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Kievan Rus' in the 11th century.

Revolution, overthrew the Russian monarchy, which was replaced by a shaky coalition of political parties that declared itself the Provisional Government.

The abdication of Nicholas II marked the end of imperial rule in Russia; the last Tsar and his family were imprisoned and later executed during the Civil War. While initially receiving the support of the Soviets, the Provisional Government proved unable to resolve many problems which had led to the February Revolution. The second revolution, the October Revolution, led by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government and created the world’s first socialist state.

Soviet Russia

Following the October Revolution, a civil war broke out between the new regime and the counter-revolutionary White movement, while the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk concluded hostilities with the Central Powers in World War I. Russia lost its Ukrainian, Polish, Baltic, and Finnish territories by signing the treaty.

The Allied powers launched a military intervention in support of anti-Communist forces and both the Bolsheviks and White movement carried out campaigns of deportations and executions against each other, known respectively as the Red Terror and White Terror. By the end of the Russian Civil War the Russian economy and infrastructure were heavily damaged. Millions were displaced, and some eventually fled Russia. During the same period, the famine of 1921 claimed 5 million victims.

The Russian SFSR together with three other Soviet republics formed the Soviet Union on 30 December 1922. Out of the 15 republics that later constituted the Soviet Union, the SFSR, the largest republic in terms of size and making up over half of the total USSR population, dominated the Soviet Union for its entire 69-year history; the USSR was often referred to, though incorrectly, as "Russia" and its people as "Russians".

Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin, an elected General Secretary of the Communist Party, managed to put down all opposition groups within the party and consolidate much power in his hands. Leon Trotsky, the main proponent of the world revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin's idea of socialism in one country became the primary line. In 1930s a number of open political trials gained much