klasyki: Russia

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, spanning eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. With a population of over 140 million, Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous in the world. It is a highly urbanised country, with three-fourths of its population living in urban areas. Moscow, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and largest city of Russia, while Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and a major cultural centre. Human settlement on modern Russian territory dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. The emergence of the…

Evidence: 73 • authority: 72

The Russian Empire was an empire that extended across northern Eurasia from 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in 1917, forming the final era of Tsarist Russia and the wider Russian monarchy. 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. Prior to the imperial era, Russian governance was dominated by the aristocratic boyar elite under the authority of the grand prince and later an autocratic tsar. The groundwork of the empire was laid by Ivan III (r. 1462–1505), who greatly expanded his domain, esta…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs. The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' state in the north in the year 862, ruled by Varangians. In 882, Prince Oleg of Novgorod seized Kiev, uniting the northern and southern lands of the Eastern Slavs under one authority, moving the governance center to Kiev by the end of the 10th century, and maintaining northern and southern parts with significant autonomy from each other. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine, Slavic and Scandinavian cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Kievan Rus…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

Tsarist Russia was a transcontinental imperial state that existed in Eurasia from 1547 to 1917, encompassing the latter stages of the Russian monarchy. It evolved from the Grand Principality of Moscow, or Muscovy, in the 16th century; its latter years from around 1478 onwards are sometimes included as part of Tsarist Russia. Under it, Russia expanded to become the largest contemporary contiguous country and one of the largest empires in all of history, and it was a major player in international politics during its existence. The history of Tsarist Russia is divided between the Tsardom of Russia, when the Russian monarch used the title of Tsar, and the Russian Empire, when they used the titl…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Tsardom of Russia, also known as the Tsardom of Moscow, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721. It is generally regarded as the first phase of Tsarist Russia. From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew by an average of 35,000 square kilometres (14,000 sq mi) per year. The period includes the upheavals of the transition from the Rurik to the Romanov dynasties, wars with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian conquest of Siberia, to the reign of Peter the Great, who took power in 1689 and transformed the tsardom into an empire. Durin…