Geographic HistoryMap of Russia
On the Geographic History map, Russia appears from 1495 to 1923. It reaches its largest mapped extent in 1900: about 22 million km² across 287 provinces.
Russia grew out of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which threw off Mongol overlordship in 1480 and became the Tsardom of Russia when Ivan IV was crowned tsar in 1547. Russian explorers and Cossacks crossed Siberia and reached the Pacific by the 1640s, and Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721. The empire fell in the revolutions of 1917, and most of its lands became part of the Soviet Union in 1922.
Mapped area over time
Russia on the world maps
Largest other states in 1900
| State | Mapped area |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 19 million km² |
| Qing | 11 million km² |
| United States of America | 9.7 million km² |
| Brazil | 7.5 million km² |
| France | 5.6 million km² |
| Canada | 5.2 million km² |
| Ottoman Empire | 3.3 million km² |
| German Empire | 2.9 million km² |
About this map
Territory comes from the Chronas historical dataset used by the Geographic History app. Areas are approximate, computed from about 2,400 province shapes, and describe this map rather than official historical figures - border data for the ancient and medieval world is necessarily a reconstruction.
Every year has a map
Drag a timeline across 2,500 years in the free Geographic History app - every province, ruler and battle, also offline.
