Russian History

general

Chkalov most commonly denotes Vasily Chkalov (1904–1938), a celebrated Soviet test pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union, and to places or items named after him. The term is wide...

history

St Petersburg—known as Petrograd in 1914–1918 and again as Leningrad after 1924—was a focal city of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and the subsequent civil war through th...

history

The capital of the Russian Empire was Moscow until 1712, when Peter the Great moved it to St. Petersburg, which remained the political, administrative, and cultural center until...

biography

Anastasia Romanov, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra, is remembered for a thoughtful, spirited personality that stood out even within a tightly bou...

culture-and-society

Russian culture and food reflect a large, multiethnic country with a history of Orthodox Christianity, imperial expansion, Soviet modernization, and contemporary urban life. Tra...

Flags & Symbols

The Russian tricolor of white, blue, and red was used long before the Soviet Union. First adopted as a merchant flag under Peter the Great and later used by the early Russian Re...

biography

Was Peter the Great a good leader? He modernized Russia through sweeping administrative, military, and cultural reforms while exercising authoritarian control that caused human...

people

Anastasia commonly denotes Anastasia Romanov, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, whose life, disappearance, and disputed fate have generated persistent public...

history

The Rasputin cache refers to collections of archival materials, intelligence records, and personal documents related to Grigory Rasputin’s role in late Imperial Russia. This e...

history

In the years following the October Revolution, Jewish communities across the former Russian Empire confronted heightened vulnerability as state power shifted amid civil war and...