History of Russia and by the 18th century, the Tsardom of Russia had grown to become the Russian Empire, stretching from eastern Poland to the Pacific Ocean. Peasant revolts were common, and all were fiercely suppressed. Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, but the peasants fared poorly and often turned to revolutionary pressures. In the following decades, reform efforts such as the Stolypin reforms, the constitution of 1906, and the State Duma attempted to open and liberalize the economy and political system, but the tsars refused to relinquish autocratic rule or share their power. The Russian Revolution in 1917 was triggered by a
Polish minority in Russia not identify as Poles or with Poland, and members of the communist party viewed themselves as Soviet citizens without any national sentiments. The Soviet Union also organized Polish units in the Red Army and a Polish Communist government-in-exile. There were 73,000 Polish nationals living in Russia according to the 2002 Russian Census. This includes autochthonous Poles as well as those forcibly deported during and after World War II; the total number of Poles in what was the former Soviet Union is estimated at up to 3 million. The number of Polish speaking people in Russia was 47,125 in 2010. Polish