In this section Eastern Europe is defined as the territory of old Tsar-Russia and the former Soviet Union. This Russia was a large but scarcely populated country on the outskirts of Europe until the 18^th century. It was Peter the Great who transformed Russia into a major European power and he and his successors expanded Russia to the west. But Russia did not have the largest population in Europe at that time, it was the rapid population growth during the 19^th century that made Russia to the giant state that dominated Europe’s modern history. The First World War ended in disaster with great losses of territory and the communist revolution 1917 transformed the country into the Soviet Union. This state re-conquered several of the lost territories during the Second World War, but a chronic bad economy prompted its dissolution 1991. The Soviet Union was then replaced by the considerably smaller Russian Federation.

Figures in blue are taken from "International Historical Statistics" by B. R. Mitchell (1998). Figures in purple are collected from English Wikipedia's articles on each country's demography. Transnistria is a break-away republic which is legally a part of Moldavia but is here listed separately from the year 2000.

* = The figures for 2020 count the 2.4 million inhabitants on the Crimean peninsula as a part of Russia and not Ukraine because it has been under Russian occupation since 2014.

Russian Provinces and Soviet Republics

Most of Bessarabia became the Soviet republic of Moldavia. Caucasus consisted of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Turkestan consisted of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Read about Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on this page.