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Citations missing=June 2007

OR= July 2007}} The history of Russia begins with that of the East Slavs, the ethnic group that eventually split into the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', 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' and Mongol Periods, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), Russia: A Country Study , Department of the Army, 1998. ISBN 0160612128. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state, leaving a number of states competing for claims to be the heirs to its civilization and dominant position.

After the 13th century, Moscow gradually came to dominate the former cultural center. By the 18th century, the Grand Duchy of Moscow had become the huge Russian Empire, stretching from Poland eastward to the Pacific Ocean. Expansion in the western direction sharpened Russia's awareness of its backwardness and shattered the isolation in which the initial stages of expansion had occurred. Successive regimes of the 19th century responded to such pressures with a combination of halfhearted reform and repression. Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, but its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to increase revolutionary pressures. Between the abolition of serfdom and the beginning of World War I in 1914, the Stolypin reforms, the constitution of 1906 and State Duma introduced notable changes in economy and politics of Russia, ^{See Jacob Walkin} but the tsars were still not willing to cede autocratic rule, or share their power. ¹

The Russian Revolution in 1917 was triggered by a combination of economic breakdown, suffering in war, and discontent with autocracy, and it first brought a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists to power and then Communist Bolsheviks. Between 1922 and 1991, the history of Russia is essentially the history of the Soviet Union, effectively an ideologically based empire which was roughly coterminous with the Russian Empire. The approach to the building of socialism, however, varied over different periods in Soviet history, from the mixed economy and diverse society and culture of the 1920s to the command economy and repressions of the Stalin era to the "era of stagnation" in the 1980s. From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called themselves, beginning in March 1918.Revolutions and Civil War, excerpted from Glenn E. Curtis (ed.), Russia: A Country Study , Department of the Army, 1998. ISBN 0160612128. However, by the late 1980s, with the weaknesses of its economic and political structures becoming acute, the Communist leaders embarked on major reforms, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.See Donald A. Filzer, Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika: The Soviet Labour Process and Gorbachev's Reforms, 1985–1991 , Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0521452929.

The history of the Russian Federation is brief, dating back only to the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. Since gaining its independence, Russia was recognized as the legal successor to the Soviet Union on the international stage. ^See However, Russia has lost its superpower status as it faced serious challenges in its efforts to forge a new post-Soviet political and economic system. Scrapping the socialist central planning and state ownership of property of the Soviet era, Russia attempted to build an economy with elements of market capitalism, with often painful results. Even today Russia shares many continuities of political culture and social structure with its tsarist and Soviet past.

• history of russia - Early history
  • (Picture) Kurgan hypothesis: South Russia as the urheimat of Indo-European peoples.
• history of russia - Grand Duchy of Moscow
  • • • history of russia - Grand Duchy of Moscow - The rise of Moscow
        • (Picture) During the reign of Daniel, Moscow was little more than a small timber fort lost in the forests of Central Russia]]Daniil Aleksandrovich, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, founded the principality of Moscow (known in the western tradition as Muscovy), which eventually 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.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 Kulikovo on the Don River, the Mongols were defeated, and although this hard-fought victory did not end Tatar rule of Russia, it did bring great fame to the Grand Prince. Moscow's leadership in Russia was now firmly based and by the middle of the fourteenth century its territory had greatly expanded through purchase, war, and marriage.===Ivan III, the Great===In the 15th century, the grand princes of Moscow went on gathering Russian lands to increase the population and wealth under their rule. The most successful practitioner of this process was Ivan III, the Great (1462–1505), 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. ^{Donald Ostrowski in _The Cambridge History of Russia _} As a result, the Grand Duchy of Moscow tripled in size under his rule. During his conflict with Pskov, a monk named Filofei composed a letter to Ivan III, with the prophecy that the latter's kingdom will 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.A contemporary of the Tudors and other "new monarchs" in Western Europe, 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 horse 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.==Tsardom of Russia=====Ivan IV, the Terrible===[[Image:Kremlinpic4.jpg|thumbnail|200px|right|Portrait of Ivan the Terrible.
• history of russia - Imperial Russia
  • • • history of russia - Imperial Russia - Peter the Great
        • Peter I, the Great (1672–1725), consolidated autocracy in Russia and played a major role in bringing his country into the European state system. From its modest beginnings in the 14th century principality of Moscow, Russia had become the largest state in the world by Peter's time. Three times the size of continental Europe, it spanned the Eurasian landmass from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. 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, this vast land had a population of only 14 million. Grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling almost the entire population to farm. Only a small fraction of the population lived in the towns.
• history of russia - Russian Revolution
  • (Picture) Vladimir Lenin speaking to Red Army troops before their departure to the Polish front.
• history of russia - Russian Civil War
  • A powerful group of counterrevolutionaries termed the White movement began to organize to topple the Bolsheviks. At the same time the Allied powers sent several expeditionary armies to Russia to support the anti-Communist forces.The Allies feared that the Bolsheviks were in a conspiracy with the Germans due to Brest-Litovsk;they also hoped that the White Russians might renew hostilities against Germany. This action furthered the Russian distrust of Western democracies after the Civil War. In the fall of 1918 the Bolshevik regime was in a perilous position, opposed by Russia's former allies and internal enemies, as well as in sporadic conflict with short-lived nationalist republics in Belarus and Ukraine and anarchist forces.
• history of russia - Soviet Union
  • Picture of Lenin and Stalin
• history of russia - Russian Federation
  • 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, especially the groups that had enjoyed the benefits of Soviet-era state-controlled wages and prices, state subsidies, and welfare entitlement programs. In the 1990s Russia suffered an economic downturn more severe than the United States or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in the Great Depression. ^{Peter Nolan}
• history of russia - References
• history of russia - Further reading
• history of russia - See also
  • • Timeline of Russian history
• history of russia - References
• history of russia - Related topics