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The Russian Empire, also known as Imperial Russia, spanned Eurasia from 1721 to 1917 and also held colonies in North America between 1799 and 1867. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War, and its rise coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Russian Empire and the February Revolution, the short-lived Russian Provisional Government proclaimed the establishment of the Russian Republic as a successor across its territories. Covering an area of approximately 22,800,000 square kilometres (8,800,000 sq mi), it remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire; it ruled over a population of 125.6 million people per the 1897 Russian census, which was the only census carried out during the entire imperial period. Like all empires, it featured gre
