Russia Travel Guide

From 1613 until the Revolution of 1917, the Romanov dynasty ruled Russia. Peter the Great’s reign from 1689-1725 included some major reforms, including reorganising government along European lines, but the Romanov period was also about building the Russia we know today, with Estonia, Latvia, Crimea, Ukraine, Georgia and what later became Belarus, Moldova and some of Poland, all acquired or conquered.

In the late 18th century, Russia joined forces with European coalitions to defeat Napoleon, but the liberal ideas brought home from Europe by army officers who fought in the war fed into a 19th century characterised by attempts to rein in the power of the Romanovs.

Russia’s 20th century was turbulent. By 1903, the Bolshevik party was founded and World War I segued – and partially provoked – the Revolution of 1917. Civil War with the White Russians followed, until the Soviet Union was born in 1922 and Stalin began his rise, ruling the entire country with conservative and Russo-centric polices and ordering his real and perceived enemies murdered.

Russia fought alongside the allies in WW2, but the Cold War followed hard on its heels, as the Soviet Union consolidated its power in Eastern Europe and promoted pro-Soviet revolution. Stalin died in 1953, but the Communist Party remained politically dominant and relations with the West came to a head during the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. Nuclear war was averted, but in Russia a period of economic stagnation and corruption characterised Brezhnev’s subsequent rule, until Gorbachev became president in 1985. He sought to reboot the economy and free-up political debate, but eventually lost control of the reform process, and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

The newly independent Russia was dogged by the rise of oligarchs – businessmen who got rich quick with the crash privatisations of state-owned enterprises – and by conflict with Chechnya. Yeltsin was president for most of the 1990s, despite failing health, and in 1999 Putin took over buoyed by popularity over a major military campaign against Chechen rebels. Since then, Putin has been either President or Prime Minister, and his second presidency, since 2012, has featured a crackdown on civil liberties, war in the Crimea, intervention in Syria and, allegedly, even in the US presidential election of 2016.