Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a human nation located on Earth in the Sol System. At its greatest extent, it extended across Europe, Asia and Alaska, and also administered interplanetary colonies on the planets Mars and Venus in the Sol System. By land area, the Russian Empire was the third largest empire to exist in human history, being surpassed only by the British and Mongol Empires.

The medieval state of Kievan Rus' arose in the 9th century. Rus' ultimately disintegrated until it was finally reunified by the Grand Duchy of Moscow in the 15th century. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire. The Russian Empire was proclaimed in 1721 by Peter the Great, and Russia quickly became one of Europe's great powers.

Russia was a major combatant during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. In 1805, a combined Russian and Austrian army was decisively defeated by Napoleon's French army in the Battle of Austerlitz. However, in 1812 Russia successfully repelled an invasion by Napoleonic France. The failure of Napoleon's campaign in Russia was a significant factor eventually leading to his downfall.

In 1841 the Russian Empire became the second nation - after Great Britain - to conduct a manned orbital spaceflight. The mission was launched from a spaceport in Kazakhstan.

In 1853 the Ottoman Empire, with support from Great Britain and France, launched the Crimean War against Russia. The war was sparked by Russian concerns about the rights of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman-occupied Holy Land. It was fought primarily in the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula and the Caucasus. Both sides employed advanced technologies such as high-speed airship bombers, steam-powered fighter and reconnaissance aircraft, and land and naval artillery guided by calculations using difference machines. The conflict ended in 1856 in a Russian defeat. Russia agreed to British, French and Ottoman demands to demilitarise the Black Sea. The defeat in the Crimean War weakened the Russian Empire and undermined its influence in Europe. Russian elites recognised that the modernisation of the country's economy and society would be necessary in order to maintain its status as a European great power. Subsequently, in 1861 Russia eliminated serfdom, proclaiming the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. This was part of Tsar Peter the Great's policy of modernising the country along Western European lines.

Also in 1861, the Russian Empire became the second nation after Great Britain to test fly an interplanetary spaceship powered by a Brunel drive.

The Russian Empire sold its large North American territory of Alaska to the United States in 1867. This was ostensibly to provide additional finances for Russia's fledgling space program, however the sale was also motivated by fears that the territory would be vulnerable to invasion by Great Britain in the event of another war.

In 1872 Russia surprised the international community by launching three Brunel drive-powered ships on a voyage toward Venus, rather than attempting a lunar landing first as they had been expected to do. The Russian ships carried a total of 14 explorers, scientists and astronauts. In 1873, the Russian Empire made the first manned landing on Venus, with the 14-strong exploration party arriving in landers in the Guinevere Planitia region. The Russians discovered an environment dominated by thick jungle, swampland and rivers, with a tropical climate characterised by high temperatures, humidity and precipitation. However, while the air was mostly hot and humid it was breathable. The Russians were also the first to confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life forms when they quickly discover that jungles of Venus were populated by vast numbers of large insects. The explorers discovered that the rivers were populated by many unidentified species of small edible fish, as well as larger fish similar to piranhas, however no large land mammals or birds were discovered. Several small villages of varying size were found constructed in the jungle on the shore of a large river, with larger settlements being centred around small Mesoamerican-style pyramids. The Russian expedition team was successful in growing crops and discovered that a nearby mountain range contained plentiful supplies of minerals. After a one-year stay on Venus the Russian expedition returned to Earth, arriving by 1875.

Russia launched its first mission to Mars in 1880, landing 30 personnel in the planet's Ares Vallis region in 1882. The Russian Empire thereby became the second country to conduct a manned landing on Mars, after Great Britain. In Ares Vallis, the Russians discovered the largest Martian archaeological site that had been found at that point — an entire ruined city several square kilometres in size. The Russians also discovered the remains of a canal system and pyramids. The Russian expedition team remained on Mars for one year, returning to Earth by 1884. This city, which had been claimed for the Russian Empire by the explorers, was the cause of a diplomatic complaint by Russia to Great Britain after British explorers established a temporary outpost at the site in 1889.

In 1892, Russia established an alliance with its former enemy, France. The establishment of this alliance was motivated by the growing power of the German Empire and the establishment of the German-led Triple Alliance. In the same year, Russia established a colony at the ruined Martian city that was discovered in its 1882 Mars expedition. The colony, which initially had a population of 500 settlers, was named "Novorossiya" (New Russia).

In 1894 Russia established a permanent scientific outpost in the jungle of Guinevere Planitia on Venus, manned by a rotating crew of 50 personnel. This was soon converted into a permanent colony.

By 1900 there were around 5,000 settlers living in the Russian colony of Novorossiya on Mars, in addition to 700 in the colony on Guinevere Planitia on Venus. These populations had grown to 35,000 settlers in Novorossiya and 15,000 settlers in Guinevere Planitia by 1914.

After Britain's discovery of the Mons Piton site on Luna, the Russian Empire launched a major expedition in 1904 to explore Luna's surface in search of additional Venusian technology and artifacts. Despite this, no evidence of the Venusian Empire on Luna other than the Mons Piton site was ever discovered.

Due to concerns over Russian encroachment on its sphere of influence in China and Korea, in 1904 Japan began the Russo-Japanese War by launching a surprise rocket, air and naval attack on the Russian Empire's naval and rocket base at Port Arthur in China. In the initial stages of the war, Japan won a string of victories over the Russian Empire, crippling the Russian Far Eastern Fleet and capturing the southern part of Sakhalin Island. However, Russia eventually managed to ship additional long-range rockets to its Pacific coast and used them to attack military bases in the Japanese archipelago. Facing the threat of additional rocket attacks on its cities, Japan agreed to return to the status quo and withdrew from Sakhalin Island, ending the war. While Russia succeeded in regaining control over Sakhalin Island, the significant losses in men and equipment which occurred in the early stages of the war were an embarrassment for the Russian Empire and damaged its prestige. Despite economic and social reforms in the 19th century, the Russian economy was agrarian and outdated compared to Western European countries, and the population mostly remained rural and poor. The space program had also consumed significant public funds. Radical socialists began to agitate for revolution to improve the living standards of Russian peasants. Russia's poor performance in the war with Japan caused these tensions to escalate in 1905, leading to a general strike and the Revolution of 1905. Tsar Nicholas II agreed to constitutional reforms extending voting rights and requiring the tsar to share his power with a parliament. These reforms took effect in 1906, and temporarily satisfied moderate reformists in the country.

In 1907, the Anglo-Russian Entente was signed between Great Britain and Russia, solidifying boundaries of respective control on Mars and Venus as well as in Persia and Central Asia on Earth. This agreement marked the end of the "great game" period of rivalry in space between the two nations that began in 1841. This agreement led to the effective formation of the "Triple Entente", an anti-German alliance between Britain, France and Russia. In the same year, the Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was invited by Britain to meet with survivors of the Venusian Empire while they were visiting London.

In 1908, the Tunguska event occurred in Siberia. The Russian government deployed the army to quarantine several thousand square kilometres of the forest around the site of the event, but explained that it had simply been an air burst caused by a meteroid. However, it was subsequently revealed by the government of the Soviet Union during the 1970s that an unmanned space probe of the Cramori Empire had actually crashed at Tunguska while searching the galaxy for Creator artifacts. The Russian military transported the advanced alien probe to a secret location and began a decades-long attempt to reverse engineer its fusion rocket propulsion system.

In 1909, the Imperial Russian Navy deployed its first orbital weapons platform.

In 1914, the Great War broke out after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Russia was a major participant in the war, and was allied with Great Britain and France. Russian forces achieved some initial successes in the conflict, advancing into territory held by the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, by 1915 the German and Austro-Hungarian armies had gained the initiative, dealing the Russians heavy casualties and forcing the Russian army into retreat from Russian-controlled Poland. In 1916 Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire launched a surprise attack using a fleet of armed space capsules and rockets directed at the orbital weapons platforms of Germany and its allies. It was hoped that destroying most of the German-led alliance's fleet of orbital weapons platforms would leave Germany with no way to retaliate against an attack by the Allies' own orbital weapons, forcing Germany to surrender and ending the war. However, the surprise attack was detected by German forces soon after it began and the leaders of Germany and its allies ordered their weapons platforms to open fire on Allied cities and military targets before they could be destroyed. After the German and German-allied battle stations began firing, the Allies ordered their own orbital weapons stations to fire on Germany and its allies. Many long-range rockets were also used by both sides to strike each other. The short exchange of orbital kinetic weapons and rockets left most of Europe destroyed. Tens of millions of civilians would eventually die from the strikes themselves, as well as from the resulting breakdown of food, water and electricity supplies in addition to outbreaks of disease. The use of chemical shells in many of the orbital projectiles and rockets left some parts of Europe uninhabitable for several years.

German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman orbital weapon strikes devastated many major Russian metropolitan areas, including Saint Petersburg. In addition to losing more than two million soldiers in the conventional fighting between 1914 and 1916, between five and ten million Russian civilians were estimated to have died as a result of the Great War, largely following the massive enemy bombardment of its cities. Strikes on the Russian capital resulted in the deaths of Tsar Nicholas II, most of the imperial line of succession, and many senior government and military officials loyal to the tsar. In October 1916 Bolshevik revolutionaries led by Vladimir Lenin, who had been left dissatisfied by the tsar's 1906 constitutional reforms, took advantage of the power vacuum arising from the succession crisis and declared the establishment of a communist state - the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) - based in Tsaritsyn (later renamed Volgograd). At around the same time, nationalist movements in several former territories of the Russian Empire - including Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - also exploited the power vacuum and declared independence from Russia. The Russian Empire is therefore generally regarded to have ceased to exist in October 1916. Popular discontent with the tsar's regime had been growing for some time in Russia due to the failure of the military to achieve its objectives in the Great War, as well as the conscription, rationing and poor economic conditions the population was subjected to during the conflict. The Bolsheviks enjoyed significant public support and the support of elements of the former imperial military. However, the anti-Bolshevik White movement soon arose in opposition to the establishment of a communist state in Russia, setting the stage for the Russian Civil War.

The Russian Civil War was fought between 1917 and 1920, and was eventually won by the Bolshevik Red Army. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic would go on to form the core of the Russian Empire's successor state, the communist Soviet Union. After the formation of the Soviet Union, the former Russian Empire's interplanetary colonies on Mars and Venus united and declared independence as the country of Novorossiya. Novorossiya became the first human nation entirely located on planets other than Earth. Many defeated anti-communist Russians would eventually flee the Soviet Union and Earth to resettle in Novorossiya.