50 Fun Facts About Russian Empire

What did Peter the Great tax from 1698 to push Russian men toward Western European fashion?

Beards could stay only if the wearer paid, and he had to carry a copper or silver token showing a nose, mouth and whiskers as his receipt.

Which territory did Tsar Alexander II's government sell in 1867 for $7.2 million, about two cents an acre?

Alaska, then known as Russian America, went to the United States in a deal negotiated by Secretary of State William Seward and the Russian diplomat Eduard de Stoeckl.

Only two empires in history covered more land than the Russian Empire: the British Empire and which other?

Mongol and British rule alone outstripped the tsars' realm, which at its height covered about 22.8 million square kilometres, roughly one-sixth of the world's land.

Which peasant mystic and faith healer gained sway over Russia's last imperial family before nobles murdered him in 1916?

Grigori Rasputin won the imperial couple's trust as a healer for their ailing only son, and his growing hold over the empress turned conservative noblemen against him.

Which jeweller's workshop made 50 jewelled Easter eggs for the last two Russian tsars between 1885 and 1917?

Fabergé delivered the first in 1885: a plain white enamel shell that opened to reveal a golden yolk, and inside that a golden hen.

Which calendar, by 1917 running 13 days behind Western Europe's, did Russia keep in use until 1918?

Julian dating is why the 'October Revolution' of 1917 fell in November for the rest of Europe. Russia caught up in 1918 by jumping straight from 31 January to 14 February.

Which member of Russia's last imperial family did the impostor Anna Anderson claim to be for decades?

Anastasia was the tsar's youngest daughter, and rumours of her escape ran for most of the 20th century. DNA tests after Anderson's death showed no match with the family's remains.

Which chamber, a 1716 gift from Prussia's king to Peter the Great, vanished after German troops looted it in wartime?

The Amber Room held more than six tonnes of the fossil resin. It was last seen in Königsberg, and a replica finished in 2003 took Russian craftsmen decades.

Which city, founded in 1703 on the site of a captured fortress, became the Russian Empire's capital?

St. Petersburg was named for the apostle Peter, and in 1914 the tsar renamed it Petrograd to strip out the German-sounding words Sankt and Burg.

Which French ruler's army marched into Moscow in September 1812 only to find the city abandoned and soon ablaze?

Napoleon held the scorched city for five weeks, waiting for a peace offer the tsar never sent, then pulled out on 19 October.

Which German-born empress overthrew her husband, Peter III, in 1762 and ruled Russia for more than 34 years?

Catherine II, remembered as 'the Great', was born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst in the Prussian town of Stettin, into a princely family that had little money.

Which tsar, forced to abdicate in March 1917, was the last emperor to rule Russia?

Nicholas II and Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II were both first cousins of Britain's George V, a family tie that did nothing to stop the three empires going to war in 1914.

Which dynasty ruled Russia for three centuries, from the election of Tsar Michael in 1613 until 1917?

Romanov rule began when an assembly of the land, the Zemsky Sobor, elected 16-year-old Michael as a compromise candidate for the vacant throne.

Which group of more than 23 million people did Tsar Alexander II free with his emancipation edict of 1861?

Serfs were peasants bound to a landlord's estate. Freedom came with a bill: they had to pay for their plots in redemption payments that the government cancelled only in 1907.

Which blood disorder did Alexei, heir to Russia's last tsar, inherit through his great-grandmother Queen Victoria?

Haemophilia stops blood from clotting properly. Victoria passed the mutation through two of her daughters to the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia.

Which rising Asian power destroyed Russia's Baltic Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905?

Japan intercepted the fleet at the end of a seven-month, 18,000-nautical-mile voyage from the Baltic Sea that was meant to rescue Russia's Pacific squadron.

Which railway, begun in 1891, links Moscow with the Pacific port of Vladivostok across eight time zones?

Trans-Siberian track runs for 9,289 kilometres, the longest railway line in the world, and the heir to the throne inaugurated construction at its Pacific end.

Which novelist's War and Peace follows aristocratic Russian families through the French invasion of 1812?

Tolstoy had seen war himself: he served as a young artillery officer and lived through an 11-month siege more than a decade before the novel appeared.

Which composer scored real cannon fire into his 1812 Overture, marking Russia's defence against the French invasion?

Tchaikovsky had little love for the piece himself, telling his patron it would be very loud and noisy and that he had written it without warmth.

Which Russian chemist arranged the elements into a periodic table and predicted three that nobody had yet found?

Mendeleev left gaps in his table and described what should fill them; gallium, scandium and germanium were later discovered and matched his forecasts.

Which Russian physiologist, famous for conditioning dogs to salivate, won a Nobel Prize in 1904?

Pavlov became the first Russian Nobel laureate, and the prize honoured his research on digestion rather than the conditioning studies that made his name.

Which kingdom, led by Charles XII, lost its main army to Peter the Great at Poltava in 1709?

Sweden's king fled into exile in the Turkish-held town of Bender while the rest of his men surrendered, and after peace came in 1721 Peter took the title of emperor.

Which region did Russia annex from its Tatar khans in 1783 and make the base of its Black Sea Fleet?

Crimea had been a khanate since 1441. Its annexation followed a decade of Russian intervention, and the naval base of Sevastopol was founded there the same year.

Which creature, drawn with two heads beneath three crowns, was the centrepiece of the Russian Empire's coat of arms?

An eagle with two heads was a Byzantine emblem, taken up by Moscow's rulers in the 15th century after Ivan III married into the Byzantine imperial family.

What name is given to 22 January 1905, when troops fired on Father Gapon's marchers heading for the Winter Palace?

Bloody Sunday began as a march to hand the tsar a petition. The shootings provoked outrage and mass strikes, and are counted as the start of the 1905 Revolution.

Which elected parliament did Russia's tsar promise in the October Manifesto after the upheavals of 1905?

The Duma first met in spring 1906 with lawmaking powers the tsar had promised under pressure, and four were elected before the monarchy fell in 1917.

Which self-governing horsemen of the Don and Dnieper frontier served the tsars as cavalry in return for privileges?

Cossacks began in part as runaway peasants who fled to the devastated lands along the lower Dnieper and Don, where they founded communities that ran their own affairs.

Which poet, often called the founder of modern Russian literature, died after an 1837 duel with a French officer?

Pushkin faced Georges d'Anthès, his wife's rumoured admirer and her sister's husband, and died two days after being shot in the duel.

Which Russian novelist faced a firing squad in 1849 before his death sentence was commuted at the last moment?

Dostoevsky had joined the Petrashevsky Circle, which discussed banned books; instead of death he served four years of hard labour in a prison camp at Omsk.

Which country vanished from the map in 1795 after Russia, Prussia and Austria divided its land between them?

Poland lost its sovereignty for 123 years after successive partitions between 1772 and 1795, and was restored as a state only after World War I.

Which country was an autonomous grand duchy under Russia's tsars from 1809 until it declared independence in 1917?

Finland kept its own laws, Lutheran religion and privileges under a pledge Alexander I gave at the Diet of Porvoo, and its parliament declared independence on 6 December 1917.

Which museum grew from a collection of paintings that an empress of Russia bought from a Berlin merchant in 1764?

The Hermitage now fills the whole Winter Palace, once the tsars' residence; that first purchase was made up mainly of Flemish and Dutch pictures.

Which declining empire, Russia's Black Sea rival, is a tsar said to have called the 'sick man of Europe'?

Ottoman decline fed the so-called Eastern Question, as other European states looked to expand into the sultan's territories.

Which prince and favourite of a Russian empress gave his name to sham villages supposedly staged for her 1787 tour?

Potemkin governed Russia's new southern provinces; the tale of painted façades full of happy, well-fed villagers is probably mythical, but the phrase stuck.

Which rebel claimed to be the dead Tsar Peter III and raised a vast peasant army in the 1770s?

Pugachev was captured, placed in a metal cage and carried to Moscow, where he was publicly executed in January 1775.

Which Russian field marshal took command in August 1812 and wore down the French invaders through attrition?

Kutuzov had survived a bullet that passed through his head and left his right eye permanently twisted; the tsar promoted him to field marshal during the campaign.

Which rebels, named for the month of their failed 1825 uprising, wanted to turn Russia into a constitutional monarchy?

The Decembrists led about 3,000 troops into Senate Square to stop the army swearing loyalty to the new tsar; five of their leaders were sentenced to hang.

Which Danish-born officer in Peter the Great's navy gave his name to the strait between Asia and America?

Vitus Bering enrolled in the tsar's fast-growing navy in 1704, and a sea, an island and a glacier were later named in his honour as well.

Which craft did Peter the Great practise for four months in Amsterdam during his Grand Embassy?

Shipbuilding drew him to the Dutch East India Company's yard, where the tsar, travelling incognito with a large delegation, helped construct an East Indiaman laid down specially for him.

Which tsarist secret police force became notorious for planting agents provocateurs inside Russian revolutionary groups?

The Okhrana went as far as funding an illegal press to print revolutionary literature in 1882, and it kept an agent in Paris to watch Russian exiles abroad.

In which city were Russia's last tsar and his family executed at the Ipatiev House in July 1918?

Yekaterinburg lost the house in 1977, when the Politburo ordered it demolished and the local party chief, Boris Yeltsin, carried the order out. A large church now stands on the site.

Which 1722 reform of Peter the Great let commoners earn hereditary nobility through state service?

The Table of Ranks sorted officers and officials into 14 grades; reaching the eighth grade of the civil list brought hereditary nobility, a blow to the old boyar families.

What name, popularised by Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim, is given to the British–Russian rivalry over Central Asia?

The Great Game ran on mutual fear: Britain thought Russia's push south would threaten India, while Russia feared British interests spreading into its own conquests.

Which city in the Russian Empire out-produced the entire United States in oil between 1898 and 1901?

Baku drew investors including the Nobel brothers in 1873 and the Rothschilds in 1882, and by the start of the 20th century its oil fields were the largest in the world.

What was the name of the western zone of the Russian Empire where Jewish subjects were permitted to live permanently?

The Pale of Settlement lasted from 1791 to 1917. Residence beyond it was mostly forbidden, with exceptions for a few groups such as university graduates and the richest merchants.

Which reforming prime minister, who gave Russian peasants the right to own land privately, was killed in Kiev in 1911?

Pyotr Stolypin had survived numerous earlier attempts on his life; his killer, Dmitry Bogrov, was a revolutionary who had also worked as a secret police informer.

Which revolutionary group assassinated Tsar Alexander II in March 1881 after an earlier attempt on his life had failed?

People's Will, or Narodnaya Volya, believed that dynamite let it strike the regime powerfully and precisely, and it had already tried to kill the tsar in December 1879.

Which US president won the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the 1905 treaty that ended Russia's war in the Far East?

Theodore Roosevelt arranged talks at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, on the border of Maine and New Hampshire, and became the first American to receive the prize.

The Russian title 'tsar' comes from which Latin title borne by the emperors of ancient Rome?

Caesar became 'tsar' in the Slavic languages; in 705 a Byzantine emperor granted the title to Tervel of Bulgaria, the first foreigner ever to receive it.

Which village west of Moscow gave its name to the bloodiest day of the 1812 campaign, with at least 68,000 casualties?

Borodino drew in around 250,000 troops and stayed among the deadliest single-day battles in military history until the First Battle of the Marne in 1914.