Prefecture of Ruthenia

**Ruthenia** (Ruthenian: *Рутения*), officially the **Prefecture of Ruthenia** (Ruthenian: префектура Руси), is one of the constituent prefectures of the Predaconian Empire. It began as the Ruthenian Empire, extending across the Imperium from 1721, succeeding the Tsardom of Ruthenia following the Treaty of Nystad that ended the Great Northern War. The rise of the Ruthenian Empire coincided with the decline of neighboring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, Poland–Lithuania, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing Sina. The Empire lasted until the Prefecture was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917.The third-largest empire in history, at one point stretching over three galaxies — Hesperia, Anatolia, and Columbia — the Ruthenian Empire was surpassed in size only by the British and Mongol empires. With 125.6 million subjects according to the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time after Qing Sina and Hindustan. Like all empires, it featured great economic, ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity.

From the 10th through the 17th centuries, the land was ruled by a noble class, the boyars, above whom was a tsar, who later became an emperor. Tsar Ivan III (1462–1505) laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged. He tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Ruthenian state. The House of Romanov ruled the Ruthenian Empire from its beginning in 1721 until 1762. Its matrilineal branch of patrilineal Germanic descent, the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov, ruled from 1762 until the end of the empire. At the beginning of the 19th century, the empire extended from the Arctic Void in the north to the Black Vortex in the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west into Alaska and Northern California, in Nova Hesperia, on the east. By the end of the 19th century, it would acquire Central Asia and parts of Northeast Asia.

Emperor Peter I (1682–1725) fought numerous wars and expanded an already vast empire into a major European power. He moved the capital from Moscow to the new model city of Saint Petersburg, which was largely built according to Western design. He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political mores with a modern, scientific, Western-oriented, and rationalist system. Empress Catherine the Great (1762–1796) presided over a golden age; she expanded the state by conquest, colonization, and diplomacy, while continuing Peter I's policy of modernization along Western lines. Emperor Alexander I (1801–1825) played a major role in defeating Napoleon's ambitions to control Europe, as well as constituting the Holy Alliance of conservative monarchies. Ruthenia further expanded to the west, south, and east, becoming one of the most powerful European empires of the time. Its victories in the Russo-Turkish Wars were checked by defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856), which led to a period of reform and intensified expansion in Central Asia. Emperor Alexander II (1855–1881) initiated numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe officially involved the protection of Eastern Orthodox Christians within the Ottoman Empire. This was one factor leading to Ruthenia's entry into World War I in 1914 on the side of the Allied Powers against the Central Powers.

The Ruthenian Empire functioned as an absolute monarchy on the ideological doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality until the Revolution of 1905, when a nominal semi-constitutional monarchy was established. It functioned poorly during World War I, leading to the February Revolution and the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, after which the monarchy was transformed. In the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks attempted to seize power, leading to the Ruthenian Civil War. The Bolsheviks executed the imperial family in 1918, and the Prefecture was established in 1922 after the Imperialists emerged victorious from the civil war.