From Poland to Alaska: the largest contiguous empire in human history. In two centuries Russia swallowed a sixth of the earth's land surface — Siberia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Finland, Poland — and ruled it all from a marshy new capital built on the Baltic. No empire ever held so much land in one piece, before or since.
St. Petersburg ★ Alaska Poland Crimea Caucasus Central Asia Greatest extent — stylized map 1721 Proclaimed 1783 Crimea 1815 Zenith · Vienna 1867 Alaska sold 1891 Trans-Siberian 1905 Defeat by Japan 1917 Revolution Rise · zenith · fall Russia by the numbers Territory 22.8 million km² Peoples ruled a hundred peoples By the numbers The rise The empire was proclaimed in 1721, when Peter the Great — fresh from defeating Sweden in the Great Northern War — took the title of emperor. Peter had spent his reign dragging Russia westward by force: building St. Petersburg on a Baltic swamp as a “window to Europe,” shaving the boyars' beards, building a navy from nothing, and beating the finest army in Europe at Poltava. The empire was his personal project, built at a terrible human cost.
