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Russia
This article is about the country. For other uses, see Russia (disambiguation).
| Russian Federation Российская Федерация Rossiyskaya Federatsiya | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Anthem: Государственный гимн Российской Федерации (Russian) Gosudarstvenny gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii (transliteration) State Anthem of the Russian Federation | ||||||
.svg) | ||||||
| Capital (and largest city) | Moscow 55°45′N 37°37′E | |||||
| Official languages | Russian official throughout the country; twenty-seven others co-official in various regions | |||||
| Ethnic groups | Russian 81.5%, Tatar 3.8%, Ukrainian 3%, Chuvash 1.2%, Bashkir 0.9%, Belarusian 0.8%, Moldavian 0.7%, other 8.1% | |||||
| Demonym | Russian | |||||
| Government | Federal semi-presidentialrepublic | |||||
| - | President | Dmitry Medvedev | ||||
| - | Prime Minister | Vladimir Putin | ||||
| - | Chairman of the Federation Council | Sergey Mironov (FR) | ||||
| - | Chairman of the State Duma | Boris Gryzlov (UR) | ||||
| Legislature | Federal Assembly | |||||
| - | Upper House | Federation Council | ||||
| - | Lower House | State Duma | ||||
| Formation | ||||||
| - | Rurik Dynasty | 862 | ||||
| - | Kievan Rus' | 882 | ||||
| - | Vladimir-Suzdal Rus’ | 1169 | ||||
| - | Grand Duchy of Moscow | 1263 | ||||
| - | Tsardom of Russia | 1547 | ||||
| - | Russian Empire | 1721 | ||||
| - | Russian SFSR | 7 November 1917 | ||||
| - | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics | 1922 | ||||
| - | Russian Federation | 25 December 1991 | ||||
| Area | ||||||
| - | Total | 17,075,400 km2 (1st) 6,592,800 sq mi | ||||
| - | Water (%) | 13[1] | ||||
| Population | ||||||
| - | 2008 estimate | 142,008,838[2] (9th) | ||||
| - | 2002 census | 145,166,731[3] | ||||
| - | Density | 8.3/km2 (209th) 21.5/sq mi | ||||
| GDP (PPP) | 2008 estimate | |||||
| - | Total | $2.261 trillion[4] | ||||
| - | Per capita | $15,922[4] | ||||
| GDP (nominal) | 2008 estimate | |||||
| - | Total | $1.676 trillion[4] | ||||
| - | Per capita | $11,807[4] | ||||
| Gini (2005) | 40.5[5] | |||||
| HDI (2005) | ▲ 0.806 (high[6]) (73rd) | |||||
| Currency | Ruble (RUB) | |||||
| Time zone | (UTC+2 to +12) | |||||
| - | Summer (DST) | (UTC+3 to +13) | ||||
| Drives on the | right | |||||
| Internet TLD | .ru (.su reserved), (.рф2 2009) | |||||
| Calling code | +7 | |||||
| 1 | The Russian Federation is one of the successors to earlier forms of continuous statehood, starting from the 9thCentury AD when Rurik, a Viking warrior, established Novgorod, traditionally taken as the beginning of Russian statehood. | |||||
| 2 | The .рф Top-level domain will be available for use in the Russian Federation in the second quarter of 2009 and will only accept domains which use the Cyrillic alphabet.[7] | |||||
Russia (pronounced /ˈrʌʃə/ (
listen); Russian: Россия, pronounced [rʌˈsʲijə]), officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation[8][9] (Russian: 
Российская Федерация(help·info), Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a country in northern Eurasia (Europe and Asiatogether).[10] It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. Russia sharesland borders with the following countries (from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland,Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (via Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland (via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus,Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan (by the Sea of Okhotsk), theRepublic of Korea (by the Sea of Japan), Sweden (by the Baltic Sea), Turkey (by the Black Sea), and the United States (by the Bering Strait). At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is, in area, by far the largest country in the world, covering more than an eighth of the Earth’s land area; with 142 million people, it is the ninth largest by population.[1] It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 11 time zones, and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources,[11] and is considered an energy superpower.[12] [13] [14] It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's unfrozen fresh water.[15]
The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs, which emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.[10] Founded and ruled by a nobleViking warrior class and their descendants, the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century and adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988,[16] beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.[16] Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated and the lands were divided into many small feudal states. The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was Moscow, which served as the main force in the Russian reunification process and independence struggle against the Golden Horde. Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation and exploration to become theRussian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Germanyeastward to the Pacific Ocean and Alaska.
Russia established worldwide power and influence from the times of the Russian Empire to being the largest and leading constituent of the Soviet Union, the world's first and largestconstitutionally socialist state and a recognized superpower.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]The Russian Federation was founded following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, but is recognized as the continuing legal personality of the Soviet state.[27] Russia is constitutionally a semi-presidential republic with the President acting as head of state and the Prime Minister acting as head of government under a representative democratic structure.[28]Nevertheless, leading Western pro-democracy organizations claim Russia exhibits fewdemocratic attributes, for example the nation is described as ‘not free’ by Freedom House[29]. Russia has the world's eighth largest GDP by nominal GDP or sixth largest by purchasing power parity with the eighth largest military budget. It is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.[30] Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the G8, APEC and the SCO, and is a leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Russian nation can boast a long tradition of excellence in every aspect of the arts and sciences,[10] as well as a strong tradition in technology, including such significant achievements as the first human spaceflight.
Contents[hide] |
[edit]Geography
As with its topography, its climates, vegetation, and soils span vast distances.[31] From north to south the East European Plain is clad sequentially in tundra, coniferous forest (taiga), mixed and broad-leaf forests, grassland (steppe), and semi-desert (fringing the Caspian Sea) as the changes in vegetation reflect the changes in climate. Siberia supports a similar sequence but is taiga. The country contains 23 World Heritage Sites[32] and 40 UNESCO Biosphere reserves.[33]
[edit]Topography
The two widest separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (5,000 mi) apart along a geodesic line. 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 Kuril Islands, a few miles off Hokkaidō Island, Japan. The points which are furthest separated in longitude are 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 11 time zones. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves[15] and is known as "the lungs of Europe",[34] second only to the Amazon Rainforest in the amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs. It provides a huge amount of oxygen for not just Europe, but the world. With access to three of the world's oceans — the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific — Russian fishing fleets are a major contributor to the world's fish supply.[35] The Caspian is the source of what is considered the finestcaviar in the world.
Most of Russia consists of vast stretches of plains that 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 (18,510 ft)) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes onKamchatka. The Ural Mountains, rich in mineral resources, form a north-south range that divides Europe and Asia. Russia possesses 10% of the world's arable land.[36] Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 kilometers (23,000 mi) along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Baltic Sea, Sea of Azov, Black and Caspian seas.[5] The Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea,Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan are linked to Russia. Major islands and archipelagos include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz Josef Land, the Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. The Diomede Islands (one controlled by Russia, the other by the United States) are just three kilometers (1.9 mi) apart, and Kunashir Island is about twenty kilometers (12 mi) from Hokkaidō.
Russia has thousands of rivers and inland bodies of water, providing it with one of the world's largest surface water resources. The largest and most prominent of Russia's bodies of fresh water is Lake Baikal, the world's deepest, purest, most ancient and most capacious freshwater lake.[37] Lake Baikal alone contains over one fifth of the world's fresh surface water.[38] Other major lakes include Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega, two largest lakes in Europe. Of Russia's 100,000 rivers,[39] The Volga is the most famous—not only because it is the longest river in Europe but also because of its major role in Russian history. Russia has a wide natural resource base unmatched by any other country, including major deposits of petroleum, natural gas, coal, timber and mineral resources.[5][40]
[edit]Climate
The climate of the Russian Federation formed under the influence of several determining factors. The enormous size of the country and the remoteness of many areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental and subarctic climate, which is prevalent in European and Asian Russia except for the tundra and the extreme southeast.[31] Mountains in the south obstructing the flow of warm air masses from the Indian Ocean and the plain of the west and north makes the country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences.[41]
Throughout much of the territory there are only two distinct seasons — winter and summer; spring and autumn are usually brief periods of change between extremely low temperatures and extremely high.[41] The coldest month is January (on the shores of the sea—February), the warmest usually is July. Great ranges of temperature are typical. In winter, temperatures get colder both from south to north and from west to east.[31] Summers can be quite hot and humid, even in Siberia. A small part of Black Sea coast around Sochi has a subtropical climate.[42] The continental interiors are the driest areas.
[edit]History
[edit]Early periods
One of the first modern human bones Kostenki 1 laid at Don banks for 35,000 years. In prehistoric times, the vast steppes of Southern Russia were home to tribes of nomadic pastoralists. In classical antiquity, thePontic Steppe was known as Scythia.[44] Remnants of these steppe civilizations were discovered in the course of the 20th century in such places as Ipatovo,[44] Sintashta,[45] Arkaim,[46] and Pazyryk.[47] In the latter part of the eighth century BC, Greek traders brought classical civilization to the trade emporiums inTanais and Phanagoria.[48] Between the third and sixth centuries BC, the Bosporan Kingdom, a Hellenisticpolity which succeeded the Greek colonies,[49] was overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions,[50] led by warlike tribes, such as the Huns and Turkic Avars. A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas until the 8th century.[51] The ancestors of modern Russians are the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pinsk Marshes.[52] Moving into the lands vacated by the migrating Germanic tribes, the Early East Slavsgradually settled Western Russia in two waves: one moving from Kievtoward present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk towardNovgorod and Rostov.[53] From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia[53] and slowly but peacefully assimilated the native Finno-Ugric tribes, including theMerya,[54] the Muromians,[55] and the Meshchera.[56]
[edit]Kievan Rus'
The 9th century saw the establishment of Kievan Rus', a predecessor state to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Scandinavian Norsemen, called "Vikings" in Western Europe and "Varangians" in the East,[57] combined piracy and trade in their roamings over much of Northern Europe. In the mid-9th century, they ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas.[58] According to the earliest Russian chronicle, a Varangian named Rurik was elected ruler (konung or knyaz) of Novgorod around the year 860;[16] his successors moved south and extended their authority to Kiev,[59] which had been previously dominated by the Khazars.[60]
In the 10th to 11th centuries this state of Kievan Rus' became the largest and most prosperous in Europe.[61] The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980-1015) and his son Yaroslav I the Wise (1019–1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchaks and thePechenegs, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye.[62] Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongols. About half of the population perished during the invasion.[63] The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which pillaged the Russian principalities and ruled the southern and central expanses of Russia for over three centuries. Mongol rule retarded the country's economic and social development.[64] 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, Novgorodians repelled the Germanic crusaders who attempted to colonize the region. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state because of in-fighting between members of the princely family that ruled it collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod in the north-west and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west. Conquest by the Golden Horde in the 13th century was the final blow and resulted in the destruction of Kiev in 1240.[65][66] Galicia-Volhynia was eventually assimilated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and the independent Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, established the basis for the modern Russian nation.[16]
