#20: Imperial Russia / The Russian Empire (1721–1917)
The Russian Empire stretched from Eastern Europe across Siberia to the Pacific, ruled by Romanov czars who governed one of the largest states in history. It was vast, autocratic, multiethnic, and increasingly unstable by the early 20th century. World War I, economic hardship, military disaster, and revolutionary anger shattered the monarchy in 1917. The empire fell, the Romanovs were killed, and Russia entered a new age under revolutionary rule. The map changed. The trauma did not.
