How many years of Russia? How many years has Russia existed?

Russians live in a country where there are no clear and unambiguous answers to the simplest questions. To say, how many years of Russia, you need to randomly choose one of many options or ask a lot of clarifying questions. There is no other country in the world that started from scratch several times in its history, it completely denied its past, then again returned to its origins. It is customary for Russia to be a young country with a thousand-year history.

Selecting a reference point

By the efforts of famous historians of the past, NM. Karamzin - the author of 12 volumes of the "History of the Russian State", S.М. Solov'ev, who wrote "History of Russia from ancient times", V.O. Klyuchevsky and many others, and also thanks to more recent studies and works of modern scientists, several points have been revealed, from which the course of Russian history can be measured. Often, these are sharp boundaries between state formations that have very little in common. At the same time, understanding Russian history as a continuous process of a thousand years seems to be natural.

The choice of the origin of coordinates depends often in our country on philosophical or ideological beliefs. His own scale for measuring historical time, his answer to the question of how many years of Russia, the Westernizer and the Slavophile, the conservative and progressist, the communist and the liberal, etc. It is possible to assume several variants of the answer about the age of our state, and for each one we will find convinced supporters and equally fierce opponents.

Prehistoric times

The earliest traces of primitive man were found in Russia in the Caucasus and the Kuban. Paleoanthropologists define the beginning of the settlement of our territory by the first hominids 2 million years ago. The fully formed biological species Homo sapiens appeared in our region about 45 thousand years ago. Fortunately, those wishing to start counting Russian identity from fair-haired Neanderthals with blue eyes yet.

But the time when some Slavic tribes (around the 5th century BC) appeared on the European part of present-day Russia are considered quite suitable for the beginning of Russian history. Among such clan associations with poetic names: Slovene, Krivichi, Merya, Chud, etc., they try to choose one or several around which a future power is formed, especially the consonant name of the Ross tribe, or Rusich.

Some say that the first Russian state education is about the same as the number of years in Russia's oldest cities : Novgorod became Rurik's residence and was already Great.

And still, the first logical grounding point will appear later.

The call of the Varangians (882 year) - 1134 years

It is this time mark that is considered to be the earliest for a more or less correct answer to the question of how many years Russia has existed. According to ancient chronicles, several Slavic, Baltic and Finno-Ugric families sent their representatives to the warlike tribe of the Varangians with a request to select from their ranks a ruler capable of leading such an intertribal union and turning it into a single state. Such a man became the legendary Varangian prince Rurik - the founder of the first ruling dynasty in Russia.

His successors attached to their possessions, located around Novgorod and in the Upper Volga region, the territory of the southern Slavs with the capital in Kiev. It is believed that this ended the formation of the first Old Russian state. This happened in 882 year.

The summit of this formation can be considered the time of Vladimir Svyatoslavich's reign, in which Orthodoxy (988) and Yaroslav the Wise were adopted, which introduced the first set of laws - the Russian Truth (1016). Russia acquired more and more signs of a single state.

But as a result of the princely feud, these signs were lost, as a result of which Rus split into several lots, and then completely lost its independence, becoming a victim of the Golden Horde.

Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible (1547) - 469 years

When Ivan the Terrible accepted the title of Tsar of All Russia, it became clear that a new Russian state appeared on the world map with a new center - Moscow. It is very different from the previous education in size, military and political power, the strength of international influence and the monolithic system of government. The word "Russia" has become more used for the name of the country.

Then followed another crisis of statehood, expressed in the troubles of the Time of Troubles and the next almost complete loss of independence, this time in favor of Poland. The new revival of Russia began with the accession of the Romanov dynasty (1613) and ended in the era of Peter the Great.

The Russian Empire (1721) - 295 years

After the end of the Northern War, Tsar Peter the Great assumed the title of the First Emperor of the All-Russian and Father of the Fatherland. A new page began in the history of Russia, a new state was formally formed. The time that has passed since then is one more answer to the question of how many years the country of Russia. It was such an official name that received a huge empire.

The history of the Russian autocracy ended in February 1917, after which the unprecedented form of government, the parliamentary republic, came to what extent. It was tried to make it the official predecessor of modern Russia: Formally, the Bolsheviks' seizure of power was illegitimate, but it looked too insignificant in the shadow of the advancing Soviet Union.

State of a new type of the USSR (1922) - 94 years

At first the Communist Party sharply disassociated itself from the past, without thinking how many years of Russia, declaring the Soviet state an unprecedented formation. This, however, did not stop the ideologists from searching for inspirational examples of the heroism of the people in Russian history , which was often in demand during almost the whole of Soviet history.

And among the current Russian politicians there are many who see the ideal form of the state in the USSR, pointing at his achievements and seeing the main reason for his collapse in spiteful foreign intrigues.

Russian Federation (1991) - 25 years old

How many years of Russia? Today's Russian state, if it feels separated from its past history, will be on a time scale by a small child, which is then pulled into a calm, reliable past, then into a bright progressive future, then into radiant freedom, then into a great empire. The main thing - not to be torn.