Russia

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Российская Федерация Rossiyskaya Federatsiya Russian Federation
Flag Coat of arms
Anthem Hymn of the Russian Federation
Capital (and largest city)		Moscow 55°45′N, 37°37′E
Official languages		Russian official throughout nation; thirty others co-official in various regions
Government		Semi-presidential federal republic
-	President	Vladimir Putin
-	Prime Minister	Mikhail Fradkov
Formation
-	Declared	June 12, 1990
-	Finalized	December 25, 1991
Area
-	Total	17,075,400 km² (1st) 6,592,800 sq mi
-	Water (%)	13
Population
-	2006 estimate	142,754,000 (9th)
-	2002 census	145,274,019
-	Density	8.3 /km² (209th) 21.8 /sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2006 estimate
-	Total	$1.727 trillion (8th1)
-	Per capita	$12,096
GDP (nominal)		2006 estimate
-	Total	$979 billion (11th)
-	Per capita	$6,856
Gini? (2002)		39.9 (medium)
HDI (2004)		0.797 (medium) (65th)
Currency		Ruble (RUB)
Time zone		(UTC+2 to +12)
-	Summer (DST)	(UTC+3 to +13)
Internet TLD		.ru (.su reserved)
Calling code		+7
1	Rank based on IMF April 2007 data.

Russia (Russian: Росси́я, Rossiya; pronounced [rʌ'sʲi.jə]), also^[1] the Russian Federation (Росси́йская Федера́ция, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; [rʌ'sʲi.skə.jə fʲɪ.dʲɪ'ra.ʦɪ.jə],(Russian language) listen (help·info)), is a transcontinental country extending over much of northern Eurasia (Asia and Europe). With an area of 17,075,400 km², Russia is the largest country in the world,^[2] covering almost twice the total area of the next-largest country, Canada, and has significant mineral and energy resources. Russia has the world's ninth-largest population. Russia shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It is also close to the United States (Alaska state), Sweden, and Japan across relatively small stretches of water (the Bering Strait, the Baltic Sea, and La Pérouse Strait, respectively).

Formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), a republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia became the Russian Federation following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. After the Soviet era, the area, population, and industrial production of the Soviet Union (then one of the world's two Cold War superpowers, the other superpower being the United States) that were located in Russia passed on to the Russian Federation.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the newly-independent Russian Federation emerged as a great power (although it is also considered to be an energy superpower).^[3] Russia is considered the Soviet Union's successor state in diplomatic matters (see Russia's membership in the United Nations) and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is also one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction (see Russia and weapons of mass destruction). Russia is the leading nation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a member of the G8 as well as other international organisations.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Ancient Russia 1.2 Muscovy 1.3 Imperial Russia 1.4 Russia as part of the Soviet Union 1.4.1 Stalin 1.4.2 Khrushchev 1.4.3 Brezhnev 1.4.4 Gorbachev 1.5 Post-Soviet Russia 2 Politics 3 Subdivisions 4 Geography and climate 4.1 Topography 4.2 Borders 4.3 Spatial extent 4.4 Largest cities 5 Economy 5.1 Crash 5.2 Recovery 5.3 Recent economy 5.4 Challenge 5.5 Prospect 6 Armed Forces 7 Demographics 8 Religion 9 Culture 9.1 Icon painting 9.2 Soviet art 9.3 Architecture 9.4 Cinema 9.5 Literature 9.6 Music 9.7 Ballet 9.8 Opera 9.9 Cuisine 9.10 Sport 10 See also 10.1 Miscellaneous 10.2 Peoples 11 References 12 External links 12.1 Government resources 12.2 Other resources

History

Main article: History of Russia

Ancient Russia

Prior to the first century, the vast lands of southern Russia were home to scattered tribes, such as Proto-Indo-Europeans and Scythians.^[4] Between the third and sixth centuries, the steppes were overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions, led by warlike tribes which would often move on to Europe, as was the case with Huns and Turkish Avars.

During the period from fifth century BC to seventh century human settlements are represented by Dyakovo culture of Iron Age which occupies the significant part of the Upper Volga, Valday and Oka River area[1]. Dyakovo culture was formed by Finno-Ugric peoples, ancestors of Merya, Muromian, Meshchera, Veps tribes. All regional Funno-Ugric toponymy and hydronym names go back to those languages, for example Yauza River which is a confluent of the Moskva River, and probably the Moskva River itself too.

A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled southern Russia through the 8th century. They were important allies of the Byzantine Empire and waged a series of successful wars against the Arab caliphates. A statue of a Vedic god recently excavated in the Volga region points to a link to India around the ninth century.^[5]

In this era, the term "Rhos" or "Rus" first came to be applied to the Varangians and later also to the Slavs who peopled the region.^[6] As well as one of the rulers who contributed to the name "rus". In the tenth to eleventh centuries this state of Kievan Rus became the largest in Europe and one of the most prosperous, due to diversified trade with both Europe and Asia. The opening of new trade routes with the Orient at the time of the Crusades contributed to the decline and fragmentation of Kievan Rus by the end of the twelfth century.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the constant incursions of nomadic Turkish tribes, such as the Kipchaks and the Pechenegs, led to the massive migration of Slavic populations from the fertile south to the heavily forested regions of the north, known as Zalesye. The medieval states of Novgorod Republic and Vladimir-Suzdal emerged as successors to Kievan Rus on those territories, while the middle course of the Volga River came to be dominated by the Muslim state of Volga Bulgaria. Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongol invaders, who formed the state of Golden Horde which would pillage the Russian principalities for over three centuries. Later known as the Tatars, they ruled the southern and central expanses of present-day Russia, while the territories of present-day Ukraine and Belarus were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, thus dividing the Russian people in the north from the Belarusians and Ukrainians in the west.

Similarly to the Balkans, long-lasting nomadic rule retarded the country's economic and social development. However, the Novgorod Republic together with Pskov retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and was largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Led by Alexander Nevsky, the Novgorodians repelled the Germanic crusaders who attempted to colonize the region.

Muscovy

Main article: Muscovy

Unlike its spiritual leader, the Byzantine Empire, Russia under the leadership of Moscow was able to revive and organize its own war of reconquest, finally subjugating its enemies and annexing their territories. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Muscovite Russia remained the only more or less functional Christian state on the Eastern European frontier, allowing it to claim succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire.

While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, the duchy of Moscow began to assert its influence in Western Russia in the early fourteenth century. Assisted by the Russian Orthodox Church and Saint Sergius of Radonezh's spiritual revival, Muscovy inflicted a defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo (1380). Ivan the Great eventually tossed off the control of the invaders, consolidated surrounding areas under Moscow's dominion and first took the title "grand duke of all the Russias".

In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Russian state set the national goal to return all Russian territories lost as a result of the Tatar invasion and to protect the southern borderland against attacks of Crimean Tatars and other Turkic peoples. The noblemen, receiving a manor from the sovereign, were obliged to serve in the military. The manor system became a basis for the nobiliary horse army.

In 1547, Ivan the Terrible was officially crowned the first Tsar of Russia. During his long reign, Ivan annexed the Tatar khanates (Kazan, Astarkhan) along the Volga River and transformed Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state. By the end of the century, Russian Cossacks established the first Russian settlements in Western Siberia. But his rule was also marked by the atrocities against both the nobility and the common people on vast scale which eventually, after his death, lead to the civil war of the Time of Troubles in early 1600s. In the middle of the seventeenth century there were Russian settlements in Eastern Siberia, on Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur River, on the Pacific coast, and the strait between North America and Asia was first sighted by a Russian explorer in 1648. The colonization of the Asian territories was largely peaceful, in sharp contrast to the build-up of other colonial empires of the time.

Imperial Russia

Main article: Russian Empire

Muscovite control of the nascent nation continued after the Polish intervention under the subsequent Romanov dynasty, beginning with Tsar Michael Romanov in 1613. Peter the Great (ruled in) defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede Ingria, Estland, and Livland (the two latter now being Estonia and northern Latvia). It was in Ingria that he founded a new capital, Saint Petersburg. Peter succeeded in bringing ideas and culture from Western Europe to a severely underdeveloped Russia. After his reforms, Russia emerged as a major European power.

Catherine the Great, ruling from 1762 to 1796, continued the Petrine efforts at establishing Russia as one of the great powers of Europe. Examples of its eighteenth-century European involvement include the War of Polish Succession and the Seven Years' War. In the wake of the Partitions of Poland, Russia had taken territories with the ethnic Belarusian and Ukrainian population, earlier parts of Kievan Rus'. As a result of the victorious Russian-Turkish wars, Russia's borders expanded to the Black Sea and Russia set its goal on the protection of Balkan Christians against a Turkish yoke. In 1783, Russia and the Georgian Kingdom (which was almost totally devastated by Persian and Turkish invasions) signed the treaty of Georgievsk according to which Georgia received the protection of Russia.

In 1812, having gathered nearly half a million soldiers from France as well as from all of its conquered states in Europe, Napoleon invaded Russia but, after taking Moscow, was forced to retreat back to Europe. Almost 90% of the invading forces died as a result of on-going battles with the Russian army, guerrillas and winter weather. The Russian armies ended their pursuit of the enemy by taking his capital, Paris. The officers of the Napoleonic wars brought back to Russia the ideas of liberalism and even attempted to curtail the tsar's powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt (1825), which was followed by several decades of political repression. Another result of the Napoleonic wars was the incorporation of Bessarabia, Finland, and Congress Poland into the Russian Empire.

The perseverance of Russian serfdom and the conservative policies of Nicholas I of Russia impeded the development of Imperial Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. As a result, the country was defeated in the Crimean War, 1853–1856, by an alliance of major European powers, including Britain, France, Ottoman Empire, and Piedmont-Sardinia. Nicholas's successor Alexander II (1855–1881) was forced to undertake a series of comprehensive reforms and issued a decree abolishing serfdom in 1861. The Great Reforms of Alexander's reign spurred increasingly rapid capitalist development and Sergei Witte's attempts at industrialization. The Slavophile mood was on the rise, spearheaded by Russia's victory in the Russo-Turkish War, which forced the Ottoman Empire to recognize the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and autonomy of Bulgaria.

The failure of agrarian reforms and suppression of the growing liberal intelligentsia were continuing problems however, and on the eve of World War I, the position of Tsar Nicholas II and his dynasty appeared precarious. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, and the consequent deterioration of the economy led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire, and ultimately to the overthrow of the Tsar in February 1917.

At the close of this Russian Revolution of 1917, a Marxist political faction called the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd and Moscow under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party. A bloody civil war ensued, pitting the Bolsheviks' Red Army against a loose confederation of anti-socialist monarchist and bourgeois forces known as the White Army. The Red Army triumphed, and the Soviet Union was formed in 1922.

Russia as part of the Soviet Union

Main articles: History of the Soviet Union and Russian SFSR

The Soviet Union was meant to be a trans-national worker's state free from nationalism. The concept of Russia as a separate national entity was therefore not emphasized in the early Soviet Union. Although Russian institutions and cities certainly remained dominant, many non-Russians participated in the new government at all levels.

Stalin

One of these was a Georgian named Joseph Stalin. After Lenin's death in 1924, a brief power struggle ensued, during which Stalin gradually eroded the various checks and balances which had been designed into the Soviet political system and assumed dictatorial power by the end of the decade. Leon Trotsky and almost all other Old Bolsheviks from the time of the Revolution were killed or exiled. At the end of 1930s, Stalin launched the Great Purges, a massive series of political repressions. Millions of people whom Stalin and local authorities suspected of being a threat to their power were executed or exiled to Gulag labor camps in remote areas of Siberia or Central Asia.

Stalin forced rapid industrialization of the largely rural country and collectivization of its agriculture. In 1928, Stalin introduced his "First Five-Year Plan" for modernizing the Soviet economy. Most economic output was immediately diverted to establishing heavy industry. Civilian industry was modernized and many heavy weapon factories were established. The plan worked, in some sense, as the Soviet Union successfully transformed from an agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse in an unbelievably short span of time, but widespread misery and famine ensued for many millions of people as a result of the severe economic upheaval.

The Soviet Union's involvement in World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War, started with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 22, 1941. The German army had considerable success in the early stages of the campaign, but they suffered defeat when they reached the outskirts of Moscow. The Red Army then stopped the Nazi offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43, which became the decisive turning point for Germany's fortunes in the war. The Soviets drove through Eastern Europe and captured Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945 (see Great Patriotic War). During the war, the Soviet Union lost more than 27 million citizens (including 18 million civilians).

Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as an acknowledged superpower. The Red Army occupied Eastern Europe after the war, including the eastern half of Germany. Stalin installed loyal communist governments in these satellite states.

During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first rebuilt and then expanded its economy, with control always exerted exclusively from Moscow. The Soviets extracted heavy war reparations from the areas of Germany under their control, mostly in the form of machinery and industrial equipment. The Soviet Union consolidated its hold on Eastern Europe (see Eastern bloc) and entered a long struggle with the United States and Western Europe on economic, political, and ideological dominance over the Third World. The ensuing struggle became known as the Cold War, which turned the Soviet Union's wartime allies, Britain and the United States, into its foes.

Stalin died in early 1953 presumably without leaving any instructions for the selection of a successor. His closest associates officially decided to rule the Soviet Union jointly, but the secret police chief Lavrenty Beria appeared poised to seize dictatorial control. General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and other leading politicians organized an anti-Beria alliance and staged a coup d'état. Beria was arrested in June 1953 and executed later that year; Khrushchev became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev

Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, and the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth aboard the first manned spacecraft, Vostok 1. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive. Foreign policy toward China and the United States suffered reverses, notably the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Khrushchev began installing nuclear missiles in Cuba (after the United States installed Jupiter missiles in Turkey, which nearly provoked a war with the Soviet Union). Over the course of several angry outbursts at the United Nations, Khrushchev was increasingly seen by his colleagues as belligerent, boorish, and dangerous. The remainder of the Soviet leadership removed him from power in 1964.

Brezhnev

Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the pre-eminent figure in Soviet politics. Brezhnev is frequently derided by historians for stagnating the development of the Soviet Union (see "Brezhnev stagnation"). Others have acknowledged that despite its inertia and repression (though very mild relative to the Stalin years), the Brezhnev era did offer a relative prosperity to a populace and leadership battered by decades of war, famine, collectivization and crash industrialization, deadly political crises, arbitrary mass murder and arrest, and the volatility of the Khrushchev years. In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change--partly because the USSR's economic woes were proving to be deeply systemic and hence immune to reform within the context of the Stalinist-Soviet system.

Gorbachev

In the mid 1980s, the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. He introduced the landmark policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), in an attempt to modernize Soviet communism. Glasnost meant that the harsh restrictions on free speech that had characterized most of the Soviet Union's existence were removed, and open political discourse and criticism of the government became possible again. Perestroika meant sweeping economic reforms designed to decentralize the planning of the Soviet economy. However, the Stalinist system was probably beyond repair, and the Gorbachev reforms started in motion forces of change that demonstrated that meaningful reform would eventually threaten Communist Party hegemony. His initiatives also provoked strong resentment amongst conservative elements of the government, and in August of 1991 an unsuccessful military coup that attempted to remove Gorbachev from power instead led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin came to power and declared the end of exclusive Communist rule. The USSR splintered into fifteen independent republics, and was officially dissolved in December of 1991 (see History of the Soviet Union).

Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and a market economy to replace the strict centralized social, political, and economic controls of the Soviet era. Corruption has run rampant, and the Yeltsin government conspired with insiders to loot countless billions in cash and assets from the State. Under Vladimir Putin, who stabilized the deteriorating Yeltsin regime, a considerable decline of political freedoms followed according to Western mainstream media. This view is not shared by the majority of Russian general public. In addition, economy and defense developed significantly, and currently Russia enjoys a state of rapid economical growth, averaging 6.7% annual GDP growth for the past 9 straight years.

Post-Soviet Russia

Main article: History of post-Soviet Russia

See also: Politics of Russia

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin had been elected President of Russia in June 1991 in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. In October 1991, as Russia was on the verge of independence, Yeltsin announced that Russia would proceed with radical market-oriented reform along the lines of "shock therapy".

After the disintegration of the USSR, the Russian economy went through a crisis. Russia took up the responsibility for settling the USSR's external debts, even though its population made up just half of the population of the USSR at the time of its dissolution. The largest state enterprises (petroleum, metallurgy, and the like) were controversially privatized for the small sum of $US 600 million, far less than they were worth, while the majority of the population plunged into poverty.

Russia's Congress of People's Deputies, in which the Communist presence was the strongest, attempted to impeach Yeltsin on March 26, 1993. Yeltsin's opponents gathered more than 600 votes for impeachment, but fell 72 votes short. On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin disbanded the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies by decree, which was illegal under the constitution. On the same day there was a military showdown: the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993. With military help, Yeltsin held control. The conflict resulted in a number of civilian casualties, but was resolved in Yeltsin's favor. According to different sources, the total number of deceased was between 300 and 2,000 people. Elections were held and the current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted on December 12, 1993.

The 1990s were plagued by armed ethnic conflicts in the North Caucasus. Such conflicts took a form of separatist insurrections against federal power (most notably in Chechnya), or of ethnic/clan conflicts between local groups (e.g., in North Ossetia-Alania between Ossetians and Ingushs, or between different clans in Chechnya). Since the Chechen separatists declared independence in the early 1990s, an intermittent guerrilla war (First Chechen War, Second Chechen War) has been fought between disparate Chechen groups and the Russian military. Some of these groups have grown increasingly Islamist over the course of the struggle.^{[citation needed]} The total number of refugees and internally displaced persons from these territories today is about 100,000 people.

After Yeltsin's presidency in the 1990s, the recently appointed Prime Minister (who was also head of the FSB from July 1998 through August 1999) Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000. Although President Putin is still the most popular Russian politician, with a 70% approval rating, his policies raised serious concerns about civil society and human rights in Russia. The West--particularly the United States--expressed growing worries about the state influence of the Russian media through Kremlin-friendly companies and law enforcement abuses.^[8]

At the same time, high oil prices and growing internal demand boosted Russian economic growth, stimulating significant economic expansion abroad and helping to finance increased military spending. Putin's presidency has shown improvements in the Russian standard of living, as opposed to the 1990s.^[9] Even with these economic improvements, the government is criticized for lack of will to fight wide-spread crime and corruption and to renovate deteriorated urban areas.

Politics

Main article: Politics of Russia

The politics of Russia (the Russian Federation) take place in a framework of a federal presidential republic, whereby the President of Russia is the head of state and the Prime Minister of Russia is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. Most of this happens in Moscow from within the Kremlin.

Despite Freedom House's listing of Russia being "not free", Alvaro Gil-Robles (former head of the Council of Europe human rights division) states "The fledgling Russian democracy is still, of course, far from perfect, but its existence and its successes cannot be denied." [2] The Economist rates Russia as a "hybrid regime", which they consider "some form of democratic government".^[10]

Subdivisions

Main article: Subdivisions of Russia

Federal subjects

The Russian Federation comprises 86 federal subjects, namely:

• 48 oblasts (provinces)
• 21 republics (states) which enjoy a high degree of autonomy on most issues and which correspond to some of Russia's numerous ethnic minorities
• seven krais (territories)
• seven okrugs (autonomous districts)
• two federal cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg)
• the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

Federal districts

Federal subjects are grouped into federal districts, four in Europe and three in Asia. Unlike the federal subjects, the federal districts are not a subnational level of government, but are a level of administration of the federal government.

See also

• Federal districts of Russia
• Economic regions of Russia
  • Federal subjects of Russia
    • Republics of Russia
    • Oblasts of Russia
    • Krais of Russia
    • Autonomous oblasts of Russia
    • Autonomous okrugs of Russia
    • Federal cities of Russia

Geography and climate

Main article: Geography of Russia

Topography

The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the supercontinent of Eurasia. Although it contains a large share of the world's Arctic and sub-Arctic areas, and therefore has less population, economic activity, and physical variety per unit area than most countries, the great area south of these still accommodates a great variety of landscapes and climates. The mid-annual temperature is -5.5°C (22°F).^{[citation needed]} For comparison, the mid-annual temperature in Iceland is +1.2°C (34°F) and in Sweden is +4°C (39°F), although the variety of climates within Russia makes such a comparison somewhat misleading, due to the extremely low temperatures in Siberia. Areas in the south of Russia have a subtropical climate, where year-round temperatures do not fall below +8°C (46°F). The average summer high temperature ranges between 26°C and 32°C (80 to 88°F) with occasional extreme heat in some interior locations exceeding 51°C (112°F)

Most of the land consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the part of Asian territory that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Russia's and Europe's highest point at 5,642 m / 18,511 ft) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The more central Ural Mountains, a north-south range that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia, are also notable.

Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 kilometres (23,000 mi) along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Baltic, Black and Caspian seas. Some smaller bodies of water are part of the open oceans; the Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are part of the Arctic, whereas the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan belong to the Pacific Ocean.

Major islands and archipelagos include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz Josef Land, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. (See List of islands of Russia). The Diomede Islands (one controlled by Russia, the other by the United States) are just three kilometers (1.9 mi) apart, and Kunashir Island (controlled by Russia but claimed by Japan) is about twenty kilometres (12 mi) from Hokkaidō.

Many rivers flow across Russia; see Rivers of Russia.

Major lakes include Lake Baikal, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega; see List of lakes in Russia.

Land Use:

• arable land: 7.17%
• permanent crops: 0.11%
• other: 92.72% (2005)

Russia has a wide natural resource base including major deposits of oil, natural gas, coal, and many strategic minerals, timber.

Borders

The most practical way to describe Russia is as a main part (a large contiguous portion with its off-shore islands) and an exclave, Kaliningrad, (at the southeast corner of the Baltic Sea).

The main part's borders and coasts (starting in the far northwest and proceeding counter-clockwise) are:

• borders with the following countries: Norway and Finland,
• a short coast on the Baltic Sea, facing eight other countries on its shores from Finland to Estonia and including the port of St. Petersburg,
• borders with Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine,
• a coast on the Black Sea, facing five other countries on its shores from Ukraine to Georgia,
• borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan,
• a coast on the Caspian Sea, facing four other countries on its shores from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan,
• borders with Kazakhstan, China (western), Mongolia, China (eastern), and North Korea.
• an extensive coastline that provides access to all the maritime nations of the world, and stretches
  • from the North Pacific Ocean including
    • the Sea of Japan (where the west shore of Russia's Sakhalin lies),
    • the Sea of Okhotsk (where the east shore of Sakhalin and its Kurile Islands lie), and
    • the Bering Sea,
  • through the Bering Strait (where its minor island of Big Diomede is separated by only a few miles from Little Diomede, a part of the US state of Alaska),
  • to the Arctic Ocean, including
    • the Chukchi Sea (where the south and east shores of its Wrangel Island lie),
    • the East Siberian Sea (where its west shore, and the east shores of its New Siberian Islands lie),
    • the Laptev Sea (where their west shores lie),
    • the Kara Sea (where the east shore of its Novaya Zemlya lies),
    • the Barents Sea (where their west shore, the south shores of its Franz-Josef Land the port of Murmansk and important naval facilities lie, and where the White Sea reaches far inland).

The exclave, constituted by the Kaliningrad Oblast,

• shares borders with
  • Poland to its south and
  • Lithuania to its north and east, and
• has a northwest coast on the Baltic Sea.

The Baltic and Black Sea coasts of Russia have less direct and more constrained access to the high seas than its Pacific and Arctic ones, but both are nevertheless important for that purpose. The Baltic gives immediate access to the nine other countries sharing its shores, and between the main part of Russia and its Kaliningrad Oblast exclave. Via the straits that lie within Denmark, and between it and Sweden, the Baltic connects to the North Sea and the oceans to its west and north. The Black Sea gives immediate access to the five other countries sharing its shores, and via the Dardanelles and Marmora straits adjacent to Istanbul, Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea with its many countries and its access, via the Suez Canal and the Straits of Gibraltar, to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The salt waters of the Caspian Sea, the world's largest lake, provide no access to the high seas.

Spatial extent

The two most widely separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (5,000 mi) apart along a geodesic (i.e. shortest line between two points on the Earth's surface). These points are: the boundary with Poland on a 60-km long (40-mi long) spit of land separating the Gulf of Gdańsk from the Vistula Lagoon; and the farthest southeast of the Kurile Islands, a few miles off Hokkaidō Island, Japan.

The points which are furthest separated in longitude are "only" 6,600 km (4,100 mi) apart along a geodesic. These points are: in the West, the same spit; in the East, the Big Diomede Island (Ostrov Ratmanova).

The Russian Federation spans eleven time zones.

Largest cities

Moscow

Saint Petersburg

Novosibirsk

Nizhny Novgorod

As of the 2002 Census, Russia has thirteen cities with over a million inhabitants:

Rank	City/town	Russian	Federal subject	Population
1	Moscow	Москва (Moskva)	Moscow	10,342,151
2	Saint Petersburg	Санкт-Петербург (Sankt-Peterburg)	Saint Petersburg	4,661,219
3	Novosibirsk	Новосибирск	Novosibirsk Oblast	1,425,508
4	Nizhny Novgorod	Нижний Новгород	Nizhny Novgorod Oblast	1,311,252
5	Yekaterinburg	Екатеринбург	Sverdlovsk Oblast	1,293,537
6	Samara	Самара	Samara Oblast	1,157,880
7	Omsk	Омск	Omsk Oblast	1,134,016
8	Kazan	Казань	Republic of Tatarstan	1,105,289
9	Chelyabinsk	Челябинск	Chelyabinsk Oblast	1,077,174
10	Rostov-on-Don	Ростов-на-Дону (Rostov-na-Donu)	Rostov Oblast	1,068,267
11	Ufa	Уфа	Republic of Bashkortostan	1,042,437
12	Volgograd	Волгоград	Volgograd Oblast	1,011,417
13	Perm	Пермь	Perm Krai	1,001,653

Economy

Main article: Economy of Russia

More than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is now trying to further develop a market economy and achieve much° more consistent economic growth. Russia saw its comparatively developed centrally planned economy contract severely for five years, as the executive and the legislature dithered over the implementation of reforms and Russia's aging industrial base faced a serious decline.

However, Russia's economy has adapted relatively quickly from a centrally planned to a market economy, a significant change. A first Russian deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, set the goal of making the country one of the five largest economies in terms of GDP by 2020. "GDP per capita by consumer spending parity will be around $30,000 in 2005 prices [by 2020], compared to the current $12,000," Ivanov forecasted.^[11]

Crash

Main article: Russian financial crisis

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia's first slight recovery, showing signs of open-market influence, occurred in 1997. In 1998, however, the Asian financial crisis culminated in the August depreciation of the ruble. This was followed by a debt default by the government in 1998, and a sharp deterioration in living standards for most of the population. Consequently, 1998 was marked by recession and an intense capital flight.

Recovery

Nevertheless, the economy started recovering in 1999. The recovery was greatly assisted by the weak ruble, which made imports expensive and boosted local production. Then it entered a phase of rapid economic expansion, the GDP growing by an average of 6.7% annually in 1999–2005 on the back of higher petroleum prices, a weaker ruble, and increasing service production and industrial output. The country is presently running a huge trade surplus, which has been helped by protective import barriers, and rampant corruption which ensures that it is almost impossible for foreign and local SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) to import goods without the help of local specialist import firms, such as the Russia Import Company. Some import barriers are expected to be abolished after Russia's accession to the WTO.

The recent recovery, made possible due to high world oil prices, along with a renewed government effort in 2000 and 2001 to advance lagging structural reforms, has raised business and investor confidence over Russia's prospects in its second decade of transition. Russia remains heavily dependent on exports of commodities, particularly oil, natural gas, metals, and timber, which account for about 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices. Industrial military exports, after undergoing sharp contraction, are now the major non-commodity export. In recent years, however, the economy has also been driven by growing internal consumer demand that has increased by over 12% annually in 2000–2005, showing the strengthening of its own internal market.

The economic development of the country has been extremely uneven: the Moscow region contributes one-third of the country's GDP while having only a tenth of its population. GDP increased by 7.2% in 2004, 6.4% in 2005 and about 7% in 2006.

Recent economy

The country's GDP (PPP) soared to $1.5 trillion in 2004, making it the ninth largest economy in the world and the fifth largest in Europe. For the year of 2007, Russia's GDP is projected to grow to about $1.2 trillion nominally (31.2 trillion rubles) that would be about $2.3 trillion PPP and would make Russia the second largest economy in Europe.^[12]

Russia's economics ministry has revised forecasts for 2007 GDP growth from 6.2 to 6.5%^[13]

According to Russia's finance minister, investment in Russia's economy will grow by $44 billion in 2007. Alexei Kudrin said investment increased $37 billion in 2006, to $168 billion. Speaking at a conference on economic modernization, the minister predicted investment would double in 2010, to $357 billion, against 2006. According to the ministry's forecast, inflation will gradually decrease from 9% in 2006 to 5.6% in 2010, which the minister said would bring loan rates down and boost investment in fixed assets. He said Russia was expected to double its domestic debt by 2010, but that foreign borrowing was not planned. The minister said Russian borrowing from the World Bank would remain at $300-400 million for the next three or four years. Kudrin specified that investment growth would be primarily due to the private sector.^[14]

Some experts^[15][16] believe that official statistic underestimates Russian GDP by 28% because of inaccuracy of decades old statistical system (for example, it didn’t count small enterprises and whole sectors of new economy). IMSG estimated that nominal Russian GDP reached $970 billion in 2005.^[17]

In 2006, GDP grew to $1018 billion nominally (26.31 trillion rubles; 2.04 trillion in PPP dollars).^[18]

In 2005 Russia exported 241.3 billion dollars and imported 98.5 billion dollars. This means that Russia registered a trade surplus of 142.8 billion dollars in 2005, up about 33% from 2004's foreign trade surplus of $106.1 billion dollars.^[19]

In 2006, export grew to $304 billion, import to $164 billion; foreign trade surplus grew 19% to $141 billion.^[20]

It's estimated what direct foreign investment reach at least $23 billion in 2006,^[21] overall foreign investments reached $55 billion.^[22]

On May 25, 2007 Russia's international reserves reached $402.2 billion nominally and projected to grow to $400–450 billion by the end of 2007.^[23][24]

Thanks to high oil prices, Russian oil exports totaled $117 billion in 2005 while gas exports totaled $32 billion in the same year. That means that oil and gas made up 60% of total Russian exports in 2005.^[25]

Knowing the importance of oil and gas to the economy, the Stabilization Fund of the Russian Federation was formed by the government in January 2004. This fund takes in revenues from oil and gas exports and is designed to help offset oil market volatility. This fund was also set up in order to prevent the ruble from appreciating. The Stabilization Fund (SF) grew to $76.6 billion in November 2006. In October 2006, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said the fund will continue to increase over the coming years, and will exceed $149 billion by late 2007 and about $260.4 billion by the end of 2009. Russia is paying off its foreign debt mainly from the Stabilization Fund, which hit $76.9 billion as of July 1. Russia repaid the bulk of its outstanding debt to the Paris Club of Creditor Nations on August 18-21. The debt totaled $1.9 billion as of October 1, compared to $23.7 billion on July 1.^[26]

According to the Federal State Statistics Service of Russia, the monthly nominal average salary in January 2007 was 11,410 rubles (about $437 nominally; about $793 PPP), 26.6 percent higher than in January 2006.^[27]

Challenge

Some perceive the greatest challenge facing the Russian economy to be encouraging the development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in a business climate with a young and less-than-sufficiently functional banking system. Many of Russia's banks are owned by oligarchs, who often use the deposits to lend to their own businesses. The 2005 Milken Institute's ratings^[28] place Russia at the 51st place in the world, out of 121 countries by the availability of capital.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank have attempted to kick-start normal banking practices by making equity and debt investments in a number of banks, but with very limited success.

However, about twenty-five of the biggest banks of Russia get entry into Top 1000 banks of the world by The Banker^[29] Many more Russian banks have very high international ratings by Moody's and Fitch, including "investment" level.

Other problems include disproportional economic development of Russia's own regions. While the huge capital region of Moscow is a bustling, affluent metropolis living on the cutting edge of technology with a per capita income rapidly approaching that of the leading Eurozone economies, much of the country, especially its indigenous and rural communities in Asia, lags significantly behind. Market integration is nonetheless making itself felt in some other sizeable cities such as Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and Ekaterinburg, and recently also in the adjacent rural areas.

The arrest of Russia's wealthiest businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and corruption in relation to the large-scale privatizations organized under then-President Yeltsin, contrary to some expectations, has not caused most foreign investors to worry about the stability of the Russian economy. Most of the large fortunes currently in evidence in Russia are the product of either acquiring government assets at particularly low costs or gaining concessions from the government. Other countries have expressed concerns and worries at the "selective" application of the law against individual businessmen, though government actions have been received positively in Russia. Russia occupies 122th place among 157 countries in the Index of Economic Freedom.

Prospect

A first Russian deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, set the goal of making the country one of the five largest economies in terms of GDP by 2020. "GDP per capita by consumer spending parity will be around $30,000 in 2005 prices [by 2020], compared to the current $12,000," Ivanov forecasted.^[30]

Encouraging foreign investment is also a major challenge due to legal, cultural, linguistic, economic and political peculiarities of the country. Nevertheless, there has been a significant inflow of capital in recent years from many European investors attracted by cheaper land, labor and higher growth rates than in the rest of Europe

Very high levels of education and societal involvement achieved by the majority of the population, including women and minorities, secular attitudes, mobile class structure, and better integration of various minorities into the mainstream culture set Russia far apart from the majority of the so-called developing countries and even some developed nations.

The country is also benefiting from rising oil prices and has been able very substantially to reduce its formerly huge foreign debt. However, equal redistribution of capital gains from the natural resource industries to other sectors is still a problem. Nonetheless, since 2003, exports of natural resources started decreasing in economic importance as the internal market has strengthened considerably, largely stimulated by intense construction, as well as consumption of increasingly diverse goods and services. Yet teaching customers and encouraging consumer spending is a relatively tough task for many provincial areas where consumer demand is primitive. However, some laudable progress has been made in larger cities, especially in the clothing, food, and entertainment industries.

Additionally, some international firms are investing in Russia. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Russia had nearly $26 billion in cumulative foreign direct investment inflows during the period (of which $11.7 billion occurred in 2004).

Russia is considered an energy superpower as it possesses vast mineral and energy wealth, which brings great benefit to the Russian economy.^[31] Russia has the largest known natural gas reserves of any state on Earth, along with the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. It is the world's second largest oil producer and, from time to time, overtakes Saudi Arabia as the world's number one.^[32] Currently, its economy benefits greatly from the relatively high price of oil.

Armed Forces

Main article: Armed Forces of the Russian Federation

After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Russia assumed control of Soviet assets abroad, and received the lion's share of the Soviet Union's production facilities and military forces. About 70% of the former Soviet Union's defense industries are located in the Russian Federation.

The Russian military is divided into the following branches: Ground Forces, Navy, and Air Force. There are also three independent arms of service : Strategic Rocket Forces, Military Space Forces, and the Airborne Troops. Russia has the world’s largest number of tanks, the second largest fleet of fighter planes, and the second largest navy fleet in the world.^[33] Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and inter-continental ballistic missiles in the world. ^[34] It also has the second largest fleet of ballistic missile submarines, and is the only country apart from the U.S. with a modern strategic bomber force. Russia has the capability and continues to develop state of the art military technologies, including the Sukhoi PAK FA fighter jet, Borei class submarine, T-95 and Black Eagle tanks, Bulava SLBM, and the Topol M and RS-24 ICBM's.

Official government military spending for 2007 was $32.4 billion, however estimating Russian military expenditure is beset with difficulty; the annual IISS Military Balance has underscored the problem numerous times within its section on Russia. ^[35] Various sources, including the US Department of Defense, have estimated Russia’s military expenditures to be considerably higher than the reported amount.^[36][37]

Economic factors that crippled the Russian economy during the harsh restructuring process after the Soviet collapse led to the Russian military experiencing large cuts in funding. In the 90’s, this led to great reduction in equipment procurement by the government, and a decrease in combat readiness. However, due to the positive economic growth since 1998, the military budget has been receiving large increases annually. The recent steps towards modernisation of the armed forces has been made possible by Russia's spectacular economic resurgence based on oil and gas revenues as well a strengthening of its own domestic market. Currently, the military is in the middle of a major equipment upgrade, with the government in the process of spending about $200 billion (what equals to about $400 billion in PPP dollars) on development and production of military equipment between 2006-2015.^[38] Cost of production of comparable weapons in Russia is three to five times less than in the United States. With this major overhaul of Russia's military infrastructure, the (former) defense minister Sergei Ivanov added that he wanted to exceed the Soviet army in "combat readiness".^[39]

As of 2005, some 330,000 young men are brought into the army via conscription in two call-ups each year. There are widespread problems with hazing in the Russian Army, known as Dedovshchina, where first-year draftees are bullied by second-year draftees, a practice that was common in the Soviet Union. To combat this problem, a new decree was signed in March of 2007, which cut the conscription service term from 24 to 18 months. The term will be cut further to one year from January 1, 2008.^[40] The Army is also in the middle of phasing out conscription altogether and replacing conscripts with an entirely professional force.

Russia is the world's top supplier of weapons, a spot it has held since 2001, accounting for around 30% of worldwide weapons sales, followed by the United States, France and Germany.^[41][42] Russia is the principal weapons supplier of China and India, and provides weapons and nuclear technology to Iran. Recent arms deals seem to show that Russia is building on its former influence, both in the Middle East and in Latin America.^[43]

Demographics

Main article: Demography of Russia

Despite its comparatively high population, Russia has a low average population density due to its enormous size. Population is densest in the European part of Russia, in the Ural Mountains area, and in the south-western parts of Siberia; the south-eastern part of Siberia that meets the Pacific Ocean, known as the Russian Far East, is sparsely populated, with its southern part being densest. The Russian Federation is home to as many as 160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. As of the 2002 Russian census, 79.8% of the population is ethnically Russian, 3.8% Tatar, 2% Ukrainian, 1.2% Bashkir, 1.1% Chuvash, 0.9% Chechen, 0.8% Armenian. The remaining 10.3% includes those who did not specify their ethnicity as well as (in alphabetical order) Assyrians, Avars, Azeris, Belarusians, Bulgarians, Buryats, Chinese, Cossacks, Estonians, Evenks, Finns, Georgians, Germans, Greeks, Ingushes, Inuit, Jews, Kalmyks, Karelians, Kazakhs, Koreans, Kyrgyz, Lithuanians, Latvians, Maris, Mongolians, Mordvins, Nenetses, Ossetians, Poles, Romanians, Tajiks, Tuvans, Turkmen, Udmurts, Uzbeks, Yakuts, and others. Nearly all of these groups live compactly in their respective regions; Russians and Tatars are the only people significantly represented in every region of the country.

In October 2005, the federal statistics agency reported that Russia's population has shrunk by more than half a million people dipping to 143 million.^[44] The major reason for this decline is the high death rate, attributable mostly to widespread alcohol abuse.^[45] Further, the population decline might accelerate in the coming years, and if current growth rates persist, Russia's population has been projected to fall by a quarter to a third by 2050.^[46] Russia is the second country in the world by the number of immigrants from abroad, mostly from the former Soviet Union, and immigration is increasingly seen as necessary to sustain the country's population.^[47]

The Russian language is the only official state language, but the individual republics have often made their native language co-official next to Russian. The Cyrillic alphabet is the only official script, which means that these languages must be written in Cyrillic in official texts.

Age Structure:

• 0-14 years: 14.6%
  • (male 10,563,567)
  • (female 10,021,316)
• 15-64 years: 71.1%
  • (male 48,412,612)
  • (female 52,061,604)
• 65 years and over: 14.4%
  • (male 6,360,038)
  • (female 13,958,615) (2007 est.)

Life expectancy at birth:

• Total population: 65.87 years
  • Male: 59.12 years
  • Female: 73.03 years (2007 est)

Religion

Main article: Religion in Russia

Russian Orthodoxy is the dominant religion in the Federation. Islam is the second most widespread religion, predominating in the Volga region and Caucasus. Other religions include various Protestant churches, Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Buddhism. Induction into religion takes place primarily along ethnic lines. Ethnic Russians are mainly Orthodox whereas most people of Turkic extraction are Sunni Muslim. Kalmyks are the only predominantly Buddhist people in Europe. On May 17, 2007, an Act of Canonical Communion was signed between the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Culture

Main article: Culture of Russia

Icon painting

Russian icon painting was influenced from the art of the Byzantine churches,^[48] and it soon became an offshoot version of the mosaic and fresco traditions. Icon paintings in Russia attempted to help people with their prayers without idolizing the figure in the painting. The most comprehensive collection of Icon art is found at the Tretyakov Gallery.^[49]

Rather than being a mere imitation, Russian icons had a peculiar style and masters such as Andrei Rublev took the icon to new heights.

Soviet art

Main article: Soviet art

During the Russian Revolution, a movement was initiated to put all arts to service of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The instrument for this was created just days before the October Revolution, known as Proletkult, an abbreviation for "Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye organizatsii" (Proletarian Cultural and Enlightenment Organizations). A prominent theorist of this movement was Alexander Bogdanov. Initially Narkompros (ministry of education), which was also in charge of the arts, supported Proletkult. However the latter sought too much independence from the ruling Communist Party of Bolsheviks, gained negative attitude of Vladimir Lenin, by 1922 declined considerably, and was eventually disbanded in 1932. After Stalin died Soviet Art went into decline as gradually Russians artists became more independent of the state and in the 1980s the government ruled that it could not restrict what Russians artists could paint.

Architecture

Main article: Russian architecture

Russian architecture was influenced predominantly by the Byzantine architecture until the Fall of Constantinople. At the turn of the 15th and 16th century, Aristotle Fioravanti and other Italian architects introduced Renaissance trends. The reigns of Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov saw the development of tent-like churches culminating in Saint Basil's Cathedral, as shown above. In the 17th century, the "fiery style" of ornamentation flourished in Moscow and Yaroslavl, gradually paving the way for the Naryshkin baroque of the 1690s.

The 18th-century taste for rococo architecture led to the splendid works of Bartolomeo Rastrelli and his followers. During the reign of Catherine the Great and her grandson Alexander I, the city of Saint Petersburg was transformed into an outdoor museum of Neoclassical architecture; the 19th century was dominated by the Byzantine and Russian Revival. Prevalent styles of the 20th century were the Art Nouveau (Fyodor Shekhtel), Constructivism (Aleksey Shchusev and Konstantin Melnikov), and the Stalinist Empire style (Boris Iofan).

Cinema

Main article: Cinema of Russia and Soviet Union

While Russia was involved in filmmaking as early as most of the other nations in the West, with notable films such as Stenka Razin in 1908, it only came into prominence during the 1920s when it explored editing as the primary mode of cinematic expression. This resulted in world-renowned films such as Battleship Potemkin, Mother, and Circus. This outburst of creativity and innovation was short lived. In the 1930s, Soviet censorship discouraged non-socialist views, stifling creativity, though it did produce the hit Chapaev, a film so popular that the actor who played the main character, a leader in the Red Army during the Russian revolution, actually telephoned soldiers during WWII in character to lift their spirits.

Other notable releases of the Soviet years included Ballad of a Soldier, Siberiade, and Mirror. The Soviet Union also produced some of the world's most innovative and influential directors, most notably Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky. Although Russian language films predominated, several Soviet republics developed lively and unique cinemas. Most notable for their republican cinema were Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and, to a lesser degree, Belarus and Moldova.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian cinema has greatly transformed. Although still largely funded by the state, the topics and dynamic have been updated. During the '90s, Russian filmmaking decreased sharply, going from hundreds to double digits, though still making occasional hits like Brother. However, recent years have brought increased viewership and subsequent prosperity to the industry through exploration of contemporary subjects like sexuality in the 2004 film You, I Love. Russian filmmakers began experimenting in high-budget modern movies like the highly popular film Night Watch.

Literature

Main article: Russian literature

Russia has a rich literary history, beginning with the poet Alexander Pushkin, who is considered the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. In the nineteenth century Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age, beginning with the poet Pushkin and culminating in two of the greatest novelists in world literature, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Russia has remained a leading nation in literature since that time, although Russian literature declined under the didactic limitations of the Soviet regime; nonetheless, dissidents like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak produced world-renowned Russian literature in the twentieth century. In the field of the novel, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in particular were titanic figures, and have remained internationally renowned, to the point that many scholars have described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever.

Music

Main article: Music of Russia

Russia is a large and culturally diverse country with dozens of ethnic groups; each with their own forms of folk music. During the period of Soviet domination, music was highly scrutinized and kept within certain boundaries of content and innovation. After the fall of the USSR in the early 1990s, rock and pop music became the most popular musical forms in Russia. With the rise of these genres, some native artists became quite popular.

Ballet

Russia has a revered and recognised tradition of ballet. Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed the most famous works of ballet - Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty. Russian dancers have achieved worldwide acclaim, with notable dancers including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Avdotia Istomina, Paul Gerdt, Olga Preobrajenska, Mathilde Kschessinska, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spesivtseva, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Lydia Lopokova, Galina Ulanova, Marina Semenova, Yury Grigorovich, Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Soloviev and Maya Plisetskaya.

Opera

The first known opera made in Russia was A Life for the Tsar by Mikhail Glinka in 1836. This was followed by several operas like Ruslan and Lyudmila in 1842. Russian opera was originally a combination of Russian folk music and Italian opera. After the October revolution many opera composers left Russia. Russia's most popular operas include:

• Boris Godunov
• Eugene Onegin
• The Golden Cockerel
• Prince Igor
• The Queen of Spades

Cuisine

Main article: Russian cuisine

Russian cuisine derives its rich and varied character from the vast and multicultural expanse of Russia. Its foundations were laid by the peasant food of the rural population in an often harsh climate, with a combination of plentiful fish, poultry, game, mushrooms, berries, and honey. Crops of rye, wheat, barley, and millet provided the ingredients for a plethora of breads, pancakes, cereals, kvass, beer, and vodka. Flavourful soups and stews centred on seasonal or storable produce, fish, and meats. Primordial Russian products such as caviar, smetana (sour cream), buckwheat, rye flour, etc. have had a great influence on world-wide cuisine.

Sport

Russia is a keen sporting country, successful at a number of sports and continuously finishing in the top rankings at the Olympic games. During the Soviet era the team placed first in the total number of medals won at seven of its nine appearances and was second by this count on the other two. They returned as the Unified Team in 1992 Barcelona Olympics after the breakup of the Soviet Union and found itself again at the top of the medal tally. At seven Winter Olympics the USSR placed first place by total number of gold medals won and at the other two it was second by this count. With these performances many consider the USSR as the undisputed Olympic powerhouse at the time of its existence.

Among the traditional sports are football (soccer) and ice hockey. The USSR team won the first European Football Championship in 1960 and two Olympic gold medals, and the Russian Premier League attracts many foreign investors and players, with one of its teams, CSKA Moscow, winning the 2004-2005 UEFA Cup. Because Russia has a cold winter which makes playing impossible, football (soccer) is played more as a favourite pastime rather than pursued professionally.

The ice hockey team has a long history of traditions and success. The famous matches with the Canadians in the 1960s and 1970s brought Russia to the top of the hockey pedestal. There are three legendary offensive hockey players, Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov. These players continued the Russian success in to the 1980s. The Soviet ice hockey team dominated world ice hockey at both the Olympics and World Championships in the 1960s, 70's and 80's, winning gold at 20 out of 30 of the Ice Hockey World Championships in these decades and winning all but two Olympic ice hockey gold medals from 1956 to 1988 (winning again as the Unified Team at the 1992 Albertville Olympics). The 1990s became the decade years for NHL victories for Russian superstars such as Sergei Fedorov and Pavel Bure. Nowadays, there are more than 70 Russians in the best World League, including superstars Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals and Ilya Kovalchuk, from Atlanta Thrashers.

Chess is a favourite pastime, and a sport that has been dominated by Russians in the post-war (1945-) era. The winner of the 1948 World Chess Championship, Russian Mikhail Botvinnik, started an era of Soviet dominance in the chess world. Until the end of the Soviet Union, there was only one non-Soviet champion. Russian Vladimir Kramnik is the reigning undisputed World Chess Champion.

Russia has also produced a number of famous tennis players including Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Marat Safin, Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova. Recently, Russian women players are some of the most dominant on the womens tour, consistently winning Grand Slams and being highly ranked.

Other sports widely played in Russia include gymnastics, boxing, martial arts, volleyball, basketball, handball, figure skating and skiing.

See also

Miscellaneous

Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Public holidays Communications Companies Education Foreign relations Great power Domestic Violence in Russia Law Postal history and stamps

Quartet on the Middle East Roman Catholicism Russian Association of Scouts/Navigators Russian-language TV channels List of Biosphere Reserves in the Russian Federation Tourism Transport Russian diaspora Etymology of Rus and derivatives

Peoples

• Ket people
• Nenets people
• Tuvan people

References

External links

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• Wikimedia Atlas of Russia, holding maps related to Russia.
• RussiaMap.org - Maps of Russia

Government resources

• (Russian) Duma - Official site of the parliamentary lower house
• Federative Council - Official site of the parliamentary upper house
• Kremlin - Official presidential site
• (Russian) Gov.ru - Official governmental portal
• (Russian) Russian Federation Today - Official issue of the Federal Assembly
• [3]- Ministry of Foreign affairs
• Russian Federal Customs Service
• Central Bank of Russia
• World Security Institute's Johnson's Russia List
• Russian News Agency Ria Novosti
• Russian Space Program

Other resources

• Russia photo gallery and city guide
• (Russian) Culture of Russia - with support of Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography
• Encyclopaedia Britannica's Country Portal site
• BBC Country Profile - Russia
• RussGUS Bibliographic database of german publications on Russia (about 175 000 positions)
• Way to Russia - Guide to Russia
• CIA World Factbook - Russia
• News From Russia
• U.S. State Department Consular Information Sheet: Russia
• Russia Energy Resources and Industry from U.S. Department of Energy
• Russia History Timeline 1533 - 1991
• Russia's State Symbols

Geographic locale

v • d • e Countries of the Baltic region Baltic states  Estonia  Latvia  Lithuania Other countries bordering  Denmark  Finland  Germany the Baltic Sea  Poland  Russia  Sweden v • d • e Sovereign states of Europe Albania · Andorra · Armenia2 · Austria · Azerbaijan1 · Belarus · Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Cyprus2 · Czech Republic · Denmark3 · Estonia · Finland · France3 · Georgia1 · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Iceland · Ireland · Italy3 · Kazakhstan1 · Latvia · Liechtenstein · Lithuania · Luxembourg · Malta · Moldova · Monaco · Montenegro · Netherlands3 · Norway3 · Poland · Portugal3 · Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) · Romania · Russia1 · San Marino · Serbia · Slovakia · Slovenia · Spain3 · Sweden · Switzerland · Turkey1 · Ukraine · United Kingdom3 · Vatican City 1 Has majority of its territory in Asia.  2 Entirely in Asia but having socio-political connections with Europe.  3 Has dependencies or similar territories outside Europe. v • d • e Countries of Asia Afghanistan · Armenia · Azerbaijan1 · Bahrain · Bangladesh · Bhutan · Brunei · Cambodia · China, People's Republic of · China, Republic of (Taiwan)2 · Cyprus · Egypt3 · Georgia1 · India · Indonesia4 · Iran · Iraq · Israel · Japan · Jordan · Kazakhstan1 · Korea, Democratic People's Republic of · Korea, Republic of · Kuwait · Kyrgyzstan · Laos · Lebanon · Malaysia · Maldives · Mongolia · Myanmar · Nepal · Oman · Pakistan · Philippines · Qatar · Russia1 · Saudi Arabia · Singapore · Sri Lanka · Syria · Tajikistan · Thailand · Timor-Leste (East Timor)4 · Turkey1 · Turkmenistan · United Arab Emirates · Uzbekistan · Vietnam · Yemen3 For dependent and other territories, see Dependent territory and List of unrecognized countries. 1 Partly or significantly in Europe.  2 The Republic of China (Taiwan) is not officially recognized by the United Nations; see Political status of Taiwan. 3 Partly or significantly in Africa.  4 Partly or wholly reckoned in Oceania. v • d • e Countries of North Asia ‹The template Countries of North Asia has been proposed for deletion.›  Russia (Siberia) Sometimes included:  Mongolia v • d • e Countries bordering the Black Sea  Bulgaria  ·   Georgia  ·   Romania  ·   Russia  ·   Turkey  ·   Ukraine v • d • e Countries bordering the Caspian Sea  Azerbaijan  ·   Iran  ·   Kazakhstan  ·   Russia  ·   Turkmenistan

International organizations

v • d • e Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Members Armenia · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Georgia · Kazakhstan · Kyrgyzstan · Moldova · Russia · Tajikistan · Ukraine · Uzbekistan Associate members Turkmenistan v • d • e Council of Europe Albania · Andorra · Armenia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Cyprus · Czech Republic · Denmark · Estonia · Finland · France · Georgia · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Iceland · Ireland · Italy · Latvia · Liechtenstein · Lithuania · Luxembourg · Malta · Moldova · Monaco · Montenegro · Netherlands · Norway · Poland · Portugal · Romania · Russia · San Marino · Serbia · Slovakia · Slovenia · Spain · Sweden · Switzerland · The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia  · Turkey  · Ukraine  · United Kingdom v • d • e Group of Eight (G8) Permanent members Canada · France · Germany · Italy · Japan · Russia · United Kingdom · United States Additional representations European Union v • d • e BRIC countries  Brazil  ·   Russia  ·   India  ·   China (PRC) v • d • e Members of the United Nations Security Council Permanent members People's Republic of China · France · Russia · United Kingdom · United States Term ends December 31, 2007 Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) · Ghana · Peru · Qatar · Slovakia Term ends December 31, 2008 Belgium · Indonesia · Italy · Panama · South Africa v • d • e Member states of the East Asia Summit (EAS)  Australia  Brunei  Cambodia  India  Indonesia  Japan  Laos  Malaysia  Myanmar  New Zealand  China (PRC)  Philippines  Singapore  Republic of Korea  Thailand  Vietnam Potential future members       Timor-Leste    Russia v • d • e Member states and observers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Members Afghanistan · Albania · Algeria · Azerbaijan · Bahrain · Bangladesh · Benin · Burkina Faso · Brunei · Cameroon · Chad · Comoros · Côte d'Ivoire · Djibouti · Egypt · Gabon · Gambia · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau · Guyana · Indonesia · Iran · Iraq · Jordan · Kuwait · Kazakhstan · Kyrgyzstan · Lebanon · Libya · Maldives · Malaysia · Mali · Mauritania · Morocco · Mozambique · Niger · Nigeria · Oman · Pakistan · Palestine · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · Senegal · Sierra Leone · Somalia · Sudan · Suriname · Syria · Tajikistan · Turkey · Tunisia · Togo · Turkmenistan · Uganda · Uzbekistan · United Arab Emirates · Yemen Observers Countries and territories Bosnia and Herzegovina · Central African Republic · Russia · Thailand · Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (only recognised by Turkey) Muslim communities Moro National Liberation Front International organizations Economic Cooperation Organization · African Union · Arab League · Non-Aligned Movement · United Nations v • d • e Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC)  Albania  Armenia  Azerbaijan  Bulgaria  Georgia  Greece  Moldova  Romania  Russia  Serbia  Turkey  Ukraine v • d • e Eurasian Economic Community (EURASEC) Belarus · Kazakhstan · Kyrgyzstan · Russia · Tajikistan · Uzbekistan v • d • e Slavic-speaking states West Slavic  Czech Republic  Poland  Slovakia South Slavic  Bosnia and Herzegovina  Bulgaria  Croatia  Republic of Macedonia  Montenegro  Serbia  Slovenia East Slavic  Belarus  Russia  Ukraine