It is known that Yaroslav the Wise, passing off his daughter Anna as the French king, gave her a dowry on a wooden plaque, which is believed to have survived to this day. In any case, hard copies were taken from her. It was called the “Book of Veles” and narrated about the times before the Rurik dynasty. It is assumed that, sending this book to Europe, Yaroslav wanted to tell European civilization about the ancient history of Russia. According to the Veles book, in Russia for a very long time there was a clan of Bohumir, who had five children, including the sons of Seva and Rus, from whom the northerners and Russians came. Perhaps this was the beginning of how Russia became Russia, since in this legend there is a masculine name with the root “rus”, which later formed the basis of the name of the state “Rus”.
In Russia there were associations of tribes before Rurik
The Book of Veles repeatedly indicates that Russia as an association of Slavic (and possibly other) tribes has existed since ancient times. In this literary work, there are references to very ancient events when proto-Russian tribes went to Egypt, lived in the Carpathian region, reached the territory of present-day China, etc. Therefore, it is possible to consider the question of how Russia became Russia, not from the time of Rurik, but from earlier .
Nevertheless, modern history believes that it was this leader of the Varangian squad who became the first to unite the Slavic tribes during the period of civil strife and the attack of external enemies (in 862 AD). It is assumed that he was the grandson of the Novgorod prince (the son of a prince’s daughter), who invited him to rule in Novgorod due to the difficult situation and his own old age. Therefore, the theory that the Scandinavians created Russia is not considered very wealthy. If we turn to the Book of Veles, then we can find an indication that the ancient authors did not consider Rurik a Russian, they believed that he exercised his power by force. Perhaps the authors of the book belonged to a Slavic tribe that was at war with Novgorod, for whom the power of Rurik, who was also believed to have been baptized according to Christian traditions, was undesirable.
How did Russia become a sea power?
Initially, the Russian state was a set of settlements along the trade routes "from the Varangians to the Greeks", which Rurik helped to control with his squad. The centers of this quasi-state formation were Kiev and Novgorod. Around the 8th-9th centuries AD, the development of the territories of Central Russia (between the Volga and the Oka) began, which for several centuries was the periphery relative to Kievan Rus. After the Mongol conquests (in the 13th century), the importance of these lands increased, and a new center appeared here - Moscow, around which a new stage of consolidation of territories into the principality of Moscow began. Residents of this state formation participated in the discovery of new lands, including the upper reaches of the Kama, the banks of the Pechora, the Northern Dvina, and the White Sea. We can say that even in those days, the Russian state was a maritime power, although in waters without active international trade routes.
Successes of John the Fourth (Terrible) in the annexation of territories
In 1380, the Moscow army defeated the Mongol-Tatars, and a hundred years later on the Ugra River completely saved the Russian lands from the foreign yoke. At this point, the number of Russian lands already included Rzhev, Tula, Nizhny Novgorod, Veliky Ustyug and others. This is how Russia became such a big country in those days. The territorial successes of the predecessors were strengthened by the next ruler of Russia - Ivan the Fourth (Grozny). He annexed the vast lands of the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates to Moscow possessions. He left for the posterity a manustcript in which, perhaps, for the first time in the Old Slavonic language the name “Russia” appeared. This document is the first message of Ivan the Terrible to Prince Andrei Kurbsky, which is signed as "compiled in the reigning royal city of Russia, Moscow, on July 4, 7072 from the summer of the universe." Perhaps this is how Russia became Russia by name. Although it is worth noting that in the title of the second message of Grozny to Kurbsky, the tsar appears as a sovereign, the grand duke of “all Russia”, that is, the name “Russia” and “Russia” were used.
The largest state on the planet
In the future, the Russian state for several centuries continued mainly the growth of the territory. Even before Ivan the Fourth, Russian tsars managed to add the Pskov and Ryazan lands to their possessions. The upper reaches of the Oka and Vyazma were taken and returned from the Principality of Lithuania. At the beginning of the 16th century, the upper reaches of the Western Dvina and the entire Desna River basin became part of Muscovy, and it became the largest state of those times and is to this day. In the 80s of the 16th century, the active development of Siberia began. The cities of Tomsk, Tobolsk, Tyumen and Mangazeya were founded there, but the territories obtained in the Baltic states as a result of the Livonian War were lost by the end of the reign of the same John the Terrible.
How did Russia become a big country? It should be noted that the development of most of the new lands was mostly peaceful, since Siberian lands were relatively sparsely populated, and the population there, after the arrival of the Cossacks, began to actively surrender, for example, furs in exchange for goods of a higher level of civilization (weapons, etc.). ) But the history of our country is rich in military clashes during the development of predominantly western territories and the capture of some eastern countries. In the seventeenth century, Russia as a result of wars lost part of the land in the Smolensk region and Chernihiv region, however, in the 1950s, it received left-bank Ukraine and Zaporozhye. In the 1620-50s, an unprecedented leap was made in the development of Siberia - the Russians first went to the coast of the Yenisei, and then to the Sea of Okhotsk. However, many are interested in the question of how Russia became an empire.
The emperor rules the empire
It is believed that this event occurred during the reign of Peter the Great, who took the title of emperor in 1721 at the request of the Senate, after winning the Northern War. As a result of this military campaign, which lasted from 1700 to 1721, the Russian state included Karelia, Izhora, Estonia and Livonia, the southern part of Finnish lands before Vyborg, the city of St. Petersburg was founded. Peter the Great established trade relations with European states and made his country a maritime power, this time in a strategically important water area.
They could not conquer the Chukchi peoples - they joined themselves
After Russia became an empire, its territorial "appetites" only increased. For the period from 1723 to 1732, the Caspian lands are included in its composition. At the same time, the development of Altai, lands along the Yaik River, begins. In the twenties of that century, the Chukchi peoples voluntarily joined the Russian Empire (previously Russian Cossacks could not conquer them three times), then Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands. In the second half of the eighteenth century, as a result of the Russo-Turkish wars, the empire received the Sea of Azov, Crimea, the Black Sea region, and after the division of the Commonwealth - Lithuania, Belarus, Kurland and North-Western Ukraine. At the end of the century, part of Kazakhstan, Alaska and Southern Altai join Russia.
Nineteenth Century - Maximum Territory
In the nineteenth century, Russia had both increments and loss of territories. How did Russia become Russia these days, taking into account those events? The “acquisitions” of that time include the accession of Finland, Dagestan, Bessarabia, part of Poland, and Western Georgia. Then Armenia, part of the territories of Azerbaijan and another “portion” of Kazakh lands (the so-called Elder Zhus) entered the Russian lands. In the second half of the century, the Russian Empire reached its maximum historical size - it includes the North Caucasus, Central Asia, part of Xinjiang (temporarily, in the 60s). In addition, Moscow received a protectorate over the territory of present-day Tuva (Uryankhai lands), was entrenched on the Amur, in Primorye, on Sakhalin. In compensation for the latter, Japan then received the Kuril Islands (Sakhalin switched to Japan again as a result of the war of 1904-1905, but not for long by historical standards). In 1867, Alaska was also lost in connection with a deal concluded with America.
In the twentieth century, the Russian Empire, which arose (and then disintegrated) the Soviet Union, was either gaining or losing territory. It is worth mentioning the loss of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Finnish, Polish, Bessarabian territories after the First World War and the receipt of the Kuril Islands, South Sakhalin, Kaliningrad Region following the Second World War. During the mid-century military operations, the Republic of Tuva officially entered the USSR. And in 1991, after the separation of the former Soviet republics, the current Russia was obtained.
Common lands and genes
How did Russia become one big country? During the development of the territories, various ethnic groups and peoples who lived on them (and arrived in those places) entered into trade and military unions, as well as marital relations, which entailed the mixing of genes. Today, R1a 1a is a fairly common genetic type in Russia, which is massively distributed in Central Russia and Southern Siberia, which once again emphasizes the unity of peoples not only at the territorial, but also at the genetic level.