Tsardom of Russia in the context of "List of Russian monarchs"

Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, spanning eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. With a population of over 140 million, Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous country in the world. It is a highly urbanised country, with sixteen of its urban areas having more than 1 million inhabitants. Moscow, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and largest city of Russia; and Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and cultural centre.

Human settlement on the territory of modern Russia dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. The East Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated; the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the unification of Russian lands, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. The Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s, amidst the deaths of millions under Joseph Stalin's rule, and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front—rising as a global superpower. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological dominance and international influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the north; Poland and Slovakia to the west; Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnipro. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian.

Humans have inhabited Ukraine since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, it was the site of early Slavic expansion and later became a key centre of East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus', which emerged in the 9th century. Kievan Rus' became the largest and most powerful realm in Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries, but gradually disintegrated into rival regional powers before being destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century. For the next 600 years the area was contested, divided, and ruled by a variety of external powers, including the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of Russia.

The Dnieper or Dnepr (/(də)ˈniːpər/ (də-)NEE-pər), also called the Dnipro. is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately 2,200 km (1,400 mi) long, with a drainage basin of 504,000 square kilometres (195,000 sq mi), it is the longest river of Ukraine and Belarus and the fourth-longest river in Europe, after the Volga, Danube, and Ural rivers.

In antiquity, the river was part of the Amber Road trade routes. During the Ruin in the later 17th century, the area was contested between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire, dividing what is now Ukraine into areas described by its right and left banks. During the Soviet period, the river became noted for its major hydroelectric dams and large reservoirs. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster occurred on the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dnieper, just upstream from its confluence with the Dnieper. The Dnieper is an important navigable waterway for the economy of Ukraine and is connected by the Dnieper–Bug Canal to other waterways in Europe. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, certain segments of the river were made part of the defensive lines between territory controlled by the Russians and the Ukrainians.

The Pereiaslav Agreement or Pereyaslav Agreement (Ukrainian: Переяславська рада, romanized: Pereiaslavska Rada, lit. 'Pereiaslav Council', Russian: Переяславская рада) was an official meeting that convened for a ceremonial pledge of allegiance by Zaporozhian Cossacks to Russian tsar Alexis (r. 1645–1676) in the town of Pereiaslav in central Ukraine, in January 1654. The ceremony took place concurrently with ongoing negotiations that started on the initiative of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky to address the issue of the Cossack Hetmanate with the ongoing Khmelnytsky Uprising against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and which concluded the Treaty of Pereiaslav (also known as the March Articles). The treaty itself was finalized in Moscow in April 1654 (in March according to the Julian calendar).

Khmelnytsky secured the military protection of the Tsardom of Russia in exchange for allegiance to the tsar. An oath of allegiance to the Russian monarch from the leadership of the Cossack Hetmanate was taken, shortly thereafter followed by other officials, the clergy and the inhabitants of the Hetmanate swearing allegiance. The exact nature of the relationship stipulated by the agreement between the Hetmanate and Russia is a matter of scholarly controversy. The council of Pereiaslav was followed by an exchange of official documents: the March Articles (from the Cossack Hetmanate) and the tsar's declaration (from Russia).

The Sayan Mountains (Mongolian: Соёны нуруу, Soyonii nuruu; Old Turkic: 𐰚𐰇𐰏𐰢𐰤, romanized: Kögmen) are a mountain range in southern Siberia spanning southeastern Russia (Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Tuva and Khakassia) and northern Mongolia. Before the rapid expansion of the Tsardom of Russia, the mountain range served as the border between Mongolian and Russian cultures and cultural influences.

The Sayan Mountains' towering peaks and cool lakes southwest of Tuva give rise to the tributaries that merge to become one of Siberia's major rivers, the Yenisei River, which flows north over 3,400 kilometres (2000 mi) to the Arctic Ocean. This is a protected and isolated area, having been kept closed by the Soviet Union since 1944.

Tsar (/zɑːr, (t)sɑːr/; also spelled czar, tzar, or csar; Bulgarian: цар, romanized: tsar; Russian: царь, romanized: tsar'; Serbian: цар, car) is a title historically used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word caesar, which was intended to mean emperor in the European medieval sense of the term—a ruler with the same rank as a Roman emperor, holding it by the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official—but was usually considered by Western Europeans to be equivalent to "king".

Tsar and its variants were the official titles in the First Bulgarian Empire (681–1018), Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396), the Kingdom of Bulgaria (1908–1946), the Serbian Empire (1346–1371), and the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721).The first ruler to adopt the title tsar was Simeon I of Bulgaria. Simeon II, the last tsar of Bulgaria, is the last person to have held this title.

Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents within the city limits, over 19.1 million residents in the urban area, and over 21.5 million residents in its metropolitan area. The city covers an area of 2,511 square kilometers (970 sq mi), while the urban area covers 5,891 square kilometers (2,275 sq mi), and the metropolitan area covers over 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 sq mi). Moscow is among the world's largest cities, being the most populous city entirely in Europe, the largest urban and metropolitan area in Europe, and the largest city by land area on the European continent.

First documented in 1147, Moscow became the capital of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which led the unification of the Russian lands in the 15th century and became the center of a unified state. Following the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547, Moscow remained the political and economic center for most of its history. During the reign of Peter the Great, the Russian capital was moved to the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg in 1712, leading to a decline in Moscow's importance throughout the imperial period. Following the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Russian SFSR, the capital was moved back to Moscow in 1918. The city later became the political center of the Soviet Union and experienced significant population growth throughout the Soviet period. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow remained the capital city of the newly reconstituted Russian Federation and has experienced continued growth.

Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. With an area of 1,439 sq km (556 sq mi), Saint Petersburg is the smallest administrative division of Russia by area. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As the former capital of the Russian Empire, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city.

The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after the apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia, and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1712 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow. The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death in 1924. It was the site of the siege of Leningrad during World War II, the most lethal siege in history. In June 1991, only a few months before the Belovezha Accords and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, voters in a city-wide referendum supported restoring the city's original name.

The history of exploration by citizens or subjects of the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire, the Tsardom of Russia and other Russian predecessor states forms a significant part of the history of Russia as well as the history of the world. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,850 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than a ninth of Earth's landmass. In the times of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, the country's share in the world's landmass reached 1/6. Most of these territories were first discovered by Russian explorers (if indigenous peoples of inhabited territories are not counted). Contiguous exploration in Eurasia and the building of overseas colonies in Russian America were some of the primary factors in Russian territorial expansion.

Apart from their discoveries in Alaska, Central Asia, Siberia, and the northern areas surrounding the North Pole, Russian explorers have made significant contributions to the exploration of the Antarctic, Arctic, and the Pacific islands, as well as deep-sea and space explorations.