The name Russia comes from a Medieval Latin name for Rus', a medieval state populated primarily by the East Slavs. In modern historiography, this state is usually denoted as Kievan Rus' after its capital city.
While the oldest endonyms were Rus' (Russian: Русь) and the Rus' land or Russian land (Russian: Русская земля), a new form of its name, Rusia or Russia, appeared in the 15th century, and became common thereafter.
Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; commonly known as the Soviet Union), Russia became an independent country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Russia is a land of superlatives.
“On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgorod became known as the land of Rus.” (“Rus,” which is where the name “Russia” comes from, purportedly derives from an old Nordic word for “men who row.”)
Thereafter, the state was called, “Kievan Rus”.
The Russians were formed from East Slavic tribes, and their cultural ancestry is based in Kievan Rus'. Genetically, the majority of Russians are identical to their East and West Slavic counterparts, unlike Northern Russians, who belong to the Northern European Baltic gene pool.
The first known people to set foot on Russian territory were called the Cimmerians. They ruled between 1000 and 700 BCE and were followed by the Scythians in 700 BCE. The Scythian nomads established a military state and defeated the Persians, but were nonetheless conquered by the Sarmatians in 3 BCE.
By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history.
Defeat in the Crimean War further reduced Russian interest in this region. Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States in 1859, believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia's greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain.
Southern Siberia was part of the Mongols' khanate of the Golden Horde from the 10th to the mid-15th century.
It has enormous natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas. It is the world's eleventh-largest economy by nominal GDP, and the sixth-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, Russia's GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates sharply.
Between 1922 and 1991 the history of Russia essentially became the history of the Soviet Union, effectively an ideologically based state roughly coterminous with the Russian Empire before the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
From about 1500 BC a group of people called the Slavs settled into the area which is now Poland and Western Russia. Although they were often under threat from other groups who wanted their land, they held their ground there until the arrival of the Vikings in the 9th century.
From Middle English, from Old French sclave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus (“slave”), from Late Latin Sclāvus (“Slav”), because Slavs were often forced into slavery in the Middle Ages.
Veliky Novgorod – the Birthplace of Russian Statehood
Veliky Novgorod was the first to introduce Russia to running a republican state, and its historical example has always attracted the supporters of democratic development in our country. A visit to the Rurik's Gorodishche (Settlement) is not to be missed.
During the ninth and tenth centuries, a massive state grew to dominate much of Eastern Europe. Ancestors to Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians, the Kievan Rus were a combination of Slavic and Viking influences.
The Proto-Slavic homeland is the area of Slavic settlement in Central and Eastern Europe during the first millennium AD, with its precise location debated by archaeologists, ethnographers and historians. Most scholars consider Polesia the homeland of the Slavs.
According to the traditional account presented in The Russian Primary Chronicle, it was founded by the Viking Oleg, ruler of Novgorod from about 879. In 882 he seized Smolensk and Kiev, and the latter city, owing to its strategic location on the Dnieper River, became the capital of Kievan Rus.
The Russian colonization of Alaska lasted less than a century but in that time produced a rich history of enduring importance.
Modern journalists using the term First World countries are typically describing the most industrialized nations. This includes all of the major actors on both sides of the Cold War: the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, and more.
Bush recognized all 12 independent republics and established diplomatic relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. In February 1992, Baker visited the remaining republics and diplomatic relations were established with Uzbekistan, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.
China has become an increasingly important trading partner for Russia as it seeks to soften the impact of economic sanctions imposed by some countries in response to its invasion.