Russia has a well-managed economy, a huge land area and a relatively small population. Exports $3.39K, Imports $1.36K, Trade Surplus $2.03K, Debt to GDP 14.6K. (2022). Population 144.8M (2024). Nominal GDP is $2T (2024).
The current Russian land area is 6.602 million square miles. Arable land is 7.43%. 35% of Russia is uninhabitable Siberian permafrost. India has a land area of 1,269,219 sq mi and a population of 1.450935791B.
Exports The top exports of Russia in 2022 included Crude Petroleum ($133B), Petroleum Gas ($71.5B), Refined Petroleum ($67.4B), Coal Briquettes ($36.5B), and Gold ($14.6B), exporting mostly to China ($101B), India ($40.4B), Germany ($27.7B), Turkey ($25.3B), and Italy ($25.1B).
Imports The top imports of Russia in 2022 included Packaged Medicaments ($9.11B), Broadcasting Equipment ($7.15B), Cars ($6.38B), Computers ($3.94B), and Motor vehicles; parts and accessories (8701 to 8705) ($3.64B), importing mostly from China ($75.4B), Germany ($15.5B), Turkey ($9.24B), Kazakhstan ($8.78B), and South Korea ($6.33B).
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/rus
Early
History
The
first known people to set foot on Russian territory were called the Cimmerians.
They ruled between 1000 and 700 BC and were followed by the Scythians in 700
BC. The Scythian nomads established a military state and defeated the Persians,
but were nonetheless conquered by the Sarmatians in 3 BC.
The history of Russia begins with the
histories of the East
Slavs. The traditional start date of specifically
Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' state
in the north in 862, ruled by Varangians. In 882, Prince Oleg
of Novgorod seized Kiev,
uniting the northern and southern lands of the Eastern Slavs under one
authority, moving the governance center to Kiev by the end of the 10th century,
and maintaining northern and southern parts with significant autonomy from each
other. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine
Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures
that defined Russian
culture for the next millennium. Kievan
Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state due to
the Mongol invasions in
1237–1240. After the 13th century, Moscow became a political and cultural
magnet for the unification of Russian lands.
By the end of the 15th century, many of the petty
principalities around Moscow had been united with
the Grand Duchy of Moscow,
which took full control of its own sovereignty under Ivan the Great.
Ivan
the Terrible transformed the Grand Duchy into
the Tsardom
of Russia in 1547. However, the death of
Ivan's son Feodor I without
issue in 1598 created a succession crisis and
led Russia into a period of chaos and civil war known as the Time
of Troubles, ending with the coronation of Michael
Romanov as the first Tsar of the Romanov
dynasty in 1613. During the rest of the
seventeenth century, Russia completed the exploration and conquest of Siberia,
claiming lands as far as the Pacific Ocean by the end of the century.
Domestically, Russia faced numerous uprisings of the various ethnic groups under their
control, as exemplified by the Cossack leader Stenka
Razin, who led a revolt in 1670–1671. In 1721, in the wake
of the Great Northern War,
Tsar Peter
the Great renamed the state as the Russian
Empire; he is also noted for establishing St.
Petersburg as the new capital of his Empire,
and for his introducing Western European culture to Russia. In 1762, Russia
came under the control of Catherine the Great,
who continued the westernizing policies of Peter the Great, and ushered in the
era of the Russian Enlightenment.
Catherine's grandson, Alexander I,
repulsed an invasion by the French Emperor Napoleon,
leading Russia into the status of one of the great
powers.
Peasant revolts intensified during the nineteenth
century, culminating with Alexander II abolishing Russian
serfdom in 1861. In the following decades,
reform efforts such as the Stolypin reforms of 1906–1914, the constitution of 1906,
and the State Duma (1906–1917)
attempted to open and liberalize the economy and political system, but the
emperors refused to relinquish autocratic rule and
resisted sharing their power. A combination of economic breakdown,
mismanagement over Russia's involvement in World War I,
and discontent with the autocratic system of government triggered the Russian Revolution in
1917. The end of the monarchy initially
brought into office a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists, but their
failed policies led to the October Revolution.
In 1922, Soviet Russia,
along with the Ukrainian
SSR, Byelorussian SSR,
and Transcaucasian SFSR signed
the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR,
officially merging all four republics to form the Soviet Union as a single
state. Between 1922 and 1991 the history of Russia essentially became the history of the Soviet Union. During
this period, the Soviet
Union was one of the victors in World War II after
recovering from a surprise invasion in 1941 by Nazi
Germany and its collaborators,
which had previously signed a non-aggression pact with
the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's network of satellite
states in Eastern Europe, which were brought into
its sphere
of influence in the closing stages of World War
II, helped the country become a superpower competing with fellow superpower
the United
States and other Western countries in the Cold
War.
By the mid-1980s, with the weaknesses of Soviet
economic and political structures becoming acute, Mikhail
Gorbachev embarked on major reforms, which
eventually led to the weakening of the communist party and dissolution of the Soviet Union,
leaving Russia again on its own and marking the start of the history of post-Soviet Russia.
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic renamed itself as the Russian Federation and
became the primary successor
state to the Soviet Union. Russia retained its nuclear
arsenal but lost its superpower status.
Scrapping the central
planning and state-ownership of property of
the Soviet era in the 1990s, new leaders, led by President Vladimir
Putin, took political and economic power after 2000 and
engaged in an assertive foreign policy.
Coupled with economic growth, Russia has since regained significant global
status as a world power. Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean
Peninsula led to economic sanctions imposed
by the United States and the European Union. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine led
to significantly expanded sanctions.
Under Putin's leadership, corruption in Russia is
rated as the worst in Europe, and Russia's human rights situation has
been increasingly criticized by international observers.
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 Kermek on the Taman
Peninsula). At Bogatyri/Sinyaya
balka, in a skull of Elasmotherium
caucasicum, which lived 1.5–1.2 million years ago, a stone tool was
found. 1.5-million-year-old 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.
Fossils
of Denisovans in Russia
date to about 110,000 years ago. 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. 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. 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.
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) 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".)
Remnants of these long-gone steppe cultures were discovered in the course of
the 20th century in such places as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim, and Pazyryk.
Antiquity
Further information: Scythia, Bosporan Kingdom, Ancient Greek colonies, Goths, Huns, Turkic migration, Khazaria, and History
of Siberia
In the
later part of the 8th century BCE, Greek merchants brought classical civilization to
the trade emporiums in Tanais and Phanagoria. 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, would launch 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, 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 north 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. Noted for their laws, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism, the Khazars were the main commercial link between the Baltic and the Muslim Abbasid empire centered in Baghdad. They were important allies of the Eastern Roman Empire, and waged a series of successful wars against the Arab Caliphates. In the 8th century, the Khazars embraced Judaism.
Early History
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. 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.
From the 7th century onwards, East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia and slowly conquered and assimilated the native Finnic and Baltic tribes, such as the Merya, the Muromians, and the Meshchera.
Kievan
Rus' (862–1240)
Scandinavian Norsemen,
known as Vikings in Western Europe and Varangians 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. 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. Their successors allegedly moved south and extended their
authority to Kiev, which had been previously dominated by the
Khazars.
Thus, the
first East Slavic state, Rus', emerged
in the 9th century along the Dnieper
River valley. A coordinated group of princely states with a common
interest in maintaining trade along the river routes, Kievan Rus'
controlled the
trade route for furs, wax, and slaves between Scandinavia and
the Byzantine Empire 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, which also
absorbed Greek Christian
influences in the course of the multiple campaigns to
loot Tsargrad, or Constantinople. 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.
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. Some
years later the first code of laws, Russkaya
Pravda, was introduced by Yaroslav
the Wise. From the onset, the Kievan princes followed the
Byzantine example and kept the Church dependent on them.
By the 11th
century, particularly during the reign of 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
Mongol
invasion and vassalage (1223–1480)
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. In 1237–1238 the Mongols burnt down the city of Vladimir (4
February 1238) and other major cities of northeast Russia, routed the
Russians at the Sit' River, and
then moved west into Poland and Hungary. By then
they had conquered most of the Russian principalities. Only the Novgorod
Republic escaped occupation and continued to flourish in the
orbit of the Hanseatic
League.
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,[45] the
new cities of Moscow, Tver and Nizhny
Novgorod 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, forces of the new khan Tokhtamysh and
his Rus' allies immediately sacked Moscow in 1382 as
punishment for resisting Mongol authority. Mongol domination of the Rus'
principalities, along with tax collection by various overlords such as
the Crimean Khans, continued into
the early 16th century, despite later claims of Muscovite bookmen that
the indecisive standoff at the Ugra in 1480 had
signified "the end of the Tatar yoke" and the "liberation of
Russia".
The Mongols
dominated the lower reaches of the Volga and held Russia in sway from their
western capital at Sarai, one
of the largest cities of the medieval world. The princes had to pay tribute to
the Mongols of the Golden Horde, commonly called Tatars; 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.[34]
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.
Grand
Duchy of Moscow (1283–1547)
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,[53] 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.
Ivan III, the Great
In the 15th century, the grand princes of Moscow
continued to consolidate Russian land to increase their population and wealth.
The most successful practitioner of this process was Ivan III, 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.
Through the
defections of some princes, border skirmishes, and a long war with the Novgorod
Republic, Ivan III was able to annex Novgorod and Tver. As a result,
the Grand Duchy of Moscow tripled
in size under his rule.[51] 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. 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.
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.
Grand Duchy of Moscow
(Territorial expansion between 1300 and 1547)
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. To achieve this aim, they
sponsored the construction of the Great
Abatis Belt and granted manors to nobles, who were obliged to
serve in the military. The manor system provided a basis for an emerging
cavalry-based army.
In this
way, internal consolidation accompanied outward expansion of the state. By the
16th century, the rulers of Moscow considered the entire Russian territory
their collective property. Various 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."
Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721)
Ivan IV, the
Terrible 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". He strengthened the position of
the monarch to an unprecedented degree, as he ruthlessly subordinated the
nobles to his will, exiling or executing many on the slightest
provocation. Nevertheless, Ivan is often seen as a farsighted statesman
who reformed Russia as he promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik
of 1550), established the first Russian feudal
representative body (Zemsky Sobor), curbed the
influence of the clergy, and introduced local self-management in rural
regions. Tsar also created the first regular army in Russia: Streltsy.
His
long Livonian War (1558–1583)
for control of the Baltic coast and access to the sea trade ultimately proved a
costly failure. Ivan managed to annex the Khanates
of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia. These
conquests complicated the migration of aggressive nomadic hordes from Asia to
Europe via the Volga and Urals. Through
these conquests, Russia acquired a significant Muslim Tatar population and
emerged as a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state.
Also around this period, the mercantile Stroganov family
established a firm foothold in the Urals and recruited Russian Cossacks to
colonize Siberia.
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. However,
in 1572 the Russians defeated the Crimean Tatar army at the Battle
of Molodi and Ivan abandoned the oprichnina.
At the end of Ivan IV's reign the Polish–Lithuanian and Swedish armies carried out a powerful intervention in Russia, devastating its northern and northwest regions.
Time of
Troubles 1606-1613
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, 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. 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 4
July [O.S. 24
June] 1610. As the result of the battle, the Seven
Boyars, a group of Russian nobles, deposed the tsar Vasily
Shuysky on 27 July [O.S. 17
July] 1610, and recognized the Polish prince Władysław IV Vasa as
the Tsar of Russia on 6 September [O.S. 27
August] 1610. The Poles occupied Moscow on 21
September [O.S. 11
September] 1610. Moscow revolted but riots there were brutally suppressed
and the city was set on fire.
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 4
November [O.S. 22
October] 1612.
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.
Accession of the Romanovs and early rule
Election of
16-year-old Mikhail
Romanov, 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.[51] 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.
Sobornoye
Ulozheniye 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.
Riots among peasants and citizens of Moscow at this time were endemic and included the Salt Riot (1648),[87] Copper Riot (1662), and the Moscow Uprising (1682). By far the greatest peasant uprising in 17th-century Europe erupted in 1667. As the free settlers of South Russia, the Cossacks, reacted against the growing centralization of the state, serfs escaped from their landlords and joined the rebels. The Cossack leader 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.
Russian Empire (1721–1917)
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.
Peter
the Great
Peter
the Great (Peter I, 1672–1725) brought centralized autocracy
into Russia and played a major role in bringing his country into the European
state system. Russia was now the largest country in the world, stretching
from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The vast majority of the land was
unoccupied, and travel was slow. Much of its expansion had taken place in the
17th century, culminating in the first Russian settlement of the Pacific in the
mid-17th century, the reconquest of Kiev, and the pacification of the Siberian
tribes. However, a population of only 14 million was stretched across this
vast landscape. With a short growing season, grain yields trailed behind those
in the West and potato farming was not yet widespread. As a result, the great
majority of the population workforce was occupied with agriculture. Russia
remained isolated from the sea trade and its internal trade, communication and
manufacturing were seasonally dependent.
Peter
reformed the 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.] 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.
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.
Russian victory at Battle of Poltava
By then,
the once powerful Persian Safavid
Empire to the south was heavily declining. Taking
advantage, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War (1722–1723), known as
"The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great" by Russian histographers,
in order to be the first Russian emperor to establish Russian influence in
the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region. After considerable success
and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern
mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over the territories to
Russia. However, by 12 years later, all the territories were ceded back to
Persia, which was now led by the charismatic military genius Nader
Shah, as part of the Treaty
of Resht and Treaty
of Ganja and the Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman
Empire, the common neighbouring rivalling enemy.
Peter the Great died in 1725, leaving an unsettled succession, but Russia had become a great power by the end of his reign. Peter I was succeeded by his second wife, Catherine I (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.
Catherine
the Great
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. Catherine enthusiastically supported the ideals of The
Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. She
patronized the arts, science and learning.[99] She
contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the
death of Peter the Great. Catherine promulgated the Charter to the Gentry reaffirming
rights and freedoms of the Russian nobility and abolishing mandatory state
service. She seized control of all the church lands, drastically reduced the
size of the monasteries, and put the surviving clergy on a tight budget.
Catherine
spent heavily to promote an expansive foreign policy. She extended Russian
political control over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with actions,
including the support of the Targowica Confederation. The cost
of her campaigns, plus the oppressive social system that required serfs to
spend almost all their time laboring on the land of their lords, provoked a
major peasant uprising in 1773. Inspired
by a Cossack named Yemelyan
Pugachev, with the emphatic cry of "Hang all the
landlords!", the rebels threatened to take Moscow until Catherine crushed
the rebellion. Like the other enlightened despots of Europe, Catherine made
certain of her own power and formed an alliance with the nobility.
Catherine
successfully waged two wars (1768–1774, 1787–1792) against the
decaying Ottoman Empire[102] and
advanced Russia's southern boundary to the Black Sea. 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 prevailed[103] during
the Partitions of Poland, pushing
the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe.
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.
Ruling
the Empire (1725–1825)
Russian
emperors of the 18th century professed the ideas of Enlightened absolutism.
However, Westernization and
modernization affected only the upper classes of Russian society, while the
bulk of the population, consisting of peasants, remained in a state of serfdom. Powerful
Russians resented their privileged positions and alien ideas. The backlash was
especially severe after the Napoleonic wars. It produced a powerful
anti-western campaign that "led to a wholesale purge of Western
specialists and their Russian followers in universities, schools, and
government service". The mid-18th century was marked by the emergence
of higher education in Russia. The first two major universities Saint Petersburg State
University and Moscow State University were
opened. Russian exploration of Siberia and the Far East continued. Great Northern Expedition laid
the foundation for the development of Alaska by the Russians. By the end of the
18th century, Alaska became a Russian colony (Russian
America). In the early 19th century, Alaska was used as a base
for the First Russian circumnavigation. In
1819–1821, Russian sailors discovered Antarctica during an Antarctic expedition.
Russia was in a continuous state of financial crisis. While revenue rose from 9 million rubles in 1724 to 40 million in 1794, expenses grew more rapidly, reaching 49 million in 1794. The budget was allocated 46% to the military, 20% to government economic activities, 12% to administration, and 9% for the Imperial Court in St. Petersburg. The deficit required borrowing, primarily from Amsterdam; 5% of the budget was allocated to debt payments. Paper money was issued to pay for expensive wars, thus causing inflation. 18th-century Russia remained "a poor, backward, overwhelmingly agricultural, and illiterate country".
Alexander
I and victory over Napoleon
By the time
of her death in 1796, Catherine's expansionist policy had made Russia a major
European power. 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.
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, 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". Schroeder says Poland was the root cause of the conflict
but Russia's refusal to support the Continental System was also a factor. The
entry of Russian troops into Paris 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.[111][112] Of a
total population of around 43 million people, Russia lost about 1.5
million in the year 1812; of these about 250,000 to 300,000 were soldiers and
the rest peasants and serfs.
After the
defeat of Napoleon, Alexander presided over the redrawing of the map of Europe
at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815),
which made him the king of Congress
Poland. He formed the Holy
Alliance with Austria and Prussia, to suppress revolutionary
movements in Europe that he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian
monarchs. He helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in
suppressing all national and liberal movements.[115]
Although the Russian Empire would play a leading role on behalf of conservatism as late as 1848, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant degree. As West European economic growth accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, sea trade and colonialism which had begun in the second half of the 18th century, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, undermining its ability to field strong armies.
Nicholas
I and the Decembrist Revolt
Russia's
great power status obscured the inefficiency of its government, the isolation
of its people, and its economic backwardness. Following the defeat of
Napoleon, Alexander I was willing to discuss constitutional reforms, and though
a few were introduced, no thoroughgoing changes were attempted.
The tsar
was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I (1825–1855),
who at the onset of his reign was confronted with an uprising. The background
of this revolt lay in the Napoleonic Wars, when a number of well-educated
Russian officers traveled in Europe in the course of the military campaigns,
where their exposure to the liberalism of Western Europe encouraged them to
seek change on their return. The result was the Decembrist
Revolt (December 1825), the work of a small circle of
liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brother as a
constitutional monarch. But the revolt was easily crushed, leading Nicholas to
turn away from liberal reforms and champion the reactionary doctrine "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and
Nationality".
In
1826–1828, Russia fought another war 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. 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.[120]
In 1831,
Nicholas crushed the November
Uprising in Poland. The Russian autocracy gave Polish
artisans and gentry reason to rebel in 1863 by assailing the national core
values of language, religion, and culture. The resulting January
Uprising was a massive Polish revolt, which also was
crushed. France, Britain and Austria tried to intervene in the crisis but were
unable. The Russian patriotic press used the Polish uprising to unify the
Russian nation, claiming it was Russia's God-given mission to save Poland and
the world. Poland was punished by losing its distinctive political and
judicial rights, with Russianization imposed on its schools and courts.
Russian Army
Tsar Nicholas I (reigned
1825–1855) lavished attention on his army. In a nation of 60–70 million
people, it included a million men. They had outdated equipment and tactics, but
the tsar took pride in its smartness on parade. The cavalry horses, for
example, were only trained in parade formations, and did poorly in battle. He
put generals in charge of most of his civilian agencies regardless of their
qualifications. The Army became the vehicle of upward social mobility for noble
youths from non-Russian areas, such as Poland, the Baltic, Finland and
Georgia. On the other hand, many miscreants, petty criminals and
undesirables were punished by local officials by enlisting them for life in the
Army. Village oligarchies controlled employment, conscription for the army, and
local patronage; they blocked reforms and sent the most unpromising peasant
youth to the army. The conscription system was unpopular with people, as was
the practice of forcing peasants to house the soldiers for six months of the
year.
Finally the Crimean War at the end of his reign showed the world that Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward, and administratively incompetent. Despite his ambitions toward the south and Ottoman Empire, Russia had not built its railroad network in that direction, and communications were poor. The bureaucracy was riddled with corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. The Navy was weak and technologically backward; the Army, although very large, was good only for parades, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, poor morale, and was even more out of touch with the latest technology. The nation's leaders realized that reforms were urgently needed.
Russian
society in the first half of 19th century
The early
19th century is the time when Russian literature becomes
an independent and very striking phenomenon.
Westernizers favored imitating Western Europe while others renounced the West and called for a return of the traditions of the past. The latter path was championed by Slavophiles, who heaped scorn on the "decadent" West. The Slavophiles were opponents of bureaucracy and preferred the collectivism of the medieval Russian mir, or village community, to the individualism of the West. A forerunner of the movement was Pyotr Chaadayev. He exposed the cultural isolation of Russia, from the perspective of Western Europe, in his Philosophical Letters of 1831. He cast doubt on the greatness of the Russian past, and ridiculed Orthodoxy for failing to provide a sound spiritual basis for the Russian mind. He called on Russia to emulate Western Europe, especially in rational and logical thought, its progressive spirit, its leadership in science, and indeed its leadership on the path to freedom. Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen were prominent Westernizers.
Crimean
War
Since the
war against Napoleon, Russia had become deeply involved in the affairs of
Europe, as part of the "Holy Alliance." The Holy Alliance was formed
to serve as the "policeman of Europe." However, to maintain the
alliance required large armies. Prussia, Austria, Britain and France (the other
members of the alliance) lacked large armies and needed Russia to supply the
required numbers, which fit the philosophy of Nicholas I. The Tsar sent his army into Hungary in
1849 at the request of the Austrian Empire and broke the revolt there, while
preventing its spread to Russian Poland. The Tsar cracked down on any
signs of internal unrest.
Russia expected that in exchange for supplying the troops to be the policeman of Europe, it should have a free hand in dealing with the decaying Ottoman Empire—the "sick man of Europe." In 1853, Russia invaded Ottoman-controlled areas leading to the Crimean War. Britain and France came to the rescue of the Ottomans. After a grueling war fought largely in Crimea, with very high death rates from disease, the allies won.
Historian Orlando Figes points to the
long-term damage Russia suffered:
The demilitarization of the Black Sea was a major blow to Russia, which was no longer able to protect its vulnerable southern coastal frontier against the British or any other fleet.... The destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol and other naval docks was a humiliation. No compulsory disarmament had ever been imposed on a great power previously.... The Allies did not really think that they were dealing with a European power in Russia. They regarded Russia as a semi-Asiatic state....In Russia itself, the Crimean defeat discredited the armed services and highlighted the need to modernize the countries defenses, not just in the strictly military sense, but also through the building of railways, industrialization, sound finances and so on....The image many Russians had built up of their country – the biggest, richest and most powerful in the world – had suddenly been shattered. Russia's backwardness had been exposed....The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia – not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways the accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.
Alexander
II and the abolition of serfdom
When Alexander II came to the
throne in 1855, the demand for reform was widespread. The most pressing problem
confronting the Government was serfdom. In 1859,
there were 23 million serfs (out of a total population of
67 million). In anticipation of civil unrest that could ultimately
foment a revolution, Alexander II chose to preemptively abolish serfdom with
the emancipation reform 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 the state
assistance. The Government issued special bonds to the landowners for the land
that they had lost, and collected a special tax from the peasants, called
redemption payments, at a rate of 5% of the total cost of allotted land yearly.
All the land turned over to the peasants was owned collectively by the mir,
the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised
the various holdings.
Alexander
was responsible for numerous reforms besides abolishing serfdom. He reorganized the judicial system, setting
up elected local judges, abolishing capital punishment, promoting local
self-government through the zemstvo system, imposing universal military
service, ending some of the privileges of the nobility, and promoting the
universities.
In foreign
policy, he sold Alaska to the United
States in 1867. He modernized the military command system. He sought peace, and
joined with Germany and Austria in the League of the Three Emperors that
stabilized the European situation. The Russian Empire expanded in Siberia and
in the Caucasus and made gains at the expense of China. Faced with an uprising
in Poland in 1863, he stripped that land of its separate Constitution and
incorporated it directly into Russia. To counter the rise of a revolutionary
and anarchistic movements, he sent thousands of dissidents into exile in
Siberia and was proposing additional parliamentary reforms when he was
assassinated in 1881.
In the late
1870s Russia and the Ottoman Empire again clashed in the Balkans. 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.
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. Russia's advance in Asia led to British fears that the Russians planned aggression against British India. Before 1815 London worried Napoleon would combine with Russia to do that in one mighty campaign. After 1815 London feared Russia alone would do it step by step. However historians report that the Russians never had any intention to move against India.
Russian society in the second half of 19th century
Russian writers of the
second half of the 19th century: Leo Tolstoy, Dmitry Grigorovich, Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander
Druzhinin, and Alexander
Ostrovsky
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. They became involved in the cause of reform and became
major political forces. Their path was facilitated by the previous actions of
the Decembrists, who revolted in 1825, and the financial and political hardship
caused by the Crimean War, which caused many Russians to lose faith in
political institutions. Russian nihilists created the manifesto «Catechism of a Revolutionary».
After the
Nihilists failed to convert the aristocracy and landed gentry to the cause of
reform, they turned to the peasants. Their campaign became known as
the Narodnk ("Populist")
movement. It was based on the belief that the common people had
the wisdom and peaceful ability to lead the nation. As the Narodnik movement
gained momentum, the government moved to extirpate it. In response to the
growing reaction of the government, a radical branch of the Narodniks advocated
and practiced terrorism. One after another, prominent officials were shot
or killed by bombs. This represented the ascendancy of anarchism in Russia as a
powerful revolutionary force. Finally, after several attempts, Alexander II was
assassinated by anarchists in 1881, on the very day he had approved a proposal
to call a representative assembly to consider new reforms in addition to the
abolition of serfdom designed to ameliorate revolutionary demands.
The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th is known as the Silver Age of Russian 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.
Autocracy
and reaction under Alexander III
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". 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. Under Pobedonostsev, revolutionaries were hunted down and a policy of Russification was carried out.
Nicholas
II and new revolutionary movement
Alexander
was succeeded by his son Nicholas II (1894–1918).
The Industrial Revolution, which began to exert a significant influence in
Russia, was meanwhile creating forces that would finally overthrow the tsar.
Politically, these opposition forces organized into three competing parties:
The liberal elements among the industrial capitalists and nobility, who wanted
peaceful social reform and a constitutional monarchy, founded the Constitutional Democratic party or Kadets in
1905. Followers of the Narodnik tradition established the Socialist-Revolutionary Party or Esers in
1901, advocating the distribution of land among the peasants who worked it. A
third radical group founded the Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party or RSDLP in 1898; this party was
the primary exponent of Marxism in
Russia. Gathering their support from the radical intellectuals and the urban
working class, they advocated complete social, economic and political
revolution.
In 1903,
the RSDLP split into two wings: the radical Bolsheviks, led
by Vladimir Lenin, and the
relatively moderate Mensheviks, led by
Yuli Martov. The Mensheviks believed that Russian socialism would grow
gradually and peacefully and that the tsar's regime should be succeeded by a
democratic republic. The Bolsheviks advocated the formation of a small elite of
professional revolutionaries, subject to strong party discipline, to act as the
vanguard of the proletariat in order to seize power by force.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia continued its expansion in the Far East; Chinese Manchuria was in the zone of Russian interests. Russia took an active part in the 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 unfavorably for Russia.
Revolution of 1905
The October Manifesto 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.
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.
In October 1905, Nicholas reluctantly issued the October Manifesto, which conceded the creation of a national Duma (legislature) to be called without delay. The right to vote was extended, and no law was to go into force without confirmation by the Duma. The moderate groups were satisfied; but the socialists rejected the concessions as insufficient and tried to organize new strikes. By the end of 1905, there was disunity among the reformers, and the tsar's position was strengthened.
World
War I
On 28 June
1914, Bosnian Serbs assassinated
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary. Austro-Hungary
issued an ultimatum to Serbia, which it considered a Russian client-state.
Russia had no treaty obligation to Serbia, and most Russian leaders wanted to
avoid war. But in that crisis they had the support of France, and believed that
supporting Serbia was important for Russia's credibility and for its goal of a
leadership role in the Balkans. Tsar Nicholas II mobilized Russian forces
on 30 July 1914 to defend Serbia. Christopher
Clark states: "The Russian general mobilization [of 30 July] was one
of the most momentous decisions of the July
crisis". Germany responded with its own mobilisation
and declaration of War on 1 August 1914. At the opening of hostilities, the
Russians took the offensive against both Germany and Austria-Hungary.
The very
large but poorly led and under-equipped Russian army fought tenaciously.
Casualties were enormous. In the 1914 campaign, Russian forces defeated
Austro-Hungarian forces in the Battle
of Galicia. The success of the Russian army forced the German army
to withdraw troops from the western front to the Russian front. However,
defeats in Poland by the Central Powers in the 1915 campaign, led to a major
retreat of the Russian army. In 1916, the Russians again dealt a powerful blow
to the Austrians during the Brusilov offensive.
By 1915, morale was worsening. Many recruits were sent to the front unarmed. Nevertheless, the Russian army fought on, and tied down large numbers of Germans and Austrians. When the home-front showed an occasional surge of patriotism, the tsar and his entourage failed to exploit it for military benefit. The Russian army neglected to rally the ethnic and religious minorities that were hostile to Austria, such as Poles. The tsar refused to cooperate with the national legislature, the Duma, and listened less to experts than to his wife, who was in thrall to her chief advisor, the holy man Grigori Rasputin. More than two million refugees fled. Repeated military failures and bureaucratic ineptitude soon turned large segments of the population against the government. The German and Ottoman fleets prevented Russia from importing urgently needed supplies through the Baltic and Black seas. By mid-1915 the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties kept occurring, and inflation was mounting. Strikes increased among factory workers, and the peasants, who wanted land reforms, were restless. Meanwhile, elite distrust of the regime was deepened by reports that Rasputin was gaining influence; his assassination in late 1916 ended the scandal but did not restore the autocracy's prestige.
Russian Civil War (1917–1922)
Vladimir Lenin,
founder of the Soviet Union and
the leader of the Bolshevik party.
Leon Trotsky,
founder of the Red Army and
a key figure in the October Revolution.
In late
February (3 March 1917), a strike occurred in a factory in the capital Petrograd (Saint
Petersburg). On 23 February (8 March) 1917, thousands of female textile workers
walked out of their factories protesting the lack of food and calling on other
workers to join them. Within days, nearly all the workers in the city were
idle, and street fighting broke out. The tsar ordered the Duma to disband,
ordered strikers to return to work, and ordered troops to shoot at
demonstrators in the streets. His orders triggered the February Revolution,
especially when soldiers sided with the strikers. On 2 March, Nicholas II
abdicated.
To fill the
vacuum of authority, the Duma declared a Provisional Government, headed
by Prince Lvov, which was
collectively known as the Russian
Republic. 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.
The dissolution of
the Constituent Assembly 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.
The German
government provided over 40 million gold marks to subsidize Bolshevik
publications and activities subversive of the tsarist government, especially
focusing on disgruntled soldiers and workers. In April 1917 Germany
provided a special sealed train to carry Vladimir
Lenin back to Russia from his exile in Switzerland. After many
behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the soviets seized control of the government in
November 1917 and drove Kerensky and his moderate provisional government into
exile, in the events that would become known as the October Revolution.
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.
Russian Civil War in the
European part of Russia
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
was annexed by Romania), and Poland (with whom they had fought the Polish–Soviet War). Finland
also annexed the region
Pechenga of the Russian Kola
Peninsula; Soviet Russia and allied Soviet republics conceded the
parts of its territory to Estonia (Petseri
County and 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. Hundreds
of thousands of Jews were left homeless and tens of thousands became victims of
serious illness. These massacres are now referred to as the White Terror (Russia).
Estimates
for the total number of people killed during the Red
Terror carried out by the Bolsheviks vary widely. One
source asserts that the total number of victims could be 1.3
million, whereas others give estimates ranging from 10,000 in the initial
period of repression to 140,000 and an estimate of 28,000 executions
per year from December 1917 to February 1922. The most reliable
estimations for the total number of killings put the number at about
100,000, whereas others suggest a figure of 200,000.
The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded and machines damaged. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war. Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia, many were evacuated from Crimea in the 1920, some through the Far East, others west into the newly independent Baltic countries. These émigrés included a large percentage of the educated and skilled population.
Soviet Union (1922–1991)
The Soviet
Union, established in December 1922 by the leaders of the Russian Communist
Party, 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.
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.
War
Communism and the New Economic Policy
The period
from the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1921 is known
as the period of war
communism. Land, all industry, and small businesses
were nationalized, and the money
economy was restricted. Strong opposition soon developed. The peasants
wanted cash payments for their products and resented having to surrender their
surplus grain to the government as a part of its civil war policies. Confronted
with peasant opposition, Lenin began a strategic retreat from war communism
known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). The
peasants were freed from wholesale levies of grain and allowed to sell their
surplus produce in the open market. Commerce was stimulated by permitting
private retail trading. The state continued to be responsible for banking,
transportation, heavy industry, and public utilities.
Although the left opposition among the Communists criticized the rich peasants, or kulaks, who benefited from the NEP, the program proved highly beneficial and the economy revived. The NEP would later come under increasing opposition from within the party following Lenin's death in early 1924.
Changes to Russian society
Soviet poster from 1932
symbolizing the reform of "old ways of life", dedicated to liberation
of women from traditional roles
As the
Russian Empire included during this period not only the region of Russia, but
also today's territories of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia,
Latvia, Moldavia and the Caucasian and Central Asian countries, it is possible
to examine the firm formation process in all those regions. One of the main
determinants of firm creation for given regions of Russian Empire might be
urban demand of goods and supply of industrial and organizational skill.
While the
Russian economy was being transformed, the social life of the people underwent
equally drastic changes. The Family Code of 1918 granted women equal status to
men, and permitted a couple to take either the husband or wife's name. Divorce no
longer required court procedure, and to make women completely free of the
responsibilities of childbearing, abortion was made legal as early as
1920. As a side effect, the emancipation of women increased the labor
market. Girls were encouraged to secure an education and pursue a career.
Communal nurseries were set up for child care, and efforts were made to shift
the center of people's social life from the home to educational and
recreational groups, the soviet clubs.
The Soviet
government pursued a policy of eliminating illiteracy (Likbez). After
industrialization, massive urbanization began.
In the field of national policy in the 1920s, the Korenizatsiya was
carried out. However, from the mid-30s, the Stalinist government returned to
the tsarist policy of Russification of
the outskirts. In particular, the languages of all the nations of the USSR were
translated into the Cyrillic alphabet Cyrillization.
Industrialization and
collectivization
The years
from 1929 to 1939 comprised a tumultuous decade in Soviet history—a period of
massive industrialization and internal struggles as Joseph
Stalin established near total control over Soviet society,
wielding virtually unrestrained power. Following Lenin's death Stalin wrestled
to gain control of the Soviet Union with rival factions in the Politburo,
especially Leon Trotsky's. By 1928, with
the Trotskyists either exiled
or rendered powerless, Stalin was ready to put a radical program of
industrialization into action.
The Soviet famine of 1932–1933, 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). By a decree
of February 1930, about one million individual peasants (kulaks) were
forced off their land. Many peasants strongly opposed regimentation by the
state, often slaughtering their herds when faced with the loss of their land.
In some sections they revolted, and countless peasants deemed
"kulaks" by the authorities were executed. The combination of
bad weather, deficiencies of the hastily established collective farms, and
massive confiscation of grain precipitated a serious famine, and several
million peasants 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.
Stalinist Repression
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. 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. An
estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system, and perhaps
another 15 million had experience of some other form of forced labor.[198][199]
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.
Soviet
Union on the international stage
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. The
Soviets supported the republicans of Spain who struggled against fascist German
and Italian troops in the Spanish
Civil War. In 1938–1939, the Soviet Union successfully fought
against Imperial Japan in the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts in
the Russian Far East, which led
to Soviet-Japanese neutrality and
the tense border peace that lasted until August 1945.
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. Following the pact, the USSR normalized relations with Nazi Germany and resumed Soviet–German trade.
World
War II
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. As a result, the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet republics' western
borders were moved westward, and the new Soviet western border was drawn close
to the original Curzon line. In the meantime
negotiations with Finland over a Soviet-proposed land swap that would redraw
the Soviet-Finnish border further away from Leningrad failed,
and in December 1939 the USSR invaded Finland, beginning a campaign known as
the Winter War (1939–1940),
with the goal of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union. The war took a
heavy death toll on the Red
Army and the Soviets failed to conquer Finland, but forced Finland to sign
the Moscow Peace Treaty and
cede the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga
Karelia. In summer 1940 the USSR issued an 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).
Soviet soldiers during
the Battle
of Stalingrad, 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, 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. 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. 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. 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, 1945. The war with
Germany thus ended triumphantly for the Soviet Union. capturing
Berlin in May
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.
Although the Soviet Union was victorious in World War II, the war resulted in around 26–27 million Soviet deaths (estimates vary) and had devastated the Soviet economy in the struggle. Some 70,000 settlements were destroyed. The occupied territories suffered from the ravages of German occupation and deportations of slave labor by Germany. Thirteen million Soviet citizens became victims of the repressive policies of Germany and its allies in occupied territories, where people died because of mass murders, famine, absence of medical aid and slave labor. 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. During the occupation, the Leningrad region lost around a quarter of its population, Soviet Belarus lost from a quarter to a third of its population, and 3.6 million Soviet prisoners of war (of 5.5 million) died in German camps.
Cold
War
Collaboration
among the major Allies had won the war and was supposed to serve as the basis
for postwar reconstruction and security. USSR became one of the founders of
the UN and
a permanent
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. Stalin's goal was to establish a buffer zone of states
between Germany and the Soviet Union. Truman charged that Stalin had
betrayed the Yalta agreement. With Eastern Europe under Red Army
occupation, Stalin was also biding his time, as his own atomic bomb project was
steadily and secretly progressing. In April 1949 the United States
sponsored the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
a mutual defense pact. The Soviet Union established an Eastern counterpart to
NATO in 1955, dubbed the Warsaw
Pact. The division of Europe into Western and Soviet blocks later took on
a more global character, especially after 1949, when the U.S. nuclear monopoly
ended with the testing of 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, 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.
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.
De-Stalinization
and the 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.
President Jimmy Carter 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. Brezhnev emphasized heavy
industry, instituted the Soviet economic reform of 1965, and
also attempted to ease relationships with the United States. Soviet
science and industry peaked in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. The world's
first nuclear power plant was
established in 1954 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.[252] 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.
One of the
greatest strengths of Soviet economy was its vast supplies of oil and gas;
world oil prices quadrupled in 1973–1974, and rose again in 1979–1981, making
the energy sector the chief driver of the Soviet economy, and was used to cover
multiple weaknesses. At one point, Soviet Premier Alexei
Kosygin told the head of oil and gas production,
"things are bad with bread. Give me 3 million tons [of oil] over the
plan."
Former
prime minister Yegor Gaidar, an economist
looking back three decades, in 2007 wrote:
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.
Soviet
space program
The Soviet space program, founded by Sergey Korolev, was especially successful. On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik. On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in the Soviet spaceship Vostok 1. Other achievements of Russian space program include: the first photo of the far side of the Moon; exploration of Venus; the first spacewalk by Alexei Leonov; first female spaceflight by Valentina Tereshkova. In 1970 and 1973, the world's first planetary rovers were sent to the moon: Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2. More recently, the Soviet Union produced the world's first space station, Salyut, which in 1986 was replaced by Mir, the first consistently inhabited long-term space station, that served from 1986 to 2001.
Perestroika
and breakup of the Union
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. However, Gorbachev's social reforms led to unintended consequences. His policy of glasnost facilitated public access to information after decades of government repression, and social problems received wider public attention, undermining the Communist Party's authority. Glasnost allowed ethnic and nationalist disaffection to reach the surface, and many constituent republics, especially the Baltic republics, Georgian SSR and Moldavian SSR, sought greater autonomy, which Moscow was unwilling to provide. In the revolutions of 1989 the USSR lost its allies in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev's attempts at economic reform were not sufficient, and the Soviet government left intact most of the fundamental elements of communist economy. Suffering from low pricing of petroleum and natural gas, the ongoing 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.
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met 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. Squeezed out of Union politics by Gorbachev in 1987, Yeltsin, who represented himself as a committed democrat, presented a significant opposition to Gorbachev's authority.[ In a remarkable reversal of fortunes, he gained election as chairman of the Russian republic's new Supreme Soviet in May 1990. The following month, he secured legislation giving Russian laws priority over Soviet laws and withholding two-thirds of the budget. 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. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was banned in Russia in 1991–1992, 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 market reforms, the economic situation continued to deteriorate. By December 1991, the shortages had resulted in the introduction of food rationing in Moscow and Saint Petersburg for the first time since World War II. Russia received humanitarian food aid from abroad. After the Belavezha Accords, the Supreme Soviet of Russia withdrew Russia from the Soviet Union on 12 December. The Soviet Union officially ended on 25 December 1991, and the Russian Federation (formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) took power on 26 December. The Russian government lifted price control in January 1992. Prices rose dramatically, but shortages disappeared.
Russian Federation (1991–present)
Liberal reforms of the 1990s
Although Yeltsin came to power on a wave of optimism, he never recovered his popularity after endorsing Yegor Gaidar's "shock therapy" 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. Hyperinflation hit the ruble, due to monetary overhang from the days of the planned economy.
Boris
Yeltsin first president of
Russian Federation in 1991
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.
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. 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. 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.
Era of Putin
2011–2013 Russian protests against
the conduct of Russia's parliamentary elections Vladimir Putin 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. The Second Chechen war ended with the victory
of Russia. After the 11 September terrorist attacks, there was a rapprochement
between Russia and the United States. Putin created a system of guided
democracy in Russia by subjugating parliament, suppressing
independent media and placing major oil and gas companies under state control.
International
observers were alarmed by moves in late 2004 to further tighten the
presidency's control over parliament, civil society, and regional
officeholders.
In
2008, Dmitri Medvedev, Putin's head of
staff, was elected President. In 2008 Russia invaded Georgia.
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. In 2012, according to another pre-election
agreement, a "castling" took place; Vladimir 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.
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. 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.
In 2014,
following a controversial referendum, in which
separation was favored by a large majority of voters according to official
results, the Russian leadership announced the accession of Crimea into the
Russian Federation, thus starting the Russo-Ukrainian War. Following
Russia's annexation
of Crimea and alleged Russian interference in the war in eastern Ukraine, international
sanctions were imposed on Russia.
In 2014,
Russia annexed Crimea.
In 2018,
Vladimir Putin was re-elected for a fourth presidential term.
In 2022,
Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine, which
was denounced by NATO and the European
Union. Due to high oil prices, from 2000 to 2008, Russia's GDP at PPP
doubled. Although high oil prices and a relatively cheap ruble initially
drove this growth, since 2003 consumer demand and, more recently, investment
have played a significant role. Russia is well ahead of most other
resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of
education, science, and industry. Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in
Sochi.
Since
2015, Russia has been conducting military
intervention in Syria in support of the Bashar al-Assad They aided Ukraine
and imposed massive International
sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. A leading banker in Moscow
said the damage might take a decade to recover, as half of its international
trade has been lost. Despite international opposition, Russia officially
annexed the Donetsk People's
Republic and
the Luhansk People's
Republic,
along with most ofthe Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts on 30
September. According to the United Nations, Russia has committed war crimes during the invasion. On 23 June 2023, the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary
organization led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, rebelled against the
government. As of August 2023, the total number of Russian and Ukrainian
soldiers killed or wounded during the Russian invasion
was 500,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia
In 2023 Russia’s Nominal GDP was $1.862 trillion. Their population was 144,444,359, Per Capita GDP was $13,006. Trade Surplus was $140 billion.
Moscow is spending heavily on manufacturing, pouring cash into the defense sector to ramp up military production following its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The sector's growth in the almost two years since then has been largely predicated on domestic demand. They make their own cars.
In 2021, Russia's main trade partner was China, as the volume of export and import trade between the two countries reached nearly $141 billion U.S. dollars. China was the country's both leading import origin and export destination. Other trading partners include Germany, Netherlands, Belarus, US, Turkey, Italy, S Korea, UK, Kazakhstan and Poland. Primary exports include oil, metals, machinery, chemicals, and forestry products. Principal imports include machinery and foods.
Comments
Russia has a history of expansion and contraction due to over-extension. The Eastern European countries it absorbed after World War II became a burden and they contracted back to pre-WW2 borders, but they gave away Ukraine, their bread-basket and warm weather port. Now Putin wants Ukraine back to be a buffer to NATO. Kiev was the first Capital of Russia when the Rus established their rule in Russia in the 10th Century AD.
It is not surprising that Russia is now aligned with China, Iran, Syria and North Korea. They have isolated themselves. If Trump wins in 2024, Russia is likely to end the war in Ukraine and get ready to experience a drop in oil revenue as Trump increases US oil and gas production.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea
Party Leader
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