World War I doomed Imperial Russia. By March 1917 its armies were suffering defeat, its internal order was collapsing, and its monarchy had fallen. The Provisional Government that assumed power failed to solve the country's many problems, and within just a few months it teetered on the verge of collapse. On 7 November 1917 revolutionary forces of the radical Bolshevik party seized power in the capital, Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg). In the weeks and months that followed, the Bolsheviks spread and consolidated their authority over much of Russia. By late 1920 they were the undisputed masters of most of the territory of the Russian Empire...

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Whether Russia could have avoided revolutionary upheaval by staying out of World War I remains one of the most tantalizing questions of twentieth-century history. As Russia suffered one defeat after another in the field and severe shortages of food and crucial supplies, its soldiers and civilians became disaffected. The capital and institutions of state fell from the control of the tsarist system, and the Provisional Government that replaced it lasted less than a year. Many problems associated with the revolutionary upheaval of 1917--including massive inflation, dwindling food supplies, strained infrastructure, distracted government, and long-term commitment to unpopular foreign interests--were intimately related to the war. Many historians believe that, in their absence, the total collapse of state and society seems to have been unlikely...

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Russia's pre-World War I alliance with France, in effect since 1892, and its looser alignment with Britain, effective after 1907, were cornerstones of early-twentieth-century European and world diplomacy. Sharing an interest in countering German power, the three nations established a relationship that prefigured the Allied camp in World War I. Indeed, some historians believe that the alliances set in place before 1914 were fundamental causes of the conflict, which was created--according to conventional European diplomatic history--by a belligerent Germany that threatened the interests of most other great powers...

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Russia was one of the biggest losers in World War I. Its victories were few and fleeting, while its defeats were tremendous and lasting. Germany occupied much of the most productive Russian territory. During the first year of the war alone, Russia suffered four million casualties. In 1917 social, political, and economic strains associated with the conflict caused the collapse of two systems of government in succession and ushered in a massive social revolution. A third system of government, the Bolshevik regime, took power in November 1917 and extricated the nation from the war, but with massive territorial losses, by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918...

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A recent trend in the historiography of Imperial Russia has examined evidence of its capacity to sustain civil society. A term borrowed from the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who used it to describe the emergence of independent social and economic institutions in Western Europe, civil society can include such relatively modern innovations as the mass media, local government, business and industry, professional groups, voluntary associations, and other communities of citizenship that function beyond the purview of the central state...

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In early 1917 the German High Command agreed to transport three dozen exiled Russian revolutionaries from Switzerland across Germany to the newly renamed Petrograd. The purpose of the exercise was to foment revolution in Russia and thereby achieve through politics what for two and a half years had proven impossible militarily: drive Russia out of a war Germany was a long way from winning...

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After receiving entreaties from the Vatican, U.S. leaders, and human-rights groups, Russian president Boris Yeltsin in July 1997 rejected a bill that would limit religious freedom in Russia. Then, in September, he stunned foreign observers by signing the legislation, which recognized only the "traditional religions" of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. Wholeheartedly supported by the Russian Orthodox Church and the heavily nationalist Duma, Russia's ruling legislative body, the law was supposedly instituted to protect against dangerous cults. It would also allegedly protect the religious freedoms of non-Orthodox Christians, but many critics maintained that its purpose was to consolidate the power of what was once Russia's state church...

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Russia was one of the greatest losers of World War I (1914-1918). Its armies were defeated on the battlefield; much of its territory was occupied by enemies; both its reigning Romanov dynasty and the vaguely democratic government that replaced it were toppled by domestic political turmoil; authority fell into the hands of extremists, who presided over one of the most repressive regimes in history; and the price of peace was a massive loss of territory, population, and resources. Was Imperial Russia doomed to such terrible catastrophe?..

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Reversing generations of Russian and Soviet history, Russian President Vladimir Putin in October 2001 signed legislation legalizing the purchase and sale of land in urban and industrial areas. This accounted for only about 2 percent of Russia's vast land mass, yet the Land Code--which gave foreigners virtually the same rights of ownership as Russians--was epochal nonetheless. Creating a market for land, and a new source of value, could only be good for Russia's faltering economy, but the significance of the new law (just one of several sweeping reforms put through parliament by the president) extended far beyond economics. At a time when unrest in Russia raised occasional fears of a Communist return to power, the Land Code signified a sharp break with the Marxist - and czarist - past...

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Russia's protective role of the Balkans has been a long-lasting cliché of European politics. Bound to their larger neighbor by Orthodox Christianity, Slavic roots, and a common heritage of opposition to the Muslim Turks, the Balkan peoples, many have argued, found earnest and reliable protectors in their Russian neighbors. Russia faithfully supported their revolts against the Ottoman Empire, crafted diplomacy to safeguard their interests, and intervened directly to help them achieve independence from Muslim rule. Russia in this view was noble, helpful, and beneficent...

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