This article is missing information about Russia's total maximum expansion. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(December 2023)
Territorial evolution of Russia from 1547 to 1725
The borders of Russia changed through military conquests and by ideological and political unions from the 16th century.
After a period of political instability between 1598 and 1613, which became known as the Time of Troubles, the Romanovs came to power in 1613 and the expansion-colonization process of the tsardom continued. While Western Europe colonized the New World, the Tsardom of Russia expanded overland – principally to the east, north and south.
Russian expansion in Eurasia between 1533 and 1894
The first stage from 1582 to 1650 resulted in North-East expansion from the Urals to the Pacific. Geographical expeditions mapped much of Siberia. The second stage from 1785 to 1830 looked South to the areas between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The key areas were Armenia and Georgia, with some better penetration of the Ottoman Empire, and Persia. By 1829, Russia controlled all of the Caucasus as shown in the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829. The third era, 1850 to 1860, was a brief interlude jumping to the East Coast, annexing the region from the Amur River to Manchuria. The fourth era, 1865 to 1885 incorporated Turkestan, and the northern approaches to India, sparking British fears of a threat to India in the Great Game.[3][4]
Historian Michael Khodarkovsky describes Tsarist Russia as a "hybrid empire" that combined elements of continental and colonial empires.[5] According to Kazakh scholar Kereihan Amanzholov, Russian colonialism had "no essential difference with the colonialist policies of Britain, France, and other European powers".[6] Qing China defeated Russia in the early Sino-Russian border conflicts, although the Russian Empire later acquired Russian Manchuria in the Amur Annexation.[7] During the Boxer Rebellion, the Russian Empire invaded Manchuria in 1900, and the Blagoveshchensk massacre occurred against Chinese residents on the Russian side of the border.[7] Russian Empire reached its maximum territory in Asia with the Russo-Japanese War, where after its defeat, Russia ceded Manchuria, southern Sakhalin, Russian Dalian, and Port Arthur to Japan with the Treaty of Portsmouth, though Russia kept the northern portion of the Chinese Eastern Railway.
After the October Revolution of November 1917, Poland and Finland became independent from Russia and remained so thereafter. The Russian Empire ceased to exist, and the Russian SFSR, 1917–1991, was established on much of its territory. Its area of effective direct control varied greatly during the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1922. Eventually the revolutionary Bolshevik government regained control of most of the former Eurasian lands of the Russian Empire, and in 1922 joined the Russian SFSR to Belarus, Transcaucasia, and Ukraine as the four constituent republics of a new state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which lasted until December 1991.
Map of territorial changes in Europe after World War I (as of 1923)
Of these, Pechenga, Salla, Tuva, Kaliningrad Oblast, the Kurils, and Sakhalin were added to the territory of the RSFSR.
In late 1945, Soviet Russia annexed the northern border strip of the Masurian District (current southern border strip of Kaliningrad Oblast) with the towns of Gierdawy (now Zheleznodorozhny) and Iławka (now Bagrationovsk) from Poland and expelled the already formed local Polish administration.[21]
There were numerous minor border changes between Soviet republics as well.
After World War II, the Soviet Union set up seven satellite states, in which local politics, military, and foreign and domestic policies were dominated by the Soviet Union:[24]
Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War and after the dissolution of the Soviet UnionMap showing the annexed Ukrainian oblasts per Russian claims in yellow, with a red line marking the area of actual control by Russia on 30 September 2022.
The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was a secessionist government of the Chechen Republic during 1991–2000. After Russian defeat at the Battle of Grozny, the First Chechen War ended with Russia recognizing the new Ichkerian government of president Maskhadov in January 1997 and signing a peace treaty in May. But Russia invaded again in 1999, restoring a Chechen Republic and the Ichkeria government was exiled in 2000.
In 2014, when after months of protests in Ukraine, pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was deposed in the Revolution of Dignity, Russian troops occupied Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, and after a hasty referendum the Kremlin annexed Crimea and Sevastopol. The annexation was not recognized by Ukraine or most other members of the international community. A few weeks later, an armed conflict broke out the Donbas region of Ukraine, in which the Kremlin denies an active role, but is widely considered to be fuelled by soldiers, militants, weapons, and ammunition from the Russian Federation.
On February 21, 2022, the Russian president Putin signed a decree recognizing the independence of two Donbas republics in Ukraine, and invaded the region. Two days later, Russian troops openly invaded Ukrainian-held territory of Ukraine, a move widely seen as an attempt to conduct regime change and occupy much or all of Ukraine. After failing to seize Ukraine's capital Kyiv for over a month, the Russian defence minister stated that the main goal of the war was the "liberation of the Donbas",[27] but later a Russian general stated that it was to seize eastern and southern Ukraine right through to Transnistria, a breakaway territory in Moldova.[28][29]
On 30 September 2022, Putin announced in a speech[30] that Russia was to annex four partially occupied regions of Ukraine: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts.[31] However, Russia's annexation of these territories was widely condemned by the international community,[32] and Russia does not control the full territory of any of the four annexed regions, and its government was unable to describe the new international "borders".[33]
^Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom VII (in Polish). Warszawa. 1886. p. 27.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom VIII (in Polish). Warszawa. 1887. p. 715.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ abSłownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom XII (in Polish). Warszawa. 1892. p. 849.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ abTatomir, Lucjan (1868). Geografia ogólna i statystyka ziem dawnej Polski (in Polish). Kraków: Drukarnia "Czasu" W. Kirchmayera. p. 144.
^Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom X (in Polish). Warszawa. 1889. p. 485.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom XII (in Polish). Warszawa. 1892. p. 514.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Ciesielski, Tomasz (2010). "Prusy Wschodnie w trakcie polskiej wojny sukcesyjnej i wojny siedmioletniej". In Gieszczyński, Witold; Kasparek, Norbert (eds.). Wielkie wojny w Prusach. Działania militarne między dolną Wisłą a Niemnem na przestrzeni wieków (in Polish). Dąbrówno. p. 165. ISBN978-83-62552-00-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom VII (in Polish). Warszawa. 1886. p. 28.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom XIII (in Polish). Warszawa. 1893. p. 329.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Eberhardt, Piotr (2018). "Kwestia podziału Prus Wschodnich w okresie II wojny światowej". Przegląd Geograficzny (in Polish). 90 (4): 610. ISSN0033-2143.
Bassin, Mark. "Russia between Europe and Asia: the ideological construction of geographical space." Slavic review 50.1 (1991): 1–17. Online
Bassin, Mark. "Expansion and colonialism on the eastern frontier: views of Siberia and the Far East in pre-Petrine Russia." Journal of Historical Geography 14.1 (1988): 3–21.
Forsyth, James. "A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581–1990" (1994)
Foust, Clifford M. "Russian expansion to the east through the eighteenth century." Journal of Economic History 21.4 (1961): 469–482. Online
LeDonne, John P. The Russian empire and the world, 1700–1917: The geopolitics of expansion and containment (Oxford University Press, 1997).
McNeill, William H. Europe's Steppe Frontier: 1500–1800 (Chicago, 1975).
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