The history of Russia is essentially that of its many nationalities,
each with a separate history and complex origins, but bound together
by the thousand-year-old tradition of Russian statehood. From the late
fifteenth century until the early twentieth century, Russia was
constituted as an imperial monarchy ruling a tightly centralized,
contiguous expanse of territories and peoples. The strains of the
World War I led to the collapse of the empire, and eventually gave way
to the creation of the Soviet Union. Despite its façade of federalism,
the Soviet Union remained essentially an empire, held together by the
Communist Party rather than the tsar. Most Russians gave little
thought to any distinction between the two before the late 1980s and
early 1990s. However, as Communist Party rule was collapsing, the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic secured legislation
giving Russian laws priority over Soviet laws and declared its
independence in late 1991, forming today's Russian Federation.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1898:
The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana, Cuba, killing more than 260
people in a tragedy that precipitated the Spanish-American War.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_%28ACR-1%29)
1942:
General Tomoyuki Yamashita led the Japanese forces to capture the
supposed "impregnable fortress" of Singapore.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Singapore)
1971:
The value of a penny in the United Kingdom increased from 1/240 to
1/100 of the pound sterling on Decimal Day.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/penny)
1989:
Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan: The Soviet Union officially
announced that all of their troops had already left Afghanistan.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_invasion_of_Afghanistan)
2003:
Millions of people around the world took part in the largest mass
protest movement in history to protest against war in general, and
specifically the military preparations for the impending invasion of
Iraq.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_protests_against_war_on_Iraq)
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Wikiquote of the day:
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point
is to discover them." -- Galileo Galilei
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei)