Russia

Russian Federation Российская Федерация Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
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Anthem:  Государственный гимн Российской Федерации (tr.: Gosudarstvenny gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii) (English: State Anthem of the Russian Federation)
Capital (and largest city)		Moscow 55°45′N 37°37′E
Official language(s)		Russian official throughout the country; 27 others co-official in various regions
Ethnic groups (2002)		79.8% Russians 3.8% Tatars 2.0% Ukrainians 1.2% Bashkirs 1.1% Chuvashes 12.1% Others and Unspecified
Demonym		Russian
Government		Federal semi-presidential republic
-	President	Dmitry Medvedev
-	Prime Minister	Vladimir Putin
-	Chairman of the Federation Council	Valentina Matviyenko (UR)
-	Chairman of the State Duma	Boris Gryzlov (UR)
Legislature		Federal Assembly
-	Upper House	Federation Council
-	Lower House	State Duma
Formation
-	Rurik Dynasty	862
-	Kievan Rus'	882
-	Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'	1169
-	Grand Duchy of Moscow	1283
-	Tsardom of Russia	16 January 1547
-	Russian Empire	22 October 1721
-	Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic	7 November 1917
-	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	10 December 1922
-	Russian Federation	25 December 1991
Area
-	Total	17,075,400 km2 (1st) 6,592,800 sq mi
-	Water (%)	13 (including swamps)
Population
-	2010 census	142,905,208
-	Density	8.3/km2 (217th) 21.5/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$2.376 trillion (6th)
-	Per capita	$16,840
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$1.894 trillion (9th)
-	Per capita	$13,542
Gini (2008)		42.3 (83rd)
HDI (2011)		▲ 0.755 (high) (66th)
Currency		Ruble (RUB)
Time zone		(UTC+3 to +12 (exc. +5))
Date formats		dd.mm.yyyy
Drives on the		right
Internet TLD		.ru, .su, .рф
Calling code		+7

Russia (also the Russian Federation) is a country which is partly in Eastern Europe and partly in Asia. It is the largest country in the world by land. About 145 million people live in Russia. The official name for Russia in English is The Russian Federation. Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the United States by the Bering Strait.

Russia is a very large and diverse country. Its government is now based on a democratic form of rule. The president is chosen in direct elections, and its current President is Dmitry Medvedev. The official language is Russian. Russia produces a lot of energy made from oil and gas.

History

Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721

The roots of Russia's history began when the East Slavs formed a group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD or maybe before that time. The Vikings and their descendants founded the first East Slavic state of Kievan Rus' in the 9th century. They adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988. This form of Christianity influenced Russian culture greatly. Kievan Rus' eventually broke up and the lands were divided into many small feudal states. The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow. This area served as the main force in later Russian unification and the fight against the Golden Horde from Asia. Moscow slowly gained control of the regions around it and dominated the cultural and political life of Kievan Rus'.

By the 18th century, the nation had expanded through conquest, annexation and exploration to become the Russian Empire, the third largest empire in history. It stretched from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth eastward to the Pacific Ocean and Alaska. The empire was ruled by an emperor called the Tsar.

Peter the Great ruled Russia from 1689 until 1725. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to a new city that he built named Saint Petersburg. He made Russian society more modern in many ways. The government under Peter the Great began building ships for the Russian navy.

The Russo-Japanese War started in 1904 and ended in 1905 with Japan winning the war. The Russian defeat was one of the reasons for later revolutions.

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks (later called "Communists"), influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, took over the country and murdered the Tsar and other people who stood against them. Once they took power, the Bolsheviks, under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, created the first Marxist Communist State.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Josef Stalin ruled as an absolute dictator. After the death of Lenin, Stalin took over and destroyed anything that was against him ruling, including taking the property of farmers and shopkeepers, causing many millions of people to starve and die. Stalin also removed, or "purged", all military personnel who were not loyal to him, and many were killed or sent to prison camps for many years.

Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany agreed not to attack each other in 1939. But in June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked Russia. The attack was part of World War II. The war lasted in Europe until May 1945, and Russia lost 27 million people during that time. In spite of this large loss, Russia was one of the winners of the war and became a world superpower.

From 1922 to 1991, Russia was the largest part of the Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). People sometimes used the name "Russia" for the whole Soviet Union, or sometimes "Soviet Russia". Russia was only one of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics. The republic was in fact named the "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic" (RSFSR).

The Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s. Russia took over the place of the USSR in the United Nations (UN).

Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of Russia in 2008. Vladimir Putin, the former President, and a former agent of the KGB, became Prime Minister that same year.

Geography

Russia's capital and the biggest city is Moscow. The second biggest city is Saint Petersburg, which was the capital of Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Other cities in Russia with more than one million people are

Map of Russia

Novosibirsk Nizhniy Novgorod Yekaterinburg Samara Omsk Kazan Ufa Chelyabinsk Rostov on Don Volgograd

The most western point of Russia is near Kaliningrad, formerly named Königsberg. The most eastern point of Russia is Diomid island, 35 km from Chukotka (Russia) and 35 kilometres (22 mi) from Alaska (USA). The most southern point is in Caucasus, on the border with Azerbaijan. The most northern point is on Franz Josef Land archipelago in Arctic Ocean, 900 kilometres (560 mi) from the North Pole.

Politics

There are four major parties in Russia with United Russia (Единая Россия), led by current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, currently the largest party.

Name	Ideology	Leader	MPs
United Russia Единая Россия	Conservatism, Centrism	Vladimir Putin	315
Communist Party of the Russian Federation Коммунистическая партия Российской Федерации	Communism, Marxism-Leninism, Left-wing nationalism	Gennady Zyuganov	57
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Либерально-Демократическая Партия России	Nationalism, Pan-Slavism	Vladimir Zhirinovsky	40
A Just Russia Справедливая Россия	Social democracy, Democratic socialism	Nikolai Levichev	38

The United Russia is the ruling party, which supports the government. The other parties in the Duma (Russian parliament) do not criticize the government strongly, for fear of losing their places in the Duma. Many opposition parties, such as the People's Freedom Party and the Other Russia, have been unable to register due to very strict rules. In the 2000s the government led a war in Chechnya, and in the process, civil liberties and independent media were restricted. Corruption is widespread and human rights, especially in the North Caucasus, are frequently violated. In 2008 Putin's government was in a war with Georgia in a dispute over a region with many ethnic Russians.

Demographics

Ethnic composition (2002)
Russians	79.8%
Tatars	3.8%
Ukrainians	2.0%
Bashkirs	1.2%
Chuvash	1.1%
Chechen	0.9%
Armenians	0.8%
Other/unspecified	10.4%

Population (in millions) 1950–January 2009.

Russia has a population of 142 million citizens. Most people live in cities. The population decreased by 5 million people since the fall of the Soviet Union. The current population growth is close to zero, and the population even went down by 0.085% in 2008.

Russia's area is about 17 million square kilometers (6.5 million sq. mi.). It is the largest country in the world. Its population density is about 9 persons per square kilometer (22 per sq. mi.). This is among the lowest country density in the world. The population is most dense in the European part of the country, centering around Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

Culture

Music and ballet

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), composer.

World-renowned composers of the 20th century included Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Music was highly scrutinized during most of the Soviet Era.

Russian composer Tchaikovsky created famous ballets such as The Nutcracker. Soviet Union's choreography schools produced internationally famous dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Bolshoi Ballet is famous throughout the world.

Literature

Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace.

Russians have contributed many famous works of literature.

Alexander Pushkin is considered a founder of modern Russian literature. He was a poet from the 19th century.

Other famous poets and writers of the 19th century were Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Lermontov, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol (he was born in what is now Ukraine, but during his lifetime Ukraine was a part of Russia), Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov, Aleksey Pisemsky, and Nikolai Leskov.

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are considered by many people to be some of the greatest novelists ever.

Yakov Smirnoff, a man from Odessa, moved to United States in the 1980s and became a famous comedian there. One of his most popular jokes is called the Russian Reversal, and many people like to repeat this joke on the Internet and on television. An example of this famous Yakov Smirnoff joke is: "In America, you drive car. In Soviet Russia, car drive you!"

Sports

Soccer, ice hockey and basketball are among the most popular sports. Boxing, gymnastics, weightlifting, and tennis are also popular sports. Track suits are popular clothing items for many Russians. Russia has had many sports stars. Maria Sharapova is the world's highest paid female athlete.

Since the 1952 Olympic Games, Soviet and later Russian athletes are in the top three in gold medals collected at the Summer Olympics. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow while the 2014 Winter Olympics will be hosted by Sochi.

Religion

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, demolished during the Soviet period, was reconstructed from 1990–2000.

The most common religion in Russia is Christianity. Most Christians in Russia belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. It is one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Other pages

• Soviet Union

References

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