The history of Russia is the history of a country which is being colonized. Her area of colonization expanded together with her state territory. Now falling, now rising, this age–long movement continues up to our own time.

For Klyuchevsky colonization was, indeed, the ‘basic fact’ of Russian history. When the Empress Catherine II issued her Manifestos of 1762 and 1763 inviting immigration into Russia, most of the foreigners who responded joined, and became part of, this colonization process. Their settlements took root in regions which were in the process of population and development; and they were commonly referred to as ‘colonies’.

However, ‘colonization’ in its usual sense is an ambivalent concept for our present purposes, since it frequently carries quite inappropriate associations. In the global history of colonization and colonialism, Russia occupies a place somewhat apart. While the Muscovite state and its successors have had in common with most other Imperial powers a tradition of expansion, the more or less deliberate acquisition of new outlying territory, they differ in that Russia's colonial regions have been contiguous with metropolitan territory. ‘Other empires were divided by the sea, but the Russian empire was a continuous land mass stretching from Poland to the Bering Strait.’