Who Was When

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Russian Empire

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The state ruled by Russia's emperors from Peter I's proclamation in 1721 until Nicholas II's abdication in 1917. It took in Crimea in 1783 and much of Poland-Lithuania in the partitions, and it kept most of its peasants in serfdom until 1861.

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Key events

  1. After a peace treaty ends the war with Sweden, Peter I takes the title of emperor and Russia becomes an empire
  2. – Emelian Pugachev, a Don Cossack posing as the dead Peter III, leads Cossacks and serfs against Catherine II until his own Cossacks hand him over in 1774 and he is executed in 1775
  3. Napoleon's army fights the Russians at Borodino on 7 September and takes Moscow, then loses most of its men on the retreatDisputed

    Sources disagree on who won at Borodino: Encyclopedia.com's Borodino entry calls it effectively a Russian victory, while its Napoleonic Wars entry says Napoleon defeated the Russians there.

  4. Russian forces capture Shamil at Gunib; over the following years they burn forests and villages in the western Caucasus, and many Circassians are forcibly resettled or leave for the Ottoman EmpireDisputed

    Encyclopedia.com's Caucasian Wars entry says as many as half a million Muslim highlanders, above all Circassians in the west, were relocated, and describes the method as clearing and burning forests, destroying villages and forcibly resettling tribes under Baryatinsky and Milyutin. The Adyge entry says the Adyge left for the Ottoman Empire after the Russian conquest. The total, the end date of the western campaign and the right word for the Circassian exodus remain contested.

  5. Alexander II's manifesto of 3 March ends serfdom for over twenty million peasants, who must pay redemption for their land over 49 years
  6. Troops fire on a workers' march to the Winter Palace on 22 January, strikes spread, and in October Nicholas II promises a Duma and civil liberties
  7. After bread riots and a soldiers' mutiny in Petrograd, Nicholas II abdicates in March, ending the Romanov rule that began in 1613