THE CRADLE OF RUSSIAN CIVILIZATION – the Kievan Rus - emerged in the latter part of the 9th century as a result of the unification of the East Slavic tribes that populated the Dnieper region. It was here, in Kiev, that the early Russians shaped into a single nation, later splitting up into the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Belorussians.

From the late 9th century onward, the country was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, founded, as legend has it, by a Varangian Konung, Rurik. He was called by the Slavs, and came over together with his brothers Sineus and Truvor (or, according to some historians, with his immediate fam­ily and retinue). Hence the name Rus, as the Chronicles will have us believe: "These Varangians called themselves Russians, like some are known as Swedes, others as Normans, and still others as Goths..."

Russia occupied vast expanses stretching from the left-hand tributaries of the Vistula to the Caucasian foothills, from Taman and the lower currents of the Danube to the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. An event of great historic significance was the Christianization of Russia by Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich in 988.

Early Russia expanded, building up its strength in the struggle with Byzantium, the Varangians, and the nomads of the steppes of the Black Sea coast. It rose to primacy during the reign of Prince Yaroslav Mudry [the Wise] (1019-1054), who introduced the first code of laws, under the title "Pravda Russkaya," or "Russian Truth." At that time, the Kievan Rus became the largest and one of the most culturally developed states in medieval Europe. However, the growing political and economic independence of its cities and the conflicts between its feudal rulers caused disunity and strife, eventually leading to the disintegration of the Kievan Rus in 1132.

The largest states to emerge following the breakup of the Kievan Rus were the Vladimir - Suzdal and Galicia - Volyn principalities and the so-called Novgorod Republic.

Beginning in the 13th century, the Russian lands were invaded repeatedly by the hordes of Genghiz Khan and his successors. They ruined Russian cities and imposed a trib­ute on the Russian princes. The Mongol-Tartar Yoke lasted for two and a half centuries.

The German feudal lords took advantage of the Rus weakness in that period to capture its Baltic provinces. The Swedes, too, set out eastward, but were hatted in 1240 in a battle on the Neva River by Russian Prince Alexander Yaroslavich, whose victory in that battle earned him the name Nevsky [of the Neva]. In 1242, Alexander Nevsky routed the Teutonic knights on the ice of Lake Chudskoye.

Starting in the 14th century, Muscovy grew in impor­tance as the center of the Russian principalities. The political advances of Prince Ivan Kalita in gaining inde­pendence from the Golden Horde were consolidated by the victory of his grandson. Prince Dmitry Donskoy, over Mamai at the Battle of Kutikovo in 1380. However, the Mongol-Tartar Yoke was not completely thrown off until 1480.

From the second half of the 15th century, the forma­tion of a centralized state began around Moscow. The new state took in major Russian cities and later peoples of the Volga area, the Urals, and Siberia. Grand Prince Ivan III declared himself successor to the Byzantine Emperors and claimed the status of the "Third Rome" for Muscovy. His grandson, Ivan the Terrible, who reigned from 1547 through 1584, was the first Russian Grand Prince to be crowned Tsar. Infamous for his policy of terror against the nobles and boyars, the "Oprichnina," he laid the foundations of the Russian autocracy, carrying out important reforms in the system of government, the judicial system, the army and the Church.

Shortly after the death of Ivan the Terrible, the country plunged into the crisis known as the Time of Troubles, which was caused by the absence of a rightful successor to the Russian throne. The situation was aggravated by Polish and Swedish invasions. In 1612, the invaders were fought out of Moscow by a militia force led by Prince Pozharsky and Nizhni Novgorod commoner Minin. In 1613, a Zemsky Sobor, or Council of the Land, elected as Tsar Mikhail Fyo-dorovich, the first representative of the Romanov dynasty, which was to rule Russia for more than 300 years.

Throughout the 17th century, the country made further territorial gains in wars with | foeczpospolita, Sweden, the Ottoman Empire, and the Crimean Khanate. The most important of these gains was Ukraine, which was united 'Aith Russia by the decision of the Pereyaslavskaya Rada [or Assembly] in 1654.

A crucial era in Russian national history was the reign of Peter the Great (1682-1726), who effected a fundamental restructuring of the key spheres of Russian life. The Tsar divided the country into provinces, instituted the Senate as the supreme legislative body and placed the Colleges in charge of individual sectors. He also replaced the Patriarchate with tne Synod (to administer the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church) and introduced the Table of Ranks establishing a hierarchy of military, civil and court ranks.

During Peter the Great's reign, manufacto­ries, smelters and mining plants sprang up; artillery, navigation and medical schools appeared; the Naval Academy and the Academy of Sciences were opened; conscription was introduced; a regular army was created; and a fleet was built. Peter introduced a new calen­dar and ordered his subjects to wear German-style clothes and wigs, going as far as person­ally cutting off the long beards and broad caf­tan sleeves of those boyars who opposed the innovations. The Russian capital was shifted to St. Petersburg, a city built on the Neva marshes by the serfs forcibly driven there.

These stupendous reforms resulted in Russia's evolving into a powerful militaryfeudal state - an absolute monarchy based on a maximally centralized system of government and a strict regulation of all sides of societal life. Despite their being in many ways useful and wise, Peter's reforms decided, for many years to come, the nation's historical course, that of autocracy and despotism.

Russia saw a further strengthening of the foundations of the monarchy during the reign of Catherine II (1762-1796), marked by an official proclamation of the policy of Enlightened Absolutism and, at the same time, by suppression of all opposition. Under Catherine the Great, Russian aristocracy came to enjoy broader privileges, and the peasant riot led by Don Cossack Yemelyan Pugachov was crushed brutally.

The boundaries of Russia - proclaimed an Empire in 1721, under Peter I - stretched out still further. In the 18th century, the Empire took in vast expanses of Siberia and the Far East, Izhora, Estonia, Latvia, a part of Lithuania, and the right-bank Ukraine, Belorussia, the Crimea, and the area lying to the north of the Black Sea (Novorossiya).

The country entered the 19th century in the luster of imperial grandeur, but with a heavy burden of evergrowing domestic problems. Inthefirsthalfofhis reign Peter's great grandson Alexander I (he ruled from 1801 through 1825) was leaning towards moderate liberal reforms, but then handed over much of his power to his brutal favorite Alexei Arakcheyev, who introduced the discipline of the rod into the army and forced hundreds of thousands of serfs into military settlements. It was Alexander I who sent the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin into exile for his freedom-loving poems.

The 1812 war was one of the most exhausting wars in Russian history. The troops of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte took Moscow, abandoned by its residents and the Russian Army, but soon had to retreat: overcome by the chill, hunger, and crippling blows dealt by the Russians. In 1813, the Russian army arrived in Berlin and Hamburg, and in 1814 it entered Paris.

Russia's victory in the 1812 war, whicn was made possible by the valor, talent and wisdom of Russian military commanders under Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, boosted the national pride of the Russian people and increased Russia's authority in international affairs. Nonetheless, the key social problems, unsolved due to the ruling class' disastrous conservatism, soon began to shatter the foundations of the state.

In 1825, during the intermission following the death of Alexander I, St. Petersburg witnessed the Decembrist revolt - Russia's first armed revolutionary action. Its par­ticipants (aristocratic young officers who had fought bravely in the past war) demanded the abolition of serfdom and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy (or even of a republic). Nicholas I, who had just ascended to the throne then (years of reign 1825-1855), quelled the revolt by executing some of its leaders and sending the others to Siberia. He also instituted a political police force to suppress all demonstrations offreethinking.

The defeat of Russia in the Crimean war (1853-1856) against Turkey and its allies (England, France and the Kingdom of Sardinia) clearly showed the political backwardness and economic impotence of the serf-dominated country. Reforms could not be delayed any further.

Alexander II the Liberator (years of reign 1855-1881), who took over for Nicholas I, abolished serfdom and effected a number of other important reforms. Among otherthings, he created elective bodies of local self-government known as "zemstvos," established the principles of publicity and competition in trials, introduced juries and justices of the peace, reorganized - on the basis of all-estate conscription - the Army and the Navy, and democratized the sys­tem of education. There was a boost of industry under Alexander II: many plants, factories, and railroads were built in that period; urban construction became more extensive. The number of workers grew.

The radically-minded part of society - the intelligentsia not of noble birth, in the first place - argued that the reforms underway were inadequate. The populist movement rapidly gained strength during this period. Its rhetoric called for a peasant revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy. The more extremist of the groups belonging to this movement embarked on the path of political terror, with Alexander II becoming one of its victims.

Alexander II was succeeded by Alexander III. During his reign (1881-1894), efforts were made to stabilize the system of government through police and administrative actions. However, his "counterreforms" (among them the restoration of censorship, the abolition of universities' autonomy, and the introduction of bureaucratic surveillance over local and municipal administration) only widened the gap between the top of the monarchical regime and the populace dissatisfied with their living conditions. In the 19th century, the territory of Russia continued to expand. This was done by annexing neighboring lands - either at their inhabitants' own free will or through the use of force. In this period the Russian Empire annexed Transcaucasia, the Northern Caucasus, Finland, Bessarabia (presently Moldova), a greater part of Poland, the Amur and Maritime regions, Sakhalin Island and Central Asia. At the same time, Russia incurred one of the largest territorial losses in its history when the government sold Alaska, discovered by Russian explorers in the 17th-18th centuries, and the Aleutian Islands to the United States for a ridiculously small, by today's standards, sum of money - seven million dollars. At the same time, the 20th century has been marked by sanguine mutinies and devastating warfare never before seen by unfortunate Russia, which is all too familiar with human tragedy. The historically obsolete autocratic Tsarist regime showed its absolute inefficiency and incapacity for governing the country. But society failed to find a reasonable alternative acceptable to the majority of the citizens. The words written about Russia in the Chronicles – “Our land is vast and abundant, but there is no order on it” -  proved to be true again and again.

The collapse of the autocracy was precipitated not only by sharpened political, economic and social controversies, but also by the personal qualities of Emperor Nicholas II, who reigned in Russia from 1894 through 1917. The last Russian monarch was neither a man of resolution nor one of political acumen. He surrounded himself with all sorts of scoundrels, like the "seer" and "medicine man" Grigory Rasputin, under whose influence he made decisions crucial for his country.

At the turn of the century, a social democratic party emerged in Russia (it would later be renamed Communist). In its strategy, it relied on the philosophical and economic teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin became the leader of the party's most radically-oriented faction, the Bolsheviks.

The first Russian revolution, dubbed the "dress rehearsal of the October revolution," broke out in 1905, and Nicholas II was forced to make rorcessions. He issued a manifest on civil rights. A parlament (the State Duma) was elected, and the agrarian reforms that would go down in history as Stolypin's got underway. Tensions were eased, but only for the time being.

In 1914, Russia entered World War I on the side of the Entente. The economic chaos, devastation and food crisis in the aftermath of the war precipitated a revolutionary denouement. The three-century reign of the Romanov dynasty was coming to a close. But the nation failed to seize the unique historic chance and embark on a democ­ratic course of development. The February revolution of 1917 aroused hope for a free and happy future, but it was not to be. The October revolution followed, and the power was seized by the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

An unprecedented communist experiment began, which was to last over seventy years. The country turned into a totalitarian state, fit to a still lesser degree for nor­mal, prosperous life than the autocratic Russia. Citizens were denied elementary human rights and freedoms, and the powers that be relied in their policies on the physical and moral enslavement of millions of people.

Scoring a victory over its political adversaries in the destructive fratricidal Civil War (1918-1920), the new regime began the realization of its ambitious plans to fundamentally recontruct society.

Before that, in 1917-1918, the country underwent nationalization: the state gained control of major industries, transportation, banks, foreign trade. In 1921, so as to boost the devastated economy, the radical methods of "War Communism" were replaced with a somewhat more liberal "New Economic Policy" (known by the acronym NEP), which granted certain privileges to private entre­preneurs, though only for a short time span.

In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed and proclaimed by the Bolsheviks as "a state of proletarian dictatorship." With the creation of the USSR, the territorial integrity of the greater part of the former Russian Empire was restored on a new political and legal foundation.

After Lenin's death in 1924, the levers of the party and state governance were taken over by Joseph Stalin (Dzhugashvili), who was to go down in history as one of the most cruel tyrants of all times and nations. On pushing aside (and later eliminating physically) his principal political rival Trotsky, this man concentrated in his hands absolute, uncontrolled power.

In 1929-1936, within the framework of mass collectivization of agriculture, peasants were forcibly brought together into collective farms. Parallel to that, energetic attempts were made to industrialize the country. As a result, the Soviet Union managed to build up substantial economic potential. During the years of the first "pyatiletkas," or five-year plans (1929-1940), nine thousand industrial enterprises were put into operation, all of them, naturally, being state-owned.

The creation of the "mostjust social system ever" was accompanied by repression of unprecedented scope, inflicting suffering on millions of innocent people. Like Cronus who devoured his own children, the communist regime killed most of Lenin's associates and the most talented Red Army commanders.

Huge losses were incurred in that period by the intelli­gentsia (both "old" and "new," Soviet); and the kulaks, or the most industrious and therefore prosperous of peasants, were "eliminated as a class." The catastrophic consequences of Stalin's purges can still be felt in the country - not only at the psychological level, but also at the genetic one.

In 1941, the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, and the USSR entered World War II. TheStalinist regime proved to be unprepared to repulse the aggression.

Mere months after the beginning of military operations, German troops had managed to occupy vast territories in the western part of the country and to eventually approach Moscow. Only as a result of excruciating over­strain, and thanks to the mass heroism and self-sacrifice of the people, was the Soviet Union able to turn the course of events in its favor.

One of the most crucial moments in WWII was the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943), which ended in the encirclement and destruction of a 330,000-strong German army. In 1945, as a result of the Berlin operation, the Red Army occupied the Nazi capital, raising red flags over the Reichstag. Upon entering a war with Japan, it then routed the Japanese Quantung army.

The Soviet Union paid a very high price for the victory, however: about 27 million people perished, hundreds of cities and towns were destroyed, 70 thousand villages burnt down and over 30 thousand industrial enterprises ruined.

In 1939-1945, the borders of the country re-expanded westward. The Soviet Union re-annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had seceded after the October revolution, as well as Western Ukraine and Western Belarus (until then both belonged to Poland), some regions of Finland, Bessarabia (annexed in 1918 by Romania), Konigsberg (the center of eastern Prussia, now Kaliningrad) and adjacent lands. The Soviets also made a number of gains in Asia; Tuva in Southern Siberia, the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands in the Far East.

After the war, the Soviet Union became the political center of the socialist community, comprised of the communism-oriented nations of Eastern Europe and Asia, including a country with such gigantic demographic potential as China. The community was later joined by Cuba, looked upon as the outpost of communism in the Western Hemisphere.

Being a powerful geopolitical factor, the "world system of socialism," with Moscow as its leader, had an extraordinary influence in the international arena. It accounted for one-third of the world's total population and one-fourth of the globe's territory.

Siding with the "socialist camp" were also "socialist-oriented" countries, that is, developing countries that had embraced (in reality or in word only) communist ideals and, in reward, were receiving moral, material and military support from the USSR. The Kremlin's policy was supported, as far as was possible, by "fraternal communist and workers' parties" which functioned in practically all countries.

In military and political terms, the Soviet Union and its European satellites - Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and (till 1962) Albania - were united into the Warsaw Treaty Organization (the treaty was signed in 1953). Their economic union, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), was founded in 1949.

In 1949, the Soviet Union carried out a successful test­ing of its atomic bomb and became a nuclear power. In 1953, the USSR was the first to test a hydrogen bomb.

Partnership established between the Soviet Union and its western allies during WWII gave way to the Cold War - global confrontation between the two antagonistic political systems. In 1962, during the Caribbean Crisis, caused by an attempt to deploy Soviet missiles in Cuba, the Cold War nearly grew into a "hot" war. But although a global nuclear clash was avoided, international tensions were still high, increased by local conflicts with the participation of superpowers struggling for spheres of influence.

An arms race began. The US military intervention in Vietnam and Korea, the confrontation between the Arabs and Israel in the Middle East, the Soviet armed expeditions into Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979) added to the unstable, explosive political situation in the world. And even the significant mutual compromises reached in the '70s as part of the detente policy failed to bring stability.

After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the First Secretary of the Communist Party. With his assumption of power, favorable changes started to take place in the country. At the 20th and 22nd Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the new leader exposed the crimes of his predecessor (dubbed by critics as the personality cult) and released and rehabilitated the victims of repression from the labor camps. The "iron curtain" began to be slowly lifted, as thousands of visitors from all over the world gathered in Moscow for the World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957. A gradual cultural and spiritual emancipation, albeit a severely lim­ited one, started to make its presence felt.

The socalled thaw was not very lasting or stable, however, and in 1964 the conservative nomenclature headed by Leonid Brezhnev overthrew Khrushchev, accusing him of "subjectivism" and "voluntarism." The "iron curtain" came crashing back down, and with each passing year the country sunk deeper into the mire of the "period of stagnation." During this time (or, more precisely, hard times) the country was crippled by economic stagnation, intel­lectual and spiritual inertia, political apathy and the shat­tering of ideals.

The solemn promise that communism would soon come into being (it had been set for 1980) turned out to be nothing more than a propagandistic chimera. The USSR, although remaining one of the two military superpowers in the world, started to lose ground in the "Cold War" because of the bankruptcy of its economic, political and ideological systems. Under the constant pressure of exter­nal and internal problems, the regime with its helpless, aging leaders began to collapse.

Upon coming to power in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev made an attempt to breathe new life into the degradative system through the policies of "perestroika" and "glas-nost" (rebuilding and openness). With his blessing, the mass media began to publish sharply critical exposes and the first shoots of private initiative started to appear in the country's economy. The tenet on the "leading and organizational role of the CPSU" was struck from the Con­stitution.

However, the reforms instigated by Gorbachev were marked by duplicity and inconsistency, giving rise to ever growing popularity for the hitherto unknown Boris Yeltsin - a champion of deeper and more radical transformations.

The course of the reforms soon began to disgruntle the more orthodox members of the party apparatus, and in August 1991 a group of top government officials attempted a coup (creating the so-called State Emergency Commission - GKChP) with the goal of restoring the previ­ous order. Troops were brought into Moscow, but as the result of huge protest actions by the population (and the indecisiveness of the conspirators themselves) the attempted coup fell apart of its own accord. The failed putsch signified the end of 74 years of communist dicta­torship, and all the reigns of power were shifted into Yeltsin's hands.

The death of the communist regime was quickly followed by the crumbling of the unified multinational Soviet state. At the same time, outside the borders of the for­mer USSR the "world socialist system," left without a leader, soon disintegrated. The balance of power on the international arena suddenly took on a whole new shape; the world was no longer divided into two opposing camps - the "bipolar" world had ceased to exist. In the process the United States was relieved of its main geopolitical enemy, and NATO was given the chance to expand east­ward.

In December 1991 the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus made a very important decision about the official collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Each of the fifteen former Soviet republics had suddenly gained genuine independence, and began to carry out independent internal and foreign policies.

Despite the post-Soviet fervor, though, the fall of the USSR did not mean instant prosperity. Some of the nega­tive consequences were the disruption of its unified economic space and the weakening of traditional economic, scientific and technical, cultural and human ties. The mil­lions of Russians who lived in the other Soviet republics suddenly found themselves outside the boundaries of their own country, and in some cases were subjected to discrimination. In this regard, the efforts to facilitate reintegration processes are of extreme importance.

Beginning in 1992, the Russian leaders began to take decisive steps to democratize public life and to liberalize the economy. The mechanisms of a market economy were slowly implanted, free trade was permitted and state-owned property started to be privatized. The onward march of reforms, however, was obstructed by a heated battle between the legislative and executive branches of power: the Supreme Soviet, where the leftist and nation­alist forces (as well as other types of radical elements) called the tune, was trying to strip the president of a large part of his authority.

In September-October 1993 the situation came to log­gerheads with large-scale disturbances and armed skir­mishes in Moscow. Leaning on the support of democratic circles, Boris Yeltsin forcibly crushed all attempts at revolt and a civil war was avoided. With this victory, the road to reforms was cleared and a strong power emerged in the country. On the basis of a national referendum a new, democratic Constitution was adopted and elections to the State Duma held.

For the most part the situation in Russia was then sta­bilized, but the internal political environment was once again clouded by the events in the Northern Caucasus. Chechen separatists, having seized power in the republic, threw a direct challenge at Moscow. The attempts to sup­press the republic through the use of force led to many casualties, but were not crowned with success. In 1996 the Russian government was forced to withdraw its troops from Chechnya and to set down to solving the problem by way of peaceful negotiations and economic methods.

As mentioned earlier, the first stages of reform did not bring the abundant fruits expected by many: an econom­ic slump with all of its natural consequences (exuberant prices, unemployment and the impoverishment of the people) began to be felt throughout the country and sharp social contrasts, formerly unknown to people brought up in the communist spirit, started to make them­selves painfully felt. On the one hand, there was the unbe­lievable wealth of a handful of nouveau .rich and parvenu, and on the other, the depauperation of'the normal work­ing man.

Nonetheless, 1997 brought the country some hope. Inflation was practically overcome, and some signs of life began to be seen in the economy. Russia's international standing is growing, and it now holds a place in the "great eight" made up of the most highly-developed countries in the world. With each passing year the possibility of Russia returning to its totalitarian past becomes less and less viable. Free economy has taken strong root in the Russian soil, and besides the Russian people are tired of endless perturbations and shocks. The Russians want stability, and slowly but surely they are getting used to their new way of life.

Russia is a world power with some of the richest natural and economic resources in the world. Just as importantly, its spiritual and intellectual potential is also extremely high. All of this gives us the grounds to look to the future with confidence, knowing that in time Russia will be a flourishing country.