The Romanov Dynasty began with the election of Mikhail Romanov, a 16 year old boyar, by the zemskii sobor. The Romanov family ruled Russia from 1613 to 1855 and during this time, Russia became a major European power. The first rulers of this dynasty struggled to end internal disorder, foreign invasion and financial collapse. Mikhail Romanov was a weak ruler, his father Metropolitan Filaret was the real power until his death in 1633. After Mikhail's death, his son Alexis ruled from 1645-1676. Mikhail and Alexis relied on the advice of the zemskii sobor, which grew in power. It passed some legislation and represented the gentry and merchants against the boyars. However, Alexis often deferred to his boyar advisors who usually did not work for the best of the country and peasant uprisings and Cossack revolts were common. Revolts occurred in 1648, 1662 and 1670-1671. The revolt from 1670-1671 is the most famous. It was led by a Don Cossack named Stenka Razin who become a hero for the common people. He was eventually executed. However, while the Cossacks rebelled, they also helped Russia by leading the way in expansion into Siberia.

Peter the Great's reign transformed Russia. He strengthened the rule of the tsar and westernized Russia while at the same time making Russia a power in Europe and greatly expanding Russia's borders. During his reign, Russia became an empire and Peter became the first emperor of Russia. Peter became co-ruler with his half brother Ivan when Peter was ten. As both Peter and Ivan were young, Sofia , became regent. Peter was mostly ignored and so spent much time with the foreigners in Russia. He became very interested in western ways and in warfare. A favorite childhood activity involved directing troops he gathered and playing war games. The two troops he started as a child continued to exist and became the elite guard regiments the Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii. Peter also made two tours of Europe. He was the first Russian ruler to travel outside of Russia. While on these tours he learned about European dress and culture and warfare, especially naval warfare. He learned to do many trades, from shipbuilding to shoemaking. Peter the Great wanted to make Russia more modern militarily, economically and socially, while strengthening the power of the state and of the tsar. One of his most famous measures towards westernization was the order for noble men to shave their beards. Further changes included abolishing hereditary positions with the creation of the Table of Ranks that gave people privileges based on their ability and position within the Table of Ranks. Peter required all men to serve the state.

Military campaigns were a large part of Peter's rule. He greatly improved the army and created a navy, even building a ship by himself. Some of Peter's earliest military victories came at the beginning of his reign when he overcame coup attempts staged by Sofia. He eventually had her confined to a convent and her followers executed or exiled. The navy Peter had built and the army he created were very effective and Russia's territory grew during his reign. The Great Northern War against Sweden was the longest lasting battle of Peter's reign. This war led to Peter's famous decision to melt the church bells to create cannonballs. These wars, while increasing Russia's size and power were very difficult for the people to support. They were very expensive and the people were forced to pay heavy taxes. In addition, so many people were forced to join the army that their homes often suffered. As part of his westward expansion, Peter had St. Petersburg built, and called it his Window to the West. This too was very costly.

Peter the Great made another major reform with the Russian Orthodox church. In the past, the church had acted as the moral conscience of the nation and a check on the tsar's power. However, Peter the Great made the church the servant of the state. The biggest change he made to the church was the creation of the Ecclesiastical College, a governing board of clerics, to replace the patriarchate. Along with changes to the church, Peter increased the education that Russians received. He created the first universities in Russia.

Another change made by Peter was his declaration that ascent to the throne would not be based on hereditary principles such as the rule of primogeniture. Instead, he said that the tsar would name his own successor. However, Peter died without naming someone to succeed him. There was no obvious choice either, as Peter had been married twice. His first wife, Evdokia was forced on him by his mother and he had had her sent to a convent. He later married a woman named Catherine, who he also made Empress and so many felt that Peter the Great meant for her to succeed him. However, Peter the Great also had a son by Evdokia named Alexis. Alexis did not support Peter the Great and when Alexis had a son, named Peter, Peter the Great told Alexis that he must support him. Alexis did not and eventually Peter the Great had him killed. Also both Peter the Great and his former co tsar Ivan V had daughters who could possibly rule.

This resulted in a quick succession of rulers, Catherine I ruled for less than two years, then Peter II ruled from 1727-1730. He was followed by Anna I, who ruled from 1730-1740 and Anna II who ruled from 1740-1741. These rulers were followed by the relatively long reign of Elizabeth I, Peter the Great's daughter. She reigned from 1741-1762 and under her reign St. Petersburg became a beautiful city. She hired an Italian architect who built some of Russia's most well known buildings. These include The Catherine Palace and the fourth Winter Palace, which is now the Hermitage museum. She was followed by Peter III, who lasted only a few months when, due to his unpopular actions and anti-Russian feelings, the military sponsored his wife in a coup that succeeded and Catherine the Great began her rule of Russia.

Catherine the Great was born Sophie Auguste Frederike. She was a German princess. She married Peter III at the invitation of Peter III's mother, Elizabeth I. At the time of her marriage, she took the name Catherine and became a member of the Russian Orthodox church. Peter III and Catherine the Great were very different. Peter III idolized Frederick the Great of Prussia and ended a war Russia had been fighting with Prussia by conceding all of Russia's gains to Prussia. Peter III did not particularly like Russia. Catherine however, sought to become more Russian. She learned the language and customs and learned about the court. Within a few months of Peter III coming to power, the royal guard deserted him and helped Catherine gain the throne. The coup that brought Catherine to power and saw her crowned Empress of all Russia was organized by Count Grigorii Orlov, one of Catherine's lovers.

Catherine the Great helped make her popularity grow by minimizing her European connections and focusing on her support of Russia. Yet, while Catherine the Great sought to minimize her connections to Europe, she also tried to continue westernizing Russia as Peter the Great had done. She wanted to bring the Enlightenment to Russia and admired the French philosophers. Catherine attempted to create a progressive law code and created the Great Instruction to work towards this goal. She presented the Great Instruction to a group called the Legislative Commission who were supposed to codify laws. However, the Legislative Commission was unsuccessful in creating laws and when war broke out in Turkey Catherine disbanded the group. She also read authors such as Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu and incorporated their theories into her ruling ideas. Catherine also encouraged the publishing of numerous books and periodicals, including satires on Russia court life and the nobility. Catherine was a patron of the arts. During her reign, Catherine the Great improved the lives of the nobility while decreasing the status and rights of the peasants and serfs. Catherine was dependent on the nobility for her power. She knew that they had helped her come to power and that if she didn't satisfy them they could plan a coup against her.

One of the first controversial things Catherine did was to secularize the church lands. The Metropolitan protested and excommunicated those involved with the process, however others in the church did not support the excommunication and the Metropolitan eventually lost his position. Catherine promoted local government and created governing districts. In 1785 the Charter to the Nobility was passed. This recognized the gentry of each province as a group with an elected leader that could directly petition Catherine. It also restored previous rights and privileges of the gentry. The gentry were free from obligations to the state and from taxation. They also gained greater property rights. They were the soul owners of their estates and gained much more control over the serfs. During this time, the poor and the serfs lost much of their privileges and revolts occurred. The most famous and largest of the revolts was led by the Cossack Emelian Pugachev and lasted from 1773-1775. It ended when Pugachev was captured and brought to Moscow where he was dismembered and burned. Catherine also helped spread the institution of serfdom by giving away large tracts of land and the people on the land as gifts and rewards thus increasing the number of serfs and the places where serfdom was common.

Catherine worked to increase education in Russia. She created elementary and secondary schools and universities. The elementary schools and secondary schools were supposed to be free to all but economics often kept the poor people out of the schools. Elementary schools were largely private schools that poor people could not afford to attend, and therefore they could get into the secondary schools. Catherine also established a medical commission in 1763 which helped to improve medical conditions in Russia. She led the way in vaccinating Russians by taking the first vaccine. She also wanted Russia to be able to produce its own medicines and surgical equipment. Catherine helped expand Russia through two Russo-Turkish wars, one in 1768-1774 and one from 1787-1792, through the addition of Ukraine from 1781-1786 and by gaining portions of Poland through paritions of Poland.

Catherine died in 1796 and was seceded by her son Paul I who ruled from 1796-1801. He was mentally unstable and in 1801 a group of conspirators killed him and his son Aleksandr I became the emperor. He ruled from 1801-1825. Paul I had placed many restrictions of Russian life that Aleksandr I changed. He restored the rights of the nobles ended the ban on foreign study and the importation of foreign books, removed the restrictions on the private printing of books and released people who had been imprisoned for offending Paul. Aleksandr I's first act as Emperor had been to announce that he would reign as Catherine the Great had done and his actions proved to the people that he wanted to serve them. Aleksandr ruled with the aid of four friends who became unofficially known as the Committee of Friends and as a result of their recommendations major administrative changes were made. Later in his reign, Mikhail Speransky served as advisor and his main job was to create a constitution. Speransky's plan was never fully carried out and Russia did not gain a constitution. While the first years of Aleksandrs' reign brought reforms and improvements, the second half was reactionary. Aleksandr became most interested in religion and began to follow an obscure form of Christianity. Aleksandr also began to believe that Russia needed a larger army and that the best way to do this was to create military colonies. He had farming villages created that were staffed by military. The farmers/soldiers were thus to support themselves through farming and protect the country as soldiers. This system was not very effective. Aleksandr's Minister of Education felt that the only useful knowledge was contained in the bible, and so education also sufferred setbacks during Aleksandr I's reign. When Aleksandr died in 1825 he left behind a troubled country for his brother Nicholas.

During Aleksandr I's reign Napoleon invaded Russia. This event is one of the things Aleksandr I is most famous for. In 1812 Napoleon began his invasion of Russia. His troops were superior in skill and in numbers. So, Russia, rather than fighting began to retreat creating a path of destruction as they retreated. Napoleon followed and finally on September 7 in Borodino, a village west of Moscow a battle was fought. The Russians lost and further retreated leaving Moscow to be taken. However, by this time Moscow was deserted and Napoleon's armies were far from their supply lines. Also, the night Napoleon claimed Moscow fires broke out in the city leaving Napoleon's army without both food and adequate shelter. Napoleon finally decided to retreat. He left Moscow and was forced by Russian troops to follow the same route they had used when entering Russia. The area around this path had suffered heavy destruction when Napoleon entered Russia which left Napoleon's armies without adequate food and shelter on the return home. The effects of winter and gorilla warfare attacks on the retreating army significantly reduced its numbers and Napoleon lost his power. Russia had defeated the mighty Napoleon.

Nicholas I gained the throne of a troubled country in November 1825. He was not the person most of Russia expected to become emperor. His older brother Constantine was next in line but Constantine had earlier renounced his right to the throne and Aleksandr I and Constantine had named Nicholas I as the heir. Also, a group of young nobles launched a revolt on December 14, known as the Decembrist Revolt. The leaders planned to force Constantine to the throne. This revolt was easily defeated. Nicholas I's motto became Russian Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationalism. This meant that he upheld the rights of the church, and of his own autocratic rule. By focusing on Russian Orthodoxy, he also felt that he had the God given right to rule. Nationalism favored ethnic Russians over other ethnic groups. Mikhail Speransky remained influential and worked to reform Russia's laws. He and others succeeded in publishing a Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire. These volumes were meant to make rulings through out Russia more uniform. The Soviet KGB has its beginnings in this time. One of the Departments Nicholas created was in charge of monitering subversive groups. This department was the precursor to the KGB.

During Nicholas' reign and his successor Aleksandr II's reign some of the most important Russian writers, artists and composers worked. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. Aleksandr Pushkin wrote, among other things, The Captive of the Caucasus, The Fountain of Bakhchissarai, Ruslan and Lyudmila, Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin, and the Bronze Horseman. Nicholas Gogol was one of the best fiction writers. Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. The musician Tchaikovsky wrote 1812 Overture, Nutcracker Suite, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Eugene Onegine, and Sleeping Beauty. One of the most famous paintings of this time is Ivan the Terrible and the Death of His Son by Ilya Repin.

Nicholas' reign was a very conservative one. He was confident in Russia's military and diplomatic capabilities. However, the Crimean war at the end of his reign made it obvious that reform was needed in Russia. This task came to his son, Aleksandr II. Aleksandr ruled from 1855-1881. He became known as the Tsar Liberator because he freed the serfs. Aleksandr II could see the forced labor by the serfs was a very uneconomical way for Russia to operate. Also, many of the nobles were beginning to think that serfdom should end. Serfs were beginning to be seen as people as a result of the popular Hunting Sketches done by Ivan Turgenev that portrayed rural life. Aleksandr II freed the serfs with the Emancipation Act of February 18, 1861. 52 million serfs were freed, this was about 45% of the population. This emancipation did not solve Russia's problems of peasant unrest and may have made things worse immediately following the emancipation. Only serfs that had farmed were given land, house serfs were not given land. Also, serfs had to continue working for the estate owners two years after being freed and had to pay for the land they were given over a 49 year period. Peasants were still tied to the land because they lived in communes called a mir. However in the long run freeing the peasant was an important reform for Russia.

Nicholas made other reforms and together these came to be known as the Great Reforms. Local governments were developed to replace the collapse of power of the wealthy land owners. The military was reformed and one of the most important changes made to it was to shorten the required time of service for peasants from 25 years to 6 years. The judicial system was also reformed. This system badly needed reform. The legal profession was created, open trials and equal treatment under the law was instigated. However, the reforms to the legal system did not apply to the peasants. The education system also grew. The Ministry of Education created a national system of primary schools beginning in 1864. As people became better educated they became more critical of the government. University students especially began to question the regime. As people gained freedoms they began to want more changes and when Aleksandr III, Aleksandr II's son, gained the throne he was forced to deal with this unrest.

Aleksandr III responded by tightening control of people and removing the political freedom they had been experiencing. Aleksandr III renewed the policy of Russian Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationalism. Marxism began to grow during Aleksandr III's reign. The Bolshevik and Menshevik groups formed and revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, PLekhanov, Vera Zasulich, Paul Akselrod and Pavel Martov were emerging as revolutionaries. They originally were part of the Labor Party which split to form The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Martov. Aleksandr III's son Nicholas II began ruling in 1894 when Aleksandr III unexpectedly died. Nicholas II was a weak ruler and could not successfully rule Russia. Industrialism was finally reaching Russia and a working middle class was emerging. Nicholas II however did not want to allow workers to unite and form unions as they were elsewhere in the world. He created state approved unions and a strike by one of these groups helped illustrate Nicholas II's poor ruling ability. The people had long believed that the tsar was the protector of his people and so the group was peacefully marching to the tsar carrying icons and portraits of the tsar when Nicholas II refused to meet with them and ordered to have them fired upon. This killed hundreds of innocent people and public opinion turned against the tsar. This event came to be known as Bloody Sunday and helped set off a revolt in 1905. To help calm the unrest in the country Nicholas II agreed to the October Manifest which gave people civil liberties and created the Duma.

World War I began in 1914 when Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia went to war to defend the Serbs but was ill prepared for the battle. They had inadequate weapons and poor leadership. Nicholas II went to the lines to lead his armies but this proved to be a poor move. Problems increased and prices rose dramatically. Women organized themselves to protest high bread prices. Food and fuel shortages and outbreaks of diseases were a major problem. Also, many soldiers deserted. These soldiers were important in a final revolt in 1917 which brought about the end of the Romanov Dynasty. Nicholas II and his family were put under house arrest and in July of 1918 were murdered.