Russians

expand_more Description

Russians are an East Slavic people centered in European Russia. First coalescing politically in the Middle Ages as the Rus' and adopting the Eastern Orthodox religion, feudal Russia became a tsarist state, expanded into an empire stretching from Eastern Europe and the Caucuses through Central and North Asia, which converted in a 1917 communist revolution to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that in 1991 collapsed and was replaced by a parliamentary federation with a market economy. A traditionally agrarian society, the abolition of serfdom in the mid-nineteenth century and aggressive government promotion of industrial development—continued into the mid-twentieth century under the soviet system of state-owned enterprises and collective farms—rapidly turned Russia into a world power. Alongside their prominent role in the vanguard of the modern, Russians remarkably have retained Orthodox Christian and rural collectivist sentiments, reflected in a celebrated tradition of folklore, arts, music, and literature.

Identifier

Region

• Europe

Subregion

• Eastern Europe

Subsistence Type

• commercial economy

Samples

• EA
• SCCS

Countries

• Russia