ONE LAND · 15 ATLASES

History of Russia in maps

Russia as it appears in 15 interactive history atlases, from 1206 to 2015: the Rus principalities, the Russian Empire, Russian Empire, Russia, Russia, then the Soviet Union, the Russian SFSR, the Soviet Union, Soviet Union. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.

What was Russia before it was Russia? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

The lands of the Rus · Norse and Aztecs

NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

The Rus principalities (mod. Russia) · Mongol Empire

The northeastern Rus principalities — Ryazan, Vladimir, Suzdal — were taken in the winter campaign of 1237–38, the season war was thought impossible. They kept princes and faith, and paid the Horde tribute for 240 years: the “Tatar yoke.” Moscow, a minor town in 1237, rose precisely by collecting the khan’s taxes — until it outgrew and outlasted its masters. Historians still argue how much Muscovite autocracy is Horde inheritance.

MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

The Russian Empire · Industrial Revolution

The Russian Empire freed its serfs in 1861 and then industrialised in a rush, with the state in the lead. Under Sergei Witte in the 1890s it built the Trans-Siberian Railway, attracted French loans and grew its industry about eight per cent a year. The Donbas coalfield, Baku’s oil wells and the textile mills of Moscow and Łódź made it a major industrial producer by 1913, while most Russians remained peasants.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Russian Empire · Age of Revolutions

The age’s eastern anchor: partitioned Poland, absorbed and destroyed the Grande Armée (1812), and marched to Paris as Europe’s arbiter. Its officers brought the comparison home — the Decembrists hanged for it (1825) — and Nicholas I made Russia the Concert’s gendarme, crushing Poland (1831) and Hungary (1849). Serfdom, the question underneath every other, waited until 1861.

AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Russia (the Russian Empire; the RSFSR; the Russian Federation) · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia

Russia appears on both maps of this atlas. In the first it is the empire advancing on Japan’s north: down the Amur in 1858, to Vladivostok in 1860, into Manchuria and Port Arthur by 1898, until Japan defeats it in 1905. In the second it is the core of the Soviet Union and then, from December 1991, the Russian Federation, whose price reforms, privatisation, wars and recovery under Putin make up this atlas’s second case study.

MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Russia · Russian Revolution

The heart of the story. In 1905 the core of the largest empire on earth; by 1924 the largest republic of the USSR. Between, it lost a Tsar, a Provisional Government, a third of its territory at Brest-Litovsk, and millions of its people to war, terror and famine — and emerged with a one-party state that would rule for seventy years. Follow chapters 1–14; every color on this map is measured against Russia’s red.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Russian Empire · WWI

The Russian Empire mobilized more men than any belligerent — some 15 million — and armed, fed and led them worst. It saved France twice (1914, 1916), absorbed the Central Powers’ main weight for three years, then broke: two revolutions in 1917 (Ch. 10), a separate peace at Brest-Litovsk (Ch. 11), and a civil war deadlier than its world war. The red on this map is the century announcing itself.

WWI: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Russia, then the Soviet Union · Chinese Revolution

Empire, then Union — the revolution’s impresario and skeptic. Tsarist Russia holds the northern arc in 1911; the Soviets renounce the old privileges loudly (1919), then rebuild influence pragmatically: Borodin and the Whampoa package built the KMT as much as the CCP, Stalin’s orders nearly destroyed the CCP in 1927, Soviet interests kept Xinjiang and Mongolia in orbit, and August Storm 1945 created the civil war’s decisive arena while Moscow signed treaties with the government its arsenals were quietly undermining. Stalin advised Mao to stop at the Yangtze in 1949; Mao crossed. The alliance signed in 1950 carried that memory inside it.

CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

The Russian SFSR · Stalin’s Soviet Union

The Russian republic was the core of the Union, holding most of its land, people and industry, from Leningrad to the Pacific. It had no communist party of its own until 1990, because Moscow governed it directly. Its villages were collectivised, its northern and Siberian regions became the heartland of the camps, and its Urals cities became the arsenal of the war. Russian language and history gained a privileged place from the late 1930s, as the “first among equals” of Soviet peoples.

STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

The Soviet Union · Road to WW2

The power both maps share, and the atlas’s hardest color problem — solved honestly: neutral outsider to 1939, grey-tan partner of the aggressors for twenty-two months (eastern Poland, the Baltics, Finland, Bessarabia — and Katyń), then, from the morning of 22 June 1941, the blue power whose depth broke the biggest gamble of all. Stalin trusted one man in Europe, and it was the man who invaded him.

ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Russia · WW2

The Soviet Union: first Hitler’s partner (1939–41), then his nemesis. Absorbed the largest invasion in history, lost 27 million people, and destroyed roughly 80% of the German army — ending the war as a superpower ruling half of Europe. The war remains Russia’s founding myth today.

WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Russia (RSFSR) · Cold War

Core of the Soviet Union: the state that broke Hitler, took Eastern Europe as its security deposit, matched America bomb for bomb — and spent itself to death doing it on an economy a fraction of its rival’s. Follow it through every chapter; it is the red thread. In 1991 it signed itself out of empire at Belovezha, and inherited the USSR’s seat, arsenal and grievances.

COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Soviet Union (Russia) · Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution

FEMINISM AND THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

The Soviet Union (Russia) · Refugee crises

The Soviet Union recovered about 5.35 million of its citizens from across Europe by 1946, some by force under the Yalta accords, and screened them for disloyalty in filtration camps. It also annexed northern East Prussia as the Kaliningrad region, expelled its remaining Germans and repopulated it with Soviet settlers, and refused to join the International Refugee Organization, calling the DPs who would not return traitors.

REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

The Soviet Union · Mao’s China

The Soviet Union was China’s teacher and ally in the 1950s, supplying loans, factories and about 10,000 experts. The alliance broke over ideology, nuclear weapons and leadership of the Communist world, and in 1960 Moscow recalled its experts. By 1969 the two states were fighting on the Ussuri and the Xinjiang border, and Soviet officials asked how Washington would react to a strike on China’s nuclear sites.

MAO’S CHINA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Related

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• Norse and Aztecs timeline and maps
• Mongol Empire timeline and maps
• Industrial Revolution timeline and maps
• Age of Revolutions timeline and maps
• Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia timeline and maps
• Russian Revolution timeline and maps