Russia
About 2 million years ago, representatives of Homo erectus migrated to the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia. Flint tools discovered in the North Caucasus date back some 1.5 million years. Radiocarbon dated specimens from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains estimate the oldest Denisovan specimen lived between 195,000 and 122,700 years ago. Fossils of Denny, an archaic human hybrid that was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan, were found within that same cave. Russia hosted some of the last surviving Neanderthals from about 45,000 years ago, located in Mezmaiskaya cave. The first trace of an early modern human in Russia dates back 45,000 years, appearing in Western Siberia. High concentration cultural remains of anatomically modern humans from at least 40,000 years ago were found at Kostyonki, Borshchyovo and Sungir, both in western Russia. Humans reached Arctic Russia at least 40,000 years ago, in Mamontovaya Kurya. Ancient North Eurasian populations from Siberia genetically similar to Mal'ta, Buret' culture and Afontova Gora contributed significantly to Ancient Native Americans and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers. The Kurgan hypothesis places the Volga-Dnieper region of southern Russia and Ukraine as the urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic, Caspian steppe spread Yamnaya ancestry and Indo-European languages across large parts of Eurasia. Nomadic pastoralism developed in the Pontic, Caspian steppe beginning in the Chalcolithic. Remnants of these steppe civilisations were discovered in places such as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim, and Pazyryk, which bear the earliest known traces of horses in warfare. The genetic makeup of speakers of the Uralic language family in northern Europe was shaped by migration from Siberia that began at least 3,500 years ago.
The establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the Vikings who ventured along waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the Primary Chronicle, a Varangian from the Rus' people named Rurik was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. In 882, his successor Oleg ventured south and conquered Kiev, which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars. Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule. They destroyed the Khazar Khaganate and launched several military expeditions to Bulgaria, Byzantium and Persia. In the 10th to 11th centuries, Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980, 1015) and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019, 1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev. This era saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda. By the 12th century, Kiev lost its pre-eminence and Kievan Rus' fragmented into different principalities. Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky sacked Kiev in 1169 and made Vladimir his base, shifting political power to the north-east. Led by Prince Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240. They also defeated Germanic crusaders in the Battle on the Ice in 1242. Kievan Rus' finally fell to the Mongol invasion of 1237, 1240, resulting in the sacking of Kiev and other cities. The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which ruled over Russia for the next two centuries. Only the Novgorod Republic escaped foreign occupation after it agreed to pay tribute to the Mongols. In the northeast, the Grand Principality of Moscow began to assert its influence in the region in the early 14th century. When the seat of the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church moved to Moscow in 1325, its influence increased. Led by Prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow, the united army of Russian principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Ivan III threw off the control of the Golden Horde and gained sovereignty over the ethnically Russian lands. He later adopted the title of sovereign of all Russia. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own coat-of-arms. Vasili III united all of Russia by annexing the last few independent Russian states in the early 16th century.
Under Peter the Great, Russia was proclaimed an empire in 1721 and established itself as one of the European great powers. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700, 1721), securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade. In 1703, on the Baltic Sea, Peter founded Saint Petersburg as Russia's new capital. Throughout his rule, sweeping reforms brought significant Western European cultural influences to Russia. Catherine II ruled from 1762 to 1796 and presided over the Russian Age of Enlightenment. She extended Russian political control over the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth and annexed most of its territories into Russia, making it the most populous country in Europe. In the south, after successful Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire, Catherine advanced Russia's boundary to the Black Sea by dissolving the Crimean Khanate and annexing Crimea. As a result of victories over Qajar Iran through the Russo-Persian Wars, by the first half of the 19th century, Russia also conquered the Caucasus. During the Napoleonic Wars, Russia fought against France. The French invasion of Russia at the height of Napoleon's power in 1812 reached Moscow but eventually failed due to obstinate resistance and the bitterly cold Russian winter. Led by Mikhail Kutuzov and Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, the Imperial Russian Army ousted Napoleon and drove throughout Europe in the War of the Sixth Coalition, ultimately entering Paris. Alexander I controlled Russia's delegation at the Congress of Vienna, which defined the map of post-Napoleonic Europe. At the end of the conservative reign of Nicholas I (1825, 1855), a zenith period of Russia's power was disrupted by defeat in the Crimean War. Nicholas's successor Alexander II enacted significant changes including the emancipation reform of 1861. These reforms spurred industrialisation and modernised the Imperial Russian Army, which liberated much of the Balkans from Ottoman rule after the 1877, 1878 Russo-Turkish War. Under last Russian emperor Nicholas II (1894, 1917), the Revolution of 1905 was triggered by the humiliating failure of the Russo-Japanese War. In 1914, Russia entered World War I in response to Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Russia's ally Serbia.
In early 1917, Nicholas II was forced to abdicate; he and his family were imprisoned and later executed during the Russian Civil War. The monarchy was replaced by a shaky coalition of political parties that declared itself the Provisional Government. On the 3rd of July 1918, the Russian Constituent Assembly declared Russia a democratic federal republic. The next day the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. An alternative socialist establishment co-existed, the Petrograd Soviet, wielding power through democratically elected councils of workers and peasants called soviets. The October Revolution, led by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government and gave full governing power to the soviets. The Russian Civil War broke out between the anti-communist White movement and the Bolsheviks with its Red Army. In the aftermath of signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that concluded hostilities with the Central Powers of World War I, Bolshevist Russia surrendered most of its western territories. These territories hosted 34% of its population, 54% of its industries, 32% of its agricultural land, and roughly 90% of its coal mines. By the end of the violent civil war, as many as 10 million perished during the war, mostly civilians. Millions became White émigrés, and the Russian famine of 1921, 1922 claimed up to five million victims. On the 30th of December 1922, Lenin and his aides formed the Soviet Union, joining the Russian SFSR into a single state. Eventually internal border changes created a union of 15 republics, the largest in size and population being the Russian SFSR. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin managed to suppress all opposition factions and consolidate power to become the country's dictator by the 1930s. Under Stalin's leadership, the government launched a command economy and industrialisation of the largely rural country. During this period, millions of people were sent to penal labour camps, including many political convicts for their suspected or real opposition to Stalin's rule. The transitional disorganisation of agriculture combined with harsh state policies and drought led to the Soviet famine of 1932, 1933, which killed 5.7 to 8.7 million people.
After World War II, the Red Army occupied parts of Eastern and Central Europe, including East Germany and eastern regions of Austria. Dependent communist governments were installed in the Eastern Bloc satellite states. After becoming the world's second nuclear power, the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact alliance and entered into a struggle for global dominance known as the Cold War. Khrushchev Thaw reforms released many political prisoners from the Gulag labour camps after Stalin's death in 1953. At the same time, Cold War tensions reached their peak when rivals clashed over the deployment of United States Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, thus starting the Space Age. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth aboard the Vostok 1 crewed spacecraft on the 12th of April 1961. Following the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, another period of collective rule ensued until Leonid Brezhnev became leader. The era of the 1970s and early 1980s was later designated as the Era of Stagnation. In 1979, after a communist-led revolution in Afghanistan, Soviet forces invaded the country, ultimately starting the Soviet, Afghan War. From 1985 onwards, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced policies of glasnost and perestroika in an attempt to end economic stagnation. By 1991, economic and political turmoil began to boil over as Baltic states chose to secede from the Soviet Union. On the 17th of March, a referendum was held where the vast majority voted for changing the Soviet Union into a renewed federation. On the 25th of December 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, fourteen other post-Soviet states emerged alongside contemporary Russia.
Russia's vast landmass stretches over the easternmost part of Europe and northernmost part of Asia. It spans latitudes 41° and 82° N, and longitudes 19° E and 169° W, extending some east to west and north to south. Russia has nine major mountain ranges found along southern regions sharing significant portions of the Caucasus Mountains. Mount Elbrus at 5,642 meters is the highest peak in Russia and Europe. The Ural Mountains run north to south through the country's west and are rich in mineral resources. The lowest point in Russia and Europe sits at the head of the Caspian Sea where the Caspian Depression reaches some 28 meters below sea level. Russia lies between four oceans and has links with many seas including Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Severnaya Zemlya, Wrangel Island, Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. Lake Baikal contains over one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water. Ladoga and Onega in northwestern Russia are two of the largest lakes in Europe. Russia has one of the world's largest surface water resources. The Volga forms the Volga Delta, the largest river delta in Europe. Siberian rivers like Ob, Yenisey, Lena, and Amur rank among the world's longest. About half of Russia's territory is forested, holding the world's largest area of forest. Russia has diverse ecosystems including polar deserts, tundra, taiga, mixed forests, steppe, semi-desert, and subtropics. It maintains the sixth-largest fishing industry, capturing nearly 5 million tons of fish in 2018.
The Russian Armed Forces have 1.1 million active-duty personnel, making them the world's fifth-largest military force. About 1.5 million reserve personnel exist alongside them. Mandatory service applies to all male citizens aged 18, 27 for a year of duty. Russia possesses the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons; over half of global nuclear weapons belong to Russia. It maintains the second-largest fleet of ballistic missile submarines and operates strategic bombers. In 2024, Russia spent $109 billion on defense, corresponding to about 5.9% of its GDP. This made it the third-highest spender globally. The country was also the third-largest arms exporter between 2020 and 2024. Penal military units like Storm-Z and Storm-V were deployed as storm troops during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War since 2022. Around 48,000 prisoners were recruited to fight for the Wagner Group according to BBC estimates. Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, anti-war protests broke out across Russia leading to about 15,000 arrests. Laws adopted established punishments for discrediting armed forces. Russia introduced restrictions on LGBTQ rights including banning gender reassignment surgery in 2023. Supreme Court issued first convictions from that ruling in 2024. Occupied territories include Crimea annexed in 2014 and four other regions proclaimed in September 2022. Russian forces have been accused of committing war crimes during the invasion while occupying about a fifth of Ukraine's territory at end of 2025.
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Common questions
When did Homo erectus first migrate to the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia?
Representatives of Homo erectus migrated to the Taman Peninsula about 2 million years ago. Flint tools discovered in the North Caucasus date back some 1.5 million years.
Who founded Kievan Rus and when was Novgorod ruled by Rurik?
Rurik, a Varangian from the Rus people, was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. His successor Oleg conquered Kiev in 882 and established Kievan Rus as one of the largest states in Europe during the 10th to 11th centuries.
What year did Peter the Great proclaim Russia an empire and found Saint Petersburg?
Russia was proclaimed an empire in 1721 under Peter the Great who reigned from 1682 to 1725. He founded Saint Petersburg on the Baltic Sea in 1703 as the new capital of Russia.
On what date did the Soviet Union officially form and how many republics were created?
Lenin and his aides formed the Soviet Union on the 30th of December 1922 joining the Russian SFSR into a single state. Internal border changes eventually created a union of 15 republics with the Russian SFSR being the largest.
When did Mikhail Gorbachev introduce glasnost and perestroika policies and when did the Soviet Union dissolve?
Mikhail Gorbachev introduced policies of glasnost and perestroika from 1985 onwards to end economic stagnation. The Soviet Union dissolved on the 25th of December 1991 resulting in fourteen other post-Soviet states emerging alongside contemporary Russia.
How large is the active-duty personnel count for the Russian Armed Forces and when was nuclear weapon spending recorded at $109 billion?
The Russian Armed Forces have 1.1 million active-duty personnel making them the world's fifth-largest military force. In 2024 Russia spent $109 billion on defense which corresponded to about 5.9% of its GDP.