| VII | HISTORY OF RUSSIA |
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. The South Caucasus, 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.
| C1 | 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.
| C2 | Yaroslav the Wise |