Ivan the Terrible, the Grand Duke of Moscow, came to the throne in 1533 and began to organize Russia as a modern state. The first ruler to assume the title of Czar, he expanded his domain dramatically during his 50-year rule. Ivan conquered the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, but he failed to gain territory in the south, which was held by the Crimean Tatars, or in the west were an attempt to gain a Baltic port began the 25-year long Livonian Wars.
In the east, the Cossacks began the conquest of Siberia, a huge region that extended to the Pacific Ocean. The Romanov Dynasty was founded in 1613 and was to rule Russia for the next 300 years. During Michael Romanov’s reign, enterprising explorers tempted by a lucrative fair trade, probed deeper into Siberia and Russia eventually gained control of all of Northern Asia. In the West, Poland and Sweden had both invaded Russia during the so-called time of troubles that preceded Michael’s reign. But the ceded territories were recovered during two Polish wars.
Peter the Great was the first Czar to journey beyond the boundaries of Russia and he reorganized the society based on his observations of Western European Countries. During his reign, Russian territory was finally extended to the Baltic Sea, with the acquisition of Estonia and most of Latvia, following the defeat of Sweden in the Great Northern War. A new capital was built at St. Petersburg to increase Russian contacts and trade with the west. Catherine the Great succeeded to the throne in 1762 and extended Russia’s domains dramatically. During her reign, the Crimea was annexed, providing Russia with access to the ports of the Black Sea. The first Russian settlement was also established in North America, near Kodiak in modern day Alaska. Much of this imperial expansion was through the waging of a series of successful wars against the Turks in the south, the Poles in the west, resulting in the partition of Poland and the Swedes in the north. Further Russian expansion was at the expense of the declining Ottoman and Chinese empires. But the country suffered greatly during the Napoleonic wars, when the French invaded Russia and sacked Moscow. Conflict with European nations flared up again in the Crimean war, when Russia faced the combined forces of the French, British and Turks.
Russia ceded Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million, thus ending its ambitions in North America. In 1904, confrontation with Japan caused a disastrous war, and Russia’s humiliating defeat led to a revolution against the ruling monarchy. Large territories were conceded by the Bolshevik government following world War I. The Bolsheviks had come to power after a series of Russian defeats in the war led to the overthrow of the Czar and the revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks under Lenin were the victors of the Russian Civil War, and established the communist state of the Soviet Union. One of the first actions of the new government was to move the capital back to Moscow.
Under Stalin’s rule, former Soviet territories were recovered in Eastern Europe, first by the defeat of Finland in 1940 and then by the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II. A network of buffer states was created to protect the Soviet Union from any future aggression. But this iron curtain between east and west was to dissolve dramatically in the late 1980s. In 1991, the reformed policies of Mikhail Gorbachev led to a resurgence of nationalism within the republics and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the communist party.
Today, Russia has emerged as a separate, sovereign state, a member of the commonwealth of independent states—
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