Why is Russia so big
Today, Russia consists of 17,075,200 sq km of land mass and its borders continue for a total of 20,017 km. These statistics alone should give one an idea about the size of Russia, which is almost twice the size of the US even after breaking up into so many smaller independent countries. If Japan is known as the “land of the rising sun”, Russian can be called the “land where the sun never sets”. This is said because Russia is so big, that when the sun sets in St Petersburg, it has already risen in the pacific shores of the country. A country so vast in proportions is scarcely as less populated as Russia though. The strict cold and the almost uninhabitable sections of Russia are perhaps responsible for this lack of population in the country.
Although Russia is still big today, it is not much compared to what it was some years ago for the last three to four hundred years. Siberia was colonized as early as in the 17th century and by the 18th century, the northern banner was expanding further after Russia won against the Swedish after fighting for seven years. The Russian Empire expanded southwards in the same century after the Turks were defeated. The only colony that they had in the continent of North America was in Alaska, which they sold later. Asia was heavy with the Russian banner as Russian colonies stretched from Manchuria to Afghanistan.
Colonization of the nearby smaller and weaker tribes in the early years along with multiple small as well as big conquests in the last four hundred years are the reasons why Russia extended over such a huge mass of land, but when the USSR broke, the Soviet Union lost most of its colonies and even integral parts of Russia main, like Ukraine and Belarus. As the 20th century dawned, the steady progress of Russia was halted and finally in 1991, the fate of Russia declined along with the Soviet Union thus the country became shorter by roughly thirty percent.
Apart from the mentioned reasons, another reason is that Russia has huge portions of land that suffer from extremely hostile and cold climates unsuitable for inhabitation, thus some of it was never claimed by any other foreign power. Also, multiple conquests like that of Napoleon and Hitler himself failed miserably due to this very reason.