Russia

I

Introduction

Russia, an independent country officially known as the Russian Federation (in Russian, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya). By far the world’s largest country, Russia is almost twice the size of the next largest country, Canada. Russia sprawls across eastern Europe and northern Asia. It possesses mineral resources unmatched by any other country. Four-fifths of the people live in the European part of Russia, west of the Ural Mountains. The capital, Moscow, is an administrative, commercial, industrial, and cultural hub in the heart of European Russia.

In the 14th and 15th centuries a powerful Russian state began to grow around Moscow. Russia emerged as a great world power during the reign of Peter the Great, who built Saint Petersburg as Russia’s new “window on the West” and moved the seat of government there in 1712. The massive Russian Empire reached its greatest size in 1914, before World War I. Moscow regained its capital status after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when militant socialists called Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian monarchy. In 1922 they founded the world’s first communist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union). Russia was the largest and most powerful Soviet republic.

The USSR had a totalitarian political system in which Communist Party leaders held political and economic power. The state owned all companies and land, and the government controlled most aspects of the economy. After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, Russia began transforming itself into a more democratic society with an economy based on market mechanisms and principles. For many Russians the transformation brought a severe decline in standard of living. At the same time, Russia became more integrated with the global economy and benefited from improved relations with the countries of the European Union as well as its neighbors in Asia.

II

Land and Resources of Russia

Russia’s expansive border measures more than 20,100 km (12,500 mi), abutting a great number of countries and bodies of water. On the north Russia is bounded by extensions of the Arctic Ocean: the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas. On the east the country is bounded by the Pacific Ocean and several of its extensions: the Bering Strait (which separates Russia from Alaska), the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Sea of Japan (East Sea). In the extreme southeast Russia touches the northeastern tip of North Korea. On the south it is bounded by China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Black Sea. On the southwest it is bounded by Ukraine, and on the west by Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, the Gulf of Finland, and Finland. In the extreme northwest, Russia is bounded by Norway. Lithuania and Poland border Kaliningrad, a Russian oblast (region) on the Baltic Sea that is isolated from the main part of Russia.

---

---

In both total area and geographic extent Russia is the largest country in the world. With an area of 17,075,200 sq km (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia constitutes more than one-ninth of the world’s land area. From north to south Russia extends more than 4,000 km (2,400 mi) from Arctic islands in the Barents Sea to the southern border along the Caucasus Mountains. From the coast of the Baltic Sea to Big Diomede Island (Ratmanov Island) in the Bering Strait, Russia’s maximum east-west extent is almost 10,000 km (6,200 mi), a distance encompassing 11 time zones and spanning nearly half the circumference of the Earth. Russia stretches across parts of two continents, Europe and Asia, with the Ural Mountains and Ural River marking the boundary between them.

Russia contains complex geologic structures and surface formations. Very simply, however, the landmass consists of vast plains in the west and north, and a discontinuous belt of mountains and plateaus in the south and east. The upland and mountainous regions include most of Siberia and extend to the Pacific.

A

Russia’s Natural Regions

Russia can be divided into several broad geographic regions. From west to east they are the Great European Plain; the Ural Mountains; the mountain systems and ranges along much of Russia’s southern border; and the lowlands and uplands of Siberia, including the West Siberian Plain, the Central Siberian Plateau, and the mountain ranges of northeastern Siberia.

A

1

Great European Plain

Most of European Russia is part of a rolling plain that arcs across the continent into Russia, where it widens and has an average elevation of about 200 m (about 600 ft). Over millions of years the actions of streams, winds, and glaciers have deposited nearly horizontal layers of sedimentary rocks onto the plain. In some places, these same actions have eroded the softer sedimentary rocks, leaving the hard igneous and metamorphic layers exposed at the surface. The topography is generally rough in these areas of outcropping.

Some surface features owe their origins to glaciation. Among these features are several areas of glacial deposits, such as the Valday Hills, which lie between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. As the glaciers retreated during the last glacial age, which ended about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, a series of semicircular hills formed at the terminus, or edge, of the glacier. This area, known as a terminal moraine, runs east from the border with Belarus, then north of Moscow to the Arctic coast. For the most part, however, the relief of the Great European Plain is only modest. Much of the northern part of European Russia is very flat and poorly drained, with many swamps and lakes. By contrast, the southern part of European Russia contains rich soils that support most of the region’s agriculture.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain