The history of Russia has more than a thousand
years, starting with the resettlement of the Eastern Slavs to the
East European Plain in the 6th-7th centuries, subsequently divided
into Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The history of the
country is divided approximately into seven periods: the most
ancient (pre-state) (until the end of the 9th century AD) period,
the period of Kievan Rus (until the middle of the 12th century), the
period of fragmentation (until the beginning of the 16th century),
the period of a unified Russian state (from 1547 years of the
kingdom) (end of the 15th century - 1721), the period of the Russian
Empire (1721-1917), the Soviet period (1917-1991) and recent history
(since 1991).
Traditionally, the beginning of Russian
statehood is considered to be the calling to Ladoga and other
territories of the northern part of the East European Plain of the
Varangians, led by Prince Rurik in 862. In 882, Rurik's successor
Prince Oleg of Novgorod captured Kyiv, thereby uniting the northern
and southern lands of the Eastern Slavs under a single authority,
laying the foundation for Kievan Rus. The state under the leadership
of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich adopted Christianity from Byzantium
instead of paganism in 988, starting the synthesis of Byzantine and
Slavic culture. By the middle of the 12th century, Kievan Rus broke
up into separate principalities that lost their independence as a
result of the Mongol invasion in 1237-1240.
By 1478, under
the leadership of Ivan III the Great, a single Russian state was
formed, which completed the unification of the northern and eastern
principalities around the Grand Duchy of Moscow at the beginning of
the 16th century. In 1480, Russia freed itself from the Mongol-Tatar
yoke. The western and southern principalities ended up as part of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Since 1547, the centralized
Russian state began to be called the kingdom in connection with the
adoption of the royal title by Ivan IV the Terrible. The beginning
of his reign was marked by the convening of the Zemsky Sobor - a
nationwide class-representative body. Subsequently, the state
significantly expanded its territory by annexing the khanates of the
former Golden Horde. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, defeated in the
Russian-Lithuanian wars, lost its state independence and transferred
the southern Russian lands, including Kyiv, to the rule of Poland.
After the defeat in the Livonian War and the policy of internal
terror (oprichnina), with the suppression of the Rurik dynasty,
Russia experienced the Time of Troubles (1598-1613), which ended
with the expulsion of the Polish interventionists and the election
of Mikhail Fedorovich from the Romanov dynasty to the kingdom, at
the same time (1497-1649) serfdom continued to take shape. right.
In the XVIII century, under the leadership of Peter the Great,
major transformations took place (in particular, the first regular
army was created and the convocations of the Zemsky Sobor stopped -
absolutism was established), the kingdom was transformed into an
empire. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the state was constantly
expanding and annexed such territories and regions as: the Baltic
states; Northern Black Sea region; Caucasus; Finland; Middle Asia;
during the divisions of the Commonwealth, Russia established control
over all the former lands of Russia, with the exception of Galicia.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia defeated Napoleonic
France and a little later, under Nicholas I (1825-1855), for several
decades became the "gendarme of Europe." The uprising of the
Decembrists, who tried to limit the monarchy and abolish serfdom
during the interregnum, was suppressed (1825). Subsequently, a
number of "Great reforms" of Alexander II were carried out, however,
they were not completed (serfdom was abolished in 1861, however, the
feudal forms of dependence of the peasants were actually preserved
in the form of redemption payments for land until the revolution of
1905-1907) and gave rise to a significant dissatisfaction among the
general population. The transformations of the reformer tsar stopped
with his assassination by terrorists in 1881, after which his son
Alexander III curtailed part of the reforms.
The influx of
peasants into the cities, which became possible after the abolition
of serfdom, led to the industrial revolution at the end of the 19th
century, as well as a significant increase in the revolutionary
movement and the emergence of revolutionary groups that set as their
goal the overthrow of the autocracy. By the beginning of the 20th
century, during the reign of Nicholas II, the country was in a state
of political, social and economic crisis, and was defeated in the
war with Japan. Under the influence of the revolution of 1905, the
authorities went to the formation of a parliament, the recognition
of fundamental rights and freedoms and private ownership of land.
Russia's participation in the First World War exacerbated problems
within the state, which ultimately led to the revolutions of 1917
and the beginning of the Civil War.
The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, set out to
build a socialist state and, having made a coup, established their power
over most of the territory of the collapsed Russian Empire. After the
recognition of the independence of the Baltic states, Poland and
Finland, the victory in the Civil War and the expulsion of foreign
invaders, the USSR was formed in 1922. With the coming to power of
Joseph Stalin in the 1920s, an era of industrialization,
collectivization and mass political repression began. The USSR took the
second place in the world in terms of industrial production. During the
reign of Stalin, the country took part in the Second World War. In 1941,
the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany and its allies. During the
Great Patriotic War and the Nazi occupation, the USSR lost about 27
million people, but reached a turning point in the war and in 1945 won a
final victory over Germany and its allies. During the war, the Soviet
Union made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany,
liberated the countries of Eastern and Central Europe from the Nazi
regime, and annexed the Baltic states and the Carpathians to the USSR.
After the end of the war, the Soviet Union became one of the two
superpowers and entered the Cold War with the United States, which was a
global confrontation between two military and economic blocs.
In
the middle of the 20th century, the USSR actively increased its
economic, military and scientific power and was the first to send a man
into outer space. Since the mid-1960s, the country has fallen into a
period of "stagnation" of the economy and political governance,
accompanied by stagnation in the economy. In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev
embarked on Perestroika, major reforms that led to the removal of the
ruling party from power and the collapse of the USSR.
The modern
Russian state - the Russian Federation began its existence in December
1991, retaining legal succession, permanent membership in the UN
Security Council and the nuclear arsenal of the USSR. Private property
was introduced, a course was taken towards a market economy, but the
economic crisis in the late 1990s led to a default. After 2000, under
Vladimir Putin, significant economic growth began, the “vertical of
power” strengthened, and Russia's foreign policy became more active. In
2014, after the aggravation of civil confrontation and the change of
power in Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea, which was negatively received
by many EU countries and the United States and caused economic sanctions
on their part. Since 2015, Russia has been conducting a military
operation in Syria. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched an invasion of
Ukraine.
The name "Rus" (Old Russian and Church-Slavic Rus)
came from the name of the tribe (or social group) Rus, which formed the
top of the Old Russian state. The name originally denoted the
Scandinavians (Varangians) and came into the Old Russian language from
Old Norse: other Scandinavian. rōþr "rower" and "travel on rowboats",
transformed through Fin. ruotsi in other Russian. rѹs, and then
gradually from the Scandinavian elite it was transferred to the entire
people of Ancient Russia. There are also Northern Iranian, Slavic and
some other etymologies.
For the first time, the term "Russia"
(Greek Ρωσία) is found in the X century in the writings of the Byzantine
emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus "On ceremonies" and "On the
management of the empire" as the Greek name for Russia. The first known
mention of the word "Rosia" in a Cyrillic record is dated April 24,
1387. Subsequently, from the end of the 15th - the beginning of the 16th
century, the term "Russia" or more often "Rusiya", first with one "s",
and starting from the middle of the 17th century with two (in the old
spelling "Russia" or "Rossia"), began to be used in secular literature
and documents of the Russian state and was assigned as a self-name for
North-Eastern Russia, that is, the territories of Ancient Russia that
were not part of medieval Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and
united by the Grand Duchy of Moscow into a single state.
After
the victory in the Northern War, the Russian state was officially
declared an empire, at the same time the name of the state “Russia”
finally acquired its modern look.
July 10, 1918, after the V
All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the first Constitution of the RSFSR is
adopted where the state is called the Russian Socialist Federative
Soviet Republic. After the adoption of the Constitution of the USSR in
1936, the state changes its name to the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic.
After the collapse of the USSR, on December
25, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR adopted a law renaming the
RSFSR into the Russian Federation (Russia).
The Russian Federation is the historical successor of
the previous forms of continuous statehood since 862:
Old Russian
state (862-1240);
Russian principalities (mid-12th century - early
16th century);
the Russian state (the end of the 15th century - 1721;
since 1547 - the Russian kingdom);
Russian Empire (1721-1917);
Russian Republic (1917);
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
(1917-1991, since 1922 a republic within the USSR)
Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (1922-1991).
The Russian Federation is the
legal successor and successor state of the USSR. The State Duma of the
Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in 1998 approved that "the
Russian state, the Russian Republic, the RSFSR, the USSR and the Russian
Federation are one and the same participant in interstate relations, one
and the same subject of international law that has not ceased to exist."
This wording was later enshrined in the federal law "On the state policy
of the Russian Federation in relation to compatriots abroad." Since
2020, the mention of a thousand-year history and continuity in the
development of the Russian state has been present in the constitution.
Anniversaries of Russian statehood were officially celebrated in 1862
and 2012.
Ancient people in Russia
The richest archaeological
cultures of Russia point to the ancient history of the development of
its lands by primitive people in the early Paleolithic - at least 1.5-2
million years ago (Kermek, Liventsovka, Rubas-1, Ainikab-1, Mukhkai II).
At the Bogatyri/Sinya Balka site (Taman Peninsula), a spike-shaped tool
made of silicified dolomite was found in the skull of a Caucasian
elasmotherium that lived 1.5–1.2 million years ago.
The Denisov
man lived in the Denisova Cave during the Middle Paleolithic (200-50
thousand years ago). Finds of Neanderthals belong to the same epoch
(Rozhok 1, Denisova, Mezmaiskaya, Okladnikova, Chagyrskaya caves).
The most ancient find of Homo sapiens in Russia is the femur of the
Ust-Ishim man, who lived in Siberia 45 thousand years ago. The talus
(calcaneal) bone of a person. discovered near the village of Baigara in
the Tyumen region, dates back to 40.3 thousand years ago. In Yakutia
there is the Yanskaya site (31.6 thousand years ago), in the Irkutsk
region - the site of Malta (24 thousand years ago). The most ancient
sites of Homo sapiens on the territory of the Russian Plain are Kostenki
(Markina Gora), Sungir (35 thousand years ago), Khotylevo 2, Zaraisk
site (19 thousand years ago) and others.
In the post-glacial
Mesolithic era, the European part of Russia was settled by
representatives of the Svider culture, whose descendants were the tribes
of the Butovo (8-6 millennium BC) and Upper Volga (6-3 millennium BC)
cultures. They already used the bow and arrow as a weapon. In the later
stages, a transition to the Sub-Neolithic is planned, as they begin to
master ceramics.
In the 5th millennium BC. e. in the steppes of
southern Russia on the periphery of the Balkan Neolithic, the Samara
culture is formed. They were engaged in cattle breeding, made jewelry
from copper and gold, and poured burial mounds over the dead.
The
Yamnaya culture originates from the Khvalyn culture in the middle
reaches of the Volga and from the Sredne Stog culture in the middle
reaches of the Dnieper, later it is replaced by the Poltavka culture.
In the 3rd millennium BC. e. Indo-European tribes of pastoralists of
the Fatyanovo culture invade the forest belt of the Russian Plain, where
the tribes of the Volosovo culture lived. In the same period, the
forests of Eastern Europe and Asia are inhabited by tribes that preserve
the Neolithic way of life, which gradually mix with the cattle-breeding
tribes of the Fatyanovo and Middle Dnieper cultures who moved to their
territories. In Siberia, the Afanasiev culture was replaced by the
Okunev culture. At the turn of the 3rd millennium and 2nd millennium BC.
e. proto-urban settlements of the Sintashta culture (Arkaim) and war
chariots appear in the Urals. The log-house cultural and historical
community of the Late Bronze Age (XVIII-XII centuries BC, according to
other estimates - XVI-XII centuries BC) spread in the steppe and
forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe between the Dnieper and the Urals.
In the historical era, the Iranian-speaking peoples of the Great Steppe
are known under the names of the Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians.
In the west of Russia, in the upper reaches of the Dnieper, the
carriers of the Dnieper-Dvina culture lived, which is replaced by the
Bantser-Tushmly culture.
In the first half of the 1st millennium
BC. e. iron metallurgy is spreading over a large part of the country.
The territories of the Upper Volga region, the coast of the Oka and the
Valdai Upland are occupied by the tribes of the Dyakovo culture. The
middle Volga region is inhabited by the tribes of the Gorodets culture,
the Kama, Vyatka and Belaya basins are inhabited by the tribes of the
Ananyino culture and later the Pyanobor culture.
The Yukhnov
culture (V-II centuries BC) was widespread in the territories of the
Bryansk, Kursk and Oryol regions.
The first actual state
formations on the territory of modern Russia were city-states in the 6th
century BC, founded by ancient Greek colonists in the Northern Black Sea
region: Phanagoria, Germonassa, Gorgippia. Later they merged into the
Bosporus kingdom.
States and nomadic tribes of the 1st millennium
AD
In the IV-VII centuries, the territory of the middle Volga region
was occupied by the tribes of the Imenkovskaya culture.
In the
4th century, during the Great Migration of Peoples, the steppe became
Turkicized under the influence of the Huns. The power of the Huns was
replaced by various associations of nomads who attacked the agricultural
civilizations bordering on the steppe.
In the 4th-7th centuries,
tribes of the Moshchin culture lived on the territory of the Kaluga,
Oryol and Tula regions. In the 5th-7th centuries, tribes of the Kolochin
culture lived on the territory of the Bryansk and Kursk regions.
In the 6th century, the Turkic Khaganate with its
center in Altai plays a consolidating role for the Turkic-speaking
peoples, but in the 6th-7th centuries it breaks up into the Western
Turkic and Eastern Turkic Khaganates, which existed until the middle of
the 8th century.
From the middle of the 7th century, the Khazar
Khaganate (650-969) became the leading state on the Lower Volga, which
united nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of the Lower Volga region, the
North Caucasus, the Sea of Azov and the Don steppes. Until the 10th
century, the Finno-Ugric tribes and the Turkic-speaking Bulgarian tribes
of the Middle Volga region were also subordinate to the Khazar
Khaganate. During this period, the cities of Itil and Bulgar appeared in
the Volga region, which became large trading centers. Among the nomads,
monotheistic religions began to spread: Judaism among the Khazars (740),
Islam in the Volga Bulgaria (922).
Volintsevo culture existed in
the VIII-IX centuries on the territory of the Kursk region. In the
8th-10th centuries, tribes of the Roman-Borshchev culture lived on the
territory of the Lipetsk, Voronezh, Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions.
The Saltov-Mayak culture in the forest-steppe part of the Don region
dates from the middle of the 8th to the beginning of the 10th century.
In the 9th century, the state of Volga Bulgaria appeared, which
maintained relations with the states of Central Asia and Russia.
At the turn of the 9th-10th centuries, the state of Alania appeared in
the North Caucasus.
After the fall of Khazaria, the
Turkic-speaking peoples dominated the steppes, replacing each other:
Pechenegs, Oguzes and Polovtsy. Their tribes did not have political
unity.
The last influential nomadic empire was the Golden Horde
(1224-1483).
Settlement of the Slavs
The great migration of
peoples from the second half of the 4th century led to global migrations
of ethnic groups. Information about the wars in the 4th century between
the Slavs and the Goths has been preserved.
In the 5th century
A.D. from the territory of northern Poland through the eastern Baltic,
Slavic tribes of the culture of the Pskov long mounds penetrate into the
territory of Russia, giving rise to the Krivichi. At the same time, the
Slavs were constantly resettling to the north - to Lake Ilmen, and to
the east - to the Volga-Oka interfluve. As a result, by the 6th-8th
centuries, in general terms, all the main tribes of the Eastern Slavs,
known from the Tale of Bygone Years, are formed. Slavic colonization of
North-Eastern Russia continued until the XIV century and consisted of
several migration waves - from early colonization from the lands of the
Krivichi and Slovenes, to later from southern Russia.
One of the
earliest known Slavic associations was the Ants Union - a political and
military-tribal Slavic or Western Baltic association, consisting of the
tribes of the Ants and existing from the 4th to the beginning of the 7th
century (602).
At the beginning of the VI century, the Slavs
began to make regular raids on Byzantium, as a result of which Byzantine
and Roman authors (Procopius of Caesarea, Jordan) started talking about
them. In this era, they already had large intertribal unions, formed
mainly on a territorial basis, which could be a sign of the collapse of
the tribal system.
In the 5th-7th centuries, the Slavs spread
widely in Europe; their numerous tribes were geographically divided into
southern, western and eastern. Eastern Slavs populated Eastern Europe in
two streams. One group of tribes settled in the basin of the Dnieper and
Desna on the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Then it
spread north to the upper reaches of the Volga, east of modern Moscow,
and west to the valleys of the northern Dniester and the Southern Bug
through the territories of modern Moldavia and southern Ukraine. Another
group of Eastern Slavs migrated from Pomerania to the northeast, where
they encountered the Varangians. Here they founded the important
regional center of Veliky Novgorod. The same group of Slavs subsequently
inhabited the territories of the modern Tver region and Beloozero,
reaching the area of the Merya people near Rostov. For about two or
three centuries in the 7th-10th centuries, numerous groups of Slavic
migrants from the Middle (Moravian) and Lower Danube region, which had
played a significant role in the consolidation of the Slavic population
of Eastern Europe and culminated in the formation of the Old Russian
nationality, continued into the various areas of the Russian Plain
already mastered by the Slavs. The Old Russian language included two
dialect types. The first type: the North-West (Novgorod and Pskov with
the corresponding territories, including the Vologda, Arkhangelsk
(Dvinsk), Perm lands) and part of Northern Belarus. The second type:
South (future Ukraine), Center (future central Russia), East (current
Eastern part of the European part of Russia). There were no differences
between the Kyiv, Chernigov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Rostov and Suzdal zones.
According to some researchers, the northern Slavic
tribes of Slovene, Krivichi and the annalistic (Proto-Slavic or
Finno-Ugric tribe) Merya, in the middle of the 9th century, were united
into the so-called Northern Confederation of Tribes, which immediately
preceded the so-called calling of Rurik and his brothers.
In
Russia, the largest archaeological complexes of the early Slavic period
of the late 9th - early 11th centuries on the Russian Plain are Gnezdovo
(near Smolensk), Forgiveness, Georgy, Sergov Gorodok (near Novgorod),
Kvetun nad Desna (near Kvetun), Timerevo, Mikhailovskoye, Petrovskoe
(near Yaroslavl ), the Suprut settlement.
Old Russian state
(862-1240)
Formation of the Old Russian state
Traditionally,
starting from the Russian chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years" of the
beginning of the 12th century and up to the present, the emergence of
the Russian state dates back to 862, when the Slavic and Finno-Ugric
tribes called the Varangians, led by Rurik, to Ladoga or Novgorod and
other cities to reign. Some historians attribute the beginning of the
Russian state to a different time or tie it to another event (for
example, to 882, when Prince Oleg captured Kyiv, uniting the two centers
of Russia).
According to Russian chronicles, the State of Rurik
included the territories of the southern Ladoga (Staraya Ladoga, Veliky
Novgorod) and the upper Volga (Beloozero, Rostov), but only Ladoga
existed at that time. The "state of Rurik" was inhabited by Slavs
(Slovenes and Krivichi), Finno-Ugric tribes (All, Merya, Chud) and
Varangians. Rurik's successor, Prophetic Oleg, annexed the southern
center of the Eastern Slavs in the Middle Dnieper region to his
possessions, making, according to the chronicle, in 882 the main city of
the glades - Kyiv, his capital. Some researchers connect the formation
of the Old Russian state precisely with the unification of the northern
and southern centers under the rule of the Rurikovichs. Prince Oleg
subjugated the Drevlyans, Radimichi and Northerners to the power of
Kyiv. In 907, Oleg made a major campaign against Constantinople, as a
result of which the parties concluded the first written agreement in the
history of Russia.
Russia in the X century
Princess Olga
introduced the first administrative-territorial division in Russia (the
system of churchyards), carried out a tax reform (established a system
of lessons), began stone construction in Russia, and privately converted
to Christianity. The expansion of the state to the south led to a clash
with the powerful Khazaria, whose center was located on the lower Volga.
Prince Svyatoslav defeated the Khazar Khaganate in 965. In 968-971,
Svyatoslav captured Bulgaria and waged war with Byzantium. After his
death in 972, a war for the throne began between his sons, in which the
youngest son Vladimir won.
In 988, Prince Vladimir the Great,
after a campaign against the Byzantine Chersonese and his marriage to
Anna, the sister of the Byzantine emperors, established Eastern
Christianity in Russia as the state religion. The adoption of
Christianity strengthened state power and the territorial unity of the
Old Russian state. It was of great international significance: Russia,
having rejected primitive paganism, has now become equal to other
Christian peoples. The adoption of Christianity contributed to the
development of architecture and painting in its medieval forms, the
penetration of Byzantine culture as the heir to the ancient tradition.
The spread of Cyrillic writing and the book tradition was especially
important: it was after the baptism of Russia that the first monuments
of ancient Russian written culture arose.
Byzantium was the most
important direction of Russia's foreign trade and military campaigns
aimed at defending its interests. The collection of tribute (primarily
furs) was called polyudye and took place annually in the winter, and the
centralized sale of its results on foreign markets took place in the
summer. The transfer of significant funds in the form of tribute to Kyiv
by the tribal nobility made it possible for the Kievan princes to
constantly keep large military forces at hand, use them in long-term
campaigns and place them in fortresses on the steppe border (Posulskaya
defensive line, Stugninskaya defensive line).
After the death of
Vladimir in 1015, the throne in Kyiv was seized by his son Svyatopolk
the Accursed; in 1015, his brothers Boris and Gleb, who were later
canonized as saints, died at the hands of the assassins sent by him. In
1019 Svyatopolk was overthrown by his brother Yaroslav the Wise.
Russia in the 11th - early 12th centuries
The son
of Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, published Russkaya Pravda, which was a
code of civil and criminal law. The ruling class of Ancient Russia was
represented by the boyars (patrimonials who owed personal loyalty to the
Rurikovichs) headed by the princes, the bulk of the population were free
communal peasants. In pre-Mongol Russia, the institution of conditional
land holdings and the institution of serfdom associated with it did not
develop. Personal lack of freedom was debt, in addition, it was limited
by law (Charter of Vladimir Vsevolodovich). Under Yaroslav the Wise,
Ancient Russia reached the pinnacle of its power. The construction of
cities (Yaroslavl, Yuryev), temples (Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and
Novgorod) was actively taking place, an active foreign policy was being
carried out by concluding dynastic marriages with European rulers
(France, Byzantium, Norway, etc.), the threat from the Pechenegs was
finally eliminated (1036 ).
In 1054, after the death of Yaroslav
the Wise, power passed to the three eldest sons, whose reign was called
in historiography the “triumvirate of the Yaroslavichs”, and in 1097, at
the Lyubech Congress of Princes, his grandchildren agreed to recognize
each other as heirs of the possessions of their fathers to end the
strife. The existing order of succession (ladder law), according to
which all sons had the right to inherit their father's table, on the one
hand, restrained territorial fragmentation, but on the other, made a
fairly wide circle of applicants who fiercely fought among themselves.
By the beginning of the 12th century, there were significant successes
in the fight against the Polovtsy, as well as the reliable beginning of
chronicle writing in Russia. The last strengthening of the central power
occurs during the reign of Grand Duke Vladimir Monomakh. The death of
Mstislav the Great (1132) is considered the turning point of the
collapse of the state, after which Polotsk (1132), Novgorod (1136) and
other lands came out of the power of Kyiv. However, some researchers do
not connect the end of the existence of Kievan Rus with the formation of
independent principalities, since the Kyiv land continued to be
considered the common possession of the Rurikovichs, at the same time,
the condition for owning land in the Kiev region was participation in
the struggle against nomads, still led by the Kyiv prince, until the
Mongol invasion (1240). In addition, Kyiv continued to be the seat of
the Metropolitan of All Russia (until 1300).
Russian lands in the
period of fragmentation (1240-1478)
Russian principalities in the
XII-XIII centuries
With the collapse of Kievan Rus, about 10
independent principalities were formed, in the future they continued to
split up and their number increased. The largest Russian principalities
were: Vladimir-Suzdal, Galicia-Volyn, Kiev, Pereyaslav, Polotsk, Ryazan,
Smolensk, Turov-Pinsk, Chernigov and the Novgorod feudal republic.
The most powerful of them were: Vladimir-Suzdal, Galicia-Volyn,
Smolensk and Chernigov principalities, between which a confrontation
unfolded for the throne of Kyiv and dominance in all-Russian affairs. If
the Smolensk and Chernigov princes sought to take the reign of Kiev
personally, then the Vladimir-Suzdal and Volyn princes - through younger
relatives or allies. Kyiv continued to be considered the main city of
Russia, but was rapidly losing its importance. During the princely civil
strife, in 1169 Kyiv was first defeated by the Suzdal prince Andrei
Bogolyubsky. With this event, a number of historians associate the final
fall of the role of Kyiv as the all-Russian capital, and the "separation
of seniority from place." Subsequently, Kyiv was once again defeated in
1203 by the Smolensk prince Rurik Rostislavich.
In the
Vladimir-Suzdal principality, after the war for the inheritance of
Andrei Bogolyubsky, a strong princely power was established, based on a
new service layer, the prototype of the nobility. It was the Grand Duchy
of Vladimir-Suzdal that became the core of the modern Russian state.
During the long reign of Vsevolod the Big Nest, the Vladimir
principality reached its peak and was the strongest principality of
Russia. Pereyaslavl, Ryazan (from the middle of the XIII century and
Smolensk) principalities were in the sphere of influence of the
Vladimir-Suzdal princes.
In Novgorod, unlike other Russian
principalities, a republican system was established, in which the veche,
headed by the boyars, appointed posadniks, invited and expelled princes.
Novgorod diplomacy made it possible to use the contradictions between
the leading princely groups, take the side of one of them and emerge
victorious from the struggle, thereby preserving the Novgorod political
order, although the Vladimir-Suzdal princes had the opportunity to use
the dependence of Novgorod, unable to feed itself due to the harsh
climate, from supplies grains from the Suzdal Opole. Novgorod conducted
active trade and diplomatic relations with the countries of
North-Western Europe, was a member of the Hanseatic League of European
Cities.
The Galicia-Volyn principality, which included the
lands of the Carpathians and Volhynia, was distinguished by a powerful
landed aristocracy. In the war to restore the unity of the principality
(1205–1245), the Galician landed aristocracy, as well as the Hungarian
and Polish interventionists, were defeated, and the main appanages in
Volhynia were also liquidated. In 1253, the Galician prince Daniel
Romanovich, in order to oppose the Mongols, entered into an alliance
with Catholic Rome and took the title "King of Russia". The reign of
Daniil Romanovich was the period of the greatest economic and political
strengthening of Southwestern Russia, but later, under his descendants,
the Volyn principality fell into decay and was absorbed by Lithuania and
Poland.
Internecine struggle was combined with Polovtsian raids
from the Black Sea steppes. But if in the middle of the XII century the
onslaught was quite great, then after 1185 the Polovtsy appeared in
Russia only as allies of one of the opposing princely groups. The
Polovtsian nobility was intensively Christianized, and in 1223 they
turned to the Russian princes for help against the Mongols (Battle of
the Kalka).
Mongol-Tatar invasion (1237-1240)
During the
Mongol invasion, Russian troops suffered a number of defeats, many
Russian cities were devastated. In 1237-1238 the Mongols defeated the
northeastern Russian principalities. The combined forces of the Vladimir
and Ryazan principalities were defeated in the battle of Kolomna.
Vladimir Prince Yuri II Vsevolodovich could not resist the Mongols and
was defeated in the battle on the City River. In 1239-1240, the Mongols
defeated the southwestern Russian lands, taking Kyiv in 1240. All
Russian lands were under the supreme authority of the Mongol Empire,
subordinate to its western wing - the Ulus of Jochi or the Golden Horde.
The Horde khans became the supreme arbitrators in disputes over reigns,
including Kyiv. After the Mongol invasion, the connection between the
northeastern and southwestern Russian principalities began to be lost,
which subsequently predetermined their different historical fate. During
the second half of the 13th century, the Horde carried out several more
invasions in order to consolidate their control over the Russian
principalities and achieve tribute payments, the most famous of which
was the so-called "Dudenev's army" (1293).
At the same time, in
the western direction, the Novgorod prince Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky
was able to successfully repel the invasions: the Swedes in 1240, the
Germans in 1242 and the Lithuanians in 1245. For his victories, the
prince received the nickname Nevsky, and after his death he was
canonized as a saint.
In 1252, Alexander became the Grand Duke of
Vladimir and Kyiv at the same time. Despite the opposition to Western
expansion, Alexander made an alliance with the Horde, effectively
establishing the dependence of the Russian principalities on the
Mongol-Tatars. At the same time, after the anti-Horde uprising in Russia
in 1262, when Tatar tribute collectors (Baskaks) were killed in
Vladimir, Suzdal, Rostov, Pereyaslavl, Yaroslavl and other cities,
Alexander was able to convince the khan not to send punitive detachments
to Russia, and also not to recruit the inhabitants of Russia into the
Mongolian army. In 1263, after the death of Alexander Nevsky, the Grand
Duchy of Vladimir finally disintegrated into destinies.
Unification of Russian lands around Moscow
The Moscow principality
was separated from the Grand Duchy of Vladimir in 1263 according to the
will of the Grand Duke of Vladimir Alexander Nevsky to his youngest son
Daniil Alexandrovich. Initially, the Moscow principality, after its
formation in 1263, included only lands in the middle reaches of the
Moscow River. Its capital Moscow was the only city in the principality.
After Daniil Alexandrovich, the Moscow principality was ruled by his
descendants. In 1328, Moscow won the fight against Tver for the great
reign of Vladimir. Since 1363, the label for the great reign of Vladimir
belonged only to the Moscow princes.
In the middle of the XIII
century, Mindovg founded the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. By the 1320s,
Lithuania extended its power to Western Russian lands. In 1362,
Lithuania defeated the Tatars at Blue Waters and annexed southern
Russia.
In 1299, after another devastation of southern Russia by
the Horde, the Metropolitan of Kyiv moved to Vladimir (in 1354, the
transfer of the see was confirmed by Constantinople). Almost immediately
after this, the Galician metropolis arose in the south, and then the
Lithuanian one, which subsequently existed intermittently. The
Metropolitan of Kyiv changed his residence for the second time in 1325,
moving to Moscow. Subsequently, the Grand Duchies of Moscow and
Lithuania sought to ensure that it was their pretender who occupied the
all-Russian metropolis, or at least had its own metropolitan in those
periods when the all-Russian metropolis was controlled by a “foreign”
applicant.
During the reign of Dmitry Donskoy (1359-1389), the
Moscow principality became one of the main centers for the unification
of Russian lands, and the Grand Duchy of Vladimir became the hereditary
property of the Moscow princes. A series of Lithuanian campaigns against
the Moscow principality at the turn of the 1360s and 1370s turned out to
be fruitless, and Moscow thereby defended the status of one of the
centers of the unification of Russian lands. In the same period, the
white-stone Moscow Kremlin was built, earlier than the minting of silver
coins began in other principalities, firearms began to be used for the
first time.
Dmitry Donskoy won important victories over the
Golden Horde: on August 11, 1378, in the battle on the Vozha River, the
Russian army won the first major victory over the troops of the Horde.
September 8, 1380 - the main forces of the Horde were defeated by
Russian troops in the Battle of Kulikovo. The victories of the troops of
Dmitry Donskoy are reflected in Russian literary monuments: "The Legend
of the Mamaev Battle" and "Zadonshchina". However, after 2 years, the
new Khan Tokhtamysh, who united the Horde, attacked and burned Moscow
(1382). As a result of a new ruin, Dmitry was forced to resume paying
tribute to the Horde and recognized the independence of the Tver
principality, and Tokhtamysh recognized the great reign of Vladimir as
the hereditary possession of the Moscow princes.
In 1384, an
agreement was concluded between Dmitry and Jagiello on the marriage of
the latter to Dmitry's daughter and the recognition of Orthodoxy as the
state religion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, already in
1385, Jagiello married a Polish princess and converted to Catholicism,
concluding the first Polish-Lithuanian union. By the turn of the XIV-XV
centuries, all Russian lands, with the exception of those that had gone
to Poland, were divided between the Moscow and Lithuanian Grand Duchies,
their border passed along the Ugra River. However, Lithuania, under the
military and political pressure of the Horde, the Order and Moscow,
increasingly resorted to Polish assistance, and Poland's influence in
southwestern Russia was steadily growing.
In the first half of
the 15th century, the Golden Horde finally disintegrated. In its place
were formed: Kazan, Siberian, Crimean and Astrakhan khanates, as well as
the Great and Nogai Hordes. At the beginning of the 16th century, the
Great Horde, the successor of the Golden Horde, ceased to exist.
In the second quarter of the 15th century, a long struggle for power
took place in the Moscow principality, in which the family order of
succession to the throne prevailed over the clan. The Moscow metropolis
achieved actual independence from the Church of Constantinople (1448),
which entered into a union under the conditions of Turkish expansion.
Formation of the Russian state
In 1448, the Grand
Duke of Moscow Vasily II proclaimed the independence of the Russian
Orthodox Church from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, suspected of
heresy and inability to effectively manage the vast Russian metropolis.
At that time, St. Euthymius II (Archbishop of Novgorod), along with the
entire semi-independent Novgorod Republic, voluntarily recognized
themselves in the sphere of influence of the Moscow Metropolitan. In
1450, Moscow troops defeated the Horde on the Bityug River in the depths
of the steppes.
After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks
in 1453, the activities of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
were not restored immediately and not in full. However, in 1470 Novgorod
requested a new archbishop not from the Moscow Metropolitan, but from
the Patriarch of Constantinople. At the same time, Khan of the Great
Horde Akhmat gave a label to Novgorod to the Polish king and Grand Duke
of Lithuania Casimir IV. Then the Moscow troops invaded the Novgorod
land and in 1471 defeated the Novgorodians on the Shelon River, and in
1478 the Novgorod land was completely annexed to Moscow: Moscow's power
extended to the coast of the Arctic Ocean and the Urals. At the same
time, Novgorod in 1494 ceased to be a member of the Hanseatic League.
In 1472, the Horde were defeated near Aleksin, with which some
historians associate the liberation of the lands subject to Moscow from
the supreme power of the Horde. The formation of a single independent
Russian state is traditionally associated with the annexation of
Novgorod in 1478 and the final liquidation of the Mongol-Tatar yoke in
1480 (Standing on the Ugra). After 180 years of struggle, the Tver
principality was captured (1485). After a successful campaign against
Kazan in 1487, Ivan III took the title of "king of Bulgaria". These
successes attracted the specific Russian princes with their lands from
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the side of the Moscow prince (including
those who fled to Lithuania after the defeat in the civil strife of
1425-1453), which caused a series of Russian-Lithuanian wars. As a
result of the victory in the war of 1500-1503, the Seversky lands with
Bryansk and Chernigov, only about a third of the territory of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, came under the authority of Moscow.
With Ivan
III, the distribution of land into a conditional holding (estate), first
for life, then hereditary, begins. In 1497, the All-Russian Code of Laws
was published, the first systematized code of laws in Russia since the
time of the Russkaya Pravda of the 11th century, in particular, limiting
the transition of peasants to the autumn St. George's Day. Under Ivan
III, the first bodies of central state administration, the Orders, were
created in Russia. The great-grandson of Dmitry Donskoy Ivan III
Vasilievich married the heiress of the Byzantine emperors Sophia
Paleolog, made the double-headed eagle the Grand Duke's seal as a symbol
of Russia's succession to the power of the Byzantine Empire (Moscow is
the third Rome).
The son of Ivan III, Vasily III, completed the
unification of the Russian lands not subordinate to Lithuania, annexing
Pskov (1510) and Ryazan (1521) to Moscow. Smolensk was also conquered
from Lithuania (1514). The wars with the Kazan Khanate continued.
The reign of Elena Glinskaya, wife of Vasily III and regent of the
infant Ivan IV, the first ruler of a unified Russian state after
Princess Olga, was marked by the first centralized monetary reform in
Russia (1534), as a result of the reform a single currency was
introduced: silver money, a unified system of monetary circulation was
created ; the Russo-Lithuanian war (1534–1537) was completed and a peace
favorable to Russia was concluded.
The era of Ivan IV the
Terrible. Realm transformation
In 1547, the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan
IV the Terrible was married to the kingdom and thus became the first
Russian tsar. The new title made it possible to take a significantly
different position in diplomatic relations with Western Europe. The
grand ducal title was translated as "great duke", while the title "king"
in the hierarchy was on a par with the title of emperor.
Since
1549, together with the Chosen Rada (A.F. Adashev, Metropolitan
Macarius, A.M. Kurbsky, Archpriest Sylvester, and others), Ivan IV
carried out a number of reforms aimed at centralizing the state and
building public institutions.
In 1549, the first
class-representative body, the Zemsky Sobor, was convened. In 1550, a
new Sudebnik was adopted. In 1551, the Stoglav Cathedral was held, as a
result of which Stoglav was adopted. The first regular army armed with
firearms was created - the archery army. In 1555-1556, Ivan IV canceled
feeding and adopted the Code of Service.
In the early 1550s, the zemstvo and gubernatorial
(started by the government of Elena Glinskaya) reforms were also carried
out, which redistributed some of the powers of governors and volosts,
including judicial ones, in favor of elected representatives of the
black-haired peasantry and nobility.
In 1563, Tsar Ivan IV
founded the Moscow Printing Yard, where in 1564 the first Russian book
printers, Ivan Fedorov and Peter Mstislavets, printed the first Russian
book, The Apostle. The Book of the Big Drawing was compiled - the first
known complete set of geographical and ethnographic information about
Russia and neighboring states. The Front Chronicle was also created -
the largest historical work in the medieval history of Russia, which is
a chronicle of events in world and Russian history. Serfdom continued to
take shape, from 1581 reserved summers began to be introduced, when the
transition of peasants was prohibited even on St. George's Day.
Ivan the Terrible conquered vast territories in the Volga region (in
1552 - the Kazan Khanate, in 1556 - Astrakhan). The Volga becomes
completely a Russian river, Russia received access to the Caspian Sea.
Bashkirs pass into Russian citizenship, Ufa is based on their lands.
Arkhangelsk is founded - a strategic port on the coast of the Arctic
Ocean. The conquest of Western Siberia begins (Yermak's Campaign
1581-1585). Russian influence also spread to the North Caucasus
(Cossacks, agreements with Kabarda). In honor of the conquest of Kazan
and Astrakhan, St. Basil's Cathedral was built in Moscow, which became
one of the main symbols of Moscow and all of Russia.
In the
western direction, the Moscow troops were also initially successful (the
Livonian War). At the initial stage of the war (1558-1561), the Livonian
Order was defeated, but its head accepted the patronage of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. Then Russia entered the war with the latter, the
loss of Polotsk (1563) became especially difficult for Lithuania. Being
unable to wage war with Russia alone, Lithuania went to unite with
Poland in the Commonwealth, along which all the southern Russian lands
went to Poland (1569).
At the same time, among the Moscow
nobility, whose significant part were the descendants of former
Lithuanian subjects who insisted on continuing the wars in the southern,
Turkish direction, discontent was brewing. The sudden death of Tsarina
Anastasia, the desire of Ivan the Terrible to absolute his power, and
the betrayal of Prince Kurbsky, lead to the liquidation of the Chosen
Rada, and the introduction of a system of state terror - the oprichnina
(1565). Formed monarchical ideology (tsarism, autocracy). Oprichnina
resulted in many years of mass terror, undermined the economy, the faith
of the nobility and people in power, and ultimately became one of the
causes of the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 17th century.
Severe repressions were practiced against unreliable elements: boyar
disgrace, the Novgorod pogrom. However, the burning of Moscow by the
Crimean Khan in 1571 demonstrated the weakness of the oprichnina as an
instrument of sovereign power and pushed the tsar to abolish it in 1572.
The southern Russian lands during the 16th and 17th centuries were
subjected to raids by steppe nomads and Crimean Tatars, who sold
captured captives in slave markets. Russia had to defend itself from
their raids by building a powerful Zasechnaya line along the southern
borders. In 1571, the Crimean Khan Devlet I Gerai burned Moscow with a
huge army, and destroyed or captured most of its inhabitants. In the
next 1572, the Russian army in the Battle of Molodi (a few dozen
kilometers from Moscow), under the leadership of Princes Mikhail
Vorotynsky and Dmitry Khvorostinin, destroyed the 120,000-strong
Crimean-Turkish army marching on Moscow, which allowed Russia to
maintain independence, as well as previously conquered territories in
the Volga region.
The unification of Poland and Lithuania into
one state made possible their joint counteroffensive actions. Russia
barely managed to defend Pskov (1582). The war ended in 1583 with the
loss of all previously captured lands by Russia, as well as access to
the Baltic Sea. The long-term inconclusive Livonian War, the devastating
oprichnina terror, led the state's economy to decline (Poruha).
After the death of Ivan the Terrible, his son Fyodor I Ioannovich
ascended the throne, while the country was actually ruled by a regency
council, where Boris Godunov, who was the de facto ruler of the Russian
state, enjoyed the strongest influence.
In 1589, the Moscow
Patriarchate was established, the first Patriarch Job was elected;
cities were actively built in new territories in the Volga region,
Siberia and the Wild Field: (Samara, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, Voronezh,
Tobolsk, etc.), as well as the Smolensk fortress wall, which was
considered a "stone necklace of the Russian land", built according to
the design of Fyodor Kon.
In order to develop the Wild Field and fight the
Crimean-Nogai raids, already under Fedor, the Belgorod line was created,
which includes such fortresses as Kursk and Voronezh. In 1591, the
Crimean Tatar hordes besieged Moscow for the last time, but were
defeated. After the war with Sweden, access to the Baltic Sea was
returned. By 1598, Western Siberia was finally conquered.
In
1591, under unclear circumstances (presumably on the orders of Boris
Godunov), the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarevich Dmitry, died.
Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich died in 1598, leaving no descendants, and this
was the end of the rule of the Rurik dynasty in Russia. After the
voluntary refusal of the wife of the deceased Tsar Fedor, Irina
Godunova, from the kingdom, Boris Godunov was elected tsar by the Zemsky
Sobor in 1598.
Time of Troubles (1598-1613/1618)
The first
years of the 17th century were lean, there was an uprising of Cotton,
which became a harbinger of the Time of Troubles. There was a rumor that
the “innocently killed” Tsarevich Dmitry (son of Ivan the Terrible)
miraculously escaped and wants to ascend the throne. The impostor who
played his role went down in history under the name of False Dmitry I.
His support was the most economically developed southwestern regions of
Russia (Severshchina). Victoriously entering Moscow after the death of
the brother of the wife of the last Rurikovich Tsar Boris Godunov, False
Dmitry in 1605 was married to the kingdom. However, Polish support had
an extremely negative impact on his perception by the boyars and the
people. The new tsar was declared unreal and overthrown by a boyar group
led by Vasily Shuisky, who ascended the throne.
Despite the fact
that Vasily Shuisky belonged to the Rurik dynasty (Suzdal branch), he
did not enjoy the support of the people. In the south of the state, the
Bolotnikov uprising broke out, the participants of which were called
"thieves". The uprising was crushed, but a new impostor appeared - False
Dmitry II, to whom the rebels joined. To fight the rebellion, Shuisky
turned to Sweden for help, in exchange for the cession of part of the
territory. The Russian-Swedish army under the command of Mikhail
Skopin-Shuisky inflicted a number of defeats on the rebels and the Poles
supporting them, freeing the Russian cities and lifting the blockade of
Moscow. False Dmitry II fled, and the remnants of the Polish detachments
went to the Polish king. Then Poland, previously supporting both False
Dmitrys, decided to directly start a war with a weakened Russia. The
Poles laid siege to Smolensk, which had been defending for almost two
years, delaying the main Polish troops. However, after the sudden death
of Skopin-Shuisky in Moscow, the Russian troops were defeated in the
Battle of Klushino. Failures led to the overthrow of Vasily Shuisky and
the occupation of Moscow by the Poles.
Formally, power belonged
to the Seven Boyars, but options for swearing an oath to the Polish king
were openly discussed. Sweden changed its position to hostile towards
Russia and occupied Novgorod. Patriarch Hermogenes urged all Russian
people to fight against foreign invaders and liberate Moscow. Supporters
of False Dmitry II took an anti-Polish position (since the Seven Boyars
supported the candidacy of the Polish prince Vladislav for the Russian
throne). False Dmitry II began the fight against the Poles, but was soon
killed by his own people. The campaign of the first people's militia
against Moscow ended in failure, but already the second people's militia
of Minin and Pozharsky was able to liberate Moscow from the Poles in
1612. This day (November 4) is now celebrated as National Unity Day.
Russia in the 17th century
To combat the consequences of the
Troubles, the Zemsky Sobor of 1613 was convened, at which Mikhail
Romanov was called to the kingdom - the first of the Romanov dynasty,
who through his relative Anastasia Romanova (the first wife of Ivan the
Terrible) was the closest relative of the extinct Rurik dynasty. He was
also a “profitable king” for the boyars, since the young man, who
initially did not want to bear the burden of power, could easily become
a toy in the hands of the boyars, who in the end actually ruled.
Everything changed after the exchange of prisoners after the Time of
Troubles - in June 1619, the father of the young king (the future
Patriarch Filaret) returned, with whom Mikhail always consulted in state
affairs. Meanwhile, the fight against the rebels from among the Cossacks
and the Polish interventionists did not end. In 1614, the rebellious
Cossacks were defeated and the ataman Zarutsky was executed along with
the son of False Dmitry II, and the wife of both false kings, Marina
Mnishek, was imprisoned.
In 1618, the Polish king Vladislav again
tried to take Moscow and seize the Russian throne. However, the Poles
failed to take Moscow. In this situation, the parties signed the Deulino
truce. Russia had to cede Smolensk and Severshchina to Poland, but
Russia's independence was preserved. In 1632, Russia began a new war,
the purpose of which was to return the lands lost during the Time of
Troubles. The Russians were unable to take Smolensk and return the
territories, however, following the results of a new peace treaty, the
Polish king finally renounced his rights to the Russian throne.
At the same time, in the east, the conquest of
Siberia, begun under Ivan the Terrible, continues: the cities of
Krasnoyarsk (1628), Yakutsk (1632), Chita (1653), Irkutsk (1661) are
founded. In 1639, Russian explorers reach the shores of the Pacific
Ocean, and in 1643 Baikal. In 1648, the Cossack Semyon Dezhnev rounded
Chukotka by sea and opened the strait, later called the Bering Strait.
The development of Siberia was carried out by the forces of the
Cossacks, explorers and industrialists. The largest explorers include
Erofey Khabarov, Vasily Poyarkov, Vladimir Atlasov. Russian colonization
met with little resistance. The local population was forced to pay a fur
tax (yasak) in exchange for protecting the Cossacks from the raids of
other tribes. The only significant obstacle to the accession of the Far
East was China, with which the Nerchinsk Treaty on the delimitation of
territories was already concluded in 1689.
The Cathedral Code of
1649 for the first time in the history of Russian legislation
establishes the division of norms into branches of law. In addition,
they were enshrined in serfdom.
In 1654, the Zaporizhzhya
Cossacks of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who raised an uprising against Poland,
swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. This act led
to another multi-year Russian-Polish war. In the early years, Russian
troops successfully occupied a significant part of the Commonwealth,
took Smolensk, occupied Kyiv, defeated the army of the Lithuanian
principality and took the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,
Vilna. However, the split among the Ukrainian Cossacks, some of whom
went over to the side of Poland, and the counteroffensive of the Polish
army led to the loss of part of the previously conquered territories.
The Russians were able to hold the territories on the left bank of the
Dnieper. In 1667, the Andrusovo truce was signed between the countries.
As a result of victory in the war, Kyiv, Smolensk, and Left-bank Ukraine
were annexed to Russia.
The church reform of Patriarch Nikon
provoked a schism in 1656-1666. Zealots of antiquity go into opposition
and are persecuted, and Westernization intensifies in Russia: “regiments
of the new order” (reiters) appear, interest in Western culture
(theater, portraiture) increases in the upper strata of society.
The devastating war with Poland, the church split and the enslavement of
the peasants led to the largest Cossack-peasant uprising of Stepan Razin
(1670-1671) in the pre-Petrine era, which engulfed the entire Volga
region and the south. The uprising was suppressed by the tsarist troops,
its leaders were executed.
During the short reign of Fyodor III
Alekseevich, by the decision of the Zemsky Sobor, the system of
parochialism was abolished and the distribution of posts in the state
apparatus officially ceased to depend on the nobility of the clan, the
Bit Books were destroyed, and Genealogical Books were introduced. In
1676-1681, under the leadership of Prince Grigory Romodanovsky, a war
was waged in Ukraine against the Ottoman Empire, the Treaty of
Bakhchisaray, which was beneficial for Russia, was concluded, according
to which Turkey recognized Left-Bank Ukraine and Kyiv for Russia. The
end of the 17th century was marked by the emergence of a higher
education system: the first higher educational institution in Russia was
founded - the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy.
After the death of
young Fyodor, the Streltsy revolt was organized, as a result of which
Princess Sofya Alekseevna became regent under the juvenile Ivan and
Peter, whose reign was marked by the conclusion of an “eternal peace”
with Poland (1686) and the Nerchinsk Treaty with China - the first
Russian-Chinese treaty; joining the Holy League (1686) in the fight
against the Ottoman Empire.
In 1689, Princess Sophia was
overthrown by Peter I and imprisoned in a monastery. Peter became the
sole ruler (taking into account the incapacity of his brother co-ruler
Ivan V, who died in 1696). Peter continued the war with Turkey, and as a
result of the Azov campaigns of 1695-96, he took Azov, having received
access to the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov, secured under a peace treaty
with Turkey in 1700.
Reforms of Peter the Great. Building an empire
In
1697-98, Peter I organized the "Great Embassy" to Europe in order to
find allies in a future war against Sweden, and invite foreign
specialists to the Russian service, as well as get acquainted with
European practices. At this time, a new streltsy uprising broke out in
Moscow, the participants of which were dissatisfied with the new order
and planned to return Princess Sophia to the throne, but failed.
The Streltsy riots of 1682 and 1698, boyar feuds, as well as temporary
failures in the war with the Swedes (Battle of Narva) lead Tsar Peter to
the idea of the need for fundamental reforms in order to force the
modernization of the country.
Peter creates a modern fleet in
Russia, reforms the army, opens educational institutions (Petersburg
Academy of Sciences), encourages the development of industry. The Boyar
Duma and the patriarchate are abolished, Zemsky Sobors cease to be
convened, the country is divided into 8 provinces (1708). After the
suppression of the Bulavin uprising, the Don Cossacks lose their
autonomy. Since 1700, Russia has been switching to a new calendar, the
chronology from the "creation of the world" has been replaced by the
chronology from the Nativity of Christ. Instead of the Boyar Duma, the
Senate becomes the highest deliberative body under the tsar, and the
Holy Synod, managed by a civil official, is created instead of the
institution of the patriarch. Instead of Orders, new governing bodies
are being created - Collegiums. A structured set of ranks is being
created. The Table of Ranks.
The Great Northern War continued
until 1721. In 1709, Russian troops defeated the Swedes in the Battle of
Poltava, after which there was a turning point in the war. The final
victory in the war allows Russia to annex the eastern coast of the
Baltic Sea (Estland, Livonia, Ingria). St. Petersburg (1703) was founded
on the new lands, where in 1712 the capital of the state was
transferred. In 1721, Russia is declared an empire and is among the
great European powers.
In general, Peter's reforms were aimed at
strengthening the state and familiarizing the elite with European
culture while strengthening absolutism. In the course of the reforms,
the technical and economic backwardness of Russia from a number of other
European states was overcome, access to the Baltic Sea was won, and
transformations were carried out in many areas of the life of Russian
society. However, the achievements of Peter's rule were achieved through
violence against the population, its complete subordination to the will
of the monarch, and the eradication of any dissent. Serf-owning methods
and repressions led to an overstrain of the people's forces. Petrovsky's
Decree on the succession to the throne, designed to prevent the
curtailment of reforms, led to a protracted crisis in the supreme power,
known as the "era of palace coups."
Russia in the 18th century
After the death of Peter in 1725, an unstable period of “temporary
workers” began in Russia, which is characterized by palace coups and
“the dominance of foreigners” (Bironovshchina). The actual power in the
country belonged to the oligarchic Supreme Privy Council, which relies
on the Life Guards. Empress Anna Ioannovna, having come to power in
1730, dissolved the Privy Council. During her reign, Russia actively
intervened in European affairs, taking part in the War of the Polish
Succession, and together with Austria in the war against Turkey, during
which Russian troops captured the Crimea for the first time, defeating
the Crimean Khanate.
In 1741, the daughter of Peter I, Elizaveta
Petrovna, became empress. Under her rule, Moscow University was opened
(1755), imperial residences (the Winter Palace, Tsarskoye Selo) were
equipped in the Elizabethan Baroque style, and a moratorium on the death
penalty was introduced. During this period, science was widely developed
in Russia, primarily due to the activities of Mikhail Lomonosov. In
1756-61, Russia took part in the Seven Years' War against Prussia.
Russian troops managed to win a number of victories over the Prussian
troops, capture East Prussia and Berlin. However, after the death of
Elizabeth in 1761, the new emperor, Peter III, abandoned the conquests
and withdrew Russia from the war.
In 1762, as a result of another
palace coup that overthrew the extremely unpopular Peter III, Catherine
II the Great came to power. The internal transformations carried out by
the empress included: strengthening the role of the nobility (Charter on
liberties to the nobility), holding the Legislative Commission to
systematize the laws of the state, carrying out the provincial reform,
as well as the elimination of internal autonomies (the abolition of the
Zaporizhzhya Sich, the Kalmyk Khanate). This policy of the empress was
in line with the spirit of Enlightened absolutism. During her reign, the
largest Cossack-peasant "Pugachev uprising" took place, suppressed by
the tsarist troops.
During the reign of Catherine the Russian Empire
acquired the status of a great power. As a result of two Russian-Turkish
wars victorious for Russia in 1768-1774 and 1787-1791, Crimea and the
entire territory of the Northern Black Sea region were annexed to
Russia. In 1772-1795, Russia, with the participation of Prussia and
Austria, liquidated the Commonwealth through three sections, as a result
of which it annexed the territories of the Right-Bank Ukraine,
present-day Belarus, Lithuania and Courland. During the reign of
Catherine, the Russian colonization of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska
began.
During the reign of Catherine, such great statesmen as
Grigory Potemkin, Gavriil Derzhavin, Generalissimo Alexander Suvorov,
Admiral Fyodor Ushakov and others acted. During this period, Russian
classical art flourished, Mikhail Kheraskov wrote the first epic poem in
Russian literature - Rossiad.
After the death of Catherine in
1796, her son Paul I was emperor for a short time. Under him, Russia
joined the anti-French coalition of European powers fighting
revolutionary France. Russian expeditionary forces under the command of
Alexander Suvorov defeated the French in northern Italy, however,
without receiving support from the Austrians, they overcame the Alps
with heavy fighting and returned to Russia.
Russia in the first
half of the 19th century. Patriotic War of 1812
The grandson of
Catherine II, Alexander I, became the last emperor to come to power as a
result of a palace coup. During his reign, the Patriotic War of 1812
falls, during which the French Emperor Napoleon, after the bloody Battle
of Borodino, managed to capture Moscow. However, during the
counteroffensive, the Russian army under the command of Field Marshal
Kutuzov inflicted a series of defeats on the Napoleonic army (Battle on
the Berezina) and liberated the territory of Russia. In 1813-1814,
Russian troops carried out a foreign campaign and, with the support of
the allies, defeated Napoleon in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig,
and in March 1814 entered Paris. Russia became the initiator of the
creation of the Holy Alliance (1815) and, following the results of the
Vienna Congress, included the central Polish lands together with Warsaw.
Also, as a result of successful wars with Sweden (1808-1809), Turkey
(1806-1812) and Persia (1804-1813), the power of the Russian emperor
extended to Finland (1809), Bessarabia (1812) and Azerbaijan (1813). A
long-term war with the Caucasian highlanders began.
Important
events of Alexander's reign include the establishment of ministries
(1802) and lyceums, one of which Alexander Pushkin studied. The first
half of the 19th century becomes the "golden age" of Russian literature.
At this time, such great Russian writers and poets as Pushkin,
Lermontov, Gogol and others write their works. The status of Russia is
enhanced by the First Russian circumnavigation of the world under the
command of Ivan Kruzenshtern and Yuri Lisyansky (1803-1806), as well as
the Antarctic expedition of 1819-1821 under the leadership of Thaddeus
Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev, which discovered a new continent,
Antarctica: for the first time in history, approached the ice shelves of
Antarctica , walked around the mainland, making scientific and
cartographic measurements, and also named one of the open lands in honor
of the king.
The accession to the throne of Nicholas I (brother
of Alexander I) was marked by the Decembrist uprising in December 1825,
which proclaimed the ideals of "freedom, equality and fraternity". After
the suppression of the uprising, Nicholas moved to a more conservative
policy. The suppression of the Decembrist uprising was followed by the
suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830 and the suppression of the
Hungarian uprising of 1849, which cemented Nikolai's reputation as the
"strangler of freedoms" and Russia's cliché "The gendarme of Europe." In
the era of Nicholas I, the first railways were built in Russia (the
Nikolaev Railway). In 1832, under the leadership of Mikhail Speransky,
the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was created. Russia strengthens
its positions in the Caucasus - after the victory over Persia, according
to the results of the Turkmanchay Treaty (1828), Russia retained power
over Northern Azerbaijan and Eastern Armenia. In 1828-1829 Russia was
victorious over Turkey.
In 1853 the Crimean War began. Turkey was
again defeated, Admiral Nakhimov destroyed the Turkish fleet in the
battle of Sinop. Not wanting to strengthen Russia, England and France
entered the war on the side of Turkey; Russia was forced to go on the
defensive. The Anglo-French fleet attacked Russia in Kamchatka (Peter
and Paul Defense), in the White and Baltic Seas. Allied troops landed in
the Crimea and laid siege to Sevastopol. After a year-long siege, the
city fell. Russia suffered a painful defeat in the war. The new Russian
Emperor Alexander II embarked on major reforms in all spheres of
society.
Russia in the second half of the XIX century. Reforms
and counter-reforms
The son of Nicholas, Alexander II (the
Liberator), went down in history as a moderately liberal tsar-reformer.
First of all, he abolished serfdom (1861), restored the autonomy of
universities, expanded local self-government - introduced jury trials
and zemstvo assemblies, and also reformed the army on the basis of
universal military service (1874). In 1862, in Veliky Novgorod, with the
participation of the emperor, the Millennium of Russia was celebrated,
in honor of which a monument of the same name was erected. The second
half of the 19th century becomes the era of the flourishing of culture
in Russia. Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev and others
write their works, which have become classics of world literature.
Russian classical music performed by composers Mikhail Glinka, Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and others is gaining recognition.
Under Alexander II, the Caucasus was finally conquered, and after
the defeat of Imam Shamil, Chechnya and Dagestan (1859) and Circassia
(1864) became part of Russia. In 1863, another Polish uprising was
crushed. Russia waged successful wars against Turkey in the Balkans,
which led to the liberation of the South Slavic peoples, in particular,
in 1878, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and actual Bulgaria received full
independence. Under Alexander II, Russia annexed Central Asia (the
territory of modern: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Turkmenistan), sold Alaska. In the era of Alexander II, there is a boom
in railway construction. Since the late 1870s, revolutionary terror
(organizations "Land and Freedom", "Narodnaya Volya") has become
widespread in the country, the tsar himself became a victim (1881).
The son of Alexander II, Alexander III, was called the Peacemaker in
the official pre-revolutionary historiography, since during his reign,
for the first time in a long time, Russia did not wage major wars. In
addition, during the reign of Alexander III, his father's reforms were
partially revised. In particular, some results of the peasant, judicial
and zemstvo reforms were revised. Administrative and police supervision
was also strengthened. This policy, known as the counter-reforms of
Alexander III, slowed down the revolutionary movement in Russia, after
which terrorist activity began to decline. But at the same time, the
counter-reforms only “froze” the accumulated social contradictions in
the state. The end of the 19th century was the period of the industrial
revolution in Russia, as a result of which there was a significant
growth in the class of workers (the proletariat).
Russia at the
beginning of the XX century. First Revolution and World War
By the
beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire occupied an area of
21.8 million km², being the second largest state in the world after
the British Empire. According to the 1897 census, the population of the
country was about 129 million people. By 1914, the population of Russia
was 175 million people, having increased by more than 40 million people
in less than 20 years, which in particular led to a significant decrease
in the land allotments of the peasantry due to the fact that it was the
rural population that was the main source of population growth in the
country.
In 1894, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II ascended
the throne. Russia continued to expand in the Far East, in 1900 Russian
troops occupied Chinese Manchuria and, as part of a coalition of
European powers and Japan, captured the capital of China, Beijing.
Russia's expansion in the region led to a clash with Japan, which was
gaining strength. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which was
extremely unsuccessful for Russia, followed, during which Russia lost
the Port Arthur base and half of Sakhalin.
On January 9, 1905, a
bloody dispersal of a workers' demonstration took place in St.
Petersburg (Bloody Sunday). As a result of this, unrest and strikes
broke out all over the country. Radical organizations of both the left
(Socialist-Revolutionaries) and the right (Black Hundreds) perceptibly
intensified. The king was forced to go on a series of reforms. On
October 17, 1905, a manifesto was published on the improvement of the
state order, according to which the State Duma was established. Prime
Minister P. A. Stolypin carried out an agrarian reform, which the left
parties perceived as a blow to the traditional peasant community, but
which at the same time had a significant positive effect. On June 3,
1907, the Third of June coup took place, formally becoming the end of
the first revolution.
In 1914, Russia entered World War I on the side of the
Entente. The war took on a protracted character. In Eastern Europe,
Russia opposed Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the Caucasus, the Ottoman
Empire. Initially, the successful offensive of the Russian army in East
Prussia ended in defeat near Tannenberg. Nevertheless, on the front
against Austria-Hungary, Russian troops managed to win a major victory
(the Battle of Galicia) and occupy Galicia. The campaign of 1914 was
generally successful for Russia. However, in 1915, a shell shortage set
in in the army, and in the summer the German-Austrian troops managed to
break through the Russian front. The campaign ended with a serious
retreat of the Russian army and the loss of Poland and Lithuania. In
1916, Russian troops again carried out a major successful offensive in
the Austro-Hungarian direction (Brusilovsky breakthrough). In the
Caucasian direction, the fighting was very successful for Russia, the
Turkish troops were defeated in the battle of Erzurum.
By the
beginning of 1917, the front line passed through the territory of
Russia, a number of territories were lost (Poland, Lithuania), the
society expressed open dissatisfaction with failures at the fronts and
heavy losses. Inside the country, rumors were fueled about treason in
the highest echelons of power and about the negative influence on the
tsar by Grigory Rasputin. The war demonstrated the inefficiency of the
state apparatus and significantly exacerbated the economic and social
problems in the state, becoming a catalyst for a revolutionary
situation.
In 1917, the third year of the war, dissatisfaction
grew in society both with the war itself and the need associated with
it, and with the tsarist regime as a whole. On March 8 (February 23, old
style), on International Women's Day in Petrograd, workers from capital
enterprises went on strike. Initially, they demanded bread and an end to
the war, but soon the protesters picked up the slogan "Down with the
autocracy!" The whole city was in turmoil. Attempts by the city
authorities to disperse the protesters were unsuccessful. As early as
March 12 (February 27, O.S.), the soldiers sent to suppress the unrest
of the workers willingly went over to the side of the rebels.
In
conditions of virtual anarchy, on March 2 (15) some of the deputies of
the State Duma formed the Provisional Government of Russia (Prime
Minister Prince G. E. Lvov), and the tsar was forced to abdicate. At the
same time, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies
(Sovdep) began to operate in Petrograd, in which the leading posts were
occupied by socialists headed by Chkheidze. A dual power was established
in the country. It was assumed that the future of Russia should be
decided by the Constituent Assembly. The new government announces an
amnesty, abolishes censorship and the "Pale of Settlement", equalizes
women's rights with men, frees the Orthodox Church from the chief
prosecutor's supervision. At the same time, the Provisional Government
was determined to continue fighting Germany "to the bitter end."
Disintegration is brewing in the country: Poland was in the zone of
German occupation, autonomous state structures were created in Finland
and Ukraine (the Senate of Tokoya, the Central Rada).
Against
this background, on April 16, the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir
Lenin, arrived in Petrograd (Finlyandsky Station) from Switzerland
through Germany through the territory of Germany, who assessed the
political situation in Russia as favorable for the start of the world
proletarian revolution and came up with radical April theses. The
Bolsheviks begin to form Red Guard detachments. At the same time, the
first demonstrations against the Provisional Government take place.
After the failure of the June offensive at the front, the Bolsheviks
declare their readiness to take power into their own hands and initiate
unrest in July 1917 under the slogans “Down with the war!”, “Down with
the capitalist ministers!”, “All power to the Soviets!”. However, on
July 4 (17), Alexander Kerensky, gaining influence in the Provisional
Government, disperses anti-government demonstrations, accusing the
Bolsheviks of collaborating with German intelligence. 800 Bolsheviks,
including Trotsky, find themselves in prisons, and Lenin first hides in
a hut in Razliv, and then flees to Finland, which is not controlled by
the Provisional Government. Kerensky becomes the head of Russia.
Having suppressed the performance of the left radicals, the
revolutionary Provisional Government soon faced a new threat - an
attempted military coup by General Kornilov in August 1917. The main
purpose of the speech was to restore order and the need for a military
dictatorship in the face of growing chaos. First of all, it was supposed
to strengthen discipline at the front and introduce the death penalty
for desertion. To fight the "Kornilovites" Kerensky turns to his
yesterday's enemies, the Bolsheviks, for help. However, it does not come
to an armed confrontation. The railroad workers block the movement of
the Kornilov trains to Petrograd, and the agitators paralyze the rebels'
resolve to take action. Kornilov's speech chokes, and he himself is
arrested. On September 1, Kerensky de jure declares Russia a republic,
while the Soviets are rapidly becoming Bolsheviks - Trotsky becomes the
chairman of the Petrograd Soviet.
On the evening of October 25 (November 7), a blank
shot from the Aurora cruiser signaled the start of an uprising. Armed
detachments of sailors, workers and soldiers, under the leadership of
the Bolshevik Antonov-Ovseenko, stormed the Winter Palace and arrested
the Provisional Government at night. Kerensky managed to escape. The
goal of the uprising was the destruction of the dual power system and
the transfer of all power to the Soviets, which formed the highest body
of Soviet power - the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, chaired
by Yakov Sverdlov, and the government accountable to him (Sovnarkom),
headed by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Kerensky, with the help
of the Cossacks, unsuccessfully tried to drive the Bolsheviks out of
Petrograd. Simultaneously with the occupation of Petrograd, the
Bolsheviks organize an uprising in Moscow, and after a week of fighting
they win.
After the victory of the Bolsheviks, Russia was
declared a socialist republic. Lenin signed the Decree on Peace and the
Decree on Land (the abolition of landlord property and its complete
confiscation), as well as other decrees: on the abolition of estates,
the separation of church and state, on the transition to the Gregorian
calendar. In addition, a reform of Russian spelling was carried out.
In November, elections were held for the All-Russian Constituent
Assembly, in which the majority of the seats were won by the
Socialist-Revolutionaries. The only meeting of the Constituent Assembly
was held on January 5 (18), 1918. The meeting confirmed the proclamation
of Russia as a republic, but refused to recognize the decrees of Soviet
power. The next day it was dispersed by the Bolsheviks.
On March
12, 1918, the Bolsheviks moved the capital from Petrograd to Moscow. In
July 1918, the Bolsheviks adopted the first Constitution in the history
of Russia.
Despite the "triumphant march of Soviet power",
opposition to the revolution emerged in a number of regions. The
disintegration of Russia began, each new formation began to form its own
armed groups. On March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was
concluded, which brought Russia out of the world war. The Bolsheviks
recognized the independence of Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania and Ukraine, pledged not to claim a part of Belarus. In July
1918, in Yekaterinburg, the Bolsheviks shot the former Emperor Nicholas
II and members of his family.
Don became one of the centers of
the White movement, the main idea of which was "Russia is one, great
and indivisible." In Novocherkassk, the Volunteer Army was formed to
fight the "Reds". Another center of the anti-Bolshevik movement was the
East of Russia, where the uprising of the Czechoslovak Corps took place.
In Samara occupied by the Czechoslovaks, a Committee of Members of the
Constituent Assembly (Komuch) arose, which did not recognize the
dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, claimed all-Russian power and
formed the People's Army to fight the Bolsheviks. In September 1918,
Komuch transferred power to the Provisional All-Russian Government (Ufa
Directory). As a result of the military coup on November 18, power in
the East of Russia passed to Admiral Kolchak, who became known as the
Supreme Ruler of Russia. Kolchak's residence was the Siberian city of
Omsk.
On December 24, 1918, Kolchak's army managed to capture
Perm, and in the spring of 1919 it came close to the Volga. On May 30,
1919, General Denikin recognized the authority of the Supreme Ruler.
Mannerheim offered Kolchak an attack on Petrograd by a 100,000-strong
Finnish army in exchange for White recognition of Finland's
independence, but Kolchak remained true to the idea of "one and
indivisible Russia." However, by November 1919, the Red Army, as a
result of a large-scale counteroffensive, defeated the White armies and
occupied Omsk, the capital of Kolchak. On this front, the famous
commander Vasily Chapaev died in the fall. The White Guard fought back
to Irkutsk. The Czechoslovaks, who wanted to quickly return to their
homeland, gave Kolchak to the Socialist-Revolutionary Political Center.
Power from the Political Center passed to the Bolsheviks, and they shot
Kolchak in Irkutsk on February 7, 1920. The resistance to the “reds” in
the East of Russia was led by Ataman Semyonov, but in the fall of 1920
he was forced to retreat to the territory of China.
In the south
of Russia, after the occupation of the North Caucasus and Donbass by the
Whites and the capture of Tsaritsyn (June 30, 1919), Baron Wrangel
insisted on holding the Yekaterinoslav-Tsaritsyn line, concentrating 3-4
cavalry corps in the Kharkov region, and establishing interaction in the
east with the troops Admiral Kolchak. However, on July 3, 1919, Denikin,
while in Tsaritsyn, issued the so-called "Moscow directive", prescribing
the offensive of the southern army of whites on Moscow. In August, the
white armies of Denikin took Kyiv, in September-October Voronezh and
Oryol. Being on the brink of disaster, the Bolsheviks, having negotiated
with Poland and achieved a truce with them, removed the Red Army from
the western front to the south, while the anarchist army of Makhno,
supporting the Reds, raided the rear of the Whites. The campaign against
Moscow by the White Army failed. By the beginning of 1920, the Red Army
occupied Rostov-on-Don during the counteroffensive. White armies were
evacuated from Novorossiysk to the Crimea. Denikin in the South of
Russia was replaced by Wrangel. His last stronghold was the Crimea, from
where, after the defeat, he was evacuated to Constantinople in November
1920.
After the defeat of Denikin in the south of Russia, in
1920-1921 the Red Army carried out a number of military operations in
the Transcaucasus, as a result of which the independent governments of
Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia were liquidated. These republics were
Sovietized, but part of the territory of the former Russian Empire was
occupied by the Turkish army (Kars region). The border between the
states was established by the Moscow Treaty of 1921.
In the
Western direction, the Bolsheviks in the autumn of 1919 defeated the
North-Western Army of General Yudenich, who was trying to take
Petrograd. In 1920, the Soviet-Polish war went on with varying success,
ending with the defeat of the Red Army near Warsaw and the Riga Peace
Treaty of 1921, which divided the territory of Ukraine and Belarus
between the two countries. Thus the export of the revolution to Europe
failed.
In the north of Russia in 1918 military contingents of
interventionists landed in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk in support of the
white movement. Until the end of 1919, active hostilities were not
conducted on this front. After the interventionists were evacuated, at
the beginning of 1920 the Red Army carried out an offensive operation,
defeated the White troops and occupied Arkhangelsk and Murmansk.
As a result of the campaigns of the Red Army in 1920,
they managed to return Central Asia to their sphere of influence.
The Civil War ended only in 1922 in the Russian Far East. After the
defeat of the remnants of Kolchak's army, the Bolsheviks in 1920 created
a buffer, formally independent Far Eastern Republic. In 1921, the Red
Army defeated the White Army of Ungern in Mongolia, where pro-Soviet
power was established. In 1922, the Red Army occupied Khabarovsk during
an offensive operation. At the end of 1922, the Japanese
interventionists evacuated from Vladivostok, and in October 1922, the
Red Army occupied Vladivostok after fighting in Primorye. Only at the
beginning of 1923 the last white detachments were defeated in Yakutia.
This ended the Civil War in Russia.
Inside the RSFSR, the
Bolsheviks had to fight throughout the Civil War against the uprisings
of the peasants and their former allies: in 1918, a rebellion of the
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries broke out in Central Russia. In 1921,
Baltic sailors in Kronstadt also rebelled against the Bolsheviks. The
dissatisfaction of the peasants was caused by the policy of war
communism pursued by the Bolsheviks, primarily its integral part - the
surplus appropriation. In 1920-21, large-scale anti-communist peasant
uprisings took place in the Tambov province, as well as in Western
Siberia. In 1920-21, the Bolsheviks defeated the anarchist army of
Makhno (Makhnovshchina) in Ukraine. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the
Soviet government had to suppress the Basmachi movement in Central Asia.
The civil war and repressions by the Soviet authorities against a
number of social strata, predominantly privileged in pre-revolutionary
times, led to mass Russian emigration from the country. More than 1.5
million people left Russia, the new government practiced forced
deportations of objectionable intellectuals (Philosophical steamboat).
Interwar period (1922-1939)
After the end of the
Civil War, the Bolsheviks were forced to abandon their plans for the
immediate implementation of the communist utopia and announce a new
economic policy, that is, to introduce a market economy under a
one-party dictatorship.
On December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics was formed, which initially included the RSFSR,
Ukrainian SSR, BSSR and ZSFSR. In the course of the national-territorial
demarcation in the USSR, new union republics were created, the territory
of the RSFSR decreased.
Stalin's rise to power (1928)
After
Lenin's death in 1924, a struggle for power between his associates began
in the CPSU(b). By 1929, virtually all the reins of power were
concentrated in his hands by the General Secretary of the Communist
Party, Joseph Stalin, and the main contender for the role of leader,
Leon Trotsky, lost in the internal party struggle and was sent abroad in
1929, and subsequently killed by an NKVD agent. After Stalin's victory
in the internal party struggle, a cult of his personality began to form,
and a totalitarian regime was established in the country.
Since
1928, forced industrialization and collectivization began in the USSR
(unification of peasants into collective farms for mechanized
agriculture). During the years of the First Five-Year Plan, DneproGES,
Turksib, metallurgical and machine-building plants were built in the
Urals and the Volga region (Uralmash, GAZ and others). In 1935, the
Moscow Metro was opened.
There was a shortage of goods for many
consumer goods, including foodstuffs. From the end of 1928, a card
system was introduced, which was canceled only in 1935. At the same
time, the free sale of products in commercial stores at very high prices
was maintained. The policy of forcible collectivization and forced
confiscation of bread from the countryside led to a massive famine in
the USSR in 1932-1933, which led to the death of 7 million people. At
the same time, the authorities used the Torgsin chain of stores to
replenish the budget by selling food to citizens exclusively for
currency and jewelry at inflated prices.
From 1928 until 1953,
Stalin launched mass repressions in the USSR, which reached their peak
in 1937-1938 (the Great Terror), accompanied by dispossession,
deportation of peoples, carrying out "national operations", the
expansion of the Gulag system, and the suppression of science
(Lysinkovshchina). Stalin destroyed the internal opposition in the party
(Moscow Trials), carried out mass repressions in the Red Army
(Tukhachevsky Case) and the NKVD. According to researchers, only in
1937-1938, about 700 thousand people were shot.
In 1934 the USSR
joined the League of Nations. In 1938-1939, in the Far East, the USSR
had a number of border conflicts with Japan (Battles at Khalkhin Gol).
In August 1939, the USSR signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany
(the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact). At the same time, a secret protocol was
attached to this treaty, according to which the USSR and Germany divided
Eastern Europe.
In September 1939, the USSR, after a military campaign
against Poland, annexed the eastern lands of Poland. In late 1939 -
early 1940, the USSR fought with Finland (Winter War), joining the
Karelian Isthmus with the city of Vyborg. In the summer of 1940, the
USSR annexed the Baltic States, as well as Northern Bukovina and
Bessarabia, taken from Romania.
On June 22, 1941, the troops of
the Third Reich and its allies invaded the territory of the USSR without
declaring war. The German army, although inferior to the Soviet one in
terms of equipment, surpassed it in terms of manpower; being fully
mobilized for the start of the war, she was able to achieve a
significant advantage in the directions of her main attacks. In the
first weeks of the war, the Soviet Western Front perished, surrounded by
two of the four German tank groups at the border. The second strategic
echelon of the Soviet armies delayed the enemy near Smolensk for 2
months, after which the 3rd and 2nd German tank groups were transferred,
respectively, to the Leningrad and Kiev directions. German troops
approached Leningrad in early September, but did not storm the city and
proceeded to blockade it. Near Kyiv, he was surrounded and the Soviet
Southwestern Front was defeated. But the attack on Moscow was thus
delayed for another month, and the Germans did not have time to achieve
decisive successes before the autumn thaw. On October 20, a state of
siege was introduced in Moscow itself. By November, the Germans came
close to Moscow, but could not take the city. After receiving
intelligence data that Japan would not attack the USSR until the fall of
Moscow, military units from the Far East were transferred to Moscow. In
December 1941, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive, defeated the
German Army Group Center and pushed the Germans back 150-200 km from
Moscow. In the south, Soviet troops liberated Rostov-on-Don. The German
plan "Barbarossa" failed, the front stabilized. By the beginning of
1942, the forces of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht became almost equal
in all respects.
In the spring of 1942, the Red Army suffered a
major defeat near Kharkov, after which the German troops broke through
the southern front and during the summer of 1942 occupied the Lower and
Middle Don, a significant part of the North Caucasus, and already on
July 17, 1942 came close to Stalingrad, where the Battle of Stalingrad
unfolded. In August-November there were bloody battles in the city. On
November 19, 1942, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive and
surrounded the enemy troops. On February 2, 1943, a large group of
German troops surrendered in the city area. The liberation of the
country began. The final turning point in the war occurred in the summer
of 1943 as a result of the Battle of Kursk, the victory in which on
August 25 is celebrated as the Day of Russian Military Glory. Soviet
troops went on the offensive along the entire length of the front, went
to the Dnieper and in November 1943 liberated Kyiv.
During the
1944 campaign, the Red Army inflicted a number of major defeats on the
German troops, completely liberating the territory of the USSR and
transferring hostilities to the territory of European countries. In June
1944, when some Soviet units had already crossed the Romanian border,
the Anglo-American allies opened a second front in Europe. In early
1945, the Red Army defeated the German troops in Poland, Hungary and
Czechoslovakia and by May took Berlin. On May 9, 1945, Germany
capitulated. This day is celebrated in Russia as Victory Day. Soviet
troops made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany,
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, partly
Austria and Norway were liberated from Nazism.
The victory was
won at the cost of huge losses: the USSR lost about 27 million people,
more than 1000 cities were destroyed.
As a result of the war,
part of East Prussia with the city of Königsberg, now the Kaliningrad
region, and Transcarpathia were annexed to the USSR. Poland returned
Bialystok, Przemysl. In August 1945, the Soviet army defeated the
Kwantung Army of Japan, an ally of Germany, in Manchuria. On September
2, 1945, Japan capitulated, and as a result of the war, the USSR
returned South Sakhalin, lost in the Russo-Japanese War, and annexed the
Kuril Islands.
After the war, a pro-Soviet bloc was formed, which
included the states of Eastern Europe controlled by Moscow (Hungary,
Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany), as well as
some Asian and African countries. The USSR became one of the founders of
the UN and a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Due to
the drought, the policy of the authorities (export of grain abroad,
surplus appropriation with the fulfillment of the plan at any cost), the
general military devastation and the weakness of agriculture undermined
by collectivization, a famine occurred in the country, the peak of which
occurred in 1946-1947. Up to 1.5 million people died as a result of the
famine. Millions of citizens suffered dystrophy and other serious
diseases.
In 1947, a monetary reform was carried out, which had a
confiscation character, which was accompanied by the abolition of ration
cards, lower prices in commercial stores and which had little effect on
improving the standard of living of citizens. The monetary reform
exacerbated the problem of corruption in the USSR among senior party
workers. In the future, there were annual reductions in retail prices
for consumer goods, which somewhat improved the standard of living of
Soviet people. At the same time, the standard of living of the average
Soviet citizen remained low, and food was scarce until the death of
Stalin in 1953.
Relations between the USSR and the West sharply
worsened, which was expressed in the Cold War. An arms race has begun.
Under the leadership of Academician Igor Kurchatov, an atomic bomb was
created and tested in the USSR (1949), and in 1953 the first hydrogen
bomb was tested.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev led
the party and the country. With it, a period called the Thaw begins. At
the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev debunks Stalin's personality
cult, de-Stalinization takes place in the country. Khrushchev
strengthens his position in the party, under him in the 1950s and 1960s
economic and economic reforms were carried out. Considerable attention
is paid to the development of agriculture, in particular, a program for
the development of virgin lands is being adopted, in addition, a housing
program is being adopted, a significant amount of affordable housing was
built in the USSR, the so-called Khrushchev.
Under Khrushchev,
the Soviet space program was developed. Under the leadership of Sergei
Korolev, the first artificial Earth satellite was launched in 1957.
April 12, 1961 was the first manned flight into space. Yuri Gagarin
became the first cosmonaut on Earth. The military consequence of the
Soviet space program was the creation of intercontinental ballistic
missiles capable of delivering a nuclear charge anywhere on the planet.
In 1956, Soviet troops put down an anti-communist uprising in
Hungary. In 1962, the intensity of the Cold War reached its peak during
the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the confrontation nearly escalated into a
nuclear war between the two superpowers. After the conflict was
resolved, the parties pursued a policy of "détente". At the same time,
some revision of the Stalinist past led to a cooling of relations with
China, which had embarked on the socialist path of development.
In 1964, Khrushchev was removed from all posts and retired. The party
and the country were led by Leonid Brezhnev.
The Brezhnev era was controversial. On the one hand, a
period of political and economic stability began in the USSR, social
benefits were provided for the broad masses of the population: a
relatively stable standard of living, affordable housing, education,
medicine, which made it possible to talk about the achievement of the
level of "developed socialism". On the other hand, in the 1970s,
especially since the second half of the 1970s, there was a certain
stagnation in the development of the USSR economy and a tendency to
maintain a deficit. The arms race was a big burden for the Soviet
economy, the USSR lagged behind the scientific and technological
revolution taking place in Western countries.
In 1965-1970, the
Kosygin reform was carried out, the transfer of enterprises and
collective farms to self-supporting, the acceleration of the growth of
the Soviet economy in the 8th Five-Year Plan (1966-1970). All-Union
shock construction projects (BAM, VAZ, KAMAZ, Atommash, the Druzhba oil
pipeline) had a wide public response. By the mid-1970s, the USSR had
achieved nuclear parity with the United States. In the late 1960s and
1970s, the space race continued. The first manned spacewalk took place
in 1965. Soviet scientists explored the surface of the Moon with the
help of the first planetary rovers: Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2 (early
1970s). At the same time, attempts to send a man to the moon in the USSR
failed, and the Americans were the first to land on the moon. In 1975,
the docking in space of the Soviet and American spacecraft
(Soyuz-Apollo) took place, which marked the end of the space race. In
1980, the USSR hosted the first Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.
Within the country, the dissident movement intensified, in particular
the human rights movement, the beginning of which was the trial of
Sinyavsky and Daniel (1965). In foreign policy, the USSR actively
intervened in the internal affairs of the states of the Eastern Bloc
(“Brezhnev Doctrine”). In 1968, Soviet troops put down an anti-communist
uprising in Czechoslovakia. In addition, the USSR actively increased
assistance to socialist countries around the world (Vietnam, Angola,
Cuba, etc.). In 1979, the Soviet Union became involved in an
unsuccessful Afghan war that stretched for 10 years until 1989.
In the first half of the 1980s, 3 elderly general secretaries die one
after another: Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.
By the mid-1980s, the economic situation in the USSR
worsened in the country. This was caused by a growing technological lag
behind the leading powers, a decrease in economic efficiency in all
sectors of the economy, and a shortage of consumer goods (75% of
production was made up of heavy industry products and the
military-industrial complex). The USSR began to actively borrow money
around the world, which was invested in a planned economy inefficiently.
Political life was characterized by an increase in abuse of office and
corruption. In 1985, the country was headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, who
initiated great and profound changes in all spheres of life in Soviet
society. At the April 23, 1985 plenum of the Central Committee of the
CPSU, Gorbachev announced a program of broad reforms under the slogan of
"accelerating the socio-economic development of the country", that is,
accelerating progress along the socialist path based on the effective
use of the achievements of scientific and technological progress,
activating the human factor and changing the order of planning.
In 1985-1986, the bulk of the old cadres of the Brezhnev draft were
replaced with a new team of managers. It was then that A. N. Yakovlev,
E. K. Ligachev, N. I. Ryzhkov, B. N. Yeltsin, A. I. Lukyanov and other
active participants in future events were introduced into the leadership
of the country. Nikolai Ryzhkov subsequently expressed the opinion that
in case of refusal to start reforms, the situation could become much
worse.
The XXVII Congress of the CPSU, held in February-March
1986, changed the program of the party: a course was proclaimed for
"improving socialism" (and not "building communism", as before); it was
supposed to double the economic potential of the USSR by 2000 and
provide each family with a separate apartment.
By the end of 1986
- the beginning of 1987, Gorbachev's team came to the conclusion that
the situation in the country could not be changed by administrative
measures, and made an attempt to reform the system in the spirit of
democratic socialism. This step was facilitated by two blows to the
Soviet economy in 1986: a sharp drop in oil prices and the Chernobyl
disaster.
In 1987, a course towards democratic socialism,
self-support, glasnost, acceleration, perestroika and new thinking was
proclaimed. In parallel, the country launched an anti-alcohol campaign
and the next stage of the fight against corruption. Factories,
enterprises, collective farms and state farms are switching to full cost
accounting, self-financing and self-sufficiency. The country is
legalizing non-state entrepreneurship in the form of cooperatives and
joint ventures, as well as small private entrepreneurship.
Socio-political organizations (including those of an extremist
orientation) are registered and alternative elections to local Soviets
are held. Commodity deficit and interethnic contradictions are
aggravated (Armenian-Azerbaijani, Uzbek-Kyrgyz, Georgian-Abkhazian
conflicts).
In 1989, the economic crisis worsened in the USSR.
Against the backdrop of anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe,
similar sentiments are spreading in society (Strikes of miners in the
USSR in 1989). By 1989, it became clear that the reforms within the
framework of socialism had failed, and the first talk began about the
transition to a regulated market economy.
In 1989, the first free
elections of people's deputies of the USSR took place, and in 1990 - the
elections of people's deputies of the RSFSR.
In 1990-1991, the economic and social crisis
intensified in the USSR, the standard of living of Soviet citizens fell,
food and commodity shortages increased, food stamps were introduced for
the first time in many years. The republics of the USSR one after
another proclaim their sovereignty, sentiments for independence are
growing in the republics, interethnic clashes are taking place. In
January 1990, in order to prevent the exit of Azerbaijan from the USSR,
Soviet troops entered Baku, the fighting in the city led to the death of
more than a hundred people. In January 1991, Soviet troops entered the
Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where they stormed the television center.
However, the central authorities denied their involvement in the
introduction of troops into the city.
In March 1990, the Congress
of People's Deputies of the USSR elected Gorbachev President of the
USSR. In March, the 6th article of the Constitution was abolished, the
CPSU was deprived of its leading role in society and the state.
In May 1990, Yeltsin was elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the
RSFSR. On June 12, 1990, the first Congress of People's Deputies of the
RSFSR adopted the Declaration on State Sovereignty of the RSFSR. In
1990-1991, the years pass against the backdrop of confrontation between
the allied and Russian authorities, the war of laws.
In 1991, in
February-March, mass actions of disobedience to the allied authorities,
miners' strikes took place in the USSR, and mass demonstrations of the
democratic opposition took place in Moscow and Leningrad. On March 17,
1991, an All-Union referendum on the preservation of the USSR was held,
in which 80% of the citizens included in the voting lists took part. Of
these, 76.4% were in favor of preserving the Union. In April 1991, there
were mass strikes in the country against price increases. A “budget war”
begins, the republics do not transfer the taxes and other contributions
they have collected to the union budget. Soviet President Gorbachev and
the leaders of the union republics are negotiating in Novo-Ogaryovo to
sign a new union treaty. During the referendum in the RSFSR, the post of
president was established. On June 12, elections were held and Boris
Yeltsin became the first president of Russia.
In August 1991, the
conservative wing of the Soviet leadership was preparing to introduce a
state of emergency in the country. On August 18, 1991, part of the top
leadership of the USSR, the Government of the USSR and the Central
Committee of the CPSU organize an emergency committee - the State
Emergency Committee and make an attempt to stop the collapse of the
USSR, prevent the signing of a union treaty that actually abolished the
USSR, introduce a state of emergency in the country. These events were
called the "August Putsch".
On August 19, the State Emergency
Committee declares a state of emergency in Moscow and a number of other
regions, and sends troops into the city. August 19 The President of the
RSFSR and the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR strongly resist the GKChP.
August 19 - 21 mass protests and demonstrations in Moscow and Leningrad.
On August 19, President of the RSFSR Yeltsin, speaking from a tank of
the Taman division in front of the House of Soviets, calls the ongoing
events a putsch and calls on Muscovites and the population of the
country to resist the putschists. In Moscow, around the residence of the
leadership of the RSFSR - the White House, thousands of Muscovites take
up defense on the barricades, 10 tanks of the Taman division go over to
the side of the defenders of the White House, Muscovites persuade the
soldiers not to shoot and not to go against the people. During the
three-day confrontation, it became clear that the army would not follow
the orders of the State Emergency Committee, a split occurred in the
troops. Faced with protests and mass resistance of Muscovites, the
transition of some military units to the side of the defenders of the
White House, the GKChP withdraws military units and tanks on August 21,
which was its defeat. On August 22, 1991, members of the State Emergency
Committee were arrested, and the leadership of the RSFSR, President
Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR are victorious.
After
the defeat of the GKChP, the allied center represented by the President
of the USSR Gorbachev began to rapidly lose power. Since the end of
August, the dismantling of allied political and state structures began.
The members of the GKChP themselves claimed that they acted with the
consent of Gorbachev.
At the end of August 1991, the activities
of the CPSU were first suspended and then banned. On August 24, 1991,
Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the
CPSU and proposed that the Central Committee dissolve itself. The
Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR was dissolved, in September 1991 the
Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR and the Supreme Soviet of the
USSR were dissolved. Instead of them, temporary inter-republican
governing bodies were created, which did not have real power.
After the collapse of the State Emergency Committee,
real power on the territory of the RSFSR began to pass to the President
of the RSFSR Yeltsin and the Supreme Council of the RSFSR. RSFSR
President Yeltsin resubordinates to the Russian leadership the allied
army, police and KGB located on the territory of the RSFSR, allied
ministries and departments, allied television and radio, banks, post
office, telegraph.
In September 1991, almost all the union
republics, except for the RSFSR, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, declared
their independence. In September-November 1991, attempts were made to
stop the political and economic collapse of the USSR, to sign a new
union treaty, but they were unsuccessful. In the context of the rapid
dismantling of the central government, M. S. Gorbachev relied on the
resumption of work on the Union Treaty, but due to the diametrically
opposed goals of the negotiators, they ended in nothing. By December
1991, the union structures were either abolished, or passed under the
jurisdiction of the RSFSR, or were disorganized.
On December 8,
the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and the Chairman of the Supreme
Council of Belarus signed the Agreement on the Establishment of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (Belovezhskaya Agreement), in which
the three republics stated "that the USSR as a subject of international
law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist."
On December 12,
1991, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR ratified the Belovezhskaya
Agreement and denounced the 1922 union treaty.
On December 21, in
Alma-Ata, 8 more former Soviet republics of the USSR joined the CIS. The
Alma-Ata Declaration and Protocol on the Formation of the CIS were
signed. (The Baltic republics and Georgia avoided participation in the
CIS).
On December 24, 1991, the membership of the USSR in the
United Nations was terminated - the place of the USSR was taken by the
RSFSR (Russian Federation), which also received the rights of a
permanent member of the UN Security Council. Having inherited the rights
of the USSR in the organization, Russia has been considered its
participant since 1945.
December 25, 1991 Soviet President
Gorbachev resigned. Over the Kremlin there was a symbolic change of the
flag of the USSR to the Russian tricolor. On the same day, the Supreme
Soviet of the RSFSR adopted a law on changing the name of the republic,
which renamed the RSFSR into the Russian Federation (Russia).
On
December 26, the Council of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the
USSR (formed by the Law of the USSR dated 05.09.1991 No. 2392-I, but not
provided for by the Constitution of the USSR), from which at that time
only representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and Turkmenistan were not recalled, adopted a declaration No. 142-N,
which stated the cessation of the existence of the USSR.
After
the USSR ceased to exist on December 25, 1991, the Russian Federation
became an independent state and was recognized by the international
community as the successor state of the USSR.
Russia in the 1990s
Since December 1991, Russia
(Russian Federation) exists as an independent state.
In January
1992, radical economic reforms, the transition from socialism to a
market economy, began with price liberalization in Russia.
In
April 1992, the VI Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR refused
three times to ratify the Belovezhskaya agreement and exclude from the
text of the constitution of the republic the mention of the constitution
and laws of the USSR, which later became one of the reasons for the
confrontation between the Congress of People's Deputies and President
Yeltsin and subsequently led to the dispersal of the Congress in October
1993 of the year. The Constitution of the USSR and the laws of the USSR
continued to be mentioned in Articles 4 and 102 of the Constitution
until December 25, 1993, when the Constitution of the Russian Federation
adopted by popular vote came into force, which did not contain a mention
of the Constitution and laws of the USSR.
President Boris Yeltsin
and appointed by him and. about. Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar began to
carry out radical liberal reforms in the country ("shock therapy") aimed
at establishing a market economy. In the course of liberal reforms,
prices were liberalized, small-scale privatization was introduced, and
freedom of trade was introduced. The state actually stopped regulating
the prices of goods. At the same time, freedom of trade was proclaimed,
enterprises and citizens were given freedom of economic activity.
A severe crisis began in the country: property stratification into
rich and poor increased many times over, a demographic crisis began, the
population became impoverished. The redistribution of property was
carried out under the flag of the privatization of state property, when
a narrow group of people acquired large industrial enterprises
(oligarchs) for nothing.
Radical reforms, as a result of which a
significant part of the country's population became impoverished,
provoked resistance from the Congress of People's Deputies and the
Supreme Soviet of Russia, which was headed by Chairman of the Supreme
Soviet Ruslan Khasbulatov and Vice President Alexander Rutskoi. In
response, on September 21, 1993, Yeltsin adopted a decree dissolving the
Congress and Parliament, which was declared unconstitutional and was the
basis for Yeltsin's removal from the presidency. The constitutional
crisis escalated, resulting in an armed conflict. In September-October
1993, bloody clashes took place between demonstrators, supporters of the
Supreme Council and militia and troops loyal to the government.
Demonstrators, supporters of the parliament, storm the Moscow City Hall,
try to storm the Ostankino television center, after which President
Yeltsin gives the order to bring the army into Moscow and suppress the
rebellion. On the morning of October 4, tanks shelled the White House,
forcing the deputies of the Supreme Soviet and its leaders Khasbulatov,
Rutskoy and others to surrender. The Congress of People's Deputies and
the Supreme Soviet were dispersed.
Yeltsin initiated a referendum
on December 12, 1993, which adopted a new constitution for Russia. The
president received broad powers, instead of the Supreme Council, a
bicameral parliament was established, consisting of the State Duma and
the Federation Council. The highest body of power - the Congress of
People's Deputies - was abolished. The events of October-December 1993
finally ended the 76-year Soviet period in the history of Russia.
Against the backdrop of public confrontation, numerous post-Soviet
conflicts flared up, one of which was the First Chechen War of
1994-1996. The North Caucasus has long become a region of increased
terrorist threat.
Yeltsin was able to win in the second round in
the 1996 presidential election. In 1998, Russia joined the international
club of the Big Eight (G8). By the end of the 1990s, an economic crisis
was brewing again in Russia, which manifested itself in the depreciation
of the national currency and the inability of the state to pay debts on
loans (1998 default). In 1998-1999, four governments changed in Russia.
In August 1999, FSB director Vladimir Putin was appointed prime
minister, to whom, after the start of the second Chechen war, on
December 31, 1999, Yeltsin transferred full power.
In 2000, Vladimir Putin became the second president of
Russia. In the 2000s, a number of socio-economic and political reforms
were carried out. At that time, Russia experienced economic growth and
an increase in real incomes of the population: Russia's real GDP doubled
in 2000-2008, GDP per capita also doubled in 2000-2008, Russia's public
debt fell from 92% in 1999 to 7.5% in 2008. There was a strengthening of
the "vertical of power" in the country and the establishment of
dominance at all levels of power of the United Russia party, which
supports the decisions of the president and government. The second
Chechen campaign was successfully completed, ending with the
reintegration of Chechnya into the Russian Federation.
In May
2008, First Deputy Prime Minister D. A. Medvedev was elected President
of Russia, and V. V. Putin, according to an election agreement, took
over as Prime Minister. In August 2008, Russia carried out a military
operation against Georgia in order to liberate South Ossetia. Since 2008
(since its foundation) Russia has been a member of the G20 (Big Twenty),
an international club of the world's largest economies. Since the second
half of 2008, a serious economic crisis has been observed in Russia, the
active phase of which came to naught by the end of 2009. At the end of
2011, Russia's GDP exceeded the pre-crisis figures of 2008, but the
economic growth rates have significantly decreased.
On December
4, 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 results of
the vote provoked significant protests in the country, and a number of
political scientists and journalists noted various falsifications on the
voting 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 they soon subsided.
In February 2014, Sochi hosted the first Winter Olympic Games in
Russia. On March 18, 2014, Crimea was annexed to the Russian Federation
(Ukraine and the UN General Assembly regard these events as an
occupation). This event was preceded by a large-scale social and
political crisis (Euromaidan) in the region caused by the change of
power in Ukraine. As a result of the annexation of the Crimea,
unrecognized by the countries of the West, a so-called anti-Russian war
began against Russia. "sanctions war", which includes economic
sanctions, as well as the exclusion of Russia from the G8. The ensuing
slowdown in the economy, the sharp depreciation of the ruble and the
fall in oil prices led to the fact that starting from December 2014, the
country was hit by a socio-economic crisis.
Since January 1,
2015, Russia has been a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, which
unites a number of CIS countries. Since September 30, 2015, Russia has
been conducting a military operation in Syria against the militants of
the Islamic State and Syrian opposition groups, which became the first
large-scale military operations of post-Soviet Russia outside the former
USSR.
In 2018, Vladimir Putin was re-elected for a fourth term.
Also in 2018, Russia hosted the FIFA World Cup for the first time.
According to many political scientists, the Russian political system
that has developed in the first decades of the 21st century is
characterized by: authoritarianism, which is a super-presidential power
based on the person of President Vladimir Putin and the cult of his
personality (Putinism), statism, imitation democracy. In 2020, after the
approval of significant amendments to the Russian Constitution, Vladimir
Putin received the right to “zero out” his presidential terms after
2024, thus gaining the de facto right to be elected until 2036.
In February 2022, Russia recognized the independence of the Donetsk and
Lugansk People's Republics, and on February 24, the invasion of Russian
troops into Ukraine began. In response, a number of countries have
imposed harsh economic sanctions against Russia.