Russia
From ArticleWorld
Russia is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of both Europe and Asia. With an area of 17,075,200 square kilometers, it is the largest country in the world by land mass, covering almost twice the territory of the next-largest country, Canada. It ranks as the world's eighth largest population.
Russia shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from NW to SE): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It is also close to the United States, Canada, Armenia, Iran, Turkey, and Japan across stretches of water.
Formerly the dominant republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia is now an independent country and an influential member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, since the Union's dissolution in December 1991. During the Soviet era, Russia was officially called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Russia is considered the Soviet Union's successor state in diplomatic matters.
Most of the area, population, and industrial production of the Soviet Union, then one of the world's two superpowers, lies in Russia. After the breakup of the USSR, Russia's global role was extremely diminished compared to that of the former Soviet Union. In October 2005, the federal statistics agency reported that Russia's population has shrunk by more than half a million people dropping to 143 million, although Russia remains the second country in the world by the number of immigrants from abroad.
Geography and climate
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Siberia
Kamchatka The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the super continent of Eurasia. Although it contains a large portion of the world's Arctic and sub-Arctic areas, and therefore has far less population, economic activity, and physical variety per unit area than most countries, the great area south of these still accommodates a great variety of landscapes and climates. Most of Russia is in zones of a continental and Arctic climate.
Russia is the coldest country in the world. The mid-annual temperature is -5.5°C (22°F). For comparison, the mid-annual temperature in Iceland is 1.2°C (34°F) and in Sweden is 4°C (39°F), although the variety of climates within Russia makes such comparison somewhat misleading.
Most of the land consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and very heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. The permafrost occupies more than half of territory of Russia. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Russia's and Europe's highest point at 5,633 m / 17,605 ft) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The more central Ural Mountains, a north-south range that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia, is also notable.
Russia has a very extensive coastline of over 37,000 kilometers (23,000 mi) along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as more or less inland seas such as the Baltic, Black and Caspian seas. Some smaller bodies of water are part of the open oceans; the Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are part of the Arctic, whereas the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan belong to the Pacific Ocean.
Demographics
Despite its comparatively high population, Russia has a low average population density due to its abundance in size. Population is densest in the European part of Russia, in the Ural Mountains area, and in the south-western parts of Siberia; the south-eastern part of Siberia that meets the Pacific Ocean, known as the Russian Far East, is hardly populated, with its southern part being densest.
The Russian Federation is home to as many as 150 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. As of the Russian Census (2002), 79.8% of the population is ethnically Russian, 3.8% Tatar, 2% Ukrainian, 1.2% Bashkiria, 1.1% Chuvash, 0.9% Chechen, 0.8% Armenian.
The remaining 10.3% includes those who did not specify their ethnicity as well as (in alphabetical order) Avers, Azerbaijanis, Belarusian’s, Burials, Chinese, Evens, Georgians, Germans, Greeks, Inrushes, Inuit, Jews, Kalmyk’s, Karelia’s, Kazakhs, Koreans, Maris, Moravians, Nemeses, Ossetia’s, Poles, Tuvin’s, Admits, Uzbeks, Yakutsk, and others.
Nearly all of these groups live compactly in their respective regions; Russians are the only people that are significantly represented in every region of the country.
Languages
The Russian language is the only official state language, but the individual republics have often made their native languages co-official next to the Russian language. Cyrillic alphabet is the only official script, which means that these languages must be written solely in Cyrillic in official texts.
Religion
The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant Christian religion in the Federation. Islam is the second most widespread religion. Other religions include various Protestant churches , Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Buddhism. Induction into religion takes place primarily along the ethnic lines. Ethnic Russians are mainly Orthodox, whereas most people of Turkic and Caucasian extraction are Muslim.