History of Russia
Premodern history
In pre-Christian times, the territory of what is now modern Russia was populated by Iranic, Finnic, and Slavic nomads the west, with Turkic empires and Tungusic kingdoms dominating the east. Greeks and Goths established settled civilizations in southern Russia, leading to the Romans, Huns, and Khazars. In medieval times, the Kievan Rus, the Muslim Bulgars, and the Cuman nomads eclipsed the Khazars in the west. The Kirghiz empire expanded throughout the east, expelling the Uyghurs. The Georgian Empire and a diverse array of Iranic, Turkic, and Cauasian entities were established in the south.
The Kievan Rus entered a period of collapse in the 11th century. This was closely followed by the rise of the Mongols in the 13th century, a vast empire that united all of modern Russia under one state for the first time. By the end of the century, the Golden Horde dominated the west, while the Genghisid emperors ruled the east. In the 1300s, the Teutons, Poles, and various Russian principalities dismantled the Golden Horde. This eventually led to the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow as the pre-eminent Slavic state in the west, neighbouring the Siberian khanates of the center, ultimately flanked by the Mongol states and nomadic tribes of the far east.
Moscow ceased tribute to the Mongols in 1480 and rapidly blossomed in the next century. In 1547, the Russian Tsardom under the Rurikid dynasty was declared with Moscow as its capital. By 1600, the Russian state absorbed the Muslim Siberian khanates, reaching the Jenisej river. Further expansion east with enabled by Cossack-made routes and armies, such as the Babinov Road.
In the early 17th century, the Time of Troubles led to the end of the Rurikid dynasty. The Polish Vasa dynasty attempted to claim the throne of Russia but were eventually expelled. The Romanovs were crowned as Tsars soon after and would rule Russia for three centuries.
Early Romanov period (1613-1701)
Late Romanov period (1701-1867)
Colonization efforts in America
In 1788, the private Kurile Island Company was established for the purposes of representing Russian commercial interests in northeast Asia during the Kansei Restoration of Japan. However, the company was shortly after sponsored by the Russian government to explore and settle northwestern North America, in what was eventually to become Alyeska. The Aleutian Islands were eventually claimed for Russia in 1791. While initially instructed to maintain peaceful relations with the Aleuts and other indigenous peoples, Russian colonists soon began employing violence in order to expand and secure their settlements.
Russo-Dutch Treaty of 1832
Russian colonists, led by explorer Alexander Kolchak, settled on Kolchak Island (now part of Westerzee Province, Tussenland) in the early 19th century, competing with Dutch colonists of the Royal Tussenland Company. The colony soon became mismanaged and unprofitable, leading to the Kurile Island Company declaring bankruptcy and ceasing trade in the Salish Sea. In 1832, Russia and the Netherlands came to an agreement where Russia would give up claims to any territory south of the Gitimaet River claimed by the Dutch. This came to be known as the Russo-Dutch Treaty of 1832 and created the modern border between the sovereign nations of Alyeska and the Federation of Tussenland.
Attempts to revive the Kurile Island Company
The Kurile Island Company was revived in 1841, termed the Second Kurile Company to distinguish it from the first. After a disappointing twenty years of operation, the company was dismantled again. In 1861, the Russian Pacific Company was established as a successor, financed by the imperial government as well as several Russian, French, and Japanese aristocrats. Four years later, it would come to become the main governing body of the colony of Alyeska.
The Orange Reign (1867-1923)
The Great Game
Russia and Britain began competing for influence in central Asia in the 1840s, a region situated between Russian Siberia and British India. The installation of the pro-British Dogra dynasty in Tibet in 1840. After three decades of tensions and political maneuvering, the Great Game was concluded with the creation of the artificial buffer state of Serindia in the western Qing dynasty and the withdrawal of British and Russian troops from Afghanistan.
Russian Succession Crisis
The sickly Tsar Alexander III appointed his Dutch nephew-in-law, Henry-Williams, as a General-Admiral of the Imperial Navy in 1861 in order to reform and modernize the fleet. Over the 1860s, Henry-Williams had become extremely popular in Russia in contrast to the perceived dullness and lethargy of the Russian imperial family. After the long-awaited death of the Tsar in 1867, various members of the Senate and the gentry were split on who was to become the next monarch. The chronically ill Prince Ivan was heir presumptive, never being formally named, leading to a major governmental crisis.
Henry-Williams claimed the throne of Russia three days after the death of the Tsar. Eight months later, he was successfully crowned Tsar of Russia with the support of numerous members of the Russian media, the Netherlands, and his allies in the aristocracy. To appease the conservative and anti-Dutch factions of the gentry, Henry-Williams decided to officially co-rule with his Russian wife, Queen Anna Petrovna. In the press, they were commonly known by the epithet the 'Orthodox Monarchs of Russia', reflecting the grandeur and importance of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain.
Prince Ivan passed away in March of 1868, most likely due to coronary artery disease brought on by familial hypercholesterolemia, a genetic condition which possibly afflicted his father Alexander III as well. Tsar Henry-Williams used this fact to present his bloodline as pure and healthy, in contrast to the decaying line to which the Alexandrine monarchs had belonged to. On this note, Tsarina Anna Petrovna and her close friend Joseph Ivanovich Melukov are credited with beginning the eugenics movement in Russia, emphasizing the importance of pure bloodlines to the Russian people, to the detriment of Jews, Tatars, and others.
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Russo-Ottoman War
Due to the military and social reforms orchestrated under Tsar Henry-Williams, Russia's imperial ambitions in the south were greatly increased. A series of revolts in several Ottoman possessions in Europe during the early 1880s alerted Russia to the fragility of Ottoman rule in the region. Russia declared war in the April of 1884. After four months of war, Austria joined under the condition to annexing all Ottoman territories north of the Drin River. This promise made by Russia was ultimately unfulfilled in the resulting Treaty of Angora, with Austria only being able to annex Bosnia. This later upset relations between the two empires, a grudge which would manifest itself in the Great War, where Austria and Russia were on opposing sides.
In the final weeks of the war, Russia moved their soldiers into the eastern part of Moldavia, known as Bessarabia, eventually annexing it. This greatly aggravated the newly liberated country, which turned against Russia and maintained close relations with Austria and the Ottoman Empire as a response.
Formation of the Russian viceroyalties
The lands of the former Khanate of Crimea were transformed into the Crimean Viceroyalty. While the peninsula remained populated by indigenous Tatars, areas like Yedishkul, Oezue, and the Kuban were settled by Russians from the north. Many of these agricultural colonists left the Viceroyalty during the famines of the 1910s. Cities like Taganrog, Azov, Kazikermen, and Balisaray experienced rapid population growth, eclipsing nearby Russian settlements like Alexandrovsk and Sochi. Bessarabia, bearing the name Transpruthenia, would remain heavily populated by Vlachs and Bulgarians for the next several decades. A crucial Tatar minority of both Muslim and Christian faiths existed in the south, especially around the city of Akkerman.
During the Russian Revolution, Transpruthenia would be reannexed into the Moldavian National Republic. The Crimean Viceroyalty would be reconstructed as an autonomous national republic by 1930, with the Azov region being de-attached for strategic reasons.
Double O period (1923-1944)
The Russian Revolution
In the 1920s, the European Economic Crisis and its effects hit Russia especially hard. In 1922, a series of crop failures and poor financial decisions by the Russian imperial authorities caused a financial crisis known as the Russian depression. During the depression, massive famines in Ukraine and the Don Kuban region sent thousands of refugees north towards urban centers such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev. This led to food riots, strikes, and crackdowns by imperial authorities.
Around every large city in Russia, large shantytowns started popping up; these shantytowns were overcrowded, and disease outbreaks were common in them. During this period, anti-elite, anti-tsar, and pro-republican sentiments grew throughout the Russian empire. In 1923, the Russian Republican Congress (the largest republican organization in Russia at the time, also known as the R.R.C.) had over a million members in the Muscovite region alone. By the winter of 1925, the situation in Russia rapidly deteriorated, with most citizens believing that the Tsar mishandled the economic crisis and exacerbated the famines in the rural south through poor economic policy. Additionally, there was an outrage at the continued opulence of the Tzar, Tsarina, and nobilities lifestyles the peasantry starved.
Storming of the Winter Palace
On December 3rd, the winter palace was surrounded by a bread riot that swept through Moscow, and after 6 hours of rioting, the protestors stormed the Winter Palace. The nobility left the previous day to St. Petersburg (but upon hearing of the storming of the palace, left for Britain). After two days of further agitation and the breakdown of imperial civil control in Russia, the Russian Republican Congress declared the first Russian Republic and the end of imperial rule. After a week of tension with the new government, the imperial military reluctantly agreed to back the new government.
For the first month of its existence, the new Republic was stuck in a deadlock between the two major factions in government, the liberal republicans and the nationalist republicans (more commonly known as the Vosstanists (from Russian восстановление, vosstanovlenie) . Additionally, after the Tsar fled, many non-Russian regions of the empire declared independence, while the Russian military acted mostly autonomously from the Republics congress. In February of 1926, after the first wave of elections was marred with controversy. The Vosstanists walked out of congress and started to conspire to overthrow the liberal-republican-dominated congress. The following week after a series of negotiations with the military (led by General Mikhail Orlov) and the leaders of the Cossacks, the newly reformed Nationalist Republican or Vosstanist faction now known as the 'Russian National Congress' declared the Russian Republican Congress illegitimate. On Feburary 19th the breakaway Russian National Congress elected the writer and revolutionary Anastaze "Ozero" Muromsky as the chairman of the Republic.
Russian Civil War
The Russian Republican Congress reacted harshly to the National Congresses declaration and raised militias from loyalist cities and regions. By March of 1926, the Liberal Russian Republic relied only on a decentralized system of militias with dubious loyalties and often recruited from rebellious national interest groups who feared that the Vosstanists would destroy the local autonomy given to them by the Tsar's Viceroy system. This faction was often known collectively on the battlefield as the Tricolor Army due to their use of the Russian white, blue & red tricolor flag. Initially, the Tricolor Army was able to hold on to land in southern Russian, the Baltics and regions in Northern Russia.
In contrast, the Vosstanists were able to rapidly take control of the core of Russian ethnic and industrial land in the Muscovite region. They consolidated their rule with a variety of social and work programs, which alleviated the worst of the effects of the famines and economic crisis and the use of harsh authoritarian crackdowns on dissenters. The Vosstanists were able to push the Tricolor Republic Army out of North Russia by the summer of 1926. They then slowly turned their attention to their core region of support in south Russia. Throughout 1927, opponents from the Liberal Republic would try desperately to gain a foreign backer, first from the British and then the Ottomans, but as the European Economic Crisis raged, there was little desire from the other powers of Europe to get involved in a civil war that seemed to be already lost. However, they were able to find an ally in the Finnish Nationalist Republican insurgents that launched the Finnish revolution a year prior (1925).
By the winter of 1927, the Liberals realized their plight was doomed and so used their resources to provide an exodus route for the leaders, military, and businesspeople of the ill-fated republic. By February of 1928, there were only pockets of isolated fighting as the Vosstanists swept into Southern Russia and gained control. By March, the last battle of the Russian Civil War was over.