Why is Russia So DAMN BIG?

this video was sponsored by skillshare which is a place where you can learn basically anything you want for less than ten dollars a month anyway let's get to it russia here we go like this page and this page this is russia it's huge it doesn't even fit on one of these pages i ripped the page let's look at russia [Music] but wait yes this is russia but russia is also this and this and this this one country encompasses over a hundred languages spread across 11 time zones i mean the place is freaking huge countries aren't

really supposed to be this big so how did this happen how did russia become so damn big [Music] countries come in all shapes and sizes you have really small countries like here in europe the country of monaco is tiny it's literally two square kilometers like smaller than most cities now that's obviously an outlier so let's look at a more average-sized country like belgium more like 11 000 square kilometers then you have even bigger countries like france like 550 000 square kilometers over here in the united states where everything is apparently bigger you have states that

are bigger than france like the state of texas is 695 000 square kilometers all 48 of these continental united states are huge by european standards at least this whole continental united states is 8 million square kilometers so you have all these different sizes of countries the average sort of looks like this and then you have the second largest country on earth which is canada huge but now take a look at the size of the largest country on earth russia is huge it is more than double the size of the continental united states 17 million square

kilometers makes up one-eighth of the total habitable area on earth and it's almost double the next biggest country on this list i mean it's mind-blowing russia is a part of europe it also shares a beach line with turkey but then you go all the way over here and it has an extensive border with china and north korea [Music] keep going and it stretches all the way up here to where you could literally swim from russia to the united states assuming you can swim you know like two and a half miles so yeah russia is [

__ ] huge it's giant but not that long ago russia wasn't huge in fact relative to empires and their borders russia was kind of a small fish that's the story i want to tell you a thousand years ago russia looked like this a loose group of slavic peoples who were a growing and prosperous society here in eastern europe but they had a pretty big weakness and that weakness looked like this these are flat grasslands which are very easy to cross if you're an army looking to pillage land and that's exactly what a group of horse-riding

warriors did these guys were the mongols and they basically used this path of flat grasslands to traverse across asia and expand their empire 40 000 of these mongol guys on horses with bows and arrows eventually made it all the way here to the slavic peoples of russia here's an image of them invading the cities and burning them down conquering these people look at how scared these people look i mean i would be too if 40 000 mongols on horseback rode into my city anyway so the mongols take over this little block of slavic people and

it really weakens their society it breaks up all the cities that were sort of collaborating with each other and now they're paying taxes to the mongols like this empire that was from super far away like on the other side of the world but there was one city in this area that was particularly ready to fight back they were quietly getting more powerful this city was called muscovy or moscow eventually and it became the regional epicenter for trading fur which is a thing that was becoming all the rage in europe moscow was also learning how to

use gunpowder and guns and technology from europe and before long they were able to punch back against the mongols whose big ass empire was getting really big and hard to maintain and it was sort of starting to crack and moscow was there to take advantage of this i mean let's be honest there's only so long you can keep an empire that looks like this together way too big i mean this is the biggest land empire in history but it didn't last long even though they had these badass warriors on horseback anyway so yeah moscow started

punching back they had fur money and they had gunpowder and they were having success pushing the mongols out and moving east one thing's for sure said moscow which was soon becoming the russian empire we're not gonna let anyone sneak up on us again like the mongols did and everyone over here sort of chuckled and european and said don't you realize that the only way to keep people out is to have like mountains and water to protect you and the russians were like oh yeah you mean like these and the europeans were like nice so moscow

which was just a city but is now becoming the russian empire starts expanding towards these mountains and soon they have like a nice empire-sized set of borders some mountains for protection they have an economy of fur they have technology and commerce they're getting rich things are looking good for russia but wait a minute can we overlay that green layer on the map that shows the super highway of grasslands that the mongols used to invade yeah that one that one ugh look there's a flaw in the plan nice try russia but you see that this natural

border which is great has a huge gap of flat grasslands that people can easily pass directly on their way to moscow so it's the middle of the 1500s moscow has beat back the mongols is expanding east they're doing their fur thing they find kind of a natural border but it doesn't really work so they're still looking for a natural border or water or something to buffer their country to the east and then this terrible guy comes into power his name was literally ivan the terrible and he had some pretty big ambitions for expanding russia he's

like dude we don't need to stop at these mountains let's see how far we can push this thing east way past the mountains what he finds on the other side of these mountains is a very sparsely populated land of ice called siberia there wasn't a lot of people here and the people that were there weren't super resistant to this russian takeover the main thing that the russians had to fight against was the cold but with cold comes furry animals who have thick coats of fur which again was incredibly valuable in european markets and that helped

fuel this race to just keep going east [Music] is it just me or they sort of overcompensating like yeah we get it you got invaded by the mongols and like you want to like make sure it doesn't happen again but like settle down they just kept moving east until eventually they reach the pacific ocean the edge of the world but they didn't stop there they just kept going i mean listen this is so far away from the original starting point of moscow and it started to get to the point where the government back in moscow

was sort of sending out expeditions not really sure what they were doing and what they were taking over because they couldn't really like stay in touch with them they were just sort of hoping for the best after one russian dude went out on an expedition and conquered some remote city in the far east a government official back in moscow said nobody really knows why he did that and to what end there is however something erotic taking place in the borders of our empire erotic i guess that's one way to talk about it but here's the

most interesting part to me about this russian imperialism that is very different than most imperialism that i've looked into when the russians would find a tribe or a people or culture that was very different than theirs because they were so far from home they first tried to negotiate with them and convince them to join the russian empire if people resisted it got very predictable imperialism very quickly but a lot of tribes didn't resist and they found it beneficial to be a part of this growing empire so this empire grew without a lot of conflict and

in the process enveloping a lot of cultures that sort of kept their identity their language their culture far far away from moscow because of this russia today is yes this huge landmass but perhaps a better way to look at it is this [Music] russia today is divided into 85 territories 22 of these territories are actually called republics they have their own official language their own legislature and basically are totally independent from russia except for in international affairs it's like 22 countries within a country all with their own unique style so yeah while russia is this

there's also other versions of russia and i want to show you some of those stop one let's look at the republic of sakha it's located way in the east and it's huge 3.1 million square kilometers massive this place is in a time zone six hours ahead of moscow the people here don't look like putin at all their ancestors are not from the original moscow russia area and they speak their own northern siberian turkic language as well the capital of this russian republic is way up here it's called yakutsk it's the coldest large city on earth

with an average temperature of minus eight degrees centigrade and this whole region is full of these giant holes in these holes they're looking for diamonds 25 of the world's diamonds are mined in this republic so yeah this is russia next stop down here is dagestan which borders the countries of azerbaijan and georgia the climate here is so different than what i think of when i think of russia it is hot and dry and people here speak 13 different official languages besides russian plus there's a bunch of unofficial languages and 83 of the people here identify

as muslim which again like i don't think of muslims in russia but this is russia it's right next to chechnya which is another part of russia which is politically and culturally very much doing its own thing the people here declared independence in the 90s which caused rebel groups to militarize and then there was war and terrorist attacks and people died and putin may or may not have planned a bombing to frame chechnya and terrorists to then go to war with them so he'd get approval rating so he could take over the country no no wait

no i'm not going down the freaking rabbit hole i'm doing one of those fun geography videos where we talk about cultural diversity and and like borders and history and not this stuff come on just this once can i just go into a video without having to talk about the fact that some people are really terrible anyway so dagestan down here has all these different languages and people so different than what i think about when i think of russia plus i mean look at this fashion culture okay so there's a republic here right on these mountains

these mountains that we talked about that were sort of a good natural border but had a big hole in them the ural mountains this is the comey republic the main thing about this republic is it doesn't look like the sort of ice swept moscow streets that i'm used to of russia this place is known for its natural beauty beautiful landscapes and where the gulags were the brutal russian prisons during the soviet times where they would do terrible things anyway there's these beautiful rock formations that are super unique and people aren't supposed to climb on them

because there's some legend and it's bad luck but of course foreigners show up and do stupid things and they couldn't resist and here they are anyway this is russia okay a couple more you have this republic of kamikia you just need to look at this place and its people to know that this feels very different than what you think of as russia and yet this is russia mother russia has been sort of brutal to these people over the years trying to erase their culture but even still they persist last one i want to talk about

is called tuva it's down here here's putin visiting tuva a while back this is another place where russian ethnicity and language is a minority the people here are more related to the mongols and they speak a turkic language called tuvan which sounds like this so is the upshot here is that this is russia but so is this and this and this and this russia got really big as they were searching for a border and for fur and they just kept expanding their empire enveloping all of the people and cultures that came with it [Music] okay

let me just be clear about something russia is giant this video is not 15 hours long and so i was able to give a very brief overview of the history the history is so much more mind-bendingly complicated it's like game of thrones on steroids not to mention today's russia is also so much more diverse like a mosaic of cultures and languages that i was able to give a little overview for but i know that a lot of you watching are thinking why isn't he mentioning fill in the blank i want to hear from you like

what are the parts of russia that you know about that i didn't mention here that are the most interesting or the most surprising that are more different from the russia that we sort of think of let me know in the comments i got i got fascinated with russia as we did the navalny video a while back and i'm now becoming deeper and deeper into this place and where it came from and what it looks like today i've never visited and i want to so maybe i can't though because i did that navalny video and they'll

be angry at me if i go there anyway i hadn't thought about that [Music] okay before you go i want to tell you how you can sign up for skillshare for free and start learning stuff skillshare is this giant repository of tutorials video based quality tutorials that can teach you anything from photography to business skills to cooking to animation like i've learned so many of my skills from watching web-based tutorials just like this including a lot of stuff on skillshare they're really good practical courses and i'm a major believer in what they're doing i'm also

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