From Peter the Great's proclamation of empire in 1721 through Catherine the Great's conquests, the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, the golden age of Russian literature, the emancipation of the serfs, rapid industrialization, and the revolution of 1905, to the Great War and the fall of the Romanovs in 1917. Slide across the years to read the major events of two centuries of imperial Russia.
After victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, the Senate confers on Peter I the title 'Emperor of All Russia', formally founding the Russian Empire.
From Peter the Great's proclamation of empire in 1721 through Catherine the Great's conquests, the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, the golden age of Russian literature, the emancipation of the serfs, rapid industrialization, and the revolution of 1905, to the Great War and the fall of the Romanovs in 1917. Slide across the years to read the major events of two centuries of imperial Russia.
After victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, the Senate confers on Peter I the title 'Emperor of All Russia', formally founding the Russian Empire.
Peter issues the Table of Ranks, ordering state service into fourteen parallel grades and basing status on merit and office rather than birth.
Peter dies without naming an heir, opening an era of palace coups in which the imperial guards repeatedly make and unmake rulers.
Under Empress Elizabeth, the scholar Mikhail Lomonosov helps found Moscow University, a milestone in Russian science and higher learning.
A German-born princess, Catherine overthrows her husband Peter III in a guard coup and begins a thirty-four-year reign as Catherine the Great.
Victory in the Russo-Turkish War gives Russia a foothold on the Black Sea and a claimed right to protect Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
The Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev, claiming to be the murdered Peter III, leads a vast revolt of Cossacks, serfs, and peoples of the Urals before being captured and executed.
Catherine annexes the Crimean Khanate, the last remnant of the Golden Horde, securing the northern Black Sea coast and founding the naval base of Sevastopol.
In the third partition, Russia, Prussia, and Austria erase Poland-Lithuania from the map, with Russia taking the largest share in the east.
Napoleon's Grande Armée invades Russia, fights the bloody battle of Borodino, and enters a Moscow set ablaze, before a catastrophic winter retreat destroys the army.
Tsar Alexander I leads the victorious coalition into Paris and, at the Congress of Vienna, shapes the post-Napoleonic order and the Holy Alliance.
On the accession of Nicholas I, liberal army officers rise in Saint Petersburg demanding a constitution, but the revolt is swiftly crushed.
Alexander Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian literature, dies after a duel, at the height of a great age of Russian poetry and prose.
A quarrel over the holy places escalates into war with the Ottomans, Britain, and France, who besiege the great naval base of Sevastopol.
Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom, freeing some twenty-three million peasants in the greatest single act of social reform in Russian history.
Russia sells Alaska to the United States for 7.2 million dollars, withdrawing from North America as it pushes deeper into Central Asia.
Victory over the Ottomans in 1877-1878 lets Russia dictate the Treaty of San Stefano, creating a large Bulgaria and confirming the independence of Balkan states.
The reforming 'Tsar Liberator' is killed by a bomb of the revolutionary group People's Will, on the very day he had approved a tentative reform.
Work begins on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the spine of a rapid industrial drive that would link Moscow to the Pacific across more than 9,000 kilometers.
Troops fire on peaceful petitioners outside the Winter Palace, igniting a year of strikes, mutinies, and unrest that forces the tsar to grant a parliament.
Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin combines harsh repression with land reforms meant to create a class of independent, conservative peasant farmers.
In defense of Serbia, Russia mobilizes against Germany and Austria-Hungary, plunging the empire into a vast and ruinous war.
Bread riots and mutiny in Petrograd force Nicholas II to abdicate, ending three centuries of Romanov rule and the Russian Empire itself.