# Russian Empire The state that governed Russia from 1721 until the [[Russian Revolution]] of 1917 — one of the largest empires in world history, spanning from Poland to Alaska at its peak. Under the Romanov dynasty, the Russian Empire operated as an autocracy with no constitution until 1906, when [[Tsar Nicholas II]] was forced to concede a limited parliament (the Duma) after the 1905 Revolution. The Russian Empire matters to the vault as the predecessor state whose collapse produced both the [[Soviet Union]] and the patterns of Russian imperial ambition (territorial expansion, authoritarian governance, suspicion of Western liberalism) that persist through Putin's Russia. The concept of "Russkiy Mir" (Russian World) — Moscow's claimed sphere of influence over Russian-speaking populations beyond its borders — is explicitly imperial in lineage, connecting tsarist territorial claims through Soviet borders to the justifications invoked for the invasion of [[Ukraine]]. ## See Also - [[Tsar Nicholas II]] — the last emperor - [[Russian Revolution]] — the event that ended the empire - [[Vladimir Lenin]] — the revolutionary who replaced it with the [[Soviet Union]] - [[Ukraine]] — where imperial territorial claims drive current conflict