Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Who started the Russian empire?
Though the Empire was only officially proclaimed by Tsar Peter I following the Treaty of Nystad (1721), some historians would argue that it was truly born either when Ivan III of Russia conquered Veliky Novgorod in 1478, or when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552. According to another point of view, the term Tsardom, which was used after the coronation of Ivan IV in 1547, was already a contemporary Russian word for empire.
Historically, Russia and Turkey fought a number of wars and had caused a great devastation for each nation. During the old Tsardom of Russia, the Ottomans often raided and attacked Russian villagers. With the transformation into Russian Empire, Russia started to expand and clashed heavily with the Turks; which Russia often won more than lost, and reduced the Ottoman Empire heavily. The series of wars had manifested the ideas among the Turks that Russia wanted to turn Turkey into a vassal state, leading to a high level of Russophobia in Turkey. In the 20th century, anti-Russian sentiment in Turkey was so great that the Russians refused to allow a Turkish military attache to accompany their armies. After the World War I, both Ottoman and Russian Empires collapsed, and two nations went on plagued by their own civil wars; during that time Soviet Russia (who would later become Soviet Union) supported Turkish Independence Movement led by Mustafa Kemal, leading to a warmer relations between two states, as newly established Turkish Republic maintained a formal tie with Soviet Union. But their warm relations didn't last long; after the World War II, the Bosphorus crisis occurred at 1946 due to Joseph Stalin's demand for a complete Soviet control of the straits led to resurgence of Russophobia in Turkey.
"Muscovy" in the 16th century was the Russian state which separated itself from the Kievan Rus' after it fell apart. It evolved into the Russian Empire under Peter the Great starting at the end of the 17th century. Russia was the region, Muscovy was the state until it no longer included just Moscow. Muscovy was then ruled by the Muscovite monarchy, starting with Ivan III (1462–1505), who expanded Muscovy, and ending with Ivan IV, who claimed the title "Tsar of Russia".
When the Russian Empire started annexing Central Asian Turkestan, Āmul was surrendered to Russians by the Bukhara emirate, who later herself would entirely become a vassal of Russia and pledge allegiance to the Russian emperor. The modern city was founded in 1886, when Cossack Russians settled in Uralka in what is now the eastern part of Türkmenabat, naming their settlement "New-Chardjuy". The settlement here was necessary to complete the construction of the Trans-Caspian railway.
Nikolay Mikhailovich Yazykov (, March 4, 1803, Simbirsk, Russian Empire – December 26, 1846, Moscow, Russian Empire) was a Russian poet and Slavophile who in the 1820s rivalled Alexander Pushkin and Yevgeny Baratynsky as the most popular poet of his generation.
In the second half of the 19th century, in response to the widespread and systematic persecution of Jews, many Jews fled the Russian Empire, but with the spread of literacy, many of those who stayed were drawn into radical and reformist ideologies, attracted by the prospect of liberation of Jewish communities from the conditions imposed on them, as well as disgust at the political system of the Russian Empire. The Social Democrats (Socialists) included many Jews including Martov and Trotsky in its leadership, as did the Social Revolutionary Party of Russia. The same period saw the Bundist and Zionist movements emerge and rapidly grow, with their promises to end the persecution of Jews, but their growth led to a polarization of Jewish communities due to their diverging political goals. While the Bundists proclaimed the superiority of the Yiddish language, the Zionists promoted Hebrew as a lingua franca for Jews of varying geographic origins. The Zionist movement in Russia was officially started with the Hibbat Zion movement in 1881-1883, in response to the growing pogroms against Jews. While the Bundists saw the home for Russian Jewry in Russia, the Zionists aimed to establish a Jewish state free of rule by foreigners. Although the Zionist movement was first organized in Western Europe, the majority of its adherents came from Eastern Europe, the Russian Empire in particular. Russian Jews were the founders of Labor Zionism. Despite, or perhaps because of, its popularity, all Zionist organizations were outlawed in Russia. The Bundists, on the other hand, proclaimed Yiddish as a national language for Jews and argued for a separate set of Jewish-run schools.
He was educated in Belgium, University of Liege. Upon his return to Poland (Privislinsky Krai, Russian Empire), he became one of technical directors in the Lilpop, Rau i Loewenstein factory in Warsaw, and then the company's representative for all of Russian Empire. He also served as a general secretary of three Russian technological syndicates and simultaneously started his own company in Sankt Petersburg.
In 1902 Japan and the British Empire forged the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which would last until 1923. The purpose of this alliance was to contain the Russian Empire in East Asia. In response to this alliance, Russia formed a similar alliance with France and began to renege on agreements to reduce troop strength in Manchuria. From Russian perspective, it seemed inconceivable that Japan, a non-European power which was considered to be undeveloped (i.e. not-industrial), and almost bereft of natural resources, would challenge the Russian Empire. This view would change when Japan started and won the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05).
By the mid 18th century, Russian Empire has expanded into Siberia, and Russian settlements started to appear along Volga and Yaik rivers. The Kazakh-Russian relationship at the border regions was tense, which often resulted in mutual raids by Russian Cossacks on Kazakh lands and Kazakhs on Russian settlements.
The Russo-Circassian War (1763–1864) involved a series of battles and wars in Circassia, the northwestern part of the Caucasus, in the course of the Russian Empire's conquest of the Caucasus. Fighting lasted approximately 101 years, starting in the reign of Empress Catherine the Great and finishing in 1864. Although the Russian conquest of the Caucasus started at least as early as the Russo-Persian Wars, the term Caucasian War commonly refers only to the period 1817–1864. Those who use the term Russian–Circassian War take its starting date as 1763, when the Russians began establishing forts, including at Mozdok, to be used as springboards for conquest.
The Russian government also managed to alienate many Georgian nobles, prompting a group of young aristocrats to plot to overthrow Russian rule. They were inspired by events elsewhere in the Russian Empire: the Decembrist revolt in St. Petersburg in 1825 and the Polish uprising against the Russians in 1830. The Georgian nobles' plan was simple: they would invite all the Russian officials in the region to a ball then murder them. However, the conspiracy was discovered by the authorities on December 10, 1832 and its members were arrested and internally exiled elsewhere in the Russian Empire. There was a revolt by peasants and nobles in Guria in 1841. Things changed with the appointment of Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov as Viceroy of the Caucasus in 1845. Count Vorontsov's new policies won over the Georgian nobility, who increasingly adopted Western European customs and attire, as the Russian nobility had done in the previous century. 
As of the end of 1878, there were only four Slavic states in the world: the Russian Empire, Principality of Serbia, Principality of Montenegro and the Principality of Bulgaria. In the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire of approximately 50 million people, about 23 million were Slavs. The Slavic peoples who were, for the most part, denied a voice in the affairs of the Austria-Hungary, were calling for national self-determination. Because of the vastness and diversity of the territory occupied by Slavic people, there were several centers of Slavic consolidation. In the 19th century, Pan-Slavism developed as a movement among intellectuals, scholars, and poets, but it rarely influenced practical politics and did not find support in some Slavic nations. Pan-Slavism became compromised when the Russian Empire started to use it as an ideology justifying its territorial conquests in Central Europe as well as subjugation of other Slavic ethnic groups such as Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and the ideology became associated with Russian imperialism.
The 1860s marked a turning point of Belarus in the Russian Empire. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861, followed by the January Uprising fully left the Polish influence on Belarus behind. A number of authors started publishing in the Belarusian language, including Jan Czeczot, Władysław Syrokomla and Konstanty Kalinowski. What followed was the Industrial Revolution under Alexander III and with it the arrival of the railways Peasants sought a better lot in growing industrial centres in Belarus and a further 1.5 million people leaving to other parts of the Empire in the half-century preceding the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Ivan Vasilyevich Samarin (, 19 January 1817, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, — 1885, Moscow, Russian Empire) was a Russian stage actor (later theatre director and playwright), associated with the Maly Theatre, who achieved his greatest success with the parts of Chatsky (from 1839 onwards) and later (starting from 1863) Famusov in Alexander Griboyedov's "Woe from Wit", as well as Khlestakov in Gogol's "Revizor". As a comic he excelled in several plays by William Shakespeare.
Tsar Alexander I of Russia had started a worldwide Russian representation mission under the lead of Adam Johann von Krusenstern (Russian: Крузенштерн). With Japan in mind, Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov was appointed to the mission. He was the founder of Russian–Siberian trade in fur and the ideal man to convince the Japanese.
With Britain's old rivals no-longer a threat, the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new rival, the Russian Empire, and a strategic competition in what became known as The Great Game for supremacy in Central Asia. Britain feared that Russian expansionism in the region would eventually threaten the Empire in India. In response, Britain undertook a number of pre-emptive actions against perceived Russian ambitions, including the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842), the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880) and the British expedition to Tibet (1903–1904). During this period, Britain also sought to maintain the balance of power in Europe, particularly against Russian expansionism, who at the expense of the waning Ottoman Empire had ambitions to "carve up the European part of Turkey". This ultimately led to British involvement in the Crimean War (1854–1856) against the Russian Empire.
Proponents of the new Russian Empire purport it to be the successor of the historical Russian Empire founded by Peter the Great in 1721. As such, the nation stakes its claim to unpopulated territory that belonged to the historical Russian Empire through "right of discovery", but which was not claimed by the Soviet Union after the 1917 Russian Revolution. It does not claim land that was part of the historical Russian Empire that is now part of Finland, Poland, or the former Soviet republics.
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Makarov (, 19 July 1857 (7 July 1857 O.S.), St. Petersburg, Russian Empire – 1919, Moscow, Russian SFSR) was a Russian politician who served as the Minister of Internal Affairs (1911–1912) and Minister of Justice (1916) of the Russian Empire.
Armenians played little role in the revolutionary movements of the Russian Empire until the 1880s. Until that point, the ideas of Grigor Artsruni, the editor of the Tbilisi-based newspaper "Mshak" ("The Cultivator"), enjoyed great popularity among the Armenian intelligentsia. Artsruni believed that life under the Russian Empire represented the "lesser evil" for his people. Russian Armenians were deeply concerned about the plight of their compatriots under the Persian and Ottoman Empires, especially the peasants of western Armenia who were mostly ignored by Ottoman Armenian intellectuals far away in Istanbul and Smyrna. Tbilisi and Yerevan were much more obvious choices for a base for promoting revolutionary activity among Armenians in the eastern Ottoman Empire. The importance of the unity of the Armenia, divided between three empires, ensured that Armenian political movements would have little in common with other political movements in the Russian Empire.
During the Second Opium War (1857–1860), Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky approached Yishan and offered to provide Russian assistance to the Qing Empire against the British and French, in return for redefining the Sino–Russian border along the Amur and Ussuri rivers. The Russians also put up a display of their military power by firing artillery shells along the Amur River. Yishan was terrified, but did not want to retaliate for fear of starting another war. In May 1858, the Russian and Qing Empires signed the Treaty of Aigun, which transferred the lands between the Stanovoy Range and Amur River to the Russian Empire. In 1860, the Russians intervened in the Convention of Beijing (which ended the Second Opium War), and forced the Qing Empire to further cede its territories east of the Ussuri River, including Sakhalin, to them. The Xianfeng Emperor was enraged by the territorial losses to the Russians, so he dismissed Yishan from his office as General of Heilongjiang, despite the latter's attempts to explain himself. Yishan returned to Beijing to await further orders, but was soon back into service.
After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, and with the amalgamation of Ukrainian territories into one administrative unit (the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic), the term started to recede from common use. Its subsequent usage has been regarded as derogatory, referring to those Ukrainians with little or no Ukrainian national consciousness.
The term retains currency among Russian monarchists and Russian nationalists who deny that Ukraine and Ukrainians are distinct from Russia and Russians. By the late 1980s, the term had become archaic, and Ukrainians regarded its anachronistic usage as offensive.
The Ottoman Empire began massacring Assyrians in the nineteenth century, a time of friendly relations between the Ottomans and the British, who were defending the Ottomans from the Russian Empire's efforts to include under its protection the communities of Ottoman Orthodox Christians. In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire began deporting and massacring Assyrians and Armenians in Van. After attacking Russian cities and declaring war on Britain and France, the Empire declared a holy war on Christians. The German Kaiser and the German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire directed and orchestrated the holy war, and financed the Ottomans' war against the Russian Empire.
In 1864, after the end of the century-long Russian-Circassian War between the Circassians (Adyghes) who formed the historical population of Circassia and the Russian Empire, a major part of the Shapsugs, who lived on Black Sea coast from modern Sochi to Tuapse, were either killed in the Circassian Genocide or expelled to the Ottoman Empire like the other Circassian tribes. 
Because the Shapsugs were one of the most stubborn enemies of the Russian Empire, they suffered more than the other Circassian tribes. They were the last of their alliance to surrender to the occupiers' army, and kept resisting the Russians in a holy war, for more than 20 years after the end of the Russian-Circassian War in 1864.
Kyrgyz attitudes towards Russians was initially neutral as their first interaction with the Russian Empire was in the context of Russo-Kazakh fighting, specifically the Russian attack on the Khan of Kokand in the 1850’s. Prior to Russian expansion into traditional Kyrgyz lands, the Kazakhs had begun a series of raids on Kyrgyz settlements in an attempt to increase their authority in the region as well as drum up support and popularity amongst the local inhabitants. Thus upon the arrival of the Cossacks (who had been fighting against the Kazakhs since the 1730s), the Kyrgyz were excited to gain an ally that was militarily superior to the Kazakhs, despite also being militarily superior to themselves. In 1860 Cossacks from the Russian Empire sacked the city of Bishkek, the centre of Kyrgyz life, and annexed the region for the empire. Despite the taking of their capital city, the Kyrgyz were supportive of the Russians. This is due to the fact that the Kyrgyz had grown to dislike their Khan, who had in turn been put in place by the Kazakhs, whom the Tsar hoped to depose. By 1865 the Kyrgyz were fully subordinate to the Russians and by 1895 Turkmenistan had been fully incorporated into the Russian Empire.
In the end, the Russian declaration of war came as a surprise to both Carol and Kogălniceanu, who had not been informed of the exact date (April 23) when the Imperial Russian Army would start moving into Moldavia—hence, Romanians tended to regard it as an invasion. Also alarming for Kogălniceanu, the official Russian proclamation addressed Romanians as protegés of the Empire. Bilateral tensions were somewhat alleviated by Russian apologies and, later, by the Ottoman pledge to annex Romania; addressing a discontented Parliament, Kogălniceanu asserted that the Russian road was the country's only choice.