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The Royal Federation
Королевская Федерация
Korolevskaja Federacija

[hr]

The Unity Ensign
(Royal Flag)

Khabarov Crest
(Royal Coat of Arms)

National Motto :

Слава Королевскому флагу! • Slava Korolevskomu Flagu!

[centre][/centre]

Imperial Anthem :
Bozhe, hrani monarha!

Боже, храни монарха!
English: God Save the Monarch!

Link

National Anthem :
Predannost' Rodine

Преданность Родине
English: Devotion to the Motherland

Link

[centre][/centre]


[background-block=#00081D][color=white][font=futura][centre][b]Overview[/b][/centre][/font][/color][/background-block]

Capital:

Moscow

Largest City:

Chongqing

Population :

2,952,673,039

Official Language :

Russian

National Languages :

• Russian
• Arabic
• Mandarin
• Persian
• English
• Mongolian
• Kazakh
• Ukrainian
• Azerbaijani
• Georgian
• Armenian

[background-block=#00081D][color=white][font=futura][centre][b]Government[/b][/centre][/font][/color][/background-block]

Government :

Absolute Monarchy

Queen :

Her Majesty Sasha Khabarov
(Khabarov Dynasty)

[background-block=#00081D][color=white][font=calibri][centre][b]Economics[/b][/centre][/font][/color][/background-block]

Currency :

Ruble (₽)

GDP :

GDP Per Capita :

$ 450,122,572,063,676.273

$ 77,509.21

HDI :

▲ 1.14572 (Rising)

[background-block=#00081D][color=white][font=calibri][centre][b]Miscellaneous[/b][/centre][/font][/color][/background-block]

Time Zones :

• UTC

Calling Code :

+7

Drives on the :

Left

Internet LTD :

.ru

Introduction


The Royal Federation (Russian: Королевская Федерация | Korolevskaja Federacija) also known unofficially as the Russian Empire (Russian:Российская империя| Rossijskaja imperija) is a sovereign state located across the vast majority of Asia as well as eastern Europe bordered by the Holy Roman Empire, Military Complex of the Overlord, and Callaxium(Orange Creek, Republic of Callaxium, Overlord69) to the west , The east india trade federation, Western serpents, and The Emerald Union to its south, and the Sunrise Corporatocracy of Japan (Kek republic) to the east. The Royal Federation is an unitary state with some degree of devolution as to ensure a proper and functioning state. The Federation has one of the youngest dynasties in the world, with the Khabarov Dynasty being in power since 1992, making the feat of becoming one of the largest, most advanced, and most powerful nations in the world all the more impressive.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and subsequent creation of the Royal Federation, the Federation has had a steadfast policy of absolute devotion to the Royal Family. The Russian Empire, despite being an absolute monarchy, has a thriving free market economy due to the devolution of power to lower officials by the Queen to help regulate various sectors of the government and public life, including corporations. The Royal Family as an institution is integral to the core identity of the state. Democracy, as it stands, is virtually non existent in regards to the Royal Family, who's blood alone solidifies their place as rulers. However, lower members of government, those who represent their respective provinces, for example, are elected by the people to voice their concerns to the high command of the government, including the Queen. Currently the Federation is focusing on further improving its already very advanced technological systems, for both civilian and military purposes.

Etymology


The name Russia is derived from Rus', a medieval state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля" (Russkaja Zemlja), which can be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography. The name Rus itself comes from the early medieval Rus' people, Swedish merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea and founded a state that later became Kievan Rus.

An old Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus' that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия (Rossija), comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Rus', Ρωσσία Rossía—spelled Ρωσία (Rosía pronounced [roˈsia]) in Modern Greek.

The standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is "Russians" in English and Rossiyane (Russian: россияне) in Russian. There are two Russian words which are commonly translated into English as "Russians". One is "русские" (russkiye), which most often means "ethnic Russians". Another is "россияне" (rossiyane), which means "citizens of Russia, regardless of ethnicity". Translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups.

History


Kievan Rus'

Scandinavian Norsemen, known as Vikings in Western Europe and Varangians in the East, combined piracy and trade throughout Northern Europe. In the mid-9th century, they began to venture along the waterways from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the earliest Russian chronicle, a Varangian named Rurik was elected ruler (knyaz) of Novgorod in about 860, before his successors moved south and extended their authority to Kiev, which had been previously dominated by the Khazars. Oleg, Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar khaganate and launched several military expeditions to Byzantium and Persia.

Thus, the first East Slavic state, Rus', emerged in the 9th century along the Dnieper River valley. A coordinated group of princely states with a common interest in maintaining trade along the river routes, Kievan Rus' controlled the trade route for furs, wax, and slaves between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire along the Volkhov and Dnieper Rivers.

By the end of the 10th century, the minority Norse military aristocracy had merged with the native Slavic population, which also absorbed Greek Christian influences in the course of the multiple campaigns to loot Tsargrad, or Constantinople. One such campaign claimed the life of the foremost Slavic druzhina leader, Svyatoslav I, who was renowned for having crushed the power of the Khazars on the Volga. At the time, the Byzantine Empire was experiencing a major military and cultural revival; despite its later decline, its culture would have a continuous influence on the development of Russia in its formative centuries.

The civilisation's cities were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and new techniques in handicraft (carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, and tin). The large cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to containing between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and the civilisation itself during its florescence may have contained between one and five million individuals. Gradual drying of the region's soil during the 3rd millennium BCE may have been the initial spur for the urbanisation associated with the civilisation, but eventually also reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilisation's demise, and to scatter its population eastward.

Kievan Rus' is important for its introduction of a Slavic variant of the Eastern Orthodox religion, dramatically deepening a synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next thousand years. The region adopted Christianity in 988 by the official act of public baptism of Kiev inhabitants by Prince Vladimir I, who followed the private conversion of his grandmother. Some years later the first code of laws, Russkaya Pravda, was introduced by Yaroslav the Wise. From the onset the Kievan princes followed the Byzantine example and kept the Church dependent on them, even for its revenues, so that the Russian Church and state were always closely linked.

By the 11th century, particularly during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus' displayed an economy and achievements in architecture and literature superior to those that then existed in the western part of the continent. Compared with the languages of European Christendom, the Russian language was little influenced by the Greek and Latin of early Christian writings. This was because Church Slavonic was used directly in liturgy instead.

A nomadic Turkic people, the Kipchaks (also known as the Cumans), replaced the earlier Pechenegs as the dominant force in the south steppe regions neighbouring to Rus' at the end of the 11th century and founded a nomadic state in the steppes along the Black Sea (Desht-e-Kipchak). Repelling their regular attacks, especially on Kiev, which was just one day's ride from the steppe, was a heavy burden for the southern areas of Rus'. The nomadic incursions caused a massive influx of Slavs to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye.

Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state because of in-fighting between members of the princely family that ruled it collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod in the north, and Halych-Volhynia in the south-west. Conquest by the Mongol Golden Horde in the 13th century was the final blow. Kiev was destroyed. Halych-Volhynia would eventually be absorbed into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and independent Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, would establish the basis for the modern Russian nation.

Mongol Invasion (1223-1240)

The invading Mongols accelerated the fragmentation of the Rus'. In 1223, the disunited southern princes faced a Mongol raiding party at the Kalka River and were soundly defeated. In 1237–1238 the Mongols burnt down the city of Vladimir (4 February 1238) and other major cities of northeast Russia, routed the Russians at the Sit' River, and then moved west into Poland and Hungary. By then they had conquered most of the Russian principalities. Only the Novgorod Republic escaped occupation and continued to flourish in the orbit of the Hanseatic League.

The impact of the Mongol invasion on the territories of Kievan Rus' was uneven. The advanced city culture was almost completely destroyed. As older centers such as Kiev and Vladimir never recovered from the devastation of the initial attack, the new cities of Moscow, Tver and Nizhny Novgorod began to compete for hegemony in the Mongol-dominated Russia. Although a Russian army defeated the Golden Horde at Kulikovo in 1380, Mongol domination of the Russian-inhabited territories, along with demands of tribute from Russian princes, continued until about 1480.

Russo-Tatar Relations

After the fall of the Khazars in the 10th century, the middle Volga came to be dominated by the mercantile state of Volga Bulgaria, the last vestige of Greater Bulgaria centered at Phanagoria. In the 10th century the Turkic population of Volga Bulgaria converted to Islam, which facilitated its trade with the Middle East and Central Asia.[citation needed] In the wake of the Mongol invasions of the 1230s, Volga Bulgaria was absorbed by the Golden Horde and its population evolved into the modern Chuvashes and Kazan Tatars.

The Mongols held Russia and Volga Bulgaria in sway from their western capital at Sarai, one of the largest cities of the medieval world. The princes of southern and eastern Russia had to pay tribute to the Mongols of the Golden Horde, commonly called Tatars; but in return they received charters authorizing them to act as deputies to the khans. In general, the princes were allowed considerable freedom to rule as they wished, while the Russian Orthodox Church even experienced a spiritual revival under the guidance of Metropolitan Alexis and Sergius of Radonezh.

To the Orthodox Church and most princes, the fanatical Northern Crusaders seemed a greater threat to the Russian way of life than the Mongols.[citation needed] In the mid-13th century, Alexander Nevsky, elected prince of Novgorod, acquired heroic status as the result of major victories over the Teutonic Knights and the Swedes. Alexander obtained Mongol protection and assistance in fighting invaders from the west who, hoping to profit from the Russian collapse since the Mongol invasions, tried to grab territory and convert the Russians to Roman Catholicism.

The Mongols left their impact on the Russians in such areas as military tactics and transportation. Under Mongol occupation, Russia also developed its postal road network, census, fiscal system, and military organization.



The Sacking of Suzdal by Batu Khan in February 1238: a miniature from the 16th-century chronicle

Rise of Moscow

Daniil Aleksandrovich, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, founded the principality of Moscow (known as Muscovy in English), which first cooperated with and ultimately expelled the Tatars from Russia. Well-situated in the central river system of Russia and surrounded by protective forests and marshes, Moscow was at first only a vassal of Vladimir, but soon it absorbed its parent state.

A major factor in the ascendancy of Moscow was the cooperation of its rulers with the Mongol overlords, who granted them the title of Grand Prince of Moscow and made them agents for collecting the Tatar tribute from the Russian principalities. The principality's prestige was further enhanced when it became the center of the Russian Orthodox Church. Its head, the Metropolitan, fled from Kiev to Vladimir in 1299 and a few years later established the permanent headquarters of the Church in Moscow under the original title of Kiev Metropolitan.

By the middle of the 14th century, the power of the Mongols was declining, and the Grand Princes felt able to openly oppose the Mongol yoke. In 1380, at Kulikovo on the Don River, the Mongols were defeated, and although this hard-fought victory did not end Tatar rule of Russia, it did bring great fame to the Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy. Moscow's leadership in Russia was now firmly based and by the middle of the 14th century its territory had greatly expanded through purchase, war, and marriage.



Alexander Nevsky in the Golden Horde

Ivan III, the Great

In the 15th century, the grand princes of Moscow continued to consolidate Russian land to increase their population and wealth. The most successful practitioner of this process was Ivan III,[44] who laid the foundations for a Russian national state. Ivan competed with his powerful northwestern rival, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, for control over some of the semi-independent Upper Principalities in the upper Dnieper and Oka River basins.

Through the defections of some princes, border skirmishes, and a long war with the Novgorod Republic, Ivan III was able to annex Novgorod and Tver. As a result, the Grand Duchy of Moscow tripled in size under his rule. During his conflict with Pskov, a monk named Filofei (Philotheus of Pskov) composed a letter to Ivan III, with the prophecy that the latter's kingdom would be the Third Rome. The Fall of Constantinople and the death of the last Greek Orthodox Christian emperor contributed to this new idea of Moscow as 'New Rome' and the seat of Orthodox Christianity.

A contemporary of the Tudors and other "new monarchs" in Western Europe, Ivan proclaimed his absolute sovereignty over all Russian princes and nobles. Refusing further tribute to the Tatars, Ivan initiated a series of attacks that opened the way for the complete defeat of the declining Golden Horde, now divided into several Khanates and hordes. Ivan and his successors sought to protect the southern boundaries of their domain against attacks of the Crimean Tatars and other hordes. To achieve this aim, they sponsored the construction of the Great Abatis Belt and granted manors to nobles, who were obliged to serve in the military. The manor system provided a basis for an emerging cavalry based army.

In this way, internal consolidation accompanied outward expansion of the state. By the 16th century, the rulers of Moscow considered the entire Russian territory their collective property. Various semi-independent princes still claimed specific territories, but Ivan III forced the lesser princes to acknowledge the grand prince of Moscow and his descendants as unquestioned rulers with control over military, judicial, and foreign affairs. Gradually, the Russian ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic ruler, a tsar. The first Russian ruler to officially crown himself "Tsar" was Ivan IV.

Ivan III tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde over the Rus', renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Biographer Fennell concludes that his reign was "militarily glorious and economically sound," and especially points to his territorial annexations and his centralized control over local rulers. However, Fennell, the leading British specialist on Ivan III, argues that his reign was also "a period of cultural depression and spiritual barrenness. Freedom was stamped out within the Russian lands. By his bigoted anti-Catholicism Ivan brought down the curtain between Russia and the west. For the sake of territorial aggrandizement he deprived his country of the fruits of Western learning and civilization."

Ivan IV, The Terrible

The development of the Tsar's autocratic powers reached a peak during the reign of Ivan IV (1547–1584), known as "Ivan the Terrible". He strengthened the position of the monarch to an unprecedented degree, as he ruthlessly subordinated the nobles to his will, exiling or executing many on the slightest provocation. Nevertheless, Ivan is often seen as a farsighted statesman who reformed Russia as he promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor), curbed the influence of the clergy, and introduced local self-management in rural regions.

Although his long Livonian War for control of the Baltic coast and access to the sea trade ultimately proved a costly failure,[59] Ivan managed to annex the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia. These conquests complicated the migration of aggressive nomadic hordes from Asia to Europe via the Volga and Urals. Through these conquests, Russia acquired a significant Muslim Tatar population and emerged as a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. Also around this period, the mercantile Stroganov family established a firm foothold in the Urals and recruited Russian Cossacks to colonise Siberia.

In the later part of his reign, Ivan divided his realm in two. 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 the betrayal of prince Kurbsky), culminating in the Massacre of Novgorod in 1570. This combined with the military losses, epidemics, and poor harvests so weakened Russia that the Crimean Tatars were able to sack central Russian regions and burn down Moscow in 1571. In 1572 Ivan abandoned the oprichnina.

At the end of Ivan IV's reign the Polish–Lithuanian and Swedish armies carried out a powerful intervention in Russia, devastating its northern and northwest regions.

Time of Troubles

The death of Ivan's childless son Feodor was followed by a period of civil wars and foreign intervention known as the "Time of Troubles" (1606–13). Extremely cold summers (1601–1603) wrecked crops, which led to the Russian famine of 1601–1603 and increased the social disorganization. Boris Godunov's (Борис Годунов) reign ended in chaos, civil war combined with foreign intrusion, devastation of many cities and depopulation of the rural regions. The country rocked by internal chaos also attracted several waves of interventions by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

During the Polish–Muscovite War (1605–1618), Polish–Lithuanian forces reached Moscow and installed the impostor False Dmitriy I in 1605, then supported False Dmitry II in 1607. The decisive moment came when a combined Russian-Swedish army was routed by the Polish forces under hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski at the Battle of Klushino on 4 July [O.S. 24 June] 1610. As the result of the battle, the Seven Boyars, a group of Russian nobles, deposed the tsar Vasily Shuysky on 27 July [O.S. 17 July] 1610, and recognized the Polish prince Władysław IV Vasa as the Tsar of Russia on 6 September [O.S. 27 August] 1610.[68][69] The Poles entered Moscow on 21 September [O.S. 11 September] 1610. Moscow revolted but riots there were brutally suppressed and the city was set on fire.

The crisis provoked a patriotic national uprising against the invasion, both in 1611 and 1612. Finally, a volunteer army, led by the merchant Kuzma Minin and prince Dmitry Pozharsky, expelled the foreign forces from the capital on 4 November [O.S. 22 October] 1612.

The Russian statehood survived the "Time of Troubles" and the rule of weak or corrupt Tsars because of the strength of the government's central bureaucracy. Government functionaries continued to serve, regardless of the ruler's legitimacy or the faction controlling the throne. However, the "Time of Troubles" provoked by the dynastic crisis resulted in the loss of much territory to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Russo-Polish war, as well as to the Swedish Empire in the Ingrian War.

Accession of the Romanovs and Early Rule

In February 1613, with the chaos ended and the Poles expelled from Moscow, a national assembly, composed of representatives from fifty cities and even some peasants, elected Michael Romanov, the young son of Patriarch Filaret, to the throne. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia until 1917.

The immediate task of the new dynasty was to restore peace. Fortunately for Moscow, its major enemies, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden, were engaged in a bitter conflict with each other, which provided Russia the opportunity to make peace with Sweden in 1617 and to sign a truce with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1619.

Recovery of lost territories began in the mid-17th century, when the Khmelnitsky Uprising (1648–57) in Ukraine against Polish rule brought about the Treaty of Pereyaslav, concluded between Russia and the Ukrainian Cossacks. According to the treaty, Russia granted protection to the Cossacks state in Left-bank Ukraine, formerly under Polish control. This triggered a prolonged Russo-Polish War (1654-1667), which ended with the Treaty of Andrusovo, where Poland accepted the loss of Left-bank Ukraine, Kiev and Smolensk.

Rather than risk their estates in more civil war, the boyars cooperated with the first Romanovs, enabling them to finish the work of bureaucratic centralization. Thus, the state required service from both the old and the new nobility, primarily in the military. In return, the tsars allowed the boyars to complete the process of enserfing the peasants.

In the preceding century, the state had gradually curtailed peasants' rights to move from one landlord to another. With the state now fully sanctioning serfdom, runaway peasants became state fugitives, and the power of the landlords over the peasants "attached" to their land had become almost complete. Together the state and the nobles placed an overwhelming burden of taxation on the peasants, whose rate was 100 times greater in the mid-17th century than it had been a century earlier. In addition, middle-class urban tradesmen and craftsmen were assessed taxes, and, like the serfs, they were forbidden to change residence. All segments of the population were subject to military levy and to special taxes.

Riots amongst peasants and citizens of Moscow at this time were endemic, and included the Salt Riot (1648), Copper Riot (1662), and the Moscow Uprising (1682). By far the greatest peasant uprising in 17th-century Europe erupted in 1667. As the free settlers of South Russia, the Cossacks, reacted against the growing centralization of the state, serfs escaped from their landlords and joined the rebels. The Cossack leader Stenka Razin led his followers up the Volga River, inciting peasant uprisings and replacing local governments with Cossack rule. The tsar's army finally crushed his forces in 1670; a year later Stenka was captured and beheaded. Yet, less than half a century later, the strains of military expeditions produced another revolt in Astrakhan, ultimately subdued.

Peter the Great

Peter the Great (1672–1725) brought autocracy into Russia and played a major role in bringing his country into the European state system. Russia had now become the largest country in the world, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The vast majority of the land was unoccupied, and travel was slow. Much of its expansion had taken place in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian settlement of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the reconquest of Kiev, and the pacification of the Siberian tribes. However, a population of only 14 million was stretched across this vast landscape. With a short growing season grain yields trailed behind those in the West and potato farming was not yet widespread. As a result, the great majority of the population workforce was occupied with agriculture. Russia remained isolated from the sea trade and its internal trade, communication and manufacturing were seasonally dependent.

Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Turks. His aim was to establish a Russian foothold on the Black Sea by taking the town of Azov. His attention then turned to the north. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport except at Archangel on the White Sea, whose harbor was frozen nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by Sweden, whose territory enclosed it on three sides. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him in 1699 to make a secret alliance with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark against Sweden resulting in the Great Northern War.

The war ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden sued for peace with Russia. Peter acquired four provinces situated south and east of the Gulf of Finland, thus securing his coveted access to the sea. There, in 1703, he had already founded the city that was to become Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, as a "window opened upon Europe" to replace Moscow, long Russia's cultural center. Russian intervention in the Commonwealth marked, with the Silent Sejm, the beginning of a 200-year domination of that region by the Russian Empire. In celebration of his conquests, Peter assumed the title of emperor, and the Russian Tsardom officially became the Russian Empire in 1721.

Peter reorganized his government based on the latest Western models, molding Russia into an absolutist state. He replaced the old boyar Duma (council of nobles) with a nine-member senate, in effect a supreme council of state. The countryside was also divided into new provinces and districts. Peter told the senate that its mission was to collect tax revenues. In turn tax revenues tripled over the course of his reign.

Administrative Collegia (ministries) were established in St. Petersburg, to replace the old governmental departments. In 1722 Peter promulgated his famous Table of ranks. As part of the government reform, the Orthodox Church was partially incorporated into the country's administrative structure, in effect making it a tool of the state. Peter abolished the patriarchate and replaced it with a collective body, the Holy Synod, led by a lay government official. Peter continued and intensified his predecessors' requirement of state service for all nobles.

By this same time, the once powerful Persian Safavid Empire to the south was heavily declining. Taking advantage of the profitable situation, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War (1722-1723), known as "The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great" by Russian historians, in order to be the first Russian emperor to establish Russian influence in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region. After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over the territories to Russia. However, by twelve years later, all the territories were ceded back to Persia, which was now led by the charismatic military genius Nader Shah, as part of the Treaty of Resht and Treaty of Ganja and the Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire, the common neighboring enemy.

Peter the Great died in 1725, leaving an unsettled succession, but Russia had become a great power by the end of his reign.

Catherine the Great

Nearly forty years were to pass before a comparably ambitious ruler appeared on the Russian throne. Catherine II, "the Great" (r. 1762–1796), was a German princess who married the German heir to the Russian crown. Finding him incompetent, Catherine tacitly consented to his murder and in 1762 she became ruler. Catherine enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot ("despot" is not derogatory in this context.) She patronized the arts, science and learning. She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of Peter the Great. Catherine promulgated the Charter to the Gentry reaffirming rights and freedoms of the Russian nobility and abolishing mandatory state service. She seized control of all the church lands, drastically reduced the size of the monasteries, and put the surviving clergy on a tight budget.

Catherine spent heavily to promote an expansive foreign policy. She extended Russian political control over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with actions, including the support of the Targowica Confederation. The cost of her campaigns, on top of the oppressive social system that required serfs to spend almost all of their time laboring on the land of their lords, provoked a major peasant uprising in 1773. Inspired by a Cossack named Pugachev, with the emphatic cry of "Hang all the landlords!", the rebels threatened to take Moscow until Catherine crushed the rebellion. Like the other enlightened despots of Europe, Catherine made certain of her own power and formed an alliance with the nobility.

Catherine successfully waged war against the decaying Ottoman Empire and advanced Russia's southern boundary to the Black Sea. Then, by allying with the rulers of Austria and Prussia, she incorporated the territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where after a century of Russian rule non-Catholic, mainly Orthodox population prevailed during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. In accordance to the treaty Russia had signed with the Georgians to protect them against any new invasion of their Persian suzerains and further political aspirations, Catherine waged a new war against Persia in 1796 after they had again invaded Georgia and established rule over it about a year prior, and had expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus.

Alexander I

By the time of her death in 1796, Catherine's expansionist policy had made Russia into a major European power. Alexander I continued this policy, wresting Finland from the weakened kingdom of Sweden in 1809 and Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812.

After Russian armies liberated allied Georgia from Persian occupation in 1802, they clashed with Persia over control and consolidation over Georgia, as well as the Iranian territories that comprise modern-day Azerbaijan and Dagestan. They also became involved in the Caucasian War against the Caucasian Imamate. In 1813, the war with Persia concluded with a Russian victory, forcing Qajar Iran to cede swaths of its territories in the Caucasus to Russia, which drastically increased its territory in the region. To the south-west, Russia attempted to expand at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, using Georgia at its base for the Caucasus and Anatolian front.

In European policy, Alexander I switched Russia back and forth four times in 1804–1812 from neutral peacemaker to anti-Napoleon to an ally of Napoleon, winding up in 1812 as Napoleon's enemy. In 1805, he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after the massive defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz he switched and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon's Continental System. He fought a small-scale naval war against Britain, 1807–12. He and Napoleon could never agree, especially about Poland, and the alliance collapsed by 1810.

Furthermore, Russia's economy had been hurt by Napoleon's Continental System, which cut off trade with Britain. As Esdaile notes, "Implicit in the idea of a Russian Poland was, of course, a war against Napoleon." Schroeder says Poland was the root cause of the conflict but Russia's refusal to support the Continental System was also a factor.

The invasion of Russia was a catastrophe for Napoleon and his 450,000 invasion troops. One major battle was fought at Borodino; casualties were very high but it was indecisive and Napoleon was unable to engage and defeat the Russian armies. He attempted to force the Tsar to terms by capturing Moscow at the onset of winter, even though the French Army had already lost most of its men. The expectation proved futile. The Russians retreated, burning crops and food supplies in a scorched earth policy that multiplied Napoleon's logistic problems. Unprepared for winter warfare, 85%–90% of Napoleon's soldiers died from disease, cold, starvation or by ambush by peasant guerrilla fighters. As Napoleon's forces retreated, Russian troops pursued them into Central and Western Europe and finally captured Paris. Out of a total population of around 43 million people, Russia lost about 1.5 million in the year 1812; of these about 250,000 to 300,000 were soldiers and the rest peasants and serfs.

After the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Alexander became known as the 'savior of Europe.' He presided over the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which made him the king of Congress Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance with Austria and Prussia, to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe that he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements.

Although the Russian Empire would play a leading political role as late as 1848, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant degree. 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.

Nicholas I and the Decembrist Revolt

Russia's great power status obscured the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic backwardness. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I was willing to discuss constitutional reforms, and though a few were introduced, no thoroughgoing changes were attempted.

The Tsar was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I (1825–1855), who at the onset of his reign was confronted with an uprising. The background of this revolt lay in the Napoleonic Wars, when a number of well-educated Russian officers traveled in Europe in the course of the military campaigns, where their exposure to the liberalism of Western Europe encouraged them to seek change on their return to autocratic Russia. The result was the Decembrist Revolt (December 1825), the work of a small circle of liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brother as a constitutional monarch. But the revolt was easily crushed, leading Nicholas to turn away from liberal reforms and champion the reactionary doctrine "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality".

In 1826–1828 Russia fought another war against Persia. Russia lost almost all of its recently consolidated territories during the first year but gained them back and won the war on highly favourable terms. At the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, Russia gained Armenia, Nakhchivan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, and Iğdır. In the 1828–1829 Russo-Turkish War Russia invaded northeastern Anatolia and occupied the strategic Ottoman towns of Erzurum and Gumushane and, posing as protector and saviour of the Greek Orthodox population, received extensive support from the region's Pontic Greeks. Following a brief occupation, the Russian imperial army withdrew back into Georgia. By the 1830s, Russia had conquered all Persian territories and major Ottoman territories in the Caucasus.

In 1831 Nicholas crushed the November Uprising in Poland. The Russian autocracy gave Polish artisans and gentry reason to rebel in 1863 by assailing the national core values of language, religion, and culture. The resulting January Uprising was a massive Polish revolt, which also was crushed. France, Britain and Austria tried to intervene in the crisis but were unable to do so. The Russian patriotic press used the Polish uprising to unify the Russian nation, claiming it was Russia's God-given mission to save Poland and the world. Poland was punished by losing its distinctive political and judicial rights, with Russianization imposed on its schools and courts.

Nicholas II

Tsar Nicholas died with his philosophy in dispute. One year earlier, Russia had become involved in the Crimean War, a conflict fought primarily in the Crimean peninsula. Since playing a major role in the defeat of Napoleon, Russia had been regarded as militarily invincible, but, once pitted against a coalition of the great powers of Europe, the reverses it suffered on land and sea exposed the weakness of Tsar Nicholas' regime.

When Alexander II came to the throne in 1855, desire for reform was widespread. The most pressing problem confronting the Government was serfdom. In 1859, there were 23 million serfs (out of a total population of 67.1 Million). In anticipation of civil unrest that could ultimately foment a revolution, Alexander II chose to preemptively abolish serfdom with the emancipation reform in 1861, an event which shifted the balance of power away from the landed aristocracy.[citation needed] Emancipation brought a supply of free labor to the cities, stimulated industry, and the middle class grew in number and influence. The freed peasants had to buy land, allotted to them, from the landowners with the state assistance. The Government issued special bonds to the landowners for the land that they had lost, and collected a special tax from the peasants, called redemption payments, at a rate of 5% of the total cost of allotted land yearly. All the land turned over to the peasants was owned collectively by the mir, the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised the various holdings.

Alexander was the most successful Russian reformer since Peter the Great, and was responsible for numerous reforms besides abolishing serfdom. He reorganized the judicial system, setting up elected local judges, abolishing capital punishment, promoting local self-government through the zemstvo system, imposing universal military service, ending some of the privileges of the nobility, and promoting the universities. In foreign policy, he sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, fearing the remote colony would fall into British hands if there was another war. He modernized the military command system. He sought peace, and moved away from bellicose France when Napoleon III fell. He joined with Germany and Austria in the League of the Three Emperors that stabilized the European situation. The Russian Empire expanded in Siberia and in the Caucasus and made gains at the expense of China. Faced with an uprising in Poland in 1863, he stripped that land of its separate Constitution and incorporated it directly into Russia. To counter the rise of a revolutionary and anarchistic movements, he sent thousands of dissidents into exile in Siberia and was proposing additional parliamentary reforms when he was assassinated in 1881.

In the late 1870s Russia and the Ottoman Empire again clashed in the Balkans. The Russo-Turkish War was popular among the Russian people, who supported the independence of their fellow Orthodox Slavs, the Serbs and the Bulgarians. However, the war increased tension with Austria-Hungary, which also had ambitions in the region. The tsar was disappointed by the results of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, but abided by the agreement. During this period Russia expanded its empire into Central Asia, which was rich in raw materials, conquering the khanates of Kokand, Bokhara, and Khiva, as well as the Trans-Caspian region.

WWI

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary was assassinated by Bosnian Serbs on 28 June 1914. An ultimatum followed to Serbia, which was considered a Russian client-state, by Austro-Hungary on 23 July. Russia had no treaty obligation to Serbia, and in long-term perspective, Russia was militarily gaining on Germany and Austro-Hungary, and thus had an incentive to wait. Most Russian leaders wanted to avoid a war. However, in the present crisis they had the support of France, and they feared that the failure to support Serbia would lead to a loss of Russian credibility and a major political defeat to Russia's goals for a leadership role in the Balkans. Tsar Nicholas II mobilised Russian forces on 30 July 1914 to defend Serbia from Austria-Hungary. Christopher Clark states: "The Russian general mobilisation [of 30 July] was one of the most momentous decisions of the July crisis. This was the first of the general mobilisations. It came at the moment when the German government had not yet even declared the State of Impending War". Germany responded with her own mobilisation and declaration of War on 1 August 1914. At the opening of hostilities, the Russians took the offensive against both Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The very large but poorly equipped Russian army fought tenaciously and desperately at times despite its lack of organization and very weak logistics. Casualties were enormous. By 1915, many soldiers were sent to the front unarmed, and told to pick up whatever weapons they could from the battlefield. Nevertheless, the Russian army fought on, and tied down large numbers of Germans and Austrians. When civilians showed a surge of patriotism, the tsar and his entourage failed to exploit it for military benefit. Instead, they relied on slow-moving bureaucracies. In areas where they did advance against the Austrians, they failed to rally the ethnic and religious minorities that were hostile to Austria, such as Poles. The tsar refused to cooperate with the national legislature, the Duma, and listened less to experts than to his wife, who was in thrall to her chief advisor, the so-called holy man Grigori Rasputin. More than two million refugees fled.

Repeated military failures and bureaucratic ineptitude soon turned large segments of the population against the government. The German and Ottoman fleets prevented Russia from importing supplies and exporting goods through the Baltic and Black seas.

By the middle of 1915 the impact of the war was demoralizing. Food and fuel were in short supply, casualties kept occurring, and inflation was mounting. Strikes increased among low-paid factory workers, and the peasants, who wanted land reforms, were restless. Meanwhile, elite distrust of the regime was deepened by reports that Rasputin was gaining influence; his assassination in late 1916 ended the scandal but did not restore the autocracy's lost prestige.

Russian Revolution

The Tsarist system was completely overthrown in February 1917. Rabinowitch argues:

The February 1917 revolution...grew out of prewar political and economic instability, technological backwardness, and fundamental social divisions, coupled with gross mismanagement of the war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic dislocation, and outrageous scandals surrounding the monarchy.

In late February (3 March 1917), a strike occurred in a factory in the capital Petrograd (the new name for Saint Petersburg). On 23 February (8 March) 1917, thousands of female textile workers walked out of their factories protesting the lack of food and calling on other workers to join them. Within days, nearly all the workers in the city were idle, and street fighting broke out. The tsar ordered the Duma to disband, ordered strikers to return to work, and ordered troops to shoot at demonstrators in the streets. His orders triggered the February Revolution, especially when soldiers openly sided with the strikers. The tsar and the aristocracy fell on 2 March, as Nicholas II abdicated.

To fill the vacuum of authority, the Duma declared a Provisional Government, headed by Prince Lvov, which was collectively known as the Russian Republic. Meanwhile, the socialists in Petrograd organized elections among workers and soldiers to form a soviet (council) of workers' and soldiers' deputies, as an organ of popular power that could pressure the "bourgeois" Provisional Government.

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 continuation of the war. While Kerensky's government marked time, the socialist-led soviet in Petrograd joined with soviets that formed throughout the country to create a national movement.

The German government provided over 40 million gold marks to subsidize Bolshevik publications and activities subversive of the tsarist government, especially focusing on disgruntled soldiers and workers. In April 1917 Germany provided a special sealed train to carry Vladimir Lenin back to Russia from his exile in Switzerland. After many behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the soviets seized control of the government in November 1917 and drove Kerensky and his moderate provisional government into exile, in the events that would become known as the October Revolution.

When the national Constituent Assembly (elected in December 1917) refused to become a rubber stamp of the Bolsheviks, it was dissolved by Lenin's troops and all vestiges of democracy were removed. With the handicap of the moderate opposition removed, Lenin was able to free his regime from the war problem by the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) with Germany. Russia lost much of her western borderlands. However, when Germany was defeated the Soviet government repudiated the Treaty.

Russian Civil War

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, right-wing "Whites", and large numbers of peasants. At the same time the Allied powers sent several expeditionary armies to support the anti-Communist forces in an attempt to force Russia to rejoin the world war. The Bolsheviks fought against both these forces and national independence movements in the former Russian Empire. By 1921, they had defeated their internal enemies and brought most of the newly independent states under their control, with the exception of Finland, the Baltic States, the Moldavian Democratic Republic (which joined Romania), and Poland (with whom they had fought the Polish–Soviet War). Finland also annexed the region Pechenga of the Russian Kola peninsula; Soviet Russia and allied Soviet republics conceded the parts of its territory to Estonia (Petseri County and Estonian Ingria), Latvia (Pytalovo), and Turkey (Kars). Poland incorporated the contested territories of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, the former parts of the Russian Empire (except Galicia) east to Curzon Line.

Both sides regularly committed brutal atrocities against civilians. During the civil war era White Terror (Russia) for example, Petlyura and Denikin's forces massacred 100,000 to 150,000 Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were left homeless and tens of thousands became victims of serious illness.

Estimates for the total number of people killed during the Red Terror carried out by the Bolsheviks vary widely. One source asserts that the total number of victims of repression and pacification campaigns could be 1.3 million, whereas others gives estimates of at least 10,000 in the initial period of repression and an estimate of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922. The most reliable estimations for the total number of killings put the number at about 100,000, whereas others suggest a figure of 200,000.

The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded and machines damaged. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.[158] Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia, many with the White Gen. Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel—some through the Far East, others west into the newly independent Baltic countries. These émigrés included a large percentage of the educated and skilled population of Russia.

Post WWI

Following WWI, the strain of communism on the newly founded Soviet Union begun to show, as relations with other foreign powers deteriorated and the people of Russia starved, mostly due to the actions of those who lead the country. These actions eventually resulted in the start of the second world war, which would eventually lead to the execution of Josef Stalin, who would be replaced by more progressive leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

However, for the Soviet Union, it would take more than a more progressive leader to save the country. In 1991, the temper of the people boiled over. The military, led by then General Illyushin Nicholas Khabarov, staged a coup against the established government. Promising a brighter future for all Russian people and to do away with the communist system that had failed them, he received tremendous support from his countrymen.

In the span of less than a year, the Soviet Union had fallen. Many states such as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine, and even the eastern half of Russia were lost as a result. However, General Khabarov, now declaring himself King of the newly born Royal Federation, promised to gain back what was once lost. What followed over the next thirty years was a series of successful campaigns led by King Illyushin and, later, his daughter Queen Sasha, which would result in the Federation soaring to heights greater than the Soviet Union could dream of, balancing great power with a happy populace to create what may very well be the role model of the ideal modern nation.



City Skyline, Moscow, Russia.
Economy

The economy of Russia is a mixed economy with a GDP of approximately $95 Trillion (2018) and a GDP Per-Capita of $56,824. In the 1990's the Federation experienced a major recession following the loss of several territories vital to the economy, which led to a significant rise of unemployment in the country. By September 1997, Russia's unemployment rate had reached 9%. However, Russia's astonishing information technology sector, the government's pre-crisis budgetary surplus, and its long term policies of lowering the national debt, resulted in a less severe recession compared to early estimates published in 1993. It implemented a series of sweeping industrializing reforms in order to combat excessive poverty. Not only that, foreign investment and land privatization created one of the worlds most vibrant economies that has put it ahead of most other states.

The Royal Family enacted a series of legislation that saw the immediate privatization of various sectors of the economy, ensured that fair competition was upheld by the Imperial Government. In fact, these series of reforms were widely successful during the early to late 90s- early 2000's. The energy industry grew to dominate the economy all the while the mining industry, specifically from the Ujjaini and Saithveli Kingdoms, saw a major source of revenue. In the 2000's, the Russian economy has largely stabilized and has seen a unprecedented level of growth.

Since the 1990's, the growth of Russia's manufacturing and energy sectors has transformed the nation from a largely rural economy to an urbanizing, industrial one. The nation has employed a series of major economic incentives that has seen the creation of private-public ventures, the ease of business, and the ability for companies to regularly compete in fields of who can industrialize or build first. While state business is mostly relegated to the development of infrastructure, defense, and other key industries, the state also has a hand in most other industries as well.



The Kremlin Grand Palace, Home of the Royal Family



Topographic map of Asia (excluding the claims)
Geography

The geography of the Royal Federation is extremely diverse due to its massive size, with landscape ranging from snow-capped mountain ranges to deserts, plains, hills and plateaus. Russia comprises most of the upper half of the Federation. Having a coastline of over 30,000km (18,641 miles), the Federation is by far the largest country in the world, bordered by a multitude of seas and the Arctic Ocean.

Russia's mountain ranges are located principally along its continental dip (the Ural Mountains), along the southwestern border (the Caucasus), along the border with Mongolia (the eastern and western Sayan Mountains and the western extremity of the Altay Mountains), and in eastern Siberia (a complex system of ranges in the northeastern corner of the country and forming the spine of the Kamchatka Peninsula, and lesser mountains extending along the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan). Russia has nine major mountain ranges. In general, the eastern half of the country is much more mountainous than the western half, the interior of which is dominated by low plains. The traditional dividing line between the east and the west is the Yenisei River valley. In delineating the western edge of the Central Siberian Plateau from the West Siberian Plain, the Yenisey runs from near the Mongolian border northward into the Arctic Ocean west of the Taymyr Peninsula.

South of the barren territory of Mongolia is the equally diverse land that is the territory of China. Comprised of deserts, tropical rainforests, and beautiful mountain ranges, it features an extraordinary diversity of land, animals, and plant species as well. A paradise for biological researchers.

Tropical monsoon in the lowlands below 1,000 m (3,281 ft); cloudy, rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast monsoon, December to April). Climate varies in the highlands depending on elevation; subtropical temperate climate at around 2,500 m (8,202 ft), temperate at 3,000 m (9,843 ft), cool, alpine at 3,500 m (11,483 ft) and above the alpine zone, cold, harsh tundra and Arctic climate. The higher elevations are subject to heavy snowfall, especially in the North.

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