| Repeated devastating defeats
of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities
of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the 300-year old Romanov
Dynasty. The Communists under Vladimir LENIN seized power soon after and formed
the USSR. The brutal rule of Josef STALIN (1928-53) strengthened Russian dominance
of the Soviet Union at a cost of tens of millions of lives. The Soviet economy
and society stagnated in the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail
GORBACHEV (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring)
in an attempt to modernize Communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released
forces that by December 1991 splintered the USSR into 15 independent republics.
Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political
system and market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic
controls of the Communist period. A determined guerrilla conflict still plagues
Russia in Chechnya. |
| Border
countries: 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 North Korea 19 km Latvia 217 km Lithuania (Kaliningrad
Oblast) 227 km Mongolia 3,485 km Norway 196 km Poland (Kaliningrad
Oblast) 206 km Ukraine 1,576 km Coast
line: 37,653 km Airports: Moscow St
Petersburg |
Area: total: 17,075,200
sq km water: 79,400 sq km land: 16,995,800 sq km Population:
144,526,278 (July 2003 est.)
Language: Russian 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 |