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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]
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