Overview of Russia

COUNTRY: Russia

HEADLINE: Overview

The largest country in the world, Russia spans most of the Asian continent, fronting the Arctic and Pacific oceans to its north and east and bordering 13 countries. Its continental climate is marked by extremes, with very cold temperatures in the north and more temperate readings in the south. The average January temperature in Moscow, the capital, is 15 F. Russia has a multi-ethnic population of about 146 million people, of which ethnic Russians account for 80%, Tatars 4%, Ukrainians 3%, and Chuvash 1%. Within Russia there are also hundreds of recognized and more obscure nationalities, most living in their own territories. The official language is Russian, but many other languages are in daily use. The major religion is Christianity the Russian Orthodox Church is the largest denomination.

As early as the 5th century ethnic Slavs began migrating from the west into Russia. Rus, the first Russian state, was founded in the 9th century by Scandinavians in what is now Ukraine. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, the Tatars, a Turkic group, overran the country and helped to shape the Russian language and character. The Russian empire started to expand under the Romanov dynasty in 1613 and assumed most of its vast dimensions by the end of the 19th century. Autocratic czarist rule came to an end in 1917, when disaffected soldiers and workers under the extremist Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin revolted. After several years of civil war and territorial reorganization, Russia expanded outward to create the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin came to power after the death of Lenin in 1924 and, until his death in 1953, instituted widespread campaigns to centralize Soviet power, including forced industrialization, collectivization, and the brutal repression of real and imagined political enemies. During World War II Soviet losses reached into the tens of millions as Russia fought off an attack by Nazi Germany. By the time the cold war began in 1947, the Soviet Union had become the dominant power in Europe. Under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the mid-1980s, a thaw began in relations between the superpowers and within Soviet society itself, leading to the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991, when a feeble military putsch failed. Nationality conflicts, exemplified by the war in Chechnya, and economic confusion have since plagued the newly democratic, federative Russian state, which has faltered on its way to revamping an ossified command economy to capitalism, a competitive system deemed evil under decades of communist rule. An early advocate of democratic reforms, President Boris Yeltsin alienated most of his liberal supporters because of his shift to center nationalist policies and semi-autocratic rule. The ailing head of state was returned to power in anxiously watched presidential elections in July 1996.

Although the Russian economy nearly collapsed on its way to a market system, for the most part privatization has happened quickly, affecting over half of large-scale industries and agriculture. Russia has immense natural resources, including gas, oil, precious metals, and timber, as well as a strong engineering and scientific workforce. Despite these inherent strengths, the government is forced to subsidize aging and inefficient industries whose workers are largely underemployed. In addition, Russia lacks the right kind of legal system to adequately ensure that trade deals and property rights are respected. The economy has also suffered from the flight of capital as most Russian companies seek to store their assets in foreign banks. Moreover, the rise of gangsterism and crime has increased the cost of doing business in Russia. Russia's largest trading partner is Germany, but imports and exports are also conducted with China, Japan, the United States, Italy, and Britain. The government is committed to economic reform and with help from international lenders devised a strict 1995 budget designed to reduce inflation and increase foreign investment.

[Sources: Europa World Year Book; The Hutchinson Dictionary of World History; Political Handbook of the World; The World Factbook; World Population Prospects; World Reference Atlas]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998

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