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Early History of Russia and Quick Overview

Russian History
created by Jongha Hwang February 15, 2013 09:41 am
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Traditionally Russian history begins with that of the Eastern Slavs and the Finno-Ugric peoples (Hungarians, Finns). The East Slavs are a Slavic ethnic group, the speakers of East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus', by the seventeenth (17th) century they evolved into the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian people.

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus' was a medieval polity in Europe (9th ~ 13th C). The history of Rus' begins in 882, when the capital was moved from Novgorod to Kiev, after Vikings (Rus), liberated this Slavic city from Khazars' tibute. Kiev is the capital city of Ukrain now. Kievan Rus' adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the systhesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.

 

European territory inhabited by East Slavic tribes (700 - 850)

 

Kievan Rus was disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion in 1237 ~ 1240.

Mongol Invasion - The Mongol Empire invaded Kievan Rus' in the 13th century. All Russian states has to submit to Mongol rule. This invation resulted in the division of the East Slavic people into three separate nations (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus)

 

After the 13th century, Moscow came to dominate the former cultural center.
By the 18th century, the Tsardom of Russia had become the huge Russian Empire.
By the 19th century, Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861. Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism. itw as a condition of bondage or slavery. But the abolition of serfdom was achieved unfavorable to the peasant and served to increase revolutionary pressures.

 

Russian Revolution

Russian Revolution in 1917 was triggered by a combination of economic breakdown, war weariness, and discontent with the autocratic system of government. It first brought a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists to power, but their failed policies led to seizure of power but the Communists Bolsheviks on 25 October.

Bolshevik

It was a faction of the Marxist Socialist Party. the word means "majority". Bolshevik came to power during the October Revolution in 1917. The Bolsheviks was founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1905 and was a mass organization consisting primarily of workers under a democratic internal hierarchy governed by the principle of democratic centralism.

Leon Trotsky

He was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, politician, and the founder of the Red Army. He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. He opposed Joseph Stalin and was removed from power and expelled to Mexico and was assassinated on Stalin's order in 1940.

From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called themselves, beginning in March 1918. However, by the late 1980s, with the weaknesses of its economic and political structures becoming acute, the Communist leaders embarked on major reforms, which led to the fall of the Soviet Union.