|RNational holiday:|N Independence Day, June 12, celebrating the first presidential elections.
|RNature and climate:|N Most of Russia are lowland plains stretching from the Baltic Sea to Yenisey River. These plains are divided in a western and an eastern part by the Ural Mountains that also form the border between Europe and Asia. Highest peak of the Ural Mountains reach 1894 m.a.s.l.
The European plains are grassy in the south and forested in the north.
Between the rivers Yenisey and Lena is the central Siberian highland. In the southern part of the plateau are mighty mountain chains forming natural borders to Mongolia and China. Highest peak is Gora Belukha reaching 4506 m.a.s.l. In these mountains is Lake Baykal, the biggest lake in Asia and the world's deepest, 1620 m, lake located.
The area east of Lena River is very mountainous with an average elevation between 2500 and 3000 m. Highest peak, Klyuchevskaja Sopka on kamchatka Peninsula, reaches 4750 m.a.s.l.
Tundra covers the extreme northern parts of of the Asian part. South of the tundra are vast forests and deserts in southwest.
Russia have the two biggest lakes of Europe, Ladoga and Onega and many mighty rivers. In the European part of Russia most rivers run from north to south. Volga is the biggest river in Europe.
East of Ural Mountains most rivers run from south to north.
There are about 17 000 different species of plants, about half of the plants in the world, growing wild in Russia.
The fauna is very much like western Europe. As vast areas has been untouched by human hand many animal species have been able to survive.
Polar climate in the extreme north of Siberia the average temperature between -20 and -40°C in January and about +5°C in July.
The southern parts of Siberia have an average temperature of 0°C in January and 20°C in July.
The European Russia have an average temperature in January between -10°C in northeast to 0°C in the south and in July between +10°C in the north to 20°C in the south.
Percipitation about 700 mm in the whole country.
|RPeople:|N 83% Russians, 4% Tatars, 3% Ukrainians and more than 120 different ethnic groups of which more than 20 have populations over one million.
About 80% of the population live in the European part.
|REconomy:|N 22% of the labour force is occupied in agriculture, 29% in industry and 26% in services.
Russia is, of course, one of the economic superpowers of the world.
Though a high degree of the labour force is occupied in agriculture, the country is highly industrialized and in many fields world leading. So is scientific research a major industry and about one sixth of the world's scientists work in Russia.
Most important crops are grain, cotton, sugar beats, potatoes, vegetables and sunflowers.
Stockraizing, fishing and forestry are very extensive.
Russia have virtually every mineral and have, for instance, the world's largest reserves of oil and natural gas.
Most important industries are metal working, heavy and light machinery, chemicals, forestry, paper and wood, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, and as stated above, scientific research.
Virtually everything possible to produce is produced in Russia.
During the days of the Soviet Union the economy was completely planned by the state which led to inefficiency. In the late 1980:s and the 1990:s this inefficiency led to shortage of food many years and in the 1990:s often to a situation when the stateowned companies had no cash to pay the workers their wages.
|RHistory:|N There are rich remnants of very old cultures in Russia. One of the best known is the Kiik-Kuba Cave at the Crimean peninsula from before 35 000BC. The first farmers that settled seemed to come from the south at about 3000 BC.
In the last centennial BC the Russians seems to have had some cultural exchange with central Europe, Italy and the Assyrians, and in the 5th century AD the Huns invaded from the east and the Slavs from the west.
In the 6th century AD the Swedes started to colonize the north western part of Russia and from about 800 the Swedes founded trading stations and towns along the Russian rivers. In the 9th century Swedes created a country on Russian soil that gradually expanded towards the south. The first capital was Novgorod and later Kiev.
During the 10th and 11th centuries the realm expanded and comprised land from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and the political centre was moved from Kiev to Moscow. In the 12th century Russia was split up in a number of principalities that could not resist the Mongols under Djinghis Khan that 1237 to 1240 conquered most of Russia.
Not until 1480 the last Mongols were thrown out of Russia and the country was once again united. In 1547 Ivan IV the Terrible adopted the title czar (from latin Ceasar) and under his reign vast areas were conquered and the exploration of Sibiria started. Ivan's son Fjodor, czar 1589 to 1598, was the last Russian ruler of the old Swedish dynasty and when he died a period of disorder started. This lasted until 1613 when Mikael Romanov was elected czar. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia until 1917.
Russia then had a time of great prosperity when it was greatly expanded, first during Peter I the Great in the early 18th century and later under Catherine II the Great in the late 18th century.
In the early 19th century Russia succeeded to stop Napoleon and after that the country was expanded to the east. Alaska was colonized, but finally sold to the USA in 1867.
However internally there was little progress during the 19th century and in World War I the czarist corruption and inefficiency was revealed.
In 1917 strikes broke out and the defection of the Petrograd garrison started a revolution. The czar was forced to abdicate and republic was declared.
After four years of bloody civil war the Soviet Union was established in 1921 and a golden age in Soviet history started.
After the October revolution in 1917 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin took a strong lead in politics and his new economic policy that allowed some role for the market forces and private ownership led to a burst of economic growth. Art, literature and science also flourished in an atmosphere of revolutionary enthusiasm.
Lenin died in 1924 and in a power struggle Josef Stalin outmanoeuvred the contestants and seized power.
During the 1920:s the Soviet Union was established as a police state were millions of people were condemned to internal exile.
In 1929 agriculture was forcibly collectivized. Millions of unwilling peasants were executed while millions of Russians died of starvation.
Stalin had an obsession of eliminating all possible rivals for power. This led to summary executions of about seven million people and imprisonment of more than 12 million people.
In 1939 the Hitler-Stalin Pact was surprisingly signed and the two countries divided Poland, but in 1941 Hitler turned against his ally and invaded the Soviet Union. In 1942 the German attack was stopped at Stalingrad and the Soviet army started the counterattack.
By the end of World War II in 1945 the Soviet army had conquered/liberated all of eastern Europe and in the years that followed Stalin helped local communist parties in all occupied countries to seize power. All these countries became Soviet satellite states.
When Stalin died in 1953 he was succeeded by a collegial leadership out of which Nikita Khrushchev finally emerged as the winner.
Khrushchev created the Comecon as an answer to the Western European EG and EFTA and the Warzaw Pact Treaty Organization as a counterweight to NATO.
The Soviet Union became one of the world's two superpowers, the USA being the other one. The cold war between these two powers started immediately after WWII and Khrushchev at start eased the tensions a bit. But in 1956 the Soviet Union put a brutal end to a Hungarian uprising and in 1962, when Khrushchev tried to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba the whole world was at tense, very close to World War III when the USA threatened to sink the Soviet ships with the missiles.
However, Khrushchev had the ships turn in the very last moment and world peace was saved.
In 1964 Khrushchev was forced to retire and was succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin.
Under this era the Soviet foreign policy became more aggressive, as in 1968 when the Prague Spring in Czeckoslovakia was brutally stopped. The Soviet Union also intervened more in the Third World, supporting leftist regimes and guerillas in Asia, Africa and South America. And in 1979 Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan in an attempt to help the communists there to stay in power. But the Soviet troops learned the same lesson that the US army had learned earlier in Vietnam: You can't beat a people and finally in 1989 the Soviet troops left the mess in Afghanistan.
At home censorship was tightened and dissidents sent to mental institutions. When Brezhnev died died in 1982 he was succeeded by the elderly Yuri Andropov who died after only 15 months in office and in turn was succeeded by the elderly Konstantin Chernenko who died after only 13 months in office.
Finally, in 1985, the "youngster" Mikhail Gorbachev became party secretary, thus starting a new era in Soviet history.
Gorbachev introduced two Russian words, glasnost - meaning openness, and perestrojka - meaning reconstruction, to the Russian people and the whole world.
And he promoted young technocrats rather than old party professionals.
This started a revolution in the Soviet Union. The press could openly discuss politics and the people were forced to take responsibility for their own lives in a way they were not used to. the responsibility for economic decisions were given to industrial and agricultural managers.
However the economic benefits of this policy did not come as fast as expected, the inefficiency of the old system burdened economy and from 1989 and on there were numerous of strikes all over the country as the shortages of food and consumer goods worsened and when the companies had no money to pay wages.
Besides these economic problems Gorbachev also faced a number of ethnic riots within the Soviet Union. There were Muslim riots in Kazakhstan, Christian riots in Armenia, warfare between Uzbeks and Turks in Uzbekhistan, to mention only a few of the most violent.
On top of that, the three Baltic republics saw a chance to regain independence. In 1989 Lithaunia proclaimed independence and the satellite states of Eastern Europe one after another threw off the communistic yoke. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and the Warzaw Pact was dissolved.
Besides this Gorbachev opened up towards the rest of the world and talks on arms reductions with the USA were successful.
In 1989 Gorbachev was elected president of the USSR and competitive elections for the parliament were held for the first time since 1917.
Gorbachev's main competitor, Boris Yeltsin, was in 1991 elected president in the Russian federation and soon afterwards Yeltsin left the communist party, asking for faster and wider reforms.
In August 1991 Gorbachev Gorbachev was ousted in a coupe by some hard-core communists, but thanks to Boris Yeltsin and the people of Moscow, the coup failed and Gorbachev was reinstalled as president of the USSR. Now Gorbachev left the party and all activities were suspended. On December 26 the Soviet Union was officially dissolved. It was followed by the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, with all but four of the former Soviet republics.
In early 1992 a number of economic reforms were launched in Russia that led to an economic downturn.
There were also tensions between Russia and Ukraine about the large Black Sea fleet, and later tension internally in Russia when separatists in Tzechenia started a bloody uprising.
