Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about 22,800,000 km² (8,800,000 sq mi), roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the third-largest empire in history, behind only the British and Mongol empires. It also colonized Alaska between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity.

From the 10th to 17th century, the Russians had been ruled by a noble class known as the boyars, above whom was the tsar, the absolute monarch. The groundwork of the Russian Empire was laid by Ivan III who ruled from 1462 to 1505, and greatly expanded his domain, established a centralized Russian national state, and secured independence against the Tatars. His grandson, Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), became in 1547 the first Russian monarch to be crowned tsar of all Russia. Between 1550 and 1700, the Russian state grew by an average of 35,000 km² (14,000 sq mi) per year. Peter I transformed the tsardom into an empire, and fought numerous wars that turned a vast realm into a major European power. He moved the Russian capital from Moscow to the new model city of Saint Petersburg, and led a cultural revolution that introduced a modern, scientific, rationalist, and Western-oriented system. Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) presided over further expansion of the Russian state by conquest, colonization, and diplomacy, while continuing Peter's policy of modernization. Alexander I (r. 1801–1825) helped defeat the militaristic ambitions of Napoleon and subsequently constituted the Holy Alliance, which aimed to restrain the rise of secularism and liberalism across Europe. Russia further expanded to the west, south, and east, strengthening its position as a European power. Its victories in the Russo-Turkish Wars were later checked by defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856), leading to a period of reform and conquests in Central Asia. Alexander II (r. 1855–1881) initiated numerous reforms, most notably the 1861 emancipation of all 23 million serfs.

By the start of the 19th century, Russian territory extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, and from the Baltic Sea in the west to Alaska, Hawaii, and California in the east. By the end of the 19th century, Russia had expanded its control over the Caucasus, most of Central Asia and parts of Northeast Asia. Notwithstanding its extensive territorial gains and great power status, the empire entered the 20th century in a perilous state. The devastating Russian famine of 1891–1892 killed hundreds of thousands and led to popular discontent. As the last remaining absolute monarchy in Europe, the empire saw rapid political radicalization and the growing popularity of revolutionary ideas such as communism. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Tsar Nicholas II authorized the creation of a national parliament, the State Duma, although he still retained absolute political power.

When Russia entered the First World War on the side of the Allies, it suffered a series of defeats that further galvanized the population against the emperor. In 1917, mass unrest among the population and mutinies in the army culminated in the February Revolution, which led to the abdication of Nicholas II, the formation of the Russian Provisional Government, and the proclamation of the first Russian Republic. Political dysfunction, continued involvement in the widely unpopular war, and widespread food shortages resulted in mass demonstrations against the government in July. The republic was overthrown in the October Revolution by the Bolsheviks, who proclaimed the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and whose Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended Russia's involvement in the war, but who nevertheless were opposed by various factions known collectively as the Whites. After emerging victorious in the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union across most of the Russian territory; Russia was one of four continental European empires to collapse as a result of World War I, along with Germany, Austria–Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.

The foundations of a unified Russian state were laid in the 15th century under Ivan III. Moscow came to dominate the region known as Great Russia, and by the early 16th century, the Russian states were united with Moscow. The subjects of the Muscovite ruler were overwhelmingly Great Russian in ethnicity and Orthodox in religion. As Moscow was the only independent Orthodox power following the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, its rulers had already taken symbolic steps toward becoming an empire by marrying into the Byzantine imperial dynasty, adopting the double-headed eagle as their symbol, and the title of tsar (caesar).

During the reign of Ivan IV, the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan were conquered by Russia in the mid-16th century, marking the beginning of the transformation from an almost mono-ethnic realm into a multi-ethnic empire. The Russians began to expand into Siberia, initially in pursuit of the region's profitable furs. Following the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century, the traditional alliance of autocratic monarchy, church, and aristocracy was seen as the only basis for preserving social order and Russian statehood, which legitimized the rule of the Romanov dynasty.

The foundations of the Russian Empire were laid during Peter I's reforms, which altered Russia's political and social structure, and as a result of the Great Northern War which strengthened Russia's world standing. Peter I (r. 1682–1725), played a major role in introducing the European state system into Russia. While Russia's vast lands had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those in the West. Nearly the entire population was devoted to agriculture, with only a small percentage living in towns. The class of kholops, whose status was close to that of slaves, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter converted household kholops into house serfs, thus counting them for poll taxation. Agricultural kholops had been converted into serfs in 1679. They were largely tied to the land, in a feudal sense, until the late 19th century.

Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Empire. His attention then turned north; Russia lacked a secure northern seaport, except at Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, where the harbor was frozen for nine months a year. Access to the Baltic Sea was blocked by Sweden, whose territory enclosed it on three sides. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him, in 1699, to make a secret alliance with Saxony, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Denmark-Norway against Sweden; they conducted the Great Northern War, which ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden asked for peace with Russia. On 2 November [O.S. 22 October] 1721, the day of the announcement of the Treaty of Nystad, the Governing Senate and Synod invested the tsar with the titles of Peter the Great, Pater Patriae (father of the fatherland), and Imperator of all Russia. The adoption of the title of imperator by Peter I is seen as the beginning of "imperial" Russia.