Russia
Russia - more fully known as the Russian Federation (Russian
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- is a vast country in Eastern Europe and northern Asia.
Understand
Russia has both extensive Arctic Ocean and North Pacific Ocean
coastlines, as well as smaller coastlines on the Baltic, Black
and Caspian Seas. Russia is bordered by Norway and Finland to
the northwest, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine
to the west, Georgia and Azerbaijan to the southwest, Kazakhstan,
China and Mongolia to the south, and China and North Korea to
the southeast. The American state of Alaska lies opposite the
easternmost point of Russia across the Bering Strait.
Russia also administers the exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast on
the Baltic coast between Poland and Lithuania.
Russia is the largest country in the world by far; spanning
twelve time zones, its territory covers nearly twice as much
of the earth as that of the next largest country, Canada. Despite
its massive size, much of the country lacks proper soils and
climates (either too cold or too dry) for agriculture. Instead
it has huge reserves of some of the world's most important resources
(oil, gas, coal, platinum, gold, chrome, asbestos). Mount Elbrus
(Gora El'brus), at 5,633 m, is Europe's, and Russia's, tallest
peak.
History
Russia was first formed as a political nation by the tsar Peter
the Great, who ruled until 1725. The Russian Empire was established
in 1721, and the three hundred year chronicle of the Romanovs
came into fruition. Peter the Great was one of Russia's most
charismatic and forceful leaders, and laid the foundations of
a new political culture, trying to westernize the nation, moving
the capital from the old, quasi-medieval city of Moscow to the
new capital of Saint Petersburg, which would remain the capital
until 1918. The Russian Empire reached its peak during the late
18th and early 19th centuries, producing many colorful figures
such as Catherine the Great, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. The sharp
divide between rulers and the ruled became dreadfully obvious
in the nineteenth century, and the botched attempts of the tsars
to tidy this up ended in failure. Russia was technologically,
politically, and culturally far behind the rest of Europe, and
this would have tragic results for tsar Nicholas II and the
Russian Empire in 1917.
World War I strained Imperial Russia's governmental and social
institutions to the breaking point, allowing the seizure of
power by the Bolshevik Party and the formation of the USSR.
The brutal rule of Josef Stalin (1924-53) strengthened Russian
dominance of the Soviet Union. The Soviet economy continued
to grow at high rates under Malenkov and Khrushchev, and political
and social controls were loosened. The Soviet Union eventually
reached its peak and became stagnant under Leonid Brezhnev,
causing a crisis that would continue 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
and its neighboring republics.
Cities
Here is a representative sample of nine Russian cities with
their Anglicized and Russian Cyrillic names:
-
The Hermitage Museum in St. PetersburgMoscow
— Russia's gargantuan capital is one of the world's greatest
cities and has endless attractions to offer an adventurous
visitor
-
Irkutsk — the world's favorite Siberian
city, located within an hour of Lake Baikal on the Trans-Siberian
Railway
-
Kazan — the world's capital of Tatar
culture is an attractive city in the heart of the Volga Region
with an impressive kremlin
-
Nizhny Novgorod — often overlooked despite
being one of the largest cities in Russia, Nizhny Novgorod
is well worth a visit for its kremlin, Sakharov museum, and
nearby Makaryev Monastery
-
Saint Petersburg Russia's cultural and former
political capital is home to the Hermitage, one of the world's
best museums, while the city center is a living open air museum
in its own right, making this city one of the world's top
travel destinations
-
Sochi — Russia's favorite Black Sea beach
resort has been largely unknown to foreigners, but that is
set to change in a major way when it hosts the 2014 Winter
Olympic Games
-
Vladivostok — often referred to (somewhat
ironically) as "Russia's San Francisco," full of
hilly streets and battleships, this is Russia's principal
Pacific city and the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway
-
Volgograd—, formerly Stalingrad, the
scene of perhaps the deciding battle of World War Two, and
now home to a massive war memorial
-
Yekaterinburg— the center of the Urals
region and one of Russia's principal cultural centers is a
good stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway and an arrival point
for visitors to the Urals
