Russians

• 1. Introduction

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  Russians form the largest Slavic and European ethnic group by total numbers. Most people assume the name is as ancient as the people themselves. It is not. Russian is the most spoken native language in all of Europe and the world's most widely spoken Slavic language. A diaspora estimated at 25 million people has spread across the globe, with notable communities in Germany, Canada, Brazil, and China. Who shaped this identity across more than a millennium, and what does it mean to be Russian?

• 2. A Borrowed Name

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  Two separate Russian words translate into English as "Russians." One, russkie, means ethnic Russians specifically. The other, rossiyane, derives from Rossiya and means any person of Russia, regardless of ancestry or faith. Since Vladimir Putin became president, the ethnic term has supplanted the civic one in everyday use.

  The Rus' people were Norse merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea. They played a central role in founding the first East Slavic state, building their union among Slavs and Finns. Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod were the first major cities of that union. In 882, the prince Oleg seized Kiev, joining the northern and southern East Slavic lands under a single ruler. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988.

  From the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire declared an official doctrine. Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians), and White Russians (Belarusians) were to be understood as three brotherly peoples forming one all-Russian nation. Steppe peoples, Tatars, Baltic Germans, Lithuanians, and native Siberians could in theory become "Russian" simply by accepting Orthodox Christianity. That attitude of inclusivity is captured in a phrase sometimes attributed to Emperor Alexander III: "If you want to be Russian, be one."

• 3. Roots in the Forest

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  The ancestors of modern Russians are thought by some scholars to have lived in the Pinsk Marshes, one of the largest wetlands in Europe. Those wooded lowlands served as a starting point for a broad eastward migration. By 600 AD, the Slavic language family had divided into southern, western, and eastern branches.

  Outside archaeological remains, little was recorded about these peoples before the year 859, when the Primary Chronicle begins its accounts. The East Slavs spread into what is now Russia in two waves. One moved from Kiev toward present-day Suzdal and Murom. The other pushed from Polotsk toward Novgorod and Rostov. The Suzdal-Murom and Novgorod-Rostov areas were already home to Finnic peoples: the Merya, the Muromians, and the Meshchera. From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs slowly absorbed those populations. By year 1100, most people in Western Russia spoke a Slavic tongue.

  After the 13th century, Moscow emerged as the political and cultural center of Russian lands. By the end of the 15th century it had unified the northeastern and northwestern Russian principalities. In 1480, Moscow overthrew what Russian chronicles called the "Mongol yoke." Ivan IV was crowned tsar in 1547, marking the formal birth of the Tsardom of Russia. Recent genetic research has confirmed the presence of a Finnic substrate in the modern Russian population, a biological trace of those centuries of absorption.

• 4. What Genes Reveal

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  In 2008, Russian and Estonian geneticists published findings that distinguished two genetically distinct populations: a northern group and a southern one. Central and Southern Russians, who make up the majority, cluster genetically with other East and West Slavic peoples. This gene cluster includes Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Aromanians. Northern Russians fall into a broader North European cluster alongside Poles, Balts, Germanic peoples, and Baltic Finnic peoples.

  The most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among Russians is R1a, at approximately 46.7 percent. Haplogroup N-M231 follows at roughly 21.6 percent, haplogroup I-M170 at around 17.6 percent, and haplogroup R1b at approximately 5.8 percent. The remaining 8.3 percent belong to other less frequent haplogroups.

  Three major population sources have long been used to model the ancestry of modern Europeans: Western hunter-gatherers, Early European Farmers, and Western Steppe Herders. For populations including Russians, Mordovians, Chuvash, Estonians, and Saami, that model proves insufficient. A fourth component is required: a Siberian or Nganasan-related element with heightened allele sharing with modern East Asians. Identity-by-descent sharing between Russians and Finnic peoples is notably high. Researchers attribute this to multiple admixture events throughout Russian prehistory.

  Among the distinct ethnographic subgroups of the Russian people, the Cossacks were among the most historically significant. They inhabited sparsely populated areas of the Don, Terek, and Ural river basins and shaped the development of large regions. Russia's Arctic coastline was explored and settled by the Pomors, Russian settlers who had originated in Novgorod.

• 5. Empire and Revolution

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  In 1721, Tsar Peter the Great renamed his state the Russian Empire, connecting it to the ancient Rus' while driving his reforms toward Western Europe. By that point the state already stretched from the eastern borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Pacific Ocean. After the victory over Napoleon, Russia stood as one of the most powerful states in Europe. Peasant revolts were common and were fiercely suppressed throughout this period.

  Emperor Alexander II abolished Russian serfdom in 1861, but the peasants fared poorly and revolutionary pressures grew. In the early 20th century, reform efforts multiplied. The Stolypin reforms ran from 1906 to 1914. A constitution took effect in 1906, and the State Duma functioned from 1906 to 1917. Russia's emperors refused to relinquish autocratic rule. Economic breakdown, war-weariness, and popular discontent triggered revolution in 1917. Liberals and moderate socialists first took office, but their failed policies opened the door to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks seized power on the 25th of October 1917, or the 7th of November by the New Style calendar. In 1922, Soviet Russia, Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belarus, and the Transcaucasian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR. That agreement formally merged all four republics into the Soviet Union.

  The famine of 1930 to 1933 and the Great Purge each killed millions of Soviet citizens. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany's genocidal policies, including the Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost, killed millions more. The Siege of Leningrad alone claimed an estimated one million civilian casualties. By the mid-1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev launched major reforms that culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic renamed itself the Russian Federation and became the successor state to the USSR. Millions of ethnic Russians living in newly independent post-Soviet states found themselves facing discrimination in what had become foreign countries. According to the 2021 Russian census, the number of ethnic Russians in Russia fell by nearly 5.43 million compared to 2010. That brought the total from roughly 111 million to approximately 105.5 million. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, an achievement that would come to define the ambitions of Russian science.

• 6. Scientists and Storytellers

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  From the early 1830s, Russian literature entered what became known as its Golden Age, when poetry, prose, and drama all flourished together. Vasily Zhukovsky helped lead that wave, and his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to prominence in the same era. A new generation of poets followed Pushkin: Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Fyodor Tyutchev, and Afanasy Fet. Nikolai Gogol became the first great Russian novelist. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon achieved international renown. Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist in the second half of the century. The early 20th century Silver Age of Russian Poetry brought Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. After 1917, Russian literature divided: Socialist realism dominated at home, led by Maxim Gorky, while émigrés like Vladimir Nabokov worked abroad. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winner, wrote about life in the Soviet Gulag camps.

  Mikhail Lomonosov proposed the conservation of mass in chemical reactions, discovered the atmosphere of Venus, and founded modern geology. Dmitry Mendeleev invented the periodic table. Grigori Perelman, in 2002, was offered the first Clay Millennium Prize Problems Award for his proof of the Poincaré conjecture. In 2006, he was offered the Fields Medal. He declined both. Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963, became the first and youngest woman to travel to space, flying a solo mission on Vostok 6. In 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first human to conduct a spacewalk, exiting the capsule during Voskhod 2. Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station and one of six official languages of the United Nations.

  The music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky defined the late Romantic era. Composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich extended that tradition into the 20th century. Soviet conservatories produced generations of acclaimed soloists, among them pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Sviatoslav Richter and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. During the Soviet era, popular music flourished despite state restrictions, with balladeer Vladimir Vysotsky and performer Alla Pugacheva becoming celebrated figures. Sergei Eisenstein, a student of the theorist Lev Kuleshov, became one of the world's most influential film directors. In 2002, the film Russian Ark became the first feature ever shot in a single continuous take. Critics described the Ganelin Trio as the greatest ensemble of free jazz in continental Europe. They shared the Soviet era with rock bands including Aria, Aquarium, DDT, and Kino.

• 7. Faith and Dissent

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  Between 41 and over 80 percent of Russia's population is estimated to follow the Russian Orthodox Church, depending on which sociological survey one consults. Non-religious Russians often still identify with Orthodoxy for cultural reasons. Not all Russians have accepted the Church's authority. A relatively small schismatic group called the Old Believers rejected the liturgical reforms of the 17th century. Their descendants remain a distinct community to this day.

  Two other movements went considerably further. In the 18th century, the Doukhobors rejected secular government, priests, icons, and all church ritual. They also denied the Bible as the supreme source of divine revelation and the divinity of Jesus. Facing state pressure, they emigrated to Canada. In the 19th century, the Molokans formed around a rejection of the Tsar's divine right to rule. They also rejected icons, the Trinity as outlined by the Nicene Creed, Orthodox fasts, military service, and water baptism.

  Islam counts over 100,000 followers among Russia's national minorities, and Baptists number over 85,000 Russian adherents. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a new religious movement has gained ground. Rodnovery, a revival of Slavic native religion shared with other Slavic nations, has become the most prominent among ethnic Russians. In 1969, Vladimir Motyl's film White Sun of the Desert was released. By tradition, Russian cosmonauts watch it before every trip into space.