The destiny of Russia, State which was constituted little before the year thousand between average Dniepr and the high Volga, remained a long time separated from that of Europe. Subjected to the yoke tatar of the medium of the XIII E at the end of the XV E century, the Russian company was constituted, under the leadership of its Church, a treasure of traditions. Of its secular opposition to progress - the release of the serfs intervened only in 1861 -, the Russian writers of the XIX E century, of Gogol with Tchekhov, offered a seizing description. The emergence of an urban proletariat, at the dawn of the XX E century, created the conditions of the revolution of 1917, which was to put an end to four centuries of autocracy.
The empire of the tsars succeeded the Union of the Soviet socialist republics, gigantic multinational Federal state, founded on the application of the Marxist and become doctrines, the shortly after the Second world war, a true super power, dominating a compact unit geopolic.
December 1991, the dissolution of the USSR left the place to the Community of the independent States, in which the Federation of Russia plays a paramount role. But the beginnings of the new State are difficult: the reconversion of an economic system in bankruptcy has very high social costs, and the loss of the traditional values generated a crisis of the company without precedent. The Federation even is threatened in its integrity by the wills of independence which are felt, to the example of Chetchnia. Russia is a State to be recomposed.