Questions tagged [russia]
The largest country in the world, spanning territory from the eastern edge of Europe to Siberia in northern Asia.
402
questions
7
votes
1
answer
273
views
Who was part of the Raznochintsy class in 1800s Russia?
In the system of social estates of Imperial Russia, someone "of miscellaneous rank" was a member of the raznochintsy, at least until the category was abolished. В.Н.Разгон says this happened at the ...
- 27.7k
-3
votes
1
answer
719
views
Why did Hitler repeat Napoleon's error (attacking Russia in mid-summer instead of late spring)? [closed]
We often hear that it's important to learn from history to avoid the errors of people before us. To me - then - it's astounding to think that a head of state like Hitler, surrounded with elite ...
- 103
0
votes
2
answers
950
views
Why is the English name of the country "Russia" not spelled "Rossia" (with the letter o)? [closed]
Once there was Rus (about 9-15 centuries). Then there are different historical moments, different countries. And finally Ukraine, Belorussia, Rossia (17 century) (and maybe more that related to ...
3
votes
1
answer
794
views
Why didn't all non-Russian states become independent during the collapse of the Soviet Union?
There are so many sub-divisions in the country who are not Russian in their language and ethnicity, Tuva, Dagestan, Chechnya etc.
When states like the Baltics, Ukraine, and Central Asia were gaining ...
- 3,780
5
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Would an illegitimate child of a monarch have been recognized at the Russian court?
For purposes of a novel I am writing I would like to know if an illegitimate son or daughter of a 19th century Russian tsar would have been recognized by the court. Would it matter if the birth was ...
- 233
0
votes
0
answers
69
views
Did Russia support both Georgian nationalists and the Georgian government during Georgian civil war?
I am trying to understand the history of Georgia after the independence from Russia reading the French Wikipedia article about it. Yet I don't understand the position of Russia during the Civil War.
...
0
votes
1
answer
479
views
Are the war plans published in "Dropshot: The American Plan for World War III against Russia in 1957" genuine?
In 1979 Anthony Cave Brown published a book (Operation, World War III: The Secret American Plan 'Dropshot' for War with the Soviet Union, 1957, Arms and Armour Press, 1979; Google Books, Amazon) which ...
user23839
0
votes
2
answers
303
views
What are some good sources on the everyday life of Soviet troops during WWII?
Imagine I wanted to get a basic understanding what the everyday life of a Soviet soldier (especially infantry, tank units, air force) during WWII was like.
What books and other resources in English, ...
user23839
25
votes
1
answer
7k
views
Did Catherine the Great really call for the abolition of serfdom?
... like Catherine the Great S01E01 (2019) shows?
This would be almost a century before serfdom was actually abolished, and makes one wonder why the Czars didn't just do it, if they were in favor of ...
user26470
5
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Did Yuri Gagarin really mention Anna Magnani in his flight in space?
This NYTimes article about the Italian actress Anna Magnani states:
Perhaps the best way to describe her effect on audiences is to quote from a documentary on the Italian actress by the Belgian film ...
- 51
7
votes
2
answers
601
views
What uniform is my Cossack great great grandfather wearing?
The man bellow with the medals and the beard is my great great grandfather. He was a Cossack in the Urals, I have been looking for ages but I can not find what Cossack uniform he is wearing.
I really ...
- 119
6
votes
4
answers
5k
views
What are specific parts of this 19th century dress called?
Src: Portrait of Nadezhda Polovtseva
So this a the Portrait of Nadezhda Polovtseva in which she is wearing a white and green gown. I just need a really simple explaination of what the separate ...
- 355
13
votes
2
answers
3k
views
What are these hats and the function of those wearing them (worn by the Russian imperial army at Borodino)?
After the battle of Borodino Franz Roubaud worked on a great panorama painting of 115 meters long.
looking at the big panorama painting by Franz Roubaud I noticed that some of the Russian imperial ...
- 2,257
4
votes
1
answer
698
views
When did Tsar Nicholas II become Tsar of Russia?
I'm having trouble understanding the technicalities of throne inheritance in the Tsardom.
Did Nicholas II become Tsar after his fathers' death on the 1st of November 1894, or did he become Tsar after ...
- 143
6
votes
1
answer
387
views
How long was a coach journey from Coburg to St Peterburg in 1790s?
If someone had to get from Coburg to St Petersburg in the 1790s? Would they travel overland by stagecoach or go up to the north German coast and get a boat round to the Gulf of Finland and enter ...
12
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Did the Russian Empire have a claim to Sweden? Was there ever a time where they could have pursued it?
Consider that Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and the one that all Russian emperors after Catherine were descended from, would have been king of Sweden had his aunt not stolen the throne ...
- 237
2
votes
2
answers
398
views
Is this story about the Tsar's encounter with a sergeant true?
I once read a story (about why one should not be rude to strangers or rude in general) in a local magazine that,
once Tsar Peter I asked about directions from a Sergeant. Sergeant (not knowing whom ...
- 43
2
votes
0
answers
86
views
What happened to the cavalry corps of Simon Boudienny?
According to this question, there was a campaign led by the Russians in Ukraine where they engaged a cavalry unit. I imagine it was in 1941, and according to Wikipedia research, it might be the ...
- 6,695
2
votes
1
answer
163
views
For how many years in the eighteenth century were Russian soldiers present within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth borders?
For modern Poland, the answer is rather simple. Russian, and later Soviet soldiers, were stationed inside the Polish borders for almost the whole 19th and 20th centuries (with a notable exception for ...
6
votes
1
answer
958
views
Identification of a badge with Russian text
Here's a curious badge that I found somewhere years ago, but didn't know whom to ask.
(click to enlarge)
Could someone please identify it? I learnt the Cyrillic script and tried googling it, but ...
1
vote
0
answers
57
views
Did Boris Tarasov return from Mexico to Russia?
Boris Tarasov, employee of the Russian-American Company, was arrested in San Pedro, California in 1815. As a prisoner of some political value, in 1816 he was sent from Monterey to San Blas and then ...
- 27.7k
8
votes
1
answer
962
views
Where can I find documents from the Nuremberg trials about war crimes of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union?
I want to read documents that were used to prove German war crimes in the Soviet Union, incl. crimes against civilians and treatment of Soviet prisoners of war.
So far I found the following:
...
user23839
20
votes
4
answers
7k
views
Why did the Germans forbid the possession of pet pigeons in Rostov-on-Don in 1941?
Photograph made by Max Alpert shows a dead boy holding a pigeon. It seems that the child has been tortured before he was killed.
Source: Federal Archive Agency of Russia, Russian state archive of ...
user23839
7
votes
1
answer
2k
views
What was the average age of first marriage in 18th century Russia?
I found the following claim on Wikipedia (Women in Russia) and I wonder if it is true:
Early in the eighteenth-century, the average age for peasant girls to marry was around twelve years old.
In ...
- 73
2
votes
1
answer
95
views
Are the Zemstvo Statistics Digitized?
There were massive statistics collected during the late Russian Empire (1861-1917)-- the "Zemstvo Statistics." They are available on microform at Yale (http://www.library.yale.edu/slavic/microform/...
- 21
9
votes
2
answers
856
views
Why did Russia set up so many cities in Siberia and Far East?
If one takes a casual glance at the Russian population census data, he or she would be astonished to find that a significant part of the Russian population is actually not concentrated west of the ...
7
votes
3
answers
816
views
Did Imperial Japan persecute Slavic people, as European fascists did?
Over the interwar period, fascist governments in Europe heavily promoted anti-Slavic propaganda. In Germany, they were labelled as Untermensch alongside the Jews, and in Italy, Slavic media, languages,...
- 95
7
votes
1
answer
458
views
Telegraph availability in Russia around year 1875
Were there any telegraph lines available in late 19th century Russia (let's say year 1875), which would go deep into mainland Russia?
I can find some mentions about Moscow telegraph station being ...
4
votes
3
answers
749
views
Did the defense of the Brest fortress make sense?
I came across an opinion of an alternative "historian"/conspiracy theorist who claims that the defense of Brest fortress did not make sense. According to his theory, its inhabitants should have left ...
user23839
30
votes
6
answers
7k
views
What are the text and subtext of this 1949 Soviet cartoon?
Over on Wikipedia, we find this cover from the March 1949 issue of Soviet satire mag Krokodil:
The person who uploaded it to Wikipedia captioned it "Antisemitic caricature of rootless cosmopolitan." ...
- 2,285
11
votes
1
answer
654
views
What's this flag flying on a fort at Kodiak, Alaska?
Naval captain Yuri Lisianskii drew a harbor scene in Alaska about 1805. It was engraved in England for an edition of his book.
(High-res version)
In the image, from left to right, there are flags ...
- 27.7k
2
votes
1
answer
172
views
Which Imperial Russian officials created and verified passports?
In Imperial Russia (as in other states) passports were required for interior travel. They were issued to individuals and had a finite duration. I'm guessing that being found away from home without a ...
- 27.7k
6
votes
1
answer
184
views
Which prayer did sailors in Russian America expect to hear?
Father Ioann Veniaminov (Saint Innocent) was a Russian Orthodox priest who ministered in Russian America. Leaving Sitka, he recorded the following in his journal:
Tuesday, June 30, 1836. Having ...
- 27.7k
2
votes
1
answer
174
views
Were "The People's Will" referred to as "terrorist" by their contemporaries?
Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) was the organization responsible for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in in March 1881. Is there any evidence (preferably online sources) which point to the ...
- 2,094
3
votes
1
answer
300
views
What was the troop ratio between the Reds and the Whites in the Russian Revolution?
I am making a game over the Russian Revolution for English class. I want to make this game a somewhat accurate representation of the Russian Revolution. I have been able find the answers to all of my ...
- 31
1
vote
2
answers
279
views
How was money transferred in early 1900s' Russia?
I'm reading Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The book frequently quotes letters between him and fellow revolutionaries, often when he was in internal exile in some obscure corner of Siberia.
...
- 2,028
6
votes
1
answer
251
views
Was slaughtering cows in Kamchatka prohibited in the 1820s?
In To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of HMS Blossom, 1825–1828, Peard claims that in Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, "nearly every family possesses a Cow (...
- 27.7k
7
votes
1
answer
257
views
Kabris, the "half-wild Frenchman", in Kamchatka
A Frenchman who had gone native in the Marquesas Islands, Jean Cabri or Kabris, returned to Europe in the early 1800s and became a well-known attraction and swimming teacher.
His return voyage ...
- 27.7k
0
votes
1
answer
190
views
Was The Great Game a war? [closed]
I know that The Great Game was between UK & Russia and done through parts of Asia, Middle East & Europe. I was wondering if the Great Game was basically two empires trying fighting each other ...
- 19
14
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Why is Russian far east less populated than Chinese north east regions?
I was comparing the Russia's Far Eastern zone with the equivalent Northeast China. Anyway the two regions have many difference but by comparing regions at the same latitude I found vast difference to ...
- 597
3
votes
1
answer
331
views
Under Catherine the Great were all officers appointed for five years?
I noticed that the chief commandants of Kamchatka seemed to serve terms of about five years (Koselev 1802-1807, Petrovskii 1807-1813, Rudakov 1813-1817). Their rank (IV) qualified them to be made ...
- 27.7k
5
votes
2
answers
303
views
What were Catherine the Great's orders to von Böhm?
In about 1773, Catherine the Great appointed Magnus Karl von Böhm (or Behm, depending on the roundtrip transliteration) governor of Kamchatka. The peninsula had been pacified and the natives were ...
- 27.7k
3
votes
1
answer
242
views
How did the Russian-American Company hire serfs?
In the Russian Empire until 1861 the estate of serfdom kept most of the country's population the property of others. This cheap labor was attractive to capitalist enterprises like the Russian-American ...
- 27.7k
1
vote
0
answers
52
views
How old were the youngest employees of the Russian-American Company?
The Russian-American Company, founded 1799, employed some real lowlifes. Golovnin about 1810 found them "composed for the most part of dissolute persons, many of whom have been flogged with the knout ...
- 27.7k
1
vote
0
answers
199
views
What do historians say would have been Napoleon's optimal strategy after Borodino? [closed]
There is a saying that everyone is a general after the battle, but I still could not figure out what could have Napoleon done differently in order to save his army and consequently empire after ...
- 11.3k
3
votes
1
answer
399
views
What did Russia do about Caucasus oil after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
During World War II, something like 72% of the Soviet Union's oil came from Baku, Azerbaijan, in the Caucasus. More like 86% if you count Grozny (Chechnya), and other Caucasus territories, leaving ...
- 105k
2
votes
2
answers
806
views
Has the training of Russian troops improved since 1989? [closed]
Recently, USA has excluded Pakistan from military training list. On the flip side, Pakistan has signed an agreement with Russian Federation for the training of its officers. My personal assessment is, ...
user32936
0
votes
1
answer
291
views
What is Russia's official reason for invading Crimea? [closed]
I'm having trouble finding Russia's official reason for invading the Crimea region of Ukraine. If my memory serves me right, didn't they change the reason halfway through the invasion?
- 507
5
votes
2
answers
320
views
How did Taganrog escape the devastation of the Stalingrad batlle of WW2?
About 30 years ago I visited Taganrog ( steel mill ), and drove through Rostov-on-Don. I did not realize how close Stalingrad was (I only saw Volograd on the map). We did pass a monument marking the ...
- 311
3
votes
2
answers
826
views
Is this a true quote of Engels about vague Russian leaders and their vague followers?
In the recent movie "The Young Karl Marx", Engels refers to Russian communist leaders being confused and finding confused followers.
Is this a true quote and if yes, whom did he mean?
- 671