Russia (National Flag)
The old Russian tricolor, created by Tsar Peter the Great in 1699, was
abolished in 1917, but was officially reintroduced in 1991. The colors come from
the Dutch flag, which the Tsar saw on a trip to Western Europe. They were later
associated with Moscow's city coat of arms, which contains the three colors. It
was not until 1799 that the horizontal tricolor, white, blue and red, became
official. The flag and its colors, which have since become known as the
Pan-Slavic, have been the model for many Slavic peoples' flags.
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Russia (Prehistory)
Near the Russian territory, in Dmanisi in Georgia, bones of Homo erectus,
1.7-1.6 million, have been found. years old. Traces of habitation in the Elder
and Middle Paleolithic for approximately 500,000-40,000 years ago must be searched in
the Caucasus and along the river Volga, where finds from the cultures younger
acheuléen and moustérien have been made. The closest skeletal finds of Homo
neanderthalensis known from Crimea and Uzbekistan. In an Arctic environment
in the Late Paleolithic for approximately 40,000-11,500 years ago, there were numerous
settlements in Central Russia, whose residents hunted horses, bison, saiga
antelopes, reindeer and mammoths, and whose oval huts were surrounded by
reindeer tusks and mammoth teeth, as at Kostenki on the river Don. From here are
known ocher-strewn burials and so-called Venus figures of mammoth tooth. In the
Kapova Cave in the southern Urals, there are paintings of mammoths, horses and
woolly rhinos. At the end of the ice age, the hunters followed with the ice edge
to the north. Flint tools with parallels to the Federmesser and Ahrensburg
cultures have been found in settlements in western Russia. In the Mesolithic
from approximately 9300 BC there were hunter-gatherer communities adapted to the
wooded stretches to the north and along the rivers to the south. There was a
connection between the hunter cultures in Finnmark.
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In the Neolithic, agriculture and cattle breeding spread from the south from
the Balkans, the Caucasus and through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan from
approximately 6000 BC Many different cultural patterns developed over the large
area. While in the Caucasus there were permanent, well-organized villages with
houses built of clay, cattle nomads spread on the Pontic Steppes. In the forest
belt to the west and north, the burning of pottery (pottery) was introduced, but
people continued to live by hunting and fishing and built on traditions from the
Mesolithic. Deposits of copper in the Caucasus and the southern Urals were
exploited from approximately 3000 BC In the 3rd millennium BC. a princely environment
developed north of the Caucasus with fortresses and princely tombs,
see Majkop. On the southern steppes were the Jamnaja culture, known from burial
mounds, Kurgan, with the oldest known four-wheeled carriages. Central
Russia was with the Fatjanovo and Balanovo cultures from approximately 2900
BC involved in the string ceramic culture complex with livestock farming and the
use of copper and bronze for tools, weapons and jewelry.

At the transition to the Bronze Age approximately 2000 BC witnesses rich funerals
with human sacrifices about a hierarchically structured society. The
exploitation of copper and tin deposits in the southern Ural led to a
flourishing metal industry on both sides of the Ural Mountains. In the Late
Bronze Age, the Kimmerians, prepared nomads, appear in southern Russia, who,
like the Scythians, are known from clashes with the Urartian Empire and the
Assyrians in 800-600 BC.
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The Iron Age began approximately 700 BC, when iron technology was introduced from
Asia Minor over the Caucasus. With the establishment of colonies along the Black
Sea coast in the 600-t. the Greeks created a market in southern Russia and
introduced viticulture. Greek blacksmiths contributed to the development of the
excellent metal art of the Scythians, known from richly equipped princely
funerals especially in southern Ukraine. From 100-tfKr. the Black Sea cities
were attacked by the Sarmatians, who controlled the area between the Sea of
Azov and the Caucasus. Part of the Scythian people practiced developed
agriculture. In central Russia around the Oka River and along the Upper and
Middle Volga, agricultural expansion occurred in the Iron Age, presumably based
on sweating. The settlements gathered on high plateaus that were often
fortified, so-called gorodishtje. The time after the birth of Christ in southern
Russia was marked by warlike incursions of tribal peoples such as Alans, Huns,
Bulgarians, and Khazars culminating in the conquest of the Huns in the second
half of the 300's. The turbulent period was followed by a new era, characterized
by the establishment of great empires such as the Bulgarian Empire from 582
between the Urals and the Volga and the Khazar Empire 600-1000-t. between the
Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Slavic peoples immigrated from the west in the
500-t. and settled in northwestern Russia. Their tombstones in the form of long
and conical round mounds characterize the area around Lake Ilmen. Cities emerged
as characterized by the establishment of great empires such as the Bulgarian
Empire from 582 between the Urals and the Volga and the Khazar Empire
600-1000-t. between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Slavic peoples immigrated
from the west in the 500-t. and settled in northwestern Russia. Their tombstones
in the form of long and conical round mounds characterize the area around Lake
Ilmen. Cities emerged as characterized by the establishment of great empires
such as the Bulgarian Empire from 582 between the Urals and the Volga and the
Khazar Empire 600-1000-t. between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Slavic
peoples immigrated from the west in the 500-t. and settled in northwestern
Russia. Their tombstones in the form of long and conical round mounds
characterize the area around Lake Ilmen. Cities emerged asStaraja Ladoga on the
Volkhov River, where finds from 750-1000 testify to trade relations with
Scandinavia. Gnezdovo near Smolensk grew as a city with a mixed
Slavic-Scandinavian population. For the Norsemen in the Viking Age, they were
strongholds on the trade route south through the Russian rivers to the Black
Sea. But the finds also testify to a significant Scandinavian
settlement. relating to. the area east of the Urals, see also Siberia
(prehistory).
Russia - history until 1682
Until 1682, the Kingdom of Russia, the earliest beginnings of
Russia, emerged in the 800-t. By 839, Scandinavians, known as Rhos,
were active along the Russian rivers. The process that led to the rise of
Russia, however, can only be followed from the Rurikids' national assembly in
the late 800-t. They had their original power base in the later Novgorod area,
but approximately 900 the residence was moved to Kyjiv, after which the Prince of Rus
could control the entire course of river roads connecting the Baltic Sea with
Byzantine territory. The control of this important trade route seems to have
motivated the formation of the kingdom. A prerequisite for this to succeed must
have been the coincidence of interests between Scandinavians and local East
Slavic, Baltic and Finno-Ugric peoples along the route. Although the dynasty and
the circle of great men around it were Scandinavian, there are also hints that
the Russian Empire in its origin was the result of multi-ethnic cooperation.
Kyjivriget
Russia. Two situations from a 1400's chronicle manuscript. At the top, the
newly baptized Vladimir I the Holy had a church built in Kiev, in which he
inserts the Anastasios, who by treason helped him conquer Korsun and thus paved
the way for Vladimir's baptism and marriage to a Byzantine emperor's
daughter. The new church, built by Greek artisans, was equipped with
ecclesiastical loot from Korsun. At the bottom, Vladimir lets the city of
Belgorod build and populate.
With the relocation of the residence to Kyjiv, the dynasty came to live in an
East Slavic environment, culturally influenced by the steppe peoples who from
time to time cut off the connection to the Byzantine Empire. Over the course of
a few generations, the dynasty was enslaved, and the term intoxication was
passed on to the predominantly East Slavic population.
At the same time, the proximity to the Byzantine Empire involved an influence
that was most strongly expressed when the Kyjiv prince Vladimir I the
Holy approximately 988 chose to let himself and his people become
Christians. Kyjivriget was now Europe's geographically largest empire, but it
proved difficult to hold it together. It was seen after Vladimir's death in
1015, when a bloody dispute over succession broke out among his many sons. Only
from 1036 was the kingdom reunited under a ruler, Jaroslav the Wise, whose rule
appears as the flowering period of the Kyjiv Kingdom. Alliances were formed that
included Scandinavia and Hungary as well as Western Europe, and the kingdom was
then a well-integrated part of Europe. To avoid a new split after his death,
Jaroslav introduced a rotation system for succession, which meant that his sons,
after the death of a brother, moved from a princely seat of lower dignity to
Kyjiv, a principle that was also applied later. In this way, it managed to keep
the kingdom roughly together until 1132, even though there were branches of the
dynasty that were so closely linked to their territories that they tended to
become hereditary and thus also in reality independent of Kyjiv. That the Kyjiv
Empire then quickly fell apart was also due to the fact that new steppe peoples
had made regular trade with the Byzantine Empire impossible, so that there was
no pronounced need to keep the trade route between North and South under central
control. At the same time, there was a Russian emigration from the Kyjiv area to
the NE, where new centers and princely residences,
e.g.Suzdal, Rostov and Vladimir, emerged.
Historical overview |
800-t. |
Rusriget |
900-t. |
Kyjivriget |
988 |
Kyjivriget is Christianized under Vladimir I the Holy |
1100-t. |
Kyjivriget dissolves and a new center is formed in the northeast |
1237-40 |
The Mongol storm |
approx. 1326 |
The metropolitan moves its residence to Moscow |
1441 |
The Russian Church is becoming independent from the Greek |
1462-1505 |
Ivan 3. the Great; Moscow will be the center of the whole of Russia |
1550's |
Ivan 4. the Cruel conquers Kazan and Astrakhan |
1580's |
Jermak Timofeyevich begins the conquest of Siberia |
1598 |
The Rurikid dynasty is dying out |
1654 |
Ukraine is annexed |
1689 |
The first Russian-Chinese treaty is concluded in Nertjinsk |
1682-1725 |
Peter the Great; Russia opens up to the West |
1703 |
St. Petersburg is founded; capital from 1712 |
1721 |
The peace in Nystad after the Great Nordic War; Peter the Great
takes the title of emperor |
1768-92 |
Wars against the Ottoman Empire; Russia reaches the Black Sea |
1772-95 |
Russia secures large areas in the west by the Polish partitions |
1808-09 |
Russia conquers Finland from Sweden |
1801-64 |
Caucasus conquered |
1812 |
Napoleon occupies Moscow but is forced to withdraw |
1814-15 |
The Congress of Vienna reaffirms Russia's sovereignty over the
Kingdom of Poland |
1825 |
The Decabrist uprising |
1853-56 |
The Crimean War against the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France |
1861 |
Abolition of serfdom |
1864 |
The conquest of Central Asia begins |
1891 |
Pact with France; with the accession of Great Britain in 1907, the
Entente is formed |
1898 |
The founding of Russia's Social Democratic Workers' Party |
1904-05 |
The Russo-Japanese War |
1905 |
The first Russian revolution |
1906 |
The first Duma is convened; Russia gets curtailed constitutional
rule |
1914-18 |
World War 1 |
1917 |
The February Revolution; Nikolai II abdicates, and Russia gets a
provisional government. October Revolutions; the Bolsheviks take power
in a coup |
1918 |
The Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, RSFSR, is established |
1918-21 |
The Russian Civil War; war communism |
1921-28 |
The new economic policy, NEP |
1922 |
Stalin becomes general secretary of the Communist Party; The Soviet
Union is established by merging the RSFSR and other Soviet republics |
1924 |
Lenin dies |
1928-32 |
First five-year plan : forced collectivization of agriculture and
forced industrialization |
1932-33 |
Politically generated famine in Ukraine and southern Russia |
1936-38 |
The Moscow trials and incipient repression |
1939 |
The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact |
1939-40 |
The Soviet Union annexes the East Pole, parts of Finland, the
Baltics, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina |
1941-45 |
WW2 |
1945-48 |
The Soviet Union circumvents the Tehran and Yalta agreements and
establishes communist governments in the occupied Eastern and Central
European countries |
1948-49 |
The Berlin blockade |
1949 |
The Soviet Union becomes nuclear power; COMECON is formed |
1953 |
Stalin dies; Khrushchev wins the ensuing power struggle |
1955 |
Warsaw Pact created |
1956 |
Khrushchev's Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress; political and
cultural thaw |
1956 |
Soviet troops fight a popular uprising in Hungary |
1957 |
The Soviet Union launches the first satellite into orbit around the
Earth |
1962 |
The Cuban Missile Crisis |
1964 |
Khrushchev is overthrown and Leonid Brezhnev becomes party leader |
1968 |
Warsaw Pact forces invade Czechoslovakia |
1971-75 |
The arms race is slowed down through the Berlin Agreement in 1971,
the SALT I Agreement in 1972 and the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. |
1979 |
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the relaxation process stops |
1985 |
Gorbachev becomes party leader and opens for a free
debate, glasnost, and launches the perestroika reform program |
1988 |
The Soviet Union begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan |
1989-90 |
Communist regimes lose power in Eastern Europe |
1990 |
The Communist Party's monopoly of power formally ceases |
1991 |
June: Yeltsin becomes Russia's elected president; August:
Conservative coup against Gorbachev fails; December: the Presidents of
Russia, Belarus and Ukraine close down the Soviet Union; SNG is formed |
1992-93 |
Conflict between Yeltsin and the Russian parliament |
1993 |
September: Yeltsin dissolves Russian parliament; October: Rebel
members are forced out of parliament by military force |
1994-96 |
War between Russia and Chechnya ending in de facto recognition of
Chechnya's independence |
1999 |
Russia militarily invades Dagestan and Chechnya; Yeltsin
resigns; Putin becomes new president |
2004 |
Chechen terrorists take hostages at a school in Beslan, North
Ossetia. More than 330, including many children, perish |
2008 |
Vladimir Putin resigns as president and is replaced by Dmitry
Medvedev. Putin becomes prime minister. In August, Russian troops
invade parts of Georgia following a failed Georgian attempt to
occupy South Ossetia. |
The Mongol storm
The balance shift from the Kyjiv to the Vladimir region had as an important
consequence that Russia, with the exception of the city republic of Novgorod,
moved away from the pan-European development. The process intensified when the
Mongols or Tatars, as they were called by the Russians, in 1237-40 directed
their destructive attacks on Russia and subjugated its now central parts of the
NE. Western principalities, Galich-Volynien, managed for a time to stay
outside, but in the long run could not maintain their independence. They were
gradually incorporated first in Lithuania and then in Poland, and these areas
therefore had their own historical development, cf. Belarus and Ukraine.. The
Mongols chose to rule Russia indirectly by making use of the Grand Duke
of Vladimir as a tax collector. This meant that it was now the Mongols who
appointed the Grand Duke, just as all princes had to have the approval of the
Mongols. The Grand Duke was elected from among the princes who had a power
potential that enabled them to complete the tax collection. This favored certain
new principalities such as Tver and Moscow, which had benefited from the Mongol
storm, in that many had fled there from the most vulnerable areas in the
east. In the long run, however, this policy was to prove unfavorable to the
Mongols, as it meant that these principalities were strengthened as the Mongol
Empire was dissolved.
Moskvariget
Both in the time of dissolution and especially during the Mongol lid, the
Russian Church was the only institution that united the divided Russia and gave
the Russians a sense of community. The head of the church, the metropolitan,
still resided until approximately 1295 in Kyjiv, but then moved to Northeast Russia
and settled approximately 1326 down in Moscow, which now became the center of the
Russian Church. Together with a simultaneous uprising in Tver against the
Mongols, which the Moscow prince Ivan 1. Kalita defeated with Mongol forces,
this secured Moscow a decisive advantage in the efforts to become the
principality around which the divided Russia could regroup, albeit a process,
which was first settled with the subjugation of Novgorodin 1478 and Tver in
1485. Now the Prince of Moscow Ivan III emerged as the undisputed ruler of the
whole of Russia, and he was also able to finally liberate the country from the
Mongols.
The Russian Tsardom
Under Ivan III, Russia re-entered the European scene, now with imperial
ambitions. The Russian Church became independent from the Greek Church in 1441,
and after the final fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the church saw the
Prince of Moscow as the heir of the Byzantine emperor, and Ivan III began to
call himself Tsar.'emperor', a title reserved for the Byzantine emperors and the
Mongols. Ivan III also demanded to be equated with the German-Roman emperor,
which was also reflected in the notion of Moscow as the Third Rome. The new
Russian self-understanding, together with the dynamics created by the National
Assembly, naturally led the country into a phase of expansion. To the west, it
first targeted areas that had previously been part of the Kyjiv War but now
belonged to Lithuania.. Here they succeeded in enticing local Russian princes to
renounce their affiliation with Lithuania, so that more and more areas along
Lithuania's eastern border were incorporated into Moscow. To the east and south,
the war of liberation against the Tatars turned into a war aimed at placing
territories that had not previously been Russian under Moscow. Here it was
partly Siberia's riches of furs that enticed. Another motive was to pacify the
Tatars, who were constantly threatening raids into Russia. A tentative
culmination of this policy of expansion under Ivan the Terrible, who conquered
the Tatar Hanakans Kazan and Astrakhan in large-scale campaigns in the
1550's. Immediately after, Ivan IV started the Livonian War (1558-83) in an
attempt to fill the vacuum of power that the Reformation had created in the
territory of the old order of knights in the Baltics. For a time it seemed that
Ivan should succeed in subjugating the whole of Livonia, but the threat of this
called the neighboring states to battle, and the war ended with a Russian
defeat.
The time of confusion
In connection with the war, Ivan IV introduced a terrorist
regime with the oppritjnina. The double warfare, both externally and
internally, exhausted the country, and large parts were laid waste, partly
because many had perished, partly because the peasants had fled to the periphery
from the ever-increasing tax burden necessitated by the wars. In the long run,
this fostered Russia's expansion to the south and east, but as a state, Russia
was now again threatened with dissolution. The situation was not improved by
the extinction of the Rurikid dynasty in 1598 with Ivan IV's weakest son, Fyodor
1. His successor and brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, had ruled the country with
a strong hand in 1584-98 and in 1589 had succeeded in exaltthe Russian Church to
a patriarchy, but as a tsar he got legitimacy problems. When the country was
also hit by famine, his family could not stay in power when he died in 1605 in
the middle of a Polish-backed uprising. False pretenders to the throne, posing
as Dmitry's son IV, stepped forward and demanded power. Both Poland and Sweden
intervened in support of their own candidates for the throne and occupied their
respective parts of the country, but no single power group managed to gain
control of all of Russia.
Romanov Dynasty: Towards the Russian Empire
Eventually, however, in 1613 a National Assembly (see zemsky
sobor) succeeded in agreeing on a candidate for the throne, the young,
personally weak Mikhail Romanov, son of the politically strong metropolitan,
from 1619 patriarch Filaret. This gave the blessing and support of the new
dynasty the church. In a European context, early Romanovrusland, despite its
size, was a weak state that only managed to be a pawn in the games of other
powers. Nevertheless, Russia was able to continue the Cossack-backed expansion
into Siberia. During the 1600's. the Russian expansion reached both the Pacific
and the Chinese sphere of interest further south, which in 1689 led to the first
Russian-Chinese treaty in Nertjinsk. At the same time, the incipient weakening
of Poland allowed Russia to exploit a Cossack uprising to in 1654 incorporate
large parts of Ukraine incl. Kyjiv.
However, this relative progress could not hide the fact that Russia was a
country in constant crisis. In reality, the now gigantic country was ruled in
the same way as the small emerging principality of Moscow by a principally
autocratic ruler, who, however, in step with the growth of the empire, became
completely dependent on its administrative apparatus. However, this had expanded
almost by budding. Chancelleries, prikaz, often with overlapping
jurisdictions, were created when specific needs arose, eg for the administration
of newly incorporated territories. An attempt to coordinate the administration
was made by gathering the leaders of the chancelleries in the Bojarduma,
the tsar's old advisory body, which thus also grew and was bureaucratized. Next
to the tsar stood the Russian Churchas an economic, spiritual and highly
conservative power factor. However, Western theological influence, which reached
Russia after the incorporation of Kyjiv, created a desire in the church
hierarchy for reforms in terms of church texts and rituals. At the same time,
the proponent of the reform, Patriarch Nikon, was given the opportunity to
assert the Church's supremacy over secular power. Together, it gave rise to
violent turbulence within both church and community. While Nikon itself suffered
defeat in its claim to the supremacy of the Church, the Tsar supported his other
reforms. This led to a schism between the official church and a wide range
of old believers, a schism that has survived to this day.
An important component of Russian society was the nobility. As a state, it
had no direct political influence, and its function had primarily been to form
the backbone of the country's military. It had its livelihood in land holdings,
which the state power had alternated between regarding as hereditary or
dependent on military service. To ensure the nobility its economic return of the
land and thus its loyalty had the state during 1500-1600-t. secured its labor
power by increasingly tying up the peasants, who gradually became serfs,
completely at the mercy of the nobility and the ecclesiastical landowners. It
created during the 1600-t. a latent danger of peasant uprisings and a steady
stream of runaway peasants. While peasant uprisings could not immediately bring
down the tsarist regime, uprisings in cities, not least Moscow, were the more
dangerous. The Russian cities, like the cities of the West, did not have the
special privileges that, through wholesale trade and international relations,
could have made them catalysts in the development of society. As the financial
needs of the state catered for the export of grain, and the urban communities
were simultaneously imposed a salt tax, the supply situation in the cities
evoked in the mid-1600's. a number of almost simultaneous uprisings, in
Moscow. They shook the regime and resulted in a new National Assembly convened
to discuss reforms. The result was a new legal codification (see and the urban
communities at the same time imposed a salt tax, provoking the supply situation
in the cities in the mid-1600-t. a number of almost simultaneous uprisings,
in Moscow. They shook the regime and resulted in a new National Assembly
convened to discuss reforms. The result was a new legal codification (see and
the urban communities at the same time imposed a salt tax, provoking the supply
situation in the cities in the mid-1600-t. a number of almost simultaneous
uprisings, in Moscow. They shook the regime and resulted in a new National
Assembly convened to discuss reforms. The result was a new legal codification
(seeSobornoje Ulozjenije), which, however, did not seriously reform society. In
the late 1660's, Stepan Razin's peasant uprising followed, and in 1682 an
uprising broke out among the Struelets in Moscow, in which many
elements from the 1600's crises came together, the urban proletariat, old
believers and intriguing circles in the administrative apparatus. Together, the
uprisings revealed a country in dire need of reform.
Russia (History - 1682-1917)
Russia (History - 1682-1917), Peter the Great and his reforms
With Peter the Great (1682/89-1725), Russia's window to the West was
seriously opened. In 1697-98, he was the first Tsar to make a trip to Western
Europe, and when he returned home, he was determined to transform the old
Muscovite society after the Western European model and to make Russia a European
superpower. The first goal he symbolized by literally shaving the beard of the
nobility and forcing it to wear Western clothing, and in 1700 he replaced the
Byzantine calendar, still used in the Greek Catholic countries, with the Julian
one. As a symbol of Russia's opening to the West, Peter founded St.
Petersburg in 1703 and then made it the capital. The dignity of great power was
achieved by Russia through 25 years of constant war. First without success
againstThe Ottoman Empire and then together with Saxony-Poland and
Denmark-Norway against Sweden in the Great Nordic War. At the Peace of Nystad
in 1721, Russia replaced Sweden as the strongest power around the Baltic
Sea. Russia got Ingermanland, Estonia, Livonia and the eastern part
of Karelia. Peter assumed beside the existing autokratorværdighed now the
waning Western title imperator 'Emperor' and renamed the Moscow Russia
to the Russian Empire.
The long war, which required a lot of money and an efficient state system,
gave rise to Peter's reform work. Its realization became a mixture of ad hoc
solutions and a master plan to transform Russia into a well-functioning
state. The reforms came to include the military (standing army and navy), the
state administration (introduction of the dormitory system according to the
Swedish pattern), the local government (an administrative division of the
kingdom into eight governments), the tax system (the male serf, a "soul", was
made a tax object), the economic life (construction of manufactories, shipyards
and ironworks) and the church, the administration of which was placed under the
state. One of the means of the reform was to make the whole population
conscripted in relation to the state: the tax-free nobility was to serve either
in the military or as civil servants, while the rest of the population should be
taxable, through a state cup tax.
Peter the Great was controversial both as a person and as a reformer in both
the past and the present. Granted, the functioning of the state and the life of
the upper class were radically changed, while the foundations of the political
structure (self-government) and the social conditions of the general population
did not change significantly. Many of the Petrine reforms lost their momentum
after his death, but fundamentally the course towards Europeanization and
modernization was maintained.
The period between Peter the Great and Catherine II was marked by a series of
succession disputes and palace revolutions. It is noteworthy that the
uncertainty and unrest surrounding the succession to the throne did not allow
the nobility to curtail self-rule.
Catherine II continues the reforms
Peter's reforms were continued by Catherine II the Great (reigned 1762-96),
who had succeeded in pushing her husband, Peter III, from the throne through
the intervention of the guard regiments. However, the illegitimate ascension to
the throne was decisive for Katarina's maintenance of the tacit alliance between
the nobility and the autocracy, which had been established in the middle of the
17th century, consolidated under Peter the Great., and whose price had been the
ever-increasing dependence of the landowner peasants on their
masters. Katarina's reign was marked by a field of tension between a ruler
inspired by the ideas of the enlightened autocracy and the Enlightenment
philosophy, and a Russian reality marked by serfdom and autocracy. Katarina's
ideal was the enlightened autocracy and its emphasis on the rule of law. This
was the background for an instruction she issued in 1766 as the basis for a
future social order; its implementation in practice, however, remained without
the great results. However, at the local level, she separated the executive and
the judiciary. On the other hand, she increased the centralization by e.g. to
make the division of government introduced by Peter I more finely meshed. In
addition, she subdivided the population into a legal system consisting of four
estates (nobility, clergy, urban population and peasants). The nobility, which
had already been exempted from compulsory service to the state as early as 1762,
had its rights and privileges reaffirmed in 1785, including its monopoly on land
ownership. Through a series of urban reforms, Katarina tried to create a basis
for the development of a wealthy bourgeoisie, but without the great
results. Despite the formal abolition of conscription, the nobility remained an
important element of state bureaucracy. During the 1700's. and not least in the
decades between Peter I and Catherine II, the serfdom found its final form. Now
it was no longer just a staff band for the peasants; they became the lord's
personal property, which could be sold with or without land, and over which he
had an extensive right of neck and hand. The landowners could sentence stubborn
peasants to corporal punishment, deport them or enlist them in a lifelong
military service. The social and political tensions that arose in the wake of
this development led 1773-75 to the so-calledPugachev uprising. It threatened
central power, and it required the deployment of the army to stifle it.
The Orthodox Church, which had been permanently weakened by the schism
1666/67 (see Old Believers), and whose supreme administration in 1721 had been
placed under the state (see the Holy Synod), lost under Catherine its economic
foundation, as the extensive estates of the monasteries became confiscated for
the benefit of the state. The development of a secular education system, the
first germ of which had been laid under Peter the Great, resulted in 1755 in the
establishment of the first Russian university in Moscow. In the second half of
the 1700's. a not insignificant network of secular urban schools emerged.
Foreign policy until 1914
Peter the Great had himself pushed Russia's borders to the Baltic Sea,
and Catherine the Great pursued the second of Peter's goals, to advance south
and SW. Here it succeeded in expanding the empire's borders at the expense of
the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Noble Republic. In two wars
against the Ottomans (1768-74 and 1787-92) the fertile, but largely empty steppe
areas, incl. Crimean peninsula, north of the Black Sea conquered and then
colonized with immigrant Germans, Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks. The area
soon became a center for wheat production, and with it came the need to build
ports from which the grain could be shipped to meet the demand for food in the
growing cities of Western Europe. Through the Polish divisions (1772, 1793 and
1795) the entire eastern part of Poland-Lithuania was incorporated, whereby a
large population element of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians and Jews became
subjects of the emperor.
As a European superpower, Russia from the 1790's actively participated in the
coalitions and wars that followed in the wake of the French Revolution. The
victory over Napoleon in 1812 contributed significantly to Russia's imperial
self - awareness, and the Congress of Vienna 1814-15 confirmed Russia's
sovereignty over Finland (conquered from Sweden 1808-09) and the Kingdom of
Poland. Both Finland and Poland were granted far-reaching autonomy by Alexander
I (reigned 1801-25). Also Bessarabia, which had been conquered by the Ottomans
from 1806 to 12, remained in Russia. With the Napoleonic Wars, however,
Russia's expansion to the west stalled. In the following decades, attention was
focused on gaining influence over the straitsThe Bosphorus and
the Dardanelles and thus the departure from the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean. With war (1827-29) and constant diplomatic pressure on the
Ottoman sultan, Russian influence in Istanbul increased. It reached its peak in
1833, when the sultan and the Russian emperor promised each other help in case
of outside attacks. The Sultan further promised to close the Dardanelles to
foreign ships when Russia demanded it.
In European politics, Russia under Nikolai I (reigned 1825-55) played the
role of "Europe's gendarme", ie. as a supporter and maintainer of the order that
had been created at the Congress of Vienna, and as an ardent opponent of the
ideas of freedom and national currents that emerged during the European
revolutions of 1830 and 1848/49.
The Crimean War of 1853-56 was the culmination of a development in which
Russia's influence in Istanbul and thus over the exit from the Black Sea
collided with the interests of Britain and France in the eastern
Mediterranean. They sided with the increasingly weak Ottoman Empire and added a
contemptuous defeat to Russia. Although the territorial losses were modest, the
loss in prestige was enormous. At the conclusion of the peace in Paris, the
Black Sea was closed to all countries' warships, which shook Russia's status as
a great power. In the following decades, it turned its attention to Asia,
where Turkestan and the Siberian Far East were incorporated. Thus, Russia became
an Asian superpower, which clashed with British interests in
southern Central Asia.Transcaucasiawas already in the first decades of the
1800-t. became part of the empire, and in the years 1859-64 the same thing
happened to the North Caucasus after 25 years of bitter battles. On the European
stage, after 1870, Russia sought alliance with the continent's new superpower,
Germany, and with its old ally Austria. From the mid-1870's, when the national
freedom movements in the Balkans made the Ottoman Empire the "sick man of
Europe" and the dissolution of its Balkan rule, a competitive relationship arose
between Austria and Russia to fill the vacancy left - but now with the other
European powers as interested observers on the sidelines. Russia went to war
alone against the sultan in 1877-78, won a significant victory militarily and
sought to establish a Greater Bulgaria with access to the Aegean Sea as an
important Russian bridgehead.Bismarck, at the Berlin Congress of 1878 thwarted
Russian plans. Russia's disappointment with Germany and growing competition with
Austria in the Balkans removed Russia from traditional alliance partners and
brought it closer to France. It resulted in a Russian-French pact in 1891. It
was renewed in 1898, and after the British-Russian antagonism
around Afghanistan and Central Asia had been settled, Britain joined this pact
in 1907 (the Entente). With the Triple Alliance(Germany, Austria-Hungary and
Italy) on the other hand, World War I was planned. In the early 1900-t. clashed
Russian and Japanese interests in the Far East. This led to the war of 1904-05,
in which Russia was again inflicted with a contemptible defeat (see The
Russo-Japanese War).
Reform attempts and reaction
During the 1800's. there was a desire among landowners and in the state
apparatus to reform economic life - not least in the light of rapid social and
economic development in Central and Western Europe. In Russia, however, there
was no self-conscious and wealthy bourgeoisie that could put political action
behind the reform aspirations. It was therefore still a tacit precondition that
reforms should primarily serve to maintain Russia's place in Europe in such a
way that they did not threaten stability and the existing political
order. Already under Alexander I, with Prussia as a model, there had been
approaches to reforms that rationalized the administrative system. On the other
hand, they did not affect autocracy and serfdom. The same came to apply
to Nikolaj 1.sreign, not least because he had to open his government to
crush Dekabristopstanden who was the Russian højadels last attempt to wrest
imperial power some of its powers. With this starting point, and further
frightened by the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848/49, Nikolai's policies
were largely marked by bureaucratization, militarization and social
control. Against this background, a regulation of e.g. the conditions of
the state peasants in the 1840's only as ripples. First, the defeat in
the Crimean War really gave impetus to the reforms, now under the leadership of
the new emperor, Alexander II (reigned 1855-81), and primarily because it had
just revealed the strategic weaknesses of the great power.
Most important among the reforms was the abolition of serfdom in 1861. The
nobility had to relinquish part of the land, but retained even a significant and
most fertile part of it. The now free peasants were given a plot of land for
which they had to pay, which was generally smaller than the land they had
previously cultivated. Lack of arable land and a large debt burden thus became
part of the peasant liberation. The village community (mir) was
maintained as a stabilizing and controlling element by being made collectively
responsible for the debt payments. The scheme thus limited the freedom and
mobility of the workforce and was therefore an obstacle to a radical
reorganization of society's economic life.
The liberation of the peasants necessitated a number of other reforms, which
were an expression of a controlled activation of society and a certain movement
in the existing power relations. In 1864, the zemstvo institution was
established as elected bodies that were to take care of, for example, social
welfare, health care, elementary education and roads. A similar reform was
implemented for the cities in 1870. A judicial reform in 1864 introduced modern
legal principles such as the inalienability of judges, juries and the public in
the administration of justice. In 1874, conscription was introduced with
built-in options for some social mobility.
The success of the reforms in activating society was limited, and they were
unable to provide any change of system. This was especially true after Alexander
II in 1881 had fallen victim to an assassination attempt. The new
emperor, Alexander III (1881-94), again embarked on a system stabilizing course
by to cancel or override a number of the father's liberal reforms in, for
example, the administration of justice, administration and education. In
addition, the implementation of a Russian nationalist policy, which led to
special legislation for Jews and a brutal attempt to Russify the national
minorities in the outskirts of the empire. This reactionary course that
continued under Nikolaj 2.(ruled 1894-1917), however, was linked to a highly
active state enterprise policy. Railway construction (eg the Trans-Siberian
Railway), the expansion of the banking system, foreign government loans and a
protectionist trade policy made Russia a "greenhouse of capitalism" in the
1890's, which, however, was vulnerable to international economic fluctuations due
to its small domestic market. But in the 1890's, Russia had Europe's largest
growth rates in mining and heavy industry. Basically, however, it remained an
agricultural country where the number of industrial workers and the size of the
cities were modest.
Towards revolution
Reforms and industrialization took place largely within the existing
political framework. This strengthened the antagonism between state and society
that had been established under Peter the Great. There was also a contradiction
between a relatively small educated elite and the rest of the population living
in illiterate darkness, between city and country, between imperial power and a
burgeoning public, and between the imperial center and the national movements of
the periphery.
This meant that Russia around 1900 was marked by a number of fundamental
unsolved problems. They were about the division of power, about the land
question, about the living conditions of the workers and about the national
question. These problems came to an end in the 1905 revolution, where workers,
peasants and intelligentsia for the first time in unison rose up against
self-rule. The socially critical and radically minded intelligentsia had found
no place in 1800's society. Russia's attempts at Europeanization had in the
1700's. not been a problem for the intellectuals who were, by and large, loyal
supporters of it. But under the influence of the European national romantic
currents, in the 1830's and 1840's, they began to question Russia's identity in
this process of Europeanization and further on Russia's place in history. On
this question, the intellectuals were divided into two camps:
the Slavophiles believed that Russia should return to its roots in the
pre-Petrine and Orthodox-ruled society, while the Western-oriented (zapadniki)
saw a continuation of Europeanization as Russia's true path. In the second half
of the century, the Russian intelligentsia developed into the self-appointed
mouthpiece of society, which through fiction, literary criticism, social
critique, utopian social models in both legal and illegal form more or less
radically declared itself an enemy of the state and the existing social
order. An example is the so-called narodniki (populists), who in the 1870's went
out into the peasant population to spread the knowledge of their agrarian
socialism there.
From the 1890's, the agrarian socialists were opposed by the Marxist Social
Democrats, who turned their attention to the rather few industrial
proletariat. Their party, founded in 1898, was split as early as 1903 at the
party's second congress into an evolutionary faction (Mensheviks) and a
revolutionary wing (Bolsheviks).
Among the non-Russian peoples such as the Baltics, Ukrainians, Belarusians,
Georgians, Armenians and Tatars, national movements developed that with varying
intensity made cultural, political and social demands. The liberal opposition,
which consisted mainly of academics and people in liberal professions, organized
itself in 1905 in the party The Constitutional Democrats (Cadets).
The 1905 revolution
The direct cause of the upheavals in 1905 was a peaceful workers'
demonstration in St. Petersburg on January 22, 1905, which wanted to hand over a
petition to the emperor, but by the intervention of elite units turned into a
massacre (see The Bloody Sunday). In the following months, numerous strikes
followed, forming the first workers' soviets, and which in the autumn turned
into a general strike. At the same time, the imperial power suffered defeat in
the war against Japan 1904-05, and it was therefore in the autumn of 1905 on the
verge of collapse. However, the imperial power succeeded in splitting the
organized part of the opposition by issuing a manifesto (the October Manifesto),
which promised far-reaching concessions. The Liberal opposition thus lost its
moderate wing, which under the party name Oktobrister allowed itself to be
satisfied by the manifesto's promises. The October Manifesto formed the basis
for the constitutional provisions issued in April 1906. For the first time in
Russia's history, civil and political rights were guaranteed; trade unions and
political parties were legalized, which created the basis for a legal political
public. A two-chamber system was established with a Council of State, where the
emperor was to appoint half of the members, and a State Duma, whose members were
to be appointed through elections with ordinary but indirect and unequal
suffrage. The emperor retained dominance over military and foreign policy. He
continued to appoint the government, convening and dissolving parliament. He
also had a veto power over all Duma decisions and could impose a state of
emergency. convened and was able to dissolve Parliament. He also had a veto
power over all Duma decisions and could impose a state of emergency. convened
and was able to dissolve Parliament. He also had a veto power over all Duma
decisions and could impose a state of emergency.
The 1st and 2nd Duma (1906-07) were dominated by radical and socialist
parties and were disbanded as they came into conflict with the government rather
quickly. Thereafter, suffrage was curtailed, and the two following Dumas, who
came to sit 1907-17, were given a conservative composition. Prime
Minister Stolypin had, against the wishes of the first two Duma, initiated a
far-sighted agrarian reform which, by freeing the peasants from the village and
allowing them to relocate and replace the land over a number of years, foresaw
the formation of a government-loyal peasantry. Industrial development and the
gradual literacy of the population also continued after 1905. However, this
development was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
World War 1
After some military progress in the beginning, the Russian armies soon
suffered defeat, and the empire had to give up territory for the first time in
centuries. The food supply totally collapsed, causing the social tensions to
reach the breaking point. The government's incompetent military leadership and
its partly German - friendly policies gradually removed the regime from the
Duma's liberal-conservative majority, which wanted to stand firm on Entente co -
operation. At the end of February 1917, therefore, the regime was again on the
brink of collapse, but this time it did not stand to be saved. A spontaneous
popular movement in the capital Petrograd (until 1914 St. Petersburg) demanded
its fall. A self-appointed committee of the Duma, led by members of the Cadet
Party, agreed to this demand, and on March 15, 1917, Nikolai 2 abdicated. The
300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty was over.
The resulting power vacuum was filled by a dual government, which from the
beginning helped to weaken the transitional government. The spontaneously
emerging Petrograd Soviet of workers 'and soldiers' deputies shared power with
the Duma Committee, now called the Provisional Government. But the temporary
nature of the government prevented it from addressing the very fundamental
problems: the agrarian question, the workers' question, and an end to the
war. They were postponed to a Constituent Assembly to be elected and convened
later in the year 1917.
The dual government went from crisis to crisis. Its dependence on the Western
allies prevented it from concluding a special peace with the Axis powers. During
the summer a social revolution was carried out. The industrial proletariat
organized itself into trade unions, factory committees and workers 'militias,
took over the factories by suicide and demanded workers' control of
production. In the countryside, the farmers carried out a land distribution by
e.g. by force to take over the estates and distribute the land among
themselves. The national movements of the peripheral areas were in the process
of realizing autonomy. The government, since July under the leadership of the
socialist Alexander Kerensky, could not stand a chance.
In the autumn of 1917, the social and political crisis culminated. At that
time, all parties except the Bolsheviks had compromised by participating in the
Provisional Government and by allowing the war to continue. The time had come
when political power was at stake for anyone who was able to offer the people
the right slogans. And the Bolsheviks could. Their leader, Lenin, had, after the
party split in 1903, created a small but well-organized party of revolutionaries
who believed they would have history with them if they took power. In his theory
of imperialism, Lenin, like the agrarian socialists of his day, had argued that
a socialist revolution was possible in an agrarian society like Russia. He saw
the country as the weakest link in the chain of capitalist countries, and
therefore a revolution here could be the beginning of the world
revolution. Lenin had coupled this theory with concrete promises to solve all
the pressing problems that the Provisional Government had postponed. By April
1917, the promises had been summed up in three slogans with a clear popular
appeal: land, peace, and all power to the Soviets. During the autumn, the
Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Soviets of the largest cities, and 7.11.1917
(October 25, 1917,Live Trotsky at the head of the Petrograd Soviet Revolutionary
Committee undramatically and without meeting appreciable resistance in an armed
coup take over political power in the capital. The Provisional Government was
arrested, but its leader, Alexander Kerensky, had fled. An authoritarian empire
had collapsed, and its successor had proved too weak to create a new capitalist
and democratic Russia.
Russia (History - 1917-45)
the October Revolution led to the formation of a new government, the Council
of People's Commissars, led by Lenin. The aim was then to build a dictatorship
of the proletariat, based on a system of state Soviets and with the
Bolshevik wing of the Social Democrats (from 1918 the Communist Party) as the
all-dominating political force. Shortly after the revolution, other parties were
banned and the non-Bolshevik press closed. The Communists' rapid monopoly of
power and radical economic policies triggered in 1918 the Russian Civil
War between the Reds, ie. the Bolsheviks, and the whites, the
anti-Bolsheviks. The fronts, however, were not clear; the large population
majority, the peasants, for example, found it difficult to choose sides in the
conflict. The war, which cost 8-9 million. human life, the vast majority of
civilians, ended in the late 1920's with defeats to the whites who were weakened
by mutual strife and failed to devise an alternative political program. Britain,
France and a number of other states intervened to varying degrees in the Civil
War. The main goal of the European intervention powers in the short term was to
create a new eastern front in World War I, after Soviet Russia concluded a
separate peace in March 1918, the Brest-Litovsk peace., with Germany; in the
long run, they wanted to prevent communism from spreading to the rest of
Europe. The foreign intervention, however, only to a modest extent came to
influence the course of the civil war.
Of greater importance were the many non-Russian nationalities who fought for
increased autonomy or full independence from
Russia. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland gained independence,
but most other national movements were neutralized by Soviet power in the first
half of the 1920's. Most of the old tsarist empire was thus reunited, and in 1922
a highly centralized federal state, the Soviet Union, was established,
consisting of four Union republics: the Russian, the Ukrainian, the Belarusian,
and the Transcaucasian. The number of Union Republics has since risen to 16.
The Soviet state also consolidated its foreign policy position. The attempt
to promote proletarian revolutions in the rest of Europe, through the new
Communist International, the Comintern, had created a deep opposition to the
capitalist countries. But the world revolution did not take place, and Soviet
Russia therefore had to try to find a place in a traditional international
system. In 1922, Moscow signed a treaty of friendship, the Treaty of Rapallo,
with Germany, and in 1924, the Soviet Union was recognized by Great
Britain, France and the Scandinavian countries.
The Civil War had plunged the country into a deep economic and social
crisis. In order to rectify the economy and counter several peasant uprisings,
Lenin decided in 1921 to abolish the radical war communism that had
been introduced in 1918 and, among other things, entailed extensive
nationalizations and forced seizure of grain by the peasants. Instead, a new
economic policy, NEP, was introduced, which provided significant room for
private economic enterprise. Cultural life was also given relatively free
opportunities to unfold.
With Lenin's death in 1924, however, the smoldering controversy over the
future political course intensified. The general secretary of the Communist
Party, Josef Stalin, was in favor of a continuation of the NEP for a long
time. But after maneuvering Lev Trotskyand other leading Bolsheviks, he
initiated in 1928-29 a new radical social upheaval. The Stalin revolution
involved the forced collectivization of agriculture, the deportation of millions
of stubborn peasants, the nationalization of the means of production, and forced
industrialization, based on a highly centralized planned economic system. In
addition, there was a massive unification of cultural and social life and a
general attack on the Orthodox Church, Islam, Judaism and other
denominations. The goal was in a short time to build a strong industrial state
and a real socialist social order.
However, collectivization became a regular disaster. In rural areas, due to
peasant resistance, there were civil war-like conditions, and in 1932-33, parts
of the Soviet Union were hit by a severe famine that cost millions of
lives. Stalin, however, stood firm and in the following years laid the
groundwork for an inviolable personal dictatorship. Already as general secretary
he had built up a solid power base in the party apparatus, and at the same time
the influence of the Soviet government had been gradually reduced in favor of
the party's Politburo. In the 1930's, the Politburo also lost its significance,
as all important decisions were now made by Stalin himself and the circle around
him. To further secure his position, Stalin carried out extensive purges of real
and potential opponents. It culminated inthe great terror of 1936-38,
in which a number of leading Bolsheviks were sentenced to death by the Moscow
trials, and millions of ordinary citizens were liquidated or imprisoned in
Soviet prisons and forced labor camps (see GULag). In those years, the security
service NKVD stood as society's dominant institution.
The terror deprived the non-Russian peoples of the last remnant of autonomy,
but affected the Russians just as much. At the same time, the Soviet population
was disciplined through a series of measures aimed at pushing the workforce to
the extreme and counteracting the chaos that had prevailed in companies in the
first phase of the industrialization process. However, the 1930's were also
marked by targeted government education efforts and strong social mobility. Many
Soviet citizens therefore also experienced the period as the emergence of a new,
modern age with great career and development opportunities. With Stalin's own
expression, the original "equality" was now rejected in favor of a strong wage
differentiation and a host of privileges for the new elite. The massive
ideological indoctrination,
Under enormous human costs, it succeeded in transforming the backward
agrarian Russia into an industrial power, thereby also achieving fundamental
security policy goals. Both industrialization and political terror were largely
aimed at preparing the country for war. It was about, firstly, creating a strong
defense, secondly, developing new industrial centers far from the vulnerable
western border and, thirdly, ensuring that the people in the hinterland were
absolutely loyal. The Soviet leadership at the time considered a military
showdown with the capitalist world inevitable. The agreements that Moscow made
with other states were therefore to serve both to postpone the military conflict
until the Soviet Union itself was ready, and to strengthen the economy through
trade and technology transfer.
The special relations with Germany, which had been established in 1922, were
largely maintained until shortly after Hitler took power in 1933. In the
following years, the Soviet Union sought to approach the Western powers and
create a system of collective security against fascism and Nazism. at the same
time equipped to counter an attack from Japan. The major political developments
of the second half of the 1930's, however, caused the Soviet leadership to change
course. It had not succeeded in obtaining French and British support against
Germany, and in the light of the concession to Germany in the Munich
Agreement of 1938 and the fascists' victory in the Spanish Civil War sought the
Soviet Union again with Germany. On 23.8.1939 was signedThe German-Soviet
Non-Aggression Pact, supplemented by a secret additional protocol that divided
Eastern Europe into a German and a Soviet sphere of interest. The pact triggered
Hitler's attack on Poland on September 1, and thus World War II.
Through the annexation of the East Pole, the three Baltic states, smaller
Finnish territories, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, the Soviet Union in
1939-40 pushed its defenses to the west. Yet the country was ill-prepared
militarily as well as politically when Hitler, on June 22, 1941, launched his
lightning war against the Soviet Union, thus becoming the Western powers' ally
in the fight against Germany. In a few months, the Germans pushed to the
outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow, and in 1942 they reached the Volga city
of Stalingrad. After this, however, a Soviet counter-offensive set in, driving
the Germans into retreat. Most of Eastern Europe was conquered by Soviet forces
1944-45, and in April-May 1945 the Red Army occupied Berlin.
The war on the Eastern Front had been waged with unusual brutality. Hitler's
goal was to colonize the Soviet Union west of the Urals and force the Slavic
"subhumans" to live on a subsistence level and function as cheap labor for the
German "lords". In the occupied territories, special SS units also had the task
of liquidating Jews and Communist party functionaries. Far greater, however,
were the losses on the battlefield itself and the number of civilian casualties
of the German attacks; in total, the Great Patriotic War cost about 25
million. Soviet citizens life.
Also for the Russians who were behind the front, the situation was extremely
harsh due to great food shortages, appallingly poor housing conditions, etc. In
addition, the Soviet state persecuted its own citizens. Both before and during
the war, for example, a number of smaller non-Russian peoples suspected of
disloyalty or rebellious intentions were deported to the outskirts of the Soviet
Union.
Despite the immense devastation of the war, the Soviet Union in 1945 stood
strong in the foreign policy arena. The Red Army had control over most of
Eastern Europe and the eastern part of Germany; moreover, the agreements reached
with the Western powers at the Tehran and Yalta conferences in November 1943 and
February 1945 provided good opportunities for the Soviet Union to gain decisive
influence in the Eastern European countries and thereby build a new advanced
security zone vis-à-vis the West. The pattern in the world of the Cold War took
shape even before the real war was over.
Russia (History - 1945-91)
Already at the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, disagreements arose
between the former allies, and when the Soviet Union in 1945-48, bypassing the
Tehran and Yalta Accords, had communist-dominated governments in the occupied
Central and Eastern European states. countries, the Cold War was a reality. The
first serious confrontation between East and West was the Berlin Blockade in
1948-49, in which Stalinto prevent the formation of a West German state, the
access roads to West Berlin closed, but were forced to abandon the blockade due
to the West Powers' airlift to the city. In 1949, the Federal Republic of
Germany was established, after which the Soviet Union established the East
German state of GDR. That same year, the Soviet Union got the atomic bomb,
laying the groundwork for its status as a superpower. The new Eastern European
"people's democracies" were imposed on Soviet-like political and economic
systems and largely subject to Moscow's leadership. Control of Eastern Europe
was exercised through COMECON, formed in 1949. Only Yugoslavia
under Titowent its own ways despite strong Soviet pressure. In return, in 1950,
Moscow signed a friendship and aid agreement with the new communist China. That
same year, Stalin supported North Korea's invasion of South Korea and then also
China's interference in the Korean War, increasing polarization between East
and West.
The victory in World War II had endowed both Communism and Stalin's person
with almost inviolable popular legitimacy. Nevertheless, after the end of the
war, coercion and unification continued as political means of control. The labor
camps were replenished, leading politicians were executed (see
the Leningrad affair), and cultural life was kept in check, while at the same
time the Stalin cult reached absurd heights. The newly incorporated territories
in the west were brutally integrated into the Soviet system, by forced
collectivization of agriculture and mass deportations of, in particular, Balts
to Siberia.
Economically, the early post-war period was marked by forced
reconstruction. An ambitious five-year plan for 1946-50 achieved good results,
especially in heavy industry, but agriculture and thus the living conditions of
the population continued to be neglected.
Stalin died in 1953, and the ensuing power struggle was won by Nikita
Khrushchev. He was deeply rooted in Stalinism, but wanted to free it from some
of its repressive features. Therefore, at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, he
exposed a number of Stalin's crimes (see The Secret Speech) and in the
following years with the so-called thaw broke allowed some liberalization of the
public life of Soviet society. A large number of the prisoners were released,
and many of the victims of the Stalin terror were rehabilitated, just as the
secret police, the KGB, came under stricter political control. However, the
course was highly volatile, and the ideological framework remained narrow.
Khrushchev tried with some success to expand the welfare of Soviet citizens
through increased emphasis on consumer production, housing construction, and
access to education. Moreover, he understood the negative consequences of the
backwardness of agriculture and took the initiative to bring it to its feet. To
strengthen the overall planned economy, he implemented a comprehensive
decentralization of economic planning and governance, which, like a number of
other initiatives, strengthened the party and made it the sovereign leading
institution in the state administration. Soviet technology experienced a
short-lived global lead when in 1957 the first satellite was sent and in 1961
the first human in orbit around the Earth.
Khrushchev agreed with Stalin's thesis of "two camps" in world politics, but
instead of confrontation, he wanted a more peaceful rivalry between communism
and capitalism under the motto "peaceful coexistence". He was sure of the
victory of communism, in the expectation that the Soviet Union would
already around 1970 surpass the United States in production per. resident. In
step with the decolonization, the controversy increasingly arose about the new
countries in the third world, and here Soviet diplomacy reaped good results in
Egypt, India and Cuba. In return, it came to a violent break with China,
which would not recognize the Soviet leading role in world communism.
All the more so, the Soviet Union cemented its control of the Eastern Bloc
and thus, despite the intention to the contrary, maintained the fundamental
conflict between East and West. In 1955, the Warsaw Pact was established in
response to West Germany's accession to NATO, in 1956 Soviet troops stifled a
popular uprising in Hungary, and after several years of international crisis
over Berlin's status, the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to stem the population
exodus from East Germany. The following year, the world was brought to the brink
of a nuclear war when the Soviet Union in Cuba wanted to deploy nuclear missiles
that could reach large parts of the United States.
Khrushchev's risky games and defeats in the Cuba crisis, his dictatorial
leadership style, and the problems caused by his chaotically implemented reforms
in the economy, led in 1964 to his removal under coup-like circumstances. The
leadership was taken over by Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin, with the
former in the now dominant role.
The new leadership quickly abolished many of Khrushchev's reforms, including
the decentralization of the planned economy, and replaced his restless reforms
with a leadership style that emphasized stability and the preservation of the
existing structure of power and privilege in society. The decade leading up to
the mid-1970's was probably the most materially prosperous period in the history
of the Soviet Union, but thereafter a stagnation ensued which in the first half
of the 1980's led to economic zero growth and paralysis of political action.
In 1965, Kosygin tried to implement a reform that, through economic framework
management, was to make companies more independent, but it ran into the sand due
to opposition in the powerful ministries. Subsequent sub - reforms failed to
address the inability of the planned economy system to manage and further
develop the now relatively complex economy. Among other things, it was clearly
when the West in the same period actually hooked the Soviet Union on
international technological development. On the other hand, the black market and
corruption flourished, which probably covered the population's need for consumer
goods and services, but at the same time undermined the legitimacy of communism.
The aging leadership took many initiatives to remedy the problems, but
constantly refused to go beyond the existing political-economic system, for
which it in turn led a stifling ideological defense. From the mid-1960's,
however, the system was challenged on several fronts: the growing political
cynicism and apathy of the population effectively eliminated the ideological
tools of the past, while the growing dissident movement created considerable
turbulence with its demands for political and religious freedoms and the right
to emigrate. the Jewish population.
The course of the Cuban Missile Crisis had exposed the Soviet Union's
inability to respond to global military action. It brought about under Brezhnev
a tremendous expansion of the navy and the intercontinental missile forces,
whereby in the 1970's, at enormous cost, the country achieved strategic equality
with the United States. But the crisis also gave rise to a process of relaxation
between the superpowers, further alienated by the Soviet Union's need for
Western technology and the tense relationship with China. The process came to a
temporary halt when the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to
halt Alexander Dubček's reforms; but in the first half of the 1970's a number of
agreements were concluded, including the Berlin Agreementin 1971, the SALT I
Agreement in 1972 and the Helsinki Agreement in 1975, which together slowed down
the arms race and increased stability in Europe. After this, the mistrust
between the parties grew again, due to Soviet use of Cuban troops in the
Third World and a fierce dispute over the deployment of medium-range missiles in
Europe. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the process came to a
complete standstill.
At Brezhnev's death in 1982, the Soviet Union was in deep internal and
external crisis, and its successors, Yuri Andropov (1982-84) and Konstantin
Chernenko (1984-85), failed to change this. Mikhail Gorbachev, who became the
new leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, realized, unlike his predecessors, that
the problems had their roots in the political-economic system itself. Therefore,
he launched under the name perestroika'restructuring' means an in-depth
reform program. By means that had previously been ideologically unacceptable,
the perestroika was to boost the ailing economy and involve the population more
in the political process, all in order to preserve the Soviet Union as a
socialist state in the long run. In practice, however, the reform work suffered
from a lack of clear ideas about what should be put in place of the parts of the
Soviet system that it managed to break down. The economic reforms thus cut
central planning, but for ideological reasons failed to replace it with a truly
free market, which destabilized the economy. Under the slogans glasnost, political
reforms introduced 'openness' and democratizationfar-reaching freedom
of speech and of the press, as well as relatively free elections to parliament,
which were given real powers. These conditions opened up an avalanche of
criticism of the system, but never led to full democracy; Among other
things, the Communist Party was first deprived of its formal monopoly of power
in 1990.
Also in relations with the outside world, Gorbachev broke with decades of
habitual thinking and sought a new, afideologized relationship with the
West. This was done partly in recognition of the fact that inflated defense
spending hampered internal reforms, and partly out of a presumably genuine
desire to make the Soviet Union a "civilized" actor on the international
stage. The change of course led to a number of important arms control and
disarmament agreements with the West, to Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and
to the conclusion of the treaties that made German reunification possible in
1990. But it also led to the loss of Moscow's dominance over the Eastern
Bloc; the Eastern European revolutions of 1989-90 were largely born of the
example of perestroika and of Gorbachev's insistence on not using armed force
against its European neighbors.
The political upheaval in the Soviet Union took on an ethnic dimension as the
many non-Russian peoples began to turn against the highly centralized and
Russian-dominated regime and demand autonomy or direct secession from the Soviet
Union. The demands most strongly put forward by the Baltic republics weakened in
conjunction with bloody ethnic clashes around the country's central power,
especially as the Greater Russia Republic under the leadership of Boris
Yeltsinin 1990 joined the pressure for a decentralization of the
union. Gorbachev tried to meet the demand with a new Union treaty, which
extended extensive powers to the republics, but before signing, he was subjected
to a conservative coup attempt in August 1991. The coup failed, but intensified
the dissolution tendencies. The Communist Party was now banned, a number of
republics declared independence, and in December the presidents of Russia,
Belarus, and Ukraine single-handedly disbanded the Soviet Union, forming the
looser CIS, the Union of Independent States, which soon gained membership from
most other Soviet republics. Gorbachev took the consequence and resigned as
President of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.
Russia (History - After 1991)
During the coup attempt against Gorbachev, Yeltsin had acted as a courageous
opponent of the coup plotters and defender of democratic values. He was the
leading figure in the last phase of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and as
President of Russia, he took over upon Gorbachev's resignation of the Soviet
Union's previous international obligations as well as the leadership of the
armed forces, the secret services and the ministries. Thus, an independent
Russia was established with borders that, apart from the later conquered areas
of the North Caucasus, the Far East and East Prussia, corresponded to the
borders in the mid-1600's.
Yeltsin immediately launched a shock therapy market economy program. Social
tensions grew as economic performance slowed and output declined as inflation
rose. 1992-93 was also marked by a grueling conflict between Yeltsin and
parliament, ie. The People's Congress and the Supreme Soviet, both of which were
elected during the Soviet era. The conflict over both the constitution and
economic policy culminated when Yeltsin dissolved parliament in September 1993
in violation of the constitution and then in early October forced the rebel
members out by letting the military bomb the parliament building. A new
constitution that provided for a strong presidency came to a referendum in
December, while its provisions were applied in an election to one chamber of the
new parliament, the State Duma.
Heads of State |
grand princes Sort |
1462-1505 |
Ivan 3. the Great |
1505-33 |
Vasilij 3. |
zarer |
1533-84 |
Ivan 4. the Cruel |
1584-98 |
Fyodor 1. Ivanovich |
1598-1605 |
Boris Godunov |
1605-13 |
"The Time of Confusion" |
1605 |
Fyodor 2. Borisovich |
1605-06 |
Dmitry Ivanovich (First Pseudo-Dmitry) |
1606-10 |
Vasily Shusky |
the Romanov house |
1613-45 |
Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov |
1645-76 |
Alexei Mikhailovich |
1676-82 |
Fyodor 3. Alekseevich |
1682-96 |
Ivan 5. |
1682/89-1725 |
Peter the Great (Emperor of 1721) |
1725-27 |
Catherine 1. |
1727-30 |
Peter 2. |
1730-40 |
Anna Ivanovna |
1740-41 |
Ivan 6. |
1741-62 |
Elisabeth Petrovna |
the house Holsten-Gottorp-Romanov |
1762 |
Peter 3. |
1762-96 |
Catherine II the Great |
1796-1801 |
Paul 1. |
1801-25 |
Alexander 1. |
1825-55 |
Nicholas 1. |
1855-81 |
Alexander 2. |
1881-94 |
Alexander 3. |
1894-1917 |
Nicholas 2. |
the Provisional Government |
1917 |
Georgia Lvov |
1917 |
Alexander Kerensky |
leaders of the Soviet Union |
chairmen of the Council of People's Commissars, from
1946 the Council of Ministers |
1917/23-24 |
Vladimir Lenin |
1924-30 |
Alexei Rykov |
1930-41 |
Vyacheslav Molotov |
1941-53 |
Josef Stalin |
1953-55 |
Georgia Malenkov |
1955-58 |
Nikolaj Bulganin |
1958-64 |
Nikita Khrushchev |
1964-80 |
Alexei Kosygin |
1980-85 |
Nikolai Tikhonov |
1985-91 |
Nikolai Ryzhkov |
Secretaries-General (1953-66 First Secretaries) of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
1922-53 |
Josef Stalin |
1953 |
Georgia Malenkov |
1953-64 |
Nikita Khrushchev |
1964-82 |
Leonid Brezhnev |
1982-84 |
Yuri Andropov |
1984-85 |
Konstantin Tjernenko |
1985-91 |
Mikhail Gorbachev |
Presidents (1917-38 Presidents of the Central
Executive Committee, 1938-90 Presidents of the Supreme Soviet Presidium
of the Soviet Union, 1990-91 President of the Soviet Union) |
1917 |
Lev Kamenev |
1917-19 |
Jakov Sverdlov |
1919/23-46 |
Mikhail Kalinin |
1946-53 |
Nikolaj Sjvernik |
1953-60 |
Kliment Voroshilov |
1960-64 |
Leonid Brezhnev |
1964-65 |
Anastas Mikojan |
1965-77 |
Nikolai Podgornyj |
1977-82 |
Leonid Brezhnev |
1982-84 |
Yuri Andropov |
1984-85 |
Konstantin Tjernenko |
1985-89 |
Andrej Gromyko |
1989-91 |
Mikhail Gorbachev |
The division of the new Russia into 89 administrative units, some of which
were ethnically based, was a threat to the unity of the state. Not only was
there unrest in the national republics, but also in the purely Russian regions
there was a desire for increased independence. Most conflicts were resolved
through bilateral agreements; only with Chechnya, which had declared
independence in 1991, no agreement was reached. The Republic's strategic
position in relation to international oil agreements led in December 1994 to the
start of a bloody war against the Republic. It ended in the summer of 1996 with
a de facto recognition of Chechnya's independence, although the question of
Chechnya's status was formally postponed until 2001.
The elections to the State Duma did not produce a reform-friendly majority in
either 1993 or 1995. Communists and nationalists could therefore force the
president and his prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, to slow down reforms and
adjust the course of foreign policy in a nationalist direction. Despite this and
despite the war in Chechnya, in 1996 Yeltsin succeeded in being re-elected for a
new five-year term. However, the president's serious health problems weakened
the power of the central government to deal with the rapidly growing crime and
the stubborn states. Debt, which was not matched by growth in output, gave
Russia such great economic problems in 1998 that it had to carry out a sharp
devaluation and declare itself unable to meet its debt obligations. A new
government led byYevgeny Primakov then initiated a revision of the reform policy
with greatly increased state influence in economic life; In the field of foreign
policy, Primakov had already, as Foreign Minister since 1996, emphasized
Russia's orientation towards Asian partners and Russia's need to pursue national
interests, for example in relation to NATO enlargement.
Putin's period
Despite great popularity, Primakov was fired in May 1999; Yeltsin wanted a
successor who would look after the interests of the inner circle after the
presidential election in the year 2000, and therefore in August made Vladimir
Putin the prime minister and unofficial presidential candidate. Among other
things, he was to fight a new, strong political party that had fielded Primakov
as a presidential candidate. In late summer, a Muslim-inspired uprising erupted
in Dagestan, led by a Chechen breakaway group. After the uprising, Putin took
advantage of the situation to invade Chechnya. The purpose of the action, which
met with criticism in the international community, was, in addition to the
officially declared fight against Chechen terrorism, probably both to force
Chechnya back into Russia and to build Putin up as a strong man in public
opinion. The latter succeeded as the majority of the population supported the
action and Putin's popularity grew, whereupon he became acting president until
the March 2000 presidential election, which he won with 53% of the vote.
During his first term in office, he launched political and economic reforms
to strengthen state power and promote the development of a market economy. The
State Duma, elected in 1999, supported his initiatives. In 2000, Putin divided
the country's 89 regions into seven "federal districts" and deployed its own
people to control them, but many regions remain autonomous. Among other things,
he received adopted a law on the purchase and sale of agricultural land and took
action against corruption and abuse of office. His popularity was high despite
events such as the sinking of the submarine Kursk with 118 men on board
in 2000, the unending war in Chechnya and the growing control of the media. The
country had economic prosperity, but in 2002 lived 1/3of
the population below the poverty line. In addition, the population fell by
approximately 800,000 a year. Putin's foreign policy was to look after the country's
economic interests, including in cooperation with the EU to create a common
economic space. Following the terrorist attacks on the United States on
September 11, 2001, Putin quickly joined the anti-terror coalition. His
orientation of the country to the west in 2002 led to the formation of a new
NATO-Russia Council, which to combat terrorism, and for the accession of
Russia as a member of the G8. In addition, the EU and the US have recognized
Russia's market economy and supported its accession to the World Trade
Organization, WTO.
The Russian Federation |
presidents Sort |
1991-99 |
Boris Yeltsin |
1999-2008 |
Vladimir Putin |
2008-2012 |
Dmitry Medvedev |
2012- |
Vladimir Putin |
heads of government |
1991-92 |
Boris Yeltsin |
1992 |
Jegor Gajdar |
1992-98 |
Viktor Tjernomyrdin |
1998 |
Sergei Kirijenko |
1998 |
Viktor Tjernomyrdin |
1998-99 |
Yevgeny Primakov |
1999 |
Sergei Stepasjin |
1999-2000 |
Vladimir Putin |
2000-04 |
Mikhail Kasyanov |
2004-07 |
Mikhail Fradkov |
2007-08 |
Viktor Zubkov |
2008-12 |
Vladimir Putin |
2012- |
Dmitry Medvedev |
In March 2004, Putin was re-elected with 71% of the vote for a final
four-year term, after which he continued his efforts to centralize power by,
among other things, to appoint former colleagues from the security service to
senior positions. In the Duma elections in 2003, the Putin-friendly party United
Russia occupied over two-thirds of the 450 seats. In his second term, Putin
restricted freedom of expression by, among other things. to subject state-wide
television stations to state control, and in 2006 he approved a law allowing
authorities to monitor the activities of NGOs. In 2004, he abolished direct
election of regional leaders; they are then appointed by the President and
subsequently approved by the regional parliaments. In 2005, a process of merging
some of the 89 regions that make up the Russian Federation was
launched,Komi-Permjakien Autonomous Circle was merged with the Perm region where
it is located. Putin has failed to normalize conditions in Chechnya, which still
had 80,000 federal troops in 2005, and since the hostage-taking at the Dubrova
Theater in Moscow in 2002, Chechen rebels have carried out several terrorist
attacks, including the Beslan hostage-taking in 2004. the director of the oil
company Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for tax evasion and the sentence of
eight years in prison in 2005 Putin tightened his grip on the stone-rich
businessmen, the oligarchs, and he let the state take over the majority stake in
the gas company Gazpromin 2005. Russia has benefited from the high world oil and
gas market prices, and initiatives have therefore been taken to reform health
care and the social sphere. In the 2007 Duma elections, in which single-member
constituencies were abolished and all were elected to party lists by
proportional representation, the United Russia party won 315 seats, retaining
the qualified majority, Russia's Communist Party 57 seats, the Liberal
Democratic Party 40 seats, and Justice Russia. received 38 seats. Seven of the
11 parties lined up did not meet the 7% threshold. President Putin was nominated
as the leading candidate for United Russia, but only to attract voters. He did
not intend to become a member of the Duma, which he would not be able to be if
he became Prime Minister after his resignation as President.
Despite joining the anti-terror coalition in 2001 and accepting the
coalition's military presence in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Russia turned to the
US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and since then relations between the two
countries have been strained. also because of US concerns over Russia's support
for Iran's civilian nuclear program. The EU is Russia's most important trading
partner, but the relationship is slowly developing, and even in the summer of
2006 it was not known what to build on when the Partnership and Cooperation
Agreement expired in 2007. Relations with China have developed strongly since
2004, and in 2006 a agreement on future supplies of gas from
Russia. Among SNGThe countries are Kazakhstan Russia's most loyal partner, but
the other Central Asian countries also have a good relationship with
Russia. Since 2003, Russia has had forces stationed in Kyrgyzstan, and in
Tajikistan, Russia's largest military base is located abroad. Putin supported
his Uzbek counterpart's crackdown on the demonstrations in Andijan, and
Turkmenistan is an important gas partner. Russia has been concerned about
the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolutionin Ukraine in
2004, and relations with these countries in early 2006 were marked by frictions
regarding energy supplies. In the South Caucasus, Armenia is Russia's most
important strategic partner, but relations with Azerbaijan are also
good. Belarus is part of a loose union with Russia, but Putin has not interfered
in Lukashenko's regime. As for Moldova, Russia holds the key to resolving the
conflict over the Dniester Republic.
The presidential election on March 2, 2008 was won by Dmitry Medvedev, who
received the support of President Putin and was nominated by the United Russia
party. The newly elected president took the oath in May 2008, and Putin
resigned. Putin became the new prime minister. In August 2008, Russian forces
invaded Georgia and proclaimed recognition of the two separatist republics of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The conflict led to a period of cool relations
between Russia and the West, as well as to fears of a renewed Cold War. However,
the relationship softened up. Medvedev continued largely the line from Putin,
but generally with a more conciliatory rhetoric on the outside. During
Medvedev's tenure, the international financial crisis occurred; especially the
falling energy prices for a period had a negative impact on the Russian economy.
Vladimir Putin was confirmed in 2011 as the presidential candidate for the
2012 election, which was seen as a confirmation of the presumption that Medvedev
was installed in the presidency to "keep the chair warm" for Putin. Putin won
the election, but there were widespread demonstrations revealing that popular
support was not as great as before. Following Putin's inauguration, Medvedev
became prime minister. In 2012, Russia became a member of the World Trade
Organization.
Under Putin, Russia has rediscovered its role as a confident superpower. On
the international stage, Russia has been able to set the agenda in several
cases. As for Iran's reprocessing of uranium, which parts of the international
community feared was an attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, Russia was skeptical
of sanctions and backed a negotiated solution. Russia has also supported its
main ally in the Middle East, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; here, Putin
emerged as a diplomatic victor when he reached an agreement to disarm Syria for
chemical weapons. However, Putin's regime has also been criticized for its
authoritarian tendencies and attacks on the opposition.
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