The Russians are scientific and expansionist. They start the game with Bronze Working and Pottery and build cossacks instead of normal cavalry. Indo-European, Ural-Altaic, and other races have occupied what is now the territory of Russia since 2000 BC, but little is known about their institutions and activities. Modern Russia dates from about 770, when Viking explorers began an intensive penetration of the Volga region. From bases in estuaries along the eastern Baltic, Scandinavian bands, probably in search of new trade routes to the east, began to penetrate territory populated by Finnish and Slavic tribes, where they found unlimited natural resources. Within a few decades the Rus, as the Viking settlers were known, together with other Scandinavians operating farther west, extended their raiding activities down the main river routes toward Baghdad and Constantinople, reaching the Black Sea in 860. In the period from 930 to 1000, the region came under complete control by the Rus from their capital at Novgorod. The lifeblood of this sprawling Kievan empire was the commerce organized by these Viking princes. Novgorod's burghers even forged an accommodation with the invading Mongols during the 13th century, but its absorption by the growing Slavic principality of Muscovy in 1478 ended its political independence. Ivan III (1462-1505) consolidated the gains his father, Vasily II, had won in the saddle. This "gathering of the Russian lands" became a conscious and irresistible five-century drive by Moscow to annex all Slavic lands, both the Russian territories and the Belorussian and Ukrainian regions. The ascension of Peter I (the Great; 1694-1725) ushered in and established the social, political and intellectual trends that were to dominate Russia for the next two centuries. The location of his capital, St. Petersburg, on the shores of the Gulf of Finland symbolized this shift toward a European involvement. Catherine the Great (1762-1796) would prove to be Peter's true intellectual and political heir. Catherine's reign was notable for imperial expansion. Most important were the securing of the northern shore of the Black Sea, the annexation of the Crimea, and the expansion into the steppes beyond the Urals. This permitted the protection of Russian