Russia: Land of the Tsars is a four-part series about the leaders of Russia from the Vikings in 862 to the Revolution in 1918. It discusses aspects of Russian history including expansion of the monarchy, the origins of the Russian Orthodox Church, armed conflicts, the changing political climate, opposition to the Tsars, and the gradual modernization of Russian society.
View Russia - Land of the Tsars. Video hosted on Guba Its forests stretch from Europe to the Pacific. Its winters have vanquished the mightiest armies ever mustered. Its people have borne the excesses of some of history's most notorious rulers. RUSSIA: LAND OF THE TSARS illuminates the imperial past of the world's largest nation. At the heart of this epic tale are the figures whose names have become legend: Ivan the Terrible, who expanded the empire at the rate of 50 miles--and innumerable lives--a day; Peter the Great, whose sweeping reforms westernized the nation; and Catherine the Great, whose rule was marked by conquest, change and controversy. Filmed on location throughout Russia, enriched by exclusive visits to important sites and museums, and filled with commentary from renowned scholars, this is a kaleidoscopic, captivating portrait of a land that has endured centuries of despair and rebellion, innovation and conflict.
Tsar (Bulgarian, Serbian: цар, Russian царь (helpinfo), in scientific transliteration respectively car and car' ), occasionally spelled Czar or Tzar and sometimes Csar or Zar in English, is a Slavonic term designating certain monarchs.
Originally, and indeed during most of its history, the title tsar (derived from Caesar) meant Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term, i.e., a ruler who has the same rank as a Roman or Byzantine emperor (or, according to Byzantine ideology, the most elevated position next to the one held by the Byzantine monarch) due to recognition by another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch). Occasionally, the word could be used to designate other, non-Christian supreme rulers. In Russia and Bulgaria, the imperial connotations of the term were blurred with time and by the 19th century it had come to be viewed as an equivalent of king, The modern languages of these countries use it as a general term for a monarch. For example, the title of the Bulgarian monarchs in the 20th century was not generally interpreted as imperial.
Russia is an independent country officially known as the Russian Federation (in Russian, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya). By far the worlds largest country, Russia is almost twice the size of the next largest country, Canada. Russia sprawls across eastern Europe and northern Asia. It possesses mineral resources unmatched by any other country. Four-fifths of the people live in the European part of Russia, west of the Ural Mountains. The capital, Moscow, is an administrative, commercial, industrial, and cultural hub in the heart of European Russia.
In the 14th and 15th centuries a powerful Russian state began to grow around Moscow. Russia emerged as a great world power during the reign of Peter the Great, who built Saint Petersburg as Russias new window on the West and moved the seat of government there in 1712. The massive Russian Empire reached its greatest size in 1914, before World War I. Moscow regained its capital status after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when militant socialists called Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian monarchy. In 1922 they founded the worlds first communist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union). Russia was the largest and most powerful Soviet republic.
The USSR had a totalitarian political system in which Communist Party leaders held political and economic power. The state owned all companies and land, and the government controlled most aspects of the economy. After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, Russia began transforming itself into a more democratic society with an economy based on market mechanisms and principles. For many Russians the transformation brought a severe decline in standard of living. At the same time, Russia became more integrated with the global economy and benefited from improved relations with the countries of the European Union as well as its neighbors in Asia.
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