Territorial evolution of Russia
The borders of Russia changed through military conquests and by ideological and political unions from the 16th century.
After the October Revolution of November 1917, Poland and Finland became independent from Russia and remained so thereafter. The Russian Empire ceased to exist, and the Russian SFSR, 1917–1991, was established on much of its territory. Its area of effective direct control varied greatly during the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1922. Eventually the revolutionary Bolshevik government regained control of most of the former Eurasian lands of the Russian Empire, and in 1922 joined the Russian SFSR to Belarus, Transcaucasia, and Ukraine as the four constituent republics of a new state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which lasted until December 1991.
Territories of the former Russian Empire that permanently or temporarily became independent:
In 1919, northern Mhlyn, Novozybkiv, Starodub, and Surazh counties (povits) of Ukraine's Chernihiv Governorate were transferred from the Ukrainian SSR to the new Gomel Governorate of the Russian republic.[11] In February 1924, Tahanrih and Shakhtinsky counties (okruhas) were transferred from the Donetsk Governorate of Ukraine to Russia's North Caucasus krai.[12][13]
By the end of World War II the Soviet Union had annexed:
Of these, Pechenga, Salla, Tuva, Kaliningrad Oblast, Klaipėda, the Kurils, and Sakhalin were added to the territory of the RSFSR.
The Chinese Eastern Railway, formerly a tsarist concession, was taken again by the Soviet Union after the 1929 Sino-Soviet conflict,[14] the railway was returned in 1952.[15]
Meanwhile, territories were removed from the Russian SFSR, including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in 1924, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1936, and Karelo-Finland from 1945 to 1956. The Crimean oblast and city of Sevastopol were transferred to Ukraine on 19 February 1954 (later annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014).
There were numerous minor border changes between Soviet republics as well.
After World War II, the Soviet Union set up seven satellite states, in which local politics, military, and foreign and domestic policies were dominated by the Soviet Union:[16]