Source: MAPS IN MINUTES™ © RH Publications (1997)

A country in northern Asia and eastern Europe. Its borders touch Norway and Finland in the north, Poland in the north-west, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine in the west, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and Korea in the south; its maritime borders meet the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, the inland Caspian Sea, the Arctic, and the Pacific. It is separated from Alaska in the north-east by the Bering Strait.

Physical

The largest country in the world, Russia extends from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the peaks of Kamchatka in the east, from the frozen islands of Novaya Zemlya in the north to the warm Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Pamirs and other ranges bordering China and Mongolia in the south. The north–south Ural Mountains divide European from Asian Russia. The plateaus and plains of Siberia make up most of the area to the east. To the west of the Urals extends the North European Plain. Great rivers include the Volga flowing south to the Caspian Sea, the Ob, Yenisei, and Lena draining north into the Arctic Ocean, and the Amur entering the Pacific Ocean to the east. East of the Lena is an area of mountains stretching from the Verkhoyanska to the Anadyr Range. Lake Baikal is Eurasia’s largest, and the world’s deepest, lake. Across the country extend belts of tundra (in the far north), forest, steppe, and fertile areas.

Economy

Following the collapse of communism and the end of the Soviet Union, Russia embarked on a difficult transition to a free-market economy by freeing prices and introducing measures for privatization and land reform. The 1990s saw chronic food shortages, hyperinflation, and a financial crisis, but more recent years have seen economic growth. Russia has rich mineral resources, potentially of enormous wealth, with huge deposits of coal, iron ore, gold, platinum, copper, diamonds, and other metals; and, in Siberia, the world’s largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas, which constitute leading exports and have been used as diplomatic weapons in recent years. Other exports include such metals as steel and aluminium, wood and wood products, chemicals, and manufactured goods. These heavy industries dominate the economy.

The principal agricultural crops are grain, sunflower seeds, sugar beet, fruit, and vegetables.

History

In the 9th century the house of Rurik began to dominate the eastern Slavs, establishing the first all-Russian state with its capital at Kiev. This powerful state accepted Christianity in about 985. However, decline had set in long before the Mongols established their control over most of European Russia in the 13th century.

Following the collapse of Mongol rule in the late 14th century, the principality of Muscovy emerged as the pre-eminent state. Gradually it absorbed formerly independent principalities, such as Novgorod (1478), forming in the process an autocratic, centralized Russian state. Ivan IV (the Terrible) was the first Muscovite ruler to assume the title of Tsar (Emperor) of all Russia (1547). During his reign the state continued its expansion to the south and into Siberia. After his death a period of confusion followed as boyar families challenged the power of Theodore I (ruled 1584–98) and Boris Godunov. During the upheavals of the Time of Troubles (1604–13), there were several rival candidates to the throne which ended with the restoration of firm rule by Michael Romanov. The Romanov dynasty resumed the process of territorial expansion, and in 1649 established peasant serfdom. In the early 18th century Peter I transformed the old Muscovite state into a partially Westernized empire, stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific.

From this time onward Russia played a major role in European affairs. Under the empresses Elizabeth I and Catherine II, it came to dominate Poland, and won a series of victories against the Ottoman Turks. In 1798–99 the Russians joined Great Britain, Austria, Naples, Portugal, and the Ottoman empire to fight against Napoleon. The Treaty of Tilsit (1807) enabled it to acquire Finland from Sweden, while the early Russo-Turkish Wars led to territorial acquisitions in Bessarabia and the Caucasus. Following Napoleon’s defeat, the Treaty of Vienna (1815) confirmed Russia and Austria as the leading powers on the continent of Europe. Attempts at liberal reform by the Decembrists were ruthlessly suppressed, and Russia helped Austria to quell Hungarian nationalist aspirations in the Revolutions of 1848. Rivalry of interests, especially in south-east Europe, between Russia and the Western powers led to the Crimean War. Serfdom was abolished in 1861, and attempts at changes in local government, the judicial system, and education were partially successful, though they fell short of the demands made by the Populists and other radical reform groups. In the late 19th century Russian expansionism, curtailed by the Congress of Berlin, led to its abandonment of the Three Emperors’ League and, later, to a Triple Entente with Britain and France (1907). Defeat in the unpopular Russo-Japanese War led to the Russian Revolution of 1905. A Duma (Parliament) was established, and its Prime Minister, Stolypin, attempted a partial agrarian reform. The beginning of the 20th century saw a rapid growth in Russian industry, mainly financed by foreign capital. It was among the urban concentration of industrial workers that the leftist Social Democratic Party won support, although it split after 1903 into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Support for Balkan nationalism led Russia into World War I. The hardship which the war brought on the people was increased by the inefficient government of Nicholas II. A series of revolts culminating in the Russian Revolution of 1917 led to the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty and to the Russian Civil War, after which the Soviet Union was established in 1922.

The Russian republic was by far the largest of the Soviet republics, with 70% of the population. In 1978 it received a new constitution as the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR), consisting of six territories, 49 provinces, five autonomous regions, and 16 autonomous republics. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union maintained firm control over the federation until the late 1980s, when pressures developed for greater independence. In 1990 a new constitution created a Russian Congress of People’s Republics and a Russian Supreme Soviet, of which Boris Yeltsin was elected Chairman on a ticket of multiparty democracy and economic reform. In June 1991 he was elected President of the Federation by popular vote. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the resignation of President Gorbachev in December, Russia became an independent sovereign state. It took the leading role in forming a new body, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which most of the former Soviet republics joined. Problems facing Russia in the early 1990s included tensions between autonomous republics, ethnic conflicts, the re-deployment of military and naval forces and equipment, and of nuclear weapons, and a rapidly collapsing economy. Following endorsement of Yeltsin’s economic reforms in a national referendum in 1993, communists staged an unsuccessful coup against his administration. Yeltsin suspended parliament and ruled by presidential decree. In December 1993, elections to the Federal Assembly saw the rise of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia under its nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In 1994 serious unrest broke out in the Caucasian region of Chechnya, where Muslim Chechens declared an independent republic. Although invading Russian forces devastated the capital, Grozny, resistance continued; despite sporadic peace talks the status of Chechnya has not been resolved. In the mid-1990s, Yeltsin’s position was further weakened by failing health and by the Communist Party’s victory in parliamentary elections in 1995. Although he was re-elected President in 1996, the financial crisis of 1998 led to further power struggles between Yeltsin and parliament as a result of which Yeltsin sacked the entire government four times. Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on the last day of 1999, Vladimir Putin becoming Acting President. Putin was elected President in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. Limited to two consecutive terms, he stood down in favour of Dmitri Medvedev in 2008, but became Prime Minister and was widely seen as still the dominant figure in Russia. He was re-elected President in 2012. His rule has been marked by increased authoritarianism and rehabilitation of the Soviet period at home together with renewed assertiveness abroad. In 2008 Russia fought a short war with Georgia which left it in control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and in 2014 it responded to instability in Ukraine by annexing Crimea and backing separatist militias in the east of that country. The following year Russia provided significant military support to President Assad of Syria and was the leading player in the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union. Putin increased his criticism of NATO countries, having re-established Russia’s position as a major world power.