| Ethnic composition (2002)[162] | |
|---|---|
| Russians | 79.8% |
| Tatars | 3.8% |
| Ukrainians | 2.0% |
| Chuvash | 1.1% |
| Chechen | 0.9% |
| Armenians | 0.8% |
| Other/unspecified | 10.3% |
The Russian Federation is a diverse, multi-ethnic society, home to as many as 160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples.[164] Though Russia's population is comparatively large, its population density is low because of the country's enormous size.[165] Population is densest in European Russia, near the Ural Mountains, and in southwest Siberia. According to preliminary estimates, the resident population of the Russian Federation on 1 January 2009 was 141,903,979 people. In 2008, the population declined by 121,400 people, or by -0.085% (in 2007 - by 212,000, or 0.15% and in 2006 - by 532,600 people, or 0.37%). In 2008 migration continued to grow by a pace of 2.7% with 281,615 migrants arriving to the Russian Federation, of which 95% came from CIS countries, the vast majority being Russians orRussian speakers.[2][163] The number of Russian emigrants declined by 16% to 39,508, of which 66% went to other CIS countries. There are also an estimated 10 million illegal immigrants from the ex-Soviet states in Russia.[166] Roughly 116 million ethnic Russians live in Russia[167] and about 20 million more live in former republics of the Soviet Union, mostly in Ukraine andKazakhstan.[168]
73% of the population lives in urban areas.[169] As of the 2002 Census, the two largest cities in Russia are Moscow (10,126,424 inhabitants) and Saint Petersburg (4,661,219). Eleven other cities have between one and two million inhabitants: Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Ufa, Volgograd, and Yekaterinburg.
Russia's population peaked in 1991 at 148,689,000, but began to experience a rapid decline starting in the mid-90s.[170] The decline has slowed to near stagnation in recent years due to reduced mortality rates, increased birth rates and increased immigration. The number of deaths during 2008 was 363,500 greater than the number of births. This is down from 477,700 in 2007, and 687,100 in 2006.[2][163] According to data published by the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, the mortality rate in Russia declined 4% in 2007, as compared to 2006, reaching some 2 million deaths, while the birth rate grew 8.3% year-on-year to an estimated 1.6 million live births.[171] The primary causes of Russia's population decrease are a high death rate and low birth rate. While Russia's birth-rate is comparable to that of other European countries (12.1 births per 1000 people in 2008[163] compared to the European Union average of 9.90 per 1000)[172] its population is declining at a greater rate than many due to a substantially higher death rate (In 2008, Russia's death rate was 14.7 per 1000 people[163] compared to the European Union average of 10.28 per 1000).[173] However, the Russian health ministry predicts that by 2011, the death rate will equal the birth rate due to increases in fertility and decline in mortality.[174]
| Rank | Core City | Federal Subject | Pop. | Rank | Core City | Federal Subject | Pop. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Moscow | Moscow | 10,126,424 | 11 | Ufa | Bashkortostan | 1,042,437 | |||
| 2 | Saint Petersburg | Saint Petersburg | 4,661,219 | 12 | Volgograd | Volgograd | 1,011,417 | |||
| 3 | Novosibirsk | Novosibirsk | 1,425,508 | 13 | Perm | Perm | 1,001,653 | |||
| 4 | Nizhny Novgorod | Nizhny Novgorod | 1,311,252 | 14 | Krasnoyarsk | Krasnoyarsk | 909,341 | |||
| 5 | Yekaterinburg | Sverdlovsk | 1,293,537 | 15 | Saratov | Saratov | 873,055 | |||
| 6 | Samara | Samara | 1,157,880 | 16 | Voronezh | Voronezh | 848,752 | |||
| 7 | Omsk | Omsk | 1,134,016 | 17 | Tolyatti | Samara | 702,879 | |||
| 8 | Kazan | Tatarstan | 1,105,289 | 18 | Krasnodar | Krasnodar | 646,175 | |||
| 9 | Chelyabinsk | Chelyabinsk | 1,077,174 | 19 | Ulyanovsk | Ulyanovsk | 635,947 | |||
| 10 | Rostov-on-Don | Rostov | 1,068,267 | 20 | Izhevsk | Udmurtia | 632,140 | |||
| 2002 Census[175] | ||||||||||
[edit]Education
Russia has a free education system guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution,[176] and has a literacyrate of 99.4%.[5] Entry to higher education is highly competitive.[177] As a result of great emphasis on science and technology in education, Russian medical, mathematical, scientific, and space and aviation research is generally of a high order.[178][179]
The Russian Constitution grants a universal right to higher education free of charge through competitive entry.[180] The Government allocates funding to pay the tuition fees within an established quota, or number of students for each state institution. This is considered crucial because it provides access to higher education to all skilled students, as opposed to only those who can afford it. In addition, students are paid a small stipend and provided with free housing. However, the institutions have to be funded entirely from the federal and regional budgets; institutions have found themselves unable to provide adequate teachers' salaries, students' stipends, and to maintain their facilities.[181] To address the issue, many state institutions started to open commercial positions, which have been growing steadily since.[182] Many private higher education institutions have emerged to address the need for a skilled work-force for high-tech and emerging industries and economic sectors.[181]
[edit]Health
The Russian Constitution guarantees free, universal health care for all citizens.[183] But in practice, free health care is restricted due, for example, to propiska regime.[184][185] While Russia has more physicians, hospitals, and health care workers than almost any other country in the world on a per capita basis,[186][187] since the collapse of the Soviet Union the health of the Russian population has declined considerably as a result of social, economic, and lifestyle changes.[188] As of 2007, the average life expectancy in Russia is 61.5 years for males and 73.9 years for females.[189] The average Russian life expectancy of 67.7 years at birth is 10.8 years shorter than the overall figure in the European Union.[190] The biggest factor contributing to this relatively low life expectancy for males is a high mortality rate among working-age males from preventable causes (e.g., alcohol poisoning, stress, smoking, traffic accidents, violent crimes). Mortality among Russian men rose by 60% since 1991, four to five times higher than in Europe.[191] As a result of the large difference in life expectancy between men and women and because of the lasting effect of World War II, where Russia lost more men than any other nation in the world, the gender imbalance remains to this day and there are 0.859 males to every female.[5]
Heart diseases account for 56.7% of total deaths, with about 30% involving people still of working age. About 16 million Russians suffer from cardiovascular diseases, placing Russia second in the world, after Ukraine, in this respect.[191] Death rates from homicide, suicide and cancer are also especially high.[192] According to a 2007 survey by Romir Monitoring, 52% of men and 15% of women smoke. More than 260,000 lives are lost each year as a result of tobacco use.[193] HIV/AIDS, virtually non-existent in the Soviet era, rapidly spread following the collapse, mainly through the explosive growth of intravenous drug use.[194] According to official statistics, there are currently more than 364,000 people in Russia registered with HIV, but independent experts place the number significantly higher.[195] In increasing efforts to combat the disease, the government increased spending on HIV control measures 20-fold in 2006, and the 2007 budget doubled that of 2006.[196] Since the Soviet collapse, there has also been a dramatic rise in both cases of and deaths from tuberculosis, with the disease being particularly widespread amongst prison inmates.[197]
A study blamed alcohol for more than half the deaths (52%) among Russians aged 15 to 54 from 1990 to 2001. For the same demographic, this compares to 4% of deaths for the rest of the world.[198]
In an effort to stem Russia’s demographic crisis, the government is implementing a number of programs designed to increase the birth rate and attract more migrants to alleviate the problem. The government has doubled monthly child support payments and offered a one-time payment of 250,000 Rubles (around US$10,000) to women who had a second child since 2007.[199] In 2007, Russia saw the highest birth rate since the collapse of the USSR.[200] The First Deputy PM also said about 20 billion rubles (about US$1 billion) will be invested in new prenatal centers in Russia in 2008–2009. Immigration is increasingly seen as necessary to sustain the country's population.[201]
[edit]Language
Russia's 160 ethnic groups speak some 100 languages.[10] According to the 2002 census, 142.6 million people speak Russian, followed by Tatar with 5.3 million and Ukrainian with 1.8 million speakers.[202]Russian is the only official state language, but the Constitution gives the individual republics the right to make their native language co-official next to Russian.[203] Despite its wide dispersal, the Russian language is homogeneous throughout Russia. Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken Slavic language.[204] Russian belongs to the Indo-European language family and is one of the living members of the East Slavic languages; the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian(and possibly Rusyn). Written examples of Old East Slavic (Old Russian) are attested from the 10th century onwards.[205]
Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian. Russian is also applied as a means of coding and storage of universal knowledge—60–70% of all world information is published in the English and Russian languages.[206] The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
[edit]Religion
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism are Russia’s traditional religions, deemed part of Russia's "historical heritage" in a law passed in 1997.[207] Estimates of believers widely fluctuate among sources, and some reports put the number of non-believers in Russia as high as 16–48% of the population[208]. Russian Orthodoxy is the dominant religion in Russia.[209] 95% of the registered Orthodox parishes belong to the Russian Orthodox Churchwhile there are a number of smaller Orthodox Churches.[210] However, the vast majority of Orthodox believers do not attend church on a regular basis. Nonetheless, the church is widely respected by both believers and nonbelievers, who see it as a symbol of Russian heritage and culture.[211] Smaller Christian denominations such as Roman Catholics, Armenian Gregorian and various Protestants exist.
The ancestors of many of today’s Russians adopted Orthodox Christianity in the 10th century.[211] The 2007 International Religious Freedom Report published by the US Department of State said that approximately 100 million citizens consider themselves Russian Orthodox Christians.[212] According to a poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 63% of respondents considered themselves Russian Orthodox, 6% of respondents considered themselves Muslim and less than 1% considered themselves either Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. Another 12% said they believe in God, but did not practice any religion, and 16% said they are non-believers.[213]
It is estimated that Russia is home to some 15–20 million Muslims.[214][215] However, the Islamic scholar and human rights activist Roman Silantyev has claimed that there are only 7 to 9 million people who adhere to the Islamic faith in Russia.[216] Russia also has an estimated 3 million to 4 million Muslim migrants from the ex-Soviet states.[217] Most Muslims live in the Volga-Ural region, as well as in the North Caucasus, Moscow,[218] Saint Petersburg and western Siberia.[219] Buddhism is traditional for three regions of the Russian Federation:Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia.[220] Some residents of the Siberian and Far Eastern regions, Yakutia, Chukotka, etc., practice shamanist, pantheistic, and pagan rites, along with the major religions. Induction into religion takes place primarily along ethnic lines. Slavs are overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian. Turkic speakers are predominantly Muslim, although several Turkic groups in Russia are not.[221]
[edit]Culture
[edit]Classical music and ballet
Russia's large number of ethnic groups have distinctive traditions of folk music. Music in 19th century Russia was defined by the tension between classical composer Mikhail Glinka and his followers, who embraced Russian national identity and added religious and folk elements to their compositions, and the Russian Musical Society led by composers Anton and Nikolay Rubinstein, which was musically conservative. The later Romantic tradition ofTchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era whose music has come to be known and loved for its distinctly Russian character as well as its rich harmonies and stirring melodies, was brought into the 20th century by Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the last great champions of the Romantic style of European classical music.[222]
World-renowned composers of the 20th century included Scriabin, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, andShostakovich. During most of the Soviet Era, music was highly scrutinized and kept within a conservative, accessible idiom in conformity with the Stalinist policy of socialist realism. Soviet and Russian conservatories have turned out generations of world-renowned soloists. Among the best known are violinists David Oistrakh and Gidon Kremer, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, pianists Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, and vocalistGalina Vishnevskaya.[citation needed]
Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed the world's most famous works of ballet—Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty. During the early 20th century, Russian dancers Anna Pavlovaand Vaslav Nijinsky rose to fame, and impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes' travels abroad profoundly influenced the development of dance worldwide.[224] Soviet ballet preserved the perfected 19th century traditions,[225] and the Soviet Union's choreography schools produced one internationally famous star after another, including Maya Plisetskaya, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Bolshoi Balletin Moscow and the Kirov in Saint Petersburg remain famous throughout the world.[226]
[edit]Literature
Russian literature is considered to be among the most influential and developed in the world, contributing much of the world's most famous literary works.[227] Russia's literary history dates back to the 10th century and by the early 19th century a native tradition had emerged, producing some of the greatest writers of all time. This period and the Golden Age of Russian Poetry began withAlexander Pushkin, considered to be the founder of modern Russian literature and often described as the "Russian Shakespeare".[228] It continued in the 19th century with Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Lermontov, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov, Aleksey Pisemsky, and Nikolai Leskov made lasting contributions to Russian prose. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in particular were titanic figures to the point that many literary critics have described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever.[229][230]
By the 1880s Russian literature had begun to change. The age of the great novelists was over and short fiction and poetry became the dominant genres of Russian literature for the next several decades which became known as theSilver Age of Russian Poetry. Previously dominated by realism, symbolism dominated Russian literature in the years between 1893 and 1914. Leading writers of this age include Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov,Aleksandr Blok, Nikolay Gumilev,Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Fyodor Sologub, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam,Marina Tsvetaeva, Leonid Andreyev, Ivan Bunin and Maxim Gorky.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil war, Russian cultural life was left in chaos. Some established writers left the newly formed Soviet Union while a new generation of talented writers who had at least some sympathy for the ideals of the revolution was emerging. The most ardent of these joined together in writers organizations with the aim of creating a new and distinctive proletarian (working-class) culture appropriate to the new state. Throughout the 1920s writers enjoyed broad tolerance. In the 1930s censorship over literature was tightened in line with Joseph Stalin's policy of socialist realism. After his death several thaws took place and restrictions on literature were eased. By the 1970s and 1980s, writers were increasingly ignoring the guidelines of socialist realism. The leading writers of the Soviet era included Yevgeny Zamiatin, Isaac Babel, Ilf and Petrov, Yury Olesha, Vladimir Nabokov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mikhail Sholokhov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrey Voznesensky.
[edit]Cinema
While in the industrialized nations of the West, motion pictures had first been accepted as a form of cheap recreation and leisure for the working class, Russian filmmaking came to prominence following the 1917 revolution when it explored editing as the primary mode of cinematic expression.[231] Russian and later Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention in the period immediately following the 1917 revolution, resulting in world-renowned films such as Battleship Potemkin.[232] Soviet-era filmmakers, most notably Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, would become some of the world's most innovative and influential directors.
Eisenstein also was a student of filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov, who formulated the groundbreaking editing process called montage at the world's first film school, the All-Union Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. Dziga Vertov, whose kino-glaz (“film-eye”) theory—that the camera, like the human eye, is best used to explore real life—had a huge impact on the development of documentary film making and cinema realism. In 1932, Stalin made socialist realism the state policy; this stifled creativity but many Soviet films in this style were artistically successful, including Chapaev, The Cranes Are Flying and Ballad of a Soldier.[232] Leonid Gaidai's comedies of the 1960s and 1970s were immensely popular, with many of the catch phrases still in use today. In 1969, Vladimir Motyl's White Sun of the Desert was released, starting a genre known as 'osterns'. The film is watched by cosmonauts before any trip into space.[233]
The 1980s and 1990s were a period of crisis in Russian cinema. Although Russian filmmakers became free to express themselves, state subsidies were drastically reduced, resulting in fewer films produced. The early years of the 21st century have brought increased viewership and subsequent prosperity to the industry on the back of the economy's rapid development, and production levels are already higher than in Britain and Germany.[234] Russia's total box-office revenue in 2007 was $565 million, up 37% from the previous year[235] (by comparison, in 1996 revenues stood at $6 million).[234] Russian cinema continues to receive international recognition. Russian Ark (2002) was the first feature film ever to be shot in a single take.
[edit]Visual arts
Early Russian painting focused on icon painting and vibrant frescos inherited by Russians from Byzantium. As Moscow rose to power,Theophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev are vital names associated with the beginning of a distinctly Russian art. The Russian Academy of Arts was created in 1757, aimed to give Russian artists an international role and status. Notable portrait painters from the Academy include Ivan Argunov, Fyodor Rokotov, Dmitry Levitzky and Vladimir Borovikovsky. Realism flourished in the 19th century and the realists captured Russian identity. Russian landscapes of wide rivers, forests, and birch clearings, as well as vigorous genre scenes and robust portraits of their contemporaries asserted a sense of identity. Other artists focused on social criticism, showing the conditions of the poor and caricaturing authority while critical realism flourished under the reign of Alexander II.
After the abolition of serfdom in 1861 some artists made the circle of human suffering their focus. Artists sometimes created wide canvasses to depict dramatic moments in Russian history. The Peredvizhniki(wanderers) group of artists broke with Russian Academy and initiated a school of art liberated from Academic restrictions. Their paintings had deep social and political meaning. Leading realists include Ivan Shishkin, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Ivan Kramskoi, Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Vasily Surikov, Viktor Vasnetsov, and Ilya Repin. By the 1830s the Academy was sending painters overseas to learn. The most gifted of these were Aleksander Ivanov and Karl Briullov, both of whom were noted for the Romantic historical canvasses. Uniquely Russian styles of painting emerged by the late 19th century that was intimately engaged with the daily life of Russian society.
The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modernist art that flourished in Russia from approximately 1890 to 1930. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related, art movements that occurred at the time; namely neo-primitivism, suprematism, constructivism, rayonism and futurism. Notable artists from this era include El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, and Marc Chagall amongst others. The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, at which point the ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged conservative Stalinist direction of socialist realism.
By the late 1920s the rigid policy of socialist realism enveloped the visual arts as it did literature and motion pictures and soon the avant-garde had faded from sight. Some artists combined innovation with socialist realism including Ernst Neizvestny, Ilya Kabakov, Mikhail Shemyakin,Erik Bulatov and Vera Mukhina. They employed techniques as varied as primitivism, hyperrealism, grotesque, and abstraction, but they shared a common distaste for the canons of socialist realism. Soviet artists produced works that were furiously patriotic and anti-fascist in the 1940s. Events and battles from the Great Patriotic War were depicted with stirring patriotism and after the war sculptors made many monuments to the war dead, the greatest of which have a great restrained solemnity. In the 20th century many Russian artists made their careers in Western Europe, due in part to the traumas of the Revolution. Russian artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, and Naum Gabo spread their work and ideas internationally. These Russian artists studied internationally in Paris and Munich and their involuntary exile spread the impact of Russian art globally.
[edit]Sports
Russians have been successful at a number of sports and consistently finish in the top rankings at the Olympic Games and in international competitions. During the Soviet era, the national Olympic team placed first in the total number of medals won at 14 of its 18 appearances; with these performances, the USSR was the dominant Olympic power of its era. Since the 1952 Olympic Games, Soviet and later Russian athletes have always been in the top three for the number of gold medals collected at the Summer Olympics. Soviet gymnasts, track-and-field athletes, weight lifters, wrestlers, cross country skiers, and boxers were consistently among the best in the world, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian athletes have continued to dominate international competitions. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow while the 2014 Winter Olympics will be hosted by Sochi.
As the Soviet Union, Russia was traditionally very strong in basketball, winning various Olympic tournaments, World Championships and Eurobasket. As of 2009 they have various players in the NBA, notably Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko, and are considered as a worldwide basketball force. In 2007, Russia defeated world champions Spain to win Eurobasket 2007. Russian basketball clubs such as PBC CSKA Moscow (2006 and 2008 Euroleague Champions) have also had great success in European competitions such as the Euroleague and the ULEB Cup.
Although ice hockey was only introduced during the Soviet era, the national team soon dominated the sport internationally, winning gold at almost all the Olympics and World Championships they contested. As with some other sports, the Russian ice hockey programme suffered after the breakup of the Soviet Union with Russia enduring a 15 year gold medal drought. But in recent years they have reemerged as a hockey superpower, winning back to back gold medals in the 2008 and 2009 world championships, and overtaking Canada as the top ranked ice hockey team in the world.[237]
During the Soviet period, Russia was also a competitive footballing nation, reaching the finals of various international tournaments. Along with ice hockey and basketball, football is one of the most popular sports in Russia today. Despite having fantastic players, the USSR never really managed to assert itself as one of the major forces of international football, although its teams won various championships (such as Euro 1960) and reached numerous finals (such as Euro 1988). In recent years, Russian football, which suffered terribly from the break up of 1991, has experienced something of a revival. Russian clubs (such as CSKA Moscow, Zenit St Petersburg, Lokomotiv Moscow, and Spartak Moscow) are becoming increasingly successful on the European stage (CSKA and Zenit winning the UEFA Cup in 2005 and 2008 respectively) and many predict that the Russian league will become one of the strongest in Europe, partly due to Russia's wealth of footballing talent (visible in their team at Euro 2008) and also because of the injection of serious money into the Russian game, which helps to attract notable foreign players as well. The Russian national team, which reached the semi-finals of Euro 2008, losing to eventual champions Spain, is rapidly reemerging as a dominant force in international football, under the guidance of Dutch manager Guus Hiddink.
Figure skating is another popular sport; in the 1960s, the Soviet Union rose to become a dominant power in figure skating, especially in pair skating and ice dancing. At every Winter Olympics from 1964 until the present day, a Soviet or Russian pair has won gold, often considered the longest winning streak in modern sports history. Since the end of the Soviet era, tennis has grown in popularity and Russia has produced a number of famous tennis players. Chess is also a widely popular pastime; from 1927, Soviet and Russian chess grandmasters have held theworld championship almost continuously.
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