In the 14th and 15th centuries a powerful Russian state began to grow around Moscow. It gradually expanded west and southwest toward the Dnieper River, north to the Arctic Ocean, and east to the Ural Mountains. By the 18th century Russia had gained full control over a number of major rivers, giving it access to the Baltic and Black seas. These conquests had a huge impact on the country's trade and economic development. The Russian Empire continued to grow. At its greatest extent, in 1914 before World War I (1914-1918), the empire included more than 20 million sq km (8 million sq mi), nearly one-sixth of the land area of the Earth.The empire's heartland centered on Moscow and was the original homeland of the Great Russians, the chief ethnic component of the Russian Empire. To the east of the empire lay Siberia, which by 1914 had an overwhelmingly Russian population. The western borderlands were home to Ukrainians and Belarusians; the empire considered these Orthodox Slavs to be merely branches of the Russian people who spoke somewhat strange, regional dialects. In the northwest were Finland and the Baltic provinces (now Latvia and Estonia); their Protestant populations were very different from the Russians, both culturally and linguistically. Most of Poland, along with Lithuania, was acquired in the late 18th century. Transcaucasia, with its partly Muslim population, was absorbed in the early 19th century; most of Central Asia, almost entirely Muslim, was absorbed a generation later.
The Russian Empire fell in 1917. Most of its territory was inherited by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union), a Communist state that existed until 1991. When the USSR collapsed, the Russian Federation became its principal successor state.
A. The Territorial Zones
Russian history has been strongly influenced by the country's natural environment. European Russia's relatively flat terrain and dense network of navigable rivers facilitated communications, economic development, and political unity across the region.The frozen swamplands and dense forests of northern European Russia were unsuitable for agriculture, as they are today; however, fur pelts from the region's enormous animal population were important Russian exports that were crucial to the state treasury until the 18th century. All the medieval Russian settlements were located in a central zone of European Russia, an area with thick forests and some agricultural land. Most of the area had relatively poor soils. Therefore, this zone could not sustain a very large population until industrial development began in the 19th and 20th centuries. The region's forests offered security to the neighboring agricultural settlements, which were periodically raided by the tribes of fierce nomadic horsemen that dominated the vast grasslands to the south.
For more than 1,000 years before 1600 these warring horsemen were more formidable soldiers than the armies of the settled agricultural communities were. It was only with the creation of a modern, disciplined army, equipped with muskets and artillery, that the Russians were able to turn the tables on the nomads. With the new army, Russians colonized the steppe and united the entire vast plain between the Baltic and Black seas. Russia's modern identity as a powerful military state with a large population did not emerge until this process was completed in the 18th century. Indeed, even as late as the mid-18th century Russia's population was smaller than that of France.
B. Origins of the Russian People
During the pre-Christian era the vast territory that became Russia was sparsely inhabited by tribal peoples, many of whom were described by ancient Greek and Roman writers. The largely unknown north, a region of extensive forests, was inhabited by tribes later known collectively as Slavs. These Slavs were the ancestors of the modern Russian people. Far more important to the ancient Greeks and Romans were southern peoples in Scythia, an indeterminate region that included the greater part of southeastern Europe and Central Asia. Portions of this region were occupied by a succession of horse-riding nomadic peoples, including, chronologically, the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians. In these early times, Greek traders and colonists established many trading posts and settlements, particularly along the north coast of the Black Sea and in Crimea.
Large stretches of open plain facilitated the immigration of outside peoples. Such migrations resulted in successive invasions, the establishment of settlements, and the assimilation of people who spoke different languages. Thus, in the early centuries of the Christian era, Germanic Goths displaced the Asian peoples of Scythia and established an Ostrogothic (eastern Goth) kingdom on the Black Sea. In the 4th century nomadic Huns invaded from Asia and conquered the Ostrogoths. The Huns held the territory constituting present-day Ukraine and most of present-day Moldova until their defeat in Western Europe in the mid-5th century. Later came the Mongolian Avars, followed by the nomadic Asian Magyars, and then the Turkic Khazars, who remained influential until about the mid-10th century.
Meanwhile, during this long period of successive invasions, the Slavic tribes in the area northeast of the Carpathian Mountains had begun a series of migratory movements. As these migrations took place, the western tribes in the region eventually evolved as the Moravians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks; the southern tribes as the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and a Slavic people who were conquered by but soon assimilated the Turkic Bulgars; and the eastern tribes as a people who later gave rise to the modern Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. The East Slavs became renowned traders. The systems of rivers and waterways extending through the territory from the Valday Hills facilitated the establishment of Slav trading posts, notably the cities of Kyiv (Kiev), which is the present-day capital of Ukraine, and Novgorod, directly north of Kyiv. Along these waterways the Slavs transported goods between the Baltic and Black seas.
C. The House of Ryurik
In the 9th century Scandinavian Vikings invaded and settled a number of regions in northern Europe, from Russia in the east to Ireland in the west. From these eastward-moving Scandinavians, called Varangians or Rus, came the name Rossiya, or Russia, meaning "land of the Rus." (Scholars debate the origin of the word Rus, which also may have been derived from ruotsi, the Finnish name for the Swedes, or from Rukhs-As, the name of an Alanic tribe in southern Russia.)Scandinavian princes from the house of Ryurik organized the East Slavs into a single state. According to tradition recorded in the Primary Chronicle, the chief East Slavic source of much of early Russian history, internal dissension and feuds among the East Slavs around Novgorod became so violent that the people voluntarily chose a Scandinavian chief, Ryurik, to rule over them in AD 862. In fact, Ryurik is a semimythical figure and his precise relationship with subsequent princely rulers of Rus is debated.
C.1. Vladimir the Great: Conversion to Orthodoxy
In 882 Kyiv and Novgorod were united as the state of Kievan Rus under a single ruler from the house of Ryurik. The East Slavs were pagans who worshiped the Earth's natural forces. By the early 10th century, however, Kievan Rus had established close commercial and cultural ties with the Byzantine Empire, the center of Orthodox Christianity. In 980 Vladimir I (whose name is spelled Volodymyr in Ukrainian) became ruler; eight years later he converted to Orthodox Christianity and made Orthodoxy (see Orthodox Church) the official religion of Kievan Rus. The Slavic church had considerable autonomy, and services were held in a Slavic liturgical language known as Old Church Slavonic rather than in the Greek language of the Byzantine Empire. In matters of doctrine, however, the church obeyed the rulings of the patriarch of Constantinople in the Byzantine capital. Monasteries and churches were built in Byzantine style, and Byzantine culture became the predominant influence in fields such as art, architecture, and music. Vladimir's choice of Orthodox Christianity, rather than the Latin church (Roman Catholicism) or Islam, had an important influence on the future of Russia. Orthodoxy played a crucial role in shaping the values and the separate identity of the East Slavs. As Christians, they belonged unequivocally to Europe rather than to one of the other great regional civilizations of the world. As Orthodox, particularly after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, they were powerful but peripheral members of the European Christian community.
C.2. Yaroslav the Wise
Kievan Rus achieved its greatest power and splendor under Yaroslav the Wise in the 11th century. Yaroslav made Kyiv a great city and built magnificent buildings, including the notable Cathedral of Saint Sophia (also known as the Hagia Sophia of Kyiv). Yaroslav did much to develop Rus education and culture. He also compiled the first Russian law code, the so-called Russkaya Pravda (Russian Justice).
D. The Decline of Kievan Rus
After Yaroslav's death in 1054, Kievan Rus declined. The state's prosperity was highly dependent on its control of the major trade routes between northern Europe and the Byzantine Empire and the Middle East. In the 11th and 12th centuries the Turkic Polovtsy (Cuman) tribe conquered and dominated the southeastern steppe, threatening the Kievan Rus trade routes. Matters worsened after the Crusaders sacked Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in 1204. The huge but sparsely populated lands between the Baltic and Black seas were difficult to hold together as a single state. Furthermore, because Kievan Rus territories were divided among a ruler's heirs, political power became fragmented and constant battles ensued between the various branches of the princely house.
Yaroslav's grandson, Vladimir II Monomakh, made the final attempt to unite Kievan Rus, but after his death in 1125 the fragmentation continued. Other Kievan Rus principalities challenged Kyiv's supremacy, particularly Galicia and Volhynia to the west; Chernigov, Novgorod-Severskiy, and Vladimir-Suzdal' to the northwest; Polotsk and Smolensk to the north; and Novgorod, by far the largest, in the far north.
Novgorod rose to a dominant position as a flourishing commercial state. In the 13th century the city became the site of a major factory of the Hanseatic League, a commercial confederation of European city-states. Kyiv also lost its importance as the great national and cultural center as Suzdal', Vladimir, and ultimately Moscow, surpassed it. The East Slavic lands became a loose federation of small principalities, held together by common language, religion, traditions, and customs. Although ruled by members of the house of Ryurik, these principalities were often at war with one another. Plundering along the frontiers also caused difficulties. In the west the Poles, Lithuanians, and Teutonic Knights encroached on East Slavic territory; the Polovtsy repeatedly raided the south. While all these posed significant threats to Kievan Rus, in the 13th century an even greater danger came from East Asia.
E. The Mongol Invasion
In 1223 the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan invaded the southeast. The Polovtsy sent for help from the Russian princes, who came to their aid against this common, greater foe. In the Battle of the Kalka River (now Kal'mius River), the Polovtsy-Russian coalition was routed. After his victory, however, the Mongol khan recalled his armies to Asia and they retreated as rapidly as they had come. For 14 years, the Mongols made no move in the direction of Russia. Then, in 1237, Genghis Khan's grandson Batu Khan led an army back to eastern Russia. On their northward march, Batu's forces captured and destroyed most of the major cities in the Vladimir-Suzdal' region.
The difficult terrain of the forests and swamps south of Novgorod halted the Mongol sweep, and Batu Khan was forced to change the direction of his march, moving to the southwest. Kyiv desperately tried to defend itself, but the city was destroyed by Batu's army in 1240. The invaders came to be generally known in Russia as the Tatars, after the Turkic-speaking people who comprised a prominent part of the Mongol forces. The Mongols ravaged Poland and Hungary and progressed as far east as Moravia. In 1242 Batu established his capital at Sarai on the lower Volga (near modern Volgograd) and founded the khanate known as the Golden Horde, which was virtually independent of the Mongol Empire.
E.1. Ethnic Changes
In addition to the havoc it created in Russia at the time, the Mongol invasion had a long-term influence on later Russian history. Mongol rule increased Russia's isolation from Europe, and Tatar customs, laws, and government also had an influence on Russia. During the Mongol era the East Slavs evolved into three distinct groups. One group, culturally influenced by the Poles and Lithuanians, eventually became known as White Russians, or Belorussians (Belarusians). A second group, formed of the Slavic population from Kyiv and adjacent areas, became known as Little Russians (Malorussians) and later as Ukrainians. Those who lived in the northeast became known as the Great Russians.
E.2. Tribute to the Khanate
Although the Mongols did not attack Novgorod, northwestern Russia was menaced by invaders from the west during the same time period. The Swedes descended from the Baltic and sought to penetrate the territories of Novgorod. In 1240 a Swedish army landed on the banks of the Neva River, and Prince Alexander of Novgorod led a Russian army to meet them. The prince so completely defeated the Swedes that he became known as Alexander Nevsky, meaning "Alexander of the Neva." Two years later the Teutonic Knights, a religious military order of Germans, advanced from the west. Alexander led his troops to meet the Germans, crossing the frozen Lake Peipus, and routed them. Faced with continuing danger in the west and unwilling to risk Tatar invasion from the south, Alexander adopted a policy of loyal submission to the Golden Horde and conciliation with the khan. In accordance with Tatar wishes, Alexander journeyed to Sarai to secure permission to rule from the khan. The Tatars made Alexander ruler of Kyiv, Vladimir, and Novgorod. Most of the other Russian princes followed Alexander's example, paying tribute and considering themselves vassals of the khan.
F. The Growing Importance of Moscow
The town of Moscow, in the principality of Vladimir, occupied a favorable geographical position in the center of Russia and on the principal trade routes. In 1263 Alexander Nevsky gave Moscow to his youngest son, Daniel. Moscow, also known as Muscovy, was made a separate principality in 1301. Daniel was first in a line of powerful Muscovite princes, astute rulers who worked closely with the khans. As Mongol favorites they gradually extended their lands by annexing surrounding territories, retaining the city of Moscow as their capital. In 1328 the khan named Daniel's son, Ivan I, grand prince of Muscovy. During Ivan's reign the head of the Russian church, then called the metropolitan, moved from the town of Vladimir to Moscow. With the sanction of the church, the Muscovite grand princes began to organize a new Russian state with themselves as rulers.Meanwhile, internal dissension rocked the Golden Horde. In the mid-14th century, a series of ineffectual rulers gained control of the khanate and the turmoil weakened their ability to collect tribute from the Russian princes. During the reign of Grand Prince Dmitry (1359-1389), Mamay Khan launched a military expedition to collect unpaid taxes. Dmitry and his army defeated Mamay's troops in 1380 at the Battle of Kulikovo, although Mamay's successor sacked Moscow two years later.
Not until the reign of Ivan III Vasilyevich (1462-1505), or Ivan the Great, did Muscovy throw off all control by the Golden Horde and establish itself as the dominant power in northern Russia. In 1478 Muscovy annexed Novgorod, with its huge territories and lucrative fur trade. Two years later Muscovy stopped paying tribute to the Golden Horde, which ultimately disintegrated into a number of separate, weaker khanates. Tver', Muscovy's traditional regional rival, was finally absorbed in 1485. After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the Russian rulers began calling themselves tsars, a term Russians had previously used to describe the Byzantine emperor and the Tatar khan. However, the term tsar did not become the official title of the Russian ruler until the 16th century.
Muscovy's increasing power and its position as the last surviving Orthodox state broadened its rulers' horizons and ambitions. Internally, the power of the tsar grew at the expense of the boyars (Russian nobles). The great increase in the state's territory encouraged the development of a small but effective Muscovite bureaucracy that was loyal to the tsars alone. The tsars confiscated privately held lands in the conquered principalities and gave these estates to calvarymen who pledged continual military service in return. In the 16th century the streltsy, a regular infantry corps armed with firearms, was formed. The tsars now had an army of their own and were no longer dependent on the military forces raised by the boyars.
F.1. Ivan the Terrible
These practices continued during the reign of Ivan IV Vasilyevich, also known as Ivan the Terrible, who became grand prince of Muscovy in 1533. Ivan conquered and absorbed the Tatar khanates of Kazan' and Astrakhan' in the 1550s. During his reign Russia also began the conquest of Siberia, originally conducted by Yermak, a Cossack adventurer. Russia also established commercial contacts with England through the perilous White Sea trade route. Ivan IV imported foreign technical and professional experts, a practice continued by subsequent Russian monarchs. However, the tsar's attempt to seize Livonia and establish Russian control over part of the Baltic coastline failed in the face of Polish and Swedish resistance, and also seriously overstrained Russian resources. Furthermore, Ivan IV became mentally unstable; his increasingly maniacal domestic policies resulted in the murder of part of the aristocratic elite and the devastation of a number of regions. During Ivan's reign the Crimean Tatars began to make destructive raids into Russian territory in search of slaves, for whom there was an insatiable market in the Middle East. All of these factors worsened the acute economic crisis that Ivan IV bequeathed to his heirs upon his death in 1584.Ivan's son, Fyodor I, was sickly and feeble-minded, and his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, dominated the court during Fyodor's reign. Fyodor died without an heir in 1598, and the Assembly of the Land (zemsky sobor)—a council that represented the aristocracy, chief towns, and the church—met to choose his successor. The assembly settled on Boris Godunov.
F.2. Time of Troubles
 |
Boris Godunov never firmly established his legitimate hold on power, partly because he was suspected of murdering Dmitry Ivanovich, Fyodor's younger brother and last male blood relative. Furthermore, Boris was unpopular among the members of the aristocracy, who resented his power, and among the peasantry, who were heavily taxed and whose mobility he had severely restricted.The institution of serfdom (a system in which an agricultural worker is bound to the land and the landowner) had gradually begun to take hold in Russia during the 16th century. For some time the impoverished conditions of the peasants had induced many to seek refuge in the vast steppes to the south. Independent communities of people who became known as Cossacks developed and grew near the major rivers of the steppes. Some of the Cossacks were farmers, but many were also warriors. Discontent increased as a result of a severe famine that began in 1601. In 1604 False Dmitry, a pretender claiming to be Ivan IV's son and the rightful heir to the throne, invaded Russia with Polish troops. False Dmitry's advance on Moscow received the overwhelming support of the peasants and Cossacks in the western provinces. Boris died unexpectedly in April 1605, and in June False Dmitry took Moscow. He was a conscientious and able ruler, but he displeased the boyars, who had hoped for a revival of their power. They revolted, murdered False Dmitry, and elevated the boyar Vasily Shuysky to the throne. This move was opposed by the Cossacks and rebellious peasants, who chafed under oppressive serf laws and feared the severity of boyar rule. They rose in southern Russia and joined another pretender, the second False Dmitry, who was already advancing on Moscow. At the same time, Zygmunt III, king of Poland, invaded from the west. After a long period of fighting and intrigue, Vasily was deposed in 1610, and the throne was left vacant. Some boyars advanced the candidacy of Wladyslaw, the son of Zygmunt, and a Polish army entered Moscow. The entire country then fell into a state of anarchy. In 1612 an army raised by Kuzma Minin and led by Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky drove out the Poles.
The Time of Troubles, as this turbulent period became known, was subsequently seen as proof of Russia's need for a powerful monarchy whose legitimacy and authority were accepted by all the Russian people. In the absence of an autocratic tsar, Russia appeared doomed to anarchy and to dismemberment by powerful neighbors.
G. Romanov Rule
In 1613 the Assembly of the Land elected Michael Romanov tsar. Michael was the son of the patriarch of Moscow and a great-nephew of Ivan IV's wife. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia until 1917, when a revolution ended imperial rule in Russia.
G.1. The Pattern of Romanov Policy
During the three centuries of Romanov rule, the dominant thread was the state's determination that Russia become and remain a great European power. Since Central and Western Europe were economically and culturally more advanced than Russia, this policy demanded great ingenuity from the rulers and even greater sacrifice and suffering from the population. The law code of 1649 effectively divided the society into ranks and occupational classes from which neither the individual nor his or her descendants could move. Previous laws prohibiting the movement of peasants from estates were extended to include movement from cities and towns. Thus, the law code froze not only social status but also residency. By the mid-18th century the state had succeeded in making Russia militarily and economically powerful, but at the cost of imposing a harsh form of serfdom and despotic rule.
In the early 19th century, French emperor Napoleon I invaded Russia and was defeated. Russia was then widely viewed, both at home and abroad, as continental Europe's most powerful empire. Other European countries subsequently became more powerful, however, as their economies underwent the vast changes of the Industrial Revolution, which began in England and took a number of generations to spread across Europe. The Industrial Revolution did not reach Russia until the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Crimean War (1853-1856), in which Russia was defeated by France and Britain, showed that industrialized countries could equip, arm, transport, and pay for much more formidable armies and fleets than largely agricultural countries such as Russia. After the war the Romanov regime was forced to rapidly modernize the economy in order to ensure the country's security and its position among the Great Powers, which also included Austria, Britain, France, and Prussia. At the beginning of World War I in 1914, Russia's economy was more industrialized and its people were more urbanized and literate than they had been before the Crimean War. Still, Russia was well behind Germany and Britain. In addition, rapid modernization created acute conflicts between classes and nationalities. The strains of World War I caused internal conflicts and brought down the Romanov dynasty in 1917.
G.2. The 17th Century (1613-1689)
The tsarist state in the 17th century was not very different from what it had been under the 16th-century Ryurikids. The monarch ruled in alliance with the leading aristocratic families, but his power was enhanced by the steady growth of the (still small) bureaucracy and the minor provincial landowning nobles. The tightening of serfdom and of the state's control over the frontier Cossack communities led to a number of peasant and Cossack rebellions, of which the most famous was that of Stenka Razin in 1670.
During the reign of Michael's son Alexis (1645-1676), Russia became involved in the struggle between Cossacks living in present-day Ukraine and that region's Polish rulers. The Cossacks, supported by Ukrainians, revolted against the Poles, but they requested Russia's aid to sustain their success. In 1654 Alexis extended his help in return for a Cossack pledge of loyalty, which immediately led to war between Russia and Poland. The war was settled in 1667 by a treaty that split Ukraine into two parts, divided by the Dnieper River. Poland retained the land west of the river, and Russia gained the land to the east and Kyiv. Western influences entered Russia partly through Ukraine but encountered fierce resistance, especially in the religious sphere. In the 1650s Nikon, the patriarch of Moscow, initiated a series of liturgical reforms that caused a major schism in the Russian Orthodox Church. The loss of the so-called Old Believers—those members of the church who rejected the reforms—did long-term damage to the Orthodox Church's vitality, to its ability to remain independent of the state, and to its hold on the peasantry.
continuation
