History of Russia

Scrapping the central planning and state-ownership of property of the Soviet era in the 1990s, new leaders, led by President Vladimir Putin, took political and economic power after 2000 and engaged in an assertive foreign policy.

In 513 BC, the king of the Achaemenid Empire, Darius I, would launch a military campaign around the Black Sea into Scythia, modern-day Ukraine, eventually reaching the Tanais river (now known as the Don).

Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom was also overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions,[20] led by warlike tribes which would often move on to Europe, as was the case with the Huns and Turkish Avars.

[27] From the 7th century onwards, East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia[27] and slowly conquered and assimilated the native Finnic and Baltic tribes, such as the Merya,[28] the Muromians,[29] and the Meshchera.

[35] By the end of the 10th century, the minority Norse military aristocracy had merged with the native Slavic population,[38] which also absorbed Greek Christian influences in the course of the multiple campaigns to loot Tsargrad, or Constantinople.

As older centers such as Kiev and Vladimir never recovered from the devastation of the initial attack,[46] the new cities of Moscow,[52] Tver[52] and Nizhny Novgorod[53] began to compete for hegemony in the Mongol-dominated Rus' principalities under the suzerainty of the Golden Horde.

[55] Mongol domination of the Rus' principalities, along with tax collection by various overlords such as the Crimean Khans, continued into the early 16th century, despite later claims of Muscovite bookmen that the indecisive standoff at the Ugra in 1480 had signified "the end of the Tatar yoke" and the "liberation of Russia".

[neutrality is disputed] Daniil Aleksandrovich, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, founded the principality of Moscow (known as Muscovy in English),[52] which first cooperated with and ultimately expelled the Tatars from Russia.

In 1380, at Battle of Kulikovo on the Don River, the Mongols were defeated,[54] and although this hard-fought victory did not end Tatar rule of Russia, it did bring great fame to the Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy.

[52] Nevertheless, Ivan is often seen as a farsighted statesman who reformed Russia as he promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550),[66] established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor), curbed the influence of the clergy,[67] and introduced local self-management in rural regions.

In the zone known as the oprichnina, Ivan's followers carried out a series of bloody purges of the feudal aristocracy (whom he suspected of treachery after prince Andrey Kurbsky's betrayal), culminating in the Massacre of Novgorod in 1570.

As West European economic growth accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, sea trade and colonialism which had begun in the second half of the 18th century, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, undermining its ability to field strong armies.

Prussia, Austria, Britain and France (the other members of the alliance) lacked large armies and needed Russia to supply the required numbers, which fit the philosophy of Nicholas I.

Finally, after several attempts, Alexander II was assassinated by anarchists in 1881, on the very day he had approved a proposal to call a representative assembly to consider new reforms in addition to the abolition of serfdom designed to ameliorate revolutionary demands.

In his reign Russia concluded the union with republican France to contain the growing power of Germany, completed the conquest of Central Asia, and exacted important territorial and commercial concessions from China.

The Bolsheviks advocated the formation of a small elite of professional revolutionaries, subject to strong party discipline, to act as the vanguard of the proletariat in order to seize power by force.

[174] In July, following a series of crises that undermined their authority with the public, the head of the Provisional Government resigned and was succeeded by Alexander Kerensky, who was more progressive than his predecessor but not radical enough for the Bolsheviks or many Russians discontented with the deepening economic crisis and the war.

[179] The Bolshevik grip on power was by no means secure, and a lengthy struggle broke out between the new regime and its opponents, which included the Socialist Revolutionaries, the anti-Bolshevik White movement, and large numbers of peasants.

Communal nurseries were set up for child care, and efforts were made to shift the center of people's social life from the home to educational and recreational groups, the soviet clubs.

[192] Abolishing the NEP, it was the first of a number of plans aimed at swift accumulation of capital resources through the buildup of heavy industry, the collectivization of agriculture, and the restricted manufacture of consumer goods.

[199] The combination of bad weather, deficiencies of the hastily established collective farms, and massive confiscation of grain precipitated a serious famine,[198] and several million peasants died of starvation, mostly in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and parts of southwestern Russia.

[232] Thirteen million Soviet citizens became victims of the repressive policies of Germany and its allies in occupied territories, where people died because of mass murders, famine, absence of medical aid and slave labor.

As the Soviet Union continued to maintain tight control over its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the Cold War gave way to Détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in the 1970s.

"[260] Former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, an economist looking back three decades, in 2007 wrote: The hard currency from oil exports stopped the growing food supply crisis, increased the import of equipment and consumer goods, ensured a financial base for the arms race and the achievement of nuclear parity with the United States, and permitted the realization of such risky foreign-policy actions as the war in Afghanistan.

After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev implemented perestroika in an attempt to modernize Soviet communism, and made significant changes in the party leadership.

Although Yeltsin came to power on a wave of optimism, he never recovered his popularity after endorsing Yegor Gaidar's "shock therapy" of ending Soviet-era price controls, drastic cuts in state spending, and an open foreign trade regime in early 1992 (see Russian economic reform in the 1990s).

The crisis climaxed on 3 October, when Yeltsin chose a radical solution to settle his dispute with parliament: he called up tanks to shell the Russian White House, blasting out his opponents.

Advised by Western governments, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, Russia embarked on the largest and fastest privatization ever to reform the fully nationalized Soviet economy.

Putin created a system of guided democracy in Russia by subjugating parliament, suppressing independent media and placing major oil and gas companies under state control.

[283] In 2012, according to another pre-election agreement, a "castling" took place;[284] Vladimir Putin again became president and Dmitry Medvedev took over as chairman of the government, after which the protests acquired an anti-Putin orientation, but soon began to decline.