Russia
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 sixteen of its urban areas having more than 1 million inhabitants. 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 the territory of modern Russia dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. The East Slavs emerged in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988 adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. The latter ultimately disintegrated, and the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the unification of Russian lands in the late 13th century, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the early 18th century, Russia had expanded vastly through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, the third-largest in history. The Russian Revolution of 1917 led to the monarchic system being abolished and replaced by the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the first constitutionally socialist state in the world. Following the Russian Civil War, Soviet Russia established the Soviet Union and was its largest and principal constituent. The Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s, amidst the death of millions under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front—emerging as a superpower. During the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological dominance and international influence. The 20th-century Soviet era saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.
In 1991, the Russian SFSR emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the Russian Federation. Following the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the Soviet government structure was abolished and a new constitution was adopted, which established a federal semi-presidential system. Since the turn of the century, the political system of Russia has been dominated by Vladimir Putin, under whose leadership the country has experienced democratic backsliding and has been transformed into an authoritarian regime. Post-Soviet Russia has been militarily involved in numerous conflicts, including its war with Georgia in 2008 and its war with Ukraine since 2014. The latter has involved the internationally unrecognised annexation and occupation of Ukrainian territories, including that of Crimea in 2014 and four other regions in 2022, during an ongoing war.
Russia is generally considered a great power and wields significant regional influence in Europe, possessing the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and having the third-highest military expenditure in the world. Its advanced economy ranks among the largest in the world, relying on its vast mineral and energy resources, mainly oil and natural gas. Russia continues to rank very low in measurements of democracy, human rights and media freedom, while having high levels of corruption. As the successor state of the Soviet Union, it retains its seat as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and is a member state of several international organisations. Russia is also home to 32 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English name Russia first appeared in the 14th century, borrowed from, used in the 11th century and frequently in 12th-century British sources, in turn derived from and the suffix.There are several words in Russian which translate to "Russians" in English. The noun and adjective refers to ethnic Russians. The adjective denotes Russian citizens regardless of ethnicity. The same applies to the more recently coined noun, in the sense of citizen of the Russian state.
The oldest endonyms used were Rus and the "Russian land". According to the Primary Chronicle, the word Rus is derived from the Rus' people, who were a Swedish tribe, and from where the three original members of the Rurikid dynasty came from. The Finnish word for Swedes, ruotsi, has the same origin. In modern historiography, the early medieval East Slavic state is usually referred to as Kievan Rus', named after its capital city. Another Medieval Latin name for Rus was Ruthenia.
In Russian, the current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek name Ρωσία. The name Росия was first attested in 1387. The name appeared in Russian sources in the 15th century and began to replace the vernacular Rus during the rise of Moscow as the centre of a unified Russian state. However, until the end of the 17th century, the country was more often referred to by its inhabitants as Rus, the "Russian land", or the "Muscovite state", among other variations.
In 1721, Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire. The name Rossiya was used as the common designation for the multinational Russian Empire and then for the modern Russian state. Rossiya is distinguished from the ethnonym russkiy, as it refers to a supranational identity, including ethnic Russians. After the Russian Revolution and the proclamation of the Russian SFSR in 1918, the "Russian" in the title of the state was Rossiyskaya, rather than Russkaya, as the former denoted a multinational state, while the latter had ethnic dimensions. In modern Russian, the name Rus is still used in poetry or prose to refer to either the older Russia or an imagined essence of Russia.
History
Early history
The first human settlement on Russia dates back to the Oldowan period in the early Lower Paleolithic. About 2 million years ago, representatives of Homo erectus migrated to the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia. Flint tools, some 1.5 million years old, have been discovered in the North Caucasus. Radiocarbon dated specimens from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains estimate the oldest Denisovan specimen lived 195–122,700 years ago. Fossils of Denny, an archaic human hybrid that was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan, and lived some 90,000 years ago, was also found within the latter cave. Russia was home to some of the last surviving Neanderthals, from about 45,000 years ago, found in Mezmaiskaya cave.The first trace of an early modern human in Russia dates back to 45,000 years, in Western Siberia. The discovery of high concentration cultural remains of anatomically modern humans, from at least 40,000 years ago, was found at Kostyonki–Borshchyovo, and at Sungir, dating back to 34,600 years ago—both in western Russia. Humans reached Arctic Russia at least 40,000 years ago, in Mamontovaya Kurya. Ancient North Eurasian populations from Siberia genetically similar to Mal'ta–Buret' culture and Afontova Gora were an important genetic contributor to Ancient Native Americans and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers.
File:Yamnaya Steppe Pastoralists.jpg|thumb|320px|left|Bronze Age spread of Yamnaya Steppe pastoralist ancestry between 3300 and 1500 BC, including the Afanasievo culture of southern Siberia
The Kurgan hypothesis places the Volga-Dnieper region of southern Russia and Ukraine as the urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and Russia spread Yamnaya ancestry and Indo-European languages across large parts of Eurasia. Nomadic pastoralism developed in the Pontic–Caspian steppe beginning in the Chalcolithic. Remnants of these steppe civilisations were discovered in places such as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim, and Pazyryk, which bear the earliest known traces of horses in warfare. The genetic makeup of speakers of the Uralic language family in northern Europe was shaped by migration from Siberia that began at least 3,500 years ago.
In the 3rd to 4th centuries AD, the Gothic kingdom of Oium existed in southern Russia, which was later overrun by Huns. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom, which was a Hellenistic polity that succeeded the Greek colonies, was also overwhelmed by nomadic invasions led by warlike tribes such as the Huns and Eurasian Avars. The Khazars, who were of Turkic origin, ruled the steppes between the Caucasus in the south, to the east past the Volga river basin, and west as far as Kyiv on the Dnieper river until the 10th century. After them came the Pechenegs who created a large confederacy, which was subsequently taken over by the Cumans and the Kipchaks.
The ancestors of Russians are among the Slavic tribes that separated from the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who appeared in the northeastern part of Europe years ago. The East Slavs gradually settled western Russia in two waves: one moving from Kiev towards present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk towards Novgorod and Rostov. Prior to Slavic migration, that territory was populated by Finno-Ugrian peoples. From the 7th century onwards, the incoming East Slavs slowly assimilated the native Finno-Ugrians.
Kievan Rus'
The establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the Vikings who ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the Primary Chronicle, a Varangian from the Rus' people, named Rurik, was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. In 882, his successor Oleg ventured south and conquered Kiev, which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars. Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar Khaganate, and launched several military expeditions to Bulgaria, Byzantium and Persia.In the 10th to 11th centuries, Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great and his son Yaroslav the Wise constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium, and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda. The age of feudalism and decentralisation had come, marked by constant in-fighting between members of the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus' collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, the Novgorod Republic in the north, and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west. By the 12th century, Kiev lost its pre-eminence and Kievan Rus' had fragmented into different principalities. Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky sacked Kiev in 1169 and made Vladimir his base, leading to political power being shifted to the north-east.
Led by Prince Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle on the Ice in 1242.
Kievan Rus' finally fell to the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240, which resulted in the sacking of Kiev and other cities, as well as the death of a major part of the population. The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which ruled over Russia for the next two centuries. Only the Novgorod Republic escaped foreign occupation after it agreed to pay tribute to the Mongols. Galicia-Volhynia would later be absorbed by Lithuania and Poland, while the Novgorod Republic continued to prosper in the north. In the northeast, the Byzantine-Slavic traditions of Kievan Rus' were adapted to form the Russian autocratic state.