American Reacts to History of Russia (Part 1) | Epic History TV

what the heck is going on in the world literally a week ago we felt like we were getting back to normal after the pandemic and now everybody's talking about freaking world war iii happening as so much has gone on in the past few days i have been just absolutely fascinated with what's going on over in eastern europe right now with russia and ukraine and i don't mean that in a bad way i just mean that i've gone from learning about history to feeling like i am living in like a major part of history right now so it seems like all eyes in the world right now are on russia and ukraine you know what's going on over there and like i said i have learned a ton about the situation over there the geography over there in the past few days but in the last video i did on the soviet union i said i really lack a lot of the historical context so what i decided to do kind of following on the coattails of the napoleonic wars that i did on epic history tv eventually a lot of you asked me to do these videos on the history of russia and epic history tv does a really really good job i think with their videos so we are going to do that we are going to go through all of their videos on the history of russia they have basically six videos to do parts one through five and then the last one is on the russian revolution in 1917 so this should give me a little bit of a background i think with uh the history of that part of the world but before we get into it roger wants to say hey all right so let's take a look at part one of russian history [Music] for thousands of years the lands known today as russia and ukraine were inhabited by nomadic tribes and mysterious bronze age cultures the only record they left were their graves in the great open grasslands of the south the steppe they buried their chieftains beneath huge mounds called kergans the ancient greek historian herodotus called these people scythians [Music] their lands were overrun by the same nomadic warriors who brought down the roman empire the land was then settled by slavs they shared some language and culture but were divided into many different tribes vikings from scandinavia known in the east as varangians rode up russia's long rivers on daring raids and trading expeditions according to legend the east slavs asked a varangian chief named rurik to be their prince and unite the tribes he accepted and made his capital at novgorod his dynasty the ruri kids would rule russia for 700 years his people called themselves the rus and gave their name to the land rurik's successor oleg captured kiev making it the capital of a new state kievan rus [Music] a century later seeking closer ties with the byzantine i have done a video on the kiev and bruce but you know what i did not for whatever reason link it to kiev the capital of ukraine and at the time when i watched that video i i didn't even know that kiev was the capital of ukraine it's really only been in the last few days with you know paying attention to what's going on over there right now that uh i've become familiar with some of the cities in ukraine and stuff so i've i mean um i've heard of ukraine being part of you know russia at some point and i think it was only after the soviet union that they became ukraine like a well as like a separate sovereign country but i know that ukrainian history goes back you know goes way back to which i'm gonna do a video on the history of ukraine as well i'm sure they'll get into it a little bit here in this video but okay uh so linking the the city of kiev to the kiev and bruce okay empire to the south vladimir the great adopted their religion and converted to orthodox christianity he is still venerated today as the man who brought christianity to ukraine and russia yaroslav the wise codified laws and conquered new lands his reign marked the golden age of kievan ruse it was amongst the most sophisticated and powerful states in europe but after yaroslav's death his sons fought amongst themselves kievan disintegrated into a patchwork of feuding princedoms just as a deadly new threat emerged from the east the mongols under genghis khan had overrun much of asia now they launched a great raid across the caucasus mountains and defeated the kievan princes at the battle of the kalka river but then withdrew fourteen years later the mongols returned a gigantic army led by batu khan overran the land cities that resisted were burned their people slaughtered the city of novgorod was spared because it submitted to the mongols its prince alexander nevsky then saved the city again defeating the teutonic knights at the battle of the ice fought above a frozen lake he remains one of russia's most revered heroes why did the mongols leave after they had defeated that first army they didn't come back for 14 years did they just feel like they couldn't take on the entire caving bruce and they just retreated and decided to come back later i don't know the mongols ruled the land as conquerors their new empire was called the golden horde ruled by a khan from his new capital at sarai the roost princes were his vassals they were forced to pay tribute or suffer devastating reprisal raids they called their oppressors tatars they lived under the tatar yoke alexander nevsky's son daniel founded the grand principality of moscow which quickly grew in power under the great uzbek khan the tatars converted to islam a rising power the grand duchy of lithuania defeated the tartars at the battle of blue waters and conquered kiev you know what's crazy to me is that so there's a grand duchy of lithuania so i've this this shows my ignorance about you know europe but i thought that lithuania was a fairly obviously the country like the sovereign country that exists now i think was again a post uh soviet union creation but there's an ancient land in that same region called lithuania so i guess that's where they got the name from obviously so yeah it's just interesting seeing these names going way way way back and here i i thought that it was more of like a modern creation eighteen years later dmitry donskoi grand prince of moscow also defeated the tartars at the great battle of kulikova field after years of infighting the golden horde now began to disintegrate into rival carnates constantinople capital and last outpost of the once great byzantine empire fell to the turkish ottoman empire some hailed moscow as the third rome the seat of orthodox christian faith now rome and constantinople had fallen meanwhile the grand princes of moscow continued to expand their power annexing novgorod and forging the first russian state at the ugra river ivan iii of moscow faced down the tatar army and forced it to retreat russia had finally cast off the tata yoke under grand prince vasily iii moscow continued to grow in size and power his son ivan iv was crowned the first tsar of russia he would be remembered as ivan the terrible ivan conquered tartar lands in kazan and astrakhan but was defeated in the livonian war by sweden and the polish lithuanian commonwealth ivan's modernizing reforms gave way to a reign of terror and mass executions fueled by his violent paranoia russia was still vulnerable raiders from the crimean khanate were able to burn moscow itself but the next year russian forces routed the tartars at malady just south of the city cossacks now lived on the open step a lawless region between three warring states they were skilled horsemen who lived freely and were often recruited by russia and poland to fight as mercenaries so i first learned about the cossacks during the napoleonic wars videos that i did i had never heard of them prior to doing those those uh videos on napoleon so um yeah so i guess this was kind of like their beginnings then i didn't for some reason i thought that they were just a again like a more modern creation in napoleon's time of like a sort of like a um what it was the word a calvary like a special cavalry type thing uh but this this shows that it goes like a lot further back than that actually ivan the terrible's own son the zarovich fell victim to one of his father's violent rages bludgeoned to death with the royal scepter [Music] the cossack adventurer jeremiah the russian conquest of siberia defeating tatars and subjugating indigenous tribes in the north arkhangelsk was founded for the time being russia's only seaport linking it to western europe though it was ice bound in winter ivan the terrible was succeeded by his son fyodor the first who died childless it was the end of the rurikit dynasty ivan's advisor boris godinov became tsar but after his sudden death his widow and teenage son were brutally murdered and the throne seized by an impostor claiming to be ivan the terrible son he too was soon murdered russia slid into anarchy the so-called time of troubles rebels and foreign armies laid waste to the land and the population was decimated by famine and plague polish troops occupied moscow swedish troops seized novgorod the russian state seemed on the verge of extinction wow we'll tell you what epic history tv does a really really good job i was kind of like on the edge of my seat watching that such a roller coaster the history of russia i didn't know it was that complicated that you know i worrying i guess so many different factions so many different empires coming in and conquering and uh yeah just an interesting seeing a lot of the like names of cities like kiev and stuff going all the way back yeah this is a period of history that again i don't know much about like the the middle ages part of history especially it's a bit of a mystery to me because i just for whatever reason i've never been particularly drawn to that time period but i have to say watching stuff like this it actually is looks pretty fascinating to learn about and towards the end there we saw russia starting to expand to its full territory more like what we're used to now kind of left us with a cliffhanger of russia's basically falling apart other countries are coming in to take the territory so how do they get out of this how do they rebuild basically and become the empire that i know that they became but i don't know anything about the russian empire really so yeah this one should be fun to continue i look forward to the next uh four parts five videos release we're gonna watch the one on the russian revolution as well but if you guys have anything to add please do that down in the comments i do read your comments i learn a lot from them so i really appreciate it when you do that also make sure to hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't done that yet and you can also check the description of this video and my pen comment if you want links to my social media my patreon where i do a lot of other videos that i don't do over here on youtube and i have a link to my star trek podcast where you trekkies as well if you're interested in that anyway roger here and i thank you guys for watching we'll be back with the next few parts of russian history coming up here shortly over the next few days and we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: SoGal

Views: 44,313

Keywords: история россии, history of russia, history of ukraine, ukrainian history, история, kievan rus, ivan the terrible, ivan iv, golden horde, rurik, varangians, european history, epic history russia, epic history, epic history tv, history tsars, tsars, tsar ivan, novgorod, alexander nevsky, kulikovo, time of troubles, livonian war, rurikids, scythians, history steppe, mongols, mongol invasion europe, polish-lituanian commonwealth, battle of the ice, react to russia, history reaction

Id: eTO2V94zl_8

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 23 2022