Russland
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Russian Federation Российская Федерация Rossiyskaya Federatsiya | |
|---|---|
| Anthem: Государственный гимн Российской Федерации (Russian) Gosudarstvenny gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii (transliteration) State Anthem of the Russian Federation | |
.svg) | |
| Capital and largest city | Moscow |
| Official languages | Russian official throughout the country; 27 others co-official in various regions |
| Ethnic groups | Russians 79.8%, Tatars 3.8%, Ukrainians 2%, Bashkirs 1.2%, Chuvashes 1.1%, Chechens 0.9%, Armenians 0.8%, other 10.4%[1] |
| Demonym(s) | Russian |
| Regierung | Federal semi-presidential republic |
| Dmitry Medvedev | |
| Vladimir Putin (Independent, but leader of UR) | |
| Sergey Mironov (FR) | |
| Boris Gryzlov (UR) | |
| Legislature | Federal Assembly |
| Federation Council | |
| State Duma | |
| Formation | |
| 862 | |
| 882 | |
| 1169 | |
| 1283 | |
| 1547 | |
| 1721 | |
| 7 November 1917 | |
| 10 December 1922 | |
| 26 December 1991 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 17,075,400 km2 (6,592,800 sq mi) (1st) |
• Water (%) | 13[2] (including swamps) |
| Population | |
• 2010 estimate | 141,927,297[3] (9th) |
• 2002 census | 145,166,731[4] |
• Density | 8.3/km2 (21.5/sq mi) (217th) |
| GDP (PPP) | 2009 estimate |
• Total | $2.109 trillion[5] |
• Per capita | $14,919[5] |
| GDP (nominal) | 2009 estimate |
• Total | $1.229 trillion[5] |
• Per capita | $8,693[5] |
| HDI (2007) |  0.817[6]Error: Invalid HDI value (71st) |
| Currency | Ruble (RUB) |
| Time zone | UTC+2 to +11 (exc. +4) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC+3 to +12 (exc. +5) |
| Drives on | right |
| Calling code | +7 |
| ISO 3166 code | RU |
| Internet TLD | .ru, .su, .рф |
Russland (Template:Pron-en; Russian: Россия, romanized: Rossiya, IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ), also officially known as the Russian Federation[7] (Russian: Российская Федерация, romanized: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈraʦəjə] ), is a state in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norwegen, Finnland, Estland, Lettland, Litauen and Polen (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Weißrussland, Ukraine, Georgien, Aserbaidschan, Kasachstan, the People's Republic of China, Mongolei, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the Vereinigte Staaten by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 km2 (10,610,162 sq. miles), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than a ninth of the Earth's land area. Russia is also the ninth most populous nation with 142 million people.[2] It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 9 time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources.[8] It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.[9]
The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs, who emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.[10] Founded and ruled by a noble Viking warrior class and their descendants, the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century and adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988,[11] beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.[11] 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 the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland in Europe to Alaska in North America.
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 constitutionally socialist state and a recognized superpower,[12] that played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II.[13][14][15] The Soviet era saw some of the greatest technology achievements of the nation, such as the world's first human spaceflight. 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.[16] Russia has the world's 12th largest economy by nominal GDP or the seventh largest by purchasing power parity, with the fifth largest nominal military budget. It is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.[17] Russia is a great power and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the G8, G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Community, the OSCE, and is the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Etymology
The country's original name was Русь (Rus'), a medieval state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля" (russkaya zemlya) which could be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography.
An old Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus' that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия (Rossiya), comes from the Greek version of Rus', spelled Ρωσία [rosˈia], which was the denomination of Kievan Rus in the Byzantine Empire.
Geography
Russia is the largest country in the world; its total area is 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi). There are 23 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Russia, 40 UNESCO biosphere reserves,[18] 40 national parks and 101 nature reserve. Russia has a wide natural resource base, including major deposits of timber, petroleum, natural gas, coal, ores and other mineral resources.
Topography
The two widest separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (4,971 mi) apart along a geodesic line. These points are: the boundary with Poland on a 60 km (37 mi) long Vistula Spit separating the Gdańsk Bay from the Vistula Lagoon; and the farthest southeast of the Kuril Islands. The points which are furthest separated in longitude are 6,600 km (4,101 mi) apart along a geodesic. These points are: in the west, the same spit; in the east, the Big Diomede Island. The Russian Federation spans 9 time zones.
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. Russia possesses 10% of the world's arable land.[19] Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, which at 5,642 m (18,510 ft) is the highest point in both Russia and Europe) and the Altai (containing Mount Belukha, which at the 4,506 m (14,783 ft) is the highest point of Asian Russia); and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The Ural Mountains, rich in mineral resources, form a north-south range that divides Europe and Asia.
Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km (22,991 mi) along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as along the Baltic Sea, Sea of Azov, Black Sea and Caspian Sea.[20] 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 via the Arctic and Pacific. Russia's 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 3 km (1.9 mi) apart, and Kunashir Island is about 20 km (12.4 mi) from Hokkaidō, Japan.
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, oldest and most capacious freshwater lake.[21] Baikal alone contains over one fifth of the world's fresh surface water.[22] Other major lakes include Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega, two of the largest lakes in Europe. Russia is second only to Brazil in volume of the total renewable water resources. Of the country's 100,000 rivers,[23] 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.[20]
Climate
The climate of the country formed under the influence of several determining factors. The enormous size of Russia and the remoteness of many areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental and subarctic climate, which is prevalent in both the European and Asian parts of the country except for the tundra and the extreme southeast. Mountains in the south obstruct the flow of warm air masses from the Indian Ocean, while the plain of the west and north makes the country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences.[24]
Due to the moderating influence of the Atlantic or Pacific, the most populous areas of the country in European Russia, in the south of West Siberia and in the south of the Russian Far East, including the cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, experience a humid continental climate.
Most of Northern European Russia and Siberia has a subarctic climate, with extremely severe winters in the inner regions of Northeast Siberia (mostly the Sakha Republic, where the Northern Pole of Cold is located with the record low temperature of −68 °C (−90.4 °F)*), and more moderate elsewhere. The strip of land along the shore of the Arctic Ocean, as well as the Russian Arctic islands, have a polar climate (extreme polar climate on some of the islands and tundra climate elsewhere).
A small portion of the Black Sea coast, most notably in Sochi, possesses a humid subtropical climate with unusually wet winters. Winter is dry compared to summer in many regions of East Siberia and the Far East, while other parts of the country experience more even precipitation across seasons. Winter precipitation in most parts of the country usually falls as snow. The region along the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea coast, as well as some areas of southernmost Siberia, possess a semi-arid climate.
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.[24] The coldest month is January (February on the coastline), 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. Summers can be quite hot, even in Siberia.[25] The continental interiors are the driest areas.
Flora and fauna
From north to south the East European Plain, also known as Russian Plain, is clad sequentially in Arctic 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 largely is taiga. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves,[9] known as "the lungs of Europe",[26] second only to the Amazon Rainforest in the amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs.
There are 266 mammal species and 780 bird species in Russia. A total of 415 animal species have been included in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation as of 1997[27] and are now protected.
History
Early periods
One of the first modern human bones of 35,000 years old were found in Russia, in Kostenki on the Don River banks. In prehistoric times the vast steppes of Southern Russia were home to tribes of nomadic pastoralists.[28] Remnants of these steppe civilizations were discovered in such places as Ipatovo,[28] Sintashta,[29] Arkaim,[30] and Pazyryk,[31] which bear the earliest known traces of mounted warfare, a key feature in nomadic way of life.
In classical antiquity, the Pontic Steppe was known as Scythia. Since the 8th century BC, Ancient Greek traders brought their civilization to the trade emporiums in Tanais and Phanagoria.[32] Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom, a Hellenistic polity which succeeded the Greek colonies,[33] was overwhelmed by nomadic invasions led by warlike tribes, such as the Huns and Eurasian Avars.[34] A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas until the 8th century.[35]
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.[36] The East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia in two waves: one moving from Kiev toward present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk toward Novgorod and Rostov.[37] From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia[37] and slowly but peacefully assimilated the native Finno-Ugric peoples, including the Merya,[38] the Muromians,[39] and the Meshchera.[40]
Kievan Rus'
The establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the Vikings who ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas.[41] According to the Primary Chronicle, a Varangian from Rus' people, named Rurik, was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. His successor Oleg the Prophet moved south and conquered Kiev in 882,[42] which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars; so the state of Kievan Rus' started. Oleg, Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Svyatoslav subsequently subdued all East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar khaganate and launched several military expeditions to Byzantium.
In the 10th to 11th centuries Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe.[43] 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 from Byzantium 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 the Pechenegs, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye.[44]
The age of feudalism and decentralization had come, marked by constant in-fighting between members of the princely family that ruled Kievan Rus' 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.
Ultimately Kievan Rus' disintegrated, with the final blow being the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240,[45] that resulted in the destruction of Kiev[46] and the death of about half the population of Rus'.[47] 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.[48]
Galicia-Volhynia was eventually assimilated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, established the basis for the modern Russian nation.[11] The Novgorod Republic together with Pskov retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and were largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Led by Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle of the Ice in 1242, breaking their attempts to colonize the Northern Rus'.
Grand Duchy of Moscow
The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow ("Moscovy" in the Western chronicles), initially a part of Vladimir-Suzdal. While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, Moscow began to assert its influence in Western Russia in the early 14th century.
Those were hard times, with frequent Mongol-Tatar raids and agriculture suffering from the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Like in the rest of Europe, plagues hit Russia somewhere once every five or six years from 1350 to 1490. However, due to the lower population density and better hygiene (widespread practicing of banya, the wet steam bath),[49] the population loss caused by plagues wasn't so severe as in the Western Europe, and the pre-Plague populations were reached in Russia as early as 1500.[50]
Assisted by the Russian Orthodox Church and Saint Sergius of Radonezh's spiritual revival, under the leadership of Prince Dmitri Donskoy of Moscow, the united army of Russian principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Moscow gradually absorbed the surrounding principalities, including eventually the strong rivals, such as Tver and Novgorod, and thus became the main leading force in the process of Russia's reunification and expansion.
Ivan III (Ivan the Great) finally threw off the control of the Golden Horde, consolidated the whole of Central and Northern Rus' under Moscow's dominion, and was the first to take the title "grand duke of all the Russias".[51] After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own, and eventually Russian, coat-of-arms.
Tsardom of Russia
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In development of the Third Rome ideas, the Grand Duke Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) was officially crowned the first Tsar ("Caesar") of Russia in 1547. The Tsar promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor) and introduced local self-management into the rural regions.[52][53]
During his long reign, Ivan IV nearly doubled the already large Russian territory by annexing the three Tatar khanates (parts of disintegrated Golden Horde): Kazan and Astrakhan along the Volga River, and Sibirean Khanate in South Western Siberia. Thus by the end of the 16th century Russia was transformed into a multiethnic, multiconfessional and transcontinental state.
However, the Russian state was weakened by the long and unsuccessful Livonian War against the coalition of Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden for access to the Baltic coast and sea trade.[54] At the same time Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, the only remaining successor to the Golden Horde, continued to raid Southern Russia.[55]
The death of Ivan's sons marked the end of the ancient Rurikid Dynasty in 1598, and in combination with the famine of 1601–03[56] led to the civil war, the rule of pretenders and foreign intervention during the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century.[57] Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occupied parts of Russia, including Moscow. In 1612 the Poles were forced to retreat by the Russian volunteer corps, led by two national heroes, merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The Romanov Dynasty acceded the throne in 1613 by the decision of Zemsky Sobor, and the country started its gradual recovery from the crisis.
Russia continued its territorial growth through the 17th century, which was the age of Cossacks. Cossacks were warriors organized into military communities, resembling pirates and pioneers of the New World. In 1648, the peasants of Ukraine joined the Zaporozhian Cossacks in rebellion against Poland-Lithuania during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, because of the social and religious oppression they suffered under Polish rule. In 1654 the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Russian Tsar, Aleksey I. Aleksey's acceptance of this offer led to another Russo-Polish War (1654–1667). Finally, Ukraine was split along the river Dnieper, leaving the western part (or Right-bank Ukraine) under Polish rule and eastern part (Left-bank Ukraine and Kiev) under Russian. Later, in 1670–71 the Don Cossacks led by Stenka Razin initiated a major uprising in the Volga region, but the Tsar's troops were successful in defeating the rebels.
In the east, the rapid Russian exploration and colonisation of the huge territories of Siberia was led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. Russian explorers pushed eastward primarily along the Siberian river routes, and by the mid-17th century there were Russian settlements in the Eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur River, and on the Pacific coast. In 1648 the Bering Strait between Asia and North America was passed for the first time by Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov.
Imperial Russia
Under Peter I (Peter the Great), Russia was proclaimed an Empire in 1721 and became recognized as a world power. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede West Karelia and Ingria (two regions lost by Russia in the Time of Troubles),[58] as well as Estland and Livland, securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade.[59] On the Baltic Sea Peter founded a new capital called Saint Petersburg, later known as Russia's Window to Europe. Peter's reforms brought considerable Western European cultural influences to Russia.
The reign of Peter I's daughter Elisabeth in 1741–1762 saw Russia's participation in the Seven Years War (1756–1763). During this conflict Russia annexed Eastern Prussia for a while and even took Berlin, however upon Elisabeth's death all these conquests were returned to Kingdom of Prussia by pro-Prussian Peter III of Russia.
Catherine II (Catherine the Great), who ruled from 1762 to 1796, extended Russian political control over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and incorporated most of its territories into Russia during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. In the south, after successful Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire, Catherine advanced Russia's boundary to the Black Sea, defeating the Crimean khanate. As a result of victories over the Ottomans, by the early 19th century Russia also had made significant territorial gains in Transcaucasia. This continued with Alexander I's (1801–1825) wresting of Finland from the weakened kingdom of Sweden in 1809 and of Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812.
At the same time Russians colonised Alaska and even founded settlements in California, like Fort Ross. In 1803–1806 the first Russian circumnavigation was made, followed during the 19th century by the other notable Russian sea exploration voyages. In 1820 the Russian expedition discovered the continent of Antarctica.
In alliances with various European countries, Russia fought against Napoleon's France. The French invasion of Russia at the height of Napoleon's power in 1812 failed miserably as the obstinate resistance in combination with the bitterly cold Russian winter led to a disastrous defeat of invaders, in which more than 95% of the pan-European Grande Armée perished.[60] Led by Mikhail Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly, the Russian army ousted Napoleon from the country and drove through Europe in the war of the Sixth Coalition, finally entering Paris. Alexander I headed Russia's delegation at the Congress of Vienna that defined the map of post-Napoleonic Europe.
The officers of the Napoleonic Wars brought ideas of liberalism back to Russia with them and attempted to curtail the tsar's powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt of 1825. At the end of the conservative reign of Nicolas I (1825–1855) a zenith period of Russia's power and influence in Europe was disrupted by defeat in the Crimean War. Nicholas's successor Alexander II (1855–1881) enacted significant changes in the country, including the emancipation reform of 1861; these Great Reforms spurred industrialization and modernized the Russian army, which had successfully liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War.
The late 19th century saw the rise of various socialist movements in Russia. Alexander II was killed in 1881 by revolutionary terrorists, and the reign of his son Alexander III (1881–1894) was less liberal and more peaceful. The last Russian Emperor, Nicholas II (1894–1917), was unable, however, to prevent the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905, triggered by the unsuccessful Russo-Japanese War and the demonstration incident known as Bloody Sunday. The uprising was put down, but the government was forced to concede major reforms, including granting the freedoms of speech and assembly, the legalization of political parties and the creation of an elected legislative body, the Duma.
In 1914 Russia entered World War I in response to Austria's declaration of war on Russia's ally Serbia, and fought across multiple fronts while isolated from its Triple Entente allies. In 1916 the Brusilov Offensive of the Russian Army destroyed the military of Austria-Hungary almost completely. However, the already-existing public distrust of the regime was deepened by the rising costs of war, high casualties, and rumors of corruption and treason. All this formed the climate for the Russian Revolution of 1917, carried out in two major acts.
The February Revolution forced Nicholas II to abdicate; he and his family were imprisoned and later executed during the Russian Civil War. The monarchy was replaced by a shaky coalition of political parties that declared itself the Provisional Government. An alternative socialist establishment existed alongside, the Petrograd Soviet, wielding power through the democratically elected councils of workers and peasants, called Soviets. The rule of the new authorities only aggravated the crisis in the country, instead of resolving it. Eventually, the October Revolution, led by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government and created the world’s first socialist state.
Soviet Russia
Following the October Revolution, a civil war broke out between the counter-revolutionary White movement and the new regime with its Red Army.The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk concluded hostilities with the Central Powers in World War I. Russia lost its Ukrainian, Polish, Baltic, and Finnish territories by signing the treaty. The Allied powers launched an unsuccessful military intervention in support of anti-Communist forces, while both the Bolsheviks and White movement carried out campaigns of deportations and executions against each other, known respectively as the Red Terror and White Terror. By the end of the civil war the Russian economy and infrastructure were heavily damaged. Millions became White émigrés,[61] and the Povolzhye famine claimed 5 million victims.[62]
The Russian SFSR together with three other Soviet republics formed the Soviet Union, or USSR, on 30 December 1922. Out of the 15 republics of the USSR, the Russian SFSR was the largest in terms of size, and making up over half of the total USSR population, dominated the union for its entire 69-year history; the Soviet Union was often referred to, though incorrectly, as "Russia" and its people as "Russians".
Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin, an elected General Secretary of the Communist Party, managed to put down all opposition groups within the party and consolidate much power in his hands. Leon Trotsky, the main proponent of the world revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin's idea of socialism in one country became the primary line. The continued internal struggle in the Bolshevik party culminated in the Great Purge, a period of mass repressions in 1937–38, in which hundreds of thousands of people were executed, including military leaders convicted in coup d'état plots.[63]
The government launched a planned economy, industrialisation of the largely rural country, and collectivization of its agriculture. During this period of the rapid change in economy and society millions of people were sent into penal labor camps,[64] including many political convicts, and millions were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.[65] The transitional disorganisation of the country's agriculture, combined with the harsh state policies and a drought, led to the famine of 1932–1933.[66] However, though with a heavy price, the Soviet Union was transformed from an agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse in a short span of time.
The Appeasement policy of Great Britain and France towards Hitler's annexions of Ruhr, Austria and finally of Czechoslovakia enlarged the might of Nazi Germany and put a threat of war to the Soviet Union. Around the same time the German Reich allied with the Empire of Japan, a rival of the USSR on the Far East and an open enemy in the Soviet–Japanese Border Wars in 1938–39.
In August 1939, after another failure of its attempts to establish a counter-Nazism alliance with Britain and France, the Soviet government agreed to conclude the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, pledging non-aggression between the two countries and dividing their spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. While Hitler conquered Poland, France and other countries acting on single front at the start of the World War II, the USSR was able to build up its military and regain some of the former territories of the Russian Empire during the Soviet invasion of Poland and the Winter War.
On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany broke the non-aggression treaty and invaded the Soviet Union with the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history,[67] opening the largest theater of the Second World War. Although the German army had considerable success early on, their onslaught was halted in the Battle of Moscow.
Subsequently the Germans were dealt major defeats first at the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–43,[68] and then in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. Another German failure was the Siege of Leningrad, in which the city was fully blockaded on land between 1941–44 by German and Finnish forces, suffering starvation and more than a million deaths, but never surrendering.[69]
Under Stalin's administration and the leadership of such commanders as Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe in 1944–45 and captured Berlin in May 1945. In August 1945 the Soviet Army ousted Japanese from China's Manchukuo and North Korea, contributing to the allied victory over Japan.
1941–1945 period of World War II is known in Russia as Great Patriotic War. In this conflict, which included many of the most lethal battle operations in human history, Soviet military and civilian deaths were 10.6 million and 15.9 million respectively,[70] accounting for about a third of all World War II casualties. The Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation[71] but the Soviet Union emerged as an acknowledged superpower.
The Red Army occupied Eastern Europe after the war, including the East Germany. Dependent socialist governments were installed in these satellite states. Becoming the world's second nuclear weapons power, the USSR established the Warsaw Pact alliance and entered into a struggle for global dominance with the United States and NATO, which became known as the Cold War. The Soviet Union exported its Communist ideology to newly formed People's Republic of China and North Korea, and later into Cuba and many other countries. Significant amounts of the Soviet resources were allocated in aid to the other socialist states.[72]
After Stalin's death and a short period of collective rule, a new leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the cult of personality of Stalin and launched the policy of de-Stalinization. Penal labor system was reformed and a great many of prisoners released;[73] the general easement of repressive policies became known later as Khruschev thaw.
In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, thus starting the Space Age, and the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 1 manned spacecraft on 12 April 1961. Tensions with the United States heightened when the two rivals clashed over the deployment of the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of collective rule ensued, until Leonid Brezhnev became the leader. Kosygin reform, aimed into partial decentralization of the Soviet economy and shifting the emphasis from heavy industry and arms production to light industry and consumer goods, was stifled by the conservative Communist leadership. The era of 1970-ies and the early 1980-ies became known as Brezhnev stagnation.
In 1979 the Soviet forces entered Afghanistan at the request of its communist government. The occupation drained economic resources and dragged on without achieving meaningful political results. Ultimately the Soviet Army was withdrawn from Afghanistan in 1989 because of international opposition, persistent anti-Soviet guerilla warfare (enhanced by the U.S.), and a lack of support from Soviet citizens.
From 1985 onwards, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize the country and make it more democratic. However, this led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements. Prior to 1991, the Soviet economy was the second largest in the world,[74] but during its last years it was afflicted by shortages of goods in grocery stores, huge budget deficits and explosive growth in money supply leading to inflation.[75]
In August 1991, an unsuccessful military coup, directed against Gorbachev and aimed at preserving the Soviet Union, instead led to its collapse and the end of socialist rule. The USSR was dissolved into 15 post-Soviet states in December 1991.
Russian Federation
Boris Yeltsin was elected the President of Russia in June 1991, in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. During and after the Soviet disintegration, wide-ranging reforms including privatisation and market and trade liberalization were being undertaken,[76] including the radical changes along the lines of "shock therapy" recommended by the United States and International Monetary Fund.[77][78] All this resulted in a major economy crisis, characterized by 50% decline of both GDP and industrial output between 1990-1995.[76][79]
The privatization largely shifted control of enterprises from state agencies to individuals with inside connections in the government system. Many of the newly rich businesspeople took billions in cash and assets outside of the country in an enormous capital flight.[80] The depression of state and economy led to the collapse of social services; the birth rate plummeted while the death rate skyrocketed. Millions plunged into poverty, from 1.5% level of poverty in the late Soviet era, to 39%–49% by mid-1993.[81] The early and mid-1990s saw extreme corruption and lawlessness, rise of criminal gangs and violent crime.[82]
The 1990s were plagued by armed conflicts in the Northern Caucasus, both local ethnic skirmishes and separatist Islamist insurrections. Since the Chechen separatists had declared independence in the early 1990s, an intermittent guerrilla war was fought between the rebel groups and the Russian military. Terrorist attacks against civilians carried out by separatists, most notably the Moscow theater hostage crisis and Beslan school siege, caused hundreds of deaths and drew worldwide attention.
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.[83] High budget deficits caused the 1998 Russian financial crisis[84] and resulted in further GDP decline.[76] On 31 December 1999 President Yeltsin resigned, handing the post to the recently appointed Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, who then won the 2000 presidential election.
Putin suppressed the Chechen insurgency, although sporadic violence still occurs throughout the Northern Caucasus. High oil prices and initially weak currency followed by increasing domestic demand, consumption and investments has helped the economy grow for nine straight years, improving the standard of living and increasing Russia's influence on the world stage.[20] While many reforms made during the Putin presidency have been generally criticized by Western nations as un-democratic,[85] Putin's leadership over the return of order, stability, and progress has won him widespread popularity in Russia.[86] On 2 March 2008, Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of Russia, whilst Putin became Prime Minister.
Government and politics
According to the Constitution of Russia, the country is a federation and semi-presidential republic, wherein the President is the head of state[87] and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Russian Federation is fundamentally structured as a representative democracy, with the federal government composed of three branches:
- Legislative: The bicameral Federal Assembly, made up of the 450-member State Duma and the 176-member Federation Council, adopts federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has power of impeachment of the President.
- Executive: The President is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Cabinet and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
- Judiciary: The Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of Arbitration and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the Federation Council on the recommendation of the President, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.
The president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term (eligible for a second term, not for a third consecutive term).[88] Ministries of the government are composed of the Premier and his deputies, ministers, and selected other individuals; all are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister (whereas the appointment of the latter requires the consent of the State Duma). Leading political parties in Russia include United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, and Fair Russia.
Foreign relations
The Russian Federation is recognized in international law as successor state of the former Soviet Union.[16] Russia continues to implement the international commitments of the USSR, and has assumed the USSR's permanent seat on the UN Security Council, membership in other international organizations, the rights and obligations under international treaties and property and debts. Russia has a multifaceted foreign policy. As of 2009, it maintains diplomatic relations with 191 countries and has 144 embassies.[89] The foreign policy is determined by the President and implemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.[90]
As the successor to a former superpower, Russia's geopolitical status has been often debated, particularly in relation to unipolar and multipolar views on the global political system. While Russia is commonly accepted to be a great power, in recent years it has been characterized by a number of world leaders,[91][92] scholars,[93] commentators and politicians[94] as a currently reinstating or potential superpower[95]. However, such a characterization has been disputed by others.[96][97]
As one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia plays a major role in maintaining international peace and security. The country participates in the Quartet on the Middle East and the Six-party talks with North Korea. Russia is a member of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations, the Council of Europe, OSCE and APEC. Russia usually takes a leading role in regional organizations such as the CIS, EurAsEC, CSTO, and the SCO.[98] Former President Vladimir Putin had advocated a strategic partnership with close integration in various dimensions including establishment of EU-Russia Common Spaces.[99] Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has developed a friendlier, albeit volatile relationship with NATO. The NATO-Russia Council was established in 2002 to allow the 26 Allies and Russia to work together as equal partners to pursue opportunities for joint collaboration.[100]
Military
The Russian military is divided into the Ground Forces, Navy, and Air Force. There are also three independent arms of service: Strategic Rocket Forces, Military Space Forces, and the Airborne Troops. In 2006, the military had 1.037 million personnel on active duty.[101] It is mandatory for all male citizens aged 18–27 to be drafted for a year of service in Armed Forces.[20]
Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. It 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.[17][102] Russia's tank force is the largest in the world, its surface navy and air force are among the strongest.
The country has a large and fully indigenous arms industry, producing most of its own military equipment with only few types of weapons imported. Russia is the world's top supplier of arms, a spot it has held since 2001, accounting for around 30% of worldwide weapons sales[103] and exporting weapons to about 80 countries.[104]
Official government military spending for 2008 was $58 billion, the fifth largest in the world,[105] though various sources have estimated Russia’s military expenditures to be considerably higher.[101][106] Currently, a major military equipment upgrade worth about $200 billion is on its way between 2006 and 2015.[107]
Subdivisions
- Federal subjects
The Russian Federation comprises 83 federal subjects.[108] These subjects have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council.[109] However, they differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy.
- 46 oblasts (provinces): most common type of federal subjects, with federally appointed governor and locally elected legislature.
- 21 republics: nominally autonomous; each has its own constitution, president, and parliament. Republics are allowed to establish their own official language alongside Russian but are represented by the federal government in international affairs. Republics are meant to be home to specific ethnic minorities.
- 9 krais (territories): essentially the same as oblasts. The "territory" designation is historic, originally given to frontier regions and later also to administrative divisions that comprised autonomous okrugs or autonomous oblasts.
- 4 autonomous okrugs (autonomous districts): originally autonomous entities within oblasts and krais created for ethnic minorities, their status was elevated to that of federal subjects in the 1990s. With the exception of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, all autonomous okrugs are still administratively subordinated to a krai or an oblast of which they are a part.
- 1 autonomous oblast (the Jewish Autonomous Oblast): originally autonomous oblasts were administrative units subordinated to krais. In 1990, all of them except the Jewish AO were elevated in status to that of a republic.
- 2 federal cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg): major cities that function as separate regions.
- Federal districts
Federal subjects are grouped into 8 federal districts, each administered by an envoy appointed by the President of Russia.[110] Unlike the federal subjects, the federal districts are not a subnational level of government, but are a level of administration of the federal government. Federal districts' envoys serve as liaisons between the federal subjects and the federal government and are primarily responsible for overseeing the compliance of the federal subjects with the federal laws.
Demographics
Ethnic Russians comprise 79.8% of the country's population; however the Russian Federation is also home to several sizeable minorities. In total, 160 different other ethnic groups and indigenous peoples live within its borders.[111] Though Russia's population is comparatively large, its density is low because of the country's enormous size.[112] Population is densest in European Russia, near the Ural Mountains, and in southwest Siberia. 73% of the population lives in urban areas while 27% in rural ones.[113] The population of Russia is 141,927,297 as of 1 January 2010.[3]
The population of Russia peaked at 148,689,000 in 1991, just before the breakup of the Soviet Union. It began to experience a rapid decline starting in the mid-90s.[114] The decline has slowed to near stagnation in recent years due to reduced death rates, increased birth rates and increased immigration.
In 2009 Russia recorded annual population growth for the first time in 15 years, with total growth of 23.3 thousand.[115] 279,906 migrants arrived to the Russian Federation the same year, of which 93% came from CIS countries, the vast majority being Russians or Russian speakers.[115] The number of Russian emigrants declined by 18% to 32,458, of which 62% went to other CIS countries.[115] There are also an estimated 10 million illegal immigrants from the ex-Soviet states in Russia.[116] Roughly 116 million ethnic Russians live in Russia[117] and about 20 million more live in other former republics of the Soviet Union,[118] mostly in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.[119]
The Russian Constitution guarantees free, universal health care for all citizens.[120] In practice, however, free health care is partially restricted due to propiska regime.[121] While Russia has more physicians, hospitals, and health care workers than almost any other country in the world on a per capita basis,[122] 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;[123] the trend has been reversed only in the recent years.
As of 2009, the average life expectancy in Russia was 62.77 years for males and 74.67 years for females.[124] The biggest factor contributing to the relatively low male life expectancy for males is a high mortality rate among working-age males from preventable causes (e.g., alcohol poisoning, smoking, traffic accidents, violent crime). As a result of the large gender difference in life expectancy and because of the lasting effect of high casualties in World War II, the gender imbalance remains to this day and there are 0.859 males to every female.[20]
Russia's birth-rate is higher than that of most European countries (12.4 births per 1000 people in 2008[115] compared to the European Union average of 9.90 per 1000),[125] while the death rate is substantially higher (in 2009, Russia's death rate was 14.2 per 1000 people[115] compared to the EU average of 10.28 per 1000).[126] However, the Russian Ministry of Health and Social Affairs predicts that by 2011 the death rate will equal the birth rate due to increases in fertility and decline in mortality.[127] The government is implementing a number of programs designed to increase the birth rate and attract more migrants. Monthly child support payments were doubled, and a one-time payment of 250,000 Rubles (around US$10,000) was offered to women who had a second child since 2007.[128] In 2009 Russia saw the highest birth rate since the collapse of the USSR.
Sprache
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.[129] 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.[130]
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.[131] 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.[132]
Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian.[133] 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.[133] Russian is one of the six official languages of the UN.
Religion
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism are Russia’s traditional religions, deemed part of Russia's "historical heritage" in a law passed in 1997.[134] Estimates of believers widely fluctuate among sources, and some reports put the number of non-believers in Russia at 16–48% of the population.[135]
Traced back to the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in the 10th century,[136] Russian Orthodoxy is the dominant religion in the country;[137] approximately 100 million citizens consider themselves Russian Orthodox Christians.[138] 95% of the registered Orthodox parishes belong to the Russian Orthodox Church while there are a number of smaller Orthodox Churches.[139] 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.[136] Smaller Christian denominations such as Catholics, Armenian Gregorians, and various Protestants exist.
Estimates of the number of Muslims in Russia range from 7–9 to 15–20 million.[140][141] Also there are 3 to 4 million Muslim migrants from the post-Soviet states.[142] Most Muslims live in the Volga-Ural region, as well as in the Caucasus, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Western Siberia.[143]
Buddhism is traditional for three regions of the Russian Federation: Buryatia, Tuva, and Kalmykia.[144] Some residents of the Siberian and Far Eastern regions, such as Yakutia and Chukotka, 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, and Mongolic peoples are Buddhists.[145]
Bildung
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Russia has a free education system guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution,[146] however an entry to higher education is highly competitive.[147] As a result of great emphasis on science and technology in education, Russian medical, mathematical, scientific, and aerospace research is generally of a high order.[148]
Since 1990 the 11-year school training has been introduced. Education in state-owned secondary schools is free; first tertiary (university level) education is free with reservations: a substantial share of students is enrolled for full pay (many state institutions started to open commercial positions in the last years).[149]
In 2004 state spending for education amounted to 3.6% of GDP, or 13% of consolidated state budget.[150] The Government allocates funding to pay the tuition fees within an established quota or number of students for each state institution. In the higher education institutions, students are paid a small stipend and provided with free housing.[151]
Economy
Since the turn of the 21st century, higher domestic consumption and greater political stability have bolstered economic growth in Russia. The country ended 2008 with its tenth straight year of growth, averaging 7% annually since 1998. Growth was primarily driven by non-traded services and goods for the domestic market, as opposed to oil or mineral extraction and exports.[20] The average salary in Russia was $640 per month in early 2008, up from $80 in 2000.[152] Approximately 14% of Russians lived below the national poverty line in 2007,[153] significantly down from 40% in 1998 at the worst of the post-Soviet collapse.[81] Unemployment in Russia was at 6% in 2007, down from about 12.4% in 1999.[154] The middle class has grown from just 8 million persons in 2000 to 55 million persons in 2006.[155]
Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of Russian exports abroad.[20] Since 2003, however, exports of natural resources started decreasing in economic importance as the internal market strengthened considerably. Despite higher energy prices, oil and gas only contribute to 5.7% of Russia's GDP and the government predicts this will drop to 3.7% by 2011.[156] Oil export earnings have allowed Russia to increase its foreign reserves from $12 billion in 1999 to $597.3 billion on 1 August 2008, the third largest reserves in the world.[157] The federal budget has run surpluses since 2001 and ended 2007 with a surplus of 6% of GDP. Over the past several years, Russia has used oil revenues from its Stabilization Fund to prepay most of its formerly massive debts,[158] leaving it with one of the lowest foreign debts among major economies.
A simpler, more streamlined tax code adopted in 2001 reduced the tax burden on people, and dramatically increased state revenue.[159] Russia has a flat personal income tax rate of 13 percent. This ranks it as the country with the second most attractive personal tax system for single managers in the world after the United Arab Emirates.[160] Russia is considered well ahead of most other resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of education, science, and industry.[161] The country has more higher education graduates than any other country in Europe.[162]
The economic development of the country has been uneven geographically with the Moscow region contributing a disproportionately high amount of the country's GDP.[163] The World Bank has listed several challenges facing the Russian economy including its diversification, encouraging the growth of small and medium enterprises, building human capital and improving corporate governance.[164] Another problem is modernisation of infrastructure, ageing and inadequate after years of being neglected in 1990-ies;[165] the government has said $1 trillion will be invested in development of infrastructure by 2020.[166]
Agriculture
The total area of cultivated land in Russia was estimated as 1,237,294 km2 in 2005, the fourth largest in the world. Unlike most other countries, Russia has large reserves of unused arable land, in part due to the drop in agricultural production during the economy crisis of 1990s, when the area planted to grains dropped by 25%. This was accompanied by a severe decline of livestock inventories.
In 1999–2009, however, Russia's agriculture demonstrated steady growth,[167] and the country turned from a grain importer to the third largest grain exporter after EU and USA.[168] The production of meat has grown from 6,813,000 tonnes in 1999 to 9,331,000 tonnes in 2008, and continues to grow.[169]
This restoration of agriculture was supported by credit policy of the government, helping both individual farmers and large privatized corporate farms, that once were Soviet kolkhozes and still own the significant share of agricultural land. While large farms concentrate mainly on the production of grain and husbandry products, small private household plots produce most of the country's yield of potatoes, vegetables and fruits.
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.[170] Most of the fishing is made at the Barents Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. The land-locked Caspian Sea is the source of what is considered one of the finest caviar in the world.
Energy
In recent years, Russia has frequently been described in the media as an "energy superpower".[171][172] The country has the world's largest natural gas reserves, the 8th largest oil reserves, and the second largest coal reserves. Russia is the world's leading natural gas exporter and leading natural gas producer, while also the second largest oil exporter and largest oil producer, though Russia interchanges the latter status with Saudi Arabia from time to time.
Russia is the 4th largest electricity producer in the world and the 5th largest renewable energy producer, the latter due to the well-developed hydroelectricity production in the country. Large cascades of hydropower plants are built in European Russia along big rivers like Volga. The Asian part of Russia also features a number of major hydropower stations, however the gigantic hydroelectric potential of Siberia and the Russian Far East largely remains unexploited.
Russia was the first country to develop civilian nuclear power and to construct the world's first nuclear power plant. Currently the country is the 4th largest nuclear energy producer. Nuclear power in Russia is managed by Rosatom State Corporation. The sector is rapidly developing, with an aim of increasing the total share of nuclear energy from current 16.9% to 23% by 2020. The Russian government plans to allocate 127 billion rubles ($5.42 billion) to a federal program dedicated to the next generation of nuclear energy technology. About 1 trillion rubles ($42.7 billion) is to be allocated from the federal budget to nuclear power and industry development before 2015.[173]
Science and technology
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Science and technology in Russia blossomed since the Age of Enlightenment, when Peter the Great founded the Russian Academy of Sciences and Saint Petersburg State University, and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov established the Moscow State University, paving the way for a strong native tradition in learning and innovation. In the 19th and 20th centuries the country produced a large number of notable scientists and and inventors.
The Russian physics school began with Lomonosov who proposed the law of conservation of matter preceding the energy conservation law. Important Russian discoveries include the electric arc by Vasily Petrov, electrodynamical Lenz's law by Heinrich Lenz, formula by Nikolay Umov,[174] triplet quark model and color charge by Nikolay Bogolyubov,[175] and electron paramagnetic resonance by Yevgeny Zavoisky. Lasers and masers were co-invented by Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1964), while the idea of tokamak for controlled nuclear fusion was introduced by Igor Tamm, Andrei Sakharov and Lev Artsimovich, leading eventually the modern international ITER project.
Since the time of Nikolay Lobachevsky (a Copernicus of Geometry who pioneered the non-Euclidean geometry) and a prominent tutor Pafnuty Chebyshev, the Russian mathematical school became one of the most influential in the world.[176] Chebyshev's students included Aleksandr Lyapunov, who founded the modern stability theory, and Andrey Markov who invented the Markov chains. In the 20th century Andrei Kolmogorov founded the modern theory of probability, Sergei Sobolev introduced the Sobolev space and the notion of distributions, Lev Pontryagin founded the modern optimal control theory, and Andrey Tychonoff authored the "central theorem"[177] of the general topology. Nine Soviet/Russian mathematicians were awarded with Fields Medal, a most prestigious award in mathematics. Recently Grigori Perelman was offered the first ever Clay Millennium Prize Problems award for his final proof of the Poincaré conjecture in 2002.[178]
Dmitry Mendeleev invented the Periodic table, the main framework of the modern chemistry. Aleksandr Butlerov was one of the creators of the theory of chemical structure, playing a central role in organic chemistry. In biology Dmitry Ivanovsky was the first scientist to discover viruses.[179] Ivan Pavlov was the first to describe the phenomenon of classical conditioning and use it for studying brain functions. Ilya Mechnikov was a pioneer in investigations of the immune system and probiotics.
Many famous Russian scientists and inventors were émigrés, like Igor Sikorsky, credited with building the first airliners and modern-type helicopters, and Vladimir Zworykin, often called the father of TV; chemist Ilya Prigogine, noted for his work on dissipative structures and complex systems; Nobel Prize-winning economists Simon Kuznets and Wassily Leontief; physicist Georgiy Gamov (an author of the Big Bang theory) and social scientist Pitirim Sorokin. Many foreigners worked in Russia for a long time, like Leonard Euler and Alfred Nobel.
Russian inventions include the arc welding by Nikolay Benardos, further developed by Nikolay Slavyanov, Konstantin Khrenov and other Russian engineers. Gleb Kotelnikov invented the knapsack parachute, while Evgeniy Chertovsky introduced the pressure suit. Alexander Lodygin and Pavel Yablochkov were pioneers of electric lighting, and Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky invented and introduced the first three-phase electric power systems, widely used today. Sergei Lebedev invented the first commercially viable and mass-produced type of synthetic rubber. The first ternary computer, Setun, was developed by Nikolay Brusentsov,
Russian achievements in the field of space technology and space exploration are traced back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of theoretical austronautics.[180] His works had inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers, such as Sergey Korolyov, Valentin Glushko and many others who contributed to the success of the Soviet space program at early stages of the Space Race and beyond.
In 1957 the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched; in 1961 on 12 April the first human trip into space was successfully made by Yury Gagarin; and many other Soviet and Russian space exploration records ensued, including the first spacewalk performed by Alexey Leonov, the first space exploration rover Lunokhod-1 and the first space station Salyut 1. Nowadays Russia is the largest satellite launcher[181] and the only provider of transport for space tourism services.
In the 20th century a number of prominent Soviet aerospace engineers, inspired by the fundamental works of Nikolai Zhukovsky, Sergei Chaplygin and others, supervised the creation of many dozens of models of military and civilian aircraft and founded a number of KBs (Construction Bureaus) that now constitute the bulk of Russian United Aircraft Corporation. Famous Russian airplanes include the civilian Tu-series , and Su and MiG fighter aircraft series. Many of the Russian aircrafts are on the list of most produced aircraft in history.
Famous Russian battle tanks include T-34, the best tank design of World War II,[182] and further tanks of T-series, including the most produced tank in history, T-54/55,[183]. The AK-47 and AK-74 by Mikhail Kalashnikov constitute the most widely used type of assault rifle throughout the world—so much so that more AK-type rifles have been manufactured than all other assault rifles combined.[184]
With such technological achievements, however, since the late Soviet era Russia was lagging behind the West in a number of technologies, mostly those related to energy conservation and consumer goods production. The crisis of 1990-s led to the drastic reduction of the state support for science. Many Russian scientists and university graduates left Russia for Europe or United States in a brain drain migration.
In 2000-s, on the wave of a new economic boom, the situation in the Russian science and technology has improved, and the government launched a campaign aimed into modernisation and innovation. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev formulated top 5 priorities for the country's technological development: energy efficiency, IT (including both common products and the products combined with space technology), nuclear energy and pharmaceuticals.[185] Currently Russia is completing GLONASS, the only global satellite navigation system apart from American GPS, and constructing the first mobile nuclear plants.
Transport
Railway transport in Russia is mostly under the control of the state-run Russian Railways monopoly. The company accounts for over 3.6% of Russia’s GDP and handles 39% of the total freight traffic (including pipelines) and more than 42% of passenger traffic.[186] The total length of common-used railway tracks exceeeds 85,500 km,[186] second only to the U.S. Over 44,000 km of tracks are electrified,[187] which is the largest number in the world, and additionally there are more than 30,000 km of industrial non-common carrier lines. Railways in Russia, unlike in the most of the world, use broad gauge of 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in), with the exception of 957 km on Sakhalin Island using narrow gauge of 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in). The most renown railway in Russia is Trans-Siberian Railway (Transsib), spanning a record 7 time zones and serving the longest single continuous services in the world, Moscow-Vladivostok (9,259 km, 5,753 mi), Moscow–Pyongyang (10,267 km, 6,380 mi)[188] and Kiev–Vladivostok (11,085 km, 6,888 mi).[189]
As of 2006 Russia had 933,000 km of roads, of which 755,000 were paved.[190] Some of these make up the Russian federal motorway system. With a large land area the road density is the lowest of all the G8 and BRIC countries.[191]
102,000 km of inland waterways in Russia mostly go by natural rivers or lakes. In the European part of the country the network of channels connects the basins of major rivers. Russia's capital, Moscow, is sometimes called "the port of the five seas", due to its waterway connections to the Baltic, White, Caspian, Azov and Black seas.
Major sea ports of Russia include Rostov-on-Don on the Azov Sea, Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, Astrakhan and Makhachkala on the Caspian, Kaliningrad and St Petersburg on the Baltic, Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, Murmansk on the Barents Sea, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean. In 2008 the country owned 1448 merchant marine ships. The world's only fleet of nuclear icebreakers advances the economic exploitation of the Arctic continental shelf of Russia and the development of sea trade through the Northern Sea Route between Europe and East Asia.
By total length of pipelines Russia is second only to the U.S. Currently, many new pipeline projects are being realized, including Nord Stream and South Stream natural gas pipelines to Europe, and ESPO oil pipeline to the Russian Far East and China.
Russia has 1216 airports,[192] the busiest being Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, and Vnukovo in Moscow, and Pulkovo in St Petersburg. The total length of airlines in Russia exceeds 600,000 km.[193]
Typically, major Russian cities have well-developed and diverse systems of public transport, with the most common varieties of exploited vehicles being bus, trolleybus and tram. Seven Russian cities, namely Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Samara, Yekaterinburg and Kazan, have undeground metros, while Volgograd features a metrotram. Total length of metros in Russia is 465.4 km. Moscow Metro and Saint Petersburg Metro are the oldest in Russia, opened in 1935 and 1955 respectively. These two are among the fastest and busiest metro systems in the world, and are famous for rich decorations and unique designs of their stations, which is a common tradition on Russian metros and railways.
Culture
Folk culture and cuisine
There are over 160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples in Russia.[111] Ethnic Russians with their Slavic Orthodox culture, Tatars and Bashkirs with their Turkic Muslim culture, Buddhist nomadic Buryats and Kalmyks, Shamanistic peoples of the Far North and Siberia, highlanders of the Northern Caucasus, Finno-Ugric peoples of the Russian North West and Volga Region all contribute to diverse and rich culture of Russia. The ethnic culture is preserved in various museums and ethno-parks, reproduced in cuisine, architecture, cinema and arts, and developed by folk bands, dance ensembles and choirs.
Woodcraft Russian architecture, widely associated with the ethnic culture, is at best represented in wooden churches. Russian traditional wooden dwelling is izba, while the early type of fortified settlements is known as kremlin. Handicraft, like Dymkovo toy, khokhloma, gzhel, Zhostovo painting, pisanka and palekh, is also associated with the folk culture. Ethnic Russian clothes include kaftan, kosovorotka and ushanka for men, sarafan and kokoshnik for women, with lapti and valenki as common shoes. The Cossacks of Southern Russia have a separate brand of culture within ethnic Russian, their clothes including burka and papaha, which they share with the peoples of the Northern Caucasus.
Russian cuisine widely uses fish, poultry, mushrooms, berries, and honey. Crops of rye, wheat, barley, and millet provide the ingredients for a plethora of breads, pancakes, cereals, kvass, beer, and vodka. Black bread is relatively more popular in Russia if compared with the rest of the world. Flavourful soups and stews include shchi, borsch, ukha, solyanka and okroshka.
Smetana (a heavy sour cream) is often added to soups and salads. Pirozhki, blini and syrniki are native types of pancakes. Cutlets (like Chicken Kiev), pelmeni and shashlyk are popular meat dishes, the last two being of Tatar and Caucasus origin respectively. Popular salads include Russian salad, vinaigrette and Dressed Herring.
Russians have many traditions, most prominent being the washing in banya, a hot steam bath somewhat similar to sauna.[49] Old Russian folklore takes its roots in the pagan beliefs of ancient Slavs and now is represented in the Russian fairy tales. Epic Russian bylinas are another important part of Slavic mythology.
Russia's large number of ethnic groups have distinctive traditions of folk music. Typical ethnic Russian musical instruments are gusli, balalaika, zhaleika and garmoshka. Folk music had great influence on the Russian classical composers, and in modern times it is a source of inspiration for a number of popular folk bands, most prominent being Melnitsa. Russian folk songs, as well as patriotic songs of the Soviet era, constitute the bulk of repertoire of the world-renown Red Army choir and other popular Russian ensembles.
Many Russian fairy tales and bylinas were adaptated for animation films, or for feature movies by the prominent directors like Aleksandr Ptushko (Ilya Muromets, Sadko) and Aleksandr Rou (Morozko, Vasilisa the Beautiful). Some Russian poets, including Pyotr Yershov and Leonid Filatov, made a number of well-known poetical interpretations of the classical Russian fairy tales, and in some cases, like that of Alexander Pushkin, also created fully original fairy tale poems of great popularity.
Architecture
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Since Christianization of Kievan Rus' for several ages Russian architecture was influenced predominantly by the Byzantine architecture, until the Fall of Constantinople. Apart from fortifications (kremlins), the main stone buildings of ancient Rus' were Orthodox churches, with their many domes, often gilded or brightly painted.
Aristotle Fioravanti and other Italian architects brought Renaissance trends into Russia since the late 15th century, while the 16th century saw the development of unique tent-like churches[194] culminating in Saint Basil's Cathedral. By that time the onion dome design was also fully developed.[195] 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. After the reforms of Peter the Great the change of the architectural styles in Russia generally followed that in the Western Europe.
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 second half of the 19th century was dominated by the Byzantine and Russian Revival style. Prevalent styles of the 20th century were the Art Nouveau, Constructivism, and the Stalin Empire style.
In 1955 a new Soviet leader, Nikita Khruschev, condemned the "excesses" of the former architectural styles,[196] and in the late Soviet era the architecture of the country was dominated by plain functionalism. This helped somewhat to resolve the housing problem, but created a large quantity of buildings of low architectural quality, much in contrast with the previous bright architecture. After the end of the Soviet Union the situation improved. Many churches demolished in Soviet times were rebuilt, and this process continues along with the restoration of various historical buildings destroyed in World War II. As for the original architecture, there is no longer any common style in modern Russia, though International style has a great influence.
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 became vital names associated with the beginning of a distinctly Russian art.
The Russian Academy of Arts was created in 1757,[197] 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. In the early 19th century, when neoclassicism and romantism flourished, famous academic artists focused on mythological and Biblical themes, like Karl Briullov and Alexander Ivanov.
Realism came into dominance in the 19th century. The realists captured Russian identity in landscapes of wide rivers, forests, and birch clearings, as well as vigorous genre scenes and robust portraits of their contemporaries. Other artists focused on social criticism, showing the conditions of the poor and caricaturing authority; critical realism flourished under the reign of Alexander II, with some artists making the circle of human suffering their main theme. Others focused on depicting 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.[198] Leading realists include Ivan Shishkin, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Ivan Kramskoi, Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Vasily Surikov, Viktor Vasnetsov, and Ilya Repin.
By the turn of the 20th century and on, many Russian artists developed their own vividly unique styles, neither realist nor avante-garde. These include Boris Kustodiev, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Mikhail Vrubel and Nicholas Roerich.
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. The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932,[citation needed] at which point the revolutionary ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged conservative direction of socialist realism.
Soviet artists produced works that were furiously patriotic and anti-fascist in the 1940s. After the Great Patriotic War multiple war memorials were created, marked by a great restrained solemnity. In the Soviet era many artists combined innovation with socialist realism, including sculptors Vera Mukhina, Ernst Neizvestny and Mikhail Shemyakin. They employed techniques as varied as primitivism, hyperrealism, grotesque, and abstraction.
Music and dance
Music in 19th century Russia was defined by the tension between classical composer Mikhail Glinka along with 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 of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, characterised by a distinctly Russian character as well as rich harmonies and strident melodies, was continued into the 20th century by Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the last notable exponents of the Romantic style of European classical music.[199]
World-renowned composers of the 20th century included Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke. During most of the Soviet Era, music was highly scrutinized and kept within a conservative, accessible idiom in conformity with the 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 vocalists Fyodor Shalyapin, Galina Vishnevskaya, Anna Netrebko and Dmitry Hvorostovsky.[200]
During the early 20th century, Russian ballet dancers Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky rose to fame, and impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes' travels abroad profoundly influenced the development of dance worldwide.[201] Soviet ballet preserved the perfected 19th century traditions,[202] and the Soviet Union's choreography schools produced one internationally famous star after another, including Maya Plisetskaya, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and the Mariinsky in Saint Petersburg remain famous throughout the world.[203]
Modern Russian rock music takes its roots both in the Western rock and roll and heavy metal, and in traditions of the Russian bards of Soviet era, like Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava.[204] Saint-Petersburg (former Leningrad), Yekaterinburg and Omsk became the main centers of development of the rock music. Popular Russian rock groups include Mashina Vremeni, DDT, Aquarium, Alisa, Kino, Kipelov, Nautilus Pompilius, Aria, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Splean and Korol i Shut. Russian pop music developed from what was known in the Soviet times as estrada into full-fledged industry, with some performers gaining wide international recognition, like t.A.T.u. and Vitas.
Literature and philosophy
Russian literature is considered to be among the most influential and developed in the world, contributing many of the world's most famous literary works.[205] Russia's literary history dates back to the 10th century; in the 18th century its development was boosted by the works of Mikhail Lomonosov and Denis Fonvizin, and by the early 19th century a modern native tradition had emerged, producing some of the greatest writers of all time. This period and the Golden Age of Russian Poetry began with Alexander Pushkin, considered to be the founder of modern Russian literature and often described as the "Russian Shakespeare".[206]
It continued in the 19th century with the poetry of Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolay Nekrasov, dramas of Aleksandr Ostrovsky and Anton Chekhov, and the prose of Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. 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.[207][208]
By the 1880s the age of the great novelists was over and short fiction and poetry became the dominant genres of Russian literature. The next several decades which became known as the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. Previously dominated by realism, Russian literature came under strong influence of Symbolism in the years between 1893 and 1914. Leading authors of this age include Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok, Nikolay Gumilev, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Leonid Andreyev, Ivan Bunin, and Maxim Gorky.
Some Russian writers, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, are known also as philosophers, while many more authors are known primarily for their philosophical works. Russian philosophy blossomed since the 19th century, when it was defined initially by the opposition of Westernizers, advocating Russia's following the Western political and economical models, and Slavophiles, insisting on developing Russia as unique civilization. The latter group includes Nikolai Danilevsky and Konstantin Leontiev, the early founders of eurasianism. In its further development, Russian philosophy was always marked by deep connection to literature and interest in creativity, society, politics and nationalism; cosmos and religion were other primary subjects. Notable philosopheres of the late 19th and early 20th centuries include Vladimir Solovyev, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky and Vladimir Vernadsky. In the 20th century Russian philosophy became dominated by Marxism.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil war, Russian cultural life was left in chaos. Some prominent writers and philosophers, like Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov and Nikolay Berdyayev left the country, while a new generation of talented writers joined together in different organizations with the aim of creating a new and distinctive working-class culture appropriate for the new state, the Soviet Union.
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 the restrictions on literature were eased, and by the 1970s and 1980s, writers were increasingly ignoring the official guidelines. The leading authors of the Soviet era included Yevgeny Zamyatin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ilf and Petrov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Sholokhov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Andrey Voznesensky.
Cinema, animation and media
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.[209] Russian and later Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention in the period immediately following the 1917, resulting in world-renowned films such as Battleship Potemkin.[210] Soviet-era filmmakers, most notably Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, would become some of the world's most innovative and influential directors.
Eisenstein was a student of filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov, who developed the groundbreaking Soviet montage theory of film editing at the world's first film school, the All-Union Institute of Cinematography. 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 somewhat limited creativity, however many Soviet films in this style were artistically successful, like Chapaev, The Cranes Are Flying, and Ballad of a Soldier.[210]
1960s and 1970s saw a greater variety of artistic styles in the Soviet cinema. Eldar Ryazanov's and Leonid Gaidai's comedies of that time were immensely popular, with many of the catch phrases still in use today. In 1961–1968 Sergey Bondarchuk directed an Oscar-winning film adaptation of Tolstoy's epic War and Peace, which was the most expensive film ever made.[211] In 1969, Vladimir Motyl's White Sun of the Desert was released, a very popular film in a genre known as 'osterns'; the film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts before any trip into space.[212]
Russia also has a long and rich[citation needed] tradition of animation,[citation needed] which started already in the late Russian Empire times. Most of Russia's cartoon production for cinema and television was created during Soviet times, when Soyuzmultfilm studio was the largest animation producer. Soviet animators developed a great and unmatched variety of pioneering techniques and aesthetic styles,[citation needed] with prominent directors including Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Fyodor Khitruk and Aleksandr Tatarskiy. Soviet cartoons are still a source for many popular catch phrases, while such cartoon heroes as Russian-style Winnie-the-Pooh, cute little Cheburashka, Wolf and Hare from Nu, Pogodi! being iconic images in Russia and many surrounding countries.
The late 1980s and 1990s were a period of crisis in Russian cinema and animation. 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.[213] Russia's total box-office revenue in 2007 was $565 million, up 37% from the previous year[214] (by comparison, in 1996 revenues stood at $6 million).[213] Russian cinema continues to receive international recognition. Russian Ark (2002) was the first feature film ever to be shot in a single take. The traditions of Soviet animation were developed in the past decade by such directors as Aleksandr Petrov and studios like Melnitsa.
Russia was among the first countries to introduce radio and television. Due to the enormous size of the country Russia leads in the number of TV broadcast stations and repeaters. There were few channels in the Soviet time, but in the past two decades many new state-run and private-owned radio stations and TV channels appeared. In 2005 a state-run English language Russia Today TV started broadcasting, and its Arabic version Rusiya Al-Yaum was launched in 2007.
Sports
Russians have been successful at a number of sports and consistently finish in the top rankings at the Olympic Games and in other international competitions. Combining the total medals of Soviet Union and Russia, the country is second among all nations by number of gold medals both at the Summer Olympics and at the Winter Olympics. During the Soviet era, the national Olympic team placed first in the total number of medals won at 14 of its 18 appearances, and 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, boxers, fencers, shooters, chess players, cross country skiers, biathletes, speed skaters and figure skaters were consistently among the best in the world, along with Soviet basketball, handball, volleyball and ice hockey players.[citation needed] Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian athletes have continued to dominate international competitions.[citation needed] 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,[citation needed] winning gold at almost all the Olympics and World Championships they contested. Russian players Valery Kharlamov, Sergey Makarov, Vyacheslav Fetisov and Vladislav Tretiak hold four of six positions in the IIHF Team of the Century.[215] 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. At that time many prominent Russian players made their career in the NHL.
Russia won in the 2008 and 2009 World Championships, overtaking team Canada as the world's top ranked ice hockey team.[216] The Kontinental Hockey League was founded in 2008 as a successor to the Russian Superleague. It is seen as a rival to the NHL and is ranked the top hockey league in Europe as of 2009.[217] Bandy, known in Russian as "hockey with a ball", is another traditionally popular ice sport, with national league games averaging around 3500 spectators.[218] The Soviet Union won all the Bandy World Championships from 1957 to 1979.
During the Soviet period, Russia was also a competitive footballing nation. 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). Along with ice hockey and basketball, football is one of the most popular sports in modern Russia. In recent years, Russian football, which downgraded in 1990-s, has experienced 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). The Russian national football team reached the semi-finals of Euro 2008, losing only to eventual champions Spain.
Soviet Union dominated the sport of gymnastics for many years, with such athletes as Larisa Latynina, who currently holds a record of most Olympic medals won per person and most gold Olympic medals won by a woman. Today, Russia is leading in rhythmic gymnastics with such stars as Alina Kabayeva, Irina Tschaschina and Yevgeniya Kanayeva. Russian synchronized swimming is the best in the world, with almost all gold medals having been swept by Russians at Olympics and World Championships for more than a decade.
Figure skating is another popular sport in Russia; in the 1960s, the Soviet Union rose to become a dominant power in figure skating, especially in pair skating and ice dancing, and at every Winter Olympics from 1964 until 2006, 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 the world championship almost continuously.
National holidays and symbols
There are seven public holidays in Russia.[219] The New Year is the first in calendar and in popularity. Russian New Year traditions resemble those of the Western Christmas, with New Year Trees and gifts, and Ded Moroz (Father Frost) playing the same role as Santa. Rozhdestvo (Orthodox Christmas) falls on 7 January, because Russian Orthodox Church still follows the Julian (old style) calendar and all Orthodox holidays are 13 days after Catholic ones. Another two major Christian holidays are Paskha (Easter) and Troitsa (Trinity), but there is no need to recognize them as public holidays since they are always celebrated on Sunday. Kurban Bayram and Uraza Bayram are widely celebrated by Russian Muslims.
Further Russian public holidays include Defender of the Fatherland Day (23 February), which honors Russian men, especially those serving in the army; International Women's Day (8 March), which combines the traditions of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day; International Workers' Day (1 May), now renamed Spring and Labor Day; Victory Day (9 May); Russia Day (12 June); and Unity Day (4 November), commemorating the popular uprising which expelled the Polish-Lithuanian occupation force from Moscow in 1612. The latter is a replacement for the old Soviet holiday celebrating October Revolution of 1917 (again, it was falling on November because of the difference of calendars). Fireworks and outdoor concerts are common features of all Russian public holidays.
Victory Day is the second popular holiday in Russia, it commemorates the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and is widely celebrated throughout the country. A huge military parade, hosted by the President of the Russian Federation, is annually organized in Moscow on Red Square. Similar parades are organized in all major Russian cities and the cities with the status Hero city or City of Military Glory.
Other popular holidays, which are not public, include Old New Year (New Year according to Julian Calendar on 14 January), Tatiana Day (day of Russian students on 25 January), Maslenitsa (an old pagan holiday a week before the Great Lent), Cosmonautics Day (a day of Yury Gagarin's first ever human trip into space on 12 April), Ivan Kupala Day (another pagan Slavic holiday on 7 July) and Peter and Fevronia Day (taking place on 8 July and being the Russian analogue of Valentine's Day, which focuses, however, on the family love and fidelity). On different days in June there are major celebrations of the end of the school year, when graduates from schools and universities traditionally swim in the city fountains; the local varieties of these public events include Scarlet Sails tradition in Saint Petersburg.
State symbols of Russia include the Byzantine double-headed eagle, combined with St. George of Moscow in the Russian coat of arms; these symbols date from the Grand Duchy of Moscow time. Russian flag appeared in the late Tsardom of Russia period and became widely used since Russian Empire times. Russian anthem shares its music with the Soviet Anthem, though not the lyrics (many Russians of older generations just don't know the new lyrics and sing the old ones).
The Russian imperial motto God is with us and the Soviet motto Proletarians of all countries, unite! are now obsolete and no new motto has been officially introduced to replace them. The hammer and sickle and the full Soviet coat of arms are still widely seen in Russian cities as a part of old architectural decorations. The Soviet Red Stars are also encountered, often on military equipment and war memorials. The Red Banner continues to be honored, especially the Banner of Victory of 1945.
Matryoshka doll is a recognizable symbol of Russia, while the towers of Moscow Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow are main Russia's architectural symbols. Cheburashka is a mascot of Russian national Olympic team. Mary, Saint Nicholas, Saint Andrew, Saint George, Saint Alexander Nevsky, Saint Sergius of Radonezh and Saint Seraphim of Sarov are Russia's patron saints.
Chamomile is a flower that Russians often associate with their Motherland, while birch is a national tree. Russian bear is an animal symbol and national personification of Russia, though this image has Western origin and Russians themselves have accepted it fairly recently. The native Russian national personification is Mother Russia, sometimes called Mother Motherland.
Tourism
Tourism in Russia has seen rapid growth since the late Soviet times, first inner tourism and then international tourism as well. Rich cultural heritage and great natural variety place Russia among the most popular tourist destinations in the world. The country contains 23 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, while many more are on UNESCO's tentative lists.[220] Major tourist routes in Russia include a travel around the Golden Ring of ancient cities, cruises on the big rivers like Volga, and long journeys on the famous Trans-Siberian Railway.
Most popular tourist destinations in Russia are Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the current and the former capitals of the country and great cultural centers, recognized as World Cities. Moscow and Saint Petersburg feature such world-renown museums as Tretyakov Gallery and Hermitage, famous theaters like Bolshoi and Mariinsky, ornate churches like Saint Basil's Cathedral, Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Saint Isaac's Cathedral and Church of the Savior on Blood, impressive fortifications like Moscow Kremlin and Peter and Paul Fortress, beautiful squares like Red Square and Palace Square, and busy streets like Tverskaya and Nevsky Prospect.
Rich palaces and parks are found in the former imperial residences in suburbs of Moscow (Kolomenskoye, Tsaritsyno) and Saint Petersburg (Peterhof, Strelna, Oranienbaum, Gatchina, Pavlovsk Palace, Tsarskoye Selo). Moscow contains a great variety of Soviet era buildings along with modern scyscrapers, while Saint Petersburg, nicknamed Venice of the North, boasts of its classical architecture, many rivers, channels and bridges.
Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, shows a unique[citation needed][who?] mix of Christian Russian and Muslim Tatar cultures. The city has registered a brand The Third Capital of Russia, though a number of other major Russian cities compete for this status, like Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod, all being major cultural centers with rich history and prominent architecture.
Veliky Novgorod, Pskov and the cities of Golden Ring (Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma and others) have at best preserved the architecture and the spirit of ancient and medieval Rus',[citation needed] and also are among the main tourist destinations. Many old fortifications (typically Kremlins), monasteries and churches are scattered throughout Russia, forming its unique[citation needed] cultural landscape both in big cities and in remote areas.
Typical Russian souvenirs include matryoshka doll and other handicraft, samovars for water heating, ushanka and papaha warm hats, fur clothes and other stuff. Russian vodka and caviar are among the food that attracts foreigners, along with honey, blini, pelmeni, borsch and other products and dishes. Diverse regions and ethnic cultures of Russia offer many more different food and souvenirs, and show a great variety of traditions, like Russian banya, Tatar Sabantuy, or Siberian shamanist rituals.
The warm subtropical Black Sea coast of Russia is the site for a number of popular sea resorts, like Sochi, known for its beaches and wonderful nature. The mountains of the Northern Caucasus contain popular ski resorts, including Dombay.
The most famous natural tourist destination in Russia is lake Baikal, named the Blue Eye of Siberia. This unique lake, oldest and deepest in the world,[citation needed] has crystal-clean waters and is surrounded by taiga-covered mountains. Other popular natural destinations include Kamchatka with its volcanoes and geysers, Karelia with its many lakes and granite rocks, Altai with its snowy mountains and Tyva with its wild steppes.
See also
- List of Russia-related topics
- International rankings of Russia
- List of statistically superlative countries
- Timeline of Russian history
- Timeline of Russian inventions and technology records
References
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{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Ukraine: Security Assistance". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 27 Dec. 2007.
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- ^ The Destruction of Kiev
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Рыбаков, Б. А. (1948). Ремесло Древней Руси. pp. 525–533, 780–781.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Solovyov, S. (2001). History of Russia from the Earliest Times. Vol. 6. AST. pp. 562–604. ISBN 5170021429.
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{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Solovyov, S. (2001). History of Russia from the Earliest Times. Vol. 15, ch.1. AST.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society". American Philosophical Society, James E. Hassell (1991). p.3. ISBN 087169817X
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "The Allies' first decisive successes > Stalingrad and the German retreat, summer 1942 – February 1943". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 12 Mar. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995". Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Erlikman, V. (2004). Poteri narodonaseleniia v XX veke : spravochnik. Moskva: Russkai︠a︡ panorama. ISBN 5931651071. Note: Estimates for Soviet World War II casualties vary between sources.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Foreign trade from A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Library of Congress Country Studies project.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Russia Unforeseen Results of Reform". The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook. Retrieved 10 Mar. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ a b c "Russian Federation" (PDF). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Retrieved 24 Feb. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Melvin Fagen. "Russia: Shock Therapy Isn't the Way to Promote Democracy". International Herald Tribune. Retrieved 22 Jan. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Sciolino, E. (21 Dec. 1993). "U.S. is abandoning 'shock therapy' for the Russians". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 Jan. 2008.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=and|date=(help) - ^ "Russia: Economic Conditions in Mid-1996". Library of Congress.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ a b Branko Milanovic (1998). Income, Inequality, and Poverty During the Transformation from Planned to Market Economy. The World Bank. pp. 186–189.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Aslund A. "Russia's Capitalist Revolution" (PDF). Retrieved 28 Mar. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Treisman, D. "Is Russia's Experiment with Democracy Over?". UCLA International Institute. Retrieved 31 Dec. 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Stone, N (4 Dec. 2007). "No wonder they like Putin". The Times. London. Retrieved 31 Dec. 2007.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=and|date=(help) - ^ "The Constitution of the Russian Federation". (Article 80, §1). Retrieved 27 Dec. 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "The Constitution of the Russian Federation". (Article 81, §3). Retrieved 27 Dec. 2007.
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Based on actual count of countries listed"Note about the diplomatic relations of Russia with foreign states". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. Retrieved 28 Nov. 2009.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help). Only those listed explicitly as "Embassy of Russia" are included in the embassy count. - ^ Kosachev. K. "Russian Foreign Policy Vertical". Russia In Global Affairs. Retrieved 27 Dec. 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ “Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez recognizes independence of breakaway Georgia republics”- by Megan K. Stack - Sept 9, 2009 [1]
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ a b "Overview of the major Asian Powers" (PDF). International Institute for Strategic Studies: 31. Retrieved 27 Jan. 2008.
{{cite journal}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ “Russia pilots proud of flights to foreign shores” - The Associated Press by David Nowak - Sep 15, 2008 [6]
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Russia arms exports could exceed $7 bln in 2007 – Ivanov". RIA Novosti. Retrieved 27 Jan. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "The top 10 military spenders, 2008". Stockholm International Peace Research Institute figures. Retrieved 2009.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "World Wide Military Expenditures". Global Security. Retrieved 6 Jan. 2008.
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{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=and|date=(help) - ^ "The Constitution of the Russian Federation". (Article 65, §1) In 1993, when the Constitution was adopted, there were 89 subjects listed. Some of them were later merged. Retrieved 27 Dec. 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "The Constitution of the Russian Federation". (Article 95, §2). Retrieved 27 Dec. 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Общероссийский классификатор экономических регионов" (ОК 024–95) введённый 1 января 1997 г., в ред. Изменения № 05/2001. Секция I. Федеральные округа (Russian Classificaton of Economic Regions (OK 024–95) of 1 January 1997 as amended by the Amendments #1/1998 through #5/2001. Section I. Federal Districts)
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ a b c d e 2009 demographic figures Rosstat Retrieved on September 2, 2010 Cite error: The named reference "gks" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Russians weigh an enigma with Putin's protégé". MSNBC. Retrieved 9 May 2008.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Russia: How Long Can The Fun Last?". BusinessWeek. Retrieved 27 Dec. 2007.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "CEE Biweekly (page 6)" (PDF). UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UniCredit New Europe Research Network. Retrieved 28 Mar. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Template:Ru icon "Gross regional product by federal subjects of the Russian Federation 1998–2006". Federal State Statistics Service. Retrieved 30 Jun. 2008.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Russia to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure by 2020 – ministry". RIA Novosti. Retrieved 31 Jul. 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Russian State Statistics Service data Template:Ru icon
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{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ "Russia, China in Deal On Refinery, Not Gas" Wall Street Journal by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen - Sept 22, 2010 [7]
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "John L. Kelley. General Topology. ISBN 0-387-90125-6".
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|url=(help) - ^ "The Poincaré Conjecture".
- ^ Sebastion, Anton (2001). A dictionary of the history of science. Google Books Excerpt: Informa Health Care. p. 267. ISBN 185070418X. OCLC 9781850704188. Retrieved 24 Oct. 2008.
{{cite book}}: Check|oclc=value (help); Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics". Aiaa.org. Retrieved 2 Jan. 2010.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ George Parada (n.d.), “Panzerkampfwagen T-34(r)” at Achtung Panzer! website, retrieved on 17 November 2008.
- ^ Halberstadt, Hans Inside the Great Tanks The Crowood Press Ltd. Wiltshire, England 1997 94–96 ISBN 1-86126-270-1: "The T-54/T-55 series is the hands down, all time most popular tank in history."
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ CIS railway timetable, route No. 002, Moscow-Pyongyang, August 2009. Note: several different routes have the same number.
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{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ CIA The World Factbook – Rank Order – Airports
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- G8 nations
- North Asian countries
- Republics
- Russian-speaking countries and territories
- Slavic countries
- States and territories established in 862