[Answer] Which of the following was a reason Russia expanded beginning in the sixteenth century?

Which of the following was a reason Russia expanded beginning in the sixteenth century?

By the 16th century Polish claims extended east of the Dnieper to a point south of Moscow although the area was thinly settled and barely administered. The Russians: In the early 15th century ‘ Russia was a group of minor principalities north of the Oka River that was gradually falling under the rule of Moscow. Its Orthodox religion allowed …

Serfdom remained in force in most of Russia until the Emancipation reform of 1861 enacted on February 19 1861 though in the Russian-controlled Baltic provinces it had been abolished at the beginning of the 19th century . According to the Russian census of 1857 Russia had 23.1 million private serfs.

Population. Much of Russia s expansion occurred in the 17th century culminating in the first Russian colonization of the Pacific in the mid-17th century the Russo-Polish War (1654–67) that incorporated left-bank Ukraine and the Russian conquest of Siberia…