To treat the history of Jewish settlement and cultural and political activity in Russia, this entry includes three chronologically arranged articles. Russian Empire covers the period from 1772, when the first partition of Poland placed a large Jewish population under tsarist rule, until the end of the empire in 1917. Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic covers the Soviet period, specifically within the Russian Republic itself, until the fall of the USSR in 1991. Russian Federation covers the post-Soviet period of the 1990s until 2000. For related discussion, see Pale of Settlement; Belarus; Ukraine; and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.