Great Russia

Great Russia, also called Great Rus, is a name formerly applied to the territories of Russia proper, the land that formed the core of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and later the Tsardom of Russia. It was understood as the homeland of the ethnic Russians, where the ethnogenesis of the Great Russians took place. The name is said to derive from the Greek Megale Rhossia. From 1654 to 1721 the Russian tsars styled themselves sovereign of all Rus, the Great, the Little and the White. Nineteenth-century ethnographers and linguists spoke of Great Russians and a Great Russian language, but these terms have since fallen out of use. Together with the Volga-Ural region, the North Caucasus and Siberia, the area became the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, while Little Russia and White Russia became the Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. The phrase also appears in the opening lines of the Soviet state anthem.