Russia: The History From Grolier's The New Book of Knowledge

	Moscow pupils take a break on a toppled statue of Stalin in a park in 1991. Photo: AP/Wide World

Kievan Rus. There is a historical legend that the East Slavs invited Scandinavians, known as Varangians, to rule over them in the 700's or 800's. In 882 a Viking chieftain from the north named Oleg captured the city of Kiev (in present-day Ukraine), situated on the Dnieper River, which became the capital of the state of Kievan Rus. Under Oleg's descendants, Kievan Rus became an important power that for a time extended as far west as present-day Bulgaria. It had a flourishing trade with the Byzantine Empire as well as with western European and Asian states. About 988 or 989, Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus accepted Eastern Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantines. Two monks, Cyril and Methodius, who a century earlier had translated the scriptures into the Slavic tongue, gave the Kievan Christians their alphabet, known as Cyrillic, which was based on the Greek alphabet. The other East Slavs soon followed, and a Christian civilization of high achievement developed.

Alexander Nevsky. In its early history, Kievan Rus was invaded often. In 1240, Alexander, prince of Novgorod, defeated the Swedes in a famous battle on the Neva River, near St. Petersburg. Thereafter he became known as Alexander Nevsky. Then in 1242, on the winter ice of Lake Peipus, he defeated an invading Germanic army of Teutonic Knights. Three hundred years later, Nevsky was made a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. Today he is still considered a national hero.

Mongol Rule. Persistent wars with successive waves of nomadic peoples weakened the Kievan state. In 1240, conquerors from the Mongol Empire to the east overran its lands. For more than two centuries, the Mongols (or Tatars, as they were often called) remained the overlords of the region. Kiev itself was devastated and did not recover until years later. After the initial destruction and death produced by the conquest, however, the Mongols generally left the Slavs alone, so long as they continued to recognize the Mongols' authority.

During the period of Mongol rule, such cities as Novgorod in the northwest and Vladimir in the northeast developed in different ways. But it was Moscow, or Muscovy, first mentioned in chronicles in 1147, that emerged as the chief principality of the Russians. This was partly because the Mongols came to trust the princes of Moscow more than others, and partly because the head of the church settled there.

The Rise of Moscow. Moscow effectively became independent in 1450 and finally ceased to pay tribute to the Mongols in 1480, after a confrontation with Mongol troops. Grand Prince Ivan Rurik, who reigned as Ivan III (the Great) from 1462 to 1505, took the title "czar" (from caesar, a title used by Roman emperors) and greatly added to Moscow's domains. Ivan IV (the Terrible), ruler from 1533 and crowned czar in 1547, conquered the Tatar states of Kazan', Astrakhan, and Sibir', opening the way for Russia to cross the continent to the Pacific Ocean. He also did much to suppress the boyars, or hereditary nobles. But by killing his eldest son in a fit of rage, he ended the dynasty, or ruling family, that had begun in the 800's.

A period of turmoil followed the death of Ivan IV's successor, Fyodor I, in 1598. Known as the Time of Troubles, it was an era of domestic strife and invasions by the Poles and Swedes. Calm returned with the election in 1613 of Michael Romanov as czar. He was the first of the Romanov dynasty, which was to rule Russia until 1917.

During the 1600's the institution of serfdom was formalized, especially by the Code of 1649, under which the peasants were bound by law to the land owned by absentee landlords.

The Russian Empire. Peter the Great, who became czar in 1682, had been influenced by western European traditions as a young man. To symbolize the direction he wished his country to take, he established St. Petersburg as its new, western capital. His successes, which included military victories over Sweden, led to the proclamation of the Russian Empire in 1721. That same year, he brought the last remaining independent body in his country, the Orthodox Church, under his control.

Peter also created Russia's first institutions of higher education. He opened a network of orthodox seminaries (for training priests) and founded the Academy of Sciences. The first Russian university was founded in Moscow in 1755.

Peter, like Ivan IV, was responsible for the death of his only surviving son. As a result, the period that followed Peter's death in 1725 was one of a quick succession of weak rulers. But after the death of Czar Peter III (a grandson of Peter the Great) in 1762, his German wife, Catherine II, emerged as a powerful monarch and the last ruler to be called the Great. Among her achievements was the conquest of a wide band of territory stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, including half of Poland, and the annexation of the Crimea, the last remaining Tatar state. She sought to bring the aims of the Enlightenment, the era of intellectual change in Western Europe, to Russia, but she was only partly successful.

Invasion, Reform, and Reaction. During the 1800's, a number of attempts at political and social reform were made, but these were followed by reaction, or the return to the old, ultraconservative ways.

Alexander I, who came to the throne in 1801, put aside consideration of constitutional reform in 1812 to deal with a French invasion of Russia, led by Napoleon I. Although Napoleon was able to occupy Moscow, the destruction of much of the city by fire forced him to retreat, during which most of his army was lost.

With Napoleon's eventual defeat in 1814–15, Alexander played an important role in settling the political affairs of Europe. He was succeeded in 1825 by his brother, Nicholas I.

In December 1825—alarmed by a revolt of army officers (known as the Decembrists)—Nicholas attempted to suppress discontent by imposing censorship and forming a society of secret police. At the same time, he improved the condition of peasants on state lands and codified (put down in writing) Russian laws for the first time.

Alexander II, Nicholas' son, succeeded him in 1855, while Russia was engaged in the disastrous Crimean War against Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire.

Alexander II Liberates the Serfs. Known as the Czar Liberator, Alexander II freed the serfs, introduced local self-government, reformed the court system, and greatly improved the conditions of military service. However, he held back from creating a national representative government until 1881. A few hours after signing such a measure, he was assassinated by terrorists. Alexander III succeeded his murdered father. He had little sympathy for reform and sought to suppress the growing revolutionary movement that had been responsible for Alexander II's death.

The Last Czar. Nicholas II, the eldest son of Alexander III, came to the throne in 1894. Like his father, he was bent on maintaining absolute rule. However, the civil disturbances known as the Revolution of 1905, which occurred in the wake of Russian defeats in a war with Japan, forced Nicholas to grant an elective national assembly, called the Duma, and other civil rights. Four Dumas met from 1906 to 1917 and passed several progressive measures, including a land reform program. But Nicholas II was unable to halt the disorder that overcame the government before and during World War I (1914–18).

Russia had entered the war at its outbreak as an ally of Britain and France, opposing the Central Powers, headed by Germany and Austria-Hungary. The war went badly for Russia, and by February 1917, the government and army were near collapse, and Nicholas II was forced to abdicate (give up) the throne.

Revolution. In February 1917 (under the old calendar then in use; March under the present calendar), bread riots broke out in Petrograd (present-day St. Petersburg). Two governing bodies were established in place of the monarchy. One was the Provisional Government, which was to last only until a constituent assembly could be called and a new form of government decided upon. The other was the Soviet of Workers' (and later Soldiers') Deputies. Soviets (which means "councils") soon spread to other cities. The Provisional Government was too weak to govern effectively, although its last head, Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, did his best. The leaders of the moderate socialist parties, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who controlled the Petrograd Soviet, refused to take responsibility for governing. They believed a transitional period of government was necessary before socialism could be established in Russia.

The Bolshevik Coup. The Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, had no such qualms. In October 1917 (November in the new calendar), the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government and seized power throughout the country. All other political parties were banned. A constituent assembly, elected by popular vote and strongly anti-Bolshevik, met for only one day in January 1918, but it was quickly dispersed by troops loyal to the Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik Party then renamed itself the Communist Party.

The history of Russia that follows, up until 1991, is also largely the history of the Soviet Union.

Lenin's Policies. In 1918, the Communists under Lenin were forced to conclude a disastrous peace treaty with Germany, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under which Russia lost much of its western territories. (The treaty was later nullified.) They also had to fight a civil war, which lasted until 1921, against anti-Communist forces, who wished to undo the October Revolution. Nicholas II and the royal family became victims of the civil war; taken prisoner after the revolution, they were murdered by the Communists in July 1918.

Lenin at first sought to achieve socialism by taking complete control of the economy. But he soon recognized that he had acted too hastily. With the economy in ruins and the regime facing revolt, he introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. Under the NEP, peasants were allowed to farm as they pleased, small private businesses flourished, and trade revived. In 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was officially founded.

The Stalin Era. When Lenin died in 1924, he was succeeded as Soviet leader by Joseph Stalin. Under Stalin, farms were forcibly collectivized, industry nationalized, and many new factories built. Collectivization of agriculture, in which farms were joined together, was achieved at a dreadful human cost, and poor production led to the deaths of millions of people from starvation. While heavy industry grew under state control and the strength of the armed forces increased greatly, the standard of living of the peasants and working class fell sharply.

During the 1930's, Stalin began a series of purges that led to the deaths of many old Bolsheviks, most of the former leadership of the Communist Party, labor leaders, and nearly all of the senior officer corps.

It is estimated that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more than 20 million of his own people. Millions more were sent to labor camps, where many died under the harsh conditions.

World War II. The chaos that resulted from Stalin's policies was one of the reasons for the quick successes won by the Germans, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, beginning a 2 ½-year siege on Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg). The attack came in spite of a nonaggression pact between the two countries, signed in August 1939. The wartime Soviet losses were enormous: At least 18 million Russian soldiers and civilians are believed to have died.

Stalin emerged as one of the victors in the war, along with the United States and Britain. With Soviet troops controlling much of Eastern Europe at the war's end in 1945, Communist governments quickly came to power in most of the countries of the region. Because of this and other disputes, a long period of hostility, known as the Cold War, developed between the Soviet Union and its former Allies. See the article on the Cold War and the biography of Stalin.

Stalin's Successors. Stalin was eventually succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who began the process of "de-Stalinization" in 1956 by revealing some of Stalin's crimes. In 1964 he was toppled from power by a group of old Stalinists, headed by Leonid Brezhnev.

Under Brezhnev, Soviet nuclear power grew to match that of the United States, and the expansion of Communism in Asia and Africa was startling. At home, however, there was little improvement in the Soviet standard of living.

Yuri Andropov, who succeeded Brezhnev in 1982, died in 1984. His successor, the elderly Konstantin Chernenko, survived only 13 months into his term. See the biographies of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Chernenko.

The Breakup of the Soviet Union. An era of great change began when Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985. Between 1987 and 1988 he began a limited venture into private enterprise as part of his attempt to revive the economy. He loosened the bonds of government censorship by encouraging glasnost, or openness, in the media. He allowed the people of Eastern Europe to go their own way, politically, which they proceeded to do by ending Communist regimes in their countries by democratic means.

But while widely respected abroad, at home Gorbachev lost the backing of the people by the failure of his economic policies. In August 1991 a group of hardline Communist leaders, displeased with Gorbachev's political reforms, attempted to overthrow the government. The attempted coup failed after three days, but its results were dramatic. Boris Yeltsin, president of what was then the Russian Soviet Republic, became a popular hero for leading the resistance to the coup. By December, Gorbachev had resigned as president of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

Formation of the Russian Federation. Boris Yeltsin was elected president of Russia in June 1991. When the Soviet Union fell apart in December 1991, Yeltsin faced a Russian Supreme Soviet that was led by opponents of his reform program. The struggle between them culminated in a political crisis in 1993. Yeltsin dissolved the Supreme Soviet and set new elections; the Supreme Soviet responded by voting to oust him as president and finally called for an armed revolt. Yeltsin sent in military units, who cleared the parliament building and arrested his chief opponents.

Yeltsin then succeeded to the presidency of what became the Russian Federation. Immediately he faced the necessity of converting the nation to a free-market economy from one that had been dependent on state monopoly. He also had to develop a new foreign policy for a now non-Communist—and much weaker—Russia. To this was added political opposition at home, a civil war (1994-97) in the republic of Chechnya, and his own poor health. Still, he won re-election by a wide margin in 1996.

Recent History. In 1998, the nation's currency lost its value, plunging the economy into total collapse. Parliament's desperate attempts to stabilize the economy failed, resulting in a rapid succession of prime ministers. Furthermore, in 1999 dozens of terrorist bombings in Russia, believed to be authorized by radical Islamic warlords in Chechnya, reopened the civil war, which threatened to spread into the neighboring republic of Dagestan. Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999, and named Prime Minister Vladimir Putin acting president. Putin was elected president in his own right by popular vote in 2000.

In his 2001 state of the nation address, Putin reaffirmed his commitment to liberal economic reforms, despite continuing high inflation and slow industrial growth.

Donald W. Treadgold
University of Washington
Author, Twentieth Century Russia