Page 67 - Mongolia & the Gobi Desert

While still under the domain of the Mongols and with their connivance, the duchy of Moscow
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of all the Russias”.

In the beginning of the 16th century the Russian state set the national goal to return all
Russian territories lost as a result of the Mongolian invasion and to protect the southern
borderland against attacks of Crimean Tatars and other Turkic peoples.

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reign, Ivan annexed the Muslim polities along the Volga River and transformed Russia into
a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. By the end of the century, Russian Cossacks
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was largely peaceful, in sharp contrast to the build-up of other colonial empires of the time.

Imperial Russia

Peter the Great (ruled in 1689-1725) after defeating Sweden in the Great Northern War,
founded a new capital, Saint Petersburg. Peter succeeded in bringing ideas and culture from
Western Europe to a severely underdeveloped Russia. After his reforms, Russia emerged as a
major European power.

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of the great powers of Europe. In 1812, having gathered nearly half a million soldiers from
France, as well as from all of its conquered states in Europe, Napoleon invaded Russia but,
after taking Moscow, was forced to retreat back to Europe. Almost 90% of the invading forces
died as a result of on-going battles with the Russian army, guerillas and winter weather. The
Russian armies ended their pursuit of the enemy by taking his capital, Paris.

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attempted to curtail the tsar’s powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt (1825), which was
followed by several decades of political repression. Another result of the Napoleonic wars was
the incorporation of Bessarabia, Finland, and Congress Poland into the Russian Empire.

The perseverence of Russian serfdom and the conservative policies of Nicholas I of Russia
impeded the development of Imperial Russia in the mid-19th century. As a result, the country
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including Britain, France, Ottoman Empire, and Piedmont-Sardinia. Nicholas’s successor
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issued a decree abolishing serfdom in 1861. The Great Reforms of Alexander’s reign spurred
increasingly rapid capitalist development and Sergei Witte’s attempts at industrialization.

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