Russia

I

Introduction

Russia, general name for the independent, federal republic in eastern Europe and western and northern Asia officially called the Russian Federation (Russian, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya); historically the term is used to refer to the Russian Empire (862-1917), which covered a much larger area than that of present-day Russia. From 1922 until December 25, 1991, the Russian Federation formed part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; or Soviet Union), when it was known formally as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The term Russian Federation (or RSFSR), however, originally applied to the state proclaimed by the Bolsheviks in November 1917 as the territorial successor to the whole of the Russian Empire. It was only on the formation of the Soviet Union in 1922, following the decision by the Bolsheviks to respect the self-determination of the empire’s many nations, that the Russian Federation became one of the USSR’s 15 constituent republics—albeit the largest and most influential, accounting for more than three quarters of its area and more than half of its population.

The Russian Federation today comprises 86 territorial units: 21 republics, 7 autonomous okrugs (areas), 7 krays (territories), 48 oblasts (regions), 1 autonomous oblast, and 2 federal cities (Moscow and St Petersburg) with oblast status. In geographical extent Russia is the largest country in the world. Spanning two continents—Europe and Asia—it has a total area of 17,075,200 sq km (6,592,770 sq mi), and a total land area of 16,381,390 sq km (6,324,890 sq mi), equivalent to about one ninth of the world’s land area. North to south the country extends for more than 4,000 km (2,400 mi) from the archipelago of Franz Josef Land (in Russian, Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa) in the Arctic Ocean to the Caucasus Mountains. From west to east the maximum extent is almost 10,000 km (6,200 mi) from the Kaliningrad exclave on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea to Ratmanov (also known as Big Diomede) Island in the Bering Strait that separates eastern Siberian Russia from Alaska. Moscow (in Russian, Moskva) is the capital of Russia.

Russia’s 19,913 km (12,373 mi) of land boundaries abut on more countries than those of any other nation. On the north it is bordered by a number of arms of the Arctic Ocean comprising, west to east: the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas. On the east it is bordered by several arms of the Pacific Ocean, comprising, north to south: the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, and the seas of Okhotsk and Japan (East Sea). In the extreme south-east, Russia borders the north-eastern tip of North Korea. On the south it is bordered, east to west, by China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Black Sea. On the south-west it is bordered by Ukraine, and on the west it is bordered, south to north, by Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, the Gulf of Finland, Finland, and Norway. The Kaliningrad oblast (formerly Königsberg in East Prussia) is separated from the rest of Russia by Belarus and Lithuania. It is bordered by the latter on the north and east, by Poland on the south, and the Baltic Sea on the west.

The principal island possessions of Russia lie in Arctic and Pacific waters. Farthest north, in the Arctic Ocean, is the Franz Josef Land archipelago, consisting of about 100 islands. The other main Arctic possessions, from west to east, include the two islands that constitute Novaya Zemlya, Vaygach Island, the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, the New Siberian Islands (Novosibirskiye Ostrova), and Wrangel Island. Between these principal island possessions are numerous smaller islands and island chains. In the Pacific Ocean are the Kuril Islands, which extend in an arc south-west from the southern tip of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula to Japan, and the large island of Sakhalin, which separates the seas of Okhotsk and Japan. The southernmost islands of the Kuril chain are claimed by Japan.

Russia is a member of the UN, having inherited the USSR’s seat, and is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is also a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the voluntary association of former Soviet republics that was formed on the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991; 12 of the 15 former republics became members. In contrast to most other member states, Russia views the CIS as a vehicle for closer economic, political, and military integration, but its efforts to this end have met with little success. On May 23, 1997, Russia and Belarus signed a charter forming a union involving cooperation in a variety of spheres, including foreign policy, economic reform, energy, and transport.

II

Land and Resources

Russia can be divided into three broad geographical regions: European Russia, consisting of the territory lying west of the Ural Mountains; Siberia, stretching east from the Urals almost to the Pacific Ocean; and Far Eastern Russia (or the Russian Far East), including the extreme south-east and the Pacific coastal fringe. The majority of the country lies north of latitude 50° N, and a sizeable portion lies north of the Arctic Circle. In terms of climate and vegetation it therefore lies, broadly, within the Temperate and Polar zones. However, its sheer size means that Russia contains a wide variety of biomes, including the steppes of the south, the deserts of Central Asian Russia, the taiga of the subarctic regions, and the tundra of the polar north. The country’s agricultural resource base is limited by climate and, to a lesser degree, soils. The vastness of Russia’s territory and its varied geological formations, however, provide a rich mineral resource base that is unmatched by any other country in the world.

Both the forest-steppe and the steppe have fertile soils and together form a region, known as the black-earth belt, that is the agricultural heartland of Russia. The forest-steppe has black chernozem soils that are high in humus (organic material) content and have the right balance of nutrients for the cultivation of most crops. The forest-steppe has a better moisture supply than the steppe during the growing season, and consequently is the best agricultural area of Russia. The soils of the steppe, known as brown-steppe soils, are not quite as rich in humus as the chernozems to the north, but are very high in the minerals that are the main source of plant nutrients.

Russia’s geology is extremely complex and its varied landscapes reflect the impact of different physical processes, containing features that have evolved separately during different geological epochs. Very simply, the republic consists, in the west and north, of the world’s largest plain, fringed, on the south and east, by a discontinuous belt of mountains and plateaux. The upland and mountain regions include most of Siberia and extend to the margins of the Pacific.

A

European Plain

European Russia is primarily a rolling plain with an average elevation of about 180 m (590 ft). The terrain has been formed by millions of years of water, wind, and glacial action on nearly horizontal strata (layers) of sedimentary rocks. In some places, notably the north-western border region with Finland, the softer sedimentary rocks have been eroded away, exposing the underlying basement complex of hard igneous and metamorphic rocks. The topography is generally mountainous in these areas of outcropping, particularly in the north, where a maximum elevation of 1,191 m (3,906 ft) is reached in the Khibiny Mountains of the central Kola Peninsula. Otherwise, the relief of the European Plain, with minor exceptions, is modest.

Other surface features owe their origins to glaciation during the Pleistocene ice age. Among these are several broad marshy areas, such as the Meshchera Lowland south-east of Moscow along the Oka River. This flat, poorly drained area was a lake when glacial ice blocked the streams that now partly drain it. The retreat of the glaciers, beginning about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, left behind a terminal moraine that runs east from the border with Belarus, then north of Moscow to the Arctic coast west of the Pechora River. The region to the north of this boundary is poorly drained and has numerous lakes and swamps.

B

Ural Mountains

The European Plain terminates in the east at the Ural Mountains, a series of mountain ranges that were formed about 250 million years ago when, as a result of continental drift, Siberia collided with Europe during the formation of the ancient continent of Laurasia (see Plate Tectonics). Millennia of erosion have worn much of the mountains away and, today, the Urals are topographically unimpressive. The average elevation is only about 600 m (1,970 ft); Gora Narodnaya (“People’s Mountain”) in the north, is the highest point, at 1,894 m (6,214 ft) above sea level. The Urals are, however, important because they contain a wide variety of mineral deposits, including mineral fuels, iron ore, non-ferrous metals, and non-metallic minerals.