Motto: "Съ нами Богъ!" ("God is with us!") | |||||||
| Anthem | ""Боже, Царя храни!"
Bozhe Tsarya khrani! (1833–1998) ("God Save the Tsar!")" | ||||||
| Capital | Petrograd | ||||||
| Largest city | Moscow | ||||||
| Language official |
Russian | ||||||
| others | Finnish, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turmen, Tajiki, Kyrgyz, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani | ||||||
| Religion | 84.2% Christianity, - 69.3% Eastern Orthodox - 9.2% Catholic - 5.7% Other Christian
11.1% Islam 4.2% Judaism 0.3% Buddhism 0.2% Others | ||||||
| Ethnic Group | Russian (81%)
+ 11 others | ||||||
| Demonym | Russian | ||||||
| Government | Unitary Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy | ||||||
| Tsar | Alexander IV | ||||||
| Premier | Vladimir Putin | ||||||
| Area | 23,181,257 sq km | ||||||
| Population | 353,644,273 (1998 Estimate) | ||||||
| Established | 6th November 1910 | ||||||
| Currency | Imperial Ruble | ||||||
| Time Zone | UTC +1 to UTC 12 West | ||||||
| Calling Code | +7 | ||||||
| Internet TLD | .ru | ||||||
The Imperial Tsardom of Russia (Russian: Императорское Царство России, romanized: Imperatorskoye Tsarstvo Rossii), is a transcontinental country spanning Central and Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world and the world's fourth largest country in history, encompassing more than one-eighth of Earth's inhabitable landmass. The Imperial Tsardom of Russia extends across eleven time zones and shares land boundaries with eleven countries. It is the world's third-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. The Tsardoms capital and second largest city is Petrograd. Moscow is the Tsardoms cultural centre and the largest city. Other major urban areas in the country include Kiev, Warsaw, Minsk, Helsinki, Tashkent, Almaty.
The East Slavs emerged as a recognisable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Rus' ultimately disintegrated, with the Grand Duchy of Moscow growing to become the Tsardom of Russia. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the fifth-largest empire in history.
Unlike in our Timeline, the Russian Civil War never happened. Before World War 1, Tsar Nicholas II changed the constitution of the Russian Empire, which established a constitutional monarchy system and changed the name to the Imperial Tsardom of Russia. In 1918, the Russian's and the rest of the Allies of WW1 triumphed over the Central Powers. In 1922, the British were sceptical that most of his Allies would be lost to Russia, so the British left the Triple Entente and made a separate alliance. So the Russians, French and Americans created the Moscow Pact in response. In 1941, Prussia (who was in the London Pact) invaded Southern Germany (who was guaranteed by the Moscow Pact) and that started WW3. In 1943, Tsar Nicholas II died of old age and his only son, Alexi, became Tsar Alexander IV. In 1948, the Moscow Pact triumphed over the London Pact. Then the Second Treaty of Versailles (Europe) and the Treaty of Shanghai (Asia) were signed. The 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.
The country is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council; a member state of the G20, APTO, the EU and the WTO; and is a leading member state organizations such as the Pacific Economic Federation (PEF) and the former Moscow Pact.
Etymology[]
The name Russia is derived from Rus, a medieval state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля" (Russkaya Zemlya) which could be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography. The name Rus itself comes from Rus people, a group of Varangians (possibly Swedish Vikings) who founded the state of Rus (Русь).
An old Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus' that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия (Rossiya), comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus'; Ρωσσία (Rossía) spelt Ρωσία in Modern Greek.
History[]
Kurgan hypothesis: South Russia as the urheimat of Indo-European peoples
Early periods
In prehistoric times the vast steppes of Southern Russia were home to tribes of nomadic pastoralists. Remnants of these steppe civilizations were discovered in such places as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim, and Pazyryk, which bear the earliest known traces of mounted warfare, a key feature in the nomadic way of life.
In classical antiquity, the Pontic Steppe was known as Scythia. Since the 8th century BC, Ancient Greek traders brought their civilization to the trade emporiums in Tanais and Phanagoria. The Romans settled on the western part of the Caspian Sea, where their empire stretched towards the east. In 3rd – 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, a Hellenistic polity which succeeded the Greek colonies, was also overwhelmed by nomadic invasions led by warlike tribes, such as the Huns and Eurasian Avars. A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas until the 10th century.
The ancestors of modern Russians are the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pinsk Marshes. The East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia in two waves: one moving from Kiev toward present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk toward Novgorod and Rostov. From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia and slowly but peacefully assimilated the native Finno-Ugric peoples, including the Merya, the Muromians, and the Meshchera.
Kievan Rus'[]
Kievan Rus' in the 11th century
The establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the traders, warriors and settlers from the Baltic Sea region. Primarily they were Vikings of Scandinavian origin, who ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the Primary Chronicle, a Varangian from Rus' people, named Rurik, was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. In 882 his successor Oleg ventured south and conquered Kiev, which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars, founding Kievan Rus'. Oleg, Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar khaganate and launched several military expeditions to Byzantium and Persia.
In the 10th to 11th centuries Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980–1015) and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchaks and the Pechenegs, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye.
The Baptism of Kievans, by Klavdy Lebedev
The age of feudalism and decentralization was marked by constant in-fighting between members of the Rurik Dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus' collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod Republic in the north-west and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west.
Ultimately Kievan Rus' disintegrated, with the final blow being the Mongol invasion of 1237–40, that resulted in the destruction of Kiev and the death of about half the population of Rus'. The invading Mongol elite, together with their conquered Turkic subjects (Cumans, Kipchaks, Bulgars) became known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which pillaged the Russian principalities; the Mongols ruled the Cuman-Kipchak confederation and Volga Bulgaria (modern-day southern and central expanses of Russia) for over two centuries.
Galicia-Volhynia was eventually assimilated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, established the basis for the modern Russian nation. The Novgorod together with Pskov retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and were largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Led by Prince Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle of the Ice in 1242, breaking their attempts to colonize the Northern Rus'.
Grand Duchy of Moscow[]
Sergius of Radonezh blessing Dmitry Donskoy in Trinity Sergius Lavra, before the Battle of Kulikovo, depicted in a painting by Ernst Lissner
The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow ("Moscovy" in the Western chronicles), initially a part of
Vladimir-Suzdal, While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, Moscow began to assert its influence in the Central Rus' in the early 14th century, gradually becoming the main leading force in the process of the Rus' lands' reunification and expansion of Russia.
Those were hard times, with frequent Mongol-Tatar raids and agriculture suffering from the beginning of the Little Ice Age. As in the rest of Europe, plagues hit Russia somewhere once every five or six years from 1350 to 1490. However, because of the lower population density and better hygiene (widespread practicing of banya, the wet steam bath), the population loss caused by plagues was not so severe as in the Western Europe, and the pre-Plague populations were reached in Russia as early as 1500. Led by Prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow and helped by the Russian Orthodox Church, the united army of Russian principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Moscow gradually absorbed the surrounding principalities, including the formerly strong rivals, such as Tver and Novgorod.
Ivan III (the Great) finally threw off the control of the Golden Horde, consolidated the whole of Central and Northern Rus' under Moscow's dominion, and was the first to take the title "Grand Duke of all the Russias". After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own, and eventually Russian, coat-of-arms.
Tsardom of Russia[]
.jpg){kind=link}
Tsar Ivan the Terrible by Victor Vasnetsov
In development of the Third Rome ideas, the Grand Duke Ivan IV (the "Terrible") was officially crowned the first Tsar ("Caesar") of Russia in 1547. The Tsar promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor) and introduced local self-management into the rural regions.
During his long reign, Ivan the Terrible nearly doubled the already large Russian territory by annexing the three Tatar khanates (parts of disintegrated Golden Horde): Kazan and Astrakhan along the Volga River, and Sibirean Khanate in South Western Siberia. Thus by the end of the 16th century Russia was transformed into a multiethnic, multidenominational and transcontinental state.
However, the Tsardom was weakened by the long and unsuccessful Livonian War against the coalition of Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden for access to the Baltic coast and sea trade. At the same time the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, the only remaining successor to the Golden Horde, continued to raid Southern Russia. In effort to restore the Volga khanates, Crimeans and their Ottoman allies invaded central Russia and were even able to burn down parts of Moscow in 1571. But next year the large invading army was thoroughly defeated by Russians in the Battle of Molodi, forever eliminating the threat of the Ottoman-Crimean expansion into Russia. The raids of Crimeans, however, didn't cease until the late 17th century, though the construction of new fortification lines across Southern Russia, such as the Great Abatis Line, constantly narrowed the area accessible to incursions.
Monument to Minin and Pozharsky in Moscow
The death of Ivan's sons marked the end of the ancient Rurik Dynasty in 1598, and in combination with the famine of 1601–03 led to the civil war, the rule of pretenders and foreign intervention during the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occupied parts of Russia, including Moscow. In 1612, the Poles were forced to retreat by the Russian volunteer corps, led by two national heroes, merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The Romanov Dynasty acceded the throne in 1613 by the decision of Zemsky Sobor, and the country started its gradual recovery from the crisis.
Russia continued its territorial growth through the 17th century, which was the age of Cossacks. Cossacks were warriors organized into military communities, resembling pirates and pioneers of the New World. In 1648, the peasants of Ukraine joined the Zaporozhian Cossacks in rebellion against Poland-Lithuania during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, because of the social and religious oppression they suffered under Polish rule. In 1654, the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Russian Tsar, Aleksey I. Aleksey's acceptance of this offer led to another Russo-Polish War (1654–1667). Finally, Ukraine was split along the Dnieper River, leaving the western part (or Right-bank Ukraine) under Polish rule and eastern part (Left-bank Ukraine and Kiev) under Russian. Later, in 1670–71 the Don Cossacks led by Stenka Razin initiated a major uprising in the Volga Region, but the Tsar's troops were successful in defeating the rebels.
In the east, the rapid Russian exploration and colonisation of the huge territories of Siberia was led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. Russian explorers pushed eastward primarily along the Siberian River Routes, and by the mid-17th century there were Russian settlements in Eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur River, and on the Pacific coast. In 1648, the Bering Strait between Asia and North America was passed for the first time by Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov.
Russian Empire[]
Peter the Great, the first Emperor of Russia
Under Peter the Great, Russia was proclaimed an Empire in 1721 and became recognized as a world power. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede West Karelia and Ingria (two regions lost by Russia in the Time of Troubles), as well as Estland and Livland, securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade. On the Baltic Sea Peter founded a new capital called Saint Petersburg, later known as Russia's Window to Europe. Peter the Great's reforms brought considerable Western European cultural influences to Russia.
The reign of Peter I's daughter Elizabeth in 1741–62 saw Russia's participation in the Seven Years' War (1756–63). During this conflict Russia annexed East Prussia for a while and even took Berlin. However, upon Elisabeth's death, all these conquests were returned to Kingdom of Prussia by pro-Prussian Peter III of Russia.
Catherine II (the Great), who ruled in 1762–96, presided over the Age of Russian Enlightenment. She extended Russian political control over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and incorporated most of its territories into Russia during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. In the south, after successful Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire, Catherine advanced Russia's boundary to the Black Sea, defeating the Crimean Khanate. As a result of victories over the Ottomans, by the early 19th century Russia also made significant territorial gains in Transcaucasia. This continued with Alexander I's (1801–25) wresting of Finland from the weakened kingdom of Sweden in 1809 and of Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812. At the same time Russians colonized Alaska and even founded settlements in California, like Fort Ross.
In 1803–06, the first Russian circumnavigation was made, later followed by other notable Russian sea exploration voyages. In 1820 a Russian expedition discovered the continent of Antarctica.
.svg){kind=link}
The Russian Empire in 1866 and its spheres of influence
In alliances with various European countries, Russia fought against Napoleon's France. The French invasion of Russia at the height of Napoleon's power in 1812 failed miserably as the obstinate resistance in combination with the bitterly cold Russian Winter led to a disastrous defeat of invaders, in which more than 95% of the pan-European Grande Armée perished. Led by Mikhail Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly, the Russian army ousted Napoleon from the country and drove through Europe in the war of the Sixth Coalition, finally entering Paris. Alexander I headed Russia's delegation at the Congress of Vienna that defined the map of post-Napoleonic Europe.
The officers of the Napoleonic Wars brought ideas of liberalism back to Russia with them and attempted to curtail the Tsar's powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt of 1825. At the end of the conservative reign of Nicolas I (1825–55), a zenith period of Russia's power and influence in Europe was disrupted by defeat in the Crimean War. Between 1847 and 1851, a massive wave of Asiatic cholera swept over Russia, claiming about one million lives.
Nicholas's successor Alexander II (1855–81) enacted significant changes in the country, including the emancipation reform of 1861. These Great Reforms spurred industrialization and modernized the Russian army, which had successfully liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War. The late 19th century saw the rise of various socialist movements in Russia. Alexander II was killed in 1881 by revolutionary terrorists, and the reign of his son Alexander III (1881–94) was less liberal but more peaceful. After the Russian Tsar, Nicholas II (1894–1917), was unable to prevent the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905 because that was triggered by the unsuccessful Russo-Japanese War and the demonstration incident known as Bloody Sunday. The uprising was put down, but the government was forced to concede major reforms, including the creation of Premier (Prime Minister), granting the freedoms of speech and assembly, the legalization of political parties, and the creation of an elected legislative body, the State Duma of the Russian Empire. Then in 1910, Tsar Nicholas ordered the change of the constitution of the Russian Empire to include a change of system from a Unitary Parliamentary Semi-Constitutional Monarchy to a Unitary Constitutional Monarchy.
Imperial Tsardom of Russia[]
In 1914, Russia entered World War I in response to Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Russia's ally Serbia, and fought across multiple fronts while isolated from its Triple Entente allies. In 1916, the Brusilov Offensive of the Russian Army almost completely destroyed the military of Austria-Hungary. In 1917, the Russians launched a counter-offensive to capture the city of Posen and Cracow and it was so successful that they captured Konigsberg and all of East Prussia. On the 11th November 1918, the Central Powers surrendered to the victorious Allies. In the peace treaty of Versailles and St Germain-en-Laye, the Imperial Tsardom of Russia annexed Austrian Galicia, German Posen and German West Prussia. In 1920, US President Woodrow Wilson and Tsar Nicholas II created the League of Nations to maintain worldwide peace. All of the victorious allies of WW1 joined the League but some like Britain left because they had disputes over something and threatening war. In 1929, the Tsar ordered the army to repress the Bolsheviks and kill all their leadership, which ended in 1939. In 1930, the British left the League of Nations with some nations and created the London Pact in 1932. In 1934, Russia created the Moscow Pact, which included the Federal Union of North America, Imperial French Kingdom and etc. In 1936, the United Kingdom and Russia were in a tight arms race. In 1941, Prussia (who was in the London Pact) invaded Southern Germany (who was in the Moscow Pact).