The Duchy of served as the center for the liberation effort beginning in the fourteenth century against Mongol domination of Russia.
Under , who claimed succession from the old Rurik dynasty and the old Kievan days, a large part of Russia was freed from the Mongols after 1462.
Russian tsars insisted that Russia had succeeded Byzantium as a "" with all that this implied in terms of grandeur and expansionist potential.
, called the Terrible, continued the policy of Russian expansion with emphasis on confirming the power of the tsarist autocracy.
Russian nobles were called .
Peasants, called , were recruited to migrate to uninhabited lands in southern Russia where they combined agriculture with daring military feats on horseback.
The tsars imported Italian artists and craftsmen to design church buildings and the magnificent royal palace in the in Moscow.
Following the death of Tsar Ivan IV, Russia entered a politically disturbed era known as the .
In 1613 an assembly of Russian nobles chose a member of the family as tsar.
The first Romanov tsar, , established internal order following the era of political disturbance.
Romanov abolished the assemblies of nobles and gained new powers over the Russian church.
The tsarist government exiled thousands of the "" attached to the former rituals and beliefs of the Orthodox Church to Siberia or southern Russia.
Tsar , son of Alexis, added a more definite interest in changing selected aspects of Russian economy and culture through imitation of Western forms.
Peter the Great moved his capital from Moscow to a new Baltic city that he named .
The eighteenth-century female ruler of Russia, , flirted vigorously with the ideas of the French Enlightenment and invited French philosophers for visits.
Three in 1772, 1793, and 1795 eliminated Poland as an independent state and gave Russia the lion's share of the spoils.
Russian peasants owed extensive labor service or to landlords or to the government.
, a Cossack chieftain who claimed to be the legitimate tsar, launched a rebellion against tsarist authority and promised to abolish serfdom, taxation, and military conscription.
In 1500, , formed by a union with Lithuania, was the largest state in Eastern Europe aside from Russia.
