Russia
Russian Federative Republic Российская Федеративная Республика Rossijskaja Federativnaja Respublika | |
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 Flag
 Coat of arms
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Anthem: Земли родной бескрайни дали The native land's vasts are boundless | |
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National seal  | |
| Capital | Saint Petersburg |
| Largest city | Moscow |
| Official languages | Russian |
| Demonym(s) | Russian |
| Government | Federal parliamentary republic |
| Roman Kosmynin | |
| Vladislav Nevzorov | |
| Igor Ivankov | |
| Mikhail Volodin | |
| Yuri Borisov | |
| Legislature | Federal Assembly |
| Federal Council | |
| State Duma | |
| History | |
| 879 | |
| 1283 | |
| 1547 | |
| 1721 | |
• Monarchy abolished | March 1923 |
| September 1925 | |
| April 1948 | |
| July 1951 | |
| March 1960 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 8,353,541 km2 (3,225,320 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• 2020 estimate | 172,098,246 |
| GDP (PPP) | 2018 estimate |
• Total | $9.94 trillion |
| GDP (nominal) | 2018 estimate |
• Total | $4.62 trillion |
| Currency | Russian ruble (₽) (RUS) |
| Time zone | UTC+2 to UTC+12 |
| Date format | dd/mm/yyy |
| Driving side | right |
| ISO 3166 code | RU |
Russia (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossija), officially the Russian Federative Republic (Russian: Российская Федеративная Республика, tr. Rossijskaja Federativnaja Respublika) is a country in the northern region of Eurasia, spanning across eastern Europe, the Caucasus region, and North and Central Asia. At over 8.3 million square kilometers (3.2 million square miles), it is the second-largest country in the world after China, as well as one of the most populous with 172 million people. Saint Petersburg is the capital, while Moscow is the largest city in Russia and in Europe.
The history of Russian statehood begins in the 9th century AD, when Kievan Rus', the first East Slavic state emerged in Eastern Europe under the Nordic prince Rurik. Vikings from Sweden arrived in modern-day Russia near what is now Novgorod, before traveling south to Kiev, and established what would become Kievan Rus'. Under the prince Vladimir the Red Sun, the Kievan Rus adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined the Russian culture for the next millennium. By 1099, the Rus had collapsed into a number of smaller states, most of which were conquered by the Mongol Empire in the mid-13th century. The Mongol rule eventually fell and the Grand Duchy of Moscow started to reunite the Russian lands in the 15th century. Through expansion by conquest, annexation and exploration, the duchy rose to become the Russian Empire, which was the third-largest empire in the human history behind the Mongol and British empires. After the 1923 Russian Revolution, the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, was overthrown and a Russian Federation was established. The Russian Revolution was followed by a period of instability known as New Time of Troubles. During this time, several formations claimed to be the government of all of Russia, such as Omsk-based Russian State, before the governent formed by the Russian Constituent Assembly reclaimed its power over Russian lands. At the same time, states like Poland gained their independence.
The democratic government was overthrown during the Candlemas Coup of 1931 by an alliance led by Russian All-Military Union, an organization of former Omsk government supporters, and consisting of various right-wing forces that included Black Hundredist movements like Union of the Russian People and Pavel Gorgulov's proto-Derzhavist Green Shirts. In 1933, Russia entered the First Great War on the side of Germany and Japan, where it contributed to Germany's war effort against France and the United Kingdom in Europe as well as against the Ottoman Empire in the Caucasus and Middle East. Russia's military involvement was limited, with providing raw materials for the Germany economy being its main contribution. After the war, severe government corruption, poverty, and split of the elites were the main reasons for the April 14 revolution in 1948, after which a civilian government was installed and a democratic country of the Russian Federation re-emerged. However, the Russian Derzhavist Party quickly became the most powerful political party in the country and started dominating Russia's political life. It became the sole legal political party in 1951. The Derzhavist rule was characterized by totalitarianism, complete militarization of society, ethnic cleansing, severe political repressions, and expansion of the country's war industry to almost twice the previous scale. The Russian Derzhava was one of the Axis powers in the Second Great War. Some of the most destructive battles in history, including Battles of Kiev, Smolensk, and Moscow, took place in Russia. After the fall of the Derzhavists, the Allied powers partitioned the former Russian empire into numerous countries, while a rump state centered in Moscow remained as the Russian Empire's successor state. The new state was renamed the Russian Federative Republic and adopted a new constitution in 1960, and has been governed as a federal parliamentary republic. Russia became economically integrated with the rest of Europe by the 1970s and was a founding member of Northern Treaty Organization and the European Community.
Russia is a high-income economy with a high standard of living, having the largest economy in Europe and one of the largest in the world, with a GDP of KS$4.62 trillion. While it officially has renounced war, the Russian Self-Defense Forces are the de-facto military forces of Russia and is the largest military in Europe and among the largest in the world. The country has universal healthcare, higher education, and an extensive welfare state. Russia is considered to be a potential superpower. Russia is a member of the European Community, the NTO, the League of Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, the WTO, among other international organizations.
Etymology
The name Russia is derived from Kievan Rus', a medieval state populated primarily by the East Slavs. However, the proper name became more prominent in later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants "Русская земля" (Russkaya zemlya), which can be translated as "Russian land". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography. The name Rus' itself comes from the early medieval Rus' people, a group of Norse merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea and founded a state centered on Novgorod that later became Kievan Rus'.
A Medieval Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia, which was used as one of several designations for East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox regions, and commonly as a designation for the lands of Rus'. The current name of the country, Россия (Rossiya), comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Rus', Ρωσσία Rossía – spelled Ρωσία (Rosía pronounced [roˈsia]) in Modern Greek.
The standard way to refer to the citizens of Russia is "Russians" in English. There are two words in Russian which are commonly translated into English as "Russians" – one is "русские" (russkiye), which most often refers to ethnic Russians – and the other is "россияне" (rossiyane), which refers to citizens of Russia, regardless of ethnicity.
History
Prehistory and origin
Kievan Rus' and the Grand Duchy of Moscow
Russian Tsardom and Empire
Russia in the "long twentieth century"
The Russian Revolution refers to the the March Revolution, when Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor, was overthrown, the November Revolution, when the government of the Russian Republic was replaced with a military dictatorship, and the period between them.
Russian Revolution
Ever since the 1905 Russian Revolution, Russian political life was largely determined by the confrontation of the interests of the Russian Emperor and the general populace. The Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, mostly consisted of major landowners and businessmen as they were the most influential bulk of electorate (i.e. one vote of a landowner was equated to as much as 674 votes of workers during the 1918 elections) and had little power in the governing process: although no law could be made without the Duma's assent, neither could the Duma pass laws without the approval of the noble-dominated State Council (half of which was to be appointed directly by the Tsar), and the Tsar himself retained a veto.
For these reasons, the Duma represented the interests of the economic elite rather than the ordinary Russian population, which strengthened the tensions between the government and the people. The major industrial cities had the lowest support of the Tsar, and they saw many protests and demonstrations during the early 1920s. Nicholas II is known for his inconsistent political decisions, and this was the primary reason why he lost support of the Duma after introducing the taxes for strengthening the military in 1922, thus lowering the profits for landowners and businessmen. The Duma had its term ended in 1923, when the 1923 elections were supposed to take place.
However, it was evident for the Emperor that he had little support from any class of the society, therefore he attempted to postpone the elections indefinitely. However, the liberal and socialist political movements started protesting throughout the country, the estimated number of protesters varies from 450,000 on the lower end to as many as 1 million on the higher end. A Russian general Vasily Gurko told the Emperor he was unable to disperse the demonstrations. Nicholas himself was heading towards Petrograd from Mogilev, though he was unable to reach the capital as the railway was blocked by the rioters.
By the evening of March 22, 1923, the protesters had gained control of the Winter Palace, the imperial residence, and the Duma officially proclaimed the resignation of the Emperor. The following morning Nicholas II survived an assassination attempt and had to flee to the United Kingdom. The Russian Republic was proclaimed, and the Russian Constitution was adopted on March 30, 1923.
Immediately after the March Revolution, a dual power between the Provisional Government (Russian: временное правительство, vremennoye pravitel'stvo, lit. 'temporary government') and the Soviets (workers' councils) emerged in Russia. The Provisional Government consisted mostly of the representative of numerous democratic parties in the country, most notably the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, as well as Mensheviks, Progressists, Octobrists, as well as several independent ministers. However, due to the government's strongly pronounced political factionalism, this government was unable to make decisive policy decisions, which left many issues unresolved.
The popular organizations which came into existence during the Russian Revolution were called "Councils (Soviets) of Workmen's and Soldiers' Representatives". These bodies were supposed to hold things together under the provisional government until the election of a constituent assembly could take place; in a sense, they were vigilance committees designed to guard against counter-revolution. The Petrograd Soviet of 4,000 members was the most important of these, on account of its position in the capital and its influence over the garrison.
However, as Russia's economy was severely damaged by the last years of the monarchy and the new government could not make any real changes to the situation, the Soviets themselves, although originally supposed to serve as the guardians of the revolution, were slowly starting to radicalize and turn against the government.
The Russian military, however, was generally right-wing and supported nationalist, conservative and to a lesser extent even reactionary policies. Many highly ranked military men, including the future dictator Kolchak, were strongly opposed to the policies of the government, claiming that it desires to crush the national unity of Russia and weaken its influence. This attitude to the government was not helped by the fact that the first Minister of War and Navy, Alexander Guchkov, an Octobrist, was replaced by a left-wing politician Alexander Kerensky, which strengthened the tensions between the authorities and the military.
By November, the Provisional Government had virtually no support from the Russian army and civil unrest was rapidly growing. The newly formed democratic government was unable to solve many of the country's urgent problems, and Russia's economy was on a great decline.
New Time of Troubles and White movement
Russian Federation
Derzhavist Russia
Partition and Democratic Republic
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Following the defeat and signing of the Instruments of Surrender of Derzhavist Russia on 5 September 1957, the Allied Control Council was established in the territories of the former Russian empire. Central Russia became known as the Joint Mandate, as it was overseen by forces from Germany, Britain, and Sierra, and was recognized as the core territory of the Russian people. The Council granted independence to historically separate nations that were not part of the traditional ethnic Russian homeland, including territories in the Caucasus, the Far East, and Siberia, while the core Russian territory in Europe, the Joint Mandate, was placed under direct Allied control in early 1958 until a new Russian government could be established.
The May–June 1958 Moscow Summit took place with Allied representatives meeting with over 3,000 Russian public figures from all backgrounds, including scholars, academics, lawyers, industrialists and businessmen, financiers, military officers, and others, many of them having been exiles during the derzhavist regime. The result was the drafting of a new basic constitution and law for a Russian Democratic Republic, which rejected the derzhavist regime as a criminal state and established a new Republic with no continuity with the previous system, but still as a continuation of the historic Russian state with its history going back to the medieval Rus'. Therefore the Russian Democratic Republic asserted its sovereignty as the representative of the unified Russian people. The ideology of the new state was based on three major themes:
- The historic Rus' civilization, including the Kievan Rus', Grand Duchy of Moscow, and the Tsardom of Russia.
- The Russian resistance to the derzhavist movement, as well as Westernizing reformers in the Russian Empire, such as Peter the Great, Alexander II, and the Decembrists.
- Its own traditions since 1960.
Completely new executive, legislative, and judicial structures were set up in 1958 and 1959 for the state, and the new Russian government was granted the "authority of a sovereign country" and officially began to operate in July 1959. Notably, under the new constitution Russia dropped its territorial claims to the newly independent states across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, and even went so far as renouncing the right of the state to use offensive warfare. The new constitution was formally promulgated by the provisional State Duma in March 1960, and in June the Moscow–Berlin convention was signed, by which the occupation of Russia by the Allied powers ended officially and they formally recognized the Russian Democratic Republic as a sovereign state. Incidentally the postwar borders of Russia approximated the borders of the Tsardom of Russia around 1600, before the start of major imperial expansion. The capital was moved from Moscow to Saint Petersburg because the former had been extensively damaged, and although it was intended as a provisional capital, Saint Petersburg eventually became the permanent Russian capital. Historian Artemiy Krylov-Davydov has also claimed that for new Russian government, locating the capital in St. Petersburg also bore symbolic value, representing Russia turning its face to Europe once again after Derzhavists have previously moved the capital to Moscow.
The Allied troops remained in Russia now as members of the Northern Treaty Organization, which Russia joined as a full member of the alliance when it was created in April 1960. Nikolai Kozyrev became the acting prime minister of Russia that year as the Allied powers handed over political authority to his government, and he led the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Kadets, to win the majority of seats in the 1961 Russian legislative election, the nation's first free elections in decades. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia came in second, followed by the Russian Communist Party. The Kadets and the Liberal Democrats agreed on foreign policy and mainly differentiated on social policy, with the former being socially conservative and the latter liberal, while far-left parties such as the Communists, and later the Labor Party, preferred to distance Russia from the Anglo-American powers.
Cold War
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The premiership of Nikolai Kozyrev from 1960 to 1976 laid the foundation for the Russian recovery from the devastation of the war. Between 1957 and 1960 the economy was in a state of almost total collapse, unemployment was extremely high, and a black market was flourishing as living standards plummeted for most Russians. The Allies grew tired of spending massive sums of money on economic support to Russia so that it could pay for food imports, as its own agricultural production had fallen to almost nothing, and so in 1960 they assisted Kozyrev's plan to restore Russian manufacturing, agriculture, and resource extraction. He established a "socially conscience free market economy" in stages lasting 3–4 years, with the aim of gradually decreasing government intervention and labor regulations as the country developed the necessary preconditions for a true market economy. A currency reform in February 1960 exchanged the pre-war overinflated rubles for new ruble notes on a one-to-one basis for the first 70 but on a 6.5-to-100 basis for all over 70, thereby preventing hyperinflation in the new economy. Restrictions on bank accounts were such that the public was encouraged to invest money in local businesses and production.
A massive economic recovery occurred in the 1960s. Russian industry rebounded as demand for Russian raw materials and certain manufactured goods was high in western and eastern Europe, while Russia imported finished products from western manufacturers, linking Russia to the rest of Europe. Arable land not being used was offered by the government to farmers or prospective farmers at a discount to put make it productive. The agriculture industry received subsidies until it could sustain itself, with food production growing to such a degree that by 1968 Russia was producing more food than it needed for its own population. Wages were generally kept as low as possible while still providing the working and middle class people with a standard of living comparable to the rest of Europe. Low wages, hard work, and pursuit of profit, with limited government intervention and support where it was seen as necessary, became the basis for the Russian "economic miracle" of the 1960s. The consequences of these reforms was increasing prosperity that surpassed the pre-war standard of living for most of the population, along with the rise of several large corporations that together monopolized their industry. The high annual growth of the Russian economy, providing the average Russian with an adequate standard of living and a job, led Kozyrev's reforms to be emulated to some extent in other countries, such as Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere.
In 1964 Kozyrev successfully pushed for Russian rearmament, leading to the establishment of the Russian Self-Defense Forces. Although Russia gave up its right to go to war offensively, it created a de facto military for the purpose of defending the homeland. As the Cold War was underway by this point, the creation of the RSDF was supported by the Western powers. The People's Republic of China was seen as increasing its Communist influence over the myriad of new countries that appeared on the map of Eurasia after Great War II and Russia was seen by the West as a necessary bulwark to keep Chinese influence in northern and central Asia in check. Russia also had a long border that needed to be protected. Russian intelligence agencies were also established. Like the state itself, the RSDF and intelligence services had no continuity with the derzhavist regime and took inspiration from Russia's past history of military reforms, with a strong system of civilian control. The plan met opposition from the British, but German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard promised Kozyrev in October 1963 that he would get the British to agree to Russian rearmament by telling them that German and other NTO forces in Russia were also implicitly there to prevent a return of Russian imperialism. Kozyrev also pledged that his government will respect the Russian Constitution which stated that Russia renounced the usage of war in anything other than defense, and that the NTO general staff would work closely with the Russian military command. After overcoming British opposition, the Russian Self-Defense Forces were officially created in February 1964.
Russia normalized its relations with the newly independent states around it and became a candidate to join the European Economic Community. As a member of the NTO and now the EEC, Russia was closely integrated with the West politically and economically. Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, and the Baltic states pursued the same course at the same time as did Russia. Relations with China reached a low point, as the PRC under Mao Zedong and then Zhou Zhiyong saw Russia as an extension of its adversaries in the West, and also supported pro-Chinese Communist parties in Ussuria, Tuva, Buryatia, and other newly independent countries. Because of this there were significant tensions between Russia and China, and Western propaganda at the time pointed out the contrast between Russia's economic miracle compared to the food shortages and poverty in Communist China during the 1960s. In December 1963, the Belarusian and Ukrainian State Treaty was signed during a summit meeting in Sumy, Ukraine, between the leaders of the three East Slavic states, which formally recognized their sovereignty and independence by Russia.
Under the leadership of the Kadets and Prime Minister Kozyrev, Russian society went through a period of de-derzhavisation to remove the conception of Russia as the "autocratic Eurasian empire" that had been the dominant view of Russian conservative thinking, with the goal of making Russia a "democratic, national, non-imperial country that accepts the separate identity of its neighbors and is integrated with the European community of nations," as the Kadet electoral platform of 1961 described. Kozyrev saw his role as leading Russia's national transformation from empire to nation state, which he described as being comparable to Süleyman Shefik Erzurumlu transforming the former Ottoman Empire into the modern Anatolian Republic. Kozyrev intended to create a parliamentary system that ended the Russian tradition of a strong autocratic ruler, but despite this he made important decisions himself and delegated tasks to his cabinet, though his premiership would still be seen as creating the framework for the development of Russian democracy. The Kadets at the time supported moderate conservative policies and favored a close alliance between Russia and the West, because Western integration and accepting the independence of Ukraine and Belarus was seen by the party as necessary preconditions for Russia's transformation. The opposition to the Kadets came primarily came from the left, led by the Russian Communist Party, which had gained credibility due to its prominent role in the anti-derzhavist resistance, and to a much lesser extent from the far-right Russian National Salvation Front. The Communists opposed the presence of Allied troops in Russia and the alliance with the Western capitalist powers, which they also saw as an ongoing infringement on Russian sovereignty.
The early 1970s saw the annual growth rate of the Russian economy slow down significantly. This, combined with the de-derzhavisation of society, led to an increase in the activity of left-wing groups and movements, especially as the Vietnam War and the Colombia War intensified, which were seen by much of Russian society in a negative light, as an act of aggression by Russia's Anglo-American allies. Protests against the Western intervention in these conflicts happened outside of the foreign embassies in Saint Petersburg, leading to the creation of a student movement. Although it started as an anti-war movement, it quickly began supporting other social issues in Russia, such as feminism, increased local government, and criticisms of the Orthodox Church's influence on politics. The Kadets and their voter base were conservative and largely opposed the movement, with some of the protests in 1972 and 1973 resulting in violence between the protestors and the police. By 1974 the protests stopped, but the Russian Communist Party gained more support, being on par with the Agrarian Party and slightly behind the Liberal Democrats.
The cultural changes of the early 1970s were not enough to prevent the Kadets maintaining their majority in the State Duma during the 1976 election. However, when Kozyrev stepped down after the election because of old age and health issues, his successor Sergey Neverovsky wanted to put a focus on increasing arts and culture in Russia.
Neverovsky also organized the first major reform of the Self-Defense Forces in 1979. He appointed Defense Minister Georgy Ivashov, who wanted to create the concept of a "citizen-soldier" in Russian society, while conscription was forbidden during peacetime by the pacifist constitution. Most notably, the pay and living conditions for rank-and-file soldiers were improved to attract more recruits, and a different selection process was adopted for service academies to prevent the officer corps from being too elitist and aristocratic, as it had been in the recent past. A new code of military laws was adopted to curb corruption and other abuses, while a Military Police was created for the first time to enforce it. These reforms represented a break from the past, and the Neverovsky administration wanted to create a new kind of Russian military, more in line with those of western Europe.
Contemporary Russia
Geography, climate, and environment
Government and politics
Russia has been a federal parliamentary republic since the enactment of its current constitution in 1960. The president of Russia is a symbol of the state and national unity with a ceremonial role and some reserve powers, while most of the executive power is vested in the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is appointed by the majority party or coalition in the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly, the country's bicameral legislature. The State Duma is elected by a popular vote in single-member districts using first-past-the-post voting. The upper house, the Federal Council, consists of senators, with each of the country's regions sending two senators. The judicial branch consists of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.
Administrative divisions
The Russian Democratic Republic is composed of TBD federal subjects (Russian: субъекты федерации).
Political parties
Law enforcement and crime
Foreign relations
Military
Economy
Energy
Demographics
Ethnic groups
Languages
Religion
Health
Education
Culture
Architecture
Literature
Philosophy
Music
Theatre
Visual arts
Cinema and television
Dance
Cuisine
Sports
See also
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This page uses material from the Wikipedia page Russia, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors). |
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