Russia is a transcontinental country
extending over much of northern Eurasia (Europe and Asia). With
an area of 17,075,400 km², Russia is the largest country in the
world, covering almost twice the total area of the next-largest
country, Canada, and has large mineral and energy resources
combined with the world's ninth-largest population. Russia
shares land borders with the following countries
(counter-clockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway,
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine,
Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North
Korea. It is also close to the United States (the state of
Alaska), Sweden, and Japan across relatively small stretches of
water (the Bering Strait, the Baltic Sea, and La Pérouse Strait,
respectively).
Formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR),
a republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR),
Russia became the Russian Federation following the dissolution
of the Soviet Union in December 1991. After the Soviet era, more
than half of the area, population, and industrial production of
the Soviet Union (then one of the world's two Cold War
superpowers, the other one being the United States) passed on to
the Russian Federation.
Russia is considered to be an energy superpower. Russia is
internationally recognised as continuing the legal personality
of the Soviet Union and is a permanent member of the United
Nations Security Council. It is also one of the five recognised
nuclear weapons states and possesses the world's largest
stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is the leading
nation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a member of
the G8 as well as other international organisations.
Geography
Topography
The two most widely separated points in Russia are about 8,000
km (5,000 mi) apart along a geodesic (i.e. shortest line between
two points on the Earth's surface). These points are: the
boundary with Poland on a 60 km long (40-mi long) spit of land
separating the Gulf of Gdańsk from the Vistula Lagoon; and the
farthest southeast of the Kurile Islands, a few miles off
Hokkaidō Island, Japan. The points which are furthest separated
in longitude are 6,600 km (4,100 mi) apart along a geodesic.
These points are: in the West, the same spit; in the East, the
Big Diomede Island (Ostrov Ratmanova). The Russian Federation
spans eleven time zones.
The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the
supercontinent of Eurasia. Because of its size, Russia displays
both monotony and diversity. As with its topography, its
climates, vegetation, and soils span vast distances. From north
to south the East European Plain is clad sequentially in tundra,
coniferous forest (taiga), mixed forest, broadleaf forest,
grassland (steppe), and semidesert (fringing the Caspian Sea) as
the changes in vegetation reflect the changes in climate.[92]
Siberia supports a similar sequence but lacks the mixed forest.
Most of Siberia is taiga.
Climate
Because of its size, Russia's climate displays both monotony and
diversity. The climate of the Russian Federation formed under
the influence of several determining factors. One of the most
important is the enormous size and remoteness of many areas of
the sea, resulting in the dominance of the continental climate.
The climates of both European and Asian Russia are continental
except for the tundra and the extreme southeast. Mountains in
the south obstructing the flow of warm air masses from the
Indian Ocean and the plain of the west and north makes the
country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences.
Economy
More than a decade after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is trying to
further develop a market economy and achieve much more
consistent economic growth. Russia saw its comparatively
developed centrally planned economy contract severely for five
years, as the executive and the legislature dithered over the
implementation of reforms and Russia's aging industrial base
faced a serious decline. Russia ended 2006 with its eighth
straight year of growth, averaging 6.7% annually since the
financial crisis of 1998, despite high negative population
growth. Although high oil prices and a relatively cheap ruble
initially drove this growth, since 2003 consumer demand and,
more recently, investment have played a significant role.
Russia's 2006 GDP was $1.723 trillion (est. PPP), the 9th
highest in the world, with GDP growth of 6.8%. Growth was driven
by non-tradable services and goods for the domestic market, as
opposed to oil or mineral extraction and exports. The Russian
economy has once again outperformed expectations, and the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank forecast that
Russia's GDP will grow by at least 7% in 2007. The Ministry of
Economic Development and Trade revised its forecast and projects
that GDP will grow 7.3% in 2007.
Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80%
of exports. Oil and gas contribute to 5.7% of GDP and the
government predicts this will drop to 3.7% of Russia's GDP by
2011.
Demographics
In July
2007, the population of Russia was estimated to be 141,377,752.
The Russian Federation is home to as many as 160 different
ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. As of the 2002 Russian
census, 79.8% of the population is ethnically Russian, 3.8%
Tatar, 2% Ukrainian, 1.2% Bashkir, 1.1% Chuvash, 0.9% Chechen,
0.8% Armenian, and 10.3% other or unspecified. Though Russia's
population is large, its population density is low because of
its enormous size; its population is densest in European Russia,
near the Ural Mountains, and in the southwest Siberia.
About 75% of the population live in urban areas. As of the 2002
Census, the two largest cities in Russia are Moscow (10,342,151
inhabitants) and Saint Petersburg (4,661,219). Eleven other
cities had between one and two million inhabitants: Chelyabinsk,
Kazan, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, Perm, Rostov-on-Don,
Samara, Ufa, Volgograd, and Yekaterinburg. There are currently
about 10 million illegal labor migrants from the ex-Soviet
states in Russia.
Health Russia's constitution guarantees free, universal health care
for all Russian citizens. While Russia has more physicians,
hospitals, and health care workers than almost any other country
in the world, it has struggled to provide high levels of health
care services. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
health of the Russian population has declined considerably, a
result of social, economic, and lifestyle changes. As of 2006,
the average life expectancy in Russia is 59.12 years for males
and 73.03 years for females. The biggest factor contributing to
this relatively low life expectancy is a high mortality rate
among working-age males from preventable causes (e.g., alcohol
poisoning, stress, smoking, traffic accidents, violent crimes).
Language
The
Russian language 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. Russian is
the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the
most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to
the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or,
according to some authorities, four) living members of the East
Slavic languages; the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and
possibly Rusyn, often considered a dialect of Ukrainian).
Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th
century onwards.
Religion
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism are Russia’s
traditional religions, deemed part of Russia's "historical
heritage" in a law passed in 1997. Estimates of believers widely
fluctuate between sources, and some reports put the number of
non-believers in Russia as high as 24–48% of the population.
Russian Orthodoxy is the dominant religion in Russia. 95% of the
registered Orthodox parishes belong to the Russian Orthodox
Church while there is a number of smaller Orthodox Churches.
Culture
Russian literature is considered to be among the most
influential literature in the world. Russia has a rich literary
history, beginning with the poet Alexander Pushkin, considered
the greatest Russian poet and often described as the "Russian
Shakespeare".[181] In the nineteenth century, Russian literature
underwent an astounding golden age, beginning with the poet
Pushkin and culminating in two of the greatest novelists in
world literature, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky and in one
of the greatest playwrights Anton Chekhov. Russia has remained a
leading nation in literature since that time. Significant
Russian writers of the Soviet period were Boris Pasternak,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Mayakovski, Mikhail Sholokhov,
and the poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky.
