The History of Russia (Part 1) - Let's Talk History

welcome back everyone well as promised we're going to dive back into some history today and i thought it would be most appropriate to dive back into history using uh some stories of the history of russia and ukraine so that's we're going to do this is specifically epic history tv's history of russia but it has a lot of elements of the history of ukraine as well it seems very timely to talk about this also trying something new today i'm making this video in 4k it's the first time doing one of these videos from home in 4k i've done on-site videos that way so we'll see how it goes we're going to try some different things with format and thumbnails and things like that just to see if we can grow the channel a little more and get more people excited about history so join me in this journey as we talk about the history of russia using epic history tv we've got a link in the description to their original content if you want to be able to see that without my commentary here we go [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 so one of the things that makes it really challenging understand some understanding some of the very ancient history of some of these cultures and some of these nations and we should point out that the idea of a nation doesn't really exist for most of human history not the way we know it today cultures yes people groups tribes things like that but not really nations we have empires that arise at certain times you have kingdoms like the egyptians uh you have the assyrians and the babylonians and the romans and the greeks but nations as we know it not really a concept um we don't we get spoiled with histories of places like ancient egypt uh who left hieroglyphs and left these incredible records of their history even though we only discovered them recently in terms of being able to interpret them uh in rome things like that most of the places in the world that have these incredibly rich deep histories we don't know a lot of it because they just didn't write stuff down for us it was more oral histories beneath [Music] the ancient greek historian herodotus called these people scythians [Music] and we should mention with herodotus herodotus uh yes he's known as the father of history yes he wrote a lot of things down about a lot of places other than greece yes he also regularly embellished some of that information so as with all things history we have to compare it against what we discover in archaeology compare it against what we know from other people who may have written things down but when he's our only source you got to take everything with a grain of salt a little bit their lands were overrun by the same nomadic warriors who brought down the roman empire the land so they're kind of a like a you know a highway for other people who come through the huns and the of ours the goths coming down they're just kind of in the way and for most of that time they're pretty quiet and not making much noise on the world stage but that's going to change was then settled by slavs they shared some language and culture but were divided into many different tribes and it's interesting to point out here if you're uh of my generation and you remember the nation of yugoslavia which existed here yugoslavia just basically i think means the south slavs um you go me meaning a word for slav so for south so yugoslavia was the collection of of peoples that made up the south slavs and this is where you start to see the roots of what will eventually cause world war one because you have russia being an east slavic people and you have the south slavs being their kind of ancient brethren even though you know history has divided them in many ways 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 isn't it interesting how much the vikings uh and viking is just really more of a descriptive word than the name of their group or their people it really just means nordic warriors who attacked and raided other places but um i mean you got the vikings showing up in north america you've got them showing up in france in large numbers the you know normandy was largely a viking and french meshed culture uh you've got them showing up in britain a lot you've got them showing up here in the slavic empires 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 pretty interesting how this happens and the same kind of thing happens with the the celts in france for example and later the frankians when you face threats from outside of your group suddenly all the tribes and all the different factions who maybe were warring against each other start teaming up same thing happened in the west in the 19th century and you know what became the united states where you have uh different native american tribes who had been at war with each other eventually kind of joined together to face the oncoming threat of the white man from the east and so there's nothing that unites a people much like uh an outside threat coming at you to force everybody to band together and this is amazing this is 700 years that this a rural kid dynasty is on the throne of what we know today as russia isn't kind of novgorod at the time but um that's longer than any dynasty has been on the throne in a place like britain for example his people called themselves the rus and gave their name to the land russians rurik's successor oleg captured kiev making it the capital of a new state kiev and i learned something um i mentioned this in my video a couple of days ago how we've called it kiev the capital city of ukraine today um for as long as i can remember and then suddenly it seemed like in the news they started saying keeve and they spelled it kyiv well kiev i guess is the the russian word for the city uh kiev kyv is the ukrainian so that's why everybody's using the ukrainian uh which is much more you know the the local word and a lot of cities we've talked about this in the past how a lot of cities a lot of states have very different names germany uh we call one of their major cities munich but in german it's munchin and so there's almost always going to be different names for a city or a country or a place depending on where you live and what language you speak a century later seeking closer ties with the byzantine 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 a lot of times uh adopting christianity or adopting any religion was much more about political expediency and and getting along with other people necessarily than it might have been about a deep desire to convert i'm not saying he didn't have that but uh king john of england at one point actually considered converting to islam in order to keep his throne uh by uniting himself in alliance with muslim rulers and so uh it's not an uncommon thing to see that happen 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 ruse 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 and we don't we can't really appreciate just how huge this area is you know it looks like okay they're not really that far away but this is an enormous amount of ground to cover and you would not think looking at this map and looking at the territory and how harsh some of this territory is that a mongol empire all the way over here would be a threat to anybody over here 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 burnt their people slaughtered the city of novgorod was spared because it submitted to the mongols i want to take a little bit of a deeper look at some of the numbers and some of the um the history behind this fight all right so the mongol invasion of kievan ruse is 12 36 to 12 42 and the ruse principalities become vassals of the mongol golden horde during this time and you can see here that uh in 1236 uh mongol turkic cavalry has something like 35 000 plus another 40 000 turkic auxiliaries and remember this time that we've done turkish history the turks are much further east than they are later on they're not in what we know today as turkey uh the russians uh the cave and roost have 25 to 50 000 so similar numbers but they lose 500 000 people most of them are going to be civilians that's six to seven percent of the population of roost at that time so even then they had a massive population but to lose 500 000 is a huge huge deal at that time 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 [Music] 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 ruse princes were his vassals they were forced to pay tribute or suffer devastating reprisal raids so why do you have vassals instead of just outright controlling it yourself well it's just a massive amount of ground and when you've conquered a lot of different groups of people it's better to have someone on the ground who you believe is going to be loyal to you who speaks the language who's one of those people who will control it on your behalf but still submits to you and can be called to war can be paying taxes things like that it's an ideal situation when you're trying to run large differing people groups 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 and another example we call it moscow i believe in russian it's called moskva um so just you know whenever you see those differing names that's yeah that's a big reason why 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 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 in 1453 is very often marked as the end of the medieval period uh with the fall of constantinople it's kind of considered to be the beginning of you know the modern era and by a lot of people i mean modern as a relative term but um but think about this this is really kind of the end of 2000 years of a roman empire or roman state of some kind i mean there are client states that claim to be you know like the holy roman empire things like that but they're really not this is really the end of an era in many ways and you can see how they were shrinking shrinking shrinking and now you have the golden horde breaking up lithuania the poland lithuanian commonwealth is going to rise to power and it's amazing in all of this that you have a russian state that is able to rise out of all this because it just seems like there's no way that could happen some hailed moscow as the third rome the seat of orthodox christian faith now rome and constantinople had fallen [Music] 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 and their names are kaiser in uh german and uh all comes from caesar uh which caesar is our way of pronouncing it i think kaiser is probably more how julius caesar would have pronounced his name um but czar is from that same root word ivan the terrible as we remember him he's remembered very differently i think in russia i don't think he's he's viewed as this tyrant who was bloodthirsty and things like that the way that he's been spun to a lot of us in the west 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 and there's a brief mention of sweden there sweden is a world power at this point i mean they're one of the most powerful countries in europe and therefore in the world and because of the rise of poland because of the rise of the prussians at this time because of the russians all of that is going to combine to reduce the the influence of sweden and we've done a series on that if you want to check that out 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 isn't it interesting uh even back in the 1500s how we see that this area becomes volatile and it becomes a place where people are warring over it we see a crimean war in the 1850s we see crimea becoming the source of conflict again here in the last 10 years uh and and we're seeing the conflict today i mean these are ancient ancients a strong word these are rivalries and uh fights that go back hundreds and hundreds if not sometimes thousands of years 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 the cossack adventurer jeremiah led 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 and that becomes i mean to this day one of their most important ports i mean if you're an american think norfolk for example or pearl harbor i mean these are important places where uh you know the the russian fleet uh this is going to be their main port of being able to go out into the rest of the world in the west 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 rudi kid 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 for the romans 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 and let's take a look at those numbers as well so during the time of troubles uh which ended in 1613 which is the beginning of the romanov dynasty uh it es it's estimated that 1 to 1.2 million people died during that time some areas of russia experience population declines of over 50 percent uh just unbelievable and you know even though that was pretty violent uh that time of troubles this was a dynasty had been on the throne for what almost a millennium i mean 800 years and then the romanovs are going to be on the throne for another 300 years after that and so most of russia's history is two dynasties that go back that go over a thousand years combined that's incredible stability uh but boy it's all gonna go downhill here for a few years and then of course after 1917 again a period of great instability polish troops occupied moscow swedish troops seized novgorod the russian state seemed on the verge of extinction so i think that's actually a really good place for us to stop i know we didn't get real far into the history but i think that uh stopping right at the beginning of the romanov dynasty is going to be a good jumping off point for us to continue with this moving forward so please let me know your thoughts if you like this and you want to see more of this history please hit that like button and let me know in the comment section below something you learned today that you did not know and if you have something to add to the period we just talked about some more information add that as well let's learn together let's grow in our understanding because understanding the past is going to give us a much better view into what's going on in our world right now and if you didn't see what i had to say about the conflict between russia and ukraine i did a couple of videos on that and i'll put the links here to both of those so you can check them out thanks a lot we'll see you again tomorrow

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 75,515

Keywords: epic history tv, history of russia, russian history, kievan rus, the animated history of russia, epic history, ivan the terrible, history channel, russian history documentary

Id: DnoHB4ielnA

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 26 2022