As the largest country in the world, Russians have the most amount of neighbors, with 14 nations in total sharing a border with them. However, despite its size, it is only the 10th most populous nation with 138 million citizens.
Azerbaijan 284 km, Belarus 959 km, China (southeast) 3,605 km, China (south) 40 km, Estonia 290 km, Finland 1,313 km, Georgia 723 km, Kazakhstan 6,846 km, North Korea 17.5 km, Latvia 292 km, Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast) 227 km, Mongolia 3,441 km, Norway 196 km, Poland (Kaliningrad Oblast) 432 km, Ukraine 1,576 km
I would like to know which are the principal russian business cities.
Thank you very much in advance!
sgannon@casl.umd.edu 14th October 2005
I work at a language research lab that would like to create a web-tool on language using maps. I am doing some research into the interface and I was wondering how much it would cost to licence the flash (?) files from you.
Vladislav 14th June 2005
Russia was partially "put" in Asia by Western Europeans because of snobbishness and age-long mutual hostility. Also Siberia is so big that when you make a map and you want to put the word "Russia" on it so that it would be in the center of the country it will have to be written on top of Siberia, which is in Asia.
81% of the country are Slavs- people who are similar to Serbs albeit w/o the Turkish mixture.
Most people look like any other Europeans. If Russians appears anywhere in Asia, especially in the Far East, people immediately assume that these are Americans and talk to them in English.
Russia has a sizeable Asian population- Tatars, Buryats, etc. These are not ethnically Russian and they have their own "non-independent countries' called republics.
Unlike in the US where Asians ( and everybody else) are immigrants and do not have their "Asian state", the Asians in Russia are living in their own big areas where they have always lived. In Siberia Russians ( read European people) outnumber them 9 to 1. There is little interracial hostility unless these Asians move to Moscow where racism is on the upswing.
Suchita Vemuri Staff Editor 23rd March 2005
The Cold War came about in the wake of World War II and, simply put, was a conflict between groups of nations practicing different ideologies and political systems. There's no simple explanation to the rise of what is being called "terrorism" today, certainly the explanation cannot lie simply in the end to the Cold War. There's political manipulation, the transformation of freedom and 'people's' struggles into terrorism, and, sometimes there's just violence for its own sake! I would agree with Charles that nations - and not only nations, but all community politics - "need enemies" to galvanize (national and sectarian) politics.
Copyright 4th December 2004
Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has undergone a rocky transition toward democracy and a free-market economy. The end of Soviet-era price controls and state-controlled economic planning has created havoc for consumers and for businesses that have suddenly been forced to compete on an open market. Pro-reform President Boris Yeltsin, who led Russia from 1990 to 1999, found that his government was unable to effectively collect taxes, in part because of large-scale embezzlement by corrupt bureaucrats and organized-crime syndicates.
Employees of the government and of many state-run industries now go unpaid for months. Health services have also deteriorated -- the life expectancy of the average Russian has actually declined since the fall of the Soviet Union. Such conditions have created an atmosphere of general social discontent in the new Russia, and some analysts fear that this climate may lead to a return to Communist rule.
Falling standards of living and rampant crime did help Russia's communists regain some political influence by the mid-1990s. Nonetheless, Yeltsin was able to win reelection in July 1996 and to hold onto power until the end of 1999, when he resigned and named Vladimir Putin acting president. Putin, who was elected president in March 2000, has pledged his support for the rule of law and market reforms. However, Western observers have adopted a "wait-and-see" attitude toward the new president, who has been accused of harboring autocratic tendencies.
Also of great concern to "Russia watchers" is the former Soviet Union's enormous nuclear arsenal. Russia has signed pacts to dismantle many of its warheads and has cooperated with the U.S. in monitoring the agreements. At the same time, however, the Russian military has been decimated by budget cuts, and many analysts fear that Russia could become lax in protecting its nuclear stockpile from potential theft by terrorists. Meanwhile, U.S. and European leaders have inched slowly toward agreements that would allow Russia to cooperate on military and security issues with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Another source of tension between the West and Russia is the ongoing war in the secessionist republic of Chechnya. Russian forces in December 1994 invaded Chechnya, which had declared its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. After a year-and-a-half of fighting, a cease fire agreement was signed but the issue of Chechen independence was left unresolved. Fighting flared up again in Chechnya in July 1999 when Islamic militants seized a number of villages in neighboring Dagestan along the Chechen border. Russia the following month began launching air assaults against suspected rebel bases, and in September 1999 Russian troops invaded Chechnya. By February 2000, Groznyk, the Chechen capital, was under Russian control.
Western governments have criticized Russia's campaign in Chechnya, citing reports of human rights abuses in detention camps for Chechen civilians, the bombing of Grozny while civilians were still present, and Russian refusal to allow foreign reporters into the region.
Key Recent Stories:
2000: Russian Submarine Sinks in Barents Sea, Killing All 118 Aboard - A Russian navy nuclear submarine in August sank in the Barents Sea off the northern coast of Russia during a military exercise. The submarine, the Kursk, sank following two explosions that breached its hull, according to officials, and all 118 crew members died. The accident was the worst Russian peacetime naval disaster in history.
Putin Elected Russian President - Acting President Vladimir V. Putin in March won the presidency outright in Russian elections, three months after assuming the post from former President Boris N. Yeltsin.
Russia: Rebels Chased Out of Chechen Capital - Acting President Vladimir Putin in February declared that the Russian military had captured Grozny, the capital of the breakaway republic of Chechnya, from Chechen militants.
1999: Russian President Yeltsin Steps Down; Premier Putin Named Acting President - Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin in December announced his resignation, naming Premier Vladimir Putin acting president. Yeltsin made the unexpected announcement in an address broadcast at noon Moscow time over Russian national television.
Voters Back Centrists in Russian Election - Russian voters favored centrist and pro-government parties over left- and right-wing parties in December elections to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. Incomplete official results projected that the pro-government bloc Unity, backed by Premier Vladimir Putin--together with the centrist coalition Fatherland-All Russia and the pro-government Union of Right-Wing Forces--gained over 44% of the party-list vote.
Russia: Air Force Bombs Chechen Capital - Russian military commanders in October announced that they had established a security zone in the separatist republic of Chechnya, an achievement that they said concluded the first phase of a campaign against Islamic militants in the republic. Russian ground forces in September had entered Chechnya to secure a buffer zone that would prevent Islamic militant incursions into neighboring regions. Chechen militants had seized several villages in the region of Dagestan in August.
Russian President Yeltsin Dismisses Premier - In a move that threatened to plunge Russia into deeper political turmoil, President Boris N. Yeltsin in August 1999 dimissed Premier Sergei Stepashin and named Vladimir Putin, a loyal Yeltsin supporter and 15-year veteran of the Soviet-era KGB intelligence agency, as Stepashin's successor.
Russian Parliament Fails to Impeach Yeltsin - The Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, voted not to launch impeachment proceedings against President Boris N. Yeltsin. Among other charges, members of the Communist Party, which dominated the Duma, had accused Yelstin of conspiring to dissolve the Soviet Union in 1991 and with starting the war in Chechnya. However, the Duma failed to garner the two-thirds majority vote needed to impeach the president.
Russian President Yeltsin Dismisses Premier - President Boris N. Yeltsin dismissed Yevgeny M. Primakov as premier in May 1999, saying that Primakov's political "caution" had left Russia "marking time in the economy" and was "beginning to cause damage." Some observers suggested that Yeltsin had grown suspicious of Primakov's ties to his Communist opponents in the Duma, which, at the time of Primakov's dismissal, was set to begin an impeachment debate on Yeltsin. Yeltsin nominated Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin, a Yeltsin loyalist, to replace Primakov.
1998: Russian Parliament Confirms Primakov as Premier; Communists Named to High-Level Posts - The State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, confirmed a compromise candidate, former Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, as the country's new premier, ending a three-week-long period of political paralysis in the face of a collapsing economy.
1997: Russia: Telecom, Nickel Firms Privatized - Russian business magnates accused the government of favoritism in the privatization of two of the country's largest firms.
Russia Agrees to NATO Expansion...Nuclear Deployment Limited - Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov and Javier Solana Madariaga, secretary general of NATO, reached agreement on a new treaty that would permit NATO to incorporate Central and Eastern European States into the alliance.
Clinton, Yeltsin Meet at Summit in Finland - Yeltsin and U.S. President Clinton sought to reach an accord on the expansion of the NATO into former Soviet-bloc countries in Eastern Europe. Many Russians viewed such expansion as a threat to their security.
Maskhadov Wins Chechen Election - Aslan Maskhadov, the newly elected president of the separatist Russian republic of Chechnya, vowed to fight for full recognition by Russia of Chechnya's independence.
1996: Yeltsin Undergoes Heart Surgery - President Boris N. Yeltsin underwent a multiple- bypass operation.
Yeltsin Fires Russian Security Chief Lebed - Yeltsin dismissed Gen. Aleksandr Lebed, his top security adviser, as a result of a feud with other cabinet ministers. Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov had accused Lebed of plotting a military coup.
Lebed Signs Chechen Accord - Lebed signed an agreement with the commander of Chechen secessionist troops halting the conflict in the Russian region after 21 months.