Russia
Most of the roughly 142 million Russians derive from the Eastern
Slavic family of peoples, whose original homeland was probably
present-day Poland. Russian is the official language of Russia and
is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian
is also the language of such giants of world literature as Pushkin,
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn.
Russia's educational system has produced nearly 100% literacy. About
7 million students attended Russia's 1,090 institutions of higher
education in 2006, but continued reform is critical to producing
students with skills to adapt to a market economy. Because great
emphasis is placed on science and technology in education, Russian
medical, mathematical, scientific, and space and aviation research
is still generally of a high order. The number of doctors in
relation to the population is high by American standards, although
medical care in Russia, even in major cities, is generally far below
Western standards. The unraveling of the Soviet state in its last
decades and the physical and psychological traumas of transition
during the 1990s resulted in a steady decline in the health of the
Russian people. Currently Russia faces a demographic crisis as
births lag far behind deaths. While its population is aging,
skyrocketing deaths of working-age males due to cardiovascular
disease is a major cause of Russia's demographic woes. A rapid
increase in HIV/AIDS infections and tuberculosis compounds the
problem. In 2007, life expectancy at birth was 59 for men and 73 for
women. The large annual excess of deaths over births is expected to
cut Russia's population by 30% over the next 50 years.
The Russian labor force is undergoing tremendous changes. Although
well educated and skilled, it is largely mismatched to the rapidly
changing needs of the Russian economy. Official unemployment has
dropped in recent years to 6.9%, and labor shortages have started to
appear in some high-skilled job markets. Nonetheless, pockets of
high unemployment remain and many Russian workers are underemployed.
Unemployment is highest among women and young people. Following the
1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic dislocation it
engendered, the standard of living fell dramatically. However, real
disposable incomes have doubled since 1999, and experts estimate
that the middle class ranges from one-fifth to one-third of the
population. By the end of the third quarter in 2007, 14.8% of the
population lived below the subsistence level, in contrast to 38.1%
in 1998.
Moscow is Russia's capital and largest city. Moscow is also
increasingly important as an economic and business center; it has
become Russia's principal magnet for foreign investment and business
presence. Its cultural tradition is rich, and there are many museums
devoted to art, literature, music, dance, history, and science, as
well as hundreds of churches and dozens of notable cathedrals.
The second-largest city in Russia is St. Petersburg, which was
established by Peter the Great in 1703 to be the capital of the
Russian Empire as part of his Western-looking reforms. The city was
called Petrograd during World War I and Leningrad after 1924. In
1991, as the result of a city referendum, it was renamed St.
Petersburg. Under the tsars, the city was Russia's cultural,
intellectual, commercial, financial, and industrial center. After
Lenin moved the capital back to Moscow in 1918, the city's political
significance declined, but it remained a cultural, scientific, and
military-industrial center. The Hermitage, formerly the Winter
Palace of the tsars, is one of the world's great fine arts museums.
Russia has an area of about 17 million square kilometers (6.5
million sq. mi.); in geographic terms, this makes Russia the largest
country in the world by more than 2.5 million square miles. But with
a population density of about 22 persons per square mile (9 per sq.
km.), it is sparsely populated, and most of its residents live in
urban areas. |
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Although human experience on the territory of present-day Russia
dates back to Paleolithic times, the first lineal predecessor of the
modern Russian state was founded in 862. The political entity known
as Kievan Rus was established in Kiev in 962 and lasted until the
12th century. In the 10th century, Christianity became the state
religion under Vladimir, who adopted Greek Orthodox rites.
Consequently, Byzantine culture predominated, as is evident in much
of Russia's architectural, musical, and artistic heritage. Over the
next centuries, various invaders assaulted the Kievan state and,
finally, Mongols under Batu Khan destroyed the main population
centers except for Novgorod and Pskov in the 13th century and
prevailed over the region until 1480. Some historians believe that
the Mongol period had a lasting impact on Russian political culture.
In the post-Mongol period, Muscovy gradually became the dominant
principality and was able, through diplomacy and conquest, to
establish suzerainty over European Russia. Ivan III (1462-1505)
referred to his empire as "the Third Rome" and considered it heir to
the Byzantine tradition. Ivan IV (the Terrible) (1530-1584) was the
first Russian ruler to call himself tsar. He pushed Russian eastward
with his conquests but his later reign was marked by the cruelty
that earned him his familiar epithet. He was succeeded by Boris
Godunov, whose reign commenced the so-called Time of Troubles.
Relative stability was achieved when Michael Romanov established the
dynasty that bore his name in 1613.
During the reign of Peter the Great (1689-1725), modernization and
European influences spread in Russia. Peter created Western-style
military forces, subordinated the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy
to the tsar, reformed the entire governmental structure, and
established the beginnings of a Western-style education system. He
moved the capital westward from Moscow to St. Petersburg, his
newly-established city on the Baltic. His introduction of European
customs generated nationalistic resentments in society and spawned
the philosophical rivalry between "Westernizers" and nationalistic "Slavophiles"
that remains a key dynamic of current Russian social and political
thought.
Catherine the Great continued Peter's expansionist policies and
established Russia as a European power. During her reign (1762-96),
power was centralized in the monarchy, and administrative reforms
concentrated great wealth and privilege in the hands of the Russian
nobility. Catherine was also known as an enthusiastic patron of art,
literature and education and for her correspondence with Voltaire
and other Enlightenment figures. Catherine also engaged in a
territorial resettlement of Jews into what became known as "The Pale
of Settlement," where great numbers of Jews were concentrated and
later subject to vicious attacks known as pogroms.
Alexander I (1801-1825) began his reign as a reformer, but after
defeating Napoleon's 1812 attempt to conquer Russia, he became much
more conservative and rolled back many of his early reforms. During
this era, Russia gained control of Georgia and much of the Caucasus.
Throughout the 19th century, the Russian Government sought to
suppress repeated attempts at reform and attempts at liberation by
various national movements, particularly under the reign of Nicholas
I (1825-1855). Its economy failed to compete with those of Western
countries. Russian cities were growing without an industrial base to
generate employment, although emancipation of the serfs in 1861
foreshadowed urbanization and rapid industrialization late in the
century. At the same time, Russia expanded into the rest of the
Caucasus, Central Asia and across Siberia. The port of Vladivostok
was opened on the Pacific coast in 1860. The Trans-Siberian Railroad
opened vast frontiers to development late in the century. In the
19th century, Russian culture flourished as Russian artists made
significant contributions to world literature, visual arts, dance,
and music. The names of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Repin, and
Tchaikovsky became known to the world.
Alexander II (1855-1881), a relatively liberal tsar, emancipated the
serfs. His 1881 assassination, however, prompted the reactionary
rule of Alexander III (1881-1894). At the turn of the century,
imperial decline became evident. Russia was defeated in the
unpopular Russo-Japanese war in 1905. The Russian Revolution of 1905
forced Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917) to grant a constitution and
introduce limited democratic reforms. The government suppressed
opposition and manipulated popular anger into anti-Semitic pogroms.
Attempts at economic change, such as land reform, were incomplete.
1917 Revolution and the U.S.S.R.
The ruinous effects of World War I, combined with internal
pressures, sparked the March 1917 uprising that led Tsar Nicholas II
to abdicate the throne. A provisional government came to power,
headed by Aleksandr Kerenskiy. On November 7, 1917, the Bolshevik
Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized control and established the
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. Civil war broke out in
1918 between Lenin's "Red" army and various "White" forces and
lasted until 1920, when, despite foreign interventions and a war
with Poland, the Bolsheviks triumphed. After the Red army conquered
Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, a new nation,
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), was formed in
1922.
First among its political figures was Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik
Party and head of the first Soviet Government, who died in 1924. In
the late 1920s, Josef Stalin emerged as General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) amidst intra-party
rivalries; he maintained complete control over Soviet domestic and
international policy until his death in 1953. In the 1930s, Stalin
oversaw the forced collectivization of tens of millions of its
citizens in state agricultural and industrial enterprises. Millions
died in the process. Millions more died in political purges, the
vast penal and labor system, and in state-created famines. Initially
allied to Nazi Germany, which resulted in significant territorial
additions on its western border, the U.S.S.R. was attacked by the
Axis on June 22, 1941. Twenty million Soviet citizens died during
World War II in the successful effort to defeat the Axis, in
addition to over two million Soviet Jews who perished in the
Holocaust. After the war, the U.S.S.R. became one of the Permanent
Members of the UN Security Council. In 1949, the U.S.S.R. developed
its own nuclear arsenal.
Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, served as Communist Party
leader until he was ousted in 1964. Aleksey Kosygin became Chairman
of the Council of Ministers, and Leonid Brezhnev was made First
Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee in 1964. In 1971, Brezhnev
rose to become "first among equals" in a collective leadership.
Brezhnev died in 1982 and was succeeded by Yuriy Andropov (1982-84)
and Konstantin Chernenko (1984-85). In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev
became the next (and last) General Secretary of the CPSU. Gorbachev
introduced policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost
(openness). But his efforts to reform the creaky Communist system
from within failed. The people of the Soviet Union were not content
with half-freedoms granted by Moscow; they demanded more and the
system collapsed. Boris Yeltsin was elected the first president of
the Russian Federation in 1991. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus formed
the Commonwealth of Independent States in December 1991. Gorbachev
resigned as Soviet President on December 25, 1991. Eleven days
later, the U.S.S.R. was formally dissolved.
The Russian Federation
After the December 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian
Federation became its successor state, inheriting its permanent seat
on the UN Security Council, as well as the bulk of its foreign
assets and debt. By the fall of 1993, politics in Russia reached a
stalemate between President Yeltsin and the parliament. The
parliament had succeeded in blocking, overturning, or ignoring the
President's initiatives on drafting a new constitution, conducting
new elections, and making further progress on democratic and
economic reforms.
In a dramatic speech in September 1993, President Yeltsin dissolved
the Russian parliament and called for new national elections and a
new constitution. The standoff between the executive branch and
opponents in the legislature turned violent in October after
supporters of the parliament tried to instigate an armed
insurrection. Yeltsin ordered the army to respond with force to
capture the parliament building and crush the insurrection. In
December 1993, voters elected a new parliament and approved a new
constitution that had been drafted by the Yeltsin government.
Yeltsin remained the dominant political figure, although a broad
array of parties, including ultra-nationalists, liberals, agrarians,
and communists, had substantial representation in the parliament and
competed actively in elections at all levels of government.
In late 1994, the Russian security forces launched a brutal
operation in the Republic of Chechnya against rebels who were intent
on separation from Russia. Along with their opponents, Russian
forces committed numerous violations of human rights. The protracted
conflict, which received close scrutiny in the Russian media, raised
serious human rights and humanitarian concerns abroad as well as
within Russia. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to institute a
cease-fire, in August 1996 the Russian and Chechen authorities
negotiated a settlement that resulted in a complete withdrawal of
Russian troops and the holding of elections in January 1997. A peace
treaty was concluded in May 1997. Following a number of terrorist
incidents blamed on Chechen separatists, the Russian government
launched a new military campaign into Chechnya. By spring 2000,
federal forces claimed control over Chechen territory, but fighting
continues as rebel fighters regularly ambush Russian forces in the
region. Throughout 2002 and 2003, the ability of Chechen separatists
to battle the Russian forces waned but they claimed responsibility
for numerous terrorist acts. In 2005 and 2006, key separatist
leaders were killed by Russian forces. The situation stabilized
after Ramzan Kadyrov was confirmed as Chechen President, although
small-scale fighting continues between rebel forces and local law
enforcement.
On December 31, 1999 Boris Yeltsin resigned, and Vladimir Putin was
named Acting President. In March 2000, he won election in his own
right as Russia's second president with 53% of the vote. Putin moved
quickly to reassert Moscow's control over the regions, whose
governors had confidently ignored edicts from Boris Yeltsin. He sent
his own "plenipotentiary representatives" (commonly called ‘polpred'
in Russian) to ensure that Moscow's policies were followed in
recalcitrant regions and republics. He won enactment of liberal
economic reforms that rescued a faltering economy and stopped a
spiral of hyperinflation. Putin achieved wide popularity by
stabilizing the government, especially in marked contrast to what
many Russians saw as the chaos of the latter Yeltsin years. The
economy grew both because of rising oil prices and in part because
Putin was able to achieve reforms in banking, labor, and private
property. During this time, Russia also moved closer to the U.S.,
especially after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In
2002, the NATO-Russia Council was established, giving Russia a voice
in NATO discussions. |
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