History UsefulNotes / TsaristRussia

** Ironically, a case could be made of the Reds also being TheRemnant, as after the first attempts at fighting with the untrained worker militias (the original Red Guards) failed quite spectacularly, LeonTrotsky, who was responsible for creating the Soviet military, had to resort to bringing the FormerRegimePersonnel aboard to help organize and train it. So, in the end, the new Red Army was essentially organized by the former Tsarist officers along the [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles former Imperial Army lines]]. The Reds, however, emphatically denied any succession, down to the InsistentTerminology (e.g., they rejected the word "officer" as too Tsarist and called their officers "commanders").

The Muscovite Tsardom began under the 15th-century grand prince Ivan III "The Great" (who used the ''tsar'' title only occasionally) and was established fully under his grandson, Ivan IV "The Terrible", who was crowned as a Tsar from the very beginning. It was a convoluted, very conservative realm that considered itself a successor state to the UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire.

Several famous Russian noble houses were the Romanovs (before they got royal status), the Godunovs, the Shuiskys, the Miloslavskys, the Golitzines, the Obolenskys, the Gagarins (no, not [[YuriGagarin that one]]),[[note]]Though coming from a peasant family from one of their former estates, he's likely to descend from the princely family's ''serfs'', taking the family name of one's former landlord being the common practice[[/note]], the Ignatiev.

To add insult to injury, the later emperors Alexander III (a very conservative giant of a man, a reactionary and [[TheAlcoholic a roaring drunk]], though a shrewd and cautious ruler and a good diplomat) and his son Nicholas II--a weak and indecisive ruler, who constantly varied his policy and was basically a [[OurPresidentsAreDifferent Tsar Focus Group]]--reversed many of these reforms. The fact that Alexander II had been thanked for his efforts by being blown to pieces probably had something to do with that. However it resulted in an impoverished country. Well, the economy was booming, but the political climate was stifling, the wealth distribution ''unbelievably'' skewed and the intellectual classes (''intelligentsiya'') widely believed the country to be a basket case ([[TheNewRussia sounds familiar?]])--which caused them to adopt a "the worse the better" attitude, and dive into the revolutionary ideas. A desire to take power away from the Tsar and his bureaucracy probably had something to do with radicalism too.

A state (well, a micronation) was created in the XXI century by Russian monarchists under the name of "Russian Empire". It originally claimed the atoll Suwarrow and also claimed ownership of the entire Antarctic (justifiable, since the continent was first discovered by a Russian expedition). Later it renamed itself "The Sovereign State of the Imperial Throne", dropped its claims on the atoll and found a Romanov descendant (Karl Emich zu Leiningen, a German prince related to the Romanovs) as a monarch. The micronation now tries (unsuccessfully, [[VetinariJobSecurity because Putin]]) to promote restoration of the monarchy in TheNewRussia.

As the old regime got into costly wars against Japan (1905) and the Central Powers (1914-1917) massive revolts broke out, culminating in the overthrow of the Tsar and the RedOctober. And the rest is the matter of [[HistoryOfTheUSSR another]] [[SovietRussia article]].

* ModernMajorGeneral: Russian military commanders during WorldWarOne

* UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles

* WorldWarOne: The war that doomed the Tsar and ruined the Russian Empire, leading to RedOctober.

* The 1928 film ''Film/TheLastCommand'', starring Emil Jannings, the plot of which revolves heavily around UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne and the last days of the regime.

Note that many Bolshevik revolutionaries were actually petty nobles and not urban commoners. Among those were the MoscowCentre founder Felix Dzerzhinsky and UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin himself[[note]]To put things into perspective, Dzerszhinsky came from impoverished Polish-Lithuanian nobility, while Lenin's father Ulyanov, was a school teacher and administrator who was ennobled by Alexander III when Lenin was twelve. Ilya Ulyanov's father Nikolay had been a freed serf.[[/note]]. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin was born a prince descended from the Rurikids. There is also a persistent theory that UsefulNotes/JosephStalin was a bastard son of the Polish-Russian noble and famous explorer Przhevalsky (as they show an uncanny likeness).

Note that many Bolshevik revolutionaries were actually petty nobles and not urban commoners. Among those were the MoscowCentre founder Felix Dzerzhinsky and UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin himself[[note]]To put things into perspective, Dzerszhinsky came from impoverished Polish-Lithuanian nobility, while Lenin's father Ulyanov, was a school teacher and administrator who was ennobled by Alexander III when Lenin was twelve. Ilya Ulyanov's father Nikolay had been a freed serf.[[/note]]. There is also a persistent theory that UsefulNotes/JosephStalin was a bastard son of the Polish-Russian noble and famous explorer Przhevalsky (as they show an uncanny likeness).

Then there was the Time of Troubles--a SuccessionCrisis-cum-CivilWar. Not only did Ivan the Terrible kill his son and crown prince in a fit of a blind rage, but his second son, the weak and simpleminded Feodor Ivanovich, was more interested in religion than in ruling the realm, and [[HeirClubForMen was childless]] to boot. The original Rurikid dynasty fell, and the Godunovs (relatives of Feodor's wife) took the throne. They didn't make it, and after an interregnum and a war with Poland, Romanovs (relatives of one of Ivan the Terrible's wives) became the tsars. In an interesting aside, during the Muscovite era, Russia was ruled by a double-decker aristocracy that consisted of two classes: the Boyars, who were the feudal rulers and councilors of the Tsar, and the Dvoryans, who served as military officers and civil servants, somewhat similar to the Japanese system where also existed two separate nobilities, based on the court aristocracy and the military class.

* Boris Godunov. The man who tried to found a new dynasty but failed. He was a good, shrewd ruler, and a kind one compared to Ivan the Terrible, but his reputation of a ManipulativeBastard didn't make the people like him, and famines of the worst kind happened during his reign.

* The Literature/ErastFandorin series of novels.

* Too many works of fiction involving GrigoriRasputin to list.

[[caption-width-right:350:In America your vote counts. [[RussianReversal In Tsarist Russia your Count votes]]! Or your Boyar, like on this Muscovite era picture.]]

* Groundbreaking StopMotionAnimation film ''Film/TheCameramansRevenge'' was actually ''made'' in Tsarist Russia, namely in 1912. It satirizes the cheesy melodramas that were popular in early Russian cinema.

* HiddenBackupPrince: The two Pseudo-Demetriuses (see above) claimed to be this, as did [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemelyan_Pugachev Yemelyan Pugachev]], who led the biggest popular uprising (1773-1775) during the reign of Empress Catherine II. He claimed that he was actually Peter III, who miraculously escaped the palace revolution staged by his consort, and thereby managed to increase his popular base. And in the 20th century a number of women pretended to be Princess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Nicholas II.

** Ironically, a case could be made of the Reds also being TheRemnant, as after the first attempts at fighting with the untrained worker militias (the original Red Guards) failed quite spectacularly, LeonTrotsky, who was responsible for creating the Soviet military, had to resort to bringing the FormerRegimePersonnel aboard to help organize and train it. So, in the end, the new Red Army was essentially organized by the former Tsarist officers along the [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles former Imperial Army lines]].

* UsefulNotes/{{Cossacks}}: Arguably the most famous aspect of Tsarist Russia and their military, though really a very tiny pecentage of the Russia's armies.

The 17th century was an age of riots and turmoil, and is still known to Russian historians as the ''Buntashny vek'' (The Age of Rebellions). The most notable rebellion of this century was one of Stepan Razin, an adventurous [[{{Cossacks}} Cossack]] {{pirate}} who tried to topple the throne of the tsars. The early 18th century was the time of the tsar UsefulNotes/PeterTheGreat, who was obsessed with transforming Russia into an European power and later replaced the "tsar" title with "Emperor" (but the word "tsar" remained in unofficial usage and was retained as a secondary title [[note]]The ''Emperor'' of All Russia was also ''Tsar'' of its vassal domains, such as Poland, Tatarstan and Crimea[[/note]]). The Muscovite period was over and the Imperial age began. Russia was westernized, Western customs and noble titles were introduced. Peter the Great dismissed the Boyar class and made the Dvoryans into the only nobles of the realm, introducing the Table of Ranks, a legal mechanism that allowed lower-class people to achieve nobility by military or civil service. Since then, the word "Dvoryanin" was the only word for "noble" in Russia.

* {{Main/Cossacks}}: Arguably the most famous aspect of Tsarist Russia and their military, though really a very tiny pecentage of the Russia's armies.

* Ivan IV, better known as UsefulNotes/IvanTheTerrible. Often portrayed as TheCaligula, he was more like a ruthless [[TheChessmaster Machiavellian tyrant]], not unlike Medici or Borgia, who struggled for absolute power with boyar factions. He became paranoid--and often, ProperlyParanoid--after a number of attempts to poison him, and he never hesitated to torture or execute his opponents. Infamously assaulted his pregnant daughter-in-law, which caused her to miscarry, and kill his son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich, in the same fit of rage. Ivan was definitely smart and, despite his ruthless brutality, his reign is a great one in Russian history books; he established the absolute monarchy and conquered Volga Region and Siberia. Ivan was called ''Grozny'', which has always been translated to "the Terrible", but is technically closer to "terrifying yet awesome", in the same way as a thunderstorm (''groza'' in Russian) is. [[PetTheDog Also notable for softening the attempts at the Christianization of the Turkic peoples under Muscovite rule]].

The 17th century was an age of riots and turmoil, and is still known to Russian historians as the ''Buntashny vek'' (The Age of Rebellions). The most notable rebellion of this century was one of Stepan Razin, an adventurous [[{{Cossacks}} Cossack]] {{pirate}} who tried to topple the throne of the tsars. The early 18th century was the time of the tsar UsefulNotes/PeterTheGreat, who was obsessed with transforming Russia into an European power and later replaced the "tsar" title with "Emperor" (but the word "tsar" remained in unofficial usage). The Muscovite period was over and the Imperial age began. Russia was westernized, Western customs and noble titles were introduced. Peter the Great dismissed the Boyar class and made the Dvoryans into the only nobles of the realm, introducing the Table of Ranks, a legal mechanism that allowed lower-class people to achieve nobility by military or civil service. Since then, the word "Dvoryanin" was the only word for "noble" in Russia.

* The setting of the 1972 British/Spanish horror film ''Horror Express'' (which is another work based off of the landmark 1938 science fiction story "Literature/WhoGoesThere" that [[Film/TheThingFromAnotherWorld 1951]] and [[Film/TheThing1982 1982]] ''The Thing'' adaptations were based off of.) Set on the Orient Express going from China to Moscow in 1906, it involves a body-possessing alien organism that starts off hidden in the frozen remains of an early hominid being transported by British archeologists.

Note that many Bolshevik revolutionaries were actually petty nobles and not urban commoners. Among those were the MoscowCentre founder Felix Dzerzhinsky and UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin himself[[note]]To put things into perspective, Dzerszhinsky came from impoverished Polish-Lithuanian nobility, while Lenin's father Ulyanov, was a school teacher and administrator who was ennobled by Alexander III when Lenin was twelve. Ilya Ulyanov's father Nikolay had been a freed serf.[[/note]]. There is also a persistent theory that JosephStalin was a bastard son of the Polish-Russian noble and famous explorer Przhevalsky (as they show an uncanny likeness).

* AllJewsAreAshkenazi: The Russian Empire had the highest population of Jews of any nation prior to the Holocaust and later the foundation of Israel. The only state that may have had more Jews was TheRomanEmpire. That being said, nearly all of them were Ashkenazi. Strangely, the Jews in Russia were somewhat of a recent phenomenon. While small communities had existed here or there before the 18th century, it was the Partitions of Poland in the mid and late 18th century that brought a large amount of Jews into the control of the Russian Empire. The Jews of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the heirs to an advanced society of high literary and urbanization never quite managed to find acceptance in the Russian Empire.

The Muscovite Tsardom began under the 15th-century grand prince Ivan III "The Great" (who used the ''tsar'' title only occasionally) and was established fully under his grandson, Ivan IV "The Terrible", who was crowned as a Tsar from the very beginning. It was a convoluted, very conservative realm that considered itself a successor state to the ByzantineEmpire.

Note that many Bolshevik revolutionaries were actually petty nobles and not urban commoners. Among those were the MoscowCentre founder Felix Dzerzhinsky and VladimirLenin himself[[note]]To put things into perspective, Dzerszhinsky came from impoverished Polish-Lithuanian nobility, while Lenin's father Ulyanov, was a school teacher and administrator who was ennobled by Alexander III when Lenin was twelve. Ilya Ulyanov's father Nikolay had been a freed serf.[[/note]]. There is also a persistent theory that JosephStalin was a bastard son of the Polish-Russian noble and famous explorer Przhevalsky (as they show an uncanny likeness).

* Catherine (Yekaterina) II, UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat, also known as The Semiramis of the North. Born Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, she was a German, Lutheran {{Princess}} who converted to the Orthodox Church and learned the Russian language upon her marriage to the future Peter III. She took the throne after a successful coup d'état staged with the help of the Imperial Guard and the murder of her husband, who according to the most popular theory was strangled by Count Alexey Orlov, brother of one of Catherine's lovers. Often described as "an enlightened despot", she massively expanded the Russian Empire, massively promoted Russian culture but squashed dissent. Catherine tended and tends to be admired abroad than at home, where many people prefer to refer to her as Catherine II rather than Catherine the Great. There are two main reasons for this: One, she was pals with prominent writers of the Enlightenment such as Diderot and Creator/{{Voltaire}}, who flattered her from afar, and two, although she paid lip-service to the idea of improving the lot of the serfs, she soon left them to the "mercies" of their lords and even took away their right to complain about their treatment. Rumors about her sex life persist as {{Urban Legend}}s, but do contain elements of truth.

* Creator/NikolaiGogol's ''Literature/DeadSouls'', ''The Inspector General'', ''The Nevsky Prospect'' etc. etc.

->''"May God bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us!"''

Aka the Russian Empire and before that, Czarist Russia ("Czar" or "Tsar" being a Slavic form of "Caesar", this title also existed in medieval Bulgaria and Serbia, but was most historically important in Russia). Massive in size (sometimes bigger than even the USSR was and at one time reaching as far as northern California) and lasted for about 400 years. Its history is divided into two parts: the Muscovite Tsardom period and the Imperial period.

Then there was the Time of Troubles — a SuccessionCrisis-cum-CivilWar. Not only did Ivan the Terrible kill his son and crown prince in a fit of a blind rage, but his second son, the weak and simpleminded Feodor Ivanovich, was more interested in religion than in ruling the realm, and [[HeirClubForMen was childless]] to boot. The original Rurikid dynasty fell, and the Godunovs (relatives of Feodor's wife) took the throne. They didn't make it, and after an interregnum and a war with Poland, Romanovs (relatives of one of Ivan the Terrible's wives) became the tsars. In an interesting aside, during the Muscovite era, Russia was ruled by a double-decker aristocracy that consisted of two classes: the Boyars, who were the feudal rulers and councilors of the Tsar, and the Dvoryans, who served as military officers and civil servants, somewhat similar to the Japanese system where also existed two separate nobilities, based on the court aristocracy and the military class.

After Peter's death, the Age of Palace Revolutions came into being. The succession law introduced by Peter allowed emperors to nominate a successor of their choice[[note]] He himself chose his widow, a former maid, who ascended the throne as Catherine I.[[/note]], which unintentionally encouraged ambitious princes and (especially) [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses princesses]] to seize the throne by force. Most of the rulers of Russia after Peter during the 18th century were [[TheHighQueen women]], culminating with UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat, who wasn't even Romanov by birth (she was a German princess and a Romanov by marriage — though, ironically, she was a ''Rurikid'' by a direct male succession). The Catherinian age is often seen as the golden age of Imperial Russia. After Catherine, her son Paul I, who had never forgiven his mother for the death of his father[[note]] in spite of persistent rumours that Paul was not actually fathered by Peter III, but one of Catherine's lovers[[/note]], introduced a new succession law that was very strict, ending the Palace Revolutions age.

The death (or a secret abdication — there was a persistent rumor at the time that Alexander I faked his own death and entered a monastery, and later the famous monk Feodor was said to be the abdicated Emperor) of Alexander I far from the capital engendered a coup attempt by liberal army officers known as the Decembrists, who tried to exploit the last SuccessionCrisis in the history of the Tsars.[[note]] Grand Duke Constantine, the heir apparent, had already renounced the throne years before because of his marriage to a Polish countess, but this news had been kept a secret until Alexander's death, leading to confusion even among government officials whether Constantine or the the next in line, Grand Duke Nicholas, would become emperor.[[/note]] They tried to put in place a democratic constitution — though it [[ValuesDissonance would probably strike the modern reader]] as rather [[FairForItsDay stretching this definition]]. Nicholas I crushed the revolt and became a hated reactionary ("the Policeman of Europe"), and lost the UsefulNotes/CrimeanWar. Under Alexander II, many important reforms were implemented and the last vestiges of feudalism were removed, but a lot of these reforms were of the "too little too late" mold, and made it difficult for the country to adapt well to capitalism.

To add insult to injury, the later emperors Alexander III (a very conservative giant of a man, a reactionary and [[TheAlcoholic a roaring drunk]], though a shrewd and cautious ruler and a good diplomat) and his son Nicholas II — a weak and indecisive ruler, who constantly varied his policy and was basically a [[OurPresidentsAreDifferent Tsar Focus Group]] — reversed many of these reforms. The fact that Alexander II had been thanked for his efforts by being blown to pieces probably had something to do with that. However it resulted in an impoverished country. Well, the economy was booming, but the political climate was stifling, the wealth distribution ''unbelievably'' skewed and the intellectual classes (''intelligentsiya'') widely believed the country to be a basket case ([[TheNewRussia sounds familiar?]]) — which caused them to adopt a "the worse the better" attitude, and dive into the revolutionary ideas. A desire to take power away from the Tsar and his bureaucracy probably had something to do with radicalism too.

* Ivan IV, better known as UsefulNotes/IvanTheTerrible. Often portrayed as TheCaligula, he was more like a ruthless [[TheChessmaster Machiavellian tyrant]], not unlike Medici or Borgia, who struggled for absolute power with boyar factions. He became paranoid - and often, ProperlyParanoid, - after a number of attempts to poison him, and he never hesitated to torture or execute his opponents. Infamously assaulted his pregnant daughter-in-law, which caused her to miscarry, and kill his son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich, in the same fit of rage. Ivan was definitely smart and, despite his ruthless brutality, his reign is a great one in Russian history books; he established the absolute monarchy and conquered Volga Region and Siberia. Ivan was called ''Grozny'', which has always been translated to "the Terrible", but is technically closer to "terrifying yet awesome", in the same way as a thunderstorm (''groza'' in Russian) is. [[PetTheDog Also notable for softening the attempts at the Christianization of the Turkic peoples under Muscovite rule]].

--> '''Creator/AntonChekhov''': They're wrong when they call him ill, stupid, evil... He's just a [[UpperClassTwit common Guards officer]].

* TooDumbToLive: Nicholas II, while he was a good-intentioned ruler and well-meaning, he was weak, incompetent and easily engineered by the ultra-corrupt Imperial Court, and constantly made bad choices that doomed his empire. The only thing he did that is generally agreed upon as a good idea is the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The real Nicholas II wasn't the bloody tyrant that communists make him out to be, nor was he the holy saint that monarchists and the Russian Orthodox Church makes him out to be. He was a well-intentioned family man who was utterly incompetent and (probably) utterly stupid — his diaries read like that of a ValleyGirl, really (though there is a possibility that they are fake).

** Peter the Great appears in the epic poem ''Poltava'' (about his victory against [[UsefulNotes/CarolusRex King Charles XII of Sweden]]), his unfinished novel ''The Moor of Peter the Great'' (about Pushkin's great-grandfather), and -- as his own statue -- in the poem ''The Bronze Rider''.

* Alexander Romanov from ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'' is a distant relative of Nicholas II - and is the Premier of the Soviet Union and the successor of Joseph Stalin. Following the events of Yuri's Revenge, he and the USSR either joins the Allies against Yuri (Allied campaign), or after the Soviets defeat Yuri on their own (Soviet campaign), uses the latter's advanced space technology to force the [[{{DayoftheJackboot}} Allies to surrender]] and [[{{WagonTraintotheStars}} to spread communism over the planet, across the solar system, and beyond...]]

* ''ComicBook/NikolaiDante'' presents a version of tsarist Russia, set in the far future. The house of Romanov is heavily featured... [[AnachronismStew and that's about where similarities end.]]