Through marriage, inheritance, a lack of natural borders, an aggressive military policy, and great rivers that transversed huge expanses of land, Russia expanded from the environs of Moscow to become the largest and longest-lasting multinational empire in the world. The bulk of expansion came through wars, but there was always a strong current of natural expansion away from the autocratic center by social outcasts, adventurers, and merchants. Russian expansion was always cyclical, moving into a void, being pushed back, then recovering lost territory...

Полная версия публикации

The Grand Duchy of Muscovy was but one of several successor states of the Mongol Golden Horde claiming the right to dominate the steppes. Moscow conquered the Volga basin and the Baltic coast, and laid claim to Siberia in the sixteenth century. Russia's fortunes ebbed during the "Time of Troubles" as Sweden and Poland seized the western gains in the Baltic and Ukraine. The seventeenth century witnessed a constant struggle with Poland and Sweden to regain lost lands, and with the southern cossack bands to capture the Ukraine and the mouth of the Don River at Azov...

Полная версия публикации

Autocratic, astute, and dynamic empress who--guided by the teachings of the Enlightenment--ruled Russia during a period of unprecedented political growth...

Полная версия публикации

Sergei Witte often expressed sympathy for the many non-Russians in his country. Jews, Poles, and other peoples who were not Russian or Orthodox Christian frequently faced discriminatory laws in the businesses, education, and government of the Russian Empire. But there were basic contradictions in Witte's political career. On the one hand, he held very progressive views and stood for abolishing laws that discriminated on the basis of ethnic origins. Such laws, he felt, hindered the growth of Russia's productivity. Yet this modern outlook contrasted with his admiration for the old traditions of the Russian monarchy, whose absolute powers were often the source of discriminatory laws in the first place. When the Russian emperor Alexander II was assassinated by terrorists in 1881, Witte briefly joined a secret society dedicated to seeking out and destroying terrorists...

Полная версия публикации

Slavery was a very important social institution in Rus' between, say, A.D. 800 and 1725. Initially, slaves were one of the "forest products" harvested by Vikings making their way on the "route from the Varangians to the Greeks," the Eastern European river route (from the Baltic Sea into the Neva to Lake Ladoga, to the Volkov, to the Shelon', to the Dnepr, into the Black Sea) between Sweden and Constaninople. The Vikings picked up slaves and hauled them (along with wax, honey, and furs) to Constantinople in exchange for luxury goods. No one knows the numbers of slaves there were after the formation of the Kievan Russian state (882-1132), but it is assumed that most of these slaves had come from raids on other non-Slavic people...

Полная версия публикации

Nicholas II (1868-1918), the czar of Russia from 1894 to 1917, was a staunch defender of autocracy. A weak monarch, he was forced to abdicate, thus ending more than 300 years of Romanov rule in Russia...

Полная версия публикации

Great Britain and the United States first committed aid to the Soviet Union in October 1941. Not until 1942, however, did matériel begin reaching the U.S.S.R. in quantity. Just how much was sent, and what role it played in the Russian war effort, was a point of controversy during the Cold War. Soviet authorities insisted that Lend Lease amounted to no more than 4 percent of Russia's own production. Even that trickle of aid, it was asserted, was doled out grudgingly, so that the U.S.S.R. nearly bled itself white meeting the German onslaught...

Полная версия публикации

Among the most enduring images of the Russian effort in the Great War is a lack of the tools of modern war--not merely artillery pieces, shells, and aircraft but also basic requirements, such as small arms. Accounts are replete with stories of replacements being sent unarmed to the front and told to pick up the rifles of casualties, or of bayonets being used to do the work that more-sophisticated armies entrusted to shells and bullets...

Полная версия публикации

Sergei Witte often expressed sympathy for the many non-Russians in his country. Jews, Poles, and other peoples who were not Russian or Orthodox Christian frequently faced discriminatory laws in the businesses, education, and government of the Russian Empire. But there were basic contradictions in Witte's political career. On the one hand, he held very progressive views and stood for abolishing laws that discriminated on the basis of ethnic origins. Such laws, he felt, hindered the growth of Russia's productivity. Yet this modern outlook contrasted with his admiration for the old traditions of the Russian monarchy, whose absolute powers were often the source of discriminatory laws in the first place. When the Russian emperor Alexander II was assassinated by terrorists in 1881, Witte briefly joined a secret society dedicated to seeking out and destroying terrorists...

Полная версия публикации

First meeting of Russian representative assembly...

Полная версия публикации