. It produced a powerful anti-western campaign that "led to a wholesale purge of Western specialists and their Russian followers in universities, schools, and government service".Alfred J. Rieber, "Persistent factors in Russian foreign policy: an interpretive essay". In Hugh Ragsdale, ed., Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (1993), p. 328.

The mid-18th century was marked by the emergence of higher education in Russia. The first two major universities Saint Petersburg State University and Moscow State University were opened. Russian exploration of Siberia and the Far East continued. Great Northern Expedition laid the foundation for the development of Alaska by the Russians. By the end of the 18th century, Alaska became a Russian colony (Russian America). In the early 19th century, Alaska was used as a base for the First Russian circumnavigation. In 1819–1821, Russian sailors discovered Antarctica during an Antarctic expedition.

Russia was in a continuous state of financial crisis. While revenue rose from 9 million rubles in 1724 to 40 million in 1794, expenses grew more rapidly, reaching 49 million in 1794. The budget was allocated 46% to the military, 20% to government economic activities, 12% to administration, and 9% for the Imperial Court in St. Petersburg. The deficit required borrowing, primarily from Amsterdam; 5% of the budget was allocated to debt payments. Paper money was issued to pay for expensive wars, thus causing inflation. 18th-century Russia remained "a poor, backward, overwhelmingly agricultural, and illiterate country".{{cite book|first = Nicholas |last = Riasanovsky|title = A History of Russia|url = https://archive.org/details/historyofrussia00rias |url-access = registration |edition = 4th|date = 1984|page = [https://archive.org/details/historyofrussia00rias/page/284 284]|isbn = 978-0195033618|publisher = Oxford University Press}}

File:Napoleons retreat from moscow.jpg's retreat from Moscow]]

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 and Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812. His key advisor was a Polish nobleman Adam Jerzy Czartoryski.Charles Morley, "Czartoryski's attempts at a new foreign policy under Alexander I." American Slavic and East European Review 12.4 (1953): 475-485.

After Russian armies liberated allied Georgia from Persian occupation in 1802, they clashed with Persia over control and consolidation over Georgia, as well as the Iranian territories that comprise modern-day Azerbaijan and Dagestan. They also became involved in the Caucasian War against the Caucasian Imamate and Circassia. In 1813, the war with Persia concluded with a Russian victory, forcing Qajar Iran to cede swaths of its territories in the Caucasus to Russia,Timothy C. Dowling [https://books.google.com/books?id=KTq2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA728 Russia at War: From the Mongol Conquest to Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Beyond] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221021003937/https://books.google.com/books?id=KTq2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA728 |date=21 October 2022 }} pp. 728–729 ABC-CLIO, 2 December 2014 {{ISBN|1598849484}} which drastically increased its territory in the region. To the south-west, Russia tried to expand at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, using Georgia at its base for the Caucasus and Anatolian front.

In European policy, Alexander I switched Russia back and forth four times in 1804–1812 from neutral peacemaker to anti-Napoleon to an ally of Napoleon, winding up in 1812 as Napoleon's enemy. In 1805, he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after the massive defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz he switched and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon's Continental System. He fought a small-scale naval war against Britain, 1807–1812.

The alliance collapsed by 1810. Russia's economy had been hurt by Napoleon's Continental System, which cut off trade with Britain. As Esdaile notes, "Implicit in the idea of a Russian Poland was, of course, a war against Napoleon".Charles Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803–1815 (2007) p. 438 Schroeder says Poland was the root cause of the conflict but Russia's refusal to support the Continental System was also a factor.Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics: 1763–1848 (1994) p. 419

File:Russparis.jpg in 1814, headed by the Emperor Alexander I]]

The invasion of Russia was a catastrophe for Napoleon and his 450,000 invasion troops. One major battle was fought at Borodino; casualties were very high, but it was indecisive, and Napoleon was unable to engage and defeat the Russian armies. He tried to force the Tsar to terms by capturing Moscow at the onset of winter, even though he had lost most of his men. Instead, the Russians retreated, burning crops and food supplies in a scorched earth policy that multiplied Napoleon's logistic problems: 85%–90% of Napoleon's soldiers died from disease, cold, starvation or ambush by peasant guerrillas. As Napoleon's forces retreated, Russian troops pursued them into Central and Western Europe, defeated Napoleon's army in the Battle of the Nations and finally captured Paris.Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803–1815 (2007) pp. 460–480{{cite book|first = Alan|last = Palmer|title = Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace|publisher = Faber & Faber|date = 2014 |isbn=9780571305872}} Of a total population of around 43 million people,{{cite book|first = W.H. |last = Parker|title = An historical geography of Russia|date = 1968|page = 193|publisher = University of London Press|isbn = 978-0340069400}} 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.Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770–1870 (1998) p. 187

After the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander presided over the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), which made him the king of Congress Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance with Austria and Prussia, to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe that he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements.Henry A. Delfiner, "Alexander I, the holy alliance and Clemens Metternich: A reappraisal." East European Quarterly 37.2 (2003): 127+.

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.

File:Kolman decembrists.jpg]]

Russia's great power status obscured the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic backwardness.Riasonovsky A History of Russia (fifth ed.) pp. 302–303; Charques A Short History of Russia (Phoenix, second ed. 1962) p. 125 Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I was willing to discuss constitutional reforms, and though a few were introduced, no thoroughgoing changes were attempted.Riasonovsky pp. 302-307

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 the Decembrist Revolt (December 1825), the work of a small circle of liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brother as a constitutional monarch. But the revolt was easily crushed, leading Nicholas to turn away from liberal reforms and champion the reactionary doctrine "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality".{{cite book|author1=Christopher Browning|author2=Marko Lehti|title=The Struggle for the West: A Divided and Contested Legacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a86NAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA36|year=2009|publisher=Routledge|page=36|isbn=9781135259792|access-date=30 October 2016|archive-date=22 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122071933/https://books.google.com/books?id=a86NAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA36|url-status=live}}

In 1826–1828, Russia fought another war against Persia. Russia lost almost all of its recently consolidated territories during the first year but regained them and won the war on highly favourable terms. At the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, Russia gained Armenia, Nakhchivan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, and Iğdır.Timothy C. Dowling [https://books.google.com/books?id=KTq2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA728 Russia at War: From the Mongol Conquest to Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Beyond] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221021003937/https://books.google.com/books?id=KTq2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA728 |date=21 October 2022 }} (2014) p. 729 In the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War Russia invaded northeastern Anatolia and occupied the strategic Ottoman towns of Erzurum and Gümüşhane and, posing as protector and saviour of the Greek Orthodox population, received extensive support from the region's Pontic Greeks. After a brief occupation, the Russian imperial army withdrew into Georgia. By the 1830s, Russia had conquered all Persian territories and major Ottoman territories in the Caucasus.Riasonovsky p. 308

In 1831, Nicholas crushed the November Uprising in Poland. The Russian autocracy gave Polish artisans and gentry reason to rebel in 1863 by assailing the national core values of language, religion, and culture.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. The resulting January Uprising was a massive Polish revolt, which also was crushed. France, Britain and Austria tried to intervene in the crisis but were unable. The Russian patriotic press used the Polish uprising to unify the Russian nation, claiming it was Russia's God-given mission to save Poland and the world.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. Poland was punished by losing its distinctive political and judicial rights, with Russianization imposed on its schools and courts.Norman Davies: God's Playground: A History of Poland (OUP, 1981) vol. 2, pp. 315–333, 352-363

File:RUS-2016-SPB-Monument to Nicholas I of Russia.jpg on St. Isaac's Square, Saint Petersburg]]

Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825–1855) lavished attention on his army.John Shelton Curtiss, "The Army of Nicholas I: Its Role and Character," American Historical Review, 63#4 (1958), pp. 880-889 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1848945 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210727192308/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1848945 |date=27 July 2021 }} 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.Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier (1990) [https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Soldier-Elise-Kimerling-Wirtschafter/dp/0691055858/ excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130629164645/http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Soldier-Elise-Kimerling-Wirtschafter/dp/0691055858 |date=29 June 2013 }} 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.Edgar Melton, "Enlightened seigniorialism and its dilemmas in serf Russia, 1750-1830." Journal of Modern History 62.4 (1990): 676–708.

Finally the Crimean War at the end of his reign showed the world that Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward, and administratively incompetent. Despite his ambitions toward the south and Ottoman Empire, Russia had not built its railroad network in that direction, and communications were poor. The bureaucracy was riddled with corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. The Navy was weak and technologically backward; the Army, although very large, was good only for parades, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, poor morale, and was even more out of touch with the latest technology. The nation's leaders realized that reforms were urgently needed.E. Willis Brooks, "Reform in the Russian Army, 1856–1861." Slavic Review 43.1 (1984): 63-82 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2498735 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210728050926/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2498735 |date=28 July 2021 }}.

File:Painted-portraits-of-writer.png» writers: Pushkin, Krylov, Zhukovsky, and Gnedich]]

The early 19th century is the time when Russian literature becomes an independent and very striking phenomenon.

Westernizers favored imitating Western Europe while others renounced the West and called for a return of the traditions of the past. The latter path was championed by Slavophiles, who heaped scorn on the "decadent" West. The Slavophiles were opponents of bureaucracy and preferred the collectivism of the medieval Russian mir, or village community, to the individualism of the West.{{cite book|first = Tim |last = Chapman|title = Imperial Russia: 1801–1905|date = 2001|pages = 60–65|url = |publisher = Routledge |isbn = 978-0415231091}} A forerunner of the Westernizer movement was Pyotr Chaadayev. He exposed the cultural isolation of Russia, from the perspective of Western Europe, in his Philosophical Letters of 1831. He cast doubt on the greatness of the Russian past, and ridiculed Orthodoxy for failing to provide a sound spiritual basis for the Russian mind. He called on Russia to emulate Western Europe, especially in rational and logical thought, its progressive spirit, its leadership in science, and indeed its leadership on the path to freedom.Janko Lavrin, "Chaadayev and the West." Russian Review 22.3 (1963): 274–288 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/126270 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200325102200/https://www.jstor.org/stable/126270 |date=25 March 2020 }}.Raymond T. McNally, "The Significance of Chaadayev's Weltanschauung." Russian Review 23.4 (1964): 352–361. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/126212 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220531155448/https://www.jstor.org/stable/126212 |date=31 May 2022 }} Vissarion BelinskyNeil Cornwell, "Belinsky and V.F. Odoyevsky." Slavonic and East European Review 62.1 (1984): 6–24. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4208792 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220531231253/https://www.jstor.org/stable/4208792 |date=31 May 2022 }} and Alexander Herzen were prominent Westernizers.{{cite journal | last1 = Kantor | first1 = Vladimir K. | year = 2012 | title = The tragedy of Herzen, or seduction by radicalism | journal = Russian Studies in Philosophy | volume = 51 | issue = 3| pages = 40–57 | doi = 10.2753/rsp1061-1967510303 | s2cid = 145712584 }}

Since the war against Napoleon, Russia had become deeply involved in the affairs of Europe, as part of the "Holy Alliance." The Holy Alliance was formed to serve as the "policeman of Europe." However, to maintain the alliance required large armies. Prussia, Austria, Britain and France (the other members of the alliance) lacked large armies and needed Russia to supply the required numbers, which fit the philosophy of Nicholas I. The Tsar sent his army into Hungary in 1849 at the request of the Austrian Empire and broke the revolt there, while preventing its spread to Russian Poland.W.B. Lincoln, "Russia and the European Revolutions of 1848" History Today (Jan 1973), Vol. 23 Issue 1, pp. 53-59 online. The Tsar cracked down on any signs of internal unrest.{{cite book|author=Michael Kort|title=A Brief History of Russia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i8_RH3hhsAMC&pg=PA92|year=2008|publisher=Infobase |page=92|isbn=9781438108292}}

File:Crimea Sevastopol Istorychny boulevard Memorial complex-54.jpg of a Russian naval base at Sevastopol 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 the Crimean War. Britain and France came to the rescue of the Ottomans. After a grueling war fought largely in Crimea, with very high death rates from disease, the allies won.Rene Albrecht-Carrie, A Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (1973) pp. 84–94{{cite book|first= Orlando |last= Figes|title = The Crimean War: A History|date = 2011|publisher = Henry Holt and Company|isbn = 9781429997249}}

Historian Orlando Figes points to the long-term damage Russia suffered:

:The demilitarization of the Black Sea was a major blow to Russia, which was no longer able to protect its vulnerable southern coastal frontier against the British or any other fleet.... The destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol and other naval docks was a humiliation. No compulsory disarmament had ever been imposed on a great power previously.... The Allies did not really think that they were dealing with a European power in Russia. They regarded Russia as a semi-Asiatic state....In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the countries defenses, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on....The image many Russians had built up of their country – the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world – had suddenly been shattered. Russia's backwardness had been exposed....The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia – not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways the accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.Orlando Figes, The Crimean War, (2010) pp. 442–443.

{{Further|Government reforms of Alexander II of Russia}}

When Alexander II came to the throne in 1855, the demand for reform was widespread. The most pressing problem confronting the Government was serfdom. In 1859, there were 23 million serfs (out of a total population of 67 million).[http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0293/nauka02.php Excerpt from "Enserfed population in Russia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722042430/http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0293/nauka02.php |date=22 July 2017 }} published at Демоскоп Weekly, No 293 – 294, 18 June 1 July 2007 In anticipation of civil unrest that could ultimately foment a revolution, Alexander II chose to preemptively abolish serfdom with the emancipation reform in 1861. Emancipation brought a supply of free labor to the cities, stimulated industry, and the middle class grew in number and influence. The freed peasants had to buy land, allotted to them, from the landowners with state assistance. The Government issued special bonds to the landowners for the land that they had lost, and collected a special tax from the peasants, called redemption payments, at a rate of 5% of the total cost of allotted land yearly. All the land turned over to the peasants was owned collectively by the mir, the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised the various holdings.{{cite book|editor-first = Terence |editor-last= Emmons |title = Emancipation of the Russian Serfs|date = 1970|publisher = Holt, Rinehart and Winston|isbn = 9780030773600}}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. [http://www.econ.yale.edu/~egcenter/GelbachFinkelPaper.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801193855/http://www.econ.yale.edu/~egcenter/GelbachFinkelPaper.pdf |date=1 August 2020 }}

File:Russian Empire (1867).svg

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.W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (1990).

In foreign policy, he sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. He modernized the military command system. He sought peace, and joined with Germany and Austria in the League of the Three Emperors that stabilized the European situation. The Russian Empire expanded in Siberia and in the Caucasus and made gains at the expense of China. Faced with an uprising in Poland in 1863, he stripped that land of its separate Constitution and incorporated it directly into Russia. To counter the rise of a revolutionary and anarchistic movements, he sent thousands of dissidents into exile in Siberia and was proposing additional parliamentary reforms when he was assassinated in 1881.{{cite book|first = W. E.|last = Mosse|title = Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia|date = 1958}}

File:The defeat of Shipka Peak, Bulgarian War of Independence.JPG 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 with Austria-Hungary, which also had ambitions in the region. The Tsar was disappointed by the results of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, but abided by the agreement.Riasonovsky pp. 386–387

During this period Russia expanded its empire into Central Asia, conquering the khanates of Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva, as well as the Trans-Caspian region.Riasonovsky p. 349 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.David Fromkin, "The Great Game in Asia" Foreign Affairs 58#4 (1980), pp. 936-951 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/20040512 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210718202141/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20040512 |date=18 July 2021 }}

{{See also|Russian nihilist movement}}

File:Russian writers by Levitsky 1856.jpg, Dmitry Grigorovich, Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Druzhinin, and Alexander Ostrovsky]]

File:Russa literacy 1897.jpg literacy data)]]

In the 1860s, a movement known as Nihilism developed in Russia. A term originally coined by Ivan Turgenev in his 1862 novel Fathers and Sons, Nihilists favoured the destruction of human institutions and laws, based on the assumption that they are artificial and corrupt. At its core, Russian nihilism was characterized by the belief that the world lacks comprehensible meaning, objective truth, or value. For some time, many Russian liberals had been dissatisfied by what they regarded as the empty discussions of the intelligentsia. The Nihilists questioned all old values and shocked the Russian establishment.Riasonovsky pp. 381–382, 447–448 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.{{cite book|author=I. K. Shakhnovskiĭ|title=A Short History of Russian Literature|publisher=K. Paul, Trench, Trubner|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924026645790|year=1921|page=[https://archive.org/details/cu31924026645790/page/n156 147]}} Russian nihilists created the manifesto Catechism of a Revolutionary.

After the Nihilists failed to convert the aristocracy and landed gentry to the cause of reform, they turned to the peasants.{{cite book|author=E. Heier|title=Religious Schism in the Russian Aristocracy 1860–1900: Radstockism and Pashkovism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tuvVBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6|year=2012|pages=5–7|publisher=Springer|isbn=9789401032285|access-date=19 September 2019|archive-date=22 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122071933/https://books.google.com/books?id=tuvVBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6|url-status=live}} Their campaign became known as the Narodnk ("Populist") movement. It was based on the belief that the common people had the wisdom and peaceful ability to lead the nation.[http://countrystudies.us/russia/6.htm Transformation of Russia in the Nineteenth Century] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161103012030/http://countrystudies.us/russia/6.htm |date=3 November 2016 }}, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), Russia: A Country Study, Department of the Army, 1998. {{ISBN|0-16-061212-8}}.

As the Narodnik movement gained momentum, the government moved to extirpate it. In response to the growing reaction of the government, a radical branch of the Narodniks advocated and practiced terrorism. One after another, prominent officials were shot or killed by bombs. This represented the ascendancy of anarchism in Russia as a powerful revolutionary force. Finally, after several attempts, Alexander II was assassinated by anarchists in 1881, on the very day he had approved a proposal to call a representative assembly to consider new reforms in addition to the abolition of serfdom designed to ameliorate revolutionary demands.{{cite journal|last=Waldron|first=Peter|year=2006|title=Alexander II|url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3446900026/WHIC?xid=d0bae6e0|journal=Europe 1789–1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire|volume=1|page=40|via=GALE World History in Context|access-date=23 July 2019|archive-date=12 January 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220112083436/https://galeapps.gale.com/apps/auth?userGroupName=&origURL=https%3A%2F%2Fgo.gale.com%2Fps%2Fi.do%3Fp%3DWHIC%26u%3D%26id%3DGALE%7CCX3446900026%26v%3D2.1%26it%3Dr%26asid%3Dd0bae6e0&prodId=WHIC|url-status=live}}

The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th is known as the Silver Age of Russian culture. The Silver Age was dominated by the artistic movements of Russian Symbolism, Acmeism, and Russian Futurism, many poetic schools flourished, including the Mystical Anarchism tendency within the Symbolist movement. The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in Russian Empire and Soviet 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 tsar Alexander III (1881–1894) was throughout his reign a staunch reactionary who revived the maxim of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and National Character".{{cite encyclopedia|url = https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9057487/Orthodoxy-Autocracy-and-Nationality|title = Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality|encyclopedia = Encyclopædia Britannica|date = 26 January 2016|access-date = 23 June 2022|archive-date = 26 April 2008|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080426082306/http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9057487/Orthodoxy-Autocracy-and-Nationality|url-status = live}} A committed Slavophile, Alexander III believed that Russia could be saved from chaos only by shutting itself off from the subversive influences of Western Europe. In his reign Russia concluded the union with republican France to contain the growing power of Germany, completed the conquest of Central Asia, and exacted important territorial and commercial concessions from China.

The tsar's most influential adviser was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, tutor to Alexander III and his son Nicholas, and procurator of the Holy Synod from 1880 to 1895. He taught his royal pupils to fear freedom of speech and press and to hate democracy, constitutions, and the parliamentary system.Hugo S. Cunninggam, [http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/pobedonostsev.html Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827–1907): Reactionary Views on Democracy, General Education] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070612014154/http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/pobedonostsev.html |date=12 June 2007 }}. Retrieved 21 July 2007. Under Pobedonostsev, revolutionaries were hunted downRobert F. Byrnes, "Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought" in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 3 (September 1970), pp. 528–530. and a policy of Russification was carried out.Arthur E. Adams, "Pobedonostsev's Religious Politics" in Church History, Vol. 22, No. 4 (December 1953), pp. 314–326.

{{Main|History of Russia (1892–1917)}}

File:Coronation 1896, walking under cover (complete).jpg in Moscow]]

Alexander was succeeded by his son Nicholas II (1894–1918). The Industrial Revolution, which began to exert a significant influence in Russia, was meanwhile creating forces that would finally overthrow the tsar. Politically, these opposition forces organized into three competing parties: The liberal elements among the industrial capitalists and nobility, who wanted peaceful social reform and a constitutional monarchy, founded the Constitutional Democratic party or Kadets in 1905. Followers of the Narodnik tradition established the Socialist-Revolutionary Party or Esers in 1901, advocating the distribution of land among the peasants who worked it. A third radical group founded the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party or RSDLP in 1898; this party was the primary exponent of Marxism in Russia. Gathering their support from the radical intellectuals and the urban working class, they advocated complete social, economic and political revolution.Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire 1801–1917 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (1967), pp. 598–627

In 1903, the RSDLP split into two wings: the radical Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the relatively moderate Mensheviks, led by Yuli Martov. The Mensheviks believed that Russian socialism would grow gradually and peacefully and that the tsar's regime should be succeeded by a democratic republic. The Bolsheviks advocated the formation of a small elite of professional revolutionaries, subject to strong party discipline, to act as the vanguard of the proletariat in order to seize power by force.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).

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia continued its expansion in the Far East; Chinese Manchuria was in the zone of Russian interests. Russia took an active part in the intervention of the great powers in China to suppress the Boxer rebellion. During this war, Russia occupied Manchuria, which caused a clash of interests with Japan. In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began, which ended extremely unfavourably for Russia.

{{Main|Revolution of 1905}}

File:Repin 17October.jpg granting civil liberties and establishing first parliament]]

The disastrous performance of the Russian armed forces in the Russo-Japanese War was a major blow to the Russian State and increased the potential for unrest.[http://countrystudies.us/russia/7.htm The Last Years of the Autocracy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161103012034/http://countrystudies.us/russia/7.htm |date=3 November 2016 }}, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), Russia: A Country Study, Department of the Army, 1998. {{ISBN|0-16-061212-8}}.

In January 1905, an incident known as "Bloody Sunday" occurred when Father Gapon led an enormous crowd to the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar. When the procession reached the palace, Cossacks opened fire, killing hundreds. The Russian masses were so aroused over the massacre that a general strike was declared demanding a democratic republic. This marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Soviets (councils of workers) appeared in most cities to direct revolutionary activity.Orlando Figes, Revolutionary Russia, 1891–1991: A History (2014) pp. 1–33

In October 1905, Nicholas reluctantly issued the October Manifesto, which conceded the creation of a national Duma (legislature) to be called without delay. The right to vote was extended, and no law was to go into force without confirmation by the Duma. The moderate groups were satisfied; but the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes. By the end of 1905, there was disunity among the reformers, and the tsar's position was strengthened.Figes, Revolutionary Russia, 1891–1991: A History (2014) pp. 33–43

{{Main|Russian entry into World War I|Russia in the First World War}}

File:Les troupes russe défilant devant Gouraud, Mailly oct 1916.JPG, October 1916]]

On 28 June 1914, Bosnian Serbs assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary. Austro-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia, which it considered a Russian client-state. Russia had no treaty obligation to Serbia, and most Russian leaders wanted to avoid war. But in that crisis they had the support of France, and believed that supporting Serbia was important for Russia's credibility and for its goal of a leadership role in the Balkans.{{cite journal | last1 = Levy | first1 = Jack S. | last2 = Mulligan | first2 = William | year = 2017 | title = Shifting power, preventive logic, and the response of the target: Germany, Russia, and the First World War | journal = Journal of Strategic Studies | volume = 40 | issue = 5| pages = 731–769 | doi = 10.1080/01402390.2016.1242421 | s2cid = 157837365 }} Tsar Nicholas II mobilised Russian forces on 30 July 1914 to defend Serbia. Christopher Clark states: "The Russian general mobilisation [of 30 July] was one of the most momentous decisions of the July crisis".Clark, Christopher (2013). The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. HarperCollins. {{ISBN|978-0-06-219922-5}}. p. 509. Germany responded with its own mobilisation and declaration of War on 1 August 1914. At the opening of hostilities, the Russians took the offensive against both Germany and Austria-Hungary.W. Bruce Lincoln, Passage Through Armageddon: The Russians in War and Revolution, 1914–1918 (1986)

The very large but poorly led and under-equipped Russian army fought tenaciously. Casualties were enormous. In the 1914 campaign, Russian forces defeated Austro-Hungarian forces in the Battle of Galicia. The success of the Russian army forced the German army to withdraw troops from the western front to the Russian front. However, victories in Poland by the Central Powers in the 1915 campaign, led to a major retreat of the Russian army. In 1916, the Russians again dealt a powerful blow to the Austrians during the Brusilov offensive.

By 1915, morale was worsening.Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army (Princeton University Press, 1980) pp 76–125. Many recruits were sent to the front unarmed. Nevertheless, the Russian army fought on, and tied down large numbers of Germans and Austrians. When the homefront showed an occasional surge of patriotism, the tsar and his entourage failed to exploit it for military benefit. The Russian army neglected to rally the ethnic and religious minorities that were hostile to Austria, such as Poles. The tsar refused to cooperate with the national legislature, the Duma, and listened less to experts than to his wife, who was in thrall to her chief advisor, the holy man Grigori Rasputin.Nicholas Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (4th ed. 1984) pp. 418-20 More than two million refugees fled.{{cite web | url=http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/refugees_russian_empire | title=Refugees (Russian Empire) | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1) | access-date=18 April 2017 | archive-date=19 April 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170419101232/http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/refugees_russian_empire | url-status=live }}

Repeated military failures and bureaucratic ineptitude soon turned large segments of the population against the government. The German and Ottoman fleets prevented Russia from importing urgently needed supplies through the Baltic and Black seas. By mid-1915 the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties kept occurring, and inflation was mounting. Strikes increased among factory workers, and the peasants, who wanted land reforms, were restless.{{cite book|author=Richard Charques|title=The Twilight of Imperial Russia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PbUYPD6AY6wC&pg=PA232|year=1974|publisher=Oxford U.P.|page=232|isbn=9780195345872|access-date=25 October 2015|archive-date=22 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122071934/https://books.google.com/books?id=PbUYPD6AY6wC&pg=PA232|url-status=live}} 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.

{{Main|Dissolution of the Russian Empire|History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–1927)}}

{{Main|Russian Revolution}}

{{multiple image

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| image1 = Lenin in 1920 (cropped).jpg

| caption1 = Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union and the leader of the Bolshevik party.

| image2 = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg

| caption2 = Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army and a key figure in the October Revolution.

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In late February (3 March 1917), a strike occurred in a factory in the capital Petrograd (Saint Petersburg). On 23 February (8 March) 1917, thousands of female textile workers walked out of their factories protesting the lack of food and calling on other workers to join them. Within days, nearly all the workers in the city were idle, and street fighting broke out. The tsar ordered the Duma to disband, ordered strikers to return to work, and ordered troops to shoot at demonstrators in the streets. His orders triggered the February Revolution, especially when soldiers sided with the strikers. On 2 March, Nicholas II abdicated.{{cite book|author=Rex A. Wade|title=The Russian Revolution, 1917|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uBfnjdxFUkUC&pg=PA29|year=2005|publisher=Cambridge U.P.|pages=29–50|isbn=9780521841559|access-date=25 October 2015|archive-date=22 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122071934/https://books.google.com/books?id=uBfnjdxFUkUC&pg=PA29|url-status=live}}Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (4th ed. 1984) pp. 455–56

To fill the vacuum of authority, the Duma declared a Provisional Government, headed by Prince Lvov, which was collectively known as the Russian Republic.[https://web.archive.org/web/20070927175125/http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=221104 The Russian Revolution] in the History Channel Encyclopedia. Meanwhile, the socialists in Petrograd organized elections among workers and soldiers to form a soviet (council) of workers' and soldiers' deputies, as an organ of popular power that could pressure the "bourgeois" Provisional Government.

File:Protección del Palacio Tauride durante el Segundo Congreso Regional de los Soviets.jpg on 6 January 1918. The Tauride Palace is locked and guarded by Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev and Lashevich.]]

In July, following a series of crises that undermined their authority with the public, the head of the Provisional Government resigned and was succeeded by Alexander Kerensky, who was more progressive than his predecessor but not radical enough for the Bolsheviks or many Russians discontented with the deepening economic crisis and the war. The socialist-led soviet in Petrograd joined with soviets that formed throughout the country to create a national movement.Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (4th ed. 1984) pp. 456–460

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.{{cite book|author=Richard Pipes|title=The Russian Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XtE54LuhFzEC&pg=PA411|year=2011|page=411|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing |isbn=9780307788573}} In April 1917 Germany provided a special sealed train to carry Vladimir Lenin back to Russia from his exile in Switzerland. After many behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the soviets seized control of the government in November 1917 and drove Kerensky and his moderate provisional government into exile, in the events that would become known as the October Revolution.Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (4th ed. 1984) pp. 460–461

Bolshevik figures such as Anatoly Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky and Dmitry Manuilsky agreed that Lenin’s influence on the Bolshevik party was decisive but the October insurrection was carried out according to Trotsky’s, not to Lenin’s plan.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1283|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}

When the national Constituent Assembly (elected in December 1917) refused to become a rubber stamp of the Bolsheviks, it was dissolved by Lenin's troops and all vestiges of democracy were removed. With the handicap of the moderate opposition removed, Lenin was able to free his regime from the war problem by the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) with Germany. Russia lost much of her western borderlands. However, when Germany was defeated the Soviet government repudiated the Treaty.W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War, 1918–1921 (1999)

{{Main|Russian Civil War}}

File:Russian civil war in the west.svg

The Bolshevik grip on power was by no means secure, and a lengthy struggle broke out between the new regime and its opponents, which included the Socialist Revolutionaries, the anti-Bolshevik White movement, and large numbers of peasants. At the same time the Allied powers sent several expeditionary armies to support the anti-Communist forces in an attempt to force Russia to rejoin the world war. The Bolsheviks fought against both these forces and national independence movements in the former Russian Empire. By 1921, they had defeated their internal enemies and brought most of the newly independent states under their control, with the exception of Finland, the Baltic States, the Moldavian Democratic Republic (which elected to unite with Romania), and Poland (with whom they had fought the Polish–Soviet War).See Orlando Figes: A People's Tragedy (Pimlico, 1996) passim Finland also annexed the region Pechenga of the Russian Kola Peninsula; Soviet Russia and allied Soviet republics conceded the parts of its territory to Estonia (Petseri County and Estonian Ingria), Latvia (Pytalovo), and Turkey (Kars). Poland incorporated the contested territories of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, the former parts of the Russian Empire (except Galicia) east to Curzon Line.

Both sides regularly committed brutal atrocities against civilians. During the civil war era for example, Petlyura and Denikin's forces massacred 100,000 to 150,000 Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x6RAAAAAYAAJ&q=100,000+jews+denikin++Petlyura+Florinsky |title=Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union |first=Michael T. |last=Florinsky |page=258 |publisher=McGraw-Hill |year=1961 |access-date=22 July 2009 |archive-date=22 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230122071934/https://books.google.com/books?id=x6RAAAAAYAAJ&q=100,000+jews+denikin++Petlyura+Florinsky |url-status=live }} Hundreds of thousands of Jews were left homeless and tens of thousands became victims of serious illness. These massacres are now referred to as the White Terror (Russia).

Estimates for the total number of people killed during the Red Terror carried out by the Bolsheviks vary widely. One source asserts that the total number of victims could be 1.3 million,{{cite book |last1= Rinke|first1=Stefan|last2= Wildt|first2=Michael|date=2017 |title= Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: 1917 and Its Aftermath from a Global Perspective|publisher=Campus Verlag|pages=57–58 |isbn=978-3593507057}} whereas others give estimates ranging from 10,000 in the initial period of repression{{cite book|last=Ryan|first=James|year=2012|url=https://www.routledge.com/Lenins-Terror-The-Ideological-Origins-of-Early-Soviet-State-Violence/Ryan/p/book/9781138815681|title=Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence|location=London|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-138-81568-1|page=114|access-date=10 September 2019|archive-date=11 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111070149/https://www.routledge.com/Lenins-Terror-The-Ideological-Origins-of-Early-Soviet-State-Violence/Ryan/p/book/9781138815681|url-status=live}} to 140,000The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia. Bailey Stone. Cambridge University Press, 25 November 2013. p. 335"The Russian Revolution", Richard Pipes, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 13 July 2011, p. 838 and an estimate of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922.{{sfnp|Ryan|2012|p=2}} The most reliable estimations for the total number of killings put the number at about 100,000,{{cite book |last=Lincoln |first=W. Bruce |author-link= W. Bruce Lincoln |year=1989 |title=Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War |publisher= Simon & Schuster |page=384 |isbn=0671631667 |quote= ...the best estimates set the probable number of executions at about a hundred thousand.}} whereas others suggest a figure of 200,000.{{cite book |last=Lowe |first=Norman |year=2002 |title=Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History |publisher=Palgrave |isbn=9780333963074 |page=151}}

The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded and machines damaged. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.[https://web.archive.org/web/20130621173456/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3763/is_/ai_n8801575 And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930], Thomas J. Hegarty, Canadian Slavonic Papers Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia, many were evacuated from Crimea in the 1920, some through the Far East, others west into the newly independent Baltic countries. These émigrés included a large percentage of the educated and skilled population.

{{Main|Soviet Union|History of the Soviet Union}}

File:19191107-lenin second anniversary october revolution moscow.jpg, Trotsky and Kamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution]]

File:Lenin and stalin crop.jpg (1922)]]

The Soviet Union, established in December 1922 by the leaders of the Russian Communist Party,"[http://library.thinkquest.org/27629/themes/society/rsussr.html Tsar Killed, USSR Formed] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121019221033/http://library.thinkquest.org/27629/themes/society/rsussr.html |date=19 October 2012 }}," in 20th Century Russia. Retrieved 21 July 2007. was roughly coterminous with Russia before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. At that time, the new nation included four constituent republics: the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR.Soviet Union Information Bureau, [http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/ch01.htm Area and Population] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170903221828/https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/ch01.htm |date=3 September 2017 }}. Retrieved 21 July 2007.

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

{{See also|Hyperinflation in early Soviet Russia}}

The period from the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1921 is known as the period of war communism.{{cite journal|last=Richman|first=Sheldon L.|year=1981|title=War Communism to NEP: The Road to Serfdom|url=https://www.mises.org/journals/jls/5_1/5_1_5.pdf|journal=The Journal of Libertarian Studies|volume=5|issue=1|pages=89–97|access-date=3 October 2014|archive-date=14 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140914003928/http://mises.org/journals/jls/5_1/5_1_5.pdf|url-status=live}} Land, all industry, and small businesses were nationalized, and the money economy was restricted. Strong opposition soon developed. The peasants wanted cash payments for their products and resented having to surrender their surplus grain to the government as a part of its civil war policies. Confronted with peasant opposition, Lenin began a strategic retreat from war communism known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). The peasants were freed from wholesale levies of grain and allowed to sell their surplus produce in the open market. Commerce was stimulated by permitting private retail trading. The state continued to be responsible for banking, transportation, heavy industry, and public utilities.

Although the left opposition among the Communists criticized the rich peasants, or kulaks, who benefited from the NEP, the program proved highly beneficial and the economy revived. The NEP would later come under increasing opposition from within the party following Lenin's death in early 1924.

{{Main|Cultural Revolution in the Soviet Union}}

File:8marta.jpg

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.{{cite journal|last1=Baten|first1=Jörg|last2=Behle|first2=Dominic|year=2010|title=Regional Determinants of Firm Creation in the Russian Empire. Evidence from the 1870 Industrial Exhibition|journal=Russian Economic History Yearbook|volume=01|via=ResearchGate}}

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.{{cite web|title=Women and the Russian Revolution|url=https://www.bl.uk/russian-revolution/articles/women-and-the-russian-revolution|last=McElvanney|first=Katie|website=British Library|access-date=11 May 2020|archive-date=1 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801145838/https://www.bl.uk/russian-revolution/articles/women-and-the-russian-revolution|url-status=dead}} Divorce no longer required court procedure,{{cite web|url=http://www.iisg.nl/~womhist/pushkareva.doc|title=Marriage in Twentieth Century Russia: Traditional Precepts and Innovative Experiments|access-date=23 July 2007|last=Pushkareva|first=Natalia|format=.doc|publisher=Russian Academy of Sciences|archive-date=26 July 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070726224821/http://www.iisg.nl/%7Ewomhist/pushkareva.doc|url-status=live}}

and to make women completely free of the responsibilities of childbearing, abortion was made legal as early as 1920.{{cite journal | last1 = Remennick | first1 = Larissa | year = 1991 | title = Epidemiology and Determinants of Induced Abortion in the USSR | journal=Soc. Sci. Med. | volume = 33 | issue = 7| pages = 841–848 | doi = 10.1016/0277-9536(91)90389-T | pmid = 1948176 }} As a side effect, the emancipation of women increased the labor market. Girls were encouraged to secure an education and pursue a career. Communal nurseries were set up for child care, and efforts were made to shift the center of people's social life from the home to educational and recreational groups, the soviet clubs.

The Soviet government pursued a policy of eliminating illiteracy (Likbez). After industrialization, massive urbanization began. In the field of national policy in the 1920s, the Korenizatsiya was carried out. However, from the mid-30s, the Stalinist government returned to the tsarist policy of Russification of the outskirts. In particular, the languages of all the nations of the USSR were transcribed into the Cyrillic alphabet in the process known as Cyrillization.

{{Further|Industrialization in the Soviet Union|Collectivization in the Soviet Union}}

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

File:Famine en URSS 1933.jpg, with areas where the effects of famine were most severe shaded]]

In 1929, Stalin proposed the first five-year plan. Abolishing the NEP, it was the first of a number of plans aimed at swift accumulation of capital resources through the buildup of heavy industry, the collectivization of agriculture, and the restricted manufacture of consumer goods. For the first time in history a government controlled all economic activity. The rapid growth of production capacity and the volume of production of heavy industry was of great importance for ensuring economic independence from western countries and strengthening the country's defense capability. At this time, the Soviet Union made the transition from an agrarian country to an industrial one.

As a part of the plan, the government took control of agriculture through the state and collective farms (kolkhozes).Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. {{ISBN|0-19-505180-7}}. 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.Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. {{ISBN|0-19-513104-5}}. The combination of bad weather, deficiencies of the hastily established collective farms, and massive confiscation of grain precipitated a serious famine, and several million peasants died of starvation, mostly in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and parts of southwestern Russia. The deteriorating conditions in the countryside drove millions of desperate peasants to the rapidly growing cities, fueling industrialization, and vastly increasing Russia's urban population.

{{Further|Great Purges}}

File:5marshals 01.jpg in November 1935, clockwise from top left: Semyon Budyonny, Vasily Blyukher, Alexander Ilyich Yegorov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Only Budyonny and Voroshilov would survive Stalin's Great Purge.]]

The NKVD 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 the Great Purges.Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|0-19-507132-8}}. Purges in other Soviet republics also helped centralize control in the USSR.

Stalin destroyed the opposition in the party consisting of the old Bolsheviks during the Moscow trials. The NKVD under the leadership of Stalin's commissar Nikolai Yezhov carried out a series of massive repressive operations against the kulaks and various national minorities in the USSR. During the Great Purges of 1937–38, about 700,000 people were executed.

Penalties were introduced, and many citizens were prosecuted for fictitious crimes of sabotage and espionage. The labor provided by convicts working in the labor camps of the Gulag system became an important component of the industrialization effort, especially in Siberia.Gregory, Paul R. & Valery Lazarev (eds.). The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003. {{ISBN|0-8179-3942-3}}.Ivanova, Galina M. Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. {{ISBN|0-7656-0427-2}}. An estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system, and perhaps another 15 million had experience of some other form of forced labor.{{cite web|url=http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2000/06_15_nyrb_gulag.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081015012139/http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2000/06_15_nyrb_gulag.html|title=Anne Applebaum – Inside the Gulag|archive-date=15 October 2008}}Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps. London: Penguin Books, 2003. {{ISBN|0-7139-9322-7}}.

After the partition of Poland in 1939, the NKVD executed 20,000 captured Polish officers in the Katyn massacre. In the late 30s - first half of the 40s, the Stalinist government carried out massive deportations of various nationalities. A number of ethnic groups were deported from their settlement to Central Asia.

{{Main|Foreign relations of the Soviet Union|Soviet imperialism}}

File:Beck, Litwinow 1934.jpg with Poland's Foreign Minister Józef Beck in February 1934]]

The Soviet Union viewed the 1933 accession of fervently anti-Communist Hitler to power in Germany with alarm, especially since Hitler proclaimed the Drang nach Osten as one of the major objectives in his vision of the German strategy of Lebensraum.See, e.g. Mein Kampf{{primary source inline|date=May 2023}} The Soviets supported the republicans of Spain who struggled against fascist German and Italian troops in the Spanish Civil War.Payne, Stanley G. The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. {{ISBN|0-300-10068-X}}.Radosh, Ronald, Mary Habeck & Grigory Sevostianov (eds.). Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. {{ISBN|0-300-08981-3}}. In 1938–1939, the Soviet Union successfully fought against Imperial Japan in the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts in the Russian Far East, which led to Soviet-Japanese neutrality and the tense border peace that lasted until August 1945.Coox, Alvin D. The Anatomy of a Small War: The Soviet-Japanese Struggle for Changkufeng/Khasan, 1938. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. {{ISBN|0-8371-9479-2}}.Coox, Alvin D. Nomonhan: Japan against Russia, 1939. 2 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|0-8047-1835-0}}.

In 1938, Germany annexed Austria and, together with major Western European powers, signed the Munich Agreement following which Germany, Hungary and Poland divided parts of Czechoslovakia between themselves. German plans for further eastward expansion, as well as the lack of resolve from Western powers to oppose it, became more apparent. Despite the Soviet Union strongly opposing the Munich deal and repeatedly reaffirming its readiness to militarily back commitments given earlier to Czechoslovakia, the Western Betrayal led to the end of Czechoslovakia and further increased fears in the Soviet Union of a coming German attack. This led the Soviet Union to rush the modernization of its military industry and to carry out its own diplomatic maneuvers. In 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact: a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany dividing Eastern Europe into two separate spheres of influence.{{cite journal |author=Roberts, Geoffrey |year=1992 |title=The Soviet Decision for a Pact with Nazi Germany |journal=Soviet Studies |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=57–78 |jstor=00385859 |doi=10.1080/09668139208411994}} Following the pact, the USSR normalized relations with Nazi Germany and resumed Soviet–German trade.Ericson, Edward E. Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941. New York: Praeger, 1999. {{ISBN|0-275-96337-3}}.

{{Main|World War II|Eastern Front (World War II)}}

File:Second world war europe 1941-1942 map en.png in 1941 and 1942]]

On 17 September 1939, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland, stating as justification the "need to protect Ukrainians and Belarusians" there, after the "cessation of existence" of the Polish state.Gross, Jan Tomasz. Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 2nd ed. {{ISBN|0-691-09603-1}}.Zaloga, Steven & Victor Madej. The Polish Campaign 1939. 2nd ed. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1991. {{ISBN|0-87052-013-X}}. As a result, the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet republics' western borders were moved westward, and the new Soviet western border was drawn close to the original Curzon line. In the meantime negotiations with Finland over a Soviet-proposed land swap that would redraw the Soviet-Finnish border further away from Leningrad failed, and in December 1939 the USSR invaded Finland, beginning a campaign known as the Winter War (1939–1940), with the goal of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union.{{cite book|last1=Manninen|first1=Ohto|author-link1=Ohto Manninen|title=Miten Suomi valloitetaan: Puna-armeijan operaatiosuunnitelmat 1939–1944|year=2008|publisher=Edita|isbn=978-951-37-5278-1|ref=Manninen2008|language=fi|trans-title=How to Conquer Finland: Operational Plans of the Red Army 1939–1944}}{{cite book |editor1-last=Clemmesen |editor1-first=Michael H. |editor2-last=Faulkner |editor2-first=Marcus |title=Northern European Overture to War, 1939–1941: From Memel to Barbarossa|ref=Clemmesen| year=2013 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-24908-0}} The war took a heavy death toll on the Red Army and the Soviets failed to conquer Finland, but forced Finland to sign the Moscow Peace Treaty and cede the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia.Vehviläinen, Olli. Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia. New York: Palgrave, 2002. {{ISBN|0-333-80149-0}}Van Dyke, Carl. The Soviet Invasion of Finland 1939–1940. London: Frank Cass, 1997. {{ISBN|0-7146-4314-9}}. In summer 1940 the USSR issued an ultimatum to Romania forcing it to cede the territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. At the same time, the Soviet Union also occupied the three formerly independent Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).Dima, Nicholas. Bessarabia and Bukovina: The Soviet-Romanian Territorial Dispute. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982. {{ISBN|0-88033-003-1}}.Tarulis, Albert N. Soviet Policy Toward the Baltic States 1918–1940. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959.Misiunas, Romuald J. & Rein Taagepera. The Baltic States: The Years of Dependence, 1940–90. 2nd ed. London: Hurst & Co, 1993. {{ISBN|1-85065-157-4}}.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-E0406-0022-001, Russland, Kesselschlacht Stalingrad.jpg, the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, the turning point on the Eastern Front and in the entire WWII]]

The peace with Germany was tense, as both sides were preparing for the military conflict,А. В. Десять мифов Второй мировой. – М.: Эксмо, Яуза, 2004, {{ISBN|5-699-07634-4}}Mikhail Meltyukhov, Stalin's Missed Chance, М. И. Мельтюхов Упущенный шанс Сталина: Советский Союз и борьба за Европу 1939–1941 гг. : Документы, факты, суждения. Изд. 2-е, испр., доп. {{ISBN|5-7838-1196-3}} (second edition) and abruptly ended when the Axis forces led by Germany swept across the Soviet border on 22 June 1941. By the autumn the German army had seized Ukraine, laid a siege of Leningrad, and threatened to capture the capital, Moscow, itself.Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War: A Complete History. 2nd ed. New York: Owl Books, 1991. {{ISBN|0-8050-1788-7}}.Thurston, Robert W. & Bernd Bonwetsch (ed.). The People's War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. {{ISBN|0-252-02600-4}}.Clark, Alan. Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941–1945. New York: Harper Perennial, 1985. {{ISBN|0-688-04268-6}}. Despite the fact that in December 1941 the Red Army threw off the German forces from Moscow in a successful counterattack, the Germans retained the strategic initiative for approximately another year and held a deep offensive in the south-eastern direction, reaching the Volga and the Caucasus. However, two major German defeats in Stalingrad and Kursk proved decisive and reversed the course of the entire World War as the Germans never regained the strength to sustain their offensive operations and the Soviet Union recaptured the initiative for the rest of the conflict.Beevor, Antony. Stalingrad, The Fateful Siege: 1942–1943. New York: Viking, 1998. {{ISBN|0-670-87095-1}}. By the end of 1943, the Red Army had broken through the German siege of Leningrad and liberated much of Ukraine, much of Western Russia and moved into Belarus.Glantz, David M. & Jonathan M. House. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. {{ISBN|0-7006-0717-X}}. During the 1944 campaign, the Red Army defeated German forces in a series of offensive campaigns known as Stalin's ten blows. By the end of 1944, the front had moved beyond the 1939 Soviet frontiers into eastern Europe. Soviet forces drove into eastern Germany, capturing Berlin in May 1945.Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall, 1945. 3rd ed. London: Penguin Books, 2004. {{ISBN|0-14-101747-3}}. The war with Germany thus ended triumphantly for the Soviet Union.

As agreed at the Yalta Conference, three months after the Victory Day in Europe the USSR launched the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, defeating the Japanese troops in neighboring Manchuria, the last Soviet battle of World War II.Glantz, David M. The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria: 'August Storm{{'}}. London: Routledge, 2003. {{ISBN|0-7146-5279-2}}.

File:Raising a flag over the Reichstag - Restoration.jpg]]

Although the Soviet Union was victorious in World War II, the war resulted in around 26–27 million Soviet deaths (estimates vary)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 ({{ISBN|0-521-78503-0}}), for more information. and had devastated the Soviet economy in the struggle. Some 70,000 settlements were destroyed.As evidenced at the post-war Nuremberg Trials. See Ginsburg, George, The Nuremberg Trial and International Law, Martinus Nijhoff, 1990, p. 160. {{ISBN|0-7923-0798-4}}. The occupied territories suffered from the ravages of German occupation and deportations of slave labor by Germany.{{cite web|url=https://www.dw.com/en/final-compensation-pending-for-former-nazi-forced-laborers/a-1757323|title=Final Compensation Pending for Former Nazi Forced Laborers | DW | 27.10.2005|website=DW.COM|access-date=18 April 2020|archive-date=22 January 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120122194402/http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1757323,00.html|url-status=live}} 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.Gerlach, C. "Kalkulierte Morde" Hamburger Edition, Hamburg, 1999Россия и СССР в войнах ХХ века", М. "Олма- Пресс", 2001 год[http://www.tr.rkrp-rpk.ru/get.php?1379 Цена войны (Борис ЯЧМЕНЕВ) – "Трудовая Россия"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927001441/http://www.tr.rkrp-rpk.ru/get.php?1379 |date=27 September 2007 }}. Tr.rkrp-rpk.ru. Retrieved 16 February 2011.[http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/History/Article/_Rubak_VelOtech.php Рыбаковский Л. Великая отечественная: людские потери России] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927183814/http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/History/Article/_Rubak_VelOtech.php |date=27 September 2007 }}. Gumer.info. Retrieved 16 February 2011. The Holocaust, carried out by German Einsatzgruppen along with local collaborators, resulted in almost complete annihilation of the Jewish population over the entire territory temporarily occupied by Germany and its allies.{{cite web|url = http://www.un.int/russia/other/latv1941.htm |website = Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090113204945/http://www.un.int/russia/other/latv1941.htm |archive-date=13 January 2009 |publisher = United Nations |title = Involvement of the Lettish SS Legion in War Crimes in 1941–1945 and the Attempts to Revise the Verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal in Latvia}}[http://www.un.int/russia/other/eest1941.htm#english Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations (Russian Federation. General Information)] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090511175048/http://www.un.int/russia/other/eest1941.htm |date=11 May 2009 }}. United Nations. Retrieved 16 February 2011.{{cite web|url = http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/chronology/1939-1941/1941/chronology_1941_18.html#top |archive-url=https://archive.today/20050311225417/http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/chronology/1939-1941/1941/chronology_1941_18.html |archive-date=11 March 2005 |title = July 25: Pogrom in Lvov|website = Chronology of the Holocaust|publisher = Yad Vashem}}{{cite web | url=http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/hofer.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070606213149/http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/hofer.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=2007-06-06 | title=It Took Nerves of Steel}} During the occupation, the Leningrad region lost around a quarter of its population, Soviet Belarus lost from a quarter to a third of its population, and 3.6 million Soviet prisoners of war (of 5.5 million) died in German camps.{{cite web|url=http://www.gendercide.org/case_soviet.html|title=Case Study: Soviet Prisoners-of-War (POWs), 1941–42|work=Gendercide Watch|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-date=15 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190515180937/http://www.gendercide.org/case_soviet.html|url-status=live}}"Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century", Greenhill Books, London, 1997, G. F. KrivosheevChristian Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941–1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978), {{ISBN|3-8012-5016-4}}

{{Main|Cold War}}

File:US Army tanks face off against Soviet tanks, Berlin 1961.jpg against Soviet armor at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, October 1961.]]

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

The Cold War emerged from a conflict between Stalin and U.S. President Harry Truman over the future of Eastern Europe during the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945.{{cite web|url=http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/The+Cold+War.htm|title=The Cold War|work=John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-date=14 February 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090214004725/http://jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/The+Cold+War.htm|url-status=dead}} Stalin's goal was to establish a buffer zone of states between Germany and the Soviet Union.{{cite book|last=Gaddis|first=John Lewis|author-link=John Lewis Gaddis|title=Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History|year=1990|publisher=McGraw-Hill|page=[https://archive.org/details/russiasovietunio00gadd/page/176 176]|isbn=0-07-557258-3|url=https://archive.org/details/russiasovietunio00gadd/page/176}} Truman charged that Stalin had betrayed the Yalta agreement.{{cite journal |last1=Theoharis |first1=Athan |title=Roosevelt and Truman on Yalta: The Origins of the Cold War |journal=Political Science Quarterly |year=1972 |volume=87 |issue=2 |page=226 |doi=10.2307/2147826 |jstor=2147826 }} With Eastern Europe under Red Army occupation, Stalin was also biding his time, as his own atomic bomb project was steadily and secretly progressing.Cochran, Thomas B., Robert S. Norris & Oleg Bukharin. [http://docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/nuc_01019501a_138.pdf Making the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070809124538/http://docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/nuc_01019501a_138.pdf |date=9 August 2007 }} (PDF). Boulder,. CO:. Westview Press, 1995. {{ISBN|0-8133-2328-2}}.Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Clarendon press, 1997. {{ISBN|0-19-878071-0}}.

In April 1949 the United States sponsored the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact. The Soviet Union established an Eastern counterpart to NATO in 1955, dubbed the Warsaw Pact.Mastny, Vojtech, Malcolm Byrne & Magdalena Klotzbach (eds.). Cardboard Castle?: An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005. {{ISBN|963-7326-08-1}}.Holloway, David & Jane M. O. Sharp. The Warsaw Pact: Alliance in Transition? Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. {{ISBN|0-8014-1775-9}}.Holden, Gerard. The Warsaw Pact: Soviet Security and Bloc Politics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. {{ISBN|0-631-16775-7}}. The division of Europe into Western and Soviet blocks later took on a more global character, especially after 1949, when the U.S. nuclear monopoly ended with the testing of a Soviet bomb and the Communist takeover in China.

The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy were the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance of hegemony over Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union maintained its dominance over the Warsaw Pact through crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,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. {{ISBN|0-582-21504-8}}. suppressing the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and supporting the suppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s. The Soviet Union opposed the United States in a number of proxy conflicts all over the world, including the Korean War and Vietnam War.

File:John Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev 1961.jpg and John F. Kennedy, Vienna, June 1961]]

As the Soviet Union continued to maintain tight control over its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the Cold War gave way to Détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in the 1970s. The nuclear race continued, the number of nuclear weapons in the hands of the USSR and the United States reached a menacing scale, giving them the ability to destroy the planet multiple times. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two superpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons in treaties such as SALT I, SALT II, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

U.S.–Soviet relations deteriorated following the beginning of the nine-year Soviet–Afghan War in 1979 and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, a staunch anti-communist, but improved as the communist bloc started to unravel in the late 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia lost the superpower status that it had won in the Second World War.

{{Main|Khrushchev Thaw|History of the Soviet Union (1953–1964)|History of the Soviet Union (1964–1982)|Era of Stagnation}}

Nikita Khrushchev solidified his position in a speech before the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956 detailing Stalin's atrocities.{{cite news|publisher=CNN|url=http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/khrushchev/|title=Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080613043811/http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/khrushchev/|archive-date=13 June 2008}}

File:Carter Brezhnev sign SALT II.jpg and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, 18 June 1979.]]

In 1964, Khrushchev was impeached by the Communist Party's Central Committee, charging him with a host of errors that included Soviet setbacks such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. After a period of collective leadership led by Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny, Brezhnev took Khrushchev's place as Soviet leader.{{cite news|publisher=CNN|url=http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/brezhnev/|title=Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080613043927/http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/brezhnev/|archive-date=13 June 2008}} Brezhnev emphasized heavy industry,{{cite web|url=http://www.historyguide.org/europe/brezhnev.html|title=Leonid Brezhnev, 1906–1982|work=The History Guide|access-date=22 July 2007|quote=During the 1970s Brezhnev attempted to normalize relations between West Germany and the Warsaw 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 Soviet bureaucracy, and the generally stagnant and dispiriting character of Soviet life in the late 1970s and early '80s.|archive-date=13 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180913002304/http://www.historyguide.org/europe/brezhnev.html|url-status=live}} instituted the Soviet economic reform of 1965,{{cite web|title=Soviet and Post-Soviet Economic Structure And Performance|url=http://econ.duke.edu/pub/treml/brezhnev.293|archive-url=https://archive.today/20121210193915/http://econ.duke.edu/pub/treml/brezhnev.293|url-status=dead|archive-date=10 December 2012|publisher=HArper Collins}} and also attempted to ease relationships with the United States. Soviet science and industry peaked in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. The world's first nuclear power plant was established in 1954 in Obninsk, and the Baikal Amur Mainline was built. In the 1950s the USSR became a leading producer and exporter of petroleum and natural gas.{{Cite web |last1=Ermolaev |first1=Sergei |title=The Formation and Evolution of the Soviet Union's Oil and Gas Dependence |url=https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2017/03/the-formation-and-evolution-of-the-soviet-unions-oil-and-gas-dependence?lang=en |access-date=4 October 2022 |website=Carnegie Endowment for International Peace |language=en |archive-date=4 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221004095240/https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/29/formation-and-evolution-of-soviet-union-s-oil-and-gas-dependence-pub-68443 |url-status=live }} In 1980 Moscow hosted the Summer Olympic Games.

While all modernized economies were rapidly moving to computerization after 1965, the USSR fell behind. Moscow's decision to copy the IBM 360 of 1965 proved a decisive mistake for it locked scientists into an antiquated system they were unable to improve. They had enormous difficulties in manufacturing the necessary chips reliably and in quantity, in programming workable and efficient programs, in coordinating entirely separate operations, and in providing support to computer users.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.{{cite journal |jstor = 30036313|title = Computers and the Cold War: United States Restrictions on the Export of Computers to the Soviet Union and Communist China|journal = Journal of Contemporary History|volume = 40|issue = 1|pages = 131–147|last1 = Cain|first1 = Frank|year = 2005|doi = 10.1177/0022009405049270|s2cid = 154809517}}

One of the greatest strengths of Soviet economy was its vast supplies of oil and gas; world oil prices quadrupled in 1973–1974, and rose again in 1979–1981, making the energy sector the chief driver of the Soviet economy, and was used to cover multiple weaknesses. At one point, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin told the head of oil and gas production, "things are bad with bread. Give me 3 million tons [of oil] over the plan."Yergin, The Quest (2011) p. 23 Former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, an economist looking back three decades, in 2007 wrote:

{{blockquote|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.{{cite book|author=Yegor Gaidar|title=Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bDSfnxYjVwAC&pg=PA102|date=2007|publisher=Brookings Institution Press|page=102|isbn=978-0815731153|access-date=25 October 2015|archive-date=20 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231020195744/https://books.google.com/books?id=bDSfnxYjVwAC&pg=PA102#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}}}

File:Yuri Gagarin (1961) - Restoration.jpg, first human to travel into space.]]

The Soviet space program, founded by Sergey Korolev, was especially successful. On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik.{{cite web|work=NASA|url=https://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/|title=Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age|access-date=22 July 2007|date=19 January 2007|author=Steve Garber|quote=History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite...|archive-date=20 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200520020409/https://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/|url-status=live}} On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in the Soviet spaceship Vostok 1.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/netnotes/article/0,,470879,00.html|title=Yuri Gagarin|work=The Guardian|location=UK|quote=12 April 2001 is the fortieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space, the first time a human left the planet|author=Neil Perry|access-date=22 July 2007|date=12 April 2001|archive-date=12 January 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220112083401/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/apr/12/netnotes.neilperry|url-status=live}} Other achievements of Russian space program include: the first photo of the far side of the Moon; exploration of Venus; the first spacewalk by Alexei Leonov; first female spaceflight by Valentina Tereshkova. In 1970 and 1973, the world's first planetary rovers were sent to the moon: Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2. More recently, the Soviet Union produced the world's first space station, Salyut, which in 1986 was replaced by Mir, the first consistently inhabited long-term space station, that served from 1986 to 2001.

{{Main|History of the Soviet Union (1982–1991)|Perestroika|Glasnost}}

Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev implemented perestroika in an attempt to modernize Soviet communism, and made significant changes in the party leadership.{{Cite web |date=22 March 2025 |title=Soviet Union - Interregnum, Andropov, Chernenko {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Soviet-Union/The-Interregnum-Andropov-and-Chernenko |access-date=22 March 2025 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Little |first=Becky |date=6 March 2025 |title=Soviet Union Leaders: A Timeline |url=https://www.history.com/articles/soviet-union-leaders-order |access-date=22 March 2025 |website=www.history.com}} However, Gorbachev's social reforms led to unintended consequences. His policy of glasnost facilitated public access to information after decades of government repression, and social problems received wider public attention, undermining the Communist Party's authority. Glasnost allowed ethnic and nationalist disaffection to reach the surface,{{Cite web |date=7 March 2025 |title=Glasnost {{!}} Perestroika, Gorbachev, Reforms {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/glasnost |access-date=22 March 2025 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}} and many constituent republics, especially the Baltic republics, Georgian SSR and Moldavian SSR, sought greater autonomy, which Moscow was unwilling to provide. In the revolutions of 1989 the USSR lost its allies in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev's attempts at economic reform were not sufficient, and the Soviet government left intact most of the fundamental elements of communist economy. Suffering from low pricing of petroleum and natural gas, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and outdated industry and pervasive corruption, the Soviet planned economy proved to be ineffective, and by 1990 the Soviet government had lost control over economic conditions. Due to price control, there were shortages of almost all products. Control over the constituent republics was also relaxed, and they began to assert their national sovereignty.

File:President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at the first Summit in Geneva, Switzerland.jpg and Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, November 1985.]]

The tension between Soviet Union and Russian SFSR authorities came to be personified in the power struggle between Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.{{cite web|url=http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmZjYmUzZmQ1ZmFlMTc5NjA1ZWZiZTgwMTM1ZDVkOTk=|title=Boris on a Pedestal|quote=In the process he engaged in a power struggle with Mikhail Gorbachev...|author=David Pryce-Jones|work=National Review|access-date=22 July 2007|date=20 March 2000|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070602220414/http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmZjYmUzZmQ1ZmFlMTc5NjA1ZWZiZTgwMTM1ZDVkOTk=|archive-date=2 June 2007|url-status=dead}} 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.{{Cite web |date=24 March 2025 |title=The Helmut Kohl Transcripts: Engaging Gorbachev and Yeltsin |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/helmut-kohl-transcripts-engaging-gorbachev-and-yeltsin |access-date=22 March 2025 |website=www.wilsoncenter.org |language=en}} In a remarkable reversal of fortunes, he gained election as chairman of the Russian republic's new Supreme Soviet in May 1990.{{cite news|publisher=CNN|title=Boris Yeltsin|url=http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/yeltsin/|quote=The first-ever popularly elected leader of Russia, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a protégé of Mikhail Gorbachev's.|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080613043952/http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/yeltsin/|archive-date=13 June 2008}}

{{Main|Parade of sovereignties|War of Laws|New Union Treaty}}

The following month, Yeltsin secured legislation giving Russian laws priority over Soviet laws. Article 5 of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic establishes the full authority of the RSFSR, with the exception of those which it voluntarily transfers to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as the supremacy of the Constitution of the RSFSR and the laws of the RSFSR over the entire territory of the RSFSR. Acts of the Union of SSR which conflict with the sovereign rights of the RSFSR shall be suspended by the Republic on its territory. And also Yeltsin withholding two-thirds of the budget.{{Citation needed|date=July 2007}} In the first Russian presidential election in 1991 Yeltsin became president of the Russian SFSR. At last Gorbachev attempted to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. However, on 19 August 1991, a coup against Gorbachev was attempted. The coup faced wide popular opposition and collapsed in three days, but disintegration of the Union became imminent. The Russian government took over most of the Soviet Union government institutions on its territory. Because of the dominant position of Russians in the Soviet Union, most gave little thought to any distinction between Russia and the Soviet 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.{{cite web|quote=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.|work=Country Studies|title=Government|url=http://countrystudies.us/russia/68.htm|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-date=20 May 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180520122150/http://countrystudies.us/russia/68.htm|url-status=live}}

{{Main|1991 Soviet coup attempt|Dissolution of the Soviet Union|Transition period and cessation of the existence of the Soviet Union|Succession, continuity and legacy of the Soviet Union}}

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was banned in Russia in 1991, although no lustration has ever taken place, and many of its members became top Russian officials. However, as the Soviet government was still opposed to immediate market reforms, the economic situation continued to deteriorate.

On 24 September, RSFSR State Secretary Gennady Burbulis arrived to Boris Yeltsin, who was on vacation at the Black Sea coast. He brought a document “Russia's Strategy for the Transition Period”, which later received the unofficial name “Burbulis Memorandum”. The “memorandum” contained an analysis of the situation in the country, proposals on what should be done without delay, prepared by Yegor Gaidar's group. The document concluded that Russia should take the course of economic independence with a “soft”, “temporary” political alliance with other republics, i.e. to create not a declared, but a truly independent state of Russia.{{Cite web|url=https://www.interfax.ru/30years/790279|title=Меморандум Бурбулиса|date=24 September 1991}} 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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.interfax.ru/30years/790281|title=Геннадий Бурбулис в интервью "Интерфаксу: "Меморандум Бурбулиса" - это концепция реформ группы Гайдара|date=24 September 1991}}

As the Kommersant newspaper wrote on 7 October 1991, a series of conflicts occurred in the RSFSR government during preparations for the signing of the Treaty on the Economic Community. In his speech to members of the Russian parliament, RSFSR State Secretary Gennady Burbulis declared Russia's special role as the legal successor to the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the ways of drafting agreements with the republics should be determined by the Russian leadership. Instead of the planned order, he suggested signing a political agreement first, followed by an economic one. The newspaper suggested that Burbulis' goal was to persuade Yeltsin not to sign the agreement as it stands at the time. Yegor Gaidar, Alexander Shokhin and Konstantin Kagalovsky were named as the developers of the statement made by Burbulis. In the same time, a group of "isolationist patriots" consisting of Mikhail Maley, Nikolai Fedorov, Alexander Shokhin, Igor Lazarev and Mikhail Poltoranin criticized Ivan Silaev and Yevgeny Saburov for wanting to preserve the Soviet Union.{{cite web | url=https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1023 | title=Подпись России под соглашением: вот она была, и нету? | date=7 October 1991 }}

File:RIAN archive 848095 Signing the Agreement to eliminate the USSR and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States.jpg sign the Belovezh Accords, effectively ending the existence of the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States, 8 December 1991]]

The Treaty on Economic Community was signed in Moscow on 18 October 1991 in a single copy in the Russian language by the competent representatives, including Boris Yeltsin.https://www.gorby.ru/userfiles/21_dogovor_ob_ekonomicheskom_soobschestve.pdf{{Cite web|url=https://bigenc.ru/c/dogovor-ob-ekonomicheskom-soobshchestve-suverennykh-gosudarstv-1991-0017e0|title=Договор об Экономическом сообществе суверенных государств 1991|date=21 December 2022|website=Большая российская энциклопедия}}

By December 1991, the shortages had resulted in the introduction of food rationing in Moscow and Saint Petersburg for the first time since World War II. Russia received humanitarian food aid from abroad. After the Belavezha Accords, the Supreme Soviet of Russia withdrew Russia from the Soviet Union on 12 December. The Soviet Union officially ended on 25 December 1991,{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1112551.stm|work=BBC|title=Timeline: Soviet Union|quote=1991 25 December – Gorbachev resigns as Soviet president; US recognises independence of remaining Soviet republics|access-date=22 July 2007|date=3 March 2006|archive-date=28 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170828024054/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1112551.stm|url-status=live}} and the Russian Federation (formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic){{cite web|url=http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Russian+Soviet+Federal+Socialist+Republic|work=The Free Dictionary|title=Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic|quote=The largest republic of the former Soviet Union; it became independent as the Russian Federation in 1991|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-date=12 January 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112021153/http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Russian+Soviet+Federal+Socialist+Republic|url-status=dead}} took power on 26 December. The Russian government lifted price control on 2 January 1992. Prices rose dramatically, but shortages disappeared.

{{Main|History of the Russian Federation}}

{{main|Belovezha Accords|Alma-Ata Protocol|Common Economic Space of the Commonwealth of Independent States|Mobility rights arrangements of the Commonwealth of Independent States|Military of the Commonwealth of Independent States}}

File:Cold War border changes.png and the end of the Cold War]]

Post-Soviet countries have signed a series of treaties and agreements to settle the legacy of the former Soviet Union multilaterally and bilaterally in particular status in international organizations,https://cis.minsk.by/reestrv2/doc/5#documentCard nuclear weaponshttps://cis.minsk.by/reestrv2/doc/3#texthttps://cis.minsk.by/reestrv2/doc/9#documentCard and debts and assetshttps://cis.minsk.by/reestrv2/doc/7#text and general agreements.https://cis.minsk.by/reestrv2/doc/128#text

Although Yeltsin came to power on a wave of optimism, he never recovered his popularity after endorsing Yegor Gaidar's "shock therapy" of ending Soviet-era price controls, drastic cuts in state spending, and an open foreign trade regime in early 1992 (see Russian economic reform in the 1990s). The reforms immediately devastated the living standards of much of the population. In the 1990s Russia suffered an economic downturn that was, in some ways, more severe than the United States or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in the Great Depression.Peter Nolan, China's Rise, Russia's Fall. Macmillan Press, 1995. pp. 17–18. Hyperinflation hit the ruble, due to monetary overhang from the days of the planned economy.

Meanwhile, the profusion of small parties and their aversion to coherent alliances left the legislature chaotic. During 1993, Yeltsin's rift with the parliamentary leadership led to the September–October 1993 constitutional crisis. The crisis climaxed on 3 October, when Yeltsin chose a radical solution to settle his dispute with parliament: he called up tanks to shell the Russian White House, blasting out his opponents. As Yeltsin was taking the unconstitutional step of dissolving the legislature, Russia came close to a serious civil conflict. Yeltsin was then free to impose the current Russian constitution with strong presidential powers, which was approved by referendum in December 1993. The cohesion of the Russian Federation was also threatened when the republic of Chechnya attempted to break away, leading to the First and Second Chechen Wars.

File:BorisYeltsin and BillClinton 1999-11-18.jpg (left), first president of Russian Federation, and US President Bill Clinton in 1999]]

Economic reforms also consolidated a semi-criminal oligarchy with roots in the old Soviet system. Advised by Western governments, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, Russia embarked on the largest and fastest privatization ever to reform the fully nationalized Soviet economy. By mid-decade, retail, trade, services, and small industry was in private hands. Most big enterprises were acquired by their old managers, engendering a new rich (Russian tycoons) in league with criminal mafias or Western investors.{{cite journal | last1 = Fairbanks | first1 = Charles H. Jr. | year = 1999 | title = The Feudalization of the State | journal=Journal of Democracy | volume = 10 | issue = 2| pages = 47–53 | doi = 10.1353/jod.1999.0031 | s2cid = 155013709 }} Corporate raiders such as Andrei Volgin engaged in hostile takeovers of corrupt corporations by the mid-1990s.

By the mid-1990s Russia had a system of multiparty electoral politics.{{cite web|url=http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/9176-3.cfm|title=Russian president praises 1990s as cradle of democracy|work=Johnson's Russia List|access-date=20 July 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711053706/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/9176-3.cfm|archive-date=11 July 2007}} But it was harder to establish a representative government because of the struggle between president and parliament and the anarchic party system.

Meanwhile, the central government had lost control of the localities, bureaucracy, and economic fiefdoms, and tax revenues had collapsed. Still in a deep depression, Russia's economy was hit further by the financial crash of 1998. At the end of 1999, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the government in the hands of the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.CNN [http://archives.cnn.com/1999/WORLD/europe/12/31/yeltsin.resigns.04/ Apologetic Yeltsin resigns; Putin becomes acting president] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071113082107/http://archives.cnn.com/1999/WORLD/europe/12/31/yeltsin.resigns.04/ |date=13 November 2007 }}. Written by Jim Morris. Published 31 December 1999.

{{See also|Russia under Vladimir Putin|Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia}}

File:Moscow rally 12 June 2012, Trubnaya Square (01).jpg against the conduct of Russia's parliamentary elections]]

File:Putin with Vladimir Konstantinov, Sergey Aksyonov and Alexey Chaly 4.jpeg and pro-Russian Crimea leaders sign the Treaty on Accession of the Republic of Crimea to Russia in 2014.]]

In 2000, the new acting president won the presidential election on 26 March and won in a landslide four years later.{{cite news |title=Putin's hold on the Russians |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/667749.stm |work=BBC |date=28 June 2007 |access-date=22 July 2007 |quote=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%. |archive-date=17 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171217072041/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/667749.stm |url-status=live }} The Second Chechen war ended with the victory of Russia. After the 11 September terrorist attacks, there was a rapprochement between Russia and the United States. Putin created a system of guided democracy in Russia by subjugating parliament, suppressing independent media and placing major oil and gas companies under state control.

International observers were alarmed by moves in late 2004 to further tighten the presidency's control over parliament, civil society, and regional officeholders.{{cite news |title=Putin's hold on the Russians |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/667749.stm |work=BBC |date=28 June 2007 |access-date=22 July 2007 |quote=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" |archive-date=17 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171217072041/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/667749.stm |url-status=live }} In 2008, Dmitri Medvedev, Putin's head of staff, was elected President. In 2012, Putin became president again, prompting massive protests in Moscow.

Russia's long-term problems include a shrinking workforce, rampant corruption, and underinvestment in infrastructure. Nevertheless, reversion to a socialist command economy seemed almost impossible.{{cite web|title=The Russian Federation Today|url=http://www.guidetorussia.org/history/russia-today.html|work=Guide to Russia's HISTORY OF RUSSIA|access-date=12 August 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120507083512/http://www.guidetorussia.org/history/russia-today.html|archive-date=7 May 2012|url-status=dead}} The economic problems are aggravated by massive capital outflows, as well as extremely difficult conditions for doing business, due to pressure from the security forces Siloviki and government agencies.

Due to high oil prices, from 2000 to 2008, Russia's GDP at PPP doubled.{{cite web| url = https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=1998&ey=2018&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&pr1.x=60&pr1.y=4&c=922&s=NGDPD%2CPPPGDP&grp=0&a=| title = Russia's GDP according to the World Bank| access-date = 26 August 2020| archive-date = 28 January 2021| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210128120120/https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=1998&ey=2018&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&pr1.x=60&pr1.y=4&c=922&s=NGDPD%2CPPPGDP&grp=0&a=| url-status = live}} Although high oil prices and a relatively cheap ruble initially drove this growth, since 2003 consumer demand and, more recently, investment have played a significant role.CIA World Fact Book – Russia Russia is well ahead of most other resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of education, science, and industry.{{cite web| url = http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2006/gb20061207_520461_page_2.htm| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20061213231938/http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2006/gb20061207_520461_page_2.htm| url-status = dead| archive-date = 13 December 2006| title = Russia: How Long Can The Fun Last?}} Bloomberg BusinessWeek Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.{{Cite web |title=Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Sochi-2014-Olympic-Winter-Games |access-date=4 October 2022 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en |archive-date=22 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220922092118/https://www.britannica.com/event/Sochi-2014-Olympic-Winter-Games |url-status=live }}

File:Kyiv after Russian shelling, 2022-10-10 (073).webp following Russian missile strikes on 10 October 2022]]

In 2014, following a controversial referendum, in which separation was favored by a large majority of voters according to official results,{{Cite news |date=16 March 2014 |title=Crimea referendum: Voters 'back Russia union' |language=en-GB |work=BBC News |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26606097 |access-date=4 October 2022 |archive-date=17 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180617132157/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26606097 |url-status=live }} the Russian leadership announced the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation,{{Cite news |last1=Myers |first1=Steven Lee |last2=Barry |first2=Ellen |date=18 March 2014 |title=Putin Reclaims Crimea for Russia and Bitterly Denounces the West |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html |access-date=4 October 2022 |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=2 January 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200102070617/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html |url-status=live }} thus starting the Russo-Ukrainian War. Following Russia's annexation of Crimea and alleged Russian interference in the war in eastern Ukraine, international sanctions were imposed on Russia.{{Cite web |date=13 July 2015 |title=NATO Review - Sanctions after Crimea: Have they worked? |url=https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2015/07/13/sanctions-after-crimea-have-they-worked/index.html |access-date=4 October 2022 |website=NATO Review |language=en |archive-date=4 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221004110114/https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2015/07/13/sanctions-after-crimea-have-they-worked/index.html |url-status=live }}

On 4 December 2011, elections to the State Duma were held, as a result of which United Russia won for the third time in a row. The official voting results caused significant protests in the country; a number of political scientists and journalists noted various falsifications on election day.[http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/news/4185301/karfagen_dolzhen_byt_razrushen?full#cut Государственная дума должна быть переизбрана] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140101093052/http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/news/4185301/karfagen_dolzhen_byt_razrushen?full#cut |date=1 January 2014 }} // Vedomosti, 21 September 2012. In 2012, according to another pre-election agreement, a "castling" took place;{{Cite web |url=https://ria.ru/20111017/462644720.html |title=Путин заявил, что договорился с Медведевым о "рокировке" 4 года назад |date=17 October 2011 |trans-title=Putin said that he agreed with Medvedev on “castling” 4 years ago |access-date=18 December 2019 |archive-date=18 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191218165203/https://ria.ru/20111017/462644720.html |url-status=live}} 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.{{cite web |last1=Bidder |first1=Benjamin |last2=Offenberg |first2=Anastasia |title=Protest gegen Putin: Russlands Schneerevolution schmilzt |trans-title=Protest against Putin: Russia's snow revolution is melting |url=https://www.inopressa.ru/article/12mar2012/spiegel/kremlin1.html |publisher=InoPressa |date=12 March 2012 |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20170328015637/https://www.inopressa.ru/article/12mar2012/spiegel/kremlin1.html |archivedate = 28 March 2017}}

Since 2015, Russia has been conducting military intervention in Syria in support of the Bashar al-Assad regime.{{Cite web |title=Russian Lessons from the Syrian Operation and the Culture of Military Innovation |url=http://www.marshallcenter.org/en/publications/security-insights/russian-lessons-syrian-operation-and-culture-military-innovation |access-date=4 October 2022 |website=www.marshallcenter.org |language=en |archive-date=10 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221010023751/https://www.marshallcenter.org/en/publications/security-insights/russian-lessons-syrian-operation-and-culture-military-innovation |url-status=dead }}

File:16th BRICS Summit family photograph (2024).jpg representatives at the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, 23 October 2024]]

In 2018, Putin was re-elected for a fourth presidential term.{{Cite web |date=19 March 2018 |title=Vladimir Putin secures record win in Russian presidential election |url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/19/vladimir-putin-secures-record-win-in-russian-presidential-election |access-date=4 October 2022 |website=The Guardian |language=en |archive-date=8 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221008050454/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/19/vladimir-putin-secures-record-win-in-russian-presidential-election |url-status=live }}

In 2022, Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine,{{cite web|url=https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-putin-authorises-military-operations-donbass-domestic-media-2022-02-24/|title=Russia's Putin authorises 'special military operation' against Ukraine|website=Reuters|date=24 February 2022|access-date=3 April 2022|archive-date=24 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220224032217/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-putin-authorises-military-operations-donbass-domestic-media-2022-02-24/|url-status=live}} which was denounced by NATO and the European Union. They aided Ukraine and imposed massive International sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.{{cite web|url=https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/global-markets-wrapup-2-2022-02-28/|title=Stocks fall, ruble dives as Russia sanctions hit world markets|website=Reuters|date=28 February 2022|access-date=3 April 2022|archive-date=29 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220329192031/https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/global-markets-wrapup-2-2022-02-28/|url-status=live}} A leading banker in Moscow said the damage might take a decade to recover, as half of its international trade has been lost."Russian economy may need a decade to return to pre-sanctions levels, Sberbank says" [https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-economy-may-need-decade-return-pre-sanctions-levels-sberbank-says-2022-06-17/ (Reuters, 17 June 2022)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220717080002/https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-economy-may-need-decade-return-pre-sanctions-levels-sberbank-says-2022-06-17/ |date=17 July 2022 }} Despite international opposition, Russia officially annexed the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, along with most of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts on 30 September.{{Cite news |last=Maynes |first=Charles |date=30 September 2022 |title=Putin illegally annexes territories in Ukraine, in spite of global opposition |language=en |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126020895/russia-ukraine-putin-annexation |access-date=4 October 2022 |archive-date=5 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221005022304/https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126020895/russia-ukraine-putin-annexation |url-status=live }} The United Nations have reported that Russia has committed war crimes during the invasion.{{Cite web |date=23 September 2022 |title=War crimes have been committed in Ukraine conflict, top UN human rights inquiry reveals |url=https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1127691 |access-date=4 October 2022 |website=UN News |language=en |archive-date=4 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221204135626/https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1127691 |url-status=live }}{{cite web | title=UN Commission concludes that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine, expresses concern about suffering of civilians | website=OHCHR | date=23 September 2022 | url=https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/un-commission-concludes-war-crimes-have-been-committed-ukraine-expresses | access-date=28 May 2025}}

In March 2023, Russia adopted a Eurasianist, anti-Western foreign policy strategy detailed in a document approved by Putin. The document defined Russia as a "unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power" that seeks to create a "Greater Eurasian Partnership" by pursuing close relations with China, India, countries of the Islamic World and rest of the Global South (Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa).{{Cite news |date=31 March 2023 |title=Russia adopts new anti-West foreign policy strategy |work=Deutsche Welle |url=https://www.dw.com/en/russia-adopts-new-anti-west-foreign-policy-strategy/a-65198660 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230415103330/https://www.dw.com/en/russia-adopts-new-anti-west-foreign-policy-strategy/a-65198660 |archive-date=15 April 2023}}{{Cite web |last=Gould-Davies |first=Nigel |date=6 April 2023 |title=Russia's new foreign-policy concept: the impact of war |url=https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2023/04/russia-new-foreign-policy-concept-the-impact-of-war/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502170222/https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2023/04/russia-new-foreign-policy-concept-the-impact-of-war/ |archive-date=2 May 2023 |website=IISS}} On 23 June 2023, the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, rebelled against the government.{{cite news |last=Yeung |first=Jessie |date=25 June 2023 |title=Moscow has stepped back from civil war with Wagner. But the danger's not over, experts warn |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/25/europe/russia-prigozhin-wagner-insurrection-belarus-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html |work=CNN |access-date=29 June 2023 |archive-date=29 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230629114019/https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/25/europe/russia-prigozhin-wagner-insurrection-belarus-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html |url-status=live }} As of August 2023, the total number of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers killed or wounded during the Russian invasion of Ukraine was nearly 500,000.{{Cite news |date=18 August 2023 |title=Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say |work=The New York Times |language=en |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html |last1=Cooper |first1=Helene |last2=Gibbons-Neff |first2=Thomas |last3=Schmitt |first3=Eric |last4=Barnes |first4=Julian E. |access-date=3 September 2023 |archive-date=3 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230903175102/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html |url-status=live }}

{{See also|Historiography in the Soviet Union|List of Russian historians|List of Slavic studies journals}}

{{div col|colwidth=22em}}

• Dissolution of the Soviet Union
• Family tree of the Russian monarchs
• General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• History of Central Asia
• History of Siberia
• History of the administrative division of Russia
• History of the Caucasus
• History of the Jews in Russia
• History of the Soviet Union
• List of heads of government of Russia
• List of Mongol and Tatar raids against Rus'
• List of presidents of Russia
• List of Russian explorers
• List of Russian rulers
• List of wars involving Russia
• Military history of the Russian Empire
• Military history of the Soviet Union
• Politics of Russia
• Russian Armed Forces
• Russian colonization of the Americas
• Russian Empire
• Soviet Union
• Timeline of Moscow
• Timeline of Russian history
• Timeline of Russian innovation

{{div col end}}

{{reflist}}

{{Main|Bibliography of the history of the Early Slavs and Rus'|Bibliography of Russian history (1223–1613)|Bibliography of Russian history (1613–1917)}}

{{refbegin}}

• Auty, Robert, and Dimitri Obolensky, eds. Companion to Russian Studies: vol 1: An Introduction to Russian History (1981) 403 pages; surveys by scholars.
• Bartlett, Roger P. A History of Russia (2005) [https://archive.org/details/historyofrussia00bart online]
• Brown, Archie et al. eds. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Former Soviet Union (2nd ed. 1994) 664 pages [https://archive.org/details/cambridgeencyclo00brow online]
• Bushkovitch, Paul. A Concise History of Russia (2011) [https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Russia-Cambridge-Histories/dp/0521543231/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525205631/https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Russia-Cambridge-Histories/dp/0521543231 |date=25 May 2017 }}
• Connolly, Richard. The Russian Economy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020). [https://eh.net/book_reviews/the-russian-economy-a-very-short-introduction/ Online review] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201116060536/https://eh.net/book_reviews/the-russian-economy-a-very-short-introduction/ |date=16 November 2020 }}
• Figes, Orlando. Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (2002). [https://www.amazon.com/Natashas-Dance-Cultural-History-Russia/dp/0805057838/ excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161003212154/https://www.amazon.com/Natashas-Dance-Cultural-History-Russia/dp/0805057838 |date=3 October 2016 }}
• Florinsky, Michael T. ed. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (1961).
• Freeze, Gregory L., ed.,. Russia: A History. 2nd ed. (Oxford UP, 2002). {{ISBN|0-19-860511-0}}.
• Harcave, Sidney, ed. Readings in Russian history (1962) excerpts from scholars. [https://archive.org/details/readingsinrussia00harc online]
• Hosking, Geoffrey A. Russia and the Russians: a History (2011) [https://archive.org/details/russiarussianshi2ndehosk online]
• Jelavich, Barbara. St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814–1974 (1974).
• Kelly, Catriona. Russian Food Since 1800: Empire at Table (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60874 onlie review of this book]
• Kort, Michael. A Brief History of Russia (2008) [https://archive.org/details/briefhistoryofru0000kort online]
• McKenzie, David & Michael W. Curran. A History of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2001. {{ISBN|0-534-58698-8}}.
• Millar, James, ed. Encyclopedia of Russian History (4 vol. 2003). [https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofru0001unse online]
• Pares, Bernard. A History of Russia (1926) By a leading historian. [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.174320/page/n7 Online]
• Parmele, Mary. [https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/16930 A Short History of Russia] (1907)
• Paxton, John. Companion to Russian history (1983) [https://archive.org/details/companiontorussi00paxt online]
• Perrie, Maureen, et al. The Cambridge History of Russia. (3 vol. Cambridge University Press, 2006). [https://www.amazon.com/The-Cambridge-History-Russia-Volume/dp/0521812275/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160317054342/http://www.amazon.com/The-Cambridge-History-Russia-Volume/dp/0521812275 |date=17 March 2016 }}
• Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., and Mark D. Steinberg. A History of Russia (9th ed. 2018) [https://archive.org/details/historyofrussia0000rias 9th edition 1993 online]
• Service, Robert. A History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-First Century (Harvard UP, 3rd ed., 2009) [https://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Russia-Tsarism-Twenty-First/dp/0674034937/ excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220329235818/https://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Russia-Tsarism-Twenty-First/dp/0674034937 |date=29 March 2022 }}
• Stone, David. A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya [https://www.amazon.com/Military-History-Russia-Terrible-Chechnya-ebook/dp/B0029LGW5A/ excerpts] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525210951/https://www.amazon.com/Military-History-Russia-Terrible-Chechnya-ebook/dp/B0029LGW5A |date=25 May 2017 }}
• Ziegler; Charles E. The History of Russia (Greenwood Press, 1999)

{{Main|Russian Empire#Further reading}}

• Baykov, Alexander. “The Economic Development of Russia.” Economic History Review 7#2 1954, pp. 137–149. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2591618 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220422033115/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2591618 |date=22 April 2022 }}
• Billington, James H. The icon and the axe; an interpretive history of Russian culture (1966) [https://archive.org/details/iconaxeinterpret00bill online ]
• Christian, David. A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia. Vol. 1: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. {{ISBN|0-631-20814-3}}.
• De Madariaga, Isabel. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (2002), comprehensive topical survey
• Fuller, William C. Strategy and Power in Russia 1600–1914 (1998) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001D1YCWC/ excerpts] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210325110104/https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001D1YCWC/ |date=25 March 2021 }}
• Hughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (Yale UP, 1998), Comprehensive topical survey. [https://archive.org/details/russiainageofpet00hugh online]
• Kahan, Arcadius. The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia (1985)
• Kahan, Arcadius. Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century (1989)
• Gatrell, Peter. "Review: Russian Economic History: The Legacy of Arcadius Kahan" Slavic Review 50#1 (1991), pp. 176–178 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500609 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220422033122/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500609 |date=22 April 2022 }}
• Lincoln, W. Bruce. The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias (1983) [https://archive.org/details/romanovsautocr00linc online], sweeping narrative history
• Lincoln, W. Bruce. The great reforms : autocracy, bureaucracy, and the politics of change in Imperial Russia (1990) [https://archive.org/details/greatreformsauto0000linc online]
• Manning, Roberta. The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government. Princeton University Press, 1982.
• Markevich, Andrei, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. 2018. “Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire.” American Economic Review 108.4–5: 1074–1117.
• Mironov, Boris N., and Ben Eklof. The Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700–1917 (2 vol Westview Press, 2000)
• Moss, Walter G. A History of Russia. Vol. 1: To 1917. 2d ed. Anthem Press, 2002.
• Oliva, Lawrence Jay. ed. Russia in the era of Peter the Great (1969), excerpts from primary and secondary sources [https://archive.org/details/russiaineraofpet00oliv online]
• Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Old Regime (2nd ed. 1997)
• Seton-Watson, Hugh. The Russian Empire 1801–1917 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (1988) [https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Empire-1801-1917-Oxford-History/dp/0198221525/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170415013433/https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Empire-1801-1917-Oxford-History/dp/0198221525 |date=15 April 2017 }}
• Treasure, Geoffrey. The Making of Modern Europe, 1648–1780 (3rd ed. 2003). pp. 550–600.

{{See also|Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War|Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union|Bibliography of the Post Stalinist Soviet Union}}

• Chamberlin, William Henry. The Russian Revolution 1917–1921 (2 vol 1935) [https://archive.org/search.php?query=Chamberlin%2C%20William%20Henry.%20The%20Russian%20Revolution online free]
• Cohen, Stephen F. Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917. (Oxford University Press, 1985)
• {{Cite book |last1=Cross |first1=Samuel Hazzard |last2=Sherbowitz-Wetzor |first2=Olgerd P. |date=1953 |orig-date=1930 |title=The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian Text. Translated and edited by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor |url=https://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/dokumente/a/a011458.pdf |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=The Mediaeval Academy of America |access-date=26 January 2023 |archive-date=27 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210827201438/https://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/dokumente/a/a011458.pdf |url-status=live }}
• Davies, R. W. Soviet economic development from Lenin to Khrushchev (1998) [https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Development-Khrushchev-Studies-History-dp-0521622603/dp/0521622603/ excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221227130245/https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Development-Khrushchev-Studies-History-dp-0521622603/dp/0521622603/ |date=27 December 2022 }}
• Davies, R.W., Mark Harrison and S.G. Wheatcroft. The Economic transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945 (1994)
• Figes, Orlando. A people's tragedy a history of the Russian Revolution (1997) [https://archive.org/details/peoplestragedyhi00fige online]
• Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. (Oxford University Press, 1982), 208 pages. {{ISBN|0-19-280204-6}}
• Gregory, Paul R. and Robert C. Stuart, Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure (7th ed. 2001)
• Hosking, Geoffrey. The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within (2nd ed. Harvard UP 1992) 570 pages
• Kennan, George F. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (1961) [https://archive.org/details/russiawestmentor00geor online]
• Kort, Michael. The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath (7th ed. 2010) 502 pages
• Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014); vol 2 (2017)
• Library of Congress. Russia: a country study edited by Glenn E. Curtis. (Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1996). [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/rutoc.html online] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120711211231/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/rutoc.html |date=11 July 2012 }}
• Lincoln, W. Bruce. Passage Through Armageddon: The Russians in War and Revolution, 1914–1918 (1986)
• Lewin, Moshe. Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. (Northwestern University Press, 1968)
• McCauley, Martin. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (2007), 522 pages.
• Moss, Walter G. A History of Russia. Vol. 2: Since 1855. 2d ed. Anthem Press, 2005.
• Nove, Alec. An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–1991. 3rd ed. London: Penguin Books, 1993. {{ISBN|0-14-015774-3}}.
• Ofer, Gur. "Soviet Economic Growth: 1928-1985," Journal of Economic Literature (1987) 25#4: 1767–1833. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2726445 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111080035/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2726445 |date=11 November 2020 }}
• Pipes, Richard. A concise history of the Russian Revolution (1995) [https://archive.org/details/concisehistoryof00pipe online]
• Regelson, Lev. Tragedy of Russian Church. 1917–1953. http://www.regels.org/Russian-Church.htm {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150217102721/http://www.regels.org/Russian-Church.htm |date=17 February 2015 }}
• Remington, Thomas. Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984.
• Service, Robert. A History of Twentieth-Century Russia. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. {{ISBN|0-674-40348-7}}.
• Service, Robert. Stalin: A Biography (2004), along with Tucker and Kotkin, a standard biography
• Steinberg, Mark D. The Russian Revolution, 1905–1921 (Oxford Histories, 2017).
• Tucker, Robert C. Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929 (1973); Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929–1941. (1990)along with Kotkin and Service books, a standard biography; [https://web.archive.org/web/20000707012840/http://www.historyebook.org/ online at ACLS e-books]

• Asmus, Ronald. A Little War that Shook the World : Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West. NYU (2010). {{ISBN|978-0-230-61773-5}}
• Cohen, Stephen. Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000, 320 pages. {{ISBN|0-393-32226-2}}
• Gregory, Paul R. and Robert C. Stuart, Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, Addison-Wesley, Seventh Edition, 2001.
• {{cite book |last=Magocsi |first=Paul R. |author-link=Paul Robert Magocsi |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z0mKRsElYNkC |title=A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples |year=2010 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto |isbn=978-1-4426-1021-7 |access-date=27 June 2023 |archive-date=23 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230423152843/https://books.google.com/books?id=Z0mKRsElYNkC |url-status=live }}
• Medvedev, Roy. Post-Soviet Russia A Journey Through the Yeltsin Era, Columbia University Press, 2002, 394 pages. {{ISBN|0-231-10607-6}}
• Moss, Walter G. A History of Russia. Vol. 2: Since 1855. 2d ed. Anthem Press, 2005. Chapter 22.
• Smorodinskaya, Tatiana, and Karen Evans-Romaine, eds. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Russian Culture (2014) [https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Contemporary-Russian-Culture-Encyclopedias/dp/0415758629/ excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220330023255/https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Contemporary-Russian-Culture-Encyclopedias/dp/0415758629 |date=30 March 2022 }}; 800 pp covering art, literature, music, film, media, crime, politics, business, and economics.
• Stent, Angela. The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (2014)

{{refend}}

• Blinnikov, Mikhail S. A geography of Russia and its neighbors (Guilford Press, 2011)
• Barnes, Ian. Restless Empire: A Historical Atlas of Russia (2015), copies of historic maps
• Catchpole, Brian. A Map History of Russia (Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1974), new topical maps.
• Channon, John, and Robert Hudson. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia (Viking, 1995), new topical maps.
• Chew, Allen F. An Atlas of Russian History: Eleven Centuries of Changing Borders (Yale UP, 1970), new topical maps.
• Gilbert, Martin. Routledge Atlas of Russian History (4th ed. 2007) [https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Russian-History-Historical-Atlases/dp/0415394848/ excerpt and text search] [https://archive.org/details/atlasofrussianhi00mart online]
• Henry, Laura A. Red to Green: environmental activism in post-Soviet Russia (2010)
• Kaiser, Robert J. The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (1994).
• Medvedev, Andrei. Economic Geography of the Russian Federation by (2000)
• Parker, William Henry. An historical Geography of Russia (University of London Press, 1968)
• Shaw, Denis J. B. Russia in the Modern World: A New Geography (Blackwell, 1998) of Finland.

• Baron, Samuel H., and Nancy W. Heer. "The Soviet Union: Historiography Since Stalin." in Georg G. Iggers and Harold Talbot Parker, eds. International handbook of historical studies: contemporary research and theory (Taylor & Francis, 1979). pp. 281–94.
• {{cite book|editor=Boyd, Kelly|title=Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing vol 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0121vD9STIMC&pg=PA1025|year=1999|publisher=Taylor & Francis|pages=1025–41|isbn=9781884964336}}
• {{cite journal | last1 = Confino | first1 = Michael | title = The New Russian Historiography and the Old—Some Considerations | journal = History & Memory | year = 2009 | volume = 21 | issue = 2 | pages = 7–33 | doi = 10.2979/his.2009.21.2.7 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/317174|via=Muse |jstor=10.2979/his.2009.21.2.7| s2cid = 145645042 | url-access = subscription }}
• {{cite journal | last1 = Cox | first1 = Terry | year = 2002 | title = The New History of the Russian Peasantry | journal = Journal of Agrarian Change | volume = 2 | issue = 4| pages = 570–86 | doi = 10.1111/1471-0366.00046 | bibcode = 2002JAgrC...2..570C }}
• David-Fox, Michael et al. eds. After the Fall: Essays in Russian and Soviet Historiography (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2004)
• {{cite journal | last1 = Dmytryshyn | first1 = Basil | year = 1980 | title = Russian expansion to the Pacific, 1580–1700: A Historiographical Review | url = https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/5095/1/KJ00000113075.pdf | journal = Slavic Studies | volume = 25 | pages = 1–25 }}
• Firestone, Thomas. "Four Sovietologists: A Primer." National Interest No. 14 (Winter 1988–9), pp. 102–107 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027135 on the ideas of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Stephen F. Cohen, Jerry F. Hough, and Richard Pipes.]
• Fitzpatrick, Sheila. "Revisionism in Soviet History" History and Theory (2007) 46#4 pp. 77–91 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/4502285 online], covers the scholarship of the three major schools, totalitarianism, revisionism, and post-revisionism.
• {{cite book |last=Halperin|first=Charles J.|year=1987| title=Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History |pages=222 |publisher=Indiana University |isbn=9781850430575}} (e-book).
• {{cite book |title=Medieval Russia: 980–1584 |last=Martin |first=Janet |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sRCc3TtL9bIC |year=2004 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=9780521368322 |access-date=11 October 2015 |archive-date=23 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230423152842/https://books.google.com/books?id=sRCc3TtL9bIC |url-status=live }} (digital printing 2004)
• {{cite book |last=Martin |first=Janet |editor-last=Freeze |editor-first=Gregory |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GNeFDyRSp0wC |title=Russia: A History |chapter=From Kiev to Muscovy: The Beginnings to 1450 |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2009b |pages=1–30 |isbn=978-0-19-150121-0}} (third edition)
• {{cite journal | last1 = Martin | first1 = Russell E | year = 2010 | title = The Petrine Divide and the Periodization of Early Modern Russian History | journal = Slavic Review | volume = 69 | issue = 2| pages = 410–425 | jstor=25677105| doi = 10.1017/S0037677900015060 | s2cid = 164486882 }}
• {{cite journal | last1 = Orlovsky | first1 = Daniel | year = 1990 | title = The New Soviet History | journal = Journal of Modern History | volume = 62 | issue = 4| pages = 831–50 | jstor=1881065 | doi=10.1086/600602| s2cid = 144848873 }}
• Sanders, Thomas, ed. Historiography of Imperial Russia: The Profession and Writing of History in a Multinational State (1999).
• Suny, Ronald Grigor. "Rehabilitating Tsarism: The Imperial Russian State and Its Historians. A Review Article" Comparative Studies in Society and History 31#1 (1989) pp. 168–179 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/178799 online]
• Topolski, Jerzy. "Soviet Studies and Social History" in Georg G. Iggers and Harold Talbot Parker, eds. International handbook of historical studies: contemporary research and theory (Taylor & Francis, 1979. pp. 295–300.
• {{cite journal | last1 = Winkler | first1 = Martina | year = 2011 | title = Rulers and Ruled, 1700–1917 | journal = Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History | volume = 13 | issue = 4| pages = 789–806 | doi = 10.1353/kri.2011.0061 | s2cid = 145335289 }}

• Kaiser, Daniel H. and Gary Marker, eds. Reinterpreting Russian History: Readings 860-1860s (1994) 464 pages [https://www.amazon.com/Reinterpreting-Russian-History-Readings-860-1860s/dp/0195078586/ excerpt and text search]; primary documents and excerpts from historians
• Vernadsky, George, et al. eds. Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917 (3 vol 1972)
• [http://soviethistory.msu.edu/ Seventeen Moments in Soviet History] (An on-line archive of primary source materials on Soviet history.)

{{Spoken Wikipedia|En-History_of_Russia_(intro).ogg|date=18 March 2012}}

{{Commons category|History of Russia}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20130514001338/http://www.library.illinois.edu/spx/webct/subjectresources/subsourrus/rushistbib2.html Guides to Sources on Russian History and Historiography]
• [http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/History_of_Russia:_Primary_Documents History of Russia: Primary Documents]
• [http://diaryrh.ru Дневник Истории России] A historic project supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.
• Williams, Henry Smith (Ed.) 1905, [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73369 The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 17: Switzerland (concluded), Russia and Poland], New York: The Outlook Company.

{{History of Asia}}

{{History of Europe}}

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