Russia

**Russia**, oficially the **Russian Empire** is a sovereign nation stretching from Europe to Asia, and America via its dominion,  **Alyeska**. In its mainland boundaries, it limits to the west with  **Norway**,  **Finland**,  **Courland**, the  **United Baltic Duchy**, and the  **Republic of the Three Nations**, while to the south it limits with  **Georgia**,  **Azerbaijan**, the russian protectorates of  **Khiva** and  **Bukhara**, the  **Turkestan Clique**,  **Mongolia** and the russian protectorate of  **Manchuria**. It also limits with  **Ethiopia** and  **France** via the colony of **Sagallo**. It is an absolute monarchy lead by **Nicholas II** as **Emperor and Autocrat of All Russias**. As one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in Europe, and clinging to the most reactionary ideals, it is prone to social unrest.

## History

***For history prior to 1776, read Russian Empire on Wikipedia.***

### **Reign of Catherine the Great**

**Catherine the Great** was a German princess who married **Peter III**, the German heir to the Russian crown. After the death of Empress **Elizabeth**, she came to power when she conducted a coup d'état against her unpopular husband. She contributed to the resurgence of the Russian nobility that began after the death of **Peter the Great**. State service was abolished, and Catherine delighted the nobles further by turning over to them most state functions in the provinces. She also removed the tax on beards, instituted by **Peter the Great**.

**Catherine the Great** extended Russian political control over the lands of the **Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth**. Her actions included the support of the **Targowica Confederation**. But the cost of her campaigns added to the burden of the oppressive social system, which required serfs to spend almost all of their time laboring on their owners' land. A major peasant uprising took place in 1773, after Catherine legalised the selling of serfs separate from land. Inspired by Cossack named **Yemelyan Pugachev**, and proclaiming "Hang all the landlords!", the rebels threatened to take **Moscow** before they were ruthlessly suppressed. Instead of imposing the traditional punishment of drawing and quartering, Catherine issued secret instructions that the executioners should carry the death sentences quickly and with a minimum of suffering, as part of her effort to introduce compassion into the law. She also ordered the public trial of **Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova**, a high nobleman, on charges of torture and murder of serfs. These gestures of compassion garnered **Catherine** much positive attention from Europe in the Enlightenment age. But the specter of revolution and disorder continued to haunt her and her successors.

In order to ensure continued support from the nobility, which was essential to the survival of her government, **Catherine** was obliged to strengthen their authority and power at the expense of the serfs and other lower classes. Nevertheless, **Catherine** realized that serfdom must be ended, going so far in her *Nakaz* ("Instruction") to say that serfs were "just as good as we are" – a comment the nobility received with disgust. Catherine successfully waged war against the **Ottoman Empire** and advanced Russia's southern boundary to the Black Sea. Then, by plotting with the rulers of **Austria** and **Prussia**, she incorporated territories of the **Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth** during the **Partitions of Poland**, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. Russia had signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with the Georgians to protect them against any new invasion of their **Persian** suzerains. As part of this and her own political aspirations, **Catherine** waged a new war against **Persia** in 1796 after they had invaded **Georgia**; victorious, she established Russian rule over it and expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus. By the time of her death in 1796, Catherine's expansionist policy had developed Russia as a major European power. This continued with **Alexander I**'s wresting of **Finland** from the weakened **Sweden** in 1809 and of **Bessarabia** from the **Principality of Moldavia**, ceded by the **Ottomans** in 1812.

### **Napoleonic Wars**

In 1805 **Britain** formed a coalition against **France** with the help of **Sweden**, **Russia** and **Austria**, with **Prussia** remaining neutral in the conflict. Before the creation of the coalition, **Napoleon** planned to invade **Britain** with an army of 180,000 men known as the Grande Armée stationed in Boulogne, but the naval defeat of **Admiral Villeneuve** in **Trafalgar** prevented French dreams of invading the British islands in 1805. After this disaster, **Napoleon** turned his attention to the continent, where on September 8 Austria invaded Bavaria with an army of 70,000 men that was surrounded and defeated by **Napoleon** in the **battle of Ulm** between October 16 and 19. With the **Austrian** main force north of the Alps destroyed and without Russian reinforcements in a short time, **Napoleon** advanced on the Danube and entered **Vienna** on November 13 while the Austrian army of **Franz I** backed north until entering with the Russian army of **Alexander I** and commanded by **Mikhail Kutúzov**. Both armies met in **Austerlitz**, where **Napoleon** exposed his right-wing flank to seek to attract an attack and then hit the flank of the enemy army. **Kutúzov** noted that the apparent French weakness was a trap, but the Russian and Austrian emperors believed that the French weakness was real and ordered an attack just where **Napoleon** thought, resulting in a disaster and **Napoleon**'s greatest victory. After Austerlitz, **Austria** signed the Treaty of Presburg and left the coalition on December 26, through which **Austria** transferred **Venice** to **Napoleon**'s Italian puppet and **Tyrol** to **Bavaria**. After the capitulation of **Austria**, **Britain** and **Russia** pursued a peace agreement with **France**, but **Napoleon** had other plans.

After the occupation of **Berlin**, the king of Prussia agreed to capitulate to the **French** and join his bloc after **Saxony** and the rest of the German states did. **Napoleon** agreed to return part of the soldiers and weapons with the intention of using the Prussians as cannon fodder against Russian armies that had penetrated the country from **Poland**. The Russian army was defeated in **Eylau** on February 7, 1807 mostly by the French and Russian Tsar **Alexander I** agreed to sign a treaty with Napoleon, known as the peace of Tilsit in March 1807, agreeing that **Prussia** would remain as an ally of **France** with part of its territory ceded to the new **Duchy of Warsaw**. Several Prussian generals went into exile in Russia after the peace of Tilsit, keeping secret contact between the King of Prussia and the Tsar.

Given the situation in **Spain**, **Austria** declared war on **France** on February 6, 1809, starting a new coalition to which **Sweden** joined. **Austria** had a poorly prepared army at that time, but **Napoleon** quickly left **Spain** to face them. On April 9 an insurrection broke out in Tyrol against the Bavarians and their French allies, at which point the **Austrians** advanced on **Bavaria**. The Austrians arrived in Abensberg before Napoleon could react and threatened to take Regensburg. Napoleon managed to **defeat the Austrians** in that town on April 20, to receive news shortly after from St. Petersburg, where the Russian Tsar had declared war on France. The previous day Austro-Russian forces defeated the Polish army in the **Battle of Raszyn**, managing to conquer all of **Poland** in a matter of days. Seeing the situation, the king of Prussia decided to change sides (in this story **Stein**'s mail is not intercepted and **Prussia** is not forced to sign the humiliating convention of September 1808) and began attacking and harassing French forces in its territory, which were partly isolated by the pronouncement of **Ferdinand von Schill** in Dodendorf where **Westphalia**'s army switched sides, and a parallel uprising broke out in **Brunswick**.

By late 1810, confidence in **Napoleon** was beginning to weaken and when he returned to Paris a conspiracy forged by radical republicans was executed. Upon returning from Versailles a horse carriage passed by and the emperor was shot 3 times. **Napoleon** was hospitalized but his wounds were too serious and he died on January 2, 1811. Marshal **Soult**, who was in Paris, tried to assume the regency and mediate a ceasefire agreement with the coalition. With the death of **Napoleon** the armies of the Coalition broke the French defenses on the Rhine and the French reserve forces were defeated in the **Battle of Châlons-sur-Champagne** on March 14, after which **Soult** decided to surrender to the coalition and these triumphantly entered Paris on April 17, 1811, ending the Napoleonic wars.

### **The Southern Loss**

**Alexander I** helped **Russia** to recover through some reforms mirrowing his father, undoing some of the work **Catherine the Great** made and supporting the liberals. He embarked into a war with **Persia** to win influence over central Asia, which got in the way of Ottoman and British interests on the region. After the war had been won, liberals started to increment their presence in the newly occupied territories.

After the mysterious death of **Alexander I**, his successor **Nicholas I of Russia** started a campaing to supress liberal movements on Central Asia, which created antagonism between the conservative oligarchy that was installed on the reign of **Alexander I**. The alliance between Paris, London and Constantinople was formed due to the deteriorated relationships with St Petersburg and soon transformed onto the **War of the Black Sea** (1851-1855) which ended with a crushing defeat for the Russian side, which meant an abandonment for future Balkan expansion plans. Political factions blamed one another, and although Russia retained a lot of political influence overall, shown with the incorporation of Outer Manchuria in 1858, the political situation was irreconciliable.

### **Point of No Return**

In 1861 Tsar **Alexander II** abolished the serfdom in support of the Russian liberals. By this point the oligarchy had well organised against the modern policies applied after the southern loss on central Asia. East european ethnicities and cultures meshed together with peasants fearing famine to gain independence from the Russian crown and so a rebellion started against the Tsar to take the throne, thus they joined the conservative side. The loyals to the crown were mainly liberals, which consisted of the main ramifications of the army, though many left. A civil war started.

**Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufmann** left Central Asia and joined the Ucranian forces leading them over the Caucasus, isolating Russian reserves on the Georgian-Armenian border, capturing Ucranian territory and resources to give to the **Army of the Three Nations**. **Jarosław Dąbrowski**, another general, led a polish division 648 kilometers deep into Russian territory, as well as arming civilians with Russian equipment from raids with squads using guerilla warfare tactics, but he unfortunately died in 1862 by a stray bulley fired from a skirmish outside Orsha, he was remembered as a hero by the Polish people. By 1863 the conservatives already controlled the Russian western mainland, but Saint Petersburg still stood as a liberal stronghold, this ended when in 1865 general **Ivan Davidovich Lazarev**, backed by Baltic German and Estonian soldiers led by **Franz Eduard von Tottleben** and Finnish forces from the north besieged Saint Petersburg, capturing the last resisting point in northern Russia.

The war was ended with the siege of Vladivostok in 1868 with a combined terrestial and maritimal offensive on the city.

### **Alexander III**

The conservatives once in power made Alexander III the Tsar, as he was a recalcitrant conservative, being Russia's pillar of stability after the civil war, with ideals of revenge against Turkey aiming for the **Caucasus**. Soon, his beligerant policies made the **Second War of the Black Sea** (1872-1878) start. He used Romania to attack from the Balkans, combined with a front in the Caucasus and support for arab rebels, which made the Ottoman government to fall. Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece joined forces with Russia to take land from the Ottoman Empire, whilist France, the British Empire and Italy, invaded Turkey to cointain once again the Russian forces. Through chaos, the French, British and Italian coallition takes control over the Middle East and imposes a government in Anatolia. In 1876 the bulgarian bellic attitude made Greece, Albania and Servia abandon the Russian side, the next year the Russian troops are expelled from the Caucasus region.

In 1878 Alexander is forced to accept peace, white peace for the empire. In the decade of 1880, Russia consolidates its domain over Central Asia, while it maintains a process of commercial expansion and boosts the manufacture of military equipment. The next great military intervention wouldn't be conceived until 1906, after the decay of the Qing dinasty. Inner Manchuria is occupied and made into a protectorate in 1907 under the leadership of the Aisin-Gioro house.

### **Nicholas II**

In 1909 Nicholas II inherits the throne from his father. Timid, he promoved a process of moderate liberalism from the beginning of his reign, limited by the conservative oligarchy. Few after that, he names Piotr Stolypin as the Ministry of Interior.