History
Ancient city-states, the Bospor and Scythian States were situated in the territory of today’s Russia in 1000 BC. The Turkic Kaganate, the state of a union of Turkic tribes, occupied part of the territory of Russia in the 1st century AD. The Khazar Kaganate covered the Lower Volga, the Northern Caucasus and the Azov Sea region; the Bokhai State occupied the Far East in the 7th – 10th centuries. The Volga-Kama Bulgaria occupied the area comprising the Middle Volga and the Kama River basins from the 10th to the 14th centuries.
The 9th century saw the creation of an Old Russian State. The name Russia derives from the Greek word Pwoia which was used in the Byzantine Empire to refer to Rus from the 10th century. From the end of the 15th century the term Russia starts to be applied by Russians to their state with the capital in Moscow.
The Moscow Principality ceased to be part of the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality in the 13th century. Its founder Prince Daniil, the younger son of Prince Alexander Nevsky, attached to Moscow the cities of Kolomna and Pereslavl-Zalessky. Later Belozerskoye, Galitskoye and Uglitskoye, Rostovskoye and Suzdalskoye, and Nizhegorodskoye Principlalities and Pskov and Ryazan regions were incorporated into it. In the second half of the 15th – the first half of the 16th century, during the reign of Grand Princes Ivan III and Vasily III the Great Princedom of Moscow became the basis of an emerging united Russian State.
Christianity became Russia’s state religion in 988. The Russian Orthodox Church was under the control of the Patriarchs of Constantinople till the middle of the 15th century.
Between the end of the 16th and the middle of the 17th century Russia developed serfdom (it was abolished by an 1861 reform).
At the beginning of the 17th and the 18th centuries Russia repelled a Polish-Lithuanian invasion and a Swedish one, these centuries were marked by mass Cossack and Peasant revolts (the Bolotnikov, Razin and Puchachov rebellions).
Petrine reforms boosted social, economic and cultural development of the country (the end of the 17th to the first quarter of the 18th century). The victory in the Northern War of 1700-1721 brought Russia access to the Baltic Sea.
In the 16th and the 17th centuries, as a result of annexation of territories in the North, the Volga Region, the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and the Far East Russia turned into a multiethnic state, the Russian Empire.
Russia defeated Napoleon in 1812 in what came to be known in Russia as the Patriotic War.
Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 aggravated the situation in the country which led to the Revolution of 1905-1907. Russia started its transition to a constitutional monarchy during the revolution: the State Duma was established.
Russia participated in World War I as part of the Entente Cordiale between 1914 and 1918.
The February Revolution of 1917 led to the overthrow of the monarchy. The October Revolution, which took place on October 25th, 1917, proclaimed the authority of the Councils (Soviets) of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. A Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was born in January 1918. The Civil War of 1917-1922 and a military intervention helped establish a society based on the principles of Military Communism. In 1921, the Soviet Government adopted a New Economic Policy (NEP).
On December 1922, the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarussian SSR, and the Transcaucasian Federation (ZSFSR) formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 much of Russian territory was occupied by German troops. Despite this fact the Soviet Union made a crucial contribution to the victory over fascism and after the Second World War it became a co-founder of the post-war system of international relations.
During perestroika the RSFSR Congress of People’s Deputies adopted a Declaration of Sovereignty of Russia on June 12, 1990. In March 1991 the office of Russian Federation President was established (Boris Yeltsin was elected Russian President the same year).
In December 1991, leaders of the RSFSR, the Belarussian SSR and the Unkrainian SSR signed an agreement which came to be known as the Belovezh Accords, which declared the USSR non-existent and created a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). 1992 saw the start of an economic reform of transition to market economy.
In December 1933, the current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted and elections to the Federal Assembly, the Russian Parliament, took place. In 1992, Boris Yeltsin was elected Russian President for a second term. Vladimir Putin, who succeeded Yeltsin following his electoral victory in March 2000, retained his position at the elections of 2004.