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