Russia Overview

by countryaah · Published June 3, 2019 · Updated September 25, 2019

Country Profile

As the the largest country in the world, Russia is located in northern Eurasia. The full name of the country is the Russian Federation. Covering an area of 17,075,400 square kilometers, it is the largest country in the world. It has a population of 145.5 million, with more than 130 nationalities, of which 83% are Russians. Primary ethnic minorities are Tatars, Ukrainian, Chuvash, and so on. Residents are Orthodox. Russian is the official language. The currency is the ruble, and Moscow (Moskva) is the capital.

Russia National Flag

The flag consists of three parallel rectangles, colored, from the top down, white, blue, and red, known as the Pan-Slavic colors.

History Summary

In the 15th century, Ivan III of Russia established a centralized state, the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1861, serfdom was abolished. From the end of the 19th century until the early 20th century, Russia was a militarist, feudal, and imperialist country. On November 7, 1917, it established the world’s first socialist state, with the workers represented by the Soviet. From December 1922 on, the Russian Federation, Transcaucasian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which was later extended to fifteen countries. In August 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved and the Russian Federation became a fully independent state.

Red Square

Red Square is the Russian capital’s famous square in central Moscow. Its total area is 90,000 square meters. After the victory of the 1917 October Revolution, Red Square was where the people celebrated, and also where they assemble and parade. The Lenin mausoleum is in Red Square, in front of the center of the Kremlin palace wall. South of Red Square is the famous Vasily. Pala Ren and Cathedral is north of Red Square, of 19th century red-brick construction, with Russia’s Rose Museum distinctive style.

Kremlin

North of the Moscow River, the Kremlin is located at the center of Moscow and was founded in 1156. The palace of successive Czars, it is now the seat of the top leadership of the Russian Federation. The Kremlin covers about 275,000 square meters and is surrounded by a triangular wall and twenty towers. The coronation of the Virgin Mary was held in the Tsar’s most majestic and impressive Cathedral. The Kremlin is the center of government affairs and activities. The gold and white Georgi Hall is mainly used for meetings with foreign dignitaries. The gold and red Catherine Hall is used primarily for the State Conference. Then gold and green Vladimir for the Office is used for signing ceremonies. The Ivan the Great bell tower, at 81 meters tall, is the tallest building in the Krelmin. It has the world’s largest palace bell, weighing over 200 tons.

Economy and Culture Overview

Russian territory stretches across Asia and Europe, but its population is in concentrated and economically developed areas west of the Ural Mountains. Therefore, it is recognized as a European country. The country’s regions from west to east are, respectively, the European Plain, the Ural Mountains, the West Siberian Plain, the Central Siberian Plateau, the Yablonov Mountains, and the Chersky Mountains.

Russia is a vast country rich in a great variety of natural resources, with large reserves. It has 867,000,000 hectares of forest cover, ranking first in the world. Russia’s timber processing and paper industry is well-developed; its log output ranks first in the world, and a large number of wood products are produced and expored. Natural gas and iron reserves are first in the world. Oil, coal, aluminum, uranium, gold and other reserves are first in the world. Water resources are second in the world.

In most of the high latitude regions in Russia, the temperature is low, with little rainfall, so agricultural development is faced with difficulties. The main crops are wheat, corn, rice, beans, potatoes, flax, sunflower, and sugar beet. As food shortages have affected the development of animal husbandry, each year Russia must import large quantities of meat, eggs, poultry, and milk to meet domestic demand.

Russia has a complete, large-scale industrial system. In the former Soviet Union, the country developed heavy industry, putting manufacturing and metal processing machinery at the core of the economy, with energy, metallurgy, chemical and other industries a military priority. After the Cold War, Russia saw the development of light industry. Textiles, fisheries, and food industries are also developed. Russia has one of the largest fisheries, and has rapidly developed offshore fishing.

During the Soviet era, Russia made great achievements in the aerospace industry. In October 1957, Russia launched the first artificial Earth satellite. On April 12, 1961, the cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin completed the first space flight in human history. Russia has always maintained a very high technical level in space science, launching the most spacecraft per year of any country in the world.

Russian ballet has a unique style and enjoys a high reputation. Famous ballets include “Swan Lake,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Cinderella,” and others.
Russian literature has played an important role in the history of world literature. Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” “Resurrection,” “Anna Karenina,” Ostrovsky’s “How the Steel Was Tempered,” Gorky’s “Mother,” ” Haiyan ,” and Sholokhov’s” Quiet Flows the Don,” are all masterpieces of world literature.

Heavy layer of Lake

The Magee Lake is located in northern Russia on the Barents Sea. With five water points, each floor has a unique quality, color, and biota. The top layer is freshwater, the second layer is mixed into a light layer of water, with jellyfish, shrimp, and crab the main animals here, the middle layer is a salt layer, the the fourth level is the “cherry juice layer,” because it is colored red as a result of some bacteria, and the bottom is a mixed layer, bformed of a mixture of debris and soil, where bacteria survive with no oxygen. Five waters in one lake form a colorful world, a miracle of world geography and biology.

Siberian tundra

Siberia is vast, stretching from the Ural Mountains to the west to the order Strait to the east. To the north, Siberia is bordered by the Arctic Ocean, while to the south is Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and other countries. Because of its high latitude, the continental climate is strongly featured. The Taymyr Peninsula, near the Arctic tundra, has year-round ice, or permafrost. In Yakutsk, in Siberia, low temperatures in winter can reach -67 ℃.

Siberia’s natural conditions are very bad, but the ground is rich in mineral resources. People have also found a number of ancient dead animals preserved by the permafrost.

Lake Baikal

Located in southern Siberia, called the “North Sea” in China, Lake Baikal is the result of crustal faults; it is a tectonic lake. Of all types of lakes, those formed by tectonic crustal fracture are the deepest. Lake Baikal is narrow; it is 635 km long with an average width of 48 km, covering an area of 31,500 square kilometers. Its average depth is 730 meters, and the deepest point is over 1620 meters. It has a water storage capacity of 23,000 cubic km. It drains a total of 336 rivers and coastal lakes.

Lake Baikal is extremely clear, with visibility over 40 meters. The lake has more than 1800 kinds of animals and 600 species of plants, of which three-fourths of the species are native. Lake Baikal is a freshwater lake, but the lake has many downright marine organisms, such as seals, conch, and shrimp.