Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Russia

Specialty Definition: Russia

Top     

Specialty Definition: Alexander I of Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Aleksandr Pavlovich Romanov or Tsar Alexander I (The Blessed), (Александр I Павлович) (1777 - 1825), Emperor of Russia (reigned 1801 - 1825), son of the Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, afterwards Paul I of Russia, and Maria Fedorovna, daughter of Frederick Eugene of Württemberg was born on December 28, 1777.

The strange contradictions of his character make Alexander one of the most interesting as he is one of the most important figures in the history of the 19th century. Autocrat and "Jacobin", man of the world and mystic, he appeared to his contemporaries as a riddle which each read according to his own temperament. Napoleon I thought him a "shifty Byzantine", and called him the Talma of the North, as ready to play any conspicuous part. To Metternich he was a madman to be humoured. Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, gives him credit for "grand qualities," but adds that he is "suspicious and undecided".

His complex nature resulted, in truth, from the outcome of the complex character of his early environment and education. Reared in the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of Catherine the Great, he had imbibed from his Swiss tutor, Frederic Cesar de Laharpe, the principles of Rousseau's gospel of humanity; from his military governor, General Soltikov, the traditions of Russian autocracy; while his father had inspired him with his own passion of military parade, and taught him to combine a theoretical love of mankind with a practical contempt for men. These contradictory tendencies remained with him through life, revealed in the fluctuations of his policy and influencing through him the fate of the world.

Another element in his character emerged when in 1801 he mounted the throne over the body of his murdered father: a mystic melancholy liable at any moment to issue in extravagant action. At first, indeed, this exercised but little influence on the emperor's life. Young, emotional, impressionable, well-meaning and egotistic, Alexander displayed from the first an intention of playing a great part on the world's stage, and plunged with all the ardour of youth into the task of realizing his political ideals. While retaining for a time the old ministers who had served and overthrown the Emperor Paul, one of the first acts of his reign was to appoint a secret committee, called ironically the " Comite du salut public", consisting of young and enthusiastic friends of his own--Victor Gavovich Kochubey, Nikolai Nikolaevich Novosiltsov, Paul Alexandrovich Strogonov and Adam Czartoryski--to draw up a scheme of internal reform. Most importantly the liberal Mikhail Speransky became one of the Tsar's closest advisors, and drew up many plans for elaborate reforms. Their aims, inspired by their admiration for English institutions, far outstripped the possibilities of the time, and even after they had been raised to regular ministerial positions but little of their programme could come to pass. For Russia was not ripe for liberty; and Alexander, the disciple of the revolutionist Laharpe, was -- as he himself said -- but "a happy accident" on the throne of the tsars. He spoke, indeed, bitterly of "the state of barbarism in which the country had been left by the traffic in men."

"Under Paul," he said, "three thousand peasants had been given away like a bag of diamonds. If civilization were more advanced, I would abolish this slavery, if it cost me my head." But the universal corruption, he complained, had left him no men; and the filling up of the government offices with Germans and other foreigners merely accentuated the sullen resistance of the "old Russians" to his reforms. That Alexander's reign, which began with so large a promise of amelioration, ended by riveting still tighter the chains of the Russian people was, however, due less to the corruption and backwardness of Russian life than to the defects of the tsar himself. His love of liberty, though sincere, was in fact unreal. It flattered his vanity to pose before the world as the dispenser of benefits; but his theoretical liberalism linked with with an autocratic will which brooked no contradiction. "You always want to instruct me!" he exlaimed to Derzhavin, the minister of justice, "but I am the autocratic emperor, and I will this, and nothing else!" "He would gladly have agreed," wrote Adam Czartoryski, "that every one should be free, if every one had freely done only what he wished." Moreover, this masterful temper joined an infirmity of purpose which ever let "I dare not wait upon I would," and which seized upon any excuse for postponing measures the principles of which he had publicly approved.

The codification of the laws initiated in 1801 was never carried out during his reign; nothing was done to improve the intolerable status of the Russian peasantry; the constitution drawn up by Speranski, and passed by the emperor, remained unsigned. Alexander, in fact, who, without being consciously tyrannical, possessed in full measure the tyrant's characteristic distrust of men of ability and independent judgment, lacked also the first requisite for a reforming sovereign: confidence in his people; and it was this want that vitiated such reforms as were actually realized. He experimented in the outlying provinces of his empire; and the Russians noted with open murmurs that, not content with governing through foreign instruments, he was conferring on Poland, Finland and the Baltic provinces benefits denied to themselves.

In Russia, too, certain reforms were carried out; but they could not survive the suspicious interference of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created council of ministers, and the senate, endowed for the first time with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the slavish instruments of the tsar and his favourites of the moment. The elaborate system of education, culminating in the reconstituted, or new-founded, universities of Dorpat, Vilna, Kazan and Kharkov, was strangled in the supposed interests of "order" and of orthodox piety; while the military colonies which Alexander proclaimed as a blessing to both soldiers and state were forced on the unwilling peasantry and army with pitiless cruelty. Even the Bible Society, through which the emperor in his later mood of evangelical zeal proposed to bless his people, was conducted on the same ruthless lines. The Roman archbishop and the Orthodox metropolitans were forced to serve on its committee side by side with Protestant pastors; and village popes, trained to regard any tampering with the letter of the traditional documents of the church as mortal sin, became the unwilling instruments for the propagation of what they regarded as works of the devil.

Alexander's grandiose imagination was, however, more strongly attracted by the great questions of European politics than by attempts at domestic reform which, on the whole, wounded his pride by proving to him the narrow limits of absolute power. On the morrow of his accession he had reversed the policy of Paul, denounced the League of Neutrals, and made peace with England (April 1801), at the same time opening negotiations with Austria. Soon afterwards at Memel he entered into a close alliance with Prussia, not as he boasted from motives of policy, but in the spirit of true chivalry, out of friendship for the young king Frederick William and his beautiful wife. The development of this alliance was interrupted by the short-lived peace of October 1801; and for a while it seemed as though France and Russia might come to an understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Laharpe, who had returned to Russia from Paris, Alexander began openly to proclaim his admiration for French institutions and for the person of Bonaparte. Soon, however, came a change. Laharpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to the tsar his Reflexions on the True Nature of the Consulship for Life, which, as Alexander said, tore the veil from his eyes, and revealed Bonaparte "as not a true patriot," but only as "the most famous tyrant the world has produced." His disillusionment was completed by the murder of the duc d'Enghien. The Russian court went into mourning for the last of the Condes, and diplomatic relations with Paris were broken off.

The events of the war that followed belong to the general history of Europe; but the tsar's attitude throughout is personal to himself, though pregnant with issues momentous for the world. In opposing Napoleon, "the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world's peace," Alexander in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine mission. In his instructions to Novosiltsov, his special envoy in London, the tsar elaborated the motives of his policy in language which appealed as little to the common sense of Pitt as did later the treaty of the Holy Alliance to that of Castlereagh. Yet the document is of great interest, as in it we find formulated for the first time in an official despatch those exalted ideals of international policy which were to play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the world at the close of the revolutionary epoch, and issued at the end of the 19th century in the Rescript of Nicholas II.2 and the conference of the Hague. The outcome of the war, Alexander argued, was not to be only the liberation of France, but the universal triumph of "the sacred rights of humanity." To attain this it would be necessary "after having attached the nations to their government by making these incapable of acting save in the greatest interests of their subjects, to fix the relations of the states amongst each other on more precise rules, and such as it is to their interest to respect." A general treaty was to become the basis of the relations of the states forming "the European Confederation"; and this, though "it was no question of realizing the dream of universal peace, would attain some of its results if, at the conclusion of the general war, it were possible to establish on clear principles the prescriptions of the rights of nations." "Why could not one submit to it," the tsar continued, "the positive rights of nations, assure the privilege of neutrality, insert the obligation of never beginning war until all the resources which the mediation of a third party could offer have been exhausted, having by this means brought to light the respective grievances, and tried to remove them? It is on such principles as these that one could proceed to a general pacification, and give birth to a league of which the stipulations would form, so to speak, a new code of the law of nations, which, sanctioned by the greater part of the nations of Europe, would without difficulty become the immutable rule of the cabinets, while those who should try to infringe it would risk bringing upon themselves the forces of the new union."3

Meanwhile Napoleon, little deterred by the Russian autocrat's youthful ideology, never gave up hope of detaching him from the coalition. He had no sooner entered Vienna in triumph than he opened negotiations with him; he resumed them after Austerlitz. Russia and France, he urged, were "geographical allies"; there was, and could be, between them no true conflict of interests; together they might rule the world. But Alexander was still determined "to persist in the system of disinterestedness in respect of all the states of Europe which he had thus far followed," and he again allied himself with Prussia. The campaign of Jena and the battle of Eylau followed; and Napoleon, though still intent on the Russian alliance, stirred up Poles, Turks and Persians to break the obstinacy of the tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the tsar's brother the grand-duke Constantine, was clamorous for peace; but Alexander, after a vain attempt to form a new coalition, summoned the Russian nation to a holy war against Napoleon as the enemy of the orthodox faith. The outcome was the rout of Friedland (June 13 and 14, 1807). Napoleon saw his chance and seized it. Instead of making heavy terms, he offered to the chastened autocrat his alliance, and a partnership in his glory.

The two emperors met at Tilsit on the 25th of June. Alexander, dazzled by Napoleon's genius and overwhelmed by his apparent generosity, was completely won. Napoleon knew well how to appeal to the exuberant imagination of his new-found friend. He would divide with Alexander the empire of the world; as a first step he would leave him in possession of the Danubian principalities and give him a free hand to deal with Finland; and, afterwards, the emperors of the East and West, when the time should be ripe, would drive the Turks from Europe and march across Asia to the conquest of India. A programme so stupendous awoke in Alexander's impressionable mind an ambition to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The interests of Europe were forgotten. "What is Europe?" he exclaimed to the French ambassador. "Where is it, if it is not you and we?"4

The brilliance of these new visions did not, however, blind Alexander to the obligations of friendship; and he refused to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. "We have made loyal war," he said, "we must make a loyal peace." It was not long before the first enthusiasm of Tilsit began to wane. Napoleon was prodigal of promises, but niggard of their fulfilment. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on the Danube; and each accused the other of breach of faith. Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and Napoleon were of the most cordial character; and it was hoped that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between them. The meeting took place at Erfurt in October 1808, and resulted in a treaty which defined the common policy of the two emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon none the less suffered a change. He realized that in Napoleon sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of fact he had never intended his proposed "grand enterprise" seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the tsar while he consolidated his own power in central Europe. From this moment the French alliance was for Alexander also not a fraternal agreement to rule the world, but an affair of pure policy. He used it, in the first instance, to remove "the geographical enemy" from the gates of St Petersburg by wresting Finland from the Swedes (1809); and he hoped by means of it to make the Danube the southern frontier of Russia.

Events were in fact rapidly tending to the rupture of the Franco-Russian alliance. Alexander, indeed, assisted Napoleon in the war of 1809, but he declared plainly that he would not allow Austria to be crushed out of existence; and Napoleon complained bitterly of the inactivity of the Russian troops during the campaign. The tsar in his turn protested against Napoleon's encouragement of the Poles. In the matter of the French alliance he knew himself to be practically isolated in Russia, and he declared that he could not sacrifice the interest of his people and empire to his affection for Napoleon. "I don't want anything for myself," he said to the French ambassador, "therefore the world is not large enough to come to an understanding on the affairs of Poland, if it is a question of its restoration."5 The treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the grand-duchy of Warsaw, he complained had "ill requited him for his loyalty," and he was only mollified for the time by Napoleon's public declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and by a convention, signed on the 4th of January 1810 but not ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of chivalry.

But if Alexander suspected Napoleon, Napoleon was no less suspicious of Alexander; and, partly to test his sincerity, he sent an almost peremptory request for the hand of the grand-duchess Anne, the tsar's youngest sister. After some little delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, on the plea of the princess's tender age and the objection of the dowager empress to the marriage. Napoleon's answer was to refuse to ratify the convention of the 4th of January, and to announce his engagement to the archduchess Marie Louise in such a way as to lead Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had been negotiated simultaneously. From this time the relation between the two emperors gradually became more and more strained. The annexation of Oldenburg, of which the duke was the tsar's uncle, to France in December 1810, added another to the personal grievances of Alexander against Napoleon; while the ruinous reaction of "the continental system" on Russian trade made it impossible for the tsar to maintain a policy which was Napoleon's chief motive for the alliance. An acid correspondence followed, and ill-concealed armaments, which culminated in the summer of 1812 in Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Yet, even after the French had passed the frontier, Alexander still protested that his personal sentiments towards the emperor were unaltered; "but," he added, "God Himself cannot undo the past." It was the occupation of Moscow and the desecration of the Kremlin, the sacred centre of Holy Russia, that changed his sentiment for Napoleon into passionate hatred. In vain the French emperor, within eight days of his entry into Moscow, wrote to the tsar a letter, which was one long cry of distress, revealing the desperate straits of the Grand Army, and appealed to "any remnant of his former sentiments." Alexander returned no answer to these "fanfaronnades." "No more peace with Napoleon!" he cried, "He or I, I or He: we cannot longer reign together!"6

The campaign of 1812 was the turning-point of Alexander's life; and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well balanced. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards, his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not, however, according to his own account, till he met the Baroness de Krudener--a religious adventuress who made the conversion of princes her special mission--at Basel, in the autumn of 1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a mystic pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his private actions. Madame de Krudener, and her colleague, the evangelist Empaytaz, became the confidants of the emperor's most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in the occupation of Paris the imperial prayer-meetings were the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.

Such was Alexander's mood when the downfall of Napoleon left him the most powerful sovereign in Europe. With the memory of Tilsit still fresh in men's minds, it was not unnatural that to cynical men of the world like Metternich he merely seemed to be disguising "under the language of evangelical abnegation" vast and perilous schemes of ambition. The puzzled powers were, in fact, the more inclined to be suspicious in view of other, and seemingly inconsistent, tendencies of the emperor, which yet seemed all to point to a like disquieting conclusion. For Madame de Krudener was not the only influence behind the throne; and, though Alexander had declared war against the Revolution, Laharpe was once more at his elbow, and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his lips. The very proclamations which denounced Napoleon as "the genius of evil," denounced him in the name of "liberty," and of "enlightenment." A monstrous intrigue was suspected for the alliance of the eastern autocrat with the Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful France. At the congress of Vienna Alexander's attitude accentuated this distrust. Castlereagh, whose single-minded aim was the restoration of "a just equilibrium" in Europe, reproached the tsar to his face for a "conscience" which suffered him to imperil the concert of the powers by keeping his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligation.7

Yet Alexander was sincere. Even the Holy Alliance, the pet offspring of his pietism, does not deserve the sinister reputation it has since obtained. To the other powers it seemed, at best "verbiage" and "exalted nonsense," at worst an effort of the tsar to establish the hegemony of Russia on the goodwill of the smaller signatory powers. To the Liberals, then and afterwards it was clearly a hypocritical conspiracy against freedom. Yet to Alexander himself it seemed the only means of placing the "confederation of Europe" on a firm basis of principle8 and, so far from its being directed against liberty he declared roundly to all the signatory powers that "free constitutions were the logical outcome of its doctrines." Europe, in fact, owed much at this time to Alexander's exalted temper. During the period when his influence was supreme, the fateful years, that is, between the Moscow campaign and the close of the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, it had been used largely in the interests of moderation and liberty. To him mainly it was due that France was saved from dismemberment, and received a constitution which, to use his own words, "united crown and representatives of the people in a sense of common interests."9 By his wise intervention Switzerland was saved from violent reaction, and suffered to preserve the essential gains of the Revolution. To his protection it was due that the weak beginnings of constitutional freedom in Germany were able for a while to defy the hatred of Austria. Lastly, whatever its ultimate outcome, the constitution of Poland was, in its inception, a genuine effort to respond to the appeal of the Poles for a national existence.

From the end of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to change. A revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the guard, and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.), are said to have shaken the foundations of his Liberalism. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich, and the astute Austrian was swift to take advantage of the psychological moment. From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich over the mind of the Russian emperor and in the councils of Europe. It was, however, no case of sudden conversion. Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist Kotzebue (q.v.), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of "the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples," as formulated in the Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support "a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power."10 He still declared his belief in "free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in difficult circumstances to tide over a crisis. "Liberty," he maintained, "should be confined within just limits. And the limits of liberty are the principles of order."11

It was the apparent triumph of the principles of disorder in the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany and among his own people, that completed Alexander's conversion. In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau, where in October of 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. "You have nothing to regret," he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, "but I have!"12 The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, symbolized by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolized by the Quadruple Treaty; he had still protested against the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states. On the 19th of November he signed the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the principle of intervention and wrecked the harmony of the concert. (See Congress of Troppau)

At Laibach, whither in the spring of 1821 the congress had been adjourned, Alexander first heard of the revolt of the Greeks. From this time until his death his mind was torn between his anxiety to realize his dream of a confederation of Europe and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade against the Turks. At first, under the careful nursing of Metternich, the former motive prevailed. He struck the name of Alexander Ypsilanti from the Russian army list, and directed his foreign minister, Count Capo d'Istria, himself a Greek, to disavow all sympathy of Russia with his enterprise; and, next year, a deputation of the Greeks of the Morea on its way to the congress of Verona was turned back by his orders on the road. He made, indeed, some effort to reconcile the principles at conflict in his mind. He offered to surrender the claim, successfully asserted when the sultan had been excluded from the Holy Alliance and the affairs of the Ottoman empire from the deliberations of Vienna, that the affairs of the East were the "domestic concerns of Russia," and to march into Turkey, as Austria had marched into Naples, "as the mandatory of Europe."13 Metternich's opposition to this, illogical, but natural from the Austrian point of view, first opened his eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people drew him back into itself; and when, in the autumn of 1825, he took his dying empress for change of air to the south of Russia, in order--as all Europe supposed--to place himself at the head of the great army concentrated near the Ottoman frontiers, his language was no longer that of "the peace-maker of Europe," but of the Orthodox tsar determined to take the interests of his people and of his religion "into his own hands." Before the momentous issue could be decided, however, Alexander died at Taganrog on the 1st of December (November 18, O.S.) 1825, "crushed", to use his own words, "beneath the terrible burden of a crown" which he had more than once declared his intention of resigning. A report, current at the time and often revived, affirmed that he did not in fact die. By some it is supposed that a mysterious hermit named Fomich, who lived at Tomsk until 1870 and was treated with peculiar deference by successive tsars, was none other than Alexander.

Modern history knows no more tragic figure than that of Alexander. The brilliant promise of his early years; the haunting memory of the crime by which he had obtained the power to realize his ideals; and, in the end, the terrible legacy he left to Russia: a principle of government which, under lofty pretensions, veiled a tyranny supported by spies and secret police; an uncertain succession; an army permeated by organized disaffection; an armed Poland, whose hunger for liberty the tsar had whetted but not satisfied; the quarrel with Turkey, with its alternative of war or humiliation for Russia; an educational system rotten with official hypocrisy; a Church in which conduct counted for nothing, orthodoxy and ceremonial observance for everything; economical and financial conditions scarce recovering from the verge of ruin; and lastly, that curse of Russia,--serfdom.

In private life Alexander displayed many lovable qualities. All authorities combine in praising his handsome presence and the affability and charm of his address, together with a certain simplicity of personal tastes, which led him in his intercourse with his friends or with the representatives of friendly powers to dispense with ceremonial and etiquette. His personal friendship, too, once bestowed, was never lightly withdrawn. By nature he was sociable and pleasure-loving, he proved himself a notable patron of the arts and he took a conspicuous part in all the gaieties of the congress of Vienna. In his later years, however, he fell into a mood of settled melancholy; and, though still accessible to all who chose to approach him with complaints or petitions, he withdrew from all but the most essential social functions, and lived a life of strenuous work and of Spartan simplicity. His gloom had been increased by domestic misfortune. He had been married, in 1793, without his wishes being consulted, to the beautiful and amiable Princess Maria Louisa of Baden (Elizabeth Feodorovna), a political match which, as he regretfully confessed to his friend Frederick William of Prussia, had proved the misfortune of both; and he consoled himself in the traditional manner. The two children of the marriage, a little grand-duchess Elizaveta, died on the 12th of May 1808 and the other little grand-duchess Maria, that died six years earlier on 26 of Jun. (or 8 of Jul.) 1800; and their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together. Towards the close of his life their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the empress in sympathizing deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter by Princess Maria Naryshkina.

He had other illegitimate children, 9 all together. His other mistresses were Sophia Vsevolojsky, Maria Ivanovna Katatcharova, Veronica Dzierzanowska, Marguerite-Josephine Weimer, and Princess Barbara Tourkestanova.

See also Europe; Russia; France; Turkey; Congress of Vienna; Napoleon; Metternich; Capo dIstaria.

Preceded by: Paul of Russia

List of Russian Tsars

Succeeded by: Nicholas I of Russia

Preceded by: Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden

List of Finnish monarchs

Succeeded by: Nicholas I of Russia

Initial text changed from 1911 encyclopedia -- Please update as needed

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Alexander I of Russia."

Top     

Bolshevist Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Bolshevist Russia is a common term representing the Red side in the Russian Civil War, or more specifically the Russian government between the Bolshevik's October Revolution, November 7, 1917, and the constitution of the Soviet Union, December 30, 1922.

Bolshevist Russia ought to be distinguished from Soviet Russia which chiefly is a somewhat slappy synonym to the Soviet Union — although the term Soviet Russia well might be seen used to include all time from the February Revolution in 1917 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Bolshevist Russia."

Top     

Geography of Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Location: Northern Asia (that part west of the Urals is sometimes included with Europe), bordering the Arctic Ocean, between Europe and the North Pacific Ocean

Geographic coordinates: 60 00 N, 100 00 E

Map references: Asia

Area:
total: 17,075,200 km²
land: 16,995,800 km²
water: 79,400 km²

Area - comparative: slightly less than 1.8 times the size of the US

Land boundaries:
total: 19,917 km

Kaliningrad Oblast is a small part of west Russia with no land connection to the rest of Russia.

border countries:

• Russia excl. Kaliningrad Oblast: Azerbaijan 284 km, Belarus 959 km, China (southeast) 3,605 km, China (south) 40 km, Estonia 294 km, Finland 1,313 km, Georgia 723 km, Kazakhstan 6,846 km, Latvia 217 km, Mongolia 3,441 km, North Korea 19 km, Norway 167 km, Ukraine 1,576 km
• Kaliningrad Oblast: Lithuania 227 km, Poland 206 km

Coastline: 37,653 km

Maritime claims:
continental shelf: 200-m depth or to the depth of exploitation
exclusive economic zone: 200 nm
territorial sea: 12 nm

Climate: ranges from steppes in the south through humid continental in much of European Russia; subarctic in Siberia to tundra climate in the polar north; winters vary from cool along Black Sea coast to frigid in Siberia; summers vary from warm in the steppes to cool along Arctic coast

Terrain: broad plain with low hills west of Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia; uplands and mountains along southern border regions

Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Caspian Sea -28 m
highest point: Gora El'brus 5,633 m

Natural resources: wide natural resource base including major deposits of oil, natural gas, coal, and many strategic minerals, timber
note: formidable obstacles of climate, terrain, and distance hinder exploitation of natural resources

Land use:
arable land: 8%
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 4%
forests and woodland: 46%
other: 42% (1993 est.)

Irrigated land: 40,000 sq km (1993 est.)

Natural hazards: permafrost over much of Siberia is a major impediment to development; volcanic activity in the Kuril Islands; volcanoes and earthquakes on the Kamchatka Peninsula

Environment - current issues: air pollution from heavy industry, emissions of coal-fired electric plants, and transportation in major cities; industrial, municipal, and agricultural pollution of inland waterways and sea coasts; deforestation; soil erosion; soil contamination from improper application of agricultural chemicals; scattered areas of sometimes intense radioactive contamination; ground water contamination from toxic waste

Environment - international agreements:
party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Wetlands, Whaling
signed, but not ratified: Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol

Geography - note: largest country in the world in terms of area but unfavorably located in relation to major sea lanes of the world; despite its size, much of the country lacks proper soils and climates (either too cold or too dry) for agriculture

See also : Russia, Geography of the Soviet Union

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Geography of Russia."

Top     

History of Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The history of Russia series:

• Early Russian East Slavs
• Kievan Rus'
• Khazaria
• Mongol invasion of Russia
• Muscovy
• Imperial Russia and Russian Tsars
• Russian Revolution
• Russian Civil War
• The Soviet Union
  • History of the Soviet Union: Part I (1917-1945)
  • History of the Soviet Union: Part II (1945-1991)
• Warsaw Pact
• Collapse of the Soviet Union
• Commonwealth of Independent States
• Post-communist Russia
• List of famous Russians

Related histories

• History of Belarus
• History of Estonia
• History of Finland
• History of Latvia
• History of Lithuania
• History of Ukraine

Related articles

• Eastern Orthodoxy
• History of Europe
• History of Asia
• Russian colonization of the Americas
• History of present-day nations and states.

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "History of Russia."

Top     

Imperial Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

This article is part of the History of Russia series.

Early Russian East Slavs

Kievan Rus'

Khazaria

Muscovy

Mongol invasion of Russia

Imperial Russia and Russian Tsars

Russian Revolution

Russian Civil War

Soviet Union

Warsaw Pact

Collapse of the Soviet Union

Commonwealth of Independent States

History of post-communist Russia

List of famous Russians

The Russian Empire (or known as Imperial Russia) covers the period of Russian history from the expansion of the state of Muscovy under Peter the Great into the Russian Empire stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, to the deposition of Nicholas II of Russia, the last tsar, at the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

This period is also regarded by many as the Russian Empire, however many also consider the Soviet Union to have been a continuation of the empire up until the fall of the Soviet government in 1991. Fixing the period of the Russian Empire is contentious, whereas fixing the period of Imperial Russia is more straightforward.

Early Imperial Russia

• Peter the Great and the Russian Empire
• The Era of Russian Palace Revolutions
• Russian Imperial Expansion and Maturation - Catherine II

Ruling the Empire

• War and Peace in Russia, 1796-1825
• Russia under Nicholas I

Transformation of Russia in the Nineteenth Century

• Russian Economic Development in the 19th century
• Russian Reforms and Their Limits, 1855-1892
• Russian Foreign Affairs after the Crimean War
• 19th century Russian Revolutionary Movements
• Russian Accelerated Industrialization in the 19th century
• Radical Russian Political Parties in the late 19th century
• Russian Imperialism in Asia and the Russo-Japanese War

The Last Years of the Autocracy

• Russian Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1905-1907
• The Stolypin and Kokovtsov Governments of Russia
• Russian Active Balkan Policy, 1906-13
• Russia at War, 1914-16
• The Fatal Weakening of Tsarism in Russia

Related Articles

This article is part of History of Russia.

References

• Library of Congress Country Studies: Russia

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Imperial Russia."

Top     

Kievan Rus'

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

This article is part of the History of Russia series.

Early Russian East Slavs

Kievan Rus'

Khazaria

Muscovy

Mongol invasion of Russia

Imperial Russia and Russian Tsars

Russian Revolution

Russian Civil War

History of the Soviet Union: Part I

History of the Soviet Union: Part II

Warsaw Pact

Collapse of the Soviet Union

Commonwealth of Independent States

History of post-communist Russia

List of famous Russians

Kievan Rus' was the early Russo-Scandinavian state dominated by the city of Kiev from about 860 to the middle of the 12th century. The reigns of St. Vladimir (980-1015) and his son Iaroslav the Wise (1019-1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity and the creation of the first Russian written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda.

Early History of Kievan Rus'

According to the Primary Chronicle, the earliest chronicle of Kievan Rus', a Varangian (Viking) named Rurik first established himself in Novgorod, just south of modern-day St. Petersburg, in about 860 before moving south and extending his authority to Kiev. The chronicle cites the Scandinavian Rurik as the progenitor of a dynasty that ruled in Eastern Europe until 1598. Another Swede, Oleg (Helgi), who was a close relative of Rurik, moved south from Novgorod to expel the Khazars from Kiev and founded Kievan Rus' about 880. During the next thirty-five years, "Oleg" and his Viking and Slavic, warriors subdued the various Eastern Slavic tribes. In 907, he led an attack against Constantinople, and in 911 he signed a commercial treaty with the Byzantine Empire as an equal partner. The new Slavic Kievan state prospered because it controlled the trade route from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and because it had an abundant supply of furs, wax, honey, and slaves for export. Historians have debated the role of the Varangians in the establishment of Kievan Rus'. Some Russian historians have stressed the Slavic influence in the development of the state. Although Slavic tribes had formed their own regional jurisdictions by 860, the Varangians initiated Kievan Rus' which was named after them (Rus' is etymologically identical to the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi, and is derived from the Old Norse root for "rowing" rods-, which is logical as the Russian rivers are more suitable for rowing than sailing). The Vikings however called the land Greater Sweden, Sweden the Cold or Gardarike (the land of cities). The Slavic people had as a majority settled down at that time, and they built many large and well-defended cities, which was a contrast to many barbaric peoples of the north. The fact that Vikings had some influence in Russia is also testified by loan words, such as jabetnik "complaining person" (from aembetsman "official") and gospodin "lord" (from husbondi "master"). Nordic names also became popularized, such as Oleg (Helgi), Olga (Helga) and Igor (Ingvar).

The Golden Age of Kiev

The region of Kiev dominated the state of Kievan Rus' for the next two centuries. The grand prince of Kiev controlled the lands around the city, and his theoretically subordinate relatives ruled in other cities and paid him tribute. The zenith of the state's power came during the reigns of Prince Vladimir (r. 978-1015) and Prince Yaroslav (the Wise; r. 1019-1054). Both rulers continued the steady expansion of Kievan Rus' that had begun under Oleg. To enhance their power, Vladimir married the sister of the Byzantine emperor. Yaroslav's granddaughter, his son Vsevolod I, Prince of Kiev's daughter Eupraxia, was married to Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor.Yaroslav arranged marriages for his sister and three daughters to the kings of Poland, France, Hungary, and Norway. Vladimir's greatest achievement was the Christianization of Kievan Rus', a process that began in 988. He built the first great edifice of Kievan Rus', the Desyatinnaya Church in Kiev. Yaroslav promulgated the first East Slavic law code, Rus'ka pravda (Justice of Rus'); built cathedrals named for St. Sophia in Kiev and Novgorod; patronized local clergy and monasticism; and is said to have founded a school system. Yaroslav's sons developed Kiev's great Peshcherskiy monastyr' (Monastery of the Caves), which functioned in Kievan Rus' as an ecclesiastical academy.

The Russian annals state that when Vladimir had decided to accept a new faith instead of the tradition idol-worship of the Slavs, he sent out some of his most valued advisors and warriors as emissaries to different parts of Europe. After visiting the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims, they finally arrived in Constantinople. There, they were so astounded by the beauty of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia and the lithurgical service held there, that they had made up their minds there and then about the faith they would like to follow. Upon their arrival home, they convinced Vladimir that Orthodox Christianity was the best choice of all, upon which Vladimir made a journey to Constantinople and arranged a marriage between himself and the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor.

Vladimir's choice of Eastern Orthodoxy may also have reflected his close personal ties with Constantinople, which dominated the Black Sea and hence trade on Kiev's most vital commercial route, the Dnepr River. Adherence to the Eastern Orthodox Church had long-range political, cultural, and religious consequences. The church had a liturgy written in Cyrillic (see Glossary) and a corpus of translations from the Greek that had been produced for the South Slavs. The existence of this literature facilitated the East Slavs' conversion to Christianity and introduced them to rudimentary Greek philosophy, science, and historiography without the necessity of learning Greek. In contrast, educated people in medieval Western and Central Europe learned Latin. Because the East Slavs learned neither Greek nor Latin, they were isolated from Byzantine culture as well as from the European cultures of their neighbors to the west.

In the centuries that followed the state's foundation, Rurik's descendants shared power over Kievan Rus'. Princely succession moved from elder to younger brother and from uncle to nephew, as well as from father to son. Junior members of the dynasty usually began their official careers as rulers of a minor district, progressed to more lucrative principalities, and then competed for the coveted throne of Kiev. In the 11th century and the 12th century, the princes and their retinues, which were a mixture of Slavic and Scandinavian elites, dominated the society of Kievan Rus'. Leading soldiers and officials received income and land from the princes in return for their political and military services. Kievan society lacked the class institutions and autonomous towns that were typical of West European feudalism. Nevertheless, urban merchants, artisans, and laborers sometimes exercised political influence through a city assembly, the veche (council), which included all the adult males in the population. In some cases, the veche either made agreements with their rulers or expelled them and invited others to take their place. At the bottom of society was a small stratum of slaves. More important was a class of tribute-paying peasants, who owed labor duty to the princes; the widespread personal serfdom characteristic of Western Europe did not exist in Kievan Rus', however.

The Rise of Regional Centers

Kievan Rus' was not able to maintain its position as a powerful and prosperous state, in part because of the amalgamation of disparate lands under the control of a ruling clan. As the members of that clan became more numerous, they identified themselves with regional interests rather than with the larger patrimony. Thus, the princes fought among themselves, frequently forming alliances with outside groups such as the Polovtsians, Poles, and Hungarians. The Crusades brought a shift in European trade routes that accelerated the decline of Kievan Rus'. In 1204 the forces of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, making the Dnepr trade route marginal. As it declined, Kievan Rus' splintered into many principalities and several large regional centers. The inhabitants of those regional centers then evolved into three nationalities: Ukrainians in the southeast and southwest, Belorussians in the northwest, and Russians in the north and northeast.

In the north, the Republic of Novgorod prospered as part of Kievan Rus' because it controlled trade routes from the Volga River to the Baltic Sea. As Kievan Rus' declined, Novgorod became more independent. A local oligarchy ruled Novgorod; major government decisions were made by a town assembly, which also elected a prince as the city's military leader. In the 12th century, Novgorod acquired its own archbishop, a sign of increased importance and political independence. In its political structure and mercantile activities, Novgorod resembled the north European towns of the Hanseatic League, the prosperous alliance that dominated the commercial activity of the Baltic region between the 13th century and the 17th century, more than the other principalities of Kievan Rus'.

In the northeast, Slavs colonized the territory that eventually became Muscovy by conquering the Finno-Ugric tribes already occupying the area. The city of Rostov was the oldest center of the northeast, but it was supplanted first by Suzdal' and then by the city of Vladimir. By the 12th century, the combined principality of Vladimir-Suzdal' had become a major power in Kievan Rus'.

In 1169 Prince Andrey Bogolyubskiy of Vladimir-Suzdal' dealt a severe blow to the waning power of Kievan Rus' when his armies sacked the city of Kiev. Prince Andrey then installed his younger brother to rule in Kiev and continued to rule his realm from Suzdal'. Thus, political power shifted to the northeast, away from Kiev, in the second half of the twelfth century. In 1299, in the wake of the Mongol invasion, the metropolitan of the Orthodox Church moved to the city of Vladimir, and Vladimir-Suzdal' replaced Kievan Rus' as the religious center.

'To the southwest, the principality of Galicia-Volhynia had highly developed trade relations with its Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian neighbors and emerged as another successor to Kievan Rus'. In the early thirteenth century, Prince Roman Mstislavich united the two previously separate principalities, conquered Kiev, and assumed the title of grand duke of Kievan Rus'. His son, Prince Daniil (Danylo; r. 1238-1264) was the first ruler of Kievan Rus' to accept a crown from the Roman papacy, apparently doing so without breaking with Orthodoxy. Early in the 14th century, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople granted the rulers of Galicia-Volhynia a metropolitan to compensate for the move of the Kievan metropolitan to Vladimir.

However, a long and unsuccessful struggle against the Mongols combined with internal opposition to the prince and foreign intervention to weaken Galicia-Volhynia. With the end of the Mstislavich Dynasty in the mid-fourteenth century, Galicia-Volhynia ceased to exist; Lithuania took Volhynia, and Poland annexed Galicia.

Related Articles

This article is part of History of Russia.

References

• Library of Congress Country Studies: Russia

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Kievan Rus'."

Top     

List of cities in Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Cities in Russia:

• Arkhangelsk
• Astrakhan
• Barnaul
• Belgorod
• Birobijan
• Bratsk
• Bryansk
• Cheboksary
• Chelyabinsk
• Cherepovets
• Cherkessk
• Chernyakhovsk
• Chita
• Elista
• Gorno-Altaysk
• Grosny
• Gusev
• Irkutsk
• Ishevsk
• Ivanovo
• Kaliningrad
• Kaluga
• Kazan
• Kemerovo
• Khabarovsk
• Kirov
• Kolomna
• Komsomolsk-na-Amure
• Kostroma
• Krasnodar
• Krasnoyarsk
• Kurgan
• Kursk
• Kyzyl
• Leningrad - now called Saint Petersburg
• Lipetsk
• Makhachkala
• Magadan
• Magnitogorsk
• Maykop
• Michurinsk
• Moscow
• Murmansk
• Nakhodka
• Nalchik
• Nazran
• Neftekamsk
• Nishnekamsk
• Nishnevartovsk
• Nishniy Novgorod
• Nischniy Tagil
• Norilsk
• Novosibirsk
• Novgorod
• Novokusnetsk
• Obninsk
• Omsk
• Orenburg
• Oryol
• Penza
• Perm
• Petrograd - now called Saint Petersburg
• Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy
• Petrozavodsk
• Pechora
• Pskov
• Ryasan
• Rostov-na-Donu
• Samara
• Saint Petersburg
• Saransk
• Saratov
• Smolensk
• Sochi
• Stalingrad - now called Volgograd
• Stavropol
• Surgut
• Syktyvkar
• Tambov
• Tobolsk
• Tolyatti
• Tomsk
• Tsaritsin - now called Volgograd
• Tula
• Tver
• Tyumen
• Ufa
• Ulan-Ude
• Ulyanovsk
• Velikiye Luki
• Vladikavkas
• Vladimir
• Vladivostok
• Volgograd
• Vologda
• Volshskiy
• Vorkuta
• Voronesh
• Vyborg
• Yakutsk
• Yaroslavl
• Yekaterinburg
• Yoshkar-Ola
• Yushno-Sakhalinsk

map

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "List of cities in Russia."

Top     

Muscovy

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

This article is part of the History of Russia series.

Early Russian East Slavs

Kievan Rus'

Khazaria

Muscovy

Mongol invasion of Russia

Imperial Russia and Russian Tsars

Russian Revolution

Russian Civil War

Soviet Union

Warsaw Pact

Collapse of the Soviet Union

Commonwealth of Independent States

History of post-communist Russia

List of famous Russians

Muscovy was the state of Russia from the 14th century to the 18th century which succeeded Kievan Rus' and preceded the Russian Empire. On old maps and texts it was named Moscovia, Moskovia, Moscoviae Pars. Muscovy saw the last of the Ruriks and the origin of the Russian Tsars.

The reign of the tsars started officially with Ivan the Terrible, the first monarch to be crowned Tsar of Russia, but in practice it started with the first to use the title of tsar, Ivan III of Russia (Ivan the Great), who unified Muscovy.

The development of the Russian state can be traced from Vladimir-Suzdal' through Muscovy to the Russian Empire. Muscovy drew people and wealth to the northeastern periphery of Kievan Rus'; established trade links to the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, and the Caspian Sea and to Siberia; and created a highly centralized and autocratic political system. Muscovite political traditions, therefore, exerted a powerful influence on Russian society.

The Rise of Muscovy

When the Mongols invaded the lands of Kievan Rus', Moscow was an insignificant trading outpost in the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal'. The outpost's remote, forested location offered some security from Mongol attack and occupation, and a number of rivers provided access to the Baltic and Black Seas and to the Caucasus region. More important to Moscow's development in what became the state of Muscovy, however, was its rule by a series of princes who were ambitious, determined, and lucky. The first ruler of the principality of Muscovy, Daniil Aleksandrovich (d. 1303), secured the principality for his branch of the Rurik Dynasty. His son, Ivan I (r. 1325-1340), known as Ivan Kalita (Money Bags), obtained the title Grand Prince of Vladimir from his Mongol overlords. He cooperated closely with the Mongols and collected tribute from other Russian principalities on their behalf. This relationship enabled Ivan to gain regional ascendancy, particularly over Muscovy's chief rival, the northern city of Tver'. In 1327 the Orthodox metropolitan transferred his residency from Vladimir to Moscow, further enhancing the prestige of the new principality.

In the 14th century, the grand princes of Muscovy began gathering Russian lands to increase the population and wealth under their rule. The most successful practitioner of this process was Ivan III (the Great; r. 1462-1505), who conquered Novgorod in 1478 and Tver' in 1485. Muscovy gained full sovereignty over the ethnically Russian lands in 1480 when Mongol overlordship ended officially, and by the beginning of the 16th century virtually all those lands were united. Through inheritance, Ivan obtained part of the province of Ryazan', and the princes of Rostov and Yaroslavl' voluntarily subordinated themselves to him. The northwestern city of Pskov remained independent in this period, but Ivan's son, Vasiliy III (r. 1505-1533), later conquered it.

Ivan III was the first Muscovite ruler to use the titles of tsar and "Ruler of all Rus'". Ivan competed with his powerful northwestern rival Lithuania for control over some of the semi-independent former principalities of Kievan Rus' in the upper Dnepr and Donets river basins. Through the defections of some princes, border skirmishes, and a long, inconclusive war with Lithuania that ended only in 1503, Ivan III was able to push westward, and Muscovy tripled in size under his rule.

The Evolution of the Russian Aristocracy

Internal consolidation accompanied outward expansion of the state. By the 15th century, the rulers of Muscovy considered the entire Russian territory their collective property. Various semi-independent princes still claimed specific territories, but Ivan III forced the lesser princes to acknowledge the grand prince of Muscovy and his descendants as unquestioned rulers with control over military, judicial, and foreign affairs.

Gradually, the Muscovite ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic ruler, a tsar. By assuming that title, the Muscovite prince underscored that he was a major ruler or emperor on a par with the emperor of the Byzantine Empire or the Mongol khan. Indeed, after Ivan III's marriage to Sophia Paleologue, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, the Muscovite court adopted Byzantine terms, rituals, titles, and emblems such as the double-headed eagle. They even began to refer to the city of Constantinople as "Tzargrad", making a goal to reclaim the city for Christianity. At first, the term autocrat connoted only the literal meaning of an independent ruler, but in the reign of Ivan IV (r. 1533-1584) it came to mean unlimited rule. Ivan IV was crowned tsar and thus was recognized, at least by the Orthodox Church, as emperor. An Orthodox monk had claimed that, once Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Muscovite tsar was the only legitimate Orthodox ruler and that Moscow was the Third Rome because it was the final successor to Rome and Constantinople, the centers of Christianity in earlier periods. That concept was to resonate in the self-image of Russians in future centuries.

Ivan IV

The development of the tsar's autocratic powers reached a peak during the reign of Ivan IV, and he became known as the Terrible (his Russian epithet, groznyy , means threatening or dreaded). Ivan strengthened the position of the tsar to an unprecedented degree, demonstrating the risks of unbridled power in the hands of a mentally unstable individual. Although apparently intelligent and energetic, Ivan suffered from bouts of paranoia and depression, and his rule was punctuated by acts of extreme violence.

Ivan IV became grand prince of Muscovy in 1533 at the age of three. Various factions of the boyars competed for control of the regency until Ivan assumed the throne in 1547. Reflecting Muscovy's new imperial claims, Ivan's coronation as tsar was an elaborate ritual modeled after those of the Byzantine emperors. With the continuing assistance of a group of boyars, Ivan began his reign with a series of useful reforms. In the 1550s, he promulgated a new law code, revamped the military, and reorganized local government. These reforms undoubtedly were intended to strengthen the state in the face of continuous warfare.

During the late 1550s, Ivan developed a hostility toward his advisers, the government, and the boyars. Historians have not determined whether policy differences, personal animosities, or mental imbalance cause his wrath. In 1565 he divided Muscovy into two parts: his private domain and the public realm. For his private domain, Ivan chose some of the most prosperous and important districts of Muscovy. In these areas, Ivan's agents attacked boyars, merchants, and even common people, summarily executing some and confiscating land and possessions. Thus began a decade of terror in Muscovy. As a result of this policy, called the oprichnina, Ivan broke the economic and political power of the leading boyar families, thereby destroying precisely those persons who had built up Muscovy and were the most capable of administering it. Trade diminished, and peasants, faced with mounting taxes and threats of violence, began to leave Muscovy. Efforts to curtail the mobility of the peasants by tying them to their land brought Muscovy closer to legal serfdom. In 1572 Ivan finally abandoned the practices of the oprichnina.

Despite the domestic turmoil of Ivan's late period, Muscovy continued to wage wars and to expand. Ivan defeated and annexed the Kazan' Khanate on the middle Volga in 1552 and later the Astrakhan' Khanate, where the Volga meets the Caspian Sea. These victories gave Muscovy access to the entire Volga River and to Central Asia. Muscovy's eastward expansion encountered relatively little resistance. In 1581 the Stroganov merchant family, interested in fur trade, hired a Cossack leader, Yermak, to lead an expedition into western Siberia. Yermak defeated the Siberian Khanate and claimed the territories west of the Ob' and Irtysh rivers for Muscovy (see fig. 3).

Expanding to the northwest toward the Baltic Sea proved to be much more difficult. In 1558 Ivan invaded Livonia, eventually embroiling him in a twenty-five-year war against Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, and Denmark. Despite occasional successes, Ivan's army was pushed back, and Muscovy failed to secure a coveted position on the Baltic Sea. The war drained Muscovy. Some historians believe that Ivan initiated the oprichnina to mobilize resources for the war and to quell opposition to it. Regardless of the reason, Ivan's domestic and foreign policies had a devastating effect on Muscovy, and they led to a period of social struggle and civil war, the so-called Time of Troubles (Smutnoye vremya, 1598-1613).

The Time of Troubles

Ivan IV was succeeded by his son Fedor, who was mentally deficient. Actual power went to Fedor's brother-in-law, the boyar Boris Godunov. Perhaps the most important event of Fedor's reign was the proclamation of the patriarchate of Moscow in 1589. The creation of the patriarchate climaxed the evolution of a separate and totally independent Russian Orthodox Church. In 1598 Fedor died without an heir, ending the Rurik Dynasty. Boris Godunov then convened a zemskiy sobor , a national assembly of boyars, church officials, and commoners, which proclaimed him tsar, although various boyar factions refused to recognize the decision. Widespread crop failures caused a famine between 1601 and 1603, and during the ensuing discontent, a man emerged who claimed to be Dmitriy, Ivan IV's son who had died in 1591. This pretender to the throne, who came to be known as the first False Dmitriy, gained support in Poland and marched to Moscow, gathering followers among the boyars and other elements as he went. Historians speculate that Godunov would have weathered this crisis, but he died in 1605. As a result, the first False Dmitriy entered Moscow and was crowned tsar that year, following the murder of Tsar Fedor II, Godunov's son.

Subsequently, Muscovy entered a period of continuous chaos. The Time of Troubles included a civil war in which a struggle over the throne was complicated by the machinations of rival boyar factions, the intervention of regional powers Poland and Sweden, and intense popular discontent. The first False Dmitriy and his Polish garrison were overthrown, and a boyar, Vasiliy Shuyskiy, was proclaimed tsar in 1606. In his attempt to retain the throne, Shuyskiy allied himself with the Swedes. A second False Dmitriy, allied with the Poles, appeared. In 1610 that heir apparent was proclaimed tsar, and the Poles occupied Moscow. The Polish presence led to a patriotic revival among the Russians, and a new army, financed by northern merchants and blessed by the Orthodox Church, drove the Poles out. In 1613 a new zemskiy sobor proclaimed the boyar Mikhail Romanov as tsar, beginning the 300-year reign of the Romanov family.

Muscovy was in chaos for more than a decade, but the institution of the autocracy remained intact. Despite the tsar's persecution of the boyars, the townspeople's dissatisfaction, and the gradual enserfment of the peasantry, efforts at restricting the power of the tsar were only halfhearted. Finding no institutional alternative to the autocracy, discontented Russians rallied behind various pretenders to the throne. During that period, the goal of political activity was to gain influence over the sitting autocrat or to place one's own candidate on the throne. The boyars fought among themselves, the lower classes revolted blindly, and foreign armies occupied the Kremlin in Moscow, prompting many to accept tsarist absolutism as a necessary means to restoring order and unity in Muscovy.

The Romanovs

The immediate task of the new dynasty was to restore order. Fortunately for Muscovy, its major enemies, Poland and Sweden, were engaged in a bitter conflict with each other, which provided Muscovy the opportunity to make peace with Sweden in 1617 and to sign a truce with Poland in 1619. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the city of Smolensk from Poland in 1632, Muscovy made peace with Poland in 1634. Polish king Wladyslaw IV, whose father and predecessor Sigismund III had manipulated his nominal selection as tsar of Muscovy during the Time of Troubles, renounced all claims to the title as a condition of the peace treaty.

The early Romanovs were weak rulers. Under Mikhail, state affairs were in the hands of the tsar's father, Filaret, who in 1619 became patriarch of the Orthodox Church. Later, Mikhail's son Aleksey (r. 1645-1676) relied on a boyar, Boris Morozov, to run his government. Morozov abused his position by exploiting the populace, and in 1648 Aleksey dismissed him in the wake of a popular uprising in Moscow.

The autocracy survived the Time of Troubles and the rule of weak or corrupt tsars because of the strength of the government's central bureaucracy. Government functionaries continued to serve, regardless of the ruler's legitimacy or the boyar faction controlling the throne. In the 17th century century, the bureaucracy expanded dramatically. The number of government departments (prikazy ; sing., prikaz ) increased from twenty-two in 1613 to eighty by mid-century. Although the departments often had overlapping and conflicting jurisdictions, the central government, through provincial governors, was able to control and regulate all social groups, as well as trade, manufacturing, and even the Orthodox Church.

The comprehensive legal code introduced in 1649 illustrates the extent of state control over Russian society. By that time, the boyars had largely merged with the elite bureaucracy, who were obligatory servitors of the state, to form a new nobility, the dvoryanstvo . The state required service from both the old and the new nobility, primarily in the military. In return, they received land and peasants. In the preceding century, the state had gradually curtailed peasants' rights to move from one landlord to another; the 1649 code officially attached peasants to their domicile. The state fully sanctioned serfdom, and runaway peasants became state fugitives. Landlords had complete power over their peasants and bought, sold, traded, and mortgaged them. Peasants living on state-owned land, however, were not considered serfs. They were organized into communes, which were responsible for taxes and other obligations. Like serfs, however, state peasants were attached to the land they farmed. Middle-class urban tradesmen and craftsmen were assessed taxes, and, like the serfs, they were forbidden to change residence. All segments of the population were subject to military levy and to special taxes. By chaining much of Muscovite society to specific domiciles, the legal code of 1649 curtailed movement and subordinated the people to the interests of the state.

Under this code, increased state taxes and regulations exacerbated the social discontent that had been simmering since the Time of Troubles. In the 1650s and 1660s, the number of peasant escapes increased dramatically. A favorite refuge was the Don River region, domain of the Don Cossacks. A major uprising occurred in the Volga region in 1670 and 1671. Stenka Razin, a Cossack who was from the Don River region, led a revolt that drew together wealthy Cossacks who were well established in the region and escaped serfs seeking free land. The unexpected uprising swept up the Volga River valley and even threatened Moscow. Tsarist troops finally defeated the rebels after they had occupied major cities along the Volga in an operation whose panache captured the imaginations of later generations of Russians. Razin was publicly tortured and executed.

Expansion and Westernization

Muscovy continued its territorial growth through the 17th century. In the southwest, it acquired eastern Ukraine, which had been under Polish rule. The Ukrainian Cossacks, warriors organized in military formations, lived in the frontier areas bordering Poland, the Tatar lands, and Muscovy. Although they had served in the Polish army as mercenaries, the Ukrainian Cossacks remained fiercely independent and staged a number of uprisings against the Poles. In 1648 most of Ukrainian society joined the Cossacks in a revolt because of the political, social, religious, and ethnic oppression suffered under Polish rule. After the Ukrainians had thrown off Polish rule, they needed military help to maintain their position. In 1654 the Ukrainian leader, Bogdan Khmel'nitskiy (Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyy), offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Muscovite tsar, Aleksey I, rather than under the Polish king. Aleksey's acceptance of this offer, which was ratified in the Treaty of Pereyaslavl', led to a protracted war between Poland and Muscovy. The Treaty of Andrusovo, which ended the war in 1667, split Ukraine along the Dnepr River, reuniting the western sector with Poland and leaving the eastern sector self-governing under the suzerainty of the tsar.

In the east, Muscovy had obtained western Siberia in the sixteenth century. From this base, merchants, traders, and explorers pushed eastward from the Ob' River to the Yenisey River, then to the Lena River. By the middle of the 17th century, Muscovites had reached the Amur River and the outskirts of the Chinese Empire. After a period of conflict with the Manchu Dynasty, Muscovy made peace with China in 1689. By the Treaty of Nerchinsk, Muscovy ceded its claims to the Amur Valley, but it gained access to the region east of Lake Baikal and the trade route to Beijing. Peace with China consolidated the initial breakthrough to the Pacific that had been made in the middle of the century.

Muscovy's southwestern expansion, particularly its incorporation of eastern Ukraine, had unintended consequences. Most Ukrainians were Orthodox, but their close contact with the Roman Catholic Polish Counter-Reformation also brought them Western intellectual currents. Through Kiev, Muscovy gained links to Polish and Central European influences and to the wider Orthodox world. Although the Ukrainian link stimulated creativity in many areas, it also undermined traditional Russian religious practices and culture. The Russian Orthodox Church discovered that its isolation from Constantinople had caused variations to creep into its liturgical books and practices. The Russian Orthodox patriarch, Nikon, was determined to bring the Russian texts back into conformity with the Greek originals. But Nikon encountered fierce opposition among the many Russians who viewed the corrections as improper foreign intrusions, or perhaps the work of the devil. When the Orthodox Church forced Nikon's reforms, a schism resulted in 1667. Those who did not accept the reforms came to be called the Old Believers (starovery ); they were officially pronounced heretics and were persecuted by the church and the state. The chief opposition figure, the archpriest Avvakum, was burned at the stake. The split subsequently became permanent, and many merchants and peasants joined the Old Believers.

The tsar's court also felt the impact of Ukraine and the West. Kiev was a major transmitter of new ideas and insight through the famed scholarly academy that Metropolitan Mogila (Mohyla) founded there in 1631. Among the results of this infusion of ideas into Muscovy were baroque architecture, literature, and icon painting. Other more direct channels to the West opened as international trade increased and more foreigners came to Muscovy. The tsar's court was interested in the West's more advanced technology, particularly when military applications were involved. By the end of the 17th century, Ukrainian, Polish, and West European penetration had undermined the Muscovite cultural synthesis--at least among the elite--and had prepared the way for an even more radical transformation.

Early Imperial Russia

In the 18th century, Muscovy was transformed from a static, somewhat isolated, traditional state into the more dynamic, partially Westernized, and secularized Russian Empire. This transformation was in no small measure a result of the vision, energy, and determination of Peter the Great. Historians disagree about the extent to which Peter himself transformed Russia, but they generally concur that he laid the foundations for empire building over the next two centuries. The era that Peter initiated signaled the advent of Russia as a major European power. But, although the Russian Empire would play a leading political role in the next century, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant degree. As West European economic growth accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, which had begun in the second half of the eighteenth century, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, creating new problems for the empire as a great power.

Western European knowledge of Muscovy

Muscovy remained a fairly unknown society in western Europe until Baron Sigismund von Herberstein published his Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (literally Notes on Muscovite Affairs) in 1549. This provided a comprehensive view of what had been a rarely visited and poorly reported state.

Related Articles

This article is part of History of Russia.

References

• Library of Congress Country Studies: Russia

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Muscovy."

Top     

Politics of Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

In the political system established in Russia by the 1993 constitution, the president wields considerable executive power. There is no vice president, and the legislative is far weaker than the executive. The president nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister, who must be approved by the Duma. The president can pass decrees without consent from the Duma. He also is head of the armed forces and of the national security council.

Duma elections were on December 19, 1999 and presidential elections March 26, 2000. While the Communists won a narrow plurality of seats in the Duma, the pro-government party Unity and the centrist Fatherland-All Russia also won substantial numbers of seats in the legislature. In April 2002, the Communist Party lost eight top posts when the State Duma voted to reassign the chairmanships of nearly one-third of its committees, leaving greater power in the hands of centrist and liberal factions. In the presidential election of March 2000, Vladimir Putin, named Acting President following the December 31 resignation of Boris Yeltsin, was elected in the first round with 53% of the vote. Both the presidential and parliamentary elections were judged generally free and fair by international observers.

Russia is a federation, but the precise distribution of powers between the Central Government and the regional and local authorities is still evolving. The Russian Federation consists of 89 components, including two federal cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg. The constitution explicitly defines the federal government's exclusive powers, but it also describes most key regional issues as the joint responsibility of the federal government and the Federation components.

Judicial System

Russia's justice and judicial power are weak. Numerous matters which are dealt with by administrative authority in European countries remain subject to political influence in Russia. The Russian Federation Constitutional Court was reconvened in March 1995 following its suspension by President Yeltsin in October 1993. The 1993 constitution empowers the court to arbitrate disputes between the executive and legislative branches and between Moscow and the regional and local governments. The court also is authorized to rule on violations of constitutional rights, to examine appeals from various bodies, and to participate in impeachment proceedings against the president. The July 1994 Law on the Constitutional Court prohibits the court from examining cases on its own initiative and limits the scope of issues the court can hear.

In the past few years, the Russian Government has begun to reform the criminal justice system and judicial institutions, including the reintroduction of jury trials in certain criminal cases. Despite these efforts, judges are only beginning to assert their constitutionally mandated independence from other branches of government.

The Duma passed a Criminal Procedure Code and other judicial reforms during its 2001 session. These reforms help make the Russian judicial system more compatible with its Western counterparts and are seen by most as an accomplishment in human rights.

The constitution guarantees citizens the right to choose their place of residence and to travel abroad. Some big-city governments, however, have restricted this right through residential registration rules that closely resemble the Soviet-era "propiska" regulations. Although the rules were touted as a notification device rather than a control system, their implementation has produced many of the same results as the propiska system. The freedom to travel abroad and emigrate is respected although restrictions may apply to those who have had access to state secrets.

Human rights

Russia's human rights record remains uneven and worsened in some areas. Despite significant improvements in conditions following the end of the Soviet Union, problem areas remain. In particular, the Russian Government's military policy in Chechnya is a cause for international concern. Government forces have killed numerous civilians through the use of indiscriminate force in Chechnya. There have been credible allegations of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by Russian forces. Chechen groups also have committed abuses.

Although the government has made progress in recognizing the legitimacy of international human rights standards, the institutionalization of procedures to safeguard these rights has lagged. Implementation of the constitutional provisions for due process and timely trials, for example, has made little progress. There are indications that the law is becoming an increasingly important tool for those seeking to protect human rights; after a lengthy trial and eight separate indictments, environmental whistleblower Alexander Nikitin was acquitted of espionage charges relating to publication of material exposing hazards posed by the Russian Navy's aging nuclear fleet. On September 13, 2001, the Presidium of the Supreme Court dismissed the prosecution's last appeal against the December 29, 1999 acquittal of Nikitin. Nonetheless, serious problems remain.

The judiciary is often subject to manipulation by political authorities and is plagued by large case backlogs and trial delays. Lengthy pretrial detention remains a serious problem. Russia has the highest prison population rate in the world, at 685 per 100,000. There are credible reports of beating and torturing of inmates and detainees by law enforcement and correctional officials. Prison conditions fall well below international standards. In 2000, human rights Ombudsman Oleg Mironov estimated that 50% of prisoners with whom he spoke claimed to have been tortured. Human rights groups estimate that about 11,000 inmates and prison detainees die annually, most because of overcrowding, disease, and lack of medical care. In 2001, President Putin pronounced a moratorium on the death penalty. However, there are reports that the Russian Government might still be violating promises they made upon entering the European Council, especially in terms of prison control and conditions.

Human rights groups are very critical of cases of Chechens disappearing in the custody of Russian officials. Russian authorities have introduced some improvements, including better access to complaint mechanisms, the formal opening of investigations in most cases, and the introduction of two decrees requiring the presence of civilian investigators and other nonmilitary personnel during all large scale military operations and targeted search and seizure operations. Human rights groups welcome these changes, but claim that most abuses remain uninvestigated and unpunished.

Efforts to institutionalize official human rights bodies have been mixed. In 1996, human rights activist Sergey Kovalev resigned as chairman of the Presidential Human Rights Commission to protest the government's record, particularly the war in Chechnya. Parliament in 1997 passed a law establishing a "human rights ombudsman," a position that is provided for in Russia's constitution and is required of members of the Council of Europe, to which Russia was admitted in February 1996. The Duma finally selected Duma deputy Oleg Mironov in May 1998. A member of the Communist Party, Mironov resigned from both the Party and the Duma after the vote, citing the law's stipulation that the Ombudsman be nonpartisan. Because of his party affiliation, and because Mironov had no evident expertise in the field of human rights, his appointment was widely criticized at the time by human rights activists. International human rights groups operate freely in Russia, although the government has hindered the movements and access to information of some individuals investigating the war in Chechnya.

The Russian Constitution provides for freedom of religion and the equality of all religions before the law as well as the separation of church and state. Although Jews and Muslims continue to encounter prejudice and societal discrimination, they have not been inhibited by the government in the free practice of their religion. High-ranking federal officials have condemned anti-Semitic hate crimes, but law enforcement bodies have not effectively prosecuted those responsible. The influx of missionaries over the past several years has led to pressure by groups in Russia, specifically nationalists and the Russian Orthodox Church, to limit the activities of these "nontraditional" religious groups. In response, the Duma passed a new, restrictive, and potentially discriminatory law in October 1997. The law is very complex, with many ambiguous and contradictory provisions. The law's most controversial provisions separates religious "groups" and "organizations" and introduce a 15-year rule, which allows groups that have been in existence for 15 years or longer to obtain accredited status. Senior Russian officials have pledged to implement the 1997 law on religion in a manner that is not in conflict with Russia's international human rights obligations. Some local officials, however, have used the law as a pretext to restrict religious liberty.

Country name:
conventional long form: Russian Federation
conventional short form: Russia
local long form: Rossiskaya Federatsiya (Russian: Российская Федерация)
local short form: Rossiya (Russian: Россия)
former: Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

Data code: RS

Government type: federation

Capital: Moscow (Russian: Москва, Transliteration: Moskva)

Administrative divisions: Russia is divided into 89 administrative units with varying degrees of autonomy. (See Subdivisions of Russia)

Independence: 24 August 1991 (from Soviet Union)

National holiday: Independence Day, 12 June (1990)

Constitution: adopted 12 December 1993

Legal system: based on civil law system; judicial review of legislative acts

Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal

Executive branch:
chief of state: President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (since 7 May 2000).
Note: President Yeltsin resigned on 31 December 1999, naming Vladimir Putin as Acting President until new elections were held on 26 March 2000.
head of government: Acting Premier Mikhail Mikhaylovich KASYANOV (since 7 May 2000); Deputy Premiers Viktor Borisovich KHRISTENKO (since 31 May 1999), Boris Sergeevich ALESHIN, Alexey Vasilievich GORDEEV, Galina Nikolaevna KARELOVA, Alexey Leonidovich KUDRIN, Vladimir Anatolyevich YAKOVLEV
cabinet: Ministries of the Government or "Government" composed of the premier and his deputies, ministers, and other agency heads; all are appointed by the president
note: there is also a Presidential Administration (PA) that provides staff and policy support to the president, drafts presidential decrees, and coordinates policy among government agencies; a Security Council also reports directly to the president
elections: president elected by popular vote for a four-year term; election last held 26 March 2000 (next to be held 14 March 2004); note - no vice president; if the president dies in office, cannot exercise his powers because of ill health, is impeached, or resigns, the premier succeeds him; the premier serves as acting president until a new presidential election is held, which must be within three months; premier appointed by the president with the approval of the Duma
election results: Vladimir Vladimirovich PUTIN elected president; percent of vote - PUTIN 52.9%, Gennadiy Aadreyevich ZYUGANOV 29.2%, Grigoriy Alekseyevich YAVLINSKIY 5.8%

Legislative branch: bicameral Federal Assembly or Federalnoye Sobraniye consists of the Federation Council or Sovet Federatsii (178 seats, filled ex officio by the top executive and legislative officials in each of the 89 federal administrative units - oblasts, krays, republics, autonomous okrugs and oblasts, and the federal cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg; members serve four-year terms) and the State Duma or Gosudarstvennaya Duma (450 seats, half elected by proportional representation from party lists winning at least 5% of the vote, and half from single-member constituencies; members are elected by direct popular vote to serve four-year terms)
elections: State Duma - last held 19 December 1999 (next to be held NA December 2003)
election results: State Duma - percent of vote received by parties clearing the 5% threshold entitling them to a proportional share of the 225 party list seats - Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) 24.29%, Unity 23.32%, Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) 13.33%, Union of Right Forces 8.52%, Liberal Democratic Party (Zhirinovsky Bloc) 5.98%, Yabloko 5.93%; seats by party - Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) 90, Unity 82, People's Deputies faction 57, Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) 45, Russia's Regions 42, Agro-industrial faction 39, Union of Right Forces 32, Yabloko 21, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia 17, independents 16, repeat election required 8, vacant 1

Judicial branch: Constitutional Court, judges are appointed for life by the Federation Council on the recommendation of the president; Supreme Court, judges are appointed for life by the Federation Council on the recommendation of the president; Superior Court of Arbitration, judges are appointed for life by the Federation Council on the recommendation of the president

Political parties and leaders: Agro-industrial faction [leader NA]; Communist Party of the Russian Federation or KPRF [Gennadiy Andreyevich ZYUGANOV]; Liberal Democratic Party of Russia [Vladimir Volfovich ZHIRINOVSKIY]; People's Deputies faction [leader NA]; Russia's Regions [leader NA]; Union of Right Forces [Boris Yefimovich NEMTSOV]; One Russia / Russia United [Boris Vyacheslavovich GRYZLOV]; Yabloko Bloc [Grigoriy Alekseyevich YAVLINSKIY]
note: some 150 political parties, blocs, and movements registered with the Justice Ministry as of the 19 December 1998 deadline to be eligible to participate in the 19 December 1999 Duma elections; of these, 36 political organizations actually qualified to run slates of candidates on the Duma party list ballot, 6 parties cleared the 5% threshold to win a proportional share of the 225 party seats in the Duma, 8 other organizations hold seats in the Duma: Bloc of Nikolayev and Academician Fedorov, Congress of Russian Communities, Movement in Support of the Army, Our Home Is Russia, Party of Pensioners, Russian All-People's Union, Russian Socialist Party, and Spiritual Heritage; primary political blocs include pro-market democrats - (Yabloko Bloc and Union of Right Forces), anti-market and/or ultranationalist (Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia)

Political pressure groups and leaders: NA

International organization participation: APEC, BIS, BSEC, CBSS, CCC, CE, CERN (observer), CIS, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, ESCAP, G- 8, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICRM, IDA, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, IOM (observer), ISO, ITU, LAIA (observer), MINURSO, MONUC, NAM (guest), NSG, OAS (observer), OPCW, OSCE, PCA, PFP, UN, UN Security Council, UNAMSIL, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNIKOM, UNITAR, UNMIBH, UNMIK, UNMOP, UNOMIG, UNTAET, UNTSO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO (applicant), Zangger Committee

Diplomatic representation in the US:
chief of mission: Ambassador Yuriy Viktorovich USHAKOV
chancery: 2650 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20007
telephone: [1] (202) 298-5700 through 5704
FAX: [1] (202) 298-5735
consulate(s) general: New York, San Francisco, and Seattle

Diplomatic representation from the US:
chief of mission: Ambassador James F. COLLINS
embassy: Novinskiy Bul'var 19/23, Moscow
mailing address: APO AE 09721
telephone: [7] (095) 252-24-51 through 59
FAX: [7] (095) 956-42-61
consulate(s) general: Saint Petersburg, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg

Flag description: three equal horizontal bands of white (top), blue, and red

See also: Subdivisions of Russia, Law of the Russian Federation

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Politics of Russia."

Top     

Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Russian Federation is the largest country by area in the world, covering over 17 million square kilometers (and, providing perpective, the five next-largest countries, even including their respective dependencies, are each 42% to 55% smaller). It also spans eleven time zones in both Europe and Asia.

Nearly all of Russia is a contiguous piece that shares borders with the following countries (starting in the far northwest and proceeding counter-clockwise): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. (The other piece, the Kaliningrad Oblast, shares borders with Lithuania to its north and east, and Poland to its south, and has a northwest coast on the Baltic Sea.) Its extensive coastline stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the North Pacific Ocean, as well as to the inland (but international) Black and Caspian Seas, and two coasts with the Baltic Sea (including in one case St. Petersburg and in the other Kaliningrad). Despite Russian and international attention to the decline of Russia from the role of dominating one of the world's two superpowers, Russian influence within the Commonwealth of Independent States and international affairs worldwide remains quite notable.

Российская Федерация 
Rossijskaya Federatsiya

(In Detail)
National motto: None
Official language	Russian (among many others in political subdivisions)
Official script	Cyrillic alphabet
Capital	Moscow
President	Vladimir Putin
Prime Minister	Mikhail Kasyanov
Area  - Total  - % water	Ranked 1st 17,075,200 km² 0.5%
Population  - Total (2002)  - Density	Ranked 7th 145,537,200 8.5/km²
Independence  - Date	From the Soviet Union August 24, 1991
Currency	Ruble (RUR)
Time zone	UTC +2 to +12
National anthem	Hymn of the Russian Federation
Internet TLD	.RU
Calling Code	7

History

Main article: History of Russia

The earliest state in the region was that of the Kievan Rus. In the later Middle Ages it was the Muscovy principality that developed into an empire that from the 15th century onward slowly grew eastward into Asia. Under the tsars, Russia then became a major European power as Imperial Russia modernised and expanded westward from the 18th century onward. However, at the start of the 20th century Russia's power was declining and growing dissatisfaction amongst the population, combined with the military failure during World War I led to the Russian Revolution in 1917 that was followed by the proclamation of the Soviet Union under Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, and the Russian Civil War, in which the Communist or Red forces defeated the Czarist or White forces.

Lenin suffered a series of debilitating strokes which lead to his death in 1924. After a brief power struggle, leadership of the Soviet Union was consolidated by the dictator Joseph Stalin. Stalin's brutal reign would claim millions of lives, as known or suspected political opponents and military officers were executed or exiled to Siberia during the Great Purges of the 1930s, also known in Russia as Ezhovschina.

Following the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany during World War II, the Soviet Union would also develop into a dominant world power during the Cold War, functioning as the main ideological adversary to the United States. The two engaged in a lengthy geopolitical struggle by proxy for control of the hearts and minds of the Third World following the 1956 Suez Crisis. The Soviets created the Warsaw Pact to oppose NATO, and the two sides engaged in a lengthy and expensive arms race to stockpile more nuclear weapons than the other had. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev nearly triggered a war with the United States when he placed offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba. The Soviets also ignited the space race by launching Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth, and Col. Yuri Gagarin, the first human to orbit the Earth.

By the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev implemented reforms such as glasnost and perestroika, but these measures were unable to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union after a failed military coup in 1991. The Russian Soviet Federal Republic declared its independence on August 24 of that year as the Russian Federation. Russia, as the Soviet Union's primary successor state, has since sought to maintain its global influence, but has been hampered by economic difficulties.

Politics

Main article: Politics of Russia

The Russian Federation is a federative democracy with a president, directly elected for a four-year term, who holds considerable executive power. The president, who resides in the Kremlin, nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister, who must be approved by parliament. The president can pass decrees without consent from parliament and is also head of the armed forces and of the national security council.

Russia's bicameral parliament, the Federative Assembly or Federalnoye Sobraniye consists of an upper house known as the Federative Council (Soviet Federatsii), composed of 178 delegates serving a four-year term (two are appointed from each of the 89 subdivisions), and a lower house known as the State Duma (Gosudarstvennaya Duma), comprised of 450 deputies also serving a four-year term, of which 225 are elected by direct popular vote from single member constituencies and 225 are elected by proportional representation from nation-wide party lists.

Subdivisions

Main articles: Subdivisions of Russia, Republics of Russia, Oblasts of Russia

The Russian Federation consists of a great number of different political subdivisions, making a total of 89 consituent components. There are 21 republics within the federation that enjoy a high degree of autonomy on most issues and these correspond to some of Russia's ethnic minorities. The remaining territory consists of 49 provinces known as oblasts and 6 regions (krays), in which are found 10 autonomous districts and 1 autonomous oblast. Beyond these there are two federal cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Recently, seven extensive federal districts (four in Europe, three in Asia) have been added as a new layer between the above subdivisions and the national level. All are listed here by these federal districts, with the republics marked by a *:

Provisional list, see Talk:Russia for more.

Central Russia: (actually in the extreme west) Belgorod Oblast Bryansk Oblast Ivanovo Oblast Kaluga Oblast Kostroma Oblast Kursk Oblast Lipetsk Oblast Moscow Moscow Oblast Oryol Oblast Ryasan Oblast Smolensk Oblast Tambov Oblast Tver Oblast Tula Oblast Vladimir Oblast Voronesh Oblast Yaroslavl Oblast Russian Far East: Amur Oblast Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Jewish Autonomous Republic) Kamchatka Oblast Autonomous district of the Koryaks Khabarovsk Region (Khabarovsk Krai) Magadan Oblast Autonomous district of Chukota Maritime Province (Primorsky Krai) Sakha * Sakhalin Oblast Urals Federal District: (north of Kazakhstan) Kurgan Oblast Sverdlovsk Oblast Tyumen Oblast Autonomous district of the Khants and Manses Autonomous district of the Yamal-Nenzes Chelyabinsk Oblast Privolzhsky District (Wolga District): (northwest of Kazakhstan) Bashkortostan * Chuvashia * Kirov Oblast Mari El * Mordovia * Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Orenburg Oblast Pensa Oblast Perm Oblast Autonomous district of the Komi-Permyaks Samara Oblast Saratov Oblast Tatarstan * Udmurtia * Ulyanovsk Oblast

Northern Caucasus: (in the extreme southwest, between Ukrain and Kazakhstan) Adygeya * Astrakhan Oblast Chechnya (declared independence in 1991; 2 wars with Russia, 1994-1996 and 1999-present. Most countries do not recognize Chechen independence. c.f.) * Dagestan * Ingushetia * Kabardino-Balkaria * Kalmykia * Karachay-Cherkessia * Krasnodar Region North Ossetia-Alania * Stavropol Region Rostov Oblast Volgograd Oblast Northwestern Russia: Arkhangelsk Oblast Autonomous district of the Nenzes Kaliningrad Oblast Leningrad Oblast Karelia * Komi * Murmansk Oblast Novgorod Oblast Pskov Oblast Saint Petersburg Vologda Oblast Siberian Federal District: (west of the Far East) Altay * Altai Region Buryatia * Chita Oblast Autonomous district of the Agin Buryats Irkutsk Oblast Autonomous district of the Ust-Ordinsk Buryats Khakassia * Kemerovo Oblast Krasnoyarsk Region (Krasnoyarsk Krai) Autonomous district of the Taimyrs Autonomous district of the Evenks Novosibirsk Oblast Omsk Oblast Tomsk Oblast Tuva *

Geography

Main article: Geography of Russia

The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the supercontinent Eurasia and as such knows a great variety of landscapes and climates. Most of the landscape consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Russia's highest point at 5,633 m) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. Notable are the more central Ural Mountains that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia.

Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as inland seas such as the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas. Smaller bodies of water are part of the oceans; the Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are part of the Arctic, whereas the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan belong to the Pacific Ocean. Major islands found in them include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz-Josef Land, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel, the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin.

Many great rivers flow across the plains into the oceans and seas. In Europe these are the Volga, Don, Kama, Oka and the Northern Dvina, while several other rivers originate in Russia but flow into other countries, such as the Dniepr and the Western Dvina. In Asia are found the Ob, Irtysh, Yenisei, Angara, Lena and Amur rivers. Major lakes include Lake Baikal, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega.

• List of cities in Russia

Economy

Main article: Economy of Russia

A decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is still struggling to establish a modern market economy and achieve strong economic growth. Russia saw its economy contract for five years, as the executive and legislature dithered over the implementation of reforms and Russia's industrial base faced a serious decline.

Russia achieved a slight recovery in 1997. The 1998 financial crisis culminated in the August depreciation of the ruble, a debt default by the government, and a sharp deterioration in living standards for most of the population. The economy subsequently has rebounded, growing by an average of more than 6% annually in 1999-2002 on the back of higher oil prices and a weak ruble.

This recovery, along with a renewed government effort in 2000 and 2001 to advance lagging structural reforms, have raised business and investor confidence over Russia's prospects in its second decade of transition. Russia remains heavily dependent on exports of commodities, particularly oil, natural gas, metals, and timber, which account for over 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices.

The greatest challenge facing the Russian economy is how to encourage the development of SME (small and medium sized enterprises) in a business climate dominated by oligarchs and a large dysfunctional banking system. Many of Russia's banks are owned by entrepreneurs or oligarchs, who often use the deposits to lend to their own businesses.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank have attempted to kick-start normal banking practices by making equity and debt investments in a number of banks, but with very limited success.

The recent arrest of Russia's most successful businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and corruption in relation to the large-scale privatisations organised under President Yeltsin has caused many foreign investors to worry about the stability of the Russian economy. Most of the large fortunes currently prevailing in Russia seem to be the product of either acquiring government assets particularly cheaply or gaining concessions from government cheaply. The United States Government has expressed concern at the "selective" application of the law against individual businessmen.

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Russia

Russia is fairly sparsely populated due to its enormous size; population is densest in the European part of Russia, in the Ural Mountains area, and in the south-eastern part of Siberia. The Russian Federation is home to many different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. Over 80% of the population is ethnically Russian; the remainder includes Bashkirs, Chechens, Chuvashes, Cossacks, Evenkis, Germans, Ingushes, Inuit, Jews, Kalmyks, Karelians, Koreans, Mordvins, Ossetians, Taimyrs, Tatars, Tuvans, Yakuts and still others.

The Russian language is the only official state language, but the individual republics have often made their native language co-official next to Russian. Cyrillic alphabet is the only official script, which means that these languages must be written in Cyrillic in official texts. The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant Christian religion in the Federation; other religions include Islam, various Protestant faiths, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism and Judaism.

See also: Demographic crisis of Russia

Culture

Main article: Culture of Russia

• List of famous Russians
• Russian literature
• Russian poets
• Music of Russia

Miscellaneous topics

• Anti-Semitism in Russia and the Soviet Union
• Communications in Russia
• Foreign relations of Russia
• Law of the Russian Federation
• Military of Russia
• Tourism in Russia
• Transportation in Russia
• Postage stamps and postal history of Russia

External links

• WayToRussia.Net - An information resource about Russia.
• Gov.ru - Official governmental portal (in Russian)
• Kremlin - Official presidential site (in Russian)
• Federative Council - Official site of the parliamentary upper house
• Duma - Official site of the parliamentary lower house (in Russian)
• maps and info on federal districts
• government links
• WorldWide press Freedom index Ranked 121 out of 139

---

Countries of the world  |  Europe  |  Asia nds:Russland

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Russia."

Top     

Russia, New York

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Russia is a town located in Herkimer County, New York. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 2,487.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 156.4 km² (60.4 mi²). 146.5 km² (56.6 mi²) of it is land and 9.9 km² (3.8 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 6.34% water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there are 2,487 people, 993 households, and 707 families residing in the town. The population density is 17.0/km² (44.0/mi²). There are 1,252 housing units at an average density of 8.5/km² (22.1/mi²). The racial makeup of the town is 97.75% White, 0.32% African American, 0.56% Native American, 0.72% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.12% from other races, and 0.52% from two or more races. 0.44% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 993 households out of which 30.8% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 56.9% are married couples living together, 7.0% have a female householder with no husband present, and 28.8% are non-families. 23.1% of all households are made up of individuals and 7.7% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.50 and the average family size is 2.90. In the town the population is spread out with 24.8% under the age of 18, 6.6% from 18 to 24, 28.1% from 25 to 44, 26.4% from 45 to 64, and 14.0% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 39 years. For every 100 females there are 109.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 107.4 males. The median income for a household in the town is $35,588, and the median income for a family is $40,847. Males have a median income of $29,798 versus $20,968 for females. The per capita income for the town is $17,563. 14.9% of the population and 12.1% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 25.8% are under the age of 18 and 13.9% are 65 or older.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Russia, New York."

Top     

Russia, Ohio

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Russia is a village located in Shelby County, Ohio. As of the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 551.

Geography

Russia is located at 40°14'5" North, 84°24'37" West (40.234696, -84.410416)¹. According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.7 km² (0.6 mi²). 1.7 km² (0.6 mi²) of it is land and none of the area is covered with water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there are 551 people, 197 households, and 157 families residing in the village. The population density is 327.3/km² (854.0/mi²). There are 206 housing units at an average density of 122.4/km² (319.3/mi²). The racial makeup of the village is 99.46% White, 0.00% African American, 0.00% Native American, 0.18% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.00% from other races, and 0.36% from two or more races. 1.09% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 197 households out of which 43.1% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 71.1% are married couples living together, 5.6% have a female householder with no husband present, and 20.3% are non-families. 19.3% of all households are made up of individuals and 11.7% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.80 and the average family size is 3.22. In the village the population is spread out with 32.1% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 27.9% from 25 to 44, 16.3% from 45 to 64, and 14.7% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 30 years. For every 100 females there are 101.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 100.0 males. The median income for a household in the village is $51,250, and the median income for a family is $62,143. Males have a median income of $40,208 versus $23,125 for females. The per capita income for the village is $23,577. 0.0% of the population and 0.0% of families are below the poverty line.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Russia, Ohio."

Top     

Soviet Union

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union; Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, SSSR written in the Cyrillic alphabet as СССР) was a communist-ruled union with a single-party system that existed from 1922 until 1991. It stretched from the Baltic and Black Seas to the Pacific Ocean. In its final years it consisted of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). Russia was by far the largest Republic in the Soviet Union in terms of both land area and population, and also dominated it politically and economically.

Союз Советских Социалистических Республик
Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik

(In Detail) (Full size)
National motto: Workers of the world, unite!
Official language	Russian
Capital	Moscow
Area  - Total  - % water	Ranked 1st before collapse 22,402,200 km² xx%
Population  - Total  - Density	Ranked 3rd before collapse 293,047,571 (July 1991) 13,08/km2 (July 1991)
Formation  - Declared  - Recognised	Russian Revolution 1917 1922
Dissolution	1991
Currency	Ruble
Time zone	UTC +3 to +11
National anthem	(1917-1944) The International, (1944-1991) Hymn of the Soviet Union
Internet TLD	.SU (still in use)

History

Main article: History of the Soviet Union

Severe social problems, widespread dissatisfaction with the autocratic monarchy, and the tremendous setbacks being suffered by Russia in World War I led to the Russian Revolution and the ousting of the monarchy in 1917. A multiparty provisional government was briefly instituted, but collapsed within a year. Popular pressure prompted the Bolshevik Party to declare its seizure of power in October of 1917. During the resultant civil war, Communist forces known as Reds fought against the Whites, the pro-monarchist forces and their European and American allies. The war ended with the victory of the Red Army and the establishment of the Soviet Union, the world's first communist state, on December 30, 1922, with Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin as its leader.

The Soviet Union was the successor state of the Russian Empire but was smaller as a result of the independence of Poland, Finland and the Baltic States. Lenin instituted a policy whereby these conquests of the imperial Russian Empire were granted independence, and many other conquered regions were granted a great deal of autonomy.

After Lenin's death in 1924, there was a power struggle within the party leadership. Party secretary Joseph Stalin emerged as the new leader. Stalin began a program of rapid industrialization and forced agricultural reforms, triggering several famines (arguably used to speed up the pace of industrialisation by forcing people from the countryside to the cities. He also drastically increased the scope of the state secret police (first the NKVD then the GPU, then the KGB), and had tens of millions people killed or sent to the Gulags during his rule. Especially famous is the period, 1936-1939, known as the Great Purges.

Between 1938 and 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and some territories of Finland, Poland, Romania, Mongolia, and Hungary. Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union emerged from World War II (known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War) as a major world power, with a territory including the Baltic States and a significant portion of the territory of pre-war Poland, together with a substantial sphere of influence in Eastern Europe (see Soviet Empire). Political confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States persisted for many years and is termed the Cold War.

After Stalin's death, another power struggle occurred, with Nikita Khrushchev the new leader. A major low point of US-Soviet relations was the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Khrushchev began installing medium-range nuclear missiles on the newly-Communist island of Cuba.

Khrushchev who, throughout his period of power, oscillated between the poles of radical de-Stalinisation (known as the "thaw") and defence of the old order (such as through the invasion of Hungary in 1956) was, in 1964, removed by internal party coup lead by Leonid Brezhnev that ruled until his death in 1982. This ushered in what became known in later years as the "era of stagnation".

President Mikhail Gorbachev dramatically reformed the oppressive nature of the Soviet government in the 1980s with his glasnost, or openness program, under which people were no longer put to prison for criticizing the government. His perestroika economic reforms meant the end of Soviet imperialism; the Soviet army pulled out of Afghanistan, negotiated with the United States on arms reduction, and the Soviet government ceased interfering in the affairs of other Communist governments, specifically those in Eastern Europe.

In 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart after a failed coup attempt by military leaders who were upset with the direction Gorbachev was leading the country.

Liberal and Democratic political forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, used the coup to corner Gorbachev (who still was formally committed to the ideals of Leninism), ban the Communist Party and break the Union apart.

In chronological order, the leaders of the Soviet Union were:

1. Vladimir Lenin (1917-1924)
2. Joseph Stalin (1924-1953)
3. Lavrenty Beria (1953)
4. Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964)
5. Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982)
6. Yuri Andropov (1982-1984)
7. Konstantin Chernenko (1984-1985)
8. Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991)

Politics

Main article: Politics of the Soviet Union

After the revolution, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) outlawed every other political party. The governing of the country was, in theory, to be done by local and regional democratically elected soviets. In practice, however, each level of government was controlled by its corresponding party group (see democratic centralism). The highest legislative body was the Supreme Soviet. The highest executive body was the Politburo. (More about the political organization of the USSR can be found on Organization of the Communist Party of the USSR.)

See also: List of leaders of the Soviet Union

Republics

Main article: Republics of the Soviet Union

In its final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Socialist Soviet Republics (SSR). Three of these in particular shared some common history and were referred to as the Baltic Republics. They are all independent countries now, only very loosely organized under the heading Commonwealth of Independent States.

Former Soviet Republics Armenian SSR Azerbaijan SSR Byelorussian SSR Estonian SSR Georgian SSR Kazakh SSR Kirghiz SSR Latvian SSR Lithuanian SSR Moldavian SSR Russian SFSR Tadzhik SSR Turkmen SSR Ukrainian SSR Uzbek SSR

Current Independent Countries Armenia Azerbaijan Belarus Estonia Georgia Kazakstan Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lithuania Moldova Russia Tajikistan Turkmenistan Ukraine Uzbekistan

Geography

Main article: Geography of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union covered the area of the 15 current countries mentioned in the previous section, with a total area of 22,402,200 sq. km.

Economy

Main article: Economy of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union was the first country to base its economy on communist principles, where the state owned all the means of production and farming was collectivized.

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union was one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries, with more than 100 distinct national ethnicities living within its borders. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. The Soviet Union was so large, in fact, that even after all associated republics gained independence Russia, remains the largest country by area, and remained quite ethnically diverse, including, e.g., minorities of Tatars, Udmurts, and many other non-Russian ethnicities.

Culture

Holidays

Date	English Name	Local Name	Remarks
January 1	New Year's Day	Новый Год
January 7	Eastern Orthodox Christmas	Православное Рождество
February 23	Soviet Army's Day	День Советской Армии и Военно-Морского Флота	February Revolution, 1917, Formation of the Red Army, 1918
March 8	International Women's Day	Международный Женский День
May 1	International Labor Day	Первое Мая - День Солидарности Трудящихся
May 9	Victory Day	День Победы	Capitulation of Nazi Germany, 1945
November 7-November 8	Great October Socialist Revolution	Седьмое Ноября	October Revolution 1917; it is currently called День Примирения

See also: History of the Jews in the Soviet Union, Communism, Socialism, World War I, Russian Civil War, World War II, Red Army

External link

• Russia News, News Searches, and Reference

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Soviet Union."

Top     

Transportation in Russia

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Railways:
total: 150,000 km; note - 87,000 km in common carrier service; 63,000 km serve specific industries and are not available for common carrier use
broad gauge: 150,000 km 1.520-m gauge (January 1997 est.)

Russian, CIS and Baltic Railway Map (with place names in Russian, but legend in English).

Cities with metro systems:

• Northwestern Russia: St. Petersburg.
• Central Russia: Moscow.
• Northern Caucasus: -
• Privolzhsky District (Wolga District): Nizhny Novgorod, Samara; under construction: Kazan.
• Urals Federal District: Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk.
• Siberian Federal District: Omsk, Novosibirsk; under construction: Krasnoyarsk.
• Russian Far East: -

Highways:
total: 948,000 km (including 416,000 km which serve specific industries or farms and are not maintained by governmental highway maintenance departments)
paved: 336,000 km
unpaved: 612,000 km (including 411,000 km of graveled or some other form of surfacing and 201,000 km of unstabilized earth) (1995 est.)

Waterways: total navigable routes in general use 101,000 km; routes with navigation guides serving the Russian River Fleet 95,900 km; routes with night navigational aids 60,400 km; man-made navigable routes 16,900 km (January 1994 est.)

Pipelines: crude oil 48,000 km; petroleum products 15,000 km; natural gas 140,000 km (June 1993 est.)

Ports and harbors: Arkhangel'sk, Astrakhan', Kaliningrad, Kazan', Khabarovsk, Kholmsk, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Murmansk, Nakhodka, Nevel'sk, Novorossiysk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, St. Petersburg, Rostov, Sochi, Tuapse, Vladivostok, Volgograd, Vostochnyy, Vyborg

Merchant marine:
total: 695 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 3,920,923 GRT/4,867,676 DWT
ships by type: barge carrier 1, bulk 19, cargo 379, chemical tanker 4, combination bulk 21, combination ore/oil 3, container 25, multi-functional large load carrier 1, passenger 35, passenger/cargo 3, petroleum tanker 149, refrigerated cargo 26, roll-on/roll-off 22, short-sea passenger 7 (1999 est.)

Airports: 2,517 (1994 est.)

Airports - with paved runways:
total: 630
over 3,047 m: 54
2,438 to 3,047 m: 202
1,524 to 2,437 m: 108
914 to 1,523 m: 115
under 914 m: 151 (1994 est.)

Airports - with unpaved runways:
total: 1,887
over 3,047 m: 25
2,438 to 3,047 m: 45
1,524 to 2,437 m: 134
914 to 1,523 m: 291
under 914 m: 1,392 (1994 est.)

See also : Russia

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Transportation in Russia."

Top     

Abbreviations & Acronyms: Russia

Top     

Top     

Top     

Modern Usage: Russia

Top     

Commercial Usage: Russia

Top     

Image Slideshow: Russia

Photos: Russia More pictures...

Illustrations: Russia More pictures...

Computer Images: Russia More pictures...

Top     

Photo Album: Russia

Thumbnail	Description & Credit	Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	3-D Perspective Kamchatka Peninsula Russia. Credit: NASA.		The Lena River, some 2,800 miles(4,500km) long, is one of the largest rivers in the world. The Lena Delta Reserve is the most extensive protected wilderness area in Russia. It is an important refuge and breeding grounds for many species of Siberian wildlife. Credit: NASA.
	"The Russia Cement Company's Plant at Anacortes". This plant made glue and other products from fish processing waste, not cement. In: "Puget Sound and Western Washington Cities-Towns Scenery", by Robert A. Reid, Robert A. Reid Publisher, Seattle, 1912. P. 108. Credit: America's Coastlines.		Rick Bennett examines roots of a leafy spurge from Russia for pathogens which could be used for biocontrol of this weed in the United States. P. Credit: USDA ARS News; photo by Keith Weller..
	Fallow grain field north of Krasnoiarsk near Minderla, Russia. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.		Fall landscape near Galalino, Russia. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.
	Afternoon view southwest across southern part of lake, with Khamardaban Mountain Range in background, Lake Baikal, Russia. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.		Storm over southern part of lake, with Khamardaban Mountain Range in background, Lake Baikal, Russia. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
	View northwest across lake to the origins of the Angara River, Lake Baikal, Russia. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.		Panoramic view northeast, toward Mongolia, Kiakhta, Russia. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

Top     

Digital Photo Gallery: Russia
 

"Russia, Moscow" by Denis Grachev Commentary: "Morning, september."	"Russia. S.Peterburg" by Ogs Commentary: "Russia. S.Peterburg."
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.

Top     

Familiar Quotations: Russia

Top     

Historic Usage: Russia

Top     

Use in Literature: Russia

Top     

Non-Fiction Usage: Russia

Top     

Spoken Usage: Russia

Top     

Speeches: Russia

Top     

Usage Frequency: Russia

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

Top     

Usage in Company Names: Russia

Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.

Top     

Cities: Russia

INDEX

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.