How did Russia get so big

We have all seen the size of Russia on a world map and yes! Russia is BIG!
Taking up at least 171 million squared kilometres (including exclaves), Russia is the biggest country in the world. In fact, how did Russia get that big? Let's look at that, shall we?
Like most places, Russia started out as small little territories, khanates and principalities that were later amalgamated to form the Russia Ivan the Terrible (Tsar Ivan IV) came to rule. During his rule, Russian Cossacks were on the move to conquer land, particularly land east of the Ural Mountains. The conquering of Siberia was a crucial point in making Russia the biggest country geographically. There were no problems to be faced at that time and by 1647, (during the reign of Alexis I) the Russians had reached the Pacific Ocean.
This was possible as the tribes were submissive and obliged in joining Russia. In fact, Russia never did seek to supress the tribes as they allowed the tribes to continue living the life they had as long as they could provide them with fur (conservation was the last thing on a lot of minds back then).
Problems did arise near Poland and the Ottoman Empire among other who didn't want to surrender territory in the following decades. Despite this, Russia's empire continued to expand by covering a tremendous area of 21.8 million square kilometres of land. That is a lot more land than what Russia covers today! Between 1839 and 1805, Russia conquered Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan), the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) between 1800 and 1864 and Eastern Europe between 1710 and 1795 with Finland becoming fully part of Russia as a Grand Duchy in 1809. The Soviet Union which took over from the Russian Empire following the Russian Revolution covered 22.4 million squared kilometres of land which is bigger than Both Russia and the empire however, with the fall of the Union, Russia shrank down to 17,098,246 km2 but with the annexation of Crimea, they grew back up to their current land mass.