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.
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian colonisation of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) that incorporated left-bank Ukraine, and the Russian conquest of Siberia.
Commerce, and particularly fur trade, was the driving force behind this expansion. By moving East along Central Eurasia, the Russians also managed to avoid the remaining, powerful steppe peoples. The highways used were the many rivers and their tributaries, allowing even further expansion to the east.
Russia's territory of about 4,633,200 square miles (12,000,000 square km) included some recent and valuable acquisitions.
After the collapse of the USSR, Russia, which was known as the Soviet Union or Soviet Russia abroad, lost 23.8 percent of its national territory, 48.5 percent of its population, 41 of the GDP, 39.4 percent of its industrial potential (nearly half of our potential, I would underscore), as well as 44.6 percent of its ...
In 2022, Miratorg listed as the largest agricultural holding by farmland ownership in Russia. Prodimex ranked second with about 900 thousand hectares in ownership in that year. EcoNiva APK displayed a significant growth in its farmland volume over the past years, accounting for over 630 thousand hectares in 2022.
Thus, by pure diplomacy and only a few thousand troops, the Russians took advantage of Chinese weakness and the strength of the other European powers to annex 350,000 square miles (910,000 km2) of Chinese territory.
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.
Prints and Photographs Division. On March 30, 1867, the United States reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2 million. The Treaty with Russia was negotiated and signed by Secretary of State William Seward and Russian Minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl.
In the late 1800s, Russia was the largest country in the world. Stretching from the Black Sea in Europe to the Bering Straits in the extreme east of Asia.
Following Swedish losses in the 1808-1809 Finnish War with Russia, Finland became part of the Russian Empire from 1809 until its independence in 1917. Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, although during this time it retained many of the laws that it had adopted while part of Sweden.
The Russians used Motherland as the symbol of a country that nourished and supported its citizens during times of crisis. As for the gender-neutral "homeland," it first appeared in U.S. English in "Webster's Eighth Collegiate Dictionary'' in 1973.
In the late imperial period, Russian historiography was dominated by the self-colonization school. From history textbooks, its ideas found their way into encyclopedias. Russian historians wrote detailed accounts of Russia's takeover of the Crimea, Finland, Ukraine, Poland, and other lands.
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.
Countries in Europe, by area. Russia is the largest country in Europe, and also the largest in the world, its total size amounting to 17 million square kilometers (km2).
Under the famous tsar Ivan The Terrible (Ivan Groznyy) Russia expanded dramatically: it conquered Tartar states along Volga river and acquired access to Caspian sea. The colonization of Siberia was also started.
Before the Russians, the land belonged to the indigenous tribes who had inhabited the land for thousands of years. These were the Yupik and the Inupiat.
There are two main reasons. First, Canada wasn't its own country in 1867. Second, Great Britain controlled the Canadian colonies. Russia did not want to sell Alaska to its rival.
Alaska's proved crude oil reserves—about 3.2 billion barrels at the beginning of 2022—are the fourth-largest in the nation. Alaska was among the top five oil-producing states for many years.
By the 1850s, Russian interest in Alaska began to wane as a consequence of changing economic prospects and geopolitical concerns. The fur trade in sea otter pelts, which had been profitable in Russian America for more than a century, slumped for both ecological and commercial reasons.
Southern Siberia was part of the Mongols' khanate of the Golden Horde from the 10th to the mid-15th century.
Starting with the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Treaty of Peking in 1860, the Sino–Russian border was realigned in Russia's favour along the Amur and Ussuri rivers. As a result, China lost the region now known as Outer Manchuria (an area of more than 1 million km2) and access to the Sea of Japan.
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.