Language: Russian
Currency: Ruble (RUB)
Calling code: +7
Russia, in the long form the Russian Federation, is a
transcontinental federal state, the largest state on the planet,
straddling Northern Asia (80% of its area) and Europe (20%).
From
west to east, its territory extends from the Baltic Sea (Kaliningrad
exclave) to the Bering Strait (Chukotka Autonomous district) over more
than 6,600 kilometers, with an area of 17,234,033 km2, or 11.5% of the
land surface. Due to this extent, Russia experiences a variety of
climates ranging from the humid subtropical climate on the shores of the
Black Sea to much colder climates in the tundra zone bordering the
Arctic Circle, as well as in Siberia, passing through the arid and
semi-arid areas of the Ryn desert and the Eurasian steppe to the south.
The majority of the Russian territory is characterized by a continental
climate with cold and snowy winters and is occupied by the taiga.
The Russian population is estimated at almost 146 million
inhabitants in 2021, which makes it the ninth most populous country on
the planet. 78% of its inhabitants live in European Russia. Today's
Russia is a federation made up of 89 entities, the "subjects of the
Federation", with variable political and economic autonomy.
After
the fall of Kievan Rus' and its various principalities (originally the
modern states of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine) in the thirteenth
century, the grand principality of Moscow unifies several neighboring
territories and becomes the tsarat of Russia in the sixteenth century,
founded by Ivan the Terrible. The country expanded rapidly by conquering
from the seventeenth century part of Eastern Europe, Northern Europe,
the Caucasus, as well as with the conquest of Siberia to the Pacific
Ocean. In 1721, Tsar Peter I the Great established the Russian Empire,
the third largest empire in history, which became a major power in
relations between European states. In some conquered regions, the
gradual takeover of control over indigenous populations is accompanied
by a settlement colonization (in particular via deportations) and a
forced acculturation (russification) from the seventeenth century to the
twentieth century.
The Russian revolution, following the First
World War, led to the fall of the imperial dynasty in March 1917, then
to the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin. In
1922, the Bolsheviks established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) including Russia and neighboring territories previously conquered
under the Empire.
After the Second World War, the USSR became one
of the two superpowers of the Cold War, spearhead of communism against
the capitalist world led by the United States, then challenged by Mao's
China from the 1960s. The USSR developed nuclear weapons in 1949, took a
lead in the conquest of space by sending the first animal into space
(1957) then the first human being (1961) and became involved in numerous
conflicts in order to maintain and expand its influence, especially in
the Vietnam War. In 1979, it engages directly in a war in Afghanistan,
but it is forced to evacuate in 1988, a failure which is one of the
causes of its collapse in 1991.
With the breakup of the USSR in
1991, the Russian Federation declares itself a continuation state of the
latter in international institutions, in particular the permanent seat
on the United Nations Security Council. It also assumes the financial
liabilities of the USSR and takes over the Soviet nuclear weapons.
Russia is trying to maintain its influence by creating the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS) which brings together ten of the states
formerly under Soviet control. Russia then adopted a market economy and
a pluralist parliamentary regime. Since the resignation of the first
president, Boris Yeltsin, in 1999, Russian political life has been
dominated by Vladimir Putin, often called an authoritarian leader and
accused of human rights violations, as well as corruption and
interference.
Aspiring to integrate into globalization, Russia is
part of the BRICS + (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt,
United Arab Emirates, Iran and Ethiopia) It also considers itself as a
bridge between Europe and Asia. In 2019, Russia is the eleventh world
economic power in terms of nominal GDP and the sixth in purchasing power
parity.
Vladivostok is a major port city in the
Far East
Volgograd - a city on
the Volga, formerly known as Tsaritsyn and Stalingrad
Yekaterinburg - the capital of the
Urals, formerly known as Sverdlovsk
Kazan
is a city with a thousand-year history, the capital of Tatarstan
Kaliningrad - the capital of the
Kaliningrad region, the former Königsberg
Nizhny Novgorod is
an important industrial and transport city, formerly Gorky, located at
the confluence of the Oka River with the Volga.
Novosibirsk is a huge Siberian city.
Science city, industrial, economic and transport giant
Yakutsk is the capital of the Republic of
Sakha (Yakutia).
Northwestern Federal District (Leningrad, Novgorod, Pskov, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Kaliningrad, Murmansk regions, Karelia, Komi and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug) - here are the "northern capital" of Russia St. Petersburg, the ancient Russian cities of Veliky Novgorod, Pskov, port Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, two largest freshwater lakes of Europe - Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega, as well as Kizhi, Valaam Monastery and other monuments of northern Russia.
Central (Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Kostroma, Moscow, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, Tula and Yaroslavl regions) - here are the capital of Russia Moscow, also such cities: Vladimir, Ryazan, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tver, Tula and others rich in historical monuments Ancient Rus'.
Chernozemye (Bryansk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk, Orel and Tambov regions). The only city with a population of more than a million people is Voronezh, about half a million are Lipetsk and Kursk.
South (Volgograd, Astrakhan, Rostov Region, Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories, Adygea, Kalmykia and the North Caucasus. This also includes Crimea.) Here is a very diverse ethnic composition of the population. Hot and dry summer attracts vacationers to the beaches of the Black and Azov Seas. Sufficiently developed tourist infrastructure. The most significant resort cities: Sochi, Yalta, Gelendzhik, Feodosia, Anapa, Evpatoria, Yeysk.
Volga (Kirov Oblast, the Republic of Mari El, Bashkortostan, Mordovia, Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg, Penza, Perm Kray, Samara, Saratov regions, the Republic of Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Ulyanovsk region and Chuvashia). Large cities (over 500 thousand people): Volgograd, Astrakhan, Kazan, Izhevsk, Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Ulyanovsk.
Ural (Kurgan Oblast, Tyumen Oblast, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Yugra), Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Sverdlovsk Oblast and Chelyabinsk Oblast) is a region located on the border of Europe and Asia. Here are the major centers of heavy industry in Russia. The largest million-plus cities: Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Perm. With a population of about half a million - Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Tagil.
Siberia (Altai Republic, Altai Krai, Buryatia, Zabaykalsky Krai, Irkutsk Oblast, Kemerovo Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Kray, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tomsk Oblast, Tuva Republic, Republic of Khakassia). A huge region, with an area of about about 10,000,000 km² (larger than Canada). Million-plus cities: Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk. The largest cities: Tyumen, Barnaul, Irkutsk, Novokuznetsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Ulan-Ude. Most of Siberia has a sharply continental climate with extremely cold winters. Baikal is located in eastern Siberia - a huge, and the deepest lake on the planet, with incredibly clear water.
Far East (Amur Region, Jewish Autonomous Region, Kamchatka Territory, Magadan Region, Primorsky Territory, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Sakhalin Region, Khabarovsk Territory, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug) is a beautiful mountainous country, the most remote region of Russia from Moscow, quite recommended for traveling from - for the extraordinary nature, although difficult to reach. The largest cities with a population of more than half a million people are Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Cities with a population of 200-300 thousand people - Yakutsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Blagoveshchensk. Winters are cold here, but summers can be much hotter than you imagined.
Russia is a huge country, and it has a large number of attractions
for every taste.
Historical and architectural monuments suffered
greatly during the years of Soviet rule, during the war, and then during
the uncontrolled post-Soviet urban development. As a result, Russia has
lost almost all of its urban ensembles. There is only one city left in
the whole country that was not very affected by the late perestroika and
demolitions — St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg and its surroundings
contain dozens of compositional and palace ensembles of the 18th and
19th centuries, dozens of first—class museums, as well as a huge number
of various things - from a large number of beautiful bridges to the
largest collection of industrial architecture in Russia. St. Petersburg
is the only major city in Russia that has managed to preserve the
atmosphere, and therefore it is not at all surprising that it has become
Russia's number one attraction. Most foreign tourists go there.
Moscow is not only the capital of Russia, but also the second largest
city in terms of attractions. Unlike St. Petersburg, founded in 1703 and
sometimes, especially in the center, giving the impression of a museum
city, the history of Moscow dates back 850 years, the city developed
spontaneously, something was built, something was demolished, and as a
result, monuments of almost all eras have been preserved in Moscow.
Everyone knows the Moscow Kremlin, Red Square or St. Basil's Cathedral.
But Moscow is also, say, VDNKH, Moscow City, Shukhov Tower,
Kolomenskoye, the Moscow Metro itself or 7 high-rise buildings of the
Stalin era. It is the center of the cultural and sports life of the
country, the main museums, theaters are located here, musical concerts
and sporting events are held. Moscow is the largest transport hub in
Russia, one of the largest transport hubs in Europe, the city is served
by 4 airports, 10 railway stations; almost all types of transport are
represented in the capital — from buses, trams, electric buses, metro
(including and two ring lines), the MCC and the MCD (city trains) to
taxis, monorails and cable cars, relative to the rest of Russia, bicycle
infrastructure and mobile modes of transport are also developed —
carsharing, electric scooters.
There are very few historical and
architectural monuments in Russia before the 17th century, and all of
them are counted. The oldest city in Russia is Derbent, where the
fortress was built gradually, starting from the fifth century. Only a
few monuments of the Golden Horde have been preserved, the main ones are
the complex in Bolgar, the tower in Yelabuga, as well as a mosque and
two mausoleums in Kasimov. The Kaliningrad Region is a special region
that belonged to Germany before 1945. Many German medieval castles have
been preserved there, although mostly in poor condition. Russian Russian
architecture should first of all be viewed in Veliky Novgorod, Pskov,
the cities of the Golden Ring, Ryazan and Smolensk, as well as in the
Russian North — Vologda, Kargopol, Veliky Ustyug, Solikamsk. A typical
genre of Russian defense architecture is the Kremlin. For example, they
are in Novgorod, Pskov, Moscow, Smolensk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Tula,
Astrakhan and Tobolsk. Monasteries were also fortresses until the 17th
century. The most famous of them are the Trinity—Sergius Lavra in
Sergiev Posad, Kirillo-Belozersky in Kirillov and Solovetsky on Solovki.
Well, to look at the monuments of ancient Russian civil architecture —
the chambers — you need to go to Pskov or Gorokhovets.
In the
18th and 19th centuries, rich merchant cities appeared, where urban
architecture arose: manors, public buildings, churches. This environment
suffered greatly in the future, but in many places it was partially
preserved. For the best samples, go to Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and
Yekaterinburg, as well as to county towns like Yelabuga and Yelets. A
lot of 20th century architecture has been preserved, but you have to
choose a first-class one from it. So, the best selection of
constructivist architecture has been preserved in Moscow, and, for
example, you have to go to Tomsk to get wooden Art Nouveau. Staliance is
ubiquitous in Russia, but the most integral and colorful ensembles have
been preserved in St. Petersburg and Volgograd, and on a smaller scale
(but equally integral) in industrial cities such as Magnitogorsk and
Nizhny Tagil. Vyborg and Sortavala have a lot of high-quality pre-war
Finnish architecture, and the historical mosques of Kazan and Buddhist
temples of Buryatia and the Trans-Baikal Territory will give you the
opportunity to better understand the culture of the peoples of Russia.
It is difficult to imagine Russia without monuments of wooden
architecture. In many villages of the Russian North there are no stone
or brick buildings at all. Most of the monuments — churches, chapels,
huts, crosses — are located in the Arkhangelsk region, but the most
famous — the Kizhi triple churchyard — is located in Karelia. There are
cities — Vologda, Tyumen, Tomsk, Irkutsk — where in the center there are
still entire districts built up with wooden mansions, and every second
of them is an architectural monument. The land in the center is
expensive and needs to be built, and the tree burns well, so hurry up
while there is still something left.
Large memorials are
dedicated to major historical events: on Kulikovo field, on Borodino
field near Mozhaisk — the Patriotic War of 1812, near St. Petersburg, in
Volgograd and in Prokhorovka near Belgorod — the key events of the Great
Patriotic War.
There is no tradition in Russia of preserving
industrial heritage and even more so of turning it into museums and
tourist attractions. At the first opportunity, the historic buildings of
factory workshops are demolished, narrow-gauge railways are dismantled
for scrap, and the canals themselves become unusable. It was only in the
last few years, and only in the capitals, that the trend began to
convert industrial architectural monuments into office lofts instead of
demolition. But even in this situation, Russia still has something to
look at — the industrial architecture of St. Petersburg, the Moscow
region and the Urals, the Alapaevskaya narrow-gauge railway or the water
systems of the north-west of Russia. It is this layer of Russian culture
that is being destroyed the fastest — hurry up.
Russia occupies a
huge territory, and its nature is exceptionally diverse, although for
the most part the most interesting places are difficult to reach and
require multi-day hikes or even special expeditions. Beach holidays are
possible on the Black, Azov, Baltic and Japanese Seas, but they do not
have a very good price /quality ratio — neighbors are often cheaper and
better. But the possibilities for outdoor activities are absolutely
limitless. Karelia with its lakes and rapids is popular for water
tourism and just for a vacation in nature. If you want to go to the
mountains, the Western Caucasus, Altai and Sayan Mountains are at your
service. Lake Baikal, despite its growing popularity, is still a rather
exotic vacation destination, and no one has left there dissatisfied yet.
If you need exotic and don't mind the money — there are volcanoes of
Kamchatka, Tuva or the Kuril Islands, or even the Arctic coast. But even
in central Russia, the landscapes are not as monotonous as it seems —
Meschera is very different from the Samara Luka or the forest-steppe in
the upper reaches of the Don. There are four dozen national parks in
Russia, from Moscow to the islands of Franz Josef and Sikhote-Alin in
Primorsky Krai, and their number is constantly growing.
The population is 143,380,800 as of December 1, 2012. According to
the 2010 census, 84% of the population consider themselves Russian, thus
forming the majority.
The population density in Russia is
extremely heterogeneous. Most people live in the Eastern European
territory of Russia. In the North Asian territory of Russia, the
population density is many times lower, despite the much larger
territory. The lowest population density is in the north — there is
often no developed infrastructure and very expensive living.
The
maximum concentration of the population by city: Moscow is in the first
place, St. Petersburg is in the second, Novosibirsk is in the third.
Citizens of most countries need a visa to visit Russia. Visa-free entry for 72 hours is allowed for passengers of cruise liners of certain lines. In practice, this only makes sense for St. Peter Line cruises from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Formally, visa-free tourists are allowed to stay only in the region of arrival, but in fact it is impossible to verify this.
The main international airports of the country are located in the
suburbs of Moscow, these are Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo, as
well as in St. Petersburg - Pulkovo-2 (International). The same airports
are hubs for flights throughout the country (the so-called hub).
International terminals are available at almost all major and not very
regional airports.
Now there is a system for buying electronic
tickets, and it is enough to present your passport to board the plane,
but it would not be superfluous to make a paper printout of the ticket.
Convenient city buses to airports operate only in a few million
cities, in all others, mass passengers use taxis
In Russia by train, you can arrive direct from Austria, Germany,
France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Netherlands,
Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Finland, China, Mongolia, North Korea and
neighboring countries (i.e., countries of the former Soviet Union). At
the same time, it should be taken into account that in most countries of
the far abroad (with the exception of Finland, some areas of Poland,
formerly part of the Russian Empire and Mongolia), a railway track with
a gauge of 1,435 millimeters is used, whereas in Russia and the
countries of the former USSR its width is 1,520 millimeters, which slows
down the crossing of the Russian state border by trains (produced by
rearrangement of wheel sets of wagons, which takes extra time).
Domestic railways connect almost all more or less large cities in
Russia, with the exception of the far north and the northeast.
There are automobile border crossings on the border with Kazakhstan
(many!), Norway (two), Poland (four), China (17), Finland (many!),
Georgia (one), Azerbaijan (four), Ukraine (many!), Estonia (four),
Lithuania (four), Latvia (eight).
Crossing the border by car is a
separate story. In different places, this process can vary greatly, and
can take from 20-30 minutes to infinity, sometimes accompanied by
hostility, outright extortion or divorce for money.
Bus tours are available from Finland, Ukraine, China, CIS countries, etc. In the opposite direction, organized bus travel is more developed — bus tours are offered to many EU countries, Georgia, Turkey, China, etc.
Cruise ports
The following ports accept cruise ships in Russia:
on the Black Sea — Sochi
on the Baltic Sea — St. Petersburg,
Vyborg
Barents Sea — Murmansk
Pacific Coast —
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Vladivostok
Ferry ports
Ferry border
crossings:
On the border with China: Khabarovsk-Fuyuan, Ushakovo-Huma
(automobile), Poyarkovo-Shunke (automobile), Pashkovo-Jiayin
(automobile), Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang (automobile),
Konstantinovka-Sunu (automobile), Jalinda-Mohe (automobile),
Blagoveshchensk-Heihe (automobile), Amurzet-Lobey (automobile).
On the border with Lithuania: Sovetsk-Rusne, Sovetsk-Yurbarkas,
Rybachy-Nida.
On the border with South Korea: Vladivostok-Donghae
(automobile)
Russia's transport system is characterized by a developed transport
network, one of the most extensive in the world and including over 120
thousand km of railways, 1 million km of highways, 230 thousand km of
trunk pipelines, 100 thousand km of river shipping lanes. The vast
expanses and harsh climate have predetermined the paramount importance
for Russia of all—weather types of land transport - rail and pipeline.
The bulk of cargo work falls on them. Water transport plays a much
smaller role in Russia due to the short navigation period and the
systematic destruction of passenger traffic.
There are metro
stations in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod,
Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Kazan. Volgograd has a metrotram,
and Moscow has the only (so far) monorail transport system in Russia.
Many cities have trolleybuses and trams. Buses and minibuses are present
in almost every city. For long-distance trips, rail transport is most
often used.
Although everything seems to be in order formally in
Russia with transport — there are many airports with regular passenger
flights, railways with passenger service, highways of good quality with
buses — keep in mind that all this is absolutely not designed for
independent travelers. If you can easily get to big cities, usually by
plane or train, then public transport is much worse and slower in
smaller cities, and when you want to see a manor or a church, you can
easily find that the bus from the district center goes to the village
where it is located three times a week at an inconvenient time and you
will have to rely on taxis or look for private transport. As a rule, it
is impossible to see several such churches in a day without a car,
unless, of course, they are located in the same city, or if we are not
talking about the nearest neighborhoods of Moscow or St. Petersburg,
where transport is better. Bus schedules may be available on the
Internet (for example, on the Yandex Timetables website or on the
websites of bus stations), or they may not be available; worse,
sometimes there are no bus stations, buses are on schedules that can
only be found from the local population. Getting into some national
parks, especially east of the Urals, may require serious preliminary
organization and be comparable in complexity to expeditions.
There are about 210 operating civilian airports of various classes in
Russia (as of 2016), of which about a third (more than 70) have an
international terminal or an international service sector. The main hubs
in Russia are the airports of the Moscow air hub, and Novosibirsk. There
are flights to these airports from almost any city.
The following
major airlines operate in Russia: Aeroflot, S7 Airlines, Russia,
Nordwind Airlines, NordStar, Nordavia, Pobeda, Ural Airlines, UTair,
Yamal, Yakutia, RusLine, IrAero, Orenburg Airlines, Red Wings Airlines,
Aurora, Gazprom Avia, Vostok, Khabarovsk Airlines, Polar Airlines,
Komiaviatrans, Kamchatka Aviation the enterprise and other large and
small companies — in total, more than 300 enterprises are registered in
the territory of the Russian Federation with a license for air passenger
and transport transportation, etc. aviation works.
The aircraft
fleet is provided almost entirely by foreign equipment, with rare
exceptions. This is due to the fact that after the collapse of the USSR,
the production of passenger aircraft was practically curtailed due to
their lack of competitiveness with Western models. However, on domestic
flights it is quite rare, but you can find planes of old Soviet or
Russian construction, and helicopters are almost all of domestic
production.
There is a single electronic ticket system for all
domestic flights. At any aviation agency in the country, you can
purchase a ticket for any flight of any airline to any destination and
the date and time you need (there are some sales restrictions on
departure dates, since all airlines have winter and summer flight
schedules, which is due to seasonal changes in passenger traffic). You
can also purchase a ticket yourself on the Internet on the airline's
website (tickets online).
Due to the large extent of the country,
very often a traveler has to take tickets for connecting flights, that
is, a transfer. Sales operators in aviation agencies provide free
services for the selection of connecting flights, including on various
types of transport (bus-train-plane).
All flights to the east of
the country are operated at night — the plane departs in the evening and
flies towards the sun, arriving at its destination in the morning.
Return flights are usually performed in the morning — the plane departs
in the morning, flies after daylight and arrives in Moscow, as a rule,
at the same time.
Flights arriving in the evening also appeared
in the largest cities — Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, after
which you can not walk around the city tired, but immediately go to bed
in a hotel.
Railway transport in Russia is represented by the world's largest
transport company (3rd place in the world) JSC Russian Railways (JSC
Russian Railways) is the heir of the Soviet Ministry of Railways (MPS of
the USSR). Russian Railways trains carry over 1 billion passengers and 1
billion tons of cargo annually. Russian Railways is the country's
largest employer.
The entire railway connection is divided into
suburban and long-distance.
Commuter trains run mainly near large
cities, providing transportation in the suburban area for a distance of
no more than 200 km. The fare on commuter trains is slightly lower than
on long-distance trains. As a rule, there are only seats in the
carriages.
The vast majority of commuter trains use electric
trains — specially designed and built electric trains for this work. To
a much lesser extent, trains with a diesel locomotive as a locomotive
(the so-called diesel or motorized locomotive) are used for commuter
traffic. Recently, rail buses have begun to appear in some cities.
Express trains, high—speed trains with seats are usually "Swallows"
running from Moscow to other cities located in the 200-500 km zone
around the capital. Commuter trains take too long to get here, and
long-distance night trains need to get off too early.
Long-distance trains are designed to transport passengers and goods,
including mail, over long distances. They are divided into passenger
(regular) and branded (improved service). The annual schedule of
long-distance trains includes about 520 passenger trains in 120
directions. The most important train in the country is the long—distance
train No. 1/2 "Russia" with the Moscow — Vladivostok connection, which
runs along the longest railway passenger route in the world, crossing
almost the entire Eurasia by land. The length of this route is 9,288
kilometers, the travel time is 145 hours.
Passenger cars of
long-distance trains are divided into four classes: a seated (or
"shared" fourth-class carriage), a reserved seat (third-class carriage),
a compartment (second-class carriage), a "sleeping car" (SV, or
first-class carriage)). The first ones are ordinary reserved seats with
shelves, but they are not designed for lying down, they have 72 seats. A
standard second-class carriage consists of 9 compartments with 6 seats
each, with a total of 54 beds. The compartment car has 9-10 closed
compartments (isolated from the general passage), each with 4 beds. In
the sleeping car, there are high—comfort compartments - 1, 2 or
3-seater. Some more trains (about 20) include luxury class wagons. These
are the most expensive wagons. They differ from the SV by the presence
in each compartment of an individual bathroom with a vacuum toilet,
washbasin and shower. All compartments are equipped with individual air
conditioning, TV, radio and DVD player.
At any railway ticket
office or any travel agency, you can purchase a ticket for the train you
need in the right direction anywhere in the country, but only 60 days
before the departure date of the train.
A free toilet can be
found in the station building at most stations.
Historically,
only Moscow time was used on all Russian railways, which added to a fair
amount of confusion. Since 2018, local time has been used in tickets and
on information boards.
There is an unwritten rule for making up
the logistics of riding trains: mostly long-distance trains leave in the
evening and arrive in their main city in the morning.
All major settlements of the country, all small and large cities are
connected by an automobile network. The quality of roads is very
different — from excellent multi-lane highways to dirt roads and winter
roads (that is, temporary roads that are passable only in the winter
season). The only place where you cannot drive by car is Kamchatka
Peninsula and the Kuril Islands. There is no land road there, there is
no ferry service either — you will have to negotiate (and pay a lot of
money) for the delivery of your car by transport plane or on a merchant
fleet ship.
A car trip across the country is quite interesting in
itself and does not cost as much money as it might seem at first glance.
There are gas stations, motels and roadside cafes on the main highways.
When traveling in Russia, a section of the R-254 highway passes
through the territory of Kazakhstan (the legacy of the USSR, when there
were no internal borders between the republics). If you are unwilling
(or if it is impossible — this also happens all the time) to go through
Kazakhstan, there is a bypass road through the territory of the Russian
Federation, through the Kurgan, Tyumen and Omsk regions. Get ready, this
is the worst federal highway in the country.
Most gas stations in
the country (almost all of them) work around the clock and seven days a
week. Payment in cash or by bank card. As a rule, payment is made first
(in turn), then refueling. At large network gas stations there are
specially trained tankers who will insert a filling gun into the neck of
the tank, and at the end of refueling they will close the tank and the
hatch. Also, refueling to a full tank is possible at many gas stations,
in this case the operator will have to leave the amount a little more
than expected, and at the end of refueling the change will be given to
you.
The official language and the language of international communication
is Russian, it is understood almost everywhere, and the vast majority of
the population speaks it in everyday life. However, local national
languages or dialects of Russian may be found in some territories of the
country.
Despite the fact that English is taught in schools in
Russia, it is not popular among the population. In large cities,
especially in those where there is a large tourist flow, service workers
(hotels, airports, museums, restaurants, etc.) can speak English at one
level or another, and, with a certain probability, young people know the
language. In the outback, it is quite difficult to find people who know
English or any other foreign language.
Russia has adopted the SI metric system, as well as all over the world, except for the USA and some other countries.
In Russia, unlike, for example, some EU countries, numerous
convenience stores often operate in all large and small cities, where
you can easily buy almost EVERYTHING (up to locksmith tools!) — on any
day of the week and at any time of the day completely freely. The
exception is the retail sale of alcohol, which is prohibited from
trading at night (from 23.00 to 08.00) throughout the country.
The Russian ruble (RUB; RUR) is the only currency in official
circulation in the country. Although the definition of prices in
dollars, euros and "conventional units" is also used in everyday life,
in practice, the calculation of foreign currency is practically
impossible and prohibited by law (except for exchange operations in a
bank or conversion of a bank card account).
In almost any city,
dollars and euros can be easily exchanged for rubles, and it is always
worth using only official cash desks in banks for this and ignoring
hand-held exchange offers. According to Russian law, a passport or other
official document is required for the exchange. The approximate exchange
rate is 74 rubles for 1 euro or 65 rubles for 1 US dollar (February
2019).
ATMs are widespread and available in any more or less
large locality, in small towns there are usually several (dozens) ATMs.
But few ATMs (about 10%) allow you to withdraw not only rubles, but also
dollars or euros. Visa and MasterCard cards are widely distributed in
Russia, but American Express is usually not accepted even in popular
tourist places.
Card payment is possible in many cases — in
shops, cafes, hotels. There are also many other places in Russia where
card payment is not popular. This can often happen in depressed regions
with poor populations. In taxis (and in most cities — in other public
transport), card payments are still exotic. Taxis are also popular
through aggregators such as Yandex.Taxi, Maxim, RUTaxi, Uber (not
available in all cities)
A tourist in Russia always needs to have
a certain amount of cash with him, otherwise you can get into a very
unpleasant situation when there seems to be a lot of money, but they are
all virtual!
In general, the price level in Russia is different from the rest of
the world: some things may be more expensive, and some are cheaper. It
is noticeably cheaper (compared to the European Union, the USA or Japan)
to buy daily food and fuel for a car.
Moscow has the cheapest
consumer goods in the country (the capital also has the bulk of goods
for the well—off, the wealthy, and just the rich). With distance from
Moscow, the general dynamics of prices for goods and services of daily
demand steadily tends to increase, but also strongly depends on the
purchasing power of the population — in poor regions prices are
generally low, but the standard of living of the population leaves much
to be desired. Where the population is richer, the price level is also
noticeably higher for all goods and services. The highest prices in the
country are in the northern and eastern regions, and can be
significantly higher than Moscow prices for the most basic things.
In Russia, three or four meals a day are accepted: breakfast, lunch,
(afternoon tea), dinner, (evening tea).
Russian cuisine Russian
cuisine is the traditional cuisine of the Russian people. Russian
cuisine Russian cuisine has incorporated elements of French, German,
East European and Asian cuisine in relation to Russian realities. Its
dishes and taste accents vary depending on the geographical location and
local traditions, but in any case, it is a very high-calorie food. It is
not very spicy and is quite edible and even tasty for any European or
American.
Abroad, Russian cuisine is associated primarily with
dishes and products such as pancakes, caviar, pies.
In fact, the
following dishes are widespread in modern Russia:
Various hot
soups served as a first course for lunch. Soup is a thick meat broth
cooked with vegetable ingredients and various cereals. Less often, fresh
fish broth can be used, and such a soup is called "ear". There is also
mushroom soup, which is based on wild mushroom broth instead of meat.
Borscht is a soup that includes red beetroot, tomatoes, cabbage. It is
served with fried pieces of lard, sour cream, mayonnaise. Borscht is
originally a dish of Ukrainian or Polish cuisine, depending on whom you
ask.
Cold okroshka soup. Vegetable finely chopped salad, poured into
a soup with kvass, kefir or mineral water. It is traditionally consumed
in the hot season.
Various cereals, that is, boiled cereals,
including those that are simply not considered human food in the rest of
the world. Porridge is served as a second course for lunch with butter,
milk, fried meat, etc., there are a lot of options.
Potato. Many
different dishes are prepared from potatoes. The simplest and most
everyday ones are ordinary fried and slightly stewed potatoes for
softness (with less oil than in French fries), as well as boiled
potatoes.
Mashed potatoes are potatoes boiled and ground to a pasty
state, thoroughly mixed with butter and milk. It is served instead of
porridge (the so-called side dish) with meat, sausages, fish and
anything else. Very popular food.
Fried pancakes made from yeast
dough or thicker flatbread pancakes. Pancakes made from mashed potato
pancakes (a dish of Eastern European origin) are also baked.
Stewed
potatoes with meat, vegetables and spices. Cooking a dish in a clay pot
is considered a special delicacy.
Pasta, spaghetti (from Italy),
noodles (from China). They are cooked quite traditionally boiled or as
part of dishes.
Bread. In Russia, they eat a lot of bread, just mixed
with liquid dishes. Bread in Russia is inexpensive and easily available.
Bread is usually not made to toast, it is eaten without additional
processing. They also spread butter on bread, put pieces of sausage,
fried sausages, etc. — this is a so-called sandwich. It is widely used
for breakfast and various snacks. Dried breadcrumbs are also used, and
fried bread croutons.
Tea. In Russia, they drink a lot of black tea
with sugar. Black tea is really very popular, it is drunk in the
morning, afternoon, evening and night, with sandwiches, cookies, just
after lunch. Less often, milk or cream is added. Green tea is less
popular. Coffee is also drunk, but to a lesser extent.
Eggs. Chicken
eggs are eaten in any form, the most popular fried eggs (for breakfast)
are fried eggs, it is possible with pieces of sausage, sausages, bacon,
green onions, etc. Boiled eggs are most often used as part of complex
dishes.
Dumplings. A dish of Chinese cuisine. Minced meat wrapped in
small portions in unleavened dough. Dumplings are boiled in water and
served with butter, sour cream, mayonnaise, various sauces or, in
Siberian style, with diluted vinegar (although in China dumplings are
more often fried in oil rather than boiled). They are very popular as a
snack for vodka. The Buryats and Mongols have a similar dish called
poses (buuzes), and some Chinese peoples (for example, Dungan) called
manta rays. Poses and mantas are much larger in size and are prepared in
a steam bath.
Vareniki. A Ukrainian dish (resembling dumplings in
shape) in the form of boiled potatoes wrapped in unleavened dough,
berries, fruits, lard, etc., and boiled in water. Served with butter or
sour cream.
Lard. An obligatory attribute of the Eastern Slavs and
some other peoples of Europe (for the Germans it will be bacon) is
salted or smoked lard. It is used with bread, in borscht, as an
appetizer for vodka, etc. Very nutritious food.
Fish. Many
traditional fish dishes accepted in Russia are unusual for foreigners.
Fish soup is prepared from fish, various pies, fish is simply fried or
stewed. But the fish is also salted, dried (dried) or smoked in a
special room over smoldering sawdust — this is how a long-term storage
product turns out. Smoked and dried fish are traditionally consumed with
beer. Salted herring is eaten with mashed potatoes, and it also goes
into the national Russian salad "herring under a fur coat". Salted red
salmon caviar is not traditional for the Russian table, as it is very
expensive and most Russians simply cannot afford to buy it. Caviar is
more consumed by residents of the north and east of Russia (where salmon
live and where they are caught), and they do not eat caviar with
pancakes, but make sandwiches from white bread, butter and caviar. It
must be recognized that fish and other seafood often sold in Russian
supermarkets may not be of very good quality, and sometimes it is an
outright fake using modern chemicals.
Barbecue. A dish borrowed from
the Tatars is pieces of specially prepared meat (as well as sausages,
vegetables, etc.), strung on a skewer or skewer and fried over an open
fire or coals. Grilling is also often used. Shish kebab is a close
analogue of barbecue. In many countries of the world there is a
tradition of outdoor recreation with the preparation of similar or close
to barbecue dishes. In addition, there are street kebab shops in Russia,
which usually work in places where people relax or on holidays. A good
barbecue is not the cheapest dish.
Sauces. The most popular sauce in
Russia is mayonnaise, it is put in salads in huge quantities, as well as
in dumplings, borscht and other dishes. This may not be clear to some
tourists. Russia also has its own traditional sauce called sour cream.
Despite the appearance similar to mayonnaise, these are completely
different products in composition. Sour cream is a dairy product, it is
less fatty and harmful than mayonnaise. Its use is completely similar to
mayonnaise. Tomato sauces such as ketchup, chili and many others are
also popular.
Vodka. In fact, vodka is not drunk in buckets in
Russia. To drink vodka, you need a table with good snacks and pleasant
company. Alcohol lovers now prefer beer, of which there is an incredible
amount in Russia.
Russian (Soviet) champagne. It is more correct to
consider it just sparkling wine. Many foreigners are pleasantly
surprised by the good quality for very little money.
Kvass. The
national sweet and sour drink of the Slavs from rye bread, obtained
during fermentation. It quenches thirst well, which is why it is popular
in summer.
Kefir. A fermented milk drinking product that came to
Russia from the Caucasus Mountains. It is similar to yogurt, but more
liquid. Under the USSR, it was produced in huge quantities, and even now
it is available in any grocery store.
In most major cities, there is now an extensive nightlife that is in
no way inferior to those of major European cities. Casinos, nightclubs,
bars, discos provide ample opportunity for pleasure-seeking people.
However, it is advisable to visit them for your own safety only when
accompanied (if possible by locals).
Restaurants now also exist
in all possible price ranges. As a rule, on average, the cost is at a
similar level to that in Germany, slightly higher in Moscow, slightly
lower in other large cities.
In some cafés there is no service in
the conventional sense. Here, as a rule, you first secure a table, after
which, as a rule, the man (the men) goes to the sales counter to
purchase the desired food and then return to the table with it.
Hotels in the European part of Russia meet the most modern standards.
The prices vary greatly depending on whether trade fairs or other events
are taking place. So, in Moscow, the same room can cost 150 euros once,
and 450 euros per night the next week. In the Asian part of Russia,
hotels are simpler, but in city centers they are comfortable. In the
countryside, one should accept the invitation of friends for an
overnight stay.
It is also common to rent furnished apartments on
a daily basis. The prices are usually below the best hotels on site.
Similarly, a furnished apartment can be rented for a month. The
monthly price corresponds approximately to the weekly price in a hotel.
If you are not afraid of shared rooms, you can also stay cheaply in
hostels in cities and tourist places. If you want to rely exclusively on
this type of accommodation, you have to clarify the possibility of
registration in advance (see Entry requirements). However, since October
2019, hostels and hotels in residential buildings have been banned,
which specifically means that such accommodation must have separate
entrances, be properly soundproofed and equipped with sanitary
facilities. This also applies to apartments rented via portals. In
capitals, this has led to a reduction in the supply of cheap places to
sleep, elsewhere, "Russia is big, the tsar is far.“
A note about
sockets: Grounded sockets follow the same standard as in Germany or
Austria (Schuko plugs), but not every socket is grounded. The two-pin
sockets have narrower holes, so that only Euro plugs (flat) can be used
without an adapter. (Adapters for Switzerland/Italy can be used if they
are bipolar, i.e. do not pass through the protective contact.) In hotels
/ hostels and in general in new buildings you will always find
sufficient Schuko sockets. If you are staying privately (this should
also apply to privately rented rooms), you should ask if necessary.
There have been extensive exchange and study programs in Russia since Soviet times. Many universities offer the opportunity to complete a semester abroad or to take part in a language course. Accommodation is then usually either with a host family or in a general obshcheschitije (dormitory). They will be accommodated there in a specially reserved floor for foreigners, which is nevertheless unlikely to meet German requirements. If you are thinking about renting an apartment during your stay, you should do this if possible through the university administration in order to get more favorable conditions and a safe place to stay.
The first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union were
accompanied by an immense increase in crime. In the meantime, the
situation has improved somewhat, but caution is still required. If
possible, do not wear expensive jewelry or watches openly or carry the
wallet in an easily accessible place (e.g. back pocket of trousers)
In Russia, there is still a strong opinion that Western Europeans
are generally very rich and have a lot of money to give away. Do not
respond to offers to be led by strangers to a "great market" or a sight.
In case of emergency, do not expect immediate help from the local
militia. These often overburdened departments have proven to be poor and
uncooperative help in the past. The militia ("militsiya") officially
became the police ("politsiya") in 2011, but the former name is still
colloquially common.
Cameras are currently being set up
everywhere (streets, residential districts, entrances to houses), there
are security guards and cameras in every good residential district. A
lot of people have equipped their car with cameras, because in the past
very often it was not the accident victim who got it right, but the one
with the most money or the best contacts.
In recent years, the political system has become more repressive and
the freedom of opinion and media has been gradually restricted. In
particular, with the invasion of Ukraine from February 2022, the rules
were tightened even more. Thus, it is forbidden to speak of a "war" or
an "invasion". The official state terms are, for example, "special
operation" or "peacekeeping mission". Violation can be punished with
massive fines up to 15 years in prison. Foreigners are also affected by
these regulations (for example, journalists). Even gentle criticism of
the government, the president, or the authorities can (and will) be
severely punished.
Also, in recent times, numerous independent
media companies, NGOs and also foreign media have had to restrict or
stop their operations in Russia, or foreign websites and social media
have been blocked. So it can not be assumed that residents will have
access to objective or balanced reports on current world events.
In order not to get yourself into trouble, but also interlocutors, it is
recommended not to address current events in conversations and online.
In addition to the normal Criminal Code for Crimes, there is also a
Code of Administrative Offenses in Russia, whereby the term
"administrative offense" is much broader than in the German legal
system. In addition to fines (criminal), short prison sentences can also
be imposed. As a foreign visitor, you will come into conflict with
relevant regulations, especially in the area of traffic or residence
law. But you can also be prosecuted, for example, for bullying. Drinking
in public, including courtyards and stairwells of apartment blocks, has
also been punishable since 2013. If a bad-tempered official sees such a
thing (in the case of Russian uniformed people, one should always assume
that they are "on duty" out of office badly hung up), it costs 500-1500
r. If you do not go across the street at the traffic lights, you will
quickly be there with 500 r. For example, if you leave one day after the
visa expires, calendar days count and the end is at midnight, it costs
1500 r. (even if the train to the border was only 20 minutes late.)
Penalties are payable within one month, for traffic offenses there is a
50% "discount" if you pay within 14 days. Non-timely payment leads to
doubling, in case of persistent refusal, labor service is ordered.
Since 2016, the provision has been increasingly implemented that
foreigners who have been subjected to two or more measures within three
years in accordance with the Code of Administrative Offenses (this may
include verbal warnings) can be subject to a three-year entry ban. The
main target here (as of 2021) is foreign truck drivers. It does not
matter whether the penalty has been paid or not. Because of the
applicable holder liability, one should therefore not allow a vehicle in
Russia as a foreigner working in the country.
Objection is only
possible within 10 days, often futile or at least complicated.
Especially traffic police officers, like to invent a "violation" on the
fly in order to collect a small penalty in cash and without a receipt
immediately. It is often useful to make a good face to the bad game
here. Such corruption has been less common since the police reform that
began in 2011, but it is still hardly punished.
In the very numerous existing pharmacies there is every imaginable
medicine. Very many preparations from Europe are also sold in Russia.
The prices are very reasonable.
For longer stays, it is
recommended to get information from a private clinic or a trusted
doctor. The private clinics are equipped with European equipment and are
very inexpensive compared to Germany.
Russia has passed one of
the strictest non-smoking laws in Europe. In principle, "smoking in
public" is prohibited.
Applies to all travelers
Any traveler /tourist (and not only a
foreigner) in Russia is a potential victim who, at a minimum, needs to
be bred for money. The highest prices (sometimes indecently) throughout
Russia are at airports and train stations (so-called station prices).
The most brazen and unscrupulous taxi drivers are also there. Street
criminals, gypsies and beggars also prefer airports and train stations.
The transport police are not distinguished by humanism and decency.
NEVER drink alcohol on the road — this dramatically increases your
chances of running into trouble!
In recent years, a video
surveillance system has been installed in all more or less large
airports and railway stations, and it is so dense that every nook is
monitored. Do not even try to smoke in a specially designated place or
relieve yourself in distant bushes — you will certainly be found out and
punished, and no excuses (like a 12-hour flight) They won't help you.
It is worth being especially vigilant on public roads. Not only are
there a lot of traffic violations, both on the part of drivers and
pedestrians, but also traffic police officers take tribute, sometimes
playing a whole performance for this. Never break the rules of the road!
Remember that there are many automatic surveillance cameras installed on
the roads, and you can get a pack of fines for violating the rules upon
arrival home. When traveling by car around the country, BE sure to
install a DVR (preferably two) and a good radar detector. These measures
will help to avoid many problems. In some regions, for example in
Tatarstan, money withdrawal sensors (on toll roads) or speed sensors may
be embedded in the roadway.
When traveling by car, refueling with
fuel, especially diesel, at a dubious type of gas station should be
avoided. It is not necessary at all, but there is a risk of running into
very poor fuel, which can lead to big problems with the car engine. It
is best to use gas stations of well-known brands: Lukoil, Gazpromneft,
Rosneft, Tatneft. Never pull another gas station to an empty tank — in
Russia, the distances are huge, and you can just stand in the middle of
the road. For a long haul, a good option would be to take an emergency
fuel canister with you as an inviolable reserve.
If you travel by
Russian Railways train for a long time (several days) in the summer, you
can easily catch a cold. Air conditioners work on the move in the cars,
sometimes maintaining the temperature in the compartment at plus 16-18
degrees, whereas "overboard" can be under + 30. The windows don't open.
As a result of constant temperature fluctuations, upon arrival at your
destination, you can easily get a runny nose and cough. In winter and in
the off-season, this problem does not exist.
When traveling by
plane for a long time, take into account the time shift. A shift of two
to three hours is not serious and is easily tolerated, but when flying
(for example) from Moscow to the Far East, the difference is already
quite noticeable, and a person's biological clock is knocked off,
perception of reality is disrupted and a state of stupor simply arises,
which gradually passes (for each person it is individual — who tolerates
it easier, who is heavier). The methods of adaptation to "time travel"
for experienced travelers are different: someone gradually, day by day,
gradually shifting the sleep time, gets used to a new routine of life;
others immediately begin to live "in a new way", having overworked for
two-three-four days.
Also, do not forget about the change of
climate, lifestyle, nutrition, and even the chemical composition of
water. The further you travel across Russia, the more significantly your
entire environment will change and the more time it will take to adapt.
Russia is home to many nations, each of which has its own traditions,
but there are holidays common to all. The whole country is definitely
celebrating:
Victory Day is probably the main holiday. On this
day, the victory in the Great Patriotic War is celebrated: veterans are
congratulated, parades are held. The unofficial name is "a holiday with
tears in your eyes."
New Year is the most beloved and long—awaited
holiday of all Russians. These days, the cities are the most beautiful,
and the people are the kindest.
Russians have a really high respect for the family (children,
grandparents).
The after-effects of the Soviet Union can still be
clearly felt more than 20 years after the end of the Soviet Union. State
officials and police are sometimes very assertive in their appearance.
Do not be tempted to make arrogant or provocative statements/actions,
otherwise they will put obstacles in your way here.
Don't mess
around with your money! Even if you tell them in as much detail how
badly the grandmother is doing with her small pension, many people still
have a pronounced pride. Gifts of money could be misinterpreted here as
alms and cause great displeasure.
An invitation to dinner is
considered an absolute proof of friendship. For example, you should only
reject the invitations to dinner for really valid reasons, otherwise
your counterpart will be personally offended. In addition, do not forget
to carry a small gift with you when visiting. In the case of casual
acquaintances, this can also simply be, for example, a box of good
chocolates (for the woman of the house). The will counts here.
At
dinner, as a rule, there is an extensive toast with alcoholic beverages
(vodka, cognac, etc.). There are numerous toasts for different
occasions. Modern Russian women appreciate red wine.
Please also
note that the views on gender equality in the language differ from those
in Germany. A medical woman will insist that she is a doctor (doctor –
vratsch), and a lady in the secretariat of an institution is a secretary
(secretary – secretary). The use of the words doctor (doctor – doctor)
or secretary (secretary – secretary) is perceived as derogatory, if not
an insult.
The Post Office (Russian Post) was restructured in 2013-18 and is now a private AG without a monopoly, although still state-owned. The network of post offices continues to be well developed. Often, what can be very useful for visitors, you can find counters in stations or on the forecourt. Registered mail is called "Sakasnoe" (registered). Courier shipments are sent in cooperation with EMS. Postbank cooperates with Western Union for international transfers. Provided that you have Russian language skills, you can make transfers to bank accounts, subscribe to magazines, buy railway or theater tickets and lottery tickets for a small fee through LLC "Rapid". The sometimes long opening hours until 20.00 are pleasant, or in large cities also on Saturday and Sunday. The branding of the post office in Crimea has been aligned with the Russian one, the planned unification of the administrations has not yet taken place by 2021.
Toll-free numbers are:
from landline +7 108
from mobile phone
+7 800
Western European providers must notify their customers
about the applicable fees when roaming. However, different tariffs apply
in different parts of the country due to regionally different Russian
providers. Deutsche Telekom is charging € 2.99 per minute for outgoing
calls, € 1.79 for incoming calls and 49¢ per SMS in 2021. Vodafone
counts Russia to the zone "World 2" and takes € 6,09/min. and 79¢ per
SMS. O₂ (Telefonica) suggests that the country of the "World Zone 3" is
cheaper than the two mentioned above.
Major mobile operators are:
Mobile TeleSystems (Russian: MTS, MTS), with the best coverage
nationwide. Numbers expire after 6 months of inactivity. Incoming VoIP
calls are blocked. The paid advertising functions / SMS messages, which
are often switched on automatically, are annoying. To switch off the
different ones individually, choose one *111*29#, *111*38#, *567*0# and
*111*374# - confirmation SMS comes respectively. The package "Your
country" (your country) to be booked for ₽ 150 with *111*741# is useful
if you want to make calls to the former Soviet republics or China.
MegaFon, with the brand Yota (Iota). The latter has certain restrictions
on the Internet (no P2P or tethering, no 4G in some regions where
MegaFon cards can use it). MagaFon: SMS customer service in English,
speed dial 0500. You should definitely switch off the daily advertising
SMS "Kaleidoscope" (kaleidoscope) with *808*0#, which can quickly turn
into subscriptions à ₽ 5. If you want to use your card for another trip,
you should use the *236*00*1 # turn off all internet packages to get his
credit. In Crimea, ₽ 2.2/Mb are charged extra for data. 90 Days after
the last top-up, ₽ 5 will be automatically debited daily until the
balance drops to zero and the card is thus deactivated.
BeeLine
(Beeline), low fares, with limited 4G coverage outside big cities (map).
SIM cards are blocked on the 90th day of inactivity. When buying a plan,
you should explicitly request “prepaid” (prepayment), since different
packages have the same names for both payment methods. BeeLine is also
well represented in the Central Asian former Soviet republics, which is
helpful for onward travel due to roaming.
Tele2Russia (Rostelecom),
with the low-cost brand Skylink. The nationwide coverage is not perfect.
SIM cards are decommissioned after 120 days of inactivity. In Crimea, ₽
3/Mb are charged extra for data.
The resellers Tinkoff Mobile,
SberMobile, VTB Mobile and only regionally active providers such as
Motiv, Tattelecom, Vainakh Telecom are likely to be of no importance for
short-term visitors.
For ₽ 600-750/month in 2021 you will get
"unlimited" packages from all providers that offer 500-700 minutes of
domestic calls in addition to Internet. Internal-Russian roaming charges
were abolished in 2018, as were the charges for incoming calls. If you
want to use your Russian card abroad, you will incur hefty roaming
charges of ₽ 350-400/day, calculated from 0.00 Moscow time.
When
buying a SIM card, it is necessary to present the passport (with visa
and “Migration Card”) and specify an address. There are plenty of kiosks
and shops in airports and train stations. Especially smaller kiosks at
markets or at subway stations also sell already registered tickets.
Whether the promised balances of a few hundred rubles are then on it is
the buyer's risk, you do not lose much in comparison with the gain in
anonymity by any means. The reloading of credit with foreign credit
cards is possible in the fewest cases.
If you pay by individual
settlement (postpaid, "post paid"), it becomes complex, since all
providers have different tariffs for each of the 85 federation objects
(may). In general, capital prices in Moscow and Leningrad are 10-40%
more expensive than in the country, but where the G4 coverage is also
significantly worse. Especially in Siberia, reception will soon be over
behind city limits.
Wi-Fi is now a common standard in accommodation.
The Russian
Internet has created its own universe with the social network VK and the
all-round carefree provider Yandex, but this requires appropriate
language skills.
Since 2017, the Russian government has been
increasingly taking action against encryption and Western influences and
therefore restricts access to certain pages, some of which are also
known, such as Facebook. There is an official list for this (only
russ.). The use of VPNs is also prohibited, as is advertising or linking
to them. The pages are blocked by the ISPs. If you want to surf as usual
at home, you should take appropriate protective measures before arrival.
It may be enough to call up an "anonymization" website. With a little
effort, it is possible for owners of a German FritzBox to set up a
private VPN for free. The Tor browser can be set so that no generally
known exit nodes (which could be blocked) are in use. Those who are more
tech-savvy can familiarize themselves with the subtleties of L2TP or
SOCKS.
The first written mention of the name "Russia" in Greek (Greek:
PωσίΑ) dates back to the middle of the 10th century and is found in the
writings of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus "On
Ceremonies" and "On the administration of the Empire" to designate
Russia. In Cyrillic notation, the word "Russia" was first used on April
24, 1387 in Metropolitan Cyprian's handwritten postscript to the
"Ladder" of John of Sinai, where he calls himself "Metropolitan of
Kyivsky and All Russia". In the XV—XVI centuries, the Hellenized name
"Russia" was fixed for that part of the Russian lands that was united
into a single state under the Grand Duchy of Moscow: for example, John
de Galonifontibus uses this name in the specified meaning in 1404, and
Ivan III was named "Russian sovereign" in the charter of the Crimean
Khan in 1474.
In 1547, after the wedding of Ivan IV Vasilyevich
to the kingdom, the Moscow state also became known as the Russian
Kingdom. The modern spelling of the word — with two letters "c" —
appeared from the middle of the XVII century and was finally fixed under
Peter I.
At the end of the Northern War, on October 22 (November
2), 1721, Peter I was proclaimed Emperor of All Russia. After that, the
state was officially called the Russian Empire.
On September 1
(14), 1917, in the period between the February and October Revolutions,
Russia was declared a republic, and on July 19, 1918, it began to be
officially called the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic
(RSFSR; in 1936, the words "Socialist" and "Soviet" in the name were
rearranged). From 1922 to 1991, the RSFSR was part of the USSR, which
was informally (especially abroad) often referred to as Russia. During
the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, the RSFSR
received a new name — the Russian Federation.
In the 5th century, Slavic tribes, the ancestors of the later Krivichi, penetrated from the territory of northern Poland through the eastern Baltic States to the territory of modern Russia. From that time on, the Slavs settled north to Lake Ilmen and east to the Volga-Oka interfluve. As a result, by the VI—VIII centuries, in general terms, all the main tribes of the Eastern Slavs, known from the "Tale of Bygone Years", had formed. In the VII—X centuries, the multiple influx of numerous groups of Slavic immigrants from the Moravian Danube region into various areas of the Russian Plain already mastered by the Slavs continued, which played a significant role in consolidating the Slavic population of Eastern Europe and culminated in the formation of the Ancient Russian nationality. By the 9th century, the Slavs began to settle in the territory of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The Slavic colonization of Northeastern Russia continued until the 14th century and consisted of several migration waves — from early colonization from the lands of Krivichi and Slovenes to later from Southern Russia.
The first East Slavic state was Kievan Rus, which was formed on the
territory of modern Ukraine. Traditionally, starting from the Russian
chronicle of the "Tale of Bygone Years" of the beginning of the XII
century and up to the present, the emergence of the Ancient Russian
state dates back to 862, when, according to the ancient Russian
chronicles, Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes called the Varangians, led by
Rurik, to Ladoga or Novgorod and other cities. Some historians attribute
the beginning of the Ancient Russian state to another time or link it to
another event (for example, to 882, when Prince Oleg captured Kiev,
uniting the two centers of Russia).
The state of Rurik included
the territories of the southern Ladoga region (Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod)
and the upper Volga (Beloozero, Rostov). The main population consisted
of Slavs (Slovene and Krivichi), Finno-Ugric tribes (all, Merya, Chud),
and the military aristocracy consisted of Varangians.
In 882,
Rurik's successor, Prince Oleg of Novgorod, annexed the southern center
of the Eastern Slavs to his possessions, making the main city of Polyany
— Kiev — his capital; then he marched to Byzantium.
In
historiography, the unification of the northern and southern centers
under the rule of the Rurik dynasty is considered as the end of the
process of formation of the Ancient Russian state.
The expansion
of the state to the south led to a clash with the powerful Khazaria,
whose center was located on the lower Volga. Prince Svyatoslav inflicted
a crushing defeat on the Khazars in 965. As a result of the military
campaigns and diplomatic efforts of the Kiev rulers, the new state
included the lands of all East Slavic, as well as some Finno-Ugric,
Baltic, Turkic and Iranian-speaking tribes.
In parallel, the
process of Slavic colonization of the Volga-Oka interfluve was underway.
Ancient Russia was one of the largest state formations in Europe, fought
for a dominant position in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region with
the Byzantine Empire.
Under Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich, in
988, Russia adopted Christianity. Prince Yaroslav the Wise approved the
first national code of laws — the Russian Truth. In 1132, after the
death of Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich of Kiev, the disintegration of a
single state into a number of independent ones began: Novgorod Land,
Vladimir-Suzdal Principality, Volyn Principality, Chernigov
Principality, Ryazan Principality, Polotsk Principality and others. Kiev
remained the object of struggle between the most powerful princely
branches, and the Kievan land was considered the collective possession
of the Rurikovich.
In Northeastern Russia, the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality has been
strengthening since the middle of the XII century, its rulers fought for
Kiev and Novgorod, but they always preferred to stay in Vladimir, which
led to the rise of this city as a new all-Russian center. Other powerful
principalities were Chernihiv, Galicia-Volhynia and Smolensk.
In
1237-1240, most of the Russian lands were subjected to the devastating
invasion of Batu. Vladimir, Ryazan, Kiev, Chernihiv, Pereyaslavl, Galich
and many other ancient Russian cities were destroyed, the southern and
southeastern suburbs lost a significant part of the settled population.
The Russian principalities became tributaries of the Golden Horde, and
the princes in them began to gain power over their lands with the
sanction of the khans of the Golden Horde. This period went down in
history as the Mongol-Tatar yoke. In the XIII century, the Novgorod
lands entered into a series of military conflicts with the Swedes and
Crusader knights for the right to dominate the Eastern Baltic States.
Prince Alexander Nevsky, summoned by the Novgorod evening, defeated the
Swedish troops that landed on the banks of the Neva in 1240, and then in
1242 defeated the Livonian knights in an Ice battle.
Since the
end of the XIII century, new centers have been gradually forming among
the Russian lands — the Moscow and Tver principalities. The Moscow
princes managed to win the struggle for the Vladimir Grand Duchy, which
was labeled by the khans of the Golden Horde. The Grand Duke of Vladimir
acted as a collector of tribute and supreme ruler within Northeastern
Russia and Novgorod. Since the reign of Prince Dmitry Donskoy, who
subsequently inflicted the first serious defeats on the Golden Horde,
since 1363, the label for the Vladimir Grand Duchy was awarded only to
the princes of the Moscow house.
Under Ivan III Vasilyevich, Moscow became the center of Northeastern Russia, uniting into a single state; a double-headed eagle began to be used on the Grand ducal seal. Under Ivan III, after a series of military victories, Russia stopped paying tribute to the Horde — this is how the Horde's yoke ended. As a recognition of his sovereignty, the Grand Duke of Moscow began to be called the sovereign. During this period, the Judicial Code (a set of all-Russian laws) was adopted, the Moscow Kremlin and the Assumption Cathedral were built. Military defeats and internecine strife led to the weakening of the Golden Horde and its disintegration in the middle of the XV century into the Crimean, Astrakhan, Kazan, Siberian and other khanates. Grand Duke Vasily III of Moscow continued the unification of the Russian lands, waged wars with the Slavic-Baltic state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and with the Kazan Khanate; stone construction in Moscow and other cities intensified under him.
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, one of these principalities, Muscovy (of which Moscow is the capital), ruled by skillful princes, gradually annexed all the others and became Russia. Russian Prince Dmitry IV defeated the Mongols for the first time in the Battle of Kulikovo (1380). However, this unification movement faced rivalry and the tradition of dividing territories between the various sons of the prince, which led to a civil war between 1425 and 1453. Upon ascending the throne in 1462, Ivan III, whom a Venetian traveler describes as "a tall, fit and handsome man," liberated Muscovy from the yoke of the Mongols, whose empire is now divided into several khanates, and then absorbed the main Russian principalities, still independent, including Novgorod (1478) and the Principality of Tver (1485). In 1485, Ivan III assumed the title of "Sovereign of All Russia", wanting to show his willingness to restore the entire legacy of Vladimir. By the end of the reign of Ivan III, the territory of Muscovy had increased fourfold. His son Vasily III (1505-1533) continued territorial expansion, annexing the city-state of Pskov (1510) and the Ryazan Principality (1521), as well as Smolensk (1514). Ivan the Terrible, the first prince to receive the title of tsar, completed these conquests by capturing the main Mongol khanates, but he lost access to the Baltic Sea due to the coalition of the Swedish Empire with Poland and Lithuania. From now on, Russia's expansion to the east no longer has serious obstacles. The settlement of the vast Volga and Ural basin by Russian peasants is gaining momentum. Peasants and fugitives, Cossacks, settle on the outskirts and unite in an "army", acting as pioneers and border guards. Thus, Ivan the Terrible logically considers himself the sole heir of Vladimir, although he does not own the city of Kiev in the hands of the Lithuanian Jagiellonian dynasty. The latter conquered most of the territories of Western Russia.
The disappearance of the dynasty of Rurik's descendants (dating back
to the mythical Varangian princes) marked the beginning of the Time of
Troubles, until the new Romanov dynasty ascended the throne (1613).
Several brilliant rulers in the XVII and XVIII centuries are going to
increase the size of the Russian Empire with the help of Cossacks.
Peter the Great (1682-1725) gained access to the Baltic Sea at the
cost of a long war with Sweden; he built St. Petersburg, which became
the new capital in 1712, which symbolized the opening of the country to
Europe. A powerful metallurgical industry, the first in the West at that
time, was built in the Urals and allowed to support the war effort.
Catherine II of Russia (1762-1796), an enlightened autocrat,
completed the conquest of the steppes on the Black Sea coast after
defeating the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate and pushed the
borders of the Russian Empire to the West, dividing Poland.
Today's Ukraine and Belaya Rus (Belarus) are now completely located on
the territory of Russia. Throughout this period, the Cossacks gradually
occupied Siberia and reached the Pacific Ocean in 1640. Irkutsk on the
shore of Lake Baikal was founded in 1632, the Bering Strait area and
Alaska were explored in the 1740s.
The Code, issued in 1649, now
binds the peasant and his descendants to the Land and its owner,
extending serfdom, which contradicts the evolution of the peasant's
status in Western Europe. In turn, landowners are obliged to serve their
ruler. Catherine II confirms and strengthens these provisions. The
discontent of the peasants and the nascent class of workers, exploited
by their owners and heavily taxed by the growing state, caused numerous
peasant uprisings in the XVII and XVIII centuries, the largest of which,
led by Cossack Pugachev, managed to threaten the throne before it was
suppressed (1773).). The Church at that time played a crucial role in
the Russian the company owned more than two thirds of the land. The
reform of Russian Orthodox dogma by Patriarch Nikon (1653) marked the
beginning of a severely suppressed Old Believer schism.
Peter the
Great and then Catherine II attracted a large number of German settlers
(for example, Volga Germans), Western artisans and scientists, often
Germans, to modernize the country, create industry and lay the
foundations of educational institutions and spread knowledge.. The
foundations of the Russian literary language were laid by Mikhail
Lomonosov. The first newspapers were published at this time. The Russian
nobility is Westernizing, especially under the influence of German
philosophy and the French language, and some of its members will be
carried away by the ideas of the Enlightenment, and sometimes even the
French Revolution.
The Russian Empire played a decisive role in the Seven Years' War and
then, fifty years later, in the Napoleonic Wars; these conflicts made
Russia a European power. Educated, like all European sovereigns, by a
conservative ideology and hostile to the ideas of the French Revolution,
Alexander I participated in two coalitions against Napoleon I and
suffered costly defeats. Then Alexander I, canceling the Union, chose
the side of France (the Tilsit Treaties), but the peace lasted only five
years (1807-1812). He uses this break to attack Sweden and annex
Finland.
In 1812, hostilities resumed. Napoleon's Great army
manages to capture Moscow, but it is forced to leave it, driven out of
the city by fire. Then the Russian armies pursued the enemy, exhausted
by hunger and cold, and occupied Paris in 1814.
The Russian
Empire plays an important role in the Congress of Vienna and the holy
alliance, which wants to control the fate of post-Napoleonic Europe: it
opposes the re-establishment of the Polish state and takes military part
in suppressing uprisings against monarchies (Hungary 1849), like its
allies. The Austrian Empire.
During his reign and the rule of his successors, the Russian Empire
continued its expansion into the Caucasus and to the mouth of the Danube
at the expense of the Persian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Georgia (a
vassal of the Persian Empire) was annexed in 1813 (the Treaty of
Golestan). The eastern part of the Principality of Moldavia (a vassal of
the Ottoman Empire) was annexed in 1812 and formed the government of
Bessarabia (the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812). Armenia, Dagestan and part
of Azerbaijan were annexed in 1828 as a result of a four-year conflict
with the Persian Empire (the Treaty of Turkmanchay). After Alexander's
death (1825), reformist officers, the Decembrists, unsuccessfully
rebelled, demanding reform of the monarchy. This attempt at revolt by
officers from the aristocracy would also serve as a model for many
Russian intellectuals in the next century, inspired by the philosophy of
Hegel or Kropotkin. In 1829, the Russian Empire ceded the mouth of the
Danube to the Ottoman Empire. Nicholas I achieved good economic growth,
but strengthened the repressive apparatus. He brutally suppressed an
armed uprising in Poland (1831). The decline of the Ottoman Empire,
which inflames the desires of European powers, lies at the heart of the
conflict between Russia and other European powers, led by Great Britain:
the Crimean War. Having been defeated at Sevastopol (1856), Alexander
II, the successor of Nicholas, had to cede Southern Bessarabia with the
mouth of the Danube and lose the rights of passage between the Black Sea
and the Mediterranean Sea. The last victorious conflict with the Ottoman
Empire (1878), initiated by the Bosnian uprising of 1876, allowed him to
regain access to the Danube and completed the conquest of the Caucasus.
However, this conflict worries investors, as Turkey refuses to sign the
protocol developed by the great powers in London.
Russia is also
seeking the creation of a Bulgarian kingdom in the Balkans and
recognition by the Ottomans of the independence of Serbia and Romania.
This increased influence inflames the hostility of the United Kingdom
(The Big Game).
During this period, there were many jacqueries
directed against the landed aristocracy, mired in debt and,
consequently, bound by the serfdom system. Industry developed mainly in
the mining and textile industries, but still lagged far behind England
and Germany (about 600,000 workers in about 1860). A new class of
merchants and small industrialists is emerging – often former serfs
freed by ransom – but their numbers are relatively small.
Education is distributed in the most affluent classes, and many higher
schools have been founded. Russian Russian literature is experiencing an
early flourishing thanks to such major writers as Turgenev, Pushkin or
Gogol, who testify to the sufferings of Russian society. This cultural
boom also extends to architecture and music (Glinka).
Alexander II is trying to learn the lessons of the Crimean defeat.
The country, which now covers 12.5 million square kilometers and has 60
million inhabitants, is handicapped by its archaic functioning.
Structural reforms are being put in train by the tsar: the most
important measure is the abolition of serfdom in 1861 which includes the
allocation to the former serf of a land, often too small to feed him, at
the cost of a long-term debt vis-à-vis the state. Local councils elected
by census suffrage – the Zemstvos - were created from 1864: endowed with
powers allowing them to manage local affairs and build roads, schools
and hospitals, they could raise taxes to finance them. This type of
structure was later extended to cities (urban duma). Finally, the legal
code introduces the prosecution and defense procedures and creates a
justice theoretically independent of power up to the district level.
Despite everything, the regime retains an autocratic and strongly police
character. The reforms will also stir up the violence of groups of
nihilist intellectuals and Alexander will eventually fall under their
blows (1881). During his reign, the empire continued its colonial
expansion in Central Asia: after the annexation of the Kazakhs' lands
completed in 1847, the three khanates of Uzbek territory (Kokand,
Bukhara and Khiva) were conquered over the next three decades and then
annexed or placed under protectorate (1876). This advance places the
limits of the Russian Empire at the gates of the British Empire in
India. The tension (Great Game) between the two countries will remain
very lively until an agreement is reached in 1907 (Anglo-Russian
convention). Poland will rise unsuccessfully in 1863.
Alexander
II is primarily known for his reforms, including the abolition of
serfdom. Despite the major liberal reforms put in place, he was
assassinated on March 13, 1881, during an attack organized by the
anti-tsarist group Narodnaya Volia.
Alexander III, when he ascended the throne in 1881, led a policy of
counter-reforms in response to the assassination of his father.
Authoritarian dispositions are maintained or reinforced: political
parties and trade unions are banned, the right of movement is limited,
the press is censored. Economically, the industry developed rapidly
thanks, among other things, to foreign investment and the construction
of a railway network which reached 30,000 km in 1890. New regions are
becoming industrialized (Ukraine) while some are strengthening their
industrial character, such as the Saint Petersburg region and especially
that of Moscow. But the abundant manpower generated by the abolition of
serfdom and population growth does not find it entirely to be employed
in industry (three million workers in 1913). Many peasants come to
colonize the virgin lands of the empire located in the south and east
(lower Volga Valley, Urals, Siberia) of the empire. The Trans-Siberian
Railway makes it possible to open up the immense territories of Siberia
and facilitates this migration, while the financing of industrialization
is mainly done by Russian loans coming especially from France.
The first section of the Trans-Siberian Railway opened in 1888 and
Moscow issued four loans of 500 million gold francs. In 1904, France had
1.6 million creditors from the railway network, the Russian state and
municipalities28, while the Franco-Russian alliance set up in 1892 tried
to make room for the Triplice.
Agriculture still has an
overwhelming weight: in 1897, Russia had 97 million peasants for a total
population of 127 million inhabitants. They generally do not own the
land they cultivate (25% will be owners in 1914). The literacy rate is
very low and infant mortality is high (about 180 ‰). The demographic
surplus is absorbed by the cities whose number is growing rapidly: on
the eve of the First World War, the urban population exceeds 25 million
inhabitants. Russia continues to expand its area of influence: in China
and Korea, it is clashing with Japanese interests. The ensuing
Russo-Japanese war ended in a complete defeat (1905 in Tsushima): the
modernization of Japan was underestimated and the remoteness from the
battlefield created enormous logistical constraints.
The defeat of Tsushima in 1905 triggered the first widespread
uprising of the Russian population against the regime. The Russian
revolution of 1905 is first of all a peasant movement that mainly
affects the black earth region. The workers then joined the movement 29.
The loyalty of the armed forces will save the regime. Nicholas II, who
ascended the throne in 1894, is obliged to give pledges of openness. An
elected assembly (duma) is endowed with legislative powers. But the
elections of two successive doumas give a large majority to the
opposition. The electoral law is then modified to obtain a chamber of
deputies favorable to the power.
The economic and social
evolution of the country had increased the liberal, democratic,
socialist and revolutionary oppositions to the tsarist regime. The
deadly shooting on Red Sunday in St. Petersburg set the fire on fire.
The imperial regime survived this first major attack, but discontent
grew and the opposition became radicalized. The general strike of
October 1905 succeeded in forcing the regime to give in. A liberal
constitution was granted ; but in the two years that followed, the
counterattack of Nicholas II reduced to nothing the hopes raised by this
revolution.
The mutiny of the battleship Potemkin, immortalized
in 1925 by The Battleship Potemkin, a film by Sergei Eisenstein,
remained a symbol of this.
Russia enters the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914 to come to the aid of Serbia, its ally. The Russian Empire launches an offensive in Eastern Poland but is severely beaten. Russian troops must abandon Poland. At the beginning of 1917, social movements broke out, aroused by the weight of the war on the economy, the losses on a front reduced to a defensive strategy, the instability of the leaders and the distrust vis-à-vis the tsar. The refusal of the troops to suppress the demonstrations and the weariness of the ruling classes forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate; thus the February Revolution of 1917 broke out and Russia became a republic. A provisional government was then formed, chaired by Alexandre Kerensky. While outlining reforms, he is nevertheless trying to respect Russia's commitments to its allies by continuing the war. The unpopularity of this last measure is exploited by the party of the Bolsheviks which, on October 25, 1917 (November 7 in the Gregorian calendar), overthrows the government in Saint-Petersburg (then capital of Russia) by arms (October revolution). Peace was signed with the Germans (in Brest-Litovsk, in present-day Belarus) at the cost of huge territorial concessions (Poland, part of Ukraine, Baltic countries, etc., about 800,000 km2). An attempt by Lenin to export the revolution to the West triggering the war against Poland ends in a crushing failure: the Russian army almost twice as numerous as the Polish one is beaten at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920. This is the "miracle of the Vistula" and the "eighteenth decisive battle in the history of the world" due to the strategic genius of Marshal Joseph Pilsudski. A civil war will oppose for three years the white Russians (republicans or monarchists), assisted by the Western powers, to the Bolsheviks. After their victory, on December 22, 1922, the Bolsheviks established the Union of Soviet socialist republics; Russia became one of the Union republics.
On October 25 (November 7), 1917, the October Revolution took place.
The Bolsheviks and their allies under the leadership of V. I. Ulyanov
(Lenin) seized power in Russia. Soviet Russia became the world's first
socialist state. In January 1918, the Bolsheviks dispersed the
All-Russian Constituent Assembly, in the elections of which (according
to incomplete data) the Bolsheviks received only 22.5% of the votes (the
Socialist Revolutionaries won the elections at that time, who received
about 60% of the votes).
On March 3, 1918, the Brest Peace was
concluded, which brought Russia out of the world War. The Bolsheviks
recognized the independence of Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania and Ukraine, and pledged not to claim part of Belarus. On
March 12, the capital of the state was moved to Moscow.
After the
revolution, a Civil War broke out in Russia between the Bolsheviks and
their supporters, on the one hand, and the anti-Bolshevik forces (the
White Movement) on the other, as well as the "third force" (anarchists,
Basmachi, Social Revolutionaries, etc.). Other States also took part in
the war. The Civil War ended in 1921-22 with the victory of the
Bolsheviks. The Red Army captured Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan,
and Armenia, and established Soviet rule over most of the territory of
the former Russian Empire.
On December 30, 1922, the RSFSR, the
Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR and the ZSFSR formed the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR).
The Bolsheviks initiated ambiguous
social reforms that sharply limited the rights of representatives of
social groups disloyal to the Bolsheviks who survived the Civil War: the
nobility, clergy, merchants, wealthy peasants, representatives of the
old political, military and scientific elite, and, on the other hand,
allowed reducing the level of social inequality and abolishing access to
high-quality education only for privileged classes education, medicine,
housing and higher government positions.
After Lenin's death, the
internal party struggle escalated, as a result of which the supreme
power was concentrated in the hands of I. V. Stalin, whose rule had a
totalitarian character and was marked by a significant increase in
repression. Stalin set a course for accelerated industrialization and
complete collectivization of agriculture in order to make the transition
from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial one in the shortest
possible time through the full mobilization of internal resources,
over-centralization of economic life and the formation of an integrated
administrative and command system in the USSR.
If the pre-war
volume of industrial production of the Russian Empire in 1913 was 50% of
German and French, 20% of English and, according to various estimates,
10-15% of American, then by 1941 9 thousand factories were built, by the
end of the second five-year plan, 14 years after the end of the Civil
War, the USSR reached the second in terms of industrial production It
occupies a place in the world, second only to the United States, having
reached 10% of the total global industrial production.
In
1937-1938, a campaign of large-scale political repression took place in
the USSR, conducted by extrajudicial bodies against various social
strata and groups of the population (former nobles, priests, officers of
the Imperial army, members of the White Movement, officials of the
Russian Empire, dispossessed peasants, etc.) and known as the "Great
Terror". During this period, mass purges were also carried out in the
party, in the Red Army and state security agencies, among the heads of
industrial enterprises and scientific institutions. At the same time,
ethnic repression was launched.
In 1939, the USSR concluded a
non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany with a secret additional protocol
on the division of zones of influence in Eastern Europe to it, as a
result of which in 1939-1940 it annexed the eastern part of Poland, the
Baltic States, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, part of Karelia, pushing
the state border to the west.
On June 22, 1941, the Great
Patriotic War began with a sudden attack by Nazi Germany and its
satellites on the USSR. The German army, although inferior to the Soviet
in terms of the number of military equipment, but unlike the Red Army,
entered the war fully mobilized with deployed logistical support and was
able to achieve a decisive advantage in the directions of its main
attacks.
By the autumn of 1941, German troops had managed to
advance far enough into the territory of the USSR. During the offensive
in the Moscow direction, the Wehrmacht concentrated the bulk of all its
forces in front of the capital of the USSR, and in the north-western
direction reached the suburbs of Moscow. However, the resistance of the
Soviet troops increased dramatically, while the German troops exhausted
their offensive capabilities, after which the Soviet counteroffensive
began. During the Battle for Moscow, the plan for the lightning capture
of the USSR was finally thwarted, the German army suffered a strategic
defeat for the first time in World War II, and the war took on a
protracted character.
Immediately after the outbreak of the war,
many countries of the world expressed support for the USSR, and an
anti-Hitler coalition was created. The allies of the Soviet Union in the
war against Germany were the United Kingdom (at war with Germany since
September 3, 1939) and the United States, which provided military and
technical assistance to the USSR.
During the crucial battles of
Stalingrad and Kursk, Soviet troops launched a strategic offensive.
During the 1944-45 campaign, they defeated the German army, liberated
the territory of the USSR, as well as Poland, Romania, Hungary,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and part of Austria, making a
decisive contribution to the victory over Nazism. The losses of German
troops on the Soviet-German front amounted to about 75% of all
irretrievable combat losses in Germany, the Wehrmacht and its allies
lost 80% of all combat-ready units, 607 divisions were defeated. On May
9, 1945, the leadership of Nazi Germany signed an Act of unconditional
surrender.
As a result of the Second World War, the Soviet Union,
along with the United States, became a superpower, one of the founding
countries of the United Nations, a member of the UN Security Council
with the right of veto; pro-Soviet communist regimes were established in
the states of Eastern Europe. COMECON and the Warsaw Pact Organization
were created, opposing the EEC and NATO.
The global confrontation
between the capitalist and socialist systems in the struggle for world
influence has been called the "cold War". The efforts of the United
States and the USSR were primarily aimed at dominating the political
sphere. Although the two states did not officially engage in a direct
military clash, they waged an arms race, and their rivalry for influence
led to outbreaks of local armed conflicts in various third world
countries, which usually proceeded as mediated wars between the two
superpowers.
The coming to power of N. S. Khrushchev is
associated with a "thaw" in the socio-political life of the country and
the debunking of the cult of Stalin's personality. Nevertheless, from
the point of view of Western political scientists, the USSR continued to
remain a totalitarian state. During the period of Khrushchev's
administration, the USSR achieved world leadership in the nuclear and
space spheres: the USSR launched the first artificial satellite of the
Earth, the first man into space, the world's first spacecraft for
exploring the Moon and Venus, and for the first time in the world a
human spacewalk was realized.
In 1964, Leonid Brezhnev became the
de facto head of the Soviet Union, whose period of leadership
(1964-1982) is known as the "stagnation period". At the cost of
considerable efforts, the USSR was able to achieve military-strategic
parity with the United States by the mid-1970s, which served as one of
the foundations for defusing international tensions. Due to the rise in
world oil prices and the discovery of oil fields in Western Siberia,
development in the USSR became dependent on oil revenues, which led to
the cancellation of necessary economic reforms. The USSR lagged
significantly behind Western countries in terms of the development of
light industry, and the economic situation was characterized by
increasing queues for scarce goods. Instead, heavy industry developed,
mainly the military-industrial complex, which did not lead to an
increase in the standard of living of the population.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR with a program to accelerate socio-economic development, which in 1987 turned into larger-scale reforms called "perestroika" aimed at democratizing the socio-political and economic system that had developed in the USSR and weakening ideological control over society. They led to the loss of the leadership role of the CPSU, large-scale changes in ideology and the collapse of the USSR. In 1989-1991, a severe economic crisis occurred in the USSR, after which the transition from a socialist to a market economy model was carried out in independent Russia. In 1988, the "parade of sovereignty" of the Union republics began, which led in 1991 to the liquidation of the USSR and the independence of the former union republics. In 1989, the Warsaw Pact Organization and COMECON were dissolved. In December 1989, at the Malta Summit, Mikhail Gorbachev and George W. Bush officially announced the end of the Cold War.
On June 12, 1990, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the
RSFSR declared the sovereignty of the RSFSR. June 12 is a national
holiday of Russia — Russia Day, originally — the Independence Day of
Russia.
On August 19-21, 1991, the "August Putsch" took place in
Moscow, which caused confrontation between the authorities of the USSR
and the RSFSR, which led to mass demonstrations at the White House in
support of the President of the RSFSR B. N. Yeltsin. The coup attempt
was organized by party figures, the KGB and the military, who tried to
prevent the collapse of the USSR. An ill-conceived and poorly executed
conspiracy put an end to the CPSU and only accelerated the collapse of
the state. On December 8, 1991, the Belovezhskaya Agreements on the
termination of the existence of the USSR and the creation of the CIS
were signed.
On December 26, 1991, the Council of Republics of
the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a declaration stating the
transformation of the USSR into the CIS and the need for the
implementation of international agreements of the USSR by newly
independent states. The Russian Federation was recognized as the
successor state of the USSR in international legal relations and took
its place in the UN Security Council.
Since December 1991, Russia (the Russian Federation) has become a
fully independent and sovereign State.
In January 1992, radical
economic reforms began in Russia. The Yeltsin—Gaidar government
liberalized retail prices and foreign trade, reorganized the tax system
and other transformations that radically changed the economic situation
in the country. The result of the reforms marked Russia's transition to
a market economy. The Russian model of the market economy has caused
mixed assessments among Russian and foreign researchers, including Nobel
laureates in economics. On January 2, 1992, state price regulation was
abolished and freedom of trade was declared. The period of "wild"
capitalism and the initial accumulation of capital associated with the
abandonment of a centrally planned economy and the catastrophic
devaluation of the state's social obligations, — It was characterized by
the elimination of the shortage of consumer goods, but at the same time
by explosive price growth (hyperinflation), depreciation of the savings
of the population, mass impoverishment, a sharp increase in crime,
barterization and criminalization of the economy, mass unemployment,
non-payment of salaries, pensions and social benefits, a radical
increase in social inequality, a crisis in the social sphere, a
catastrophic drop in the birth rate, a sharp increase in mortality and a
significant reduction in the life expectancy of the population. The
economic reforms of the 1990s also led to a sharp decline in the
country's economy: industrial output decreased by 60%, and in the light
and food industries production fell by 70%, amounting to 30% of the
pre-reform level.
On October 3-4, 1993, a violent crackdown on
the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council took place in
Moscow, which resulted in human casualties. On October 9, 1993, the
President terminated the powers of the councils of People's deputies of
all levels, and in December the new Constitution of Russia came into
force, which finally consolidated the change of the socio-political
system on its territory.
In 1994, the first war broke out on the
territory of the Chechen Republic between the federal center and Chechen
separatists. The results of this conflict were the withdrawal of Russian
troops, massive destruction and casualties, the de facto independence of
Chechnya before the fighting in Dagestan and the second war, and the
wave of terror that swept through Russia.
The 1996 presidential
election was the only one in Russian history when a second round of
elections was needed to determine the winner, as a result of which Boris
Yeltsin, who was significantly behind his opponent at the beginning of
the election race, beat the leader of the Communist Party G. A.
Zyuganov, while significant violations were noted in the elections.
In the first half of the 1990s, a large number of enterprises were
privatized through voucher privatization, as well as through collateral
auctions. However, this was not enough to cover the huge external public
debt. On August 17, 1998, the Russian government declared default.
On December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation from
the post of president, appointing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
as acting president.
In March 2000, Vladimir Putin won the
election and became the second president of Russia. Putin remains
Russia's most significant political figure to this day. During his
reign, Putin, according to the BBC, has strengthened control over the
authorities and the press, with a recent focus on nationalism and
aggressiveness towards the West.
In the 2000s, the Government of
Mikhail Kasyanov carried out a number of socio-economic reforms in
Russia: tax, land, pension, banking, monetization of benefits and
others. In 2000-2008, Russia saw the growth of the Russian economy,
investments, and incomes of the population, which was facilitated by the
reforms carried out, political stability, and increased prices for
Russian exports (especially mineral resources). The introduction of
maternity capital in 2007 as a form of stimulating fertility and
supporting large families played a significant role in stabilizing the
demographic sphere in Russia and the transition to expanded reproduction
of the population. There was a strengthening of the vertical of
executive power in the country and the formation of the ruling party,
United Russia, which arose as a result of the merger of political blocs.
According to the results of the 2003, 2007, 2011, and 2016 elections,
this party held the majority of seats in the State Duma and supported
key decisions of the president and the government.
The creation
of the federal district system in 2000, as well as the reform of the
Federation Council, further strengthened the power vertical, increasing
the level of manageability of the Russian administrative system.
In 2000, the active phase of the war in Chechnya, which remained part of
Russia, was completed. In 2009, the counter-terrorism operation regime
was officially abolished in Chechnya.
In 2008, Dmitry Medvedev
became president of Russia, and Vladimir Putin took over as Prime
Minister.
On August 8, 2008, the war in Georgia began, after
which Russia officially recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as
independent states.
On December 4, 2011, elections to the State
Duma of the VI convocation were held, according to the results of which
the ruling United Russia party retained its parliamentary majority, but
lost its constitutional one. In the Russian presidential election on
March 4, 2012, Vladimir Putin won in the first round. He took office on
May 7. On May 8, the State Duma agreed to Vladimir Putin's appointment
of Dmitry Medvedev as Prime Minister.
After the elections to the
State Duma, mass political demonstrations by Russian citizens began.
They also took place during the campaign for the election of the
President of Russia and after the presidential elections held on March
4, 2012, in which Vladimir Putin officially won in the first round. The
protesters claimed that the elections were accompanied by violations of
the law and massive fraud. The speeches also had an anti-Putin
orientation.
In 2014, Russian President Putin did not accept the
Euromaidan that took place in Ukraine. In February-March 2014, Russia,
under the pretext of "protecting" the Russian-speaking population,
seized and annexed Crimea. This has led to opinions that Putin is trying
to recreate the Russian quasi-empire of the Cold War in the image of the
former USSR. New subjects were formed as part of Russia: the Republic of
Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol. The annexation of Crimea
contributed to the outbreak of the war in Donbass, in which Russia
supported the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR. The ambition of the Russian
Federation was to regain the territories lost after the collapse of the
USSR. In fact, by supporting pro-Russian entities in eastern Ukraine,
Russia was trying to destabilize Ukraine and make eastern Ukraine part
of Putin's "Novorossiya." Ukraine and most UN member states have not
recognized the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Western countries have
imposed sanctions against Russia in connection with the annexation of
Crimea and the war in Donbas; in response, Russia has also applied
sanctions policies against these countries.
On September 30,
2015, Russia launched a military operation against terrorist groups and
the opposition in Syria.
In 2020, amendments to the Constitution
were adopted, which allowed Vladimir Putin to be nominated for the post
of head of state two more times and, if he wins the next elections — in
2024 and 2030 — to lead the country until 2036.
On February 21,
2022, Russia recognized the independence of the DPR and the LPR, and on
February 24, with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, escalated the
Russian-Ukrainian war to the largest war in Europe since World War II.
The Russian invasion led to the imposition of new international
sanctions.
In October 2022, Russia announced the annexation of
the occupied parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk
regions of Ukraine.
The territory of Russia within its declared borders is 17,125,191 km2
(the first place in terms of area among the countries of the world),
which is slightly smaller than the continent of South America. It is
located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere, most of the territory of
Russia is located in the Eastern Hemisphere, only the eastern part of
the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug is located in the Western Hemisphere. It
is washed by the waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans; as well as the
Baltic, Black, and Azov Seas of the Atlantic Ocean; having the longest
coastline in the world (37,653 km). Russia is located in the north of
the Eurasian continent, occupying almost the entire Eastern Europe and
the entire north of Asia, the semi-enclave of the Kaliningrad region can
be attributed to Central Europe by a number of criteria. The Ural and
Caucasian Mountains (or the Kumo-Manych Depression) divide Russia into
European (23%) and Asian (77%) parts; at the same time, separately
taken, the European and Asian parts of Russia are the largest in terms
of territory among other European and Asian states.
The extreme
northern point of Russia is Cape Fligeli on Rudolf Island of the Franz
Josef Land archipelago (81°51’ s.s.), which belongs to the Arkhangelsk
region; the extreme northern mainland point is Cape Chelyuskin on the
Taimyr Peninsula (77°43’ s.s.), in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The
easternmost point is Ratmanov Island in the Bering Strait (169°0’ s.
d.), is the territory of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug; the easternmost
mainland point is Cape Dezhnev in Chukotka (169°39’ s. d.). The
southernmost point of Russia is located on the border of Dagestan with
Azerbaijan, southwest of Bazarduzu Mountains (41°11’ C. The westernmost
point lies in the Kaliningrad region, on the Baltic Spit of the Gdansk
Bay of the Baltic Sea (19°38’ VD). The length of the territory of Russia
from west to east is over 10 thousand kilometers, from north to south it
exceeds 4 thousand kilometers.
The list of states with which Russia borders. Partially recognized
States are shown in italics:
Land and partially sea borders:
Norway, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Abkhazia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, North Korea.
Exclusively land borders:
Latvia, Belarus, China, Mongolia, South Ossetia.
Only maritime
borders: Japan, USA.
The European part of Russia is located on the Eastern European
Platform. It is based on igneous and metamorphic rocks of the
Precambrian. The territory between the Ural Mountains and the Yenisei
River is occupied by a young West Siberian platform. East of the Yenisei
is the ancient Siberian platform, extending to the Lena River and
corresponding mainly to the Central Siberian Plateau. There are deposits
of oil, natural gas, and coal in the marginal parts of the platforms.
The folded regions of Russia include the Baltic Shield, the Urals,
Altai, the Ural-Mongolian Epipaleozoic folded belt, the northwestern
part of the Pacific folded Belt and a small segment of the outer zone of
the Mediterranean folded Belt. The highest mountains of the Caucasus are
confined to younger folded regions. The main reserves of metal ores are
located in the folded areas.
The Siberian platform has an
epiarchean age. Russia's largest deposits of coal, rock and potash
salts, oil and gas are associated with the cover of the Siberian
Platform, copper—nickel deposits of Norilsk are associated with trap
intrusions, and diamonds are associated with the kimberlite pipe.
In the structure of the Ural-Mongolian Epipaleozoic folded belt
separating 2 ancient platforms, the areas of Riphean, Baikal, Salair,
Caledonian and Hercynian folding are distinguished. The
Yenisei-Sayano-Baikal region of the Riphean and Baikal folds frames the
Siberian platform. Along the border with the East European Platform
there is a Pre-Ural regional trough filled with Permian strata with
deposits of coal in the north and potash salts in the middle part of the
trough (see Urals).
The Pacific fold belt on the territory of
Russia is represented by the extreme northwestern part, within which the
ancient Pre-Riphean massifs, areas of Mesozoic and Cenozoic folding and
modern tectonically active zones are located. Gold deposits associated
with Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous granite intrusions, as well as tin,
tungsten and mercury are known in the Verkhoyano-Chukchi region. Large
deposits of coal are enclosed in molasses of the Preverkhoyansk trough
and the Zyryansk depression.
The West Kamchatka folded system is
a terrigenous geosynclinal complex of the Upper Cretaceous, which
overlapped with granite-gneiss and shale-basite foundations, and after
folding turned out to be overlain by Paleogene-Neogene rocks. The
eastern zone is characterized by superimposed modern volcanism (28
active volcanoes).
The Kuril Island Arc, consisting of Large and
Small Ridges, has 39 active volcanoes, and is composed of Cretaceous and
Quaternary volcanogenic sedimentary and volcanic formations. The arc is
fragmented by a system of young transverse grabens, and in front of its
front, as well as in front of the eastern part of Kamchatka, there is a
deep-water trough.
The Sakhalin Cenozoic folded region is divided
into Eastern and Western zones, separated by the Central Sakhalin
graben. Oil and gas deposits are associated with the North Sakhalin
Depression, and coal deposits are associated with rocks of the Middle
Miocene on the island.
Russia comprises a large number of different natural areas, which
have a wide range of potentials, but also very diverse uses. From a
geographical point of view, Russia is mainly divided into the eight
major landscapes (approximately in the west-east direction):
The
Eastern European plain occupies most of European Russia. It consists of
wide lowlands, which are interrupted by weakly structured ridges. Only a
few elevations reach heights of more than 300 m. In Karelia and on the
Kola Peninsula, which geologically belong to the Baltic Shield, the
relief in the north is more differentiated. There, in the chibins of the
central Kola Peninsula, a maximum height of 1191 m is reached. In the
south, the East European Lowland passes into the Caspian Depression,
located below sea level. During the last Ice Age, a chain of terminal
moraines was formed, which runs from the border area with Belarus to the
east and north of Moscow to the Arctic coast west of the Pechora River.
The region to the north of it consists of many lakes and swamps.
To
the east of the Ural Mountains, the wide-stretched plain in the West
Siberian Lowland continues to the Yenisei. This extremely flat area is
occupied by extensive swampy landscapes.
The North Siberian Lowland
joins north of the Central Siberian Upland, which rises north to the
Taimyr Peninsula to the south of the Arctic Ocean.
East of the
Yenisei, the undulating Central Siberian Upland stretches to the Lena
River with average altitudes between 500 and 700 m. In the north-west of
this region, the Putorana Mountain range rises, which reaches a maximum
height of 1701 m. Rivers shaped the shape of the landscape, in some
places deep canyons have cut in.
In the south of Central and Eastern
Siberia, further mountain ranges continue eastwards to the Pacific Ocean
(South Siberian Mountains). These include Altai, Sayan Mountains,
Yablonovy Mountains, Stanovoi Mountains and Dzhugdzhur.
The
Middle-Yakutian Lowland mainly includes the lower reaches of the Lena
and Wiljui valleys, but also the lower Aldan Valley. The lowland, which
covers about 1 million km2, is bordered by the Central Siberian Upland
in the west and the East Siberian Upland in the east.
East of Lena
and Aldan is joined by the East Siberian Upland, which consists of
branched mountain ranges. The higher mountains in this region, such as
the Verkhoyansk Mountains, the Chersky Mountains and the Kolyma
Mountains, reach altitudes between about 2300 and 3200 m. There are
about 160 volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The volcanic mountain
range of Kamchatka continues in the south on the Kuril Islands. There
are about 100 volcanoes there.
To the south of the East Siberian Sea,
the extensive East Siberian Lowland opens up, which is located
exclusively north of the Arctic Circle. The landscape includes the lower
reaches of the Jana, Indigirka and Kolyma rivers. The western part is
the Jana-Indigirka lowland, the eastern is the Kolyma lowland. In the
west, south and east, the East Siberian Lowland borders on the East
Siberian Upland.
Russia is one of the most water—rich countries in the world. The
country has one of the largest freshwater reserves in the world. Surface
waters occupy 12.4% of the territory of Russia, while 84% of surface
waters are concentrated east of the Urals. The structure of water use is
dominated by production needs.
The largest freshwater lake Baikal
is located in the eastern part of the country (about 31,700 km2), it is
the deepest lake on the planet (1,642 m).
The country is rich in various minerals. Oil reserves have been explored in one volume or another in many regions of the country, in particular, in the Tyumen Region, Sakhalin, Bashkiria, as well as on the shelf, natural gas reserves — mainly on the territory of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
The soils of Russia on the plains are located zonally. Low-power and
primitive Arctic soils are formed on the islands of the Arctic Ocean and
the coast of Taimyr. To the south is the tundra zone, dominated by
acidic tundra, usually heavily peeled soils. Tundra gley, slightly
podzolic or gley-taiga-permafrost soils are characteristic of the
transitional forest-tundra zone.
Approximately 65% of Russia's
territory is located within the forest zone. In its northern part, the
soils are podzolic, and taiga-permafrost soils are formed east of the
Yenisei. There are many swamps in the taiga subzone (especially in
Western Siberia), mainly upland (oligotrophic); forests are often
swampy. South of the taiga on the East European Plain, the soils are
sod-podzolic.
The forest-steppe zone lying to the south has gray
forest soils. And the steppe zone is characterized by particularly
fertile chernozems (with a powerful humus horizon containing from 4 to
10% humus) and dark chestnut soils. Further south, on the territory of
the Caspian lowland, there are areas of a semi—desert zone with light
chestnut and brown soils, salt marshes are also found.
More than
70% of the Russian territory is a zone of risky farming. At the same
time, 9% of all productive arable lands in the world and more than 50%
of the world's chernozems are located in Russia.
The average annual temperature for Russia is given as -5.5 °C. Large
parts of the country are characterized by the continental climate with
hot summers and very cold winters. The further you travel towards the
east of the country, the more clearly you can feel the characteristic
temperatures at the different seasons, that is, the summer is extremely
hot and the temperatures in the winter months are sometimes icy cold.
Hardly any other country offers such temperature differences as Russia.
The southern half of the Far East has a monsoon-influenced climate. The
average January temperatures are below freezing everywhere except for
the Black Sea coast. In Eastern Siberia, they drop to -35 to -60 ° C,
but are easier to tolerate due to the usually very low humidity. Summer
temperatures are very different. The average temperatures in the far
North range from +1 to +2 °C, while in the semi-steppe and steppe
regions of the south they range from +24 to +25 °C.
The climate,
vegetation and ecozones in Russia are largely parallel to the
latitudinal circle, so that a north-south sequence is created:
In
the Northern Arctic Ocean, the hostile cold desert prevails. This
concerns, among other things, the northern part of the Taimyr Peninsula
and other islands located there. There is a pronounced ice climate, in
which there are hardly any plants. There are few permanent settlements
in this zone. The average temperatures rise just above the freezing
point for only three months, and in the coldest months of January and
February they reach -30 °C. The annual amounts of precipitation in the
form of snow rarely rise above 250 millimeters.
Starting from the
northernmost Eurasian mainland, it is followed by a treeless landscape
belt characterized by permafrost, which has a north-south extent of
between 200 and 800 km and extends approximately to the Arctic Circle,
in the Central Siberian Highlands to 70 ° north latitude. The coastal
landscape in the north, with the exception of the bay around the White
Sea, is characterized by the tundra. The summers there are too short and
too cool for forests to form. The average temperatures are above
freezing point only four to five months a year, with the warmest months
in the peripheral areas having an average above 10 °C. Therefore, the
soil also thaws only on the surface, so that the abundant precipitation
accumulates on the frozen subsoil, and in summer the tundra turns into a
sea of swamps and bogs with a vegetation of lichens, grasses and dwarf
shrubs. Agriculture is not possible, only the indigenous reindeer nomads
find their livelihood there. Therefore, there are few human settlements.
Further south of the cold steppe, spruce trees first begin to grow
singly, and then, together with bog birch and aspen, form forest-tundra
interspersed with swamps. At its southern border, the forest-tundra then
smoothly passes into the forest zone.
This zone, 1000-2000 km
wide, runs north along the St. Petersburg–Ufa–Irkutsk–Sakhalin line and
forms the boreal zone, or rather the taiga. The forest zone runs through
the whole of northern Eurasia. Because of this enormous extent, it is
divided into several latitudinal subzones: in the coniferous forest belt
(taiga proper), which is by far the dominant in terms of area, in the
north, in Central Siberia, further into the sub-taiga as a transition
zone to the steppe, as well as into a mixed forest belt, which, however,
joins only in European Russia to the south. The taiga, for its part,
forms three subzones connected in series parallel to each other in
width:
To the west of the Urals, the northern taiga consists of
low spruce forests with scattered birches. Only in Karelia the pine
prevails.
The middle taiga forms dark spruce forests with inclusions
of birches, to the south increasingly also pines, as well as the first
harbingers of hardwoods such as the winter linden. Low fertility of the
soil and species poverty of the vegetation makes this landscape
unsuitable for agriculture.
The southern taiga is characterized by a
high proportion of hardwoods in the undergrowth, due to more fertile
soils. The taiga of Siberia is characterized by light forests,
consisting of Siberian larch, spruce and pine.
The forest zone is
characterized by a continental climate with a sharp temperature
difference between hot summers and cold winters. The average annual
temperature decreases significantly from west to east. In Pskov, it is
still 5.1 °C, but drops to 2.3 °C up to the Urals and reaches only 0.1
°C in Tomsk in Western Siberia. In Yakutsk in eastern Siberia, it is
then at -10 °C. The low annual averages are due to the long and very
cold winter in Siberia. On the other hand, the average summer
temperatures correspond to the Central European average.
In the
areas dominated by cool temperate climates, which join the taiga to the
south, summer green deciduous and mixed forest grows. This zone runs
within Europe in the St. Petersburg–Odessa–Ufa triangle, in Western
Siberia in a strip from Chelyabinsk to Krasnoyarsk, as well as in the
Amur Region. The mixed forest zone thus runs in a triangle tapering to
the east from the Middle Carpathians and from the Baltic coast to the
Southern Urals. The vegetation consists primarily of spruce, pine and
oak trees, before it turns further south into pure deciduous forest. The
leading woods are oak, as well as beech and hornbeam in Western Ukraine.
Pines grow, as well as in the mixed forest area, especially in sandy
depressions, such as in the Pripjet basin. There is no mixed forest east
of the Urals for climatic reasons. Instead, in Western Siberia, birch
groves lead directly from the taiga to the forest-steppe. The mixed
forest then occurs again in the Far East. The mixed forest zone offers
generally acceptable living conditions for agriculture, the deciduous
forest zone offers good living conditions.
Further south follows
a steppe belt, which runs along the lower reaches of the Don and Volga,
the North Caucasus, the Caspian Depression and the Tuva. The steppe belt
is divided into the forest-steppe in the north and the steppe proper in
the south. The forest dissolves into islands from north to south and
finally disappears almost completely. This is related to the decrease in
precipitation to the southeast with a simultaneous increase in the
intensity of evaporation. Except in river valleys (as riparian forest)
or in depressions with favorable groundwater conditions, the water
stored in the loess soil is not sufficient to meet the liquid
requirements of hardwoods. Therefore, in the forest-steppe, meadow-grass
formations, in the steppe proper, feather-grass formations form the
plant cover. The steppe belt is ideal for growing cereals due to the
fertile layer of chernozem.
On the Black Sea coast between
Novorossiysk and Sochi follows a hard deciduous forest zone. On the
Black Sea coast, the average temperature is around 20 degrees Celsius.
This subtropical part of Russia is characterized by dense forests.
After Canada, Russia is home to the largest remaining Nordic
wilderness regions. According to Global Forest Watch, around 26% of the
forests are still intact virgin forests. For the most part, they are
located in Siberia. In the European part, 9% of the forests still have
this status.
With 120,000 rivers and streams and almost two million lakes, Russia
is very rich in water. The forest belt, which occupies two thirds of the
area, together with the excess of precipitation acts as a huge water
reservoir, feeding a whole network of watercourses.
In the
European part of Russia, the most important river is the Volga. It is
the longest river in Europe and runs exclusively in Russia. Together
with its two tributaries Kama and Oka, it drains a large part of the
East European Plain after 3534 km to the Caspian Sea in the southeast.
As a waterway, the Volga River has special significance, as it connects
Eastern Europe with Central Asia. The North Russian ridge forms the
watershed between the Volga Basin and the White Sea or the Barents Sea
in the north. Of great importance for the Slavic states is the Dnieper
(also called the Dnieper). The stream originates west of Moscow and then
flows through Belarus and Ukraine, where it flows into the Black Sea. It
is connected to the Polish rivers Bug and Vistula via the Dnieper-Bug
Canal and indirectly to the River Memel via the Oginsk canal system,
which makes the Dnieper an important waterway.
The longest rivers
of Russia are located in Siberia and Far Eastern Russia. The Ob River
originates in the South Siberian Altai and flows into the Arctic Ocean.
The Katun River, with its headwaters over 4300 km long, forms – together
with the Irtysh – one of the longest river systems in Asia with a total
length of over 5400 km. The Yenisei River system has an even longer flow
path, the water of which flows (partially) from Mongolia to the north
through Western Siberia to the Arctic Ocean. Its main tributary, the
Angara, represents the only outflow of Lake Baikal. The Yenisei annually
supplies about 600 km3 of water to the Arctic Ocean. Thus, he records
the highest flow rate of all Russian rivers. The approximately 4300 km
long Lena, the longest stream that runs exclusively in Russia and whose
catchment area is located exclusively in Russia, originates only 5 km
from Lake Baikal. It flows initially in a northeasterly direction, turns
north after the confluence of the Aldan and flows into the Laptev Sea, a
tributary of the Arctic Ocean, in an extensive delta. Other important
rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean are the Pechora, the Northern
Dvina, the Chatanga, as well as the Kolyma and the Indigirka.
Another important river system is the Amur with its tributary Schilka.
With its source river Onon, it has a total length of about 4400 km and
leads from the northeast of Mongolia in an easterly direction along the
Chinese border to the Pacific coast. Amur and Anadyr are the largest
Russian rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean.
Many other streams
are important as transport routes and as energy sources, or they are
used for irrigation in arid regions. The Don occupies a prominent
position in this. It is located in the populous Eastern European
Lowlands and drains south into the Sea of Azov. Other important rivers
are Moskva, Selenga, Tobol, Stony Tunguska, Lower Tunguska, Ural and
Ussuri.
In Russia, especially in the formerly glaciated
northwestern part of the country, there are many natural lakes. The
Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland lake with an area of 386,400
km2. The lake level of the saltwater lake is about 28 m below the sea
level. Since the Caspian Sea has no runoff, water escapes only by
evaporation, which leads to the crystallization of salts in the dry
climate prevailing here. Lake Baikal is the oldest freshwater lake with
a depth of 1642 m, which makes it not only the deepest lake, but also
the largest reservoir of liquid freshwater in the world (about a fifth
of all liquid freshwater reserves). Other important and large lakes are
Lake Ladoga (the largest inland lake in Europe), Lake Onega and Lake
Taimyr.
About 40% of the area of Russia is covered by mountains. The Ural
River forms the dividing line between the European and Asian parts of
the country; however, it is not a real barrier because of its low
altitude of almost 2000 m (Narodnaya, 1895 m). To the east of the Urals
stretches the very flat West Siberian Lowland, which stretches to the
Yenisei River and is crossed by vast swampy landscapes. To the
southeast, the West Siberian Lowland is closed by the Central Siberian
Upland, which stretches to the Lena River and descends to the narrow
North Siberian Lowland in the north. The Central Siberian highlands
include the Sayan Mountains (Munku Sardyk, 3491 m) and the highest
mountain range in Siberia, the Altai (Belukha, 4506 m), in the
Russian-Kazakh-Chinese-Mongolian border area. To the east of the Lena
rises the East Siberian Upland, which branches into various mountain
ranges, such as the Verkhoyansk Mountains (2389 m in Orlugan) and the
Chersky Mountains (Pobeda, 3003 m), and reaches altitudes up to a good
3000 m. The Kamchatka Peninsula is characterized by its 160 volcanoes
with altitudes up to 4688 m, of which 29 are still active.
Other
mountains in Russia are: Baikal Mountains, Chibinen, Caucasus, Kolyma
Mountains, Putorana Mountains, Stanovoi Mountains, Stanovoi Highlands,
Tannu-ola Mountains. The highest mountain in Russia is Mount Elbrus
(5642 m) in the Caucasus. In addition to other 5000s in the Caucasus,
the Kazbek with 5047 m and the Klyuchevskaya Sopka with 4750 m are
well-known peaks.
Russia has a well-developed nature conservation
system with a long tradition. Since the 1980s, national parks built
according to international criteria and other international protected
area classes have been added to the classic Russian protected area
categories such as the strictly protected Zapovedniki or the Sakasniki.
Russia has one of the largest protected area systems in the world in
terms of area:
Zapovedniki (strictly protected areas): Is the
most important national protected area category in Russia, which belongs
to the highest possible protected area category internationally. In
them, no use and no human influence on the natural processes may take
place. Therefore, visitors are prohibited from entering the core zone of
a zapovednik, although there are exceptions for scientists to a limited
extent. Currently, there are 100 of these total reserves in Russia,
ranging in area from 2.31 to 4169 km2 and covering a total of 27,000
km2.
Sakasniki (wildlife sanctuaries): These are areas that cover up
to 6000 km2 of area, where restrictions on economic use apply. As
landscape reserves, they serve the protection and regeneration of
natural ecosystems, the protection of rare animal and plant species, of
fossil sites or the protection of hydrologically or geologically
important sites. In total there are about 3000 sakasniki in Russia with
a total area of about 78,000 km2.
National parks in Russia: It is
only since the beginning of the 1980s that the protected area category
of national parks, which has long been known in other countries, has
also existed in Russia. These have a lower protection status than the
Zapovedniki and, in addition to protecting natural and cultural
treasures, they also serve research and education, as well as controlled
tourism. Currently, there are 35 national parks in Russia, ranging in
area from 7 km2 to 18,900 km2 and covering a total of 90,000 km2 of the
national territory.
Nature parks: they are a relatively new category
of protection and, in addition to nature conservation, they also serve
for recreation.
Natural heritage: in 1972, the Convention for the
Protection of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of the World was
adopted, to which Russia joined in 1988. Natural heritage is considered
to be unique physical, biological and geological formations or areas,
the preservation of which is of exceptional value for science or because
of their natural beauty, as well as habitats of endangered species of
animals and plants. So far, the following areas have been included by
UNESCO as a natural heritage:
1995 - Virgin forests of Komi
1996 -
Lake Baikal
1996 - Volcanic region of Kamchatka with natural park
1998 - Altai Mountains
1999 - Western Caucasus
2001 - Central
Sichote-Alin Nature Reserve
2003 - Uws Nuur Cymbals
2004 - Wrangel
Island Nature Reserve
2010 - Putorana Mountains
There are several zones in Russia, distinguished by the heat supply
of the climate, within which natural (landscape) zones are
distinguished. They consist of zonal types of landscapes. For example,
in the subtaiga zone, subtaiga types of landscapes predominate, but
broad-leaved and other landscapes can occur in isolation.
The
Arctic belt. Zones and subzones: Arctic (glacial, polar desert).
The
Subarctic belt. Zones and subzones: tundra (arctic tundra, typical
tundra, southern tundra), forest tundra, forest meadow.
Temperate
zone (boreal types of landscapes). Zones and subzones: taiga (northern,
middle, southern), subtaiga.
Temperate zone (subboreal types of
landscapes). Zones and subzones: broad-leaved forests, forest-steppe,
steppe (typical, dry), semi-desert, desert, sub-Mediterranean
(pre-subtropical landscapes).
In addition to the division into
landscape zones, there is a division into physical and geographical
sectors, which differ in atmospheric circulation, continental climate
and other characteristics. Examples of sectors are Eastern Europe,
Western Siberia, etc.
The Arctic zone is found only on the Arctic
islands. Tundra and forest tundra occupy the Arctic coast of Russia, as
well as part of Kamchatka and the Pacific coast of Chukotka.
The
southern border of the taiga passes through Pskov, Yaroslavl,
Yekaterinburg, Tomsk, Chita and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The subtype includes
mixed forests of European Russia and the Kaliningrad region,
coniferous-small-leaved and birch-aspen forests of the south of Western
Siberia, mixed forests of Northern Primorye (Samarga and Anyui) and
coniferous-broadleaf forests of the south of the Sakhalin region.
The zone of broad-leaved forests includes the south of the Bryansk
region. The broad-leaved landscapes from the Kaluga region to Bashkiria
are classified as the northern subzone of the forest-steppe. The zone of
broad-leaved forests also occupies the south of the Amur Region and most
of the Primorsky Territory. Steppes and forest-steppes cover the main
part of the Chernozem region and the Middle Volga, the Pre-Caucasus,
Northern Crimea, the Southern Urals and Trans-Urals, Southern Siberia
(Omsk and Novosibirsk regions, Altai, Tuva, Southern Transbaikalia).
Semi-deserts and deserts are found on the Lower Volga and in Kalmykia.
The sub-Mediterranean zone is available only on the coast of Crimea and
Krasnodar Territory. Fragments of pre-subtropical landscapes, but not
the sub-Mediterranean zone itself, are present in Dagestan.
The
natural zonality is most clearly expressed to the west of the Yenisei,
to the east of the Yenisei the zonality is less noticeable due to the
complex nature of the relief and the sharply continental climate. Since
a significant part of the country's territory is occupied by mountains,
many areas are characterized by high-altitude zones.
There are about 24,700 species of plants in the flora of Russia, of
which about 11,400 species are vascular, 1,137 species are mossy, 9,000
species are algae, 3,000 species are lichens and 159 species are ferns.
The Caucasus (6,000 species) and the Far East (4,300 species) are the
most abundant in plant species, the Arctic islands of Siberia are the
poorest (100-150 species).
According to the floristic zoning, the
vegetation of Russia is divided into several regions.
Circumboreal area. Provinces: Arctic, Central European (St. Petersburg,
Kaliningrad), Euxine (Sochi — Tuapse), Caucasian, Eastern European,
Northern European, Western Siberian, Altai-Sayan, Central Siberian,
Trans-Baikal, North-East Siberian, Okhotsk-Kamchatka.
The East Asian
region. Provinces: Manchuria (Amur basin and Primorye),
Sakhalin-Hokkaido.
The Mediterranean region. Province:
Crimean-Novorossiysk.
Iran-Turan region. Provinces: Turan (Lower
Volga, Kalmykia), Dzungaro-Tianshan (south of Altai).
The forest
cover of the territory of Russia is 45.4%, 796.2 million hectares are
covered with forest. The vastness of the territories and the diversity
of natural areas determine the rich flora and fauna. Mosses, polar
poppies, and buttercups grow in the Arctic deserts of the Far North. In
the tundra, dwarf birch, willow, and alder are added to these species.
Spruce, fir, cedar, pine, and larch are typical for the taiga. In the
undergrowth there are blueberries, vermilion, honeysuckle, rosehip,
currant, etc. To the south, coniferous-deciduous and broad-leaved
forests of spruce, pine, oak, linden, ash, elm, maple, hornbeam, pear,
cherry begin, with an undergrowth of hazel, honeysuckle, birch bark,
rosehip, currant, viburnum, elder, spirea. In the south of the Far East,
yew, walnut, velvet, zelkva, kalopanax, aralia, mulberry, lilac, maakia,
rhododendron, magnolia, hydrangea, eleutherococcus, weigela, grapes,
lemongrass, actinidia, pliers, pueraria, schizophragma, etc. are added.
In the forest-steppe and steppe parts, bayrach forests and various
grasses from the families of cereals, legumes, asters, cloves,
buckwheat, etc. are common. In the Caucasus and Crimea, in addition to
the mentioned European breeds, yew, juniper, beech, chestnut, walnut,
lapina, fig, persimmon, sea buckthorn, pistachio, sumac, mulberry,
strawberry tree are found, boxwood, holly, vitex, rhododendron,
chubushnik, almonds, laurel, klekachka, frankincense, grapes, ivy,
sassaparilla, obboynik, clematis, hops.
There are 41 national
parks and 103 nature reserves in Russia.
There are about 320 species of mammals, more than 700 species of
birds, more than 50 species of reptiles, about 670 species of freshwater
and marine fish, 100 thousand species of insects and 10 thousand species
of arachnids in Russia. Most of the biodiversity is concentrated in the
south of European Russia (especially in the Caucasus), the south of the
Far East and in the mountains of southern Siberia.
In the Arctic
and tundra zone there are polar bears, wolves, arctic foxes, reindeer,
musk oxen, snow sheep, white hare, northern pika, lemmings, seals,
walruses, polar owl.
The taiga is inhabited by brown bear, wolf,
lynx, wolverine, ermine, sable, column, otter, elk, musk deer, beavers,
white hare, chipmunk, squirrel, flying squirrel, forest lemming, forest
vole, gray vole, brown tooth, viper, grouse hawk, grouse, grouse,
woodpecker, cedar, taiga flycatcher.
Fox, badger, hedgehog, mole,
bison, wild boar, red deer, roe deer, mink, numerous species of birds,
lizards, grass snakes, and copperhead are also found in mixed and
deciduous forests. The Caucasian region is home to leopard, hyena,
striped raccoon, bandaging, tour, chamois and a large number of
reptiles. In the forests of the Far East, there are Himalayan bear,
tiger, forest cat, harza, spotted deer, goral.
Among the animals
of the steppes, the hamster, tsokora, ground squirrel, marmot, and vole
predominate. There are many saigas, badgers, foxes, large steppe birds
(bustard, cranes, flutter). In the desert, there are gazelles, jackals,
sandcats, and numerous rodents.
Russia is a federal presidential and parliamentary republic.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, in 2018 Russia was
classified as an authoritarian regime by the Democracy Index, ranking
24th out of 29 Eastern European countries.
The flag of Russia is a rectangular panel of three equal horizontal
stripes: the upper one is white, the middle one is blue and the lower
one is red. The ratio of the width of the flag to its length is 2:3.
The coat of arms of Russia is a red heraldic shield with a golden
double-headed eagle, with its wings spread upwards, with rounded lower
corners, pointed at the tip. The eagle is crowned with two small crowns
and — above them — one large crown connected by a ribbon. In the eagle's
right paw is a scepter, in the left is a power. On the chest of the
eagle, in a red shield, there is a silver horseman in a blue cloak on a
silver horse, striking with a silver spear a black dragon, overturned
and trampled by a horse.
According to the Constitution, which is the basic law of the state,
Russia is a democratic federal state governed by the rule of law with a
republican form of government.
The modern Constitution of Russia,
adopted in 1993, operates with a number of amendments, the main of which
were adopted in 2008 and 2020. These amendments have received
significant international attention.
Russia is a state with a federal structure. According to its
constitution, Russia consists of 89 subjects, 48 of which are regions,
24 are republics, 9 are territories, 3 are cities of federal
significance, 4 are autonomous districts and 1 is an autonomous region.
The system of public authorities of the subjects of the Federation
is determined by the general principles established by the federation.
Each region has a legislative (representative) body (legislative
assembly, Duma) and an executive body (government). In all subjects,
there is a position of the highest official (head, governor), who are
elected for a term of no more than 5 years and cannot fill this position
for more than two consecutive terms.
Russia is also divided into
8 federal districts, each of which has an authorized representative of
the President of Russia.
The subjects of the federation have
their own administrative and territorial structure. As a rule, the main
administrative-territorial units within the subject of the federation
are districts and cities of regional (republican, regional, district)
significance.
The head of state is the President of the Russian Federation,
currently Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. In the performance of the duties
of the head of state, the President is assisted by the Chairman of the
Government of the Russian Federation, currently Mikhail Vladimirovich
Mishustin. The Chairman of the Russian Government holds the post of
president in the event of the latter's death or resignation.
The
President is elected for a term of six years by secret ballot in direct
general elections, and the same person cannot hold the presidency for
more than two terms. Constitutional norms providing for a six-year term
of office of the president were introduced in 2008, previously the head
of state was elected every four years.
The President has a number
of important powers: he directs the country's foreign policy, is the
Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, appoints the Prime
Minister with the consent of the State Duma, decides on the resignation
of the government. On the proposal of the Prime Minister, appoints
deputy Prime Ministers and federal ministers to the posts, as well as
dismisses them from office. The President heads the Security Council,
appoints and dismisses the command of the Armed Forces. Has the right to
propose candidates for the post of Chairman of the Central Bank (which
is not part of the government) to the State Duma for consideration. In
the event of aggression or an immediate threat of aggression, the
President has the right to declare martial law throughout the country or
in certain territories, but is obliged to immediately notify the Federal
Assembly of his decision. It has the right to issue decrees that are
binding on the entire territory of Russia (decrees must not contradict
federal laws). He also has a number of other powers.
The
President may be dismissed from office by the Federation Council,
provided that the State Duma charges high treason or commits another
serious crime and there are positive conclusions of the Supreme and
Constitutional Courts.
The legislative power is exercised by the Federation Assembly, which
consists of two chambers - the Duma and the Federation Council. The
State Duma is the lower house and consists of 450 deputies elected for
five-year terms according to party lists. The government is not bound to
the legislative period of the parliament, but to the term of office of
the president, because in the case of a newly elected president, the
government abdicates its powers. The State Duma may, by a majority of
all deputies, express distrust of the government or reject the
government's question of trust modestly. The government has budgetary
sovereignty and determines a uniform financial, credit and monetary
policy. The other policy areas are cultural, scientific, educational,
health, social security and environmental policy. All in all, this means
that the distribution of power and the composition of the government
does not have to reflect the political power relations of the State
Duma. Both the candidacy of the head of government (Prime Minister) of
the Federation and the appointment require the approval of the State
Duma after a constitutional amendment of 2020, the same applies to the
Deputy prime ministers and ministers proposed by the Prime Minister. The
Russian president is obliged to appoint the appointees, a refusal is not
possible; however, he will still have the right to dismiss the Prime
minister, his deputies and ministers, as well as to dissolve the Duma in
the event of a loss of confidence or improper performance of duties. In
order to enter parliament, a party must receive at least 7% of the votes
in the election. The main task of the State Duma is the adoption of
laws. In practice (as of 2022), according to the Bertelsmann Stiftung,
Parliament has no control over the executive branch.
The
Federation Council is the upper house and the representative of the
subjects of the Federation. Each subject sends two representatives, one
of the regional executive, one of the regional parliamentary
representation. Their term of office is linked to the legislative period
of their region. The Federation Council can forward or reject laws
coming from the Duma for signature to the president, this rejection in
turn can be overruled by the Duma with a two-thirds majority. All laws
adopted by the State Duma must be submitted to the Federation Council,
which is free to treat them or not within two weeks, which is considered
consent. A presidential veto may be overridden by a two-thirds majority
in any chamber of parliament. In the constitutional reality, due to the
Kremlin's influence on the elections in the regions and the
corresponding selection of regional personnel, the Federation Council
acts more as a representative of the headquarters in the regions than
vice versa[.
According to the Constitution of December 12, 1993, Russia is a
"democratic federal constitutional state with a republican form of
government" and a semi-presidential system of government. Thus, the head
of state is the President of Russia, who is directly elected by the
people for six years at a time. According to official self-presentation,
he does not belong to any of the three state powers, rather, he ensures
their functioning and interaction. In fact, the president is the central
figure of the Russian state, his position is (as of 2023) effectively
autocratic, and he can dispose of all the means of power of the state.
By decree, he can regulate any state of affairs with direct legal
effect. The president determines the main directions of foreign policy
and can sign international treaties. He is the Supreme Commander of the
Armed Forces of Russia, appoints and dismisses the Supreme Command of
the Armed Forces. He signs the laws adopted by the Duma and the
Federation Council, against which he can veto, which, in theory, can be
overruled by a majority of two-thirds of the votes in both houses of
parliament.
Executive power is vested in the Government of the
Russian Federation, but its key ministries and authorities are directly
subordinate to the president, and not to the Prime Minister or
parliament. The National Guard, the Ministry of the Interior, the
Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among
others, report directly to the President; the Ministry of Defense, the
Ministry of Justice, the Foreign Intelligence Service SWR, the Domestic
Intelligence Service (FSB), the Federal Security Service (FSO), the
Federal Service for Financial Supervision (Rosfinmonitoring), as well as
the Russian Presidential Administration. Furthermore, the "most
important federal investigative authority", the so-called investigative
Committee (Sledstvennyj komitet), which reviews federal authorities and
investigates cases of abuse of power and corruption, reports directly to
the president. The government is not a political parliamentary
government with its own backing, but a cabinet of Technocrats, which is
mainly responsible for economic and financial issues and for
administrative tasks. The Cabinet meets in public on a weekly basis. The
president has the right to chair the cabinet, but he does not always
exercise this right. The Prime Minister of Russia, also called the Prime
Minister, is proposed by the president and must be confirmed by the
Duma.
Judicial power is exercised exclusively by the courts: the
Constitutional Court, courts of general jurisdiction headed by the
Supreme Court and arbitration courts, also headed by the Supreme Court.
Constitutional (statutory) courts operate in some regions of the Russian
Federation. The judicial system of the constituent entities of the
Federation also includes justices of the peace.
The Commissioner
for Human Rights in the Russian Federation (Ombudsman) is called upon to
monitor the observance of human rights and freedoms in the activities of
State bodies and officials. This institution was introduced for the
first time in Russian practice by the Constitution of the Russian
Federation of 1993 (paragraph "e" of Part 1 of Article 103), which
establishes that the Commissioner for Human Rights is appointed by the
State Duma and acts in accordance with the federal constitutional law.
The Commissioner for Human Rights is independent in carrying out his
activities and is not accountable to any State bodies and officials.
The Security Council of the Russian Federation (Russian: Sovet
Besopasnosti Rossiyskoi Federazii; English: Security Council of the
Russian Federation, SCRF) is a body of high-ranking politicians for
joint decision-making on foreign, security and defense policy.
Organized as part of the presidential Kremlin administration, it
actually has a certain autonomy. It consists of 13 permanent members
close to the office (e.g. Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign
Affairs) and 18 members appointed by the President without voting rights
and meets about 35 times a year. However, the permanent members meet
weekly under the chairmanship of the President. The Council has its own
and highly staffed secretariat, which coordinates coordination processes
between the actors and has insight into their planning processes and
operations. Employees of the secretariat are often promoted to high
posts in the administration. A special and influential role is played by
the long-time secretary of the Council, Nikolai Patrushev. Important
people remain members of the Council for years, even if their positions
in administration and politics change in the meantime. founded in 1992,
the Council was at times compared to the former Politburo and described
as an inner circle, but today it is assumed that the important decisions
are not prepared in the Council itself, but on an even smaller scale.
Membership in the Council is ultimately always decided by the president,
the Council is a place where elite actors – especially the Siloviki -
coordinate policies and resolve any conflicts. Security-relevant laws
are pre-formulated in the Council and introduced into the legislative
process as proposals, which are observed in the administration and the
Duma (after they have been introduced by selected deputies in
parliament), the Council and the Secretariat have an effective role as
an agenda-setter and coordinating body. In this way, the National
Security Strategy is developed as a consensus in the Council. However,
the Council not only discusses security-related issues, but ultimately
everything that seems important to the state, even on issues that leave
the field of internal and external security, it at least influences the
ideological orientation.
The decision to invade Ukraine in 2022
was not made in the Council, but by a small group of Putin's confidants,
including prominent members of the Security Council such as Secretary
Patrushev, Defense Minister Shoigu, Chief of the General Staff
Gerasimov, FSB Director Bortnikov and the commander of the Russian
National Guard Zolotov. At a public meeting before the start of the
invasion, which was officially about the recognition of the so-called
Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics, but in reality about the war,
not all members of the council had been informed about the plans in
advance. Although "one faction argued for the continuation of
negotiations with the US and NATO," Putin did not allow any
contradiction. According to Fabian Burkhardt, the purpose of the meeting
was to involve the uninitiated in the preparation for war and to "make
them complicit" in order to bind them. The incident proved that the
Council could not limit Putin, but that the rule in Russia was
radicalizing and emanated not from institutions, but from Putin as a
person. It had been made clear "how highly personalized the
authoritarian regime in Russia is".
Since the CPSU renounced its constitutional leadership role in 1990,
a change has taken place from a dictatorial one-party state to a
multi-party system. Hundreds of political groups, splinter groups,
movements and parties were formed, covering a wide political spectrum
from monarchists to communists. The Russian parties are rather weak and
rarely had a stable identity. It seems questionable whether a real
democratization ever took place, because there was no change of elites:
the former members and functionaries of the CPSU, the Nomenklatura,
continued to occupy the key positions, competition between the parties
was accepted by the Kremlin at best at times.
Since the
parliamentary elections in Russia in 1995, the government has supported
a new, separate domestic power in each case. These administrative
"parties of power" (parties of power, partii vlasti), founded from
above, are loose ad hoc alliances based on bureaucrats loyal to the
president.
Since the turn of the millennium, a few parties have
functioned as social networks that were able to mobilize specific groups
of voters. From 2008 to 2011, there were only seven parties in Russia, a
result of legal regulations that set a high minimum number of members
for parties and branches in two-thirds of the regions, in fact
nationwide. In the course of the demonstrations for the parliamentary
elections in December 2011, a new party law was passed, which allows the
admission of new parties from a membership of 500 people (previously
40,000). After a decision of the ECHR in favor of the anti-government
party of People's Freedom, the number of Russian parties increased to 48
by the end of 2012.
At present, the policy of Russia is dominated
by a single party, United Russia (United Russia, Yedinaya Rossiya).
United Russia was formed in 2001 from the Unity (Unity, Yedinstvo) and
Fatherland – All Russia (Fatherland – All Russia, Otechestvo – vsya
Rossiya) parties, which in turn were partly recruited from the defunct
Our House Russia party (Our House – Russia, Nasch dom – Rossiya), the
party of Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin. United Russia was built up
purposefully and with effort by the government side as the dominant
party of Russia, with over two million members it provides a solid mass
base. The popularity of Putin and the nationwide clientelist networks of
local leaders with high organizational power made repeated election
victories possible. The party serves to integrate the elites supporting
the system and to introduce politicians to new offices. Putin himself
did not join United Russia, which, according to Stefan Meister, shows
his dislike for parties. These "serve primarily to mobilize support and
to legitimize the existing system. Parties in Russia are either
constructed, manipulated or pacified.“ The party's youth organization is
the so-called Molodaya Gvardiya, the Naschi, conceived as a mass
organization and informally affiliated with the party, were disbanded in
2013.
In addition to this large party, there are other and
splinter parties. The Kremlin's party cartel ("a four-party cartel")
includes, in addition to United Russia, the Communist Party of the
Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and the
Social Democratic Party of Just Russia. In addition, outside the Duma
there is the Yabloko party, the Patriots of Russia and Right Cause.
Parties such as Just Russia and Right Cause were deliberately set up by
the Kremlin as spoiler parties in order to address the electorate of
competing opposition parties with related issues and thus to weaken
them. The cartel of parties loyal to the system allows the Kremlin to
control the Duma, – in the "cartel of systemic opposition", according to
political scientist Petra Stykov, there are only minor programmatic
differences and no real ideological competition for content, but only
the competition "of groups who want to have power", which should "not be
confused with a democracy". In addition, the parliament serves elite
groups as a decision-making place for issues and conflicts that the
Kremlin considers not so significant that it would have to make the
decision itself, as well as the inclusion of possible oppositionists by
deputy privileges and the possibility that Putin can still stop
initiated projects that are recognized as too unpopular among the
population by his veto and stage them in public accordingly.
Elections are not free, but are characterized by manipulation,
falsification of elections and the exclusion or prosecution of disliked
candidates, while pro-government candidates and parties are strongly
supported by the state and the media. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to
assume that Putin has no popular support, electoral fraud was not
decisive for his election victories. Manipulated elections are also not
primarily used to ensure (safe) election victories, but to demonstrate
the loyalty of the regime's clientele, to discourage opposition voters
and dissatisfied sections of the elite, and thus to consolidate the
system as a whole. In order to be translated into legitimacy, support
from the population must be demonstrably preserved.
Since
promising opposition candidates were not listed on the electoral lists
at all, but were sorted out, the opposition around Alexei Navalny in
2018 – after he had not been approved as a presidential candidate –
resorted to the concept of "smart voting": to give votes in a concerted
and tactical manner to the most promising party or such candidates,
insofar as this party is not United Russia and the candidates are not
supported by it. The aim of the concept was, among other things, a
mobilization of apathetic parts of the population. This led to the fact
that in some regional elections United Russia received noticeably fewer
votes than expected, in Tomsk, where Navalny had exposed the corruption
of the local elites, the party even lost the majority. Tactical voting
especially helped the Communists, regional deputies of this party, which
is actually loyal to the Kremlin, liked it and positioned themselves –
as hoped by Navalny – more strongly against the Kremlin. in 2021, the
state reacted to the concept with more repression; Search engines were
banned from leading to "smart voting" sites, Navalny's organization was
assessed as "extremist", and the Russian leadership increasingly relied
on election fraud.
Until the new President Vladimir Putin took office, Russian NGOs had
been able to develop largely free of state influences. Probably, their
influence on the state was greater than vice versa. That should change
quickly. Putin immediately set about systematically subjecting the areas
of the Russian political public that had not been acting autonomously
until then, but were controlled by different power centers, to the
government. He called this "strengthening the vertical of power" and
building a "dictatorship of the right". Behind this approach lies the
conviction that the Russian state was on the verge of disintegration in
the 1990s and that this was due to the weakness of the central power.
The first attempt to involve the NGOs was the initiative for a large
citizens' assembly in the Kremlin in 2001. Selected topics were
discussed at this meeting. However, from the government's point of view,
non-constructive NGOs that did not simply want to subordinate themselves
were excluded. This was supposed to be a kind of "castle peace" between
NGOs and the Russian government. However, at the beginning of 2002,
despite protests and negotiations, the tax equalization of commercial
and non-commercial enterprises was adopted. Peace finally broke when
Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested. With his Open Russia Foundation, he
had begun to finance NGO projects on a large scale, and had thus been
the last hope for long-term and sustainable financing of NGOs in
Germany. The second break was the Rose Revolution in Georgia, which was
considered a failure of Russian policy and, in the perception of the
Russian government, was a work of Western-funded NGOs. This was also
suspected during the change of power in Ukraine. Putin expressed this on
26. May 2004 in his annual address to both Chambers of Parliament:
"There are thousands of civil society associations working
constructively in our country. But by no means all of them are oriented
to defending the real interests of people. For some of these
organizations, it has become a priority task to obtain funding from
influential foreign foundations, to serve dubious groups and commercial
interests for others. At the same time, they are not interested in the
most pressing problems of the country and its citizens.“
Ultimately, the relationship between the government and NGOs remained
ambivalent during Putin's first term, resulting from the fact that
market-based systems require a certain degree of freedom. The
government's tactics with the NGOs are an expression of the desire to
prevent this freedom from spreading into the political and social
sphere.
With regard to NGOs, the second term was primarily marked
by the NGO Law, which provided the Russian government with far-reaching
instruments of control and sanctions. The Rosregistracija is now
monitoring the activities of the NGOs. To complain against this is
associated with a high administrative burden in a highly corrupt society
such as the Russian one, in which appeal and appellate instances
function only to a very limited extent, especially against state
actions, such as courts. The registration authorities are increasingly
relying on provisions of labor law, tax law, labor protection or fire
protection in order to at least partially conceal state action against
the NGOs.
On May 23, 2015, President Putin signed a law allowing
Russian authorities to blacklist international NGOs without warning.
High penalties threaten anyone who comes into contact with such
"undesirable organizations". The law restricts the work of the media and
civil society. As a case of application of this law, the deprivation of
the deputy mandate of Yabloko politician Lev Schlosberg, who had
reported in 2014 about the funerals of probably fallen Russian soldiers
in Ukraine, became known as a case of application of this law.
In
April 2022, German foundations as well as the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft, which had previously benefited from a kind of
"special relationship" between Germany and Russia, were deprived of
registration. This also affected Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch as well as the Carnegie Foundation.
After the end of the Soviet Union, Russia is striving to consolidate
its influence in the world, but especially in its immediate
neighborhood. Russia is pursuing the idea of a multipolar world order in
which great powers independently represent their national interests.
Russia is involved in a number of regional conflicts, many of which are
of a warlike nature and have only been partially or not yet resolved –
including the Chechen wars (1994 to 2009), the war in Georgia over
Abkhazia and South Ossetia (the Caucasus War in 2008), the conflict in
Transnistria in Moldova (since 1990) and most recently the war in
Ukraine, which began with the annexation of Crimea.
In the
foreign policy concept, Russia sees itself as a great power that
independently pursues national interests. The claim to great power
derives primarily from Russia's imperial heritage and secondly from its
significant arsenal of nuclear weapons. Russia also generates its
influence through its military forces (currently about 1,000,000
soldiers, military bases in various former Soviet republics and in Syria
(naval base Tartus)), arms exports, full membership with veto power in
the UN Security Council and its position as an important energy
supplier. In addition, however, there are enormous difficulties in
meeting one's own demands. This is mainly due to economic weakness. In
addition, unlike the Soviet Union, it no longer has an attractive system
of rule and culture. The possibility of transforming military power into
political influence is limited to Russia's immediate environment. Russia
lacks reliable allies, as evidenced by the non-recognition of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia by the rest of the CIS countries.
The political
leadership in Moscow is pushing for the prerogative of the UN Security
Council. An example of this is the demand that NATO should only act with
the approval of the UN Security Council. However, even the leadership of
Russia insists on the right to act unilaterally, which is evidenced by
the behavior in the Georgian War. In order to get closer to its goal,
Russia is looking for opposite poles to the USA. Asia in particular is
becoming increasingly important in this context. The BRICS are
considered strategic partners in the foreign policy concept. While
Russia and India have traditionally maintained good relations and have
continued to expand them, the Russian-Chinese relationship has steadily
improved due to the resolution of old tensions. Apart from the common
goal of countering the West's global political dominance, economic and
military projects as well as Russian raw material supplies are the main
focus of the cooperation.
In general, since about 2004, Russia
has been threatened by NATO's eastward expansion and an increasing
influence of the United States on its own geostrategic sphere of
interests. Russia is accused of using destabilizing methods to influence
foreign policy. These include, for example, cyber attacks, influencing
election campaigns and undermining support obligations.
Russia
granted US whistleblower Edward Snowden a residence permit in 2013.
Putin was the only Russian president to visit Israel. According to
Matthias Vetter, his party and he repeatedly positioned themselves
against every form of anti-Semitism. According to Jason Stanley, Putin
uses "key anti-Semitic elements of a globally networked right that sees
its leader in Putin"; he is "himself a fascist autocrat who jails
democratic opposition leaders and critics". Putin specifically addresses
Christian and other nationalists in the West in order to hit the
democracies as a whole.
In connection with the invasion of Ukraine, launched in 2022, the Russian leadership and circles close to it have repeatedly threatened with the first use of nuclear weapons. This was assessed in such a way that Russia uses such threats to achieve foreign policy goals. The extent to which Russia is actually prepared to use nuclear weapons – in Ukraine or against Western countries – is being debated. However, it is feared that the threat is already destabilizing the global order.
Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, all UN
subsidiary organizations, the OSCE and is also a member of the EBRD as
well as the IMF and the World Bank. At the G8 summit in May 1998, Russia
was formally admitted to the then Group of Seven (G7); this became the
G8 as a result. In March 2014, these Seven excluded Russia from the G8
again because of the war in Ukraine. On March 15, 2022, Russia avoided
exclusion from the Council of Europe by announcing its withdrawal.
Under Putin, two security organizations gained special weight – the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO):
The organization of the
Collective Security Treaty is aimed at closer cooperation on security
and defense issues, as well as on joint defense in the event of an
attack (Article 4 of the Treaty). Originally a security policy
institution of the CIS, the CSTO was upgraded in 2002 to an independent
security policy organization with a focus on Central Asia. Member states
besides Russia are: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan. On the Russian initiative, a rapid reaction force was
created in 2009 within the framework of the CSTO, which can be used in
crisis situations.
The main goal of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, which also includes China, is to strengthen mutual trust
and good neighborly relations between member states. In addition to
balancing the security policy interests of Russia and China in Central
Asia, it is also intended to serve the enforcement of common security
interests in the region. The original goal of Russia and China was to
keep the United States out of the region through security cooperation.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union initially presented Russia with
the task of reshaping its relations with the successor republics, which
from Russia's point of view were often referred to as the "Near Abroad"
(Near abroad). The economic relations between the individual republics
inherited from the Soviet era required a new legal form of cooperation
and integration. At the same time, numerous objects of strategic
interest to Russia were now located outside the Russian Federation.
These included, among others. the Baikonur cosmodrome,
military-strategic facilities in Azerbaijan and Belarus, as well as the
Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol.
The successor organization of
the Soviet Union was the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which
was initially joined by 12 of the 15 former Soviet republics. However,
this rather loose confederation of states has largely lost its
significance to this day. Russia has joined forces with Belarus in the
Russian-Belarusian Union, which Boris Yeltsin agreed on with Alyaksandr
Lukashenka (Belarusian president since 1994). However, according to
political scientists, their development was strongly connected with
Lukashenka's personal ambitions to become Yeltsin's successor in a
future Union state. When, after Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin became Russian
president in 1999, relations with Belarus cooled down, to which Putin
proposed joining the Russian Federation. Until 2011, further integration
was very slow, many projects such as the common currency were not
implemented. Rather, the relations were overshadowed by energy
conflicts. However, in 2011, Belarus joined the Common Customs Union
with Russia and Kazakhstan, which had already been in the planning since
2000 within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Community. Among the
other goals of this community is a common economic space and the
creation of a political union that is open to other states of the
post-Soviet space.
Russia has always had an ambivalent relationship with Ukraine, which
has been independent since 1991, and has been very tense since 2014 at
the latest. Despite close historical and cultural ties and a continuing
interdependence, especially on energy issues, historical disagreements
(see Holodomor) and the declared western course of Ukraine have put a
heavy burden on the relationship. Especially Western-oriented
governments of Ukraine have been repeatedly put under pressure by
Russia, for example after the presidential election in Ukraine in 2004,
when the Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute occurred.
Already in 2009,
the possibility of a military attack by Russia had been openly discussed
in Ukrainian media. After the flight and the subsequent removal of the
Russian-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych and the revolution of the
Euromaidan (November 2013 to February 2014), during which the
demonstrators advocated a Western orientation of Ukraine, the annexation
of Crimea led to the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In addition,
from 2014, so-called "separatists" fought for autonomy in eastern
Ukraine (see war in the Donbas). These were supported by Russia in
personnel and military terms. As part of the conflict, flight MH17 was
also shot down in Donetsk Oblast in July 2014. In February 2022, Russia
launched a war of aggression on the entire Ukraine, on September 30,
2022, large parts of southern and eastern Ukraine were annexed.
In response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, sanctions were taken
against Russia by the European Union. This mainly concerns certain
equipment for the Russian oil and gas industry, in addition, access to
the financial market is made more difficult for various Russian
financial institutions. The decision on these sanctions is made in each
case for a limited period of six months (the last time until January
2019) and requires the unanimity of the Council of the European Union.
In the course of the war of aggression against Ukraine, the EU
imposed massive sanctions against Russia, as a result of which there
were also counter-reactions on the part of Russia.
Germans were the first "Western" Europeans with whom Russia came into
more intensive contact. Since the middle of the 13th century, the
Peterhof in Novgorod existed as a trading branch of the Hanseatic
League. There have been military clashes with the Order of the Brothers
of the Sword in Livonia since the 12th century. Cultural relations
between Germans and Russians were especially close under Peter the
Great. Russian Germans have made a great contribution to the development
of Russian culture, for example, Empress Catherine II, Admiral Adam
Johann von Krusenstern, military engineer Count Eduard Ivanovich
Totleben, musician Svyatoslav Teofilovich Richter and many others. The
historical contribution of Germany is therefore recognized and
appreciated in Russia to this day. Even politically, Germany and Russia
looked back on long alliance traditions until the end of the 19th
century. In particular, the Kingdom of Prussia closely aligned itself
with the Russian Tsarist Empire from the end of the Seven Years' War in
1763 until the German Empire was founded in 1871, as it had been saved
from almost complete annihilation by Russia twice in its history – in
1762 by Tsar Peter III's change of sides in the Seven Years' War and in
1807 by Tsar Alexander I's intercession with Napoleon in the Peace of
Tilsit. During the liberation Wars, Russians and Germans fought together
against French foreign rule. Thus, Russian soldiers were significantly
involved in the liberation of Germany. The "Alliance of the Three Black
Eagles" – Russia, Austria and Prussia – which had already existed in the
first half of the 18th century, continued as a Holy Alliance after the
Congress of Vienna. The serious military conflicts in the 20th century
still have repercussions today. The legal basis of the relations of the
reunited Germany and the Russian Federation is the Treaty on the Final
Settlement in relation to Germany of 12. September 1990, the Treaty on
Good Neighborliness, Partnership and Cooperation of November 9, 1990, as
well as the joint statement of the Russian President and the German
Chancellor of November 21, 1991. In the spirit of peaceful German
reunification, the German side, on the one hand, was grateful for the
trouble-free handling of the consequences, on the other hand, Germany
felt that it was a source of impetus and an engine for greater
integration of Russia into European structures and promoted loans and
investments in Russia. From the time of Gerhard Schröder's
chancellorship and the economic upswing in Russia under Vladimir Putin,
German-Russian relations intensified, especially in the field of
business, but also in political dialogue. Since 1998, bilateral
intergovernmental consultations have been held annually at the highest
level with the participation of both governments.
In the
meantime, there have been more than 6,000 companies with German
participation in Russia, including more than 1,350 Russian-German joint
ventures.
A close cultural and educational exchange developed
between Germany and Russia. In 2003, an intergovernmental agreement was
concluded to promote mutual learning of the partner language. About
12,000 young Russian citizens studied at German universities. A joint
declaration on a strategic partnership in the field of education,
research and innovation was signed in April 2005. From 2006 there were
coordination offices in Hamburg and Moscow for bilateral student and
youth exchange. The Goethe-Institut is present in many places in Russia,
in Moscow, St. Petersburg and since spring 2009 in Novosibirsk. In
addition, numerous other German cultural mediators are represented in
Russia.
During his time as Federal Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter
Steinmeier was the architect of a close cooperation with Moscow, to
which he offered a "modernization partnership" in 2008, from which he
promised himself a liberalization of Russia in the direction of an "open
society". He adhered to this, even if doubts arose early on as to
whether such liberalization was even desired in Moscow. The planning
staff of the Ministry under Markus Ederer invented the formulation
"Rapprochement through intertwining" – based on Egon Bahr's famous
formula "change through rapprochement". The working papers set out the
goal of achieving an "irreversible" economic "interdependence" of the
two countries. Steinmeier repelled doubts from his own house about
Putin. He believed that the change to President Medvedev had actually
made him the future strongman in Russia, although employees at the
Foreign Office considered this assumption to be "absurd". With the
German EU Council Presidency in 2007, he tried to make his idea of a
modernization partnership the policy of the EU. In 2014, Steinmeier then
found out that the modernization partnership proposed in 2008 had been
rejected by the Russian side due to the formulated requirements (such as
an open civil society).
Although the trend was increasing, in
2011, despite strong economic relations and a significant exchange
between civil societies, only a third of Germans trusted Russia as a
partner country. This can be attributed to the role of the media, which
have a decisive influence on the perception of Russia (see Russia
reporting in Germany). Until Vladimir Putin took office, the image of a
"poor" and "unpredictable" Russia prevailed in the German media. Due to
the economic stabilization after the turn of the millennium and high
incomes from oil deposits, this picture gradually disappeared. In his
place came the fear of Putin's energy empire and dependence on him. The
coverage of the political situation in Russia was sometimes perceived as
too little differentiated due to the stagnation of the media and their
staff reduction; President Medvedev was considered by some as a
"liberal", by others as the president of a country that was about to be
overthrown.
In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in
2007, Putin generally described NATO's eastward expansion as a breach of
Western commitments, and in 2008 Russia separated territories from
Georgia in the wake of the Caucasus War. Relations with Western
countries deteriorated noticeably. The Russian news agency RIA Novosti
lamented a cooling of Russian-German relations that began in the fall of
2012, when the Bundestag adopted a resolution criticizing Russia's
domestic policy. The Putin government has been pursuing a
"national-patriotic policy directed against Western influences" since
May 2012.
In February 2014, Russia criticized the German role in
the Euromaidan in Ukraine. In the course of the annexation of Crimea and
the Russian-Ukrainian war, it became apparent that Russian intelligence
services are increasingly trying to manipulate public opinion abroad in
Russia's favor by means of targeted infiltration of social networks such
as Facebook and the comment sections of Western and German online media
(Deutsche Welle and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, for example, are affected).
As the Süddeutsche reports, hundreds of paid manipulators are in use for
this purpose.
Immediately after the annexation of Crimea in 2014,
economic sanctions were imposed on Russia in the European Union. As a
result, German-Russian trade slumped by about a third within months. In
the summer of 2017, the sanctions were again tightened.
in 2019,
a Chechen of Georgian citizenship was murdered in Berlin, immediately
after which the perpetrator, who was revealed as a Russian agent in
investigations, could be arrested. The German government then declared
two employees of the Russian embassy to be undesirable persons,
whereupon Russia also expelled two German diplomats. After the
sentencing of the perpetrator to life imprisonment - the court had
assessed Russia's involvement as proven and spoke of "state terrorism" -
the Federal Foreign Office again expelled two Russian diplomats, which
was also answered by Moscow with the expulsion of two German diplomats.
In February 2020, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas accused the
Russian government of violating international humanitarian law and
committing war crimes in the Idlib governorate in light of the Russian
military operation in the context of the Syrian civil War.
At the
beginning of 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz tried to influence
Vladimir Putin in Moscow to refrain from the prepared invasion of
Ukraine and warned that otherwise Germany would be ready for
far-reaching measures. The raid on Ukraine, which nevertheless took
place, finally destroyed the German-Russian relationship. The Federal
Republic of Germany joined the unprecedented Western sanctions and,
after initial hesitation, began to support Ukraine with arms supplies,
but continued to purchase (and pay for) gas through the Nordstream
pipeline until Putin interrupted the supplies.
Both states
expelled diplomats from the other side, first in protest, then in order
to shut down diplomatic relations altogether. Russia limited the number
of German civil servants and local employees to a total of 350, which
forced Germany to close three general consulates in Russia. In return,
Berlin ordered the closure of four of the five Russian consulates
General.
The Syrian conflict is one of the few international conflicts in
which the Russian government plays a central role. At the same time, her
attitude of refusal to any attempts to exert international pressure on
the Assad government within the framework of the UN Security Council
earned the Russian government sharp criticism from Western and regional
actors and damaged Russia's reputation in the Arab world. From the very
beginning, Russia took the clear position that the fighting between the
government and the opposition could only be resolved internally.
Firstly, this should be achieved through open-ended negotiations between
the two sides, and secondly, it should be done without external
interference, be it by supplying weapons to the rebels or by military
intervention. That is why Russia blocked not only draft resolutions in
the UN Security Council that would have provided for sanctions (October
2011, July 2012), but also those that would have merely condemned the
use of force by the Syrian government, without at the same time
condemning the opponents of the regime and calling for the renunciation
of violence (February 2012).
The leadership of Russia pretends to
take a neutral position with this. Several times, President Putin,
Foreign Minister Lavrov and Prime Minister Medvedev stressed that their
country – unlike the Western states or the Gulf monarchies – does not
take sides unilaterally.
However, the Russian government supports
the Assad government in many ways. Firstly, the legitimacy strategy of
the Syrian leadership is being supported on the international stage. By
portraying the opposition primarily as a group of "fanatics", Islamists
or terrorists, the blame for the outbreak of violence is implicitly
assigned to it. Secondly, Russia continues to supply weapons to the
Syrian government, including air defense systems (Buk-M2 [NATO code:
SA-17 Grizzly] and Panzir-S1 [NATO Code: SA-22 Greyhound]) and
helicopters. Russia points out that the exports are permitted under
international law. After all, the UN Security Council – due to Russian
and Chinese refusal – has so far not been able to impose an arms
embargo. As a reliable exporter – according to the Russian justification
– the Russian government is therefore obliged to fulfill existing
contracts. However, "new deliveries" have been suspended, said
Vyacheslav Dzirkaln of the Federal Service for Military-Technical
Cooperation in July 2012. Thirdly, the Russian government is also
helping the Assad government by printing banknotes for the Syrian
government.
The motives of Russia's Syria policy go beyond
material interests. They concern fundamental issues of the international
order and regional balance of power, but also concrete security policy
risks for Russia itself. For the international community, the "Arab
Spring" once again raised the question of how to deal with the tension
between state sovereignty and responsibility to protect ("responsibility
to protect" – "R2P"). It is about contrary views on the design of the
international order and Russia's claim to have a say in it. The Russian
government does not reject the "R2P" in principle, but wants it to be
bound by narrow limits, without the goal of a "regime change" from the
outside. Behind this is a traditional interpretation of state
sovereignty. This also has a domestic political justification. Finally,
a softening of the non-interference requirement for the authoritarian
leadership in Moscow also represents a danger scenario for the sake of
its own preservation of power.
After the Ghouta poison gas
attacks and the US government's threat of a military strike, Russia
managed to mediate between the US and Syrian governments. On September
14, 2013, it was agreed that the Syrian government must first disclose
the entire toxic gas arsenal within one week and grant UN inspectors
unrestricted access to the deposits. The UN inspectors should start work
in mid-November. The chemical weapons were destroyed outside of Syria.
On 16. In September, Russia again opposed a UN resolution that provided
for a threat against the Syrian government in case of non-fulfillment of
the agreement.
On the other hand, Russia hardly provides
humanitarian aid in the conflict, so far the government provided an
amount of 300,000 US dollars for the UN aid program to provide for the
approximately 4 million Syrians who have fled the war to neighboring
countries in 2015, which covers 0.02% of the total costs estimated for
the relief measures. It is estimated that between 8,000 and 12,000
Syrian refugees are staying in Russia itself, many of them illegally. In
2015, not a single Syrian was officially recognized as a refugee in
Russia, 482 asylum seekers were tolerated.
According to the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, about 19,000 people (including
about 8,300 civilians) have died as a result of the Russian military
operation by the end of September 2019. In the Idlib Governorate in
particular, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee by
the offensives of the Russian and Syrian armed forces. The offensive
also left an immense damage to the local infrastructure. According to a
report by Amnesty International, at least 18 attacks on hospitals and
schools in Syria were carried out by the Russian and Syrian armed forces
between May 2019 and February 2020. As a result, five clinics have had
to close for this reason. In July 2020, the Russian government blocked
the continuation of a large part of the UN aid deliveries of medical
goods and food to Syria with a veto in the UN Security Council, so that
the UN aid program for Syria was only continued to a limited extent.
Russian federalism is characterized by a combination of ethno-federal
republics and territorial-federal territories. Already under President
Boris Yeltsin there were attempts to limit asymmetric "treaty
federalism" (which at times gave member states the opportunity to
negotiate their power with the central office in Moscow), under Vladimir
Putin there was a return to centralization and control. The division of
the country was essentially adopted from the Soviet era, except for the
raising of the status of most Autonomous Regions to republics and the
division of the former Chechen-Ingush ASSR into two republics. According
to Article 65 of the Russian Constitution, Russia is divided into 83
subjects of the Federation. These include 21 republics, nine regions
(Krai), 46 regions (Oblast), two cities of federal rank (Moscow, Saint
Petersburg), one Autonomous Region and four Autonomous Districts. The
fact that Ukrainian territories have been annexed and are claimed as
belonging to the territory of Russia is rejected internationally. The
republics were defined according to the dominant non-Russian ethnic
groups in each case, although their borders do not always coincide with
ethnic ones, while the territories in the remaining parts of the
country, inhabited mostly by Russians, were formed according to purely
administrative points of view. Territories in which smaller non-Russian
minorities live are given the lower rank of an Autonomous Oblast, or
Autonomous okrug, respectively. Although all subjects of the federation
are formally equal, only the republics are entitled to adopt their own
constitution. They can also sign international treaties as long as they
comply with the Russian Constitution. Special features of the republics
also consist in the traditional naming, the number of deputies in
regional parliaments and specific legislative powers.
In terms of
population, area and relative wealth, the subjects of the federation
sometimes differ significantly. What they have in common is that their
tax jurisdiction exists only "minimally" and their competencies are
severely curtailed in favor of the head office. Shared responsibilities
of the federation and the lower level are in fact exercised by Moscow.
In 2000, by decree, President Putin created seven federation
circles, each of which unites several subjects of the federation into
one larger entity. The goal of this reform was to strengthen the
vertical distribution of power and tighten control over the regional
rulers. In 2010, the North Caucasus Federal District was also created as
the eighth Federal District after being separated from the Southern
Russian Federal District. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in
violation of international law, Crimea formed a part of the Republic of
Crimea from the 21st century. March 2014 a separate (ninth) Federal
District, which was dissolved on July 28, 2016 and joined the Federal
District of Southern Russia.
In addition to the two hierarchical
federal levels mentioned above (1st federal district, 2nd federal
subject), there is also a third independent administrative level, that
of local self-government (raion). Their administrative heads are
directly elected by the population. The regions are administratively
superior to the municipal self-governing bodies and have the right to
issue instructions.
Unlike the republics, the oblasts and Kraye
are not member states. They only have statutes instead of constitutions.
At the head of the subjects of the federation there is a head, subjects
of the federation are led by the head of the administration, who in
common parlance is represented as the governor. The legislative bodies
in the republics are both unicameral and bicameral systems. In the
territories, parliamentary representation consists of only one chamber.
Chechnya plays a special role within the federal system of Russia, de facto it is a "state within a state", which is largely deprived of the Russian judiciary and federal police forces. Religious freedom is no longer granted within the framework of a Sunni Islamist ideology of domination. Only "the silk thread of personal loyalty between Kadyrov and Putin" still binds the republic to Russia, Kadyrov has his own troops, whose loyalty to Putin he publicly demonstrates, but whose existence itself is also a warning.
While in the first years of the Russian Federation, a federalism with
regional centers developed under Boris Yeltsin, a centralizing "process
of successive disempowerment of the federal institutions in favor of
presidential administration and the personalization of political power"
took place under Putin.
Between 2005 and 2012, the governors and
republican leaders were no longer elected by the population, but
appointed by the president. Since 2012, the candidates have been
nominated by the regional parliament, after which a consultation of the
candidates with the president follows. A regional election will then
take place, in which the candidates must receive at least 50% of the
votes in order to be elected. The President may dismiss the governors on
the grounds of a loss of confidence. According to Julian Waller,
however, the possibility of electing a governor, which had been
introduced again, was "undermined again by even greater electoral
manipulation in the regions". No further justifications have to be given
for the dismissal since 2020, the Kremlin's control over the governors
and regions has thus been further expanded, so that the question has
been raised as to whether Russia still appears as a federal state at all
or not already as a unitary state. The use of the title "president" for
a head of a federal subject was explicitly prohibited, referring to the
Republic of Tatarstan, which had previously negotiated out special
rights. When selecting governors, the Kremlin makes sure that they have
as few ties as possible with their regions.
Between 2012 and
2021, 121 elections of governors took place, in which only four
candidates who were not in Putin's favor were able to win their
elections. Only one of them ultimately remained governor, another
transferred to the Duma, another resigned under pressure; he was banned
from running again, while Sergei Furgal, head of the Khabarovsk Region,
was arrested on charges of two murders that he allegedly commissioned
during his time as a businessman. His arrest, dismissal and trial in
Moscow led to mass protests of supporters in his region, who saw the
reason for the arrest in the fact that Furgal had maintained his
candidacy against the will and against the Kremlin's candidate and had
actually been elected in a protest election.
According to a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council in
September 2023, human rights are "systematically and blatantly violated"
in Russia. As an example, a UN human rights commissioner cited the
arrest and prosecution of 20,000 anti-war protesters who had protested
against the Russian military operation in Ukraine. She explained that
civil society was silenced by Russian authorities. There are "no more
independent media", "civil society organizations" have been "closed".
The restrictions on the freedom of the press have been criticized by
international civil rights organizations and the Federal Foreign Office
of the Federal Republic of Germany since 2001. The state influence in
the field of television is complete; all TV stations broadcasting
throughout the country are either directly owned by the state or under
state control. The situation is similar in the radio sector. Officially,
there is no censorship by the government, but it actually takes place
through repressions and bans of regime-critical channels as well as the
ownership structure and sometimes self-censorship. Three out of a total
of six votes at the meeting of the President's Human Rights Council in
October 2017 had complained about the hatred in society fueled by the
state media and their propaganda.
There are repeated attacks on
opposition members or arson attacks on their property. Particular
attention was attracted by the explosive attacks on residential
buildings in 1999, behind which state perpetrators are suspected. Also,
lists with address details of oppositionists circulated on the Internet.
Police and public prosecutor investigations, on the other hand, end or
are not even started where they affect influential politicians. Since
2015, every single person who takes to the streets with an improvised
(or even empty) protest poster has also been threatened with up to five
years in prison. In Russia, an estimated 600,000 people were in "strict
camp detention" in 2013, including not only a number of political
prisoners, according to the human rights organization Memorial. In the
spring of 2019, about 140,000 prisoners were in custody for substance
abuse under paragraph 228.2, the possibilities of abuse of which had
been known for some time and which became internationally known due to
the scandal surrounding the journalist Ivan Golunov. In August 2020, the
number of detained convicts, suspects and defendants in Russian criminal
and Pre-trial detention centers had decreased to less than 500,000,
according to the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN). According to the
FSIN, this was attributed to the use of alternative, non-incarcerating
sentences, as well as a liberalization of the penitentiary system.
In December 2015, Putin signed a law according to which the Russian
Constitutional Court, at the request of the government, can overrule
judgments of international courts, which should primarily concern
judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). An "intangible
censorship" has also been described for the cultural sector.
Homosexuality in Russia is largely taboo. The legal regulations include,
among other things, a ban on "homosexual propaganda" (such as the
rainbow flag), which is considered by critics as a violation of the
European Convention on Human Rights, the right to sexual
self-determination, the freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.
Under the pretext of combating extremism, the freedoms of religious
minorities were severely restricted. In 2016, members of unregistered
religious communities were banned from talking to others about their
religious beliefs. In March 2017, the Russian Ministry of Justice
applied for a ban on the religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses and
all their activities, which was implemented in April 2017.
The
human rights situation in Crimea has deteriorated significantly since
the occupation by Russia. According to a UNHCHR report, arbitrary
arrests and torture occur again and again, and an extrajudicial
execution is also documented. The human rights situation has been at its
most explosive for years in the Caucasus, especially in Chechnya. The
verification of civil rights, for example, in case of violation of the
European Convention on Human Rights, according to the law, takes place
before the Supreme Court of Russia.
In Transparency International's corruption perception index, Russia
was ranked 137th out of 180 countries worldwide with 28 out of a
possible 100 points in the 2022 ranking, and in last place of all
European countries.
In 2016, President Putin personally ordered a
"control break" for control authorities. The alleged security checks had
hardly ever served security, but for the greater extent of enrichment.
Breaking through the chains of corruption is also hardly possible
because clean officials cannot hand over money to the top and are
therefore forced out of office or posts for honest officials are not
accessible at all because of transfer fees, writes Jens Siegert,
long-time head of the Moscow office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The
proximity to state power makes money and privileges possible: Yelena
Chishova describes not only the everyday corruption, but also how the
scope increases with the proximity to power in the Kremlin, and calls
the commonality: "In an authoritarian country, "friend" is a key term."
Alexei Navalny and his anti-corruption organization uncovered numerous
cases of personal enrichment and nepotism at the highest level,
including the existence of the so-called Putin's Palace.
Estimates of corruption are based on an enormous scale, for example,
bribes should account for 22.5% of the costs for public contracts, the
total cost of corruption for government contracts should be equal to 93
billion US dollars, which would correspond to one third of the annual
budget of the Russian Federation.
The homicide rate in Russia between 1990 and 2017 was subject to
pronounced fluctuations between 30.5 killings (in 1995) and 9.2 killings
(in 2017) per 100,000 inhabitants. The state does not protect citizens,
the Novaya gazeta and the fugitive Yulia Latynina filed a complaint in
2017. Every year, 70,000 to 100,000 people go missing in Russia. Of
these, 25% (17,500 to 25,000 people) are permanently classified as
missing persons because they remain missing. Domestic violence is also a
social problem in Russia. 40% of all violent crimes in Russia are
committed at home, within the family. This violence is especially
directed against women. Thus, according to the Ministry of Internal
Affairs, 12,000 to 14,000 women die annually as a result of this in
Russia. Apparently, the murder rate has been rising significantly since
2022. According to Novaya Gazeta, an increase of four percent was
recorded for the full year 2022, but then it increased by 15% from
January to April 2023, before falling very sharply- possibly due to
official cover-up of the true figures.
Organized crime plays a
huge role and includes various groups on the territory of the former
Soviet Union. The thieves in the law are well known, whose strict
internal ethics, separate from society, with its own sublanguage, is
closely connected with the former Soviet prison system and the Gulag.
Their close unity with a common fund, which originated in Soviet times,
is no longer given, in fact, today different regional groups invoke
their name and heritage, while organized crime has simultaneously
"provincialized and internationalized". In particular, the taboo of
cooperation with the state and its relatives has fallen, corruption
allows joint profit extraction in a considerable amount. According to
Mark Galeotti, the war in Ukraine partially destroyed the previously
close cooperation of criminal groups in Russia and Ukraine, which had
jointly formed the "the most powerful criminal ecosystem in Europe". The
state and organized crime help each other: the Russian state uses
criminal structures to import sanctioned goods, leaders of the
underworld joined the mercenary company Wagner. Abroad, these structures
are mobilized by the Kremlin for political interests, so the use of
criminal income or skills can obscure the underlying interest and
actions of the Russian state. For example, the arms dealer Viktor But -
himself a former intelligence officer - is suspected of having acted at
least partially on instructions, the electronic competence of Russian
hacker groups is skimmed off by the Russian services, conversely,
relations with the security services also benefit members of criminal
groups, since they can exchange their services for protection or
information.
Although the independence of the judges is guaranteed by
constitutional law, in fact the courts and the public prosecutor's
office are under the influence of the executive branch. Judgments are
acted upon directly or indirectly. The judges all have to prove a
university degree in law and five years of professional activity when
hired, but they are not recruited from the legal profession or from the
legal science, but from the judiciary and security authorities. The
court presidents play a major role in the courts, they assign the
individual cases to the judges and can also withdraw them from them
during the proceedings, they also decide on the award of annual bonus
payments and on the award of official housing. Judges in Russia are
mostly federal judges, their appointment is decided by a commission in a
complex procedure and subject to the approval of the President of the
State. The commission consists "of four representatives of the
judiciary, seven heads of various departments of the presidential
administration, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, the 1st Deputy
Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Prosecutor
General. The meetings of this commission are not public, the decisions
do not have to be justified, they are also final and not subject to
appeal. The judges of the supreme courts are selected entirely behind
closed doors, without the participation of the judiciary." The executive
branch has an impact on the courts, cases of interest to them are
influenced by "telephone justice". The public prosecutor's office can
intervene in civil cases and propose a verdict, the executive branch can
also instruct the public prosecutor's office to cancel and re-roll
judgments at its own discretion.
If the cases are not politically
relevant, the Russian judiciary has more room to make its decisions
independently. In particular, the commercial courts or arbitration
courts that are responsible for disputes between companies are
considered competent, but the Supreme Commercial Court was joined to the
Supreme Court in 2014 and thus effectively dissolved.
The
Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation has the rank of a
constitutional body. It was originally supposed to monitor the strict
observance of the Constitution by state bodies. Under its long-time
president Valery Sorkin, it has become known that national security
interests should be weighted higher than constitutional principles. In
several judgments, the court supported the increasing shift of power to
the office of the President of the State. While in 1993 it had still
opposed the then President Yeltsin's hunger for power, it helped
Vladimir Putin in the authoritarian transformation of the country by
enabling the president to serve further terms beyond constitutional
admissibility.
At the lower level, there are jury courts, which
were established in 1993 and before which acquittals (15% of cases) are
more likely than before purely professional courts. They were gradually
deprived of their powers, political trials, as well as crimes with high
possible prison sentences, were transferred from the regional courts
with juries to the district courts without juries. Criminal convictions
are usually made after confessions, in fact, 75% of the accused agree to
a shortened trial without taking evidence in the hope of a mild verdict,
no appeal against such a verdict is then possible. Only the 4% of the
accused who completely deny their guilt have a chance of one of the –
rare – acquittals. Defendants agree to the shortened procedure, among
other things, in order to end the long pre-trial detention, considerable
pressure is exerted by the investigating authorities to obtain
confessions.
Officially, eight different institutions of
execution are distinguished: pre-trial detention centers, correctional
labor colonies with a general penitentiary system, correctional labor
colonies with strict conditions of detention, settlement penal colonies,
educational colonies, medical correctional institutions, special
colonies and prisons. 80% of the prisoners are correctional labor
colonies with a general prison system and correctional labor colonies
with strict conditions of detention, the differences between the two
types of detention centers being only small and related to the number of
visits allowed and the packages and money shipments to be received. In
2020, 523,928 people were in detention centers, as of March 1, 2021, 332
people out of 100,000 residents were detained (for comparison: in
Germany, as a rule, about 80 out of 100,000 residents are in detention
centers, in the USA - 650). The number of detainees has fallen sharply
since the year 2000, when more than a million people were in prisons,
this is attributed, among other things, to the imposition of sentences
without deprivation of liberty such as house arrest or regular reporting
to police stations. A third of the perpetrators will be convicted again.
Penal colonies for settlement are considered to be the mildest
institutions, where prisoners have the greatest possible freedom of
movement and are allowed to work outside with permission and possibly
even catch up with their family. Prisons and special colonies, on the
other hand, are considered the toughest institutions. The penal system
for young people and adolescents takes place in the educational
colonies, women may only be detained in educational colonies, medical
correctional institutions and correctional labor colonies with a general
penal system or in a settlement penal colony. It is not the court that
decides on the design and thus the severity of the conditions of
detention in the respective institution, but the institution's
management. Male recidivists and first-time offenders of particularly
serious offenses are imprisoned in correctional labor colonies with
strict conditions of detention, while offenders who are accused of
special offenses such as terrorism or hostage-taking are imprisoned in
prisons and special colonies.
Alexei Navalny died in the colony
IK-3, called the Polar Wolf, which is considered one of the harshest
institutions in the country.
Torture - even severe torture - is
widespread in the Russian prison system.
Prisons are unofficially
divided into red and black institutions, blacks have a certain degree of
self-government, which means that professional criminals such as the
where w sakone play a greater role in them and illegal objects or drugs
are available. Red institutions, on the other hand, are dominated by the
institution's management and are considered more strict. The thieves in
the law form a "self-administration from below" in the institutions
dominated by them and implement their values bindingly for all
prisoners, usually without the prison administration intervening.
Prisoners are mostly housed in community cells. The prison system has
its own economic enterprises in which prisoners work and earn profits,
the costs for the individual prisoner are kept so low. While in Europe
an average of about 68 euros are spent on a prisoner every day, in
Russia it is only 2.4 euros. There are economic links of prison
officials to organized crime. Within Russian prisons there is a rigid
caste system, in which the abandoned form the lowest and completely
excluded stratum. Even the accidental contact with a person who has been
dropped can lead to descending into this layer yourself. Disliked
prisoners can be subjected to deliberately sexualized violence by the
prison authorities in order to permanently shift them into the caste of
untouchables in this way.
During the ongoing invasion of Ukraine
from the beginning of 2022, numerous prisoners – including violent
felons – were offered the opportunity to perform military service for a
limited time in exchange for a pardon and the remission of the remaining
sentence. Their exact number is unknown, but the Ministry of Justice
stated at the end of 2023 that there were still 266,000 prisoners in the
detention centers. At the beginning of the same year, the FSIN prison
authority had given their number as 433,006. It can be assumed that
there were high numbers of casualties, but after their term of service
expired, criminals returned to Russia and sometimes committed other acts
there, including murders. The pardons are granted by order of the
President and apart from the other pardon procedure, which provides for
a hearing of the victims and reconciliation, a legal basis has not been
created by the Duma. The conditions for a release before the end of the
war have apparently been significantly tightened in the meantime, the
prerequisite is now the achievement of an age limit, a high award or a
wound, otherwise the contract is automatically extended.
In general, the so-called "power structures" (silovye struktury), by which federal state "ministries or institutions with uniformed, militarized and armed units" are understood, and their interaction between competition, power struggles and cooperation in Russia play a major and almost impossible to overestimate role. Their influence on the Kremlin is disproportionately great, in the services there is a common worldview of a Russia threatened by the West. Their relatives were once called the "new nobility" of Russia by the influential secretary of the National Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. The services compete with each other, their relatives use their position of power and means of power for kleptocratic enrichment. Mark Galeotti describes the services as "strategically united and tactically" separate. The power of siloviki extends beyond the services, important posts of the administration and in enterprises are often occupied by them; Putin acts as an arbiter between the services and competing groups, approaching their illiberal views in the process. The important access to the president takes place to a large extent informally and often according to political rather than professional criteria: Presidential administration and Secretary Patrushev can control which reports are given special space and which are not, and also the head of the FSO has – or had – an unregulated good access based on personal proximity. There seems to be a lack of a specialist body that looks at the information of the various services in a summary and weights it before it is presented. The FSB's reports also have an influence, even on foreign policy issues that would rather fall within the expertise of the SWR and GRU, but which apparently have a harder time penetrating with their assessments of the president.
The FSB is the domestic intelligence service of the Russian
Federation. The Russian name Federal Security Service of the Russian
Federation Federalnaya slushba besopasnosti Rossiyskoi Federazii (FSB)
means "Federal Service for Security of the Russian Federation".
With the exception of foreign espionage and the Federal Security
Service, the FSB is responsible for the entire infrastructure of the
former KGB (Committee for State Security). His tasks mainly extend to
state protection, domestic espionage, the fight against organized crime
and the border service, where the paramilitary border troops of the FSB
are subordinate to him. He is the largest of the Russian intelligence
services, is in charge of the national anti-terrorist center, has the
powers of an investigative agency and his own prisons.
However,
the FSB is not a purely domestic intelligence service, but after the
collapse of the USSR it remained in charge of the territories of former
Soviet republics, including Ukraine. His Fifth Directorate, which is
responsible for Ukraine, was partly responsible for the serious
miscalculations at the beginning of the invasion in 2022, which led to
(temporary) punitive measures against FSB officers.
The service
has good connections with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The
weakening of the latter by the establishment of the National Guard
(which has been given powers in the fight against terrorism, for which
the FSB is primarily responsible) also disadvantages the FSB in this
respect.
The FSB has special forces ALFA and Wympel, it is headed
by Alexander Bortnikov.
The Federalnaya Slushba Ochrany Rossiyskoi Federazii (FSO, Russian
Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation 'Federal Service for
Guarding the Russian Federation') is an intelligence service whose
primary primary task is the security of the Russian President and the
Russian government. The Kremlin regiment is subordinate to him.
The FSO has 20,000 members. In contrast to the physical protection task,
according to Mark Galeotti, the FSO has also gained a difficult to
understand significance as the guardian of the other intelligence
services, he even conducts his own opinion polls to gain information
about the opinion formation of the population. He "also makes forecasts
and analyzes on national security for the president," his powers, which
go beyond security tasks, put him in a competitive situation against the
FSB.
The Slushba vneschnei raswedki (SWR, also SVR; Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, SVR; German Service of
Foreign Intelligence of the Russian Federation) is the civilian Russian
foreign intelligence service.
It has more than 15,000 employees
and a special unit Saslon, which is responsible for the protection of
Russian missions abroad. He attaches great importance to HUMINT and also
leads elaborately installed long-term agents for this. Traditionally, he
is led not by long-time intelligence officers, but by career officials
with external experience, at the moment by Sergei Naryshkin.
The Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye (GRU; Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), 'Headquarters for Reconnaissance', ) is the military intelligence service (military intelligence) of the Russian military. The service is a department of the Russian General Staff, to which it is therefore subordinate and has its own Spetznas units. Similar to the FSB, he is responsible for counterintelligence, similar to the SWR, he conducts foreign espionage.
The Russian police (Russian police polizija) is federally organized
and is subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The
Russian police was founded in 2011 and replaced the militia as a police
organization. In 2016, the Ministry of the Interior experienced a
serious loss of power and lost the Internal Troops to the newly founded
National Guard, but in return it was transferred to the Drug
Investigation (Federal Service for the Control of the Circulation of
Drugs, up to 40,000 employees) and the Foreign Police (Federal Migration
Service, 42,000 employees).
At the beginning of 2023, the Russian
police had over 900,000 police officers, making it one of the largest
police agencies in the world, with 630 officers for every 100,000
inhabitants, which is more than twice as many as in the USA.
Nevertheless, due to poor pay and increased workload as a result of
tightened laws in connection with the Ukrainian war, staff shortages are
occurring.
Traditionally, the population has little trust in the
police, corruption and mixing with economic interests and private
security services have been complained about. In 2011, only about 40% of
crimes were reported at all.
National Guard Rosgvardiya
The National Guard (Russian:
Rosgvardiya, transliteration: Rosgvardiya, officially the Federal
Service of the Troops of the National Guard of the Russian Federation
(Rosgvardiya), Federal Service of the Units of the National Guard of the
Russian Federation) of Russia is a gendarmerie established in 2016 as a
successor to the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It
is an important instrument of domestic political power and is directly
subordinate to the President of the Russian Federation. She took over
the OMON and SOBR units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Since its
foundation, the National Guard has been commanded by Viktor Zolotov, who
is considered a confidant of Vladimir Putin.
The tasks of the
National Guard range from the protection of public order, the fight
against crime, the fight against extremism and terrorism to
participation in territorial defense and border protection. It also
guards critical state infrastructures.
She has been involved in
operations in Crimea, Syria and Belarus, and National Guard units have
been deployed in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion in 2022.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the National Guard has an
estimated 350,000 men upwards, but the Center for European Policy
Analysis (CEPA) estimated in 2022 that the National Guard only has units
of about 60,000-70,000 soldiers, which it could theoretically also send
to Ukraine. It has armored personnel carriers, armored transport
vehicles, transport aircraft and helicopters, as well as artillery guns,
after the failed uprising of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his group Wagner, the
National Guard is to receive additional heavy main battle tanks.
The Chechen units of the so-called Kadyrovtsy were integrated into the
National Guard, but they are still commanded by Ramzan Kadyrov.
The Border Troops of Russia (Russian Border Guard Service of the FSB
of Russia) are the armed forces responsible for border protection of the
Russian Federation. They do not belong to the Armed Forces of Russia,
but they are used to perform special tasks in the field of national
defense. They are subordinate to the Domestic Intelligence Service FSB.
The Russian Coast Guard is part of the border troops.
In 2017,
the American military intelligence service DIA estimated the personnel
strength of the FSB border troops at 170,000.
The Wagner Group is a paramilitary unit founded externally in 2014 as
a mercenary company or PMC, which is in contradiction to a legal ban on
mercenary companies in special proximity to the Russian state and is
associated with its structures and has been able to act clandestinely
for a long time without the Russian government having to publicly assume
responsibility. Members of the Wagner group were or are active in Syria,
Africa and Ukraine in order to protect the interests of the Russian
state. The Wagner group has a special proximity to the Russian military
intelligence, its military commander Dmitry Utkin was originally a
lieutenant colonel in the GRU military intelligence service, from the
very beginning it shared its training ground with Russian military
units, including a unit of the GRU. She can be characterized as a
"semi-state actor" ("semi-state actor") with a deliberately unclear
legal status, her acting in the legal dark field has advantages for the
client, for example, that if necessary, she can either act as a private
company with her own interest or, on the contrary, be used alongside
regular units, while the staff actually continues to identify with the
Russian state. The mixture of political and economic interests of
businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin allowed Russia to project relatively
favorable influence in Africa and Syria, where the Wagner group
exploited raw materials and offered services to local elites in exchange
for granting economic benefits. In this respect, Wagner stands for an
interaction of oligarchic with state interests of Russia, as well as for
a privatization of state functions, which makes Wagner appear as a
competitor of established structures and appears in contradiction to
centralized control.
At the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine
in 2022, according to press reports, several commandos consisting of
Wagner soldiers were looking for high-ranking Ukrainian leaders such as
Vitaly Klitschko and Volodymyr Zelenskyi, and three attacks on Zelenskyi
were said to have been prevented. The owner of the group, Yevgeny
Prigozhin, was allowed by the state to recruit volunteers in Russian
prisons, who were promised generous pay, benefits for relatives in case
of death and pardon for military service in and against Ukraine, where
the group fought relatively independently. At times, the Wagner group
was estimated to consist of 50,000 fighters, of whom 40,000 were
prisoners of war. Russia allowed this to generate additional fighters
without having to resort to the ordinary population for this. Their
participation in inhumane practices led to the conquest of Bachmut, but
also to extraordinarily high numbers of victims on their own side.
The role of Wagner as a combat unit in Ukraine made its proximity to
the state clear, in 2023 Defense Minister Shoigu tried to bind the group
more closely to his ministry by means of a contract, but the group
staged a coup to prevent greater integration into the chain of command
of the Ministry of Defense. Their future after the failed uprising and
the death of their most important leaders is uncertain, but the Russian
state under Putin is at least trying to maintain their fighting power,
or to continue it under new superiors. Wagner's foreign policy role is
also worth preserving for the Russian state. After years of denying any
connection to the state, Putin admitted that he had financed the Wagner
group since its foundation. From May 2022 to May 2023, according to
Putin, the Russian state paid Wagner 86 billion rubles (equivalent to
about 940 million US dollars).
In addition to Wagner, there are
other military companies of various sizes that operate with the
connivance or support of the Russian state, the Ukrainian Osint
organization molfar counts 37 different PMCs, including, however, some
already hired. Owners can be companies such as Gazprom, which is
supposed to have two such units at once, but also politicians, such as
the governor of the Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, to whom the Convoy group
operating in Kherson is assigned. Defense Minister Shoigu himself is
assigned to such militias as the Patriot group. The Redut group of the
oligarch Gennady Timchenko was credited with the opportunity or the task
of inheriting Wagner.
According to the assessments of the British
Ministry of Defense and according to the new commander of Wagner, Anton
Yelizarov, Wagner is to be integrated into the Russian National Guard.
On 25.12.2023, Putin had given the National Guard permission, as before,
to set up Wagner volunteer associations with deployment contracts
limited in time to several months, Wagner's African activities were
subordinated to the Russian military intelligence GRU. Furthermore,
military companies work for Russian institutions and companies. A
so-called PMC Espanola is said to be working for and financed by the
Kremlin party United Russia and to have been involved in the capture of
Avdiivka.
With the signature of President Putin, Ukas 683 came into force on
December 31, 2015, and with it a new military doctrine, which for the
first time named the United States, as well as its allies, NATO and the
EU, as a threat to Russia and its neighbors. In March 2018, President
Putin devoted a third of his speech to the nation to the presentation of
supposedly invincible nuclear weapons.
According to the
assumption of the US Department of Defense and various Western
scientists and analysts, the Russian nuclear strategy provides for
limited nuclear strikes in Europe in the event of a military conflict in
Eastern Europe, based on the assumption that the US is not ready for a
comprehensive similar response. In this respect, the strategy envisages
escalating to a limited extent in atomic terms, in order to then be able
to de-escalate. The development and deployment of new tactical nuclear
weapons (for example in Kaliningrad) point to this strategy as well as
the integration of simulated nuclear strikes into conventional
large-scale maneuvers of the Russian Armed Forces.
As a result of
the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia used the threat of nuclear
weapons to secure its aggressive approach to the West. Thus, nuclear
weapons no longer appear solely as a means of deterring attackers, but
as a shield for imperial reach. In particular, the announced transfer of
nuclear weapons to Belarus within the framework of nuclear participation
is interpreted as a signal to the West, especially to Poland. This not
only defensive type of deterrence does not coincide with what Russia had
previously published about its nuclear doctrines.
The Armed Forces of Russia consist of the three sub-Armed Forces
Land Forces (Army)
Air and Space forces
Marine
as well as
the independent groups of troops
Strategic missile forces
Airborne
troops
The armed Forces are led by the General Staff. Russia is
divided into five military districts. These districts are subordinated
to the United Strategic Command (russ. Objedinjonnoye strategicheskoye
komandovanije, OSK), which, in addition to the land forces, are also
subordinate to the naval and air forces deployed on the respective
territories. With the exception of the Northern Military District, the
army is the dominant element in the military districts:
North:
North-Western Russia, Arctic beyond the Arctic Circle, Chukhotka; the
core of the Military District is the Northern Fleet; headquarters
Severomorsk
West: Western and Central Russia, Kaliningrad, Baltic
States, also the Baltic Fleet; headquarters Moscow
South: Southern
Russia and the North Caucasus, as well as the Crimea, the Black Sea
Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla; headquarters Rostov-on-Don
Center:
Volga-Ural and Western Siberia (western part to Lake Baikal);
headquarters Yekaterinburg
East: Far East and Siberia (eastern part),
as well as the Pacific Fleet; Khabarovsk headquarters
In Russia,
a general conscription applies, so far for able-bodied men from 18 to a
maximum of 27 years. In 2023, the State Duma raised the conscription age
by law to 30 years in order to cover the need for soldiers in the war
against Ukraine. In 2007 it had been shortened from 24 to 18, then in
2008 to 12 months. Since conscripted soldiers were also used in crisis
areas such as Chechnya in the past and mistreatment of young recruits by
superiors is not uncommon in the context of Dedovshchina, there is
always criticism of conscription in the population, especially by the
mothers of conscripted soldiers.
Within the military, ethnic and
religious differences play a major and increasing role. Thus, after all,
15% of the soldiers as a whole are Muslims (their share in the
population is sharply increasing), but this is not reflected in higher
positions, where the share of ethnic Russians (and Ukrainians) is 90%.
Ethnically Russian units are given material preference over those from
minorities, there is a strong emphasis within the military on the
Orthodox confession and its connection with the Russian nation.
With the Sapad maneuvers, Russia practiced the scenario of a conflict
towards the west, the maneuver of 2021 served to prepare for the
Ukrainian war.
For several years, military spending has been
growing sharply. In 2018, Russia spent $ 61.4 billion on its military.
It was thus in the international comparison behind the United States
with 649 billion dollars, the People's Republic of China with 250
billion dollars, Saudi Arabia with 67.6 billion dollars, India with 66.5
billion dollars and France with 63.8 billion dollars in 6th place,
followed by the United Kingdom and Germany. Russia's arms spending,
which had already increased massively from 2000, had doubled from 2004
to 2014 and was oriented towards the goal of a fifth of total government
spending from 2014. From 2021 to 2022, spending then increased by leaps
and bounds from 65.9 billion to 86.4 billion US dollars. In 2022, it
thus moved to the place of the country with the third highest military
spending, behind the USA and China. Russia spent 4% of its GDP on the
military in 2022. Expenditures in the wake of the war in Ukraine
continue to increase, to at least 5% of GDP so far, although actual
expenditures may also be higher than officially stated. Compared to 2021
as a comparative year, the defense budget increased by 40% by 2023;
compared to the budget of 2022, when military and security services
accounted for 24% of all government spending, their share increases to
33% of government spending. For 2024, the Russian leadership plans to
spend 6% of GDP on military purposes.
Militarily, the strength of
Russia in 2023 is seen by Global Firepower in second place behind the
USA.
Current situation (from February 2022)
The information
situation about the numbers of military personnel is largely unclear.
Until the Ukrainian war in February 2022, the armed Forces had about
850,000 men. Of these, 300,000 men were accounted for by the army,
40,000 by the Airborne troops, 150,000 men by the Navy, 160,000 men by
the Air Force, 70,000 men by the Strategic Missile Forces, 20,000 men by
the special Forces and 100,000 more soldiers for staff duties, cyber
operations, support and logistics.
In addition, according to the
CIA World Factbook, the National Guard has an estimated 350,000 men,
some of them in militarily usable units. Likewise, members of the Wagner
group and similar semi-state militias can be counted among the military
personnel of Russia.
After the start of the invasion, the state
leadership responded to the increased need for personnel with the
creation of volunteer battalions, which were to be set up by the
governors in the regions. No previous military experience was required,
but the payment, as well as the permitted age of recruitment (up to 50
years, in special cases also up to 60), was significantly higher than
for regular soldiers and conscripts. Whether, as reported, ethnic
minorities are deliberately "burned out" in particularly dangerous
operations in Ukraine in order to spare ethnic Russians is unclear, the
sometimes significantly higher number of cases can also be explained by
the higher motivation in rather poor republics.
In August 2022,
President Putin ordered by decree to increase the size of the army by
137,000 to 1.15 million soldiers from 2023.
In September 2022,
the government ordered the conscription of hundreds of thousands of
reservists and thus the first mobilization since the Second World War.
in 2023, it became known that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, on
Putin's instructions, should once again increase the personnel strength
of the Russian military from 1.15 million to 1.5 million soldiers. Among
other things, a new army corps is to be set up on the border with
Finland and another twelve divisions, Dmitry Peskov justified the
renewed expansion of the armed forces with the "proxy war" that the West
is waging against Russia. At the end of 2023, the Estonian Ministry of
Defense estimated that Russia can currently train about 130,000 soldiers
to combat readiness in suitable units every six months, insofar as the
course of the war allows it. If Russia were disturbed by unfavorable
conditions such as high losses and sufficient Western aid for Ukraine,
this number would be reduced to 40,000 soldiers every six months and
thus – according to the assessment of the Estonian Ministry of Defense –
would fall below a critical mark for the success of the war.
According to the assessment of the Estonian intelligence service
Välisluureamet, Russia expects a war with NATO in the next ten years.
The Russian state has the status of a recognized nuclear power, which
was acquired in 1949 as the Soviet Union, and has the world's largest
arsenal of nuclear warheads with 5977 pieces, ahead of the United States
with 5428 (as of January 2022).
According to Western information,
Russia had 6,255 nuclear warheads in 2021. In 2015, new missiles were
announced for the nuclear forces. The number of "deployed" nuclear
warheads increased from 1,400 in 2013 to 1,796 in 2016. The number of
deployed warheads thus increased due to newly refloated submarines
compared to the entry into force of the New START Agreement in 2011.
According to the SIPRI Institute, Russia has the largest number of
nuclear warheads of all states in 2023 at 4,489, but only 1,674 of them
are ready for use, while the rest are being stored.
The militarily organized Ministry of Emergency Situations is responsible for assistance in natural disasters and major accidents, as well as for civil defense. It manages the fire brigade, which is organized into professional and voluntary fire brigades throughout the country.
In 2019, 271,000 professional and 956,600 volunteer firefighters were organized in the fire department in Russia nationwide, who work in 18,322 fire stations and fire houses, in which 22,735 fire trucks and 1,326 turntable ladders or telescopic masts are available. The percentage of women is 14%. 262,354 children and young people are organized in the youth fire brigades. The Russian fire brigades were alerted to 1,161,581 operations in the same year, while 471,426 fires were extinguished. Here, 8,559 dead were recovered by the fire brigades during fires and 9,461 injured were rescued. The State Fire Supervision Federal State Fire Supervision, represented by the State Fire Inspector (also Chief State Inspector of the Russian Federation for Fire Supervision, Russian Russian Federation for Fire Supervision), which is subordinate to the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, represents the Russian fire brigades in the World Fire Brigade Association CTIF.
The Russian currency is the Russian ruble (ruble; abbreviation RUB)
at 100 kopecks (kopeck). After strong inflation in the 1990s, a currency
reform was carried out in 1998, in which 1000 old rubles (RUR) were
replaced by one new ruble (RUB) each. Since then, until 2008, the ruble
was essentially stable against the US dollar and the euro, inflation in
2006 was 8.2%. So far, the exchange rate policy of the Central Bank of
Russia has mainly contributed to this. In order to prevent a rapid
appreciation of the ruble with a deterioration in the price
competitiveness of Russian producers, she intervened in the foreign
exchange market. It bought up the foreign exchange flowing into Russia
with the high current account surpluses against rubles. The amount of
ruble money in circulation increased sharply. The inflation potential
grew. In the course of the international Economic crisis, the ruble lost
about 20% of its value against the euro in the second half of 2008.
Since the annexation of Crimea, the ruble has lost more than half of its
value against the euro, US dollar or renminbi.
In addition to the
ruble, US dollars and euros are also used in everyday life. Until
January 2007, prices were also often given in settlement units, each
corresponding to one US dollar. Since the use of third-party currency is
not allowed in Russia, payment was nevertheless made in rubles. However,
this practice has been banned since January 2007. Due to frequent bank
insolvencies and financial crises, many Russians have switched to
investing their savings as cash in euro and dollar bills or in real
estate.
In 2016, the state budget included expenditures of the equivalent of
236.6 billion dollars, which were offset by revenues of the equivalent
of 186.5 billion dollars. As a result, the country had a budget deficit
of 3.9% of GDP. As of mid-2012, the completion of the Duma and
presidential elections will give rise to new extensive modernization
expenditures in favor of infrastructure, economy and national defense. A
further increase in social spending has also been announced. Thus,
spending will tend to continue to increase, which is not a problem due
to a low debt-to-gdp ratio. The national debt amounted to 17.0% of GDP
in 2016.
in 2006, the share of government spending from GDP was
as follows:
Health: 5.3 %
Education: 3.8% (2005)
Military: 3.9%
(2005)
After the collapse of the USSR, as a result of the privatization of state-owned enterprises, an economy characterized by so-called oligarchs was formed. However, after Vladimir Putin came to power, the latter reestablished state control over the former state-owned enterprises by removing these oligarchs from power and installing trusted people from the ranks of the Siloviki in key enterprises (primarily the oil and gas production industry). These leaders are sometimes called silowarchs. The current economic form can be characterized as oligarchically led "state capitalism", in which an "exclusive elite with the help of extractive political and economic institutions decisively determines the priorities in economic and foreign economic policy" and generates large incomes through the sale of raw materials on world markets, so that a market-based modernization, which would lead to the gain of power of other actors, is not desired by it, but is prevented. The Russian economy is strongly characterized by clientelism, loyalty to the system is rewarded by the possibility of being able to siphon off excessive profits. Margareta Mommsen assumes that there are "about 13 to 15 clans involved in the permanent poker for power and property", they ruled the country informally as a "secret oligarchy", and Vladimir Putin appears as a link between them and the externally visible power institutions of the state, he is the "patron of clique economic structures", who ensures a balance of interests.
Russia is a developed industrial and agricultural country. The
country is also a founding member of the Eurasian Economic Union, which
has existed since January 1, 2015. The leading industrial sectors are
mechanical engineering, as well as ferrous and non-ferrous metal
processing. The chemical and petrochemical industry, as well as the
wood, light and food industries are also well developed.
The
Russian gross domestic product in 2015 amounted to approximately EUR
1192 billion. The gross domestic product per capita in the same year was
8137 euros. The service sector contributes 62.6% to the gross domestic
product. The secondary industrial sector accounts for about 32.7%, while
the agricultural sector (construction and agriculture) accounts for
4.7%. The World Bank estimated that about a quarter of the total
economic output is accounted for by raw material production.
According to a study by Bank Credit Suisse, the average asset ownership
per adult person in Russia is $ 16,773. However, the median income is
only $ 3,919 (world average: $ 3,582), which indicates a high level of
wealth inequality. More than 70% of the Russian population owns less
than $ 10,000 in assets. Russia ranked 19th in the ranking of countries
by total private wealth, one place ahead of Indonesia and one behind
Sweden. Russia was the country with the fifth highest number of
billionaires in 2017 (a total of 96). The so-called oligarchs in the
country have partly become a symbol of corrupt structures and
inequality.
The total number of employees is 73.5 million (2006).
30% of the working population worked in industry in 2005. 10% of all
employed people were employed in agriculture, 22% in the service sector
and another 22% in the public sector. In 2013, Russian Deputy Prime
Minister Olga Golodez said that only 48 million (instead of 86 million)
able-bodied people were visible to the government, according to
estimates, the shadow economy accounts for half of economic output.
Small and medium-sized enterprises contributed a fifth, while
state-owned corporations contributed 70%. Also due to the minimal
pensions, working pensioners were part of the army of self-employed
low-income earners, who hardly ever declared their income: the tax
morale was low in view of the well-known corrupt debauchery of
politicians.
After years of recovery, the Russian economy was in
recession around the years 2015/16. After the Russian gross domestic
product had grown by 0.6% in 2014, the Russian economy shrank by 3.7% in
2015. A decline in economic output of 0.2% was officially reported for
the year 2016. The main reasons for the recession were mostly cited as
the very low oil price, the decline of the ruble, as well as Western
sanctions in the course of the war in Ukraine. However, fundamental
structural problems are also attested to the Russian economy.
Furthermore, Russia had to contend with increased inflation rates of up
to 15% in the case of 2015. Inflation fell back to 3% in 2018. In the
Global Competitiveness Index, which measures the competitiveness of a
country, Russia ranks 38th out of 137 countries (as of 2017/18). In the
index for Economic Freedom, the country ranks 114th out of 180 countries
in 2017.
The overall economic development of Russia after the dissolution of
the Soviet Union was initially characterized by a drastic slump in
production. The elimination of well-established trade relations in the
Union of the Soviet Union contributed to this. The transition from a
planned economy to a market economy was difficult and only succeeded in
some areas. Overall, the gross domestic product decreased by a good 40%.
Shortly after the beginning of the Asian crisis, the Russia crisis began
in the fall of 1997. On 17. August 1998, Russia declared state
bankruptcy and had to abandon the dollar peg of the ruble. The "policy
of the minimum state" under Yeltsin led to the fact that the federal
government was unable to collect taxes and provide legal certainty. This
changed under the presidency of Vladimir Putin from the year 2000. In
order to regain political control in the state, he strengthened the
state apparatus at the expense of the influence of the oligarchs.
Putin led a state-run corporatist economy in Russia until 2008. In
2007, by law, he introduced six institutions for bundling state
activities in strategically important areas, under the sole leadership
of the president. These include the nuclear technology at Rosatom, the
Bank for Foreign Trade VEB, the Reform Fund for Real Estate, Rusnano or
the armaments conglomerate Rostec, as well as Olimpstroi, the state
Company for buildings of the Olympic Games in Sochi 2014, which was
dissolved in 2014. VEB emerged from the Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR.
Among other things, Prime Minister Medvedev criticized the use of state
property or state funds to establish these state conglomerates created
by law, which led to a hidden privatization. An audit of the
corporations in 2009 by Medvedev found abuse and inefficiency. In his
speech to the nation in November 2009, President Medvedev called the
organizational form of corporations "without perspective". A few days
later, Prime Minister Putin replied that state corporations were simply
a necessity, and stressed that there was agreement on this in the
leadership of the state.
The first four years of Putin's
presidency were followed by the introduction of a flat rate in personal
income tax (see Tax law (Russia)), the full convertibility of the ruble
and a three-year budget (this was until the financial problems in 2015).
In order to benefit from the revenues of the energy sector, private
companies have been pushed back from this area. The state also expanded
its influence outside the energy sector. The government promoted the
formation of large state-owned corporations, which are supposed to
dominate strategic industries. For example, private companies for
mechanical and automotive engineering were taken over by state-owned
enterprises and supported by subsidies in order to be able to be
modernized.
Large production capacities from the time of the USSR
were not fully utilized, so the Russian government oriented itself to
fully utilize these capacities again through a demand-oriented economic
policy through an expansive, growth-oriented monetary policy. This
brought with it a double-digit inflation rate. The goal set by President
Putin to double the gross domestic product within ten years should be
achieved by means of a government spending program. For this, salaries
in the civil service, as well as pensions, other social benefits and
expenses for housing construction were increased. The social program was
made possible by the oil boom, which, in addition to high additional
revenues for the state, made it possible to reduce the external debt,
which in 2000 was still $ 166 billion. Part of the oil revenues went to
the Stabilization Fund established in 2004, which was supposed to
cushion falling government revenues and mitigate possible inflation. In
2008, this stabilisation fund was divided into a reserve fund and a
prosperity fund (to secure pensions). The Prosperity Fund amounted to
68.4 billion euros in 2011, the reserve fund to 19.9 billion euros.
The Russian economy had recovered quickly from the slump in
production in the wake of the financial crisis of 1998, as the
significant devaluation of the ruble in 1998 boosted the Russian economy
and made foreign goods more expensive, so that products from Russia
became more competitive there. From a foreign economic point of view,
however, the Russian economy's dependence on the energy sector continued
to increase. Despite a strong increase in investments, too little
investment was made in Russia compared to other countries. Investors
criticized the lack of legal certainty, widespread corruption, excessive
bureaucracy and the low efficiency of the Russian banking system.
In the wake of the international Economic Crisis, the Russian economy
has experienced significantly negative developments since mid-2008,
which was largely due to its great dependence on the raw materials
sector. Due to the drastic fall in the price of oil and natural gas,
government revenues fell. The global financial crisis hit Russia hard in
2009. Thanks to its anti-crisis policy, Russia has been able to prevent
major bank collapses, so that the Russian financial system is once again
considered stable. The mandatory deposits at the Central Bank were
increased, banks received state aid. The Central Bank of Russia used
almost $ 300 billion in reserves to support the ruble, which came under
devaluation pressure as a result of the withdrawal of foreign capital.
In 2010 and 2011, an economic recovery began in Russia.
This
crisis made it clear that the fixation on the wealth of raw materials is
leading the country into a dead end and the dependence on world market
prices for oil, natural gas or metals is too high. Already at the
beginning of the 21st century, an intensive discussion about special
economic zones had begun in Russia. Under Vladimir Putin, a
corresponding law on special economic zones in the Russian Federation
was adopted in 2005. By the end of 2009, 15 of these zones had been
designed and approved, including, among others, two industrial special
economic zones (Yelabuga, Lipetsk), four technology-oriented special
economic zones (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Dubna, Tomsk), as well as seven
zones for tourism and recreation. Interest rates were lowered to allow
investment in production. The inflation rate reached its lowest level in
20 years in 2011. The government has tried to keep price-driving factors
such as the increase in the price of fuels and electricity under control
through quarterly agreements with suppliers.
While in 1999 the
country was still ranked 22nd among the largest economic nations, in
2012 it occupied the 9th place in the world by nominal GDP. While the
value of Russian GDP in relation to German was 21.7% in 2004, in 2011 it
was already 51.7%. Accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) took
place in 2012 after 18 years of negotiations, as a result of which
import duties decreased and the pressure to modernize the domestic
economy increased. In 2015, Russia's economic performance again lagged
behind Italy's in 10th or 11th place. Until 2018, the government had
never dared to increase the retirement age, which Stalin had set in 1932
– however, the pensions that women receive from the age of 55, men from
the age of 60, are so low that many earn money in the shadow economy. At
the same time, the labor market lacked manpower.
Due to the Western sanctions due to the Russian annexation of Crimea
and the Russian-sponsored war in Ukraine since 2014, economic
development has stagnated in connection with a slump in the oil price.
The structural problems of the Russian economy, which had been focused
on the export of raw materials for years, were accentuated. The NZZ
wrote in August 2015 in a comparison with the ruble crisis of 1997:
"Today the situation is less threatening, but the chances of improvement
are lower"; thus, the ruble weakness could not be used to modernize and
diversify the economy due to financial restrictions. Russian household
income in 2015 decreased by an average of 8.5%, while food prices
increased by up to 25%. The annual inflation in 2015 was 12.9%. A
capital amnesty was supposed to return money to Russia from December
2014. While Presidential spokesman Peskov was talking about an
absolutely one-time offer valid for one year at the time of the
introduction, the amnesty was extended in December 2015 until June 2016
and renewed at the beginning of 2018 after new American sanctions.
All government spending had to be cut, only the defense sector
(defense industry and Armed Forces) was not affected by this. Russian
Prime Minister Medvedev had repeatedly stated that Russia would have to
live with Western sanctions "indefinitely". Economic development
remained paralyzed, because the techniques of maintaining the power of
the Putin regime prevented not only political, but also economic
reforms. The share of the state economy increased, the shadow economy
flourished, real incomes decreased several times between 2014 and 2018.
A tax rate of 0% for the years 2017/2018 should have encouraged
self-employed people to register their activities; of the probably
around nine million people working in this way, just 936 had registered.
According to a new legislative proposal from 2018, the entire income
should be taken from these low-income earners when the activity is
discovered, i.e. a harsher penalty than they would have to fear for
high-income earners. Opening a business was not desirable for the
majority of Russians surveyed in February 2019, as it is not possible to
do business without cheating. Foreign direct investment, which had
totaled $ 69 billion in 2013, had fallen to well below $ 5 billion by
2018, according to Le Monde.
In July 2018, it was decided to
increase VAT by 2%, which brought it to 20% from January 1, 2019.
People all over Russia in the summer of 2018 demonstrated for
several weeks against the increase in the retirement age. Putin's
approval ratings crashed, as in 2012, so the usual system of "bad
boyars, good tsar" did not work. Although Putin's popularity could
hardly fall below 60% thanks to the comprehensive propaganda, the vast
majority of respondents were convinced that Putin was responsible for
the abuse of power that the opposition accuses the rulers of; the Levada
Center's surveys differed in "agreement" with politics and in "trust".
After prices had already risen noticeably again in the pre-war year
of 2021 due to the cartelization of the economy, many Western countries
imposed unprecedented sanctions against Russia after the start of the
Russian attack on Ukraine. As a result, the service sector could shrink
again; the state already controlled 60 to 75% of the economy directly or
indirectly at the beginning of 2022.
The timber industry is mainly represented in the north-west of the
European part, in the Central Ural Mountains, in Southern Siberia and in
the south of Far Eastern Russia. Russia has about one-fifth of the
world's forest stock and about one-third of the world's coniferous
forest stock; most of Russia's timber production consists of softwood,
mainly pine, fir and larch. The most important hardwood for trade is
birch.
Agriculture is still an important branch of the Russian
economy. Once the breadbasket of Europe, Russian agriculture suffered a
drastic slump in agricultural production in the 1990s – but already in
the 1980s Russia was the world's most important wheat exporter. In 2009,
the production value of Russian agriculture again amounted to the
equivalent of 38 billion euros. In 2016, President Putin underlined the
desire to be an agricultural-export nation. Of the record harvest
of 75 million tons of wheat in 2016, almost 7 million tons (similar to
2015) could be exported. The State Agricultural Transport Authority
Rusagrotrans is responsible for the transport. The value of exported
agricultural goods in 2016 was $ 17 billion. The conditions for
agriculture are good, especially in the European part of Russia, as well
as in southern Russia, the Russian Black Earth region is the largest in
the world. The agricultural area is 219 million hectares, which is 13%
of the land area of Russia. Of this, 122 million hectares are arable
land, which corresponds to 9% of the world's arable land. More than 80%
of the sown areas are located on the Volga, in the North Caucasus, the
Urals and in Western Siberia, within the so-called agrarian triangle.
Agriculture accounts for 36% of Russia's gross agricultural production,
animal husbandry accounts for over 60%. The main agricultural products
in Russia are cereals, sugar beet, sunflower, potatoes and flax. The
inland fishery supplies the coveted Russian caviar with the sturgeon. In
the transformation phase between 1990 and 1997, the pig and poultry
stocks decreased by almost half. Russia has been importing some of its
food since then. It has been the goal of the Russian government before,
but especially since its counter-sanctions against the West after the
annexation of Crimea in 2014, to increase the ability to
self-sufficiency and reduce import dependence. The stock of cattle is
12.1 million animals, of pigs - 7 million. as well as sheep and goats,
4.6 million cattle breeding is carried out mainly in the Volga region,
in Western Siberia and the European center, pig breeding is also found
in the Volga region, but also in North Caucasus and in the central
Chernozem region. Sheep breeding focuses on the regions of Eastern
Siberia, the North Caucasus and the Volga region.
The natural resources of Russia are an important basis for the
country's economy. Russia has 16% of all mineral natural resources in
the world, including 32% of all natural gas reserves (first place in the
world), 12% of all oil reserves, which are located, in particular, in
Western Siberia, Sakhalin Island, the North Caucasus, the Komi Republic
and the oil fields in the Volga-Ural Region (Caspian Depression). With
the sharp increase in oil exports with rising oil prices from 2002 to
2011, the importance of oil and gas production in Russia in particular
had grown and played an important role for the economy outside Russia as
well. Russian companies such as Gazprom, Rosneft or Lukoil are involved
in oil and gas production, which takes place mainly in the northern and
eastern parts of the country.
With its gold reserves, Russia
occupies the third place in the world. The diamond deposits in the
North-East Siberian Yakutia are world-famous. Since 1996, diamonds have
been mined here in one of the world's largest kimberlite deposits, in
Mirny.
Russia's share in the world's reserves of iron and tin is
over 27%, nickel is 36%, copper is 11%, cobalt is 20%, lead is 12%, zinc
is 16%, and platinum group metals are 40%. 50% of the world's known coal
deposits are found in Russia. According to the mineral deposits, hard
coal and iron ore extraction plays a very important role in the economy
of Russia. Larger ore deposits are found mainly in the folded-up
mountains (chibins on the Kola Peninsula, the Urals, Altai, the Sayan
Mountains, as well as other Siberian mountain ranges). Deposits of hard
coal are found in some of the foothills of these mountains, especially
in the Urals (including Vorkuta coal deposits) and in the Donets basin
on the border with Ukraine. Coal mining suffered from a lack of
investment and has lost its importance compared to the Soviet era.
Thermal power plants powered by oil, natural gas or coal generated
around 63% of the total electricity production of around 851 billion
kilowatt hours in 2003. Hydroelectric power plants accounted for 21%,
nuclear power plants - 16%. The Russian government plans to double the
share of nuclear energy in electricity production to about a third by
2020 in order to be able to export even more oil and natural gas. The
power grid and most large-scale power plants are still under state
control. In order to benefit from the revenues of the energy sector,
Russian policy was aimed at re-strengthening state control over the
energy industry and pushing private companies out of this area. This was
achieved by the breakup of the Yukos oil company and the takeover of the
Sibneft oil company by the semi-state natural gas company Gazprom.
Today, one of the largest gas and oil production concerns is
Surgutneftegaz, where President Vladimir Putin controls 37% of the
shares. All Russian nuclear power plants are owned by the state-owned
company Rosatom and are operated by the also state-owned company
Rosenergoatom. Until 2008, Unified Energy System had the largest share
in electricity production, more than 50% of which belonged to the
Russian state and has since been divided into smaller companies.
The program of gas supply to the Russian regions has been running since
2005. It was planned to carry gas to every village in ten years, that
is, until 2015. In 2019, the program was extended until 2030. The new
goal is no longer to supply all, but 85% of the country's settlements.
In Russia, schools and hospitals were still heated with firewood in
2022, which, according to Novaya Gazeta, is more expensive than in
Germany.
In addition to the old industrial areas of Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod,
Saint Petersburg, Saratov, Rostov and Volgograd, other industrial sites
have been established since the Second World War, mainly in the Asian
part of the country. Heavy industry is concentrated in the Urals around
Yekaterinburg. Russia takes a leading role in the world production of
steel and aluminum. In recent years, world-famous steel corporations
with high financial strength have been formed in Russia. These are, for
example, Evraz, Severstal, Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works and
Novolipetsk Steel, which are among the 30 largest steel groups in the
world. Important centers of heavy industry are Magnitogorsk,
Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Novokuznetsk, Cherepovets and Lipetsk.
Numerous machine and vehicle industries produce at the old main
industrial sites of Moscow, the Volga region, the North-West and the
Urals, but also equipment and plant manufacturing is located here.
Several branches of the manufacturing industry, such as mechanical
engineering, the auto industry and the defense industry, including the
aviation industry, fell into a deep crisis after the end of the Soviet
Union. Production fell sharply. In the 2000s, however, the manufacturing
industry also went uphill again. It was possible to regain market shares
and find new markets in Asia, especially on markets in the CIS, because
some Russian products were able to distinguish themselves as simpler and
cheaper than Western competing products. The domestic production of
machinery and equipment reached a volume of around 63 billion euros in
2006. In order to accelerate the necessary modernization in mechanical
engineering, the state controls the further development of mechanical
engineering from above. This included the establishment of the state
holding Rostechnologii, in which state shares of almost 500 enterprises
(defense enterprises, airlines, truck and wagon manufacturers and
machine builders) were contributed.
Aircraft construction was one
of the most important and technically highly developed branches of
Russian industry. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the production
chains between the former Union republics were interrupted. This had a
profound negative impact on Russian aircraft construction. The main
developers and producers of aircraft in Russia were united in the OAK in
2006. In 2010, OAK delivered 75 aircraft at a revenue of four billion US
dollars. The most famous Russian automakers are AvtoVAZ, KAMAZ, Ishmash
or the GAZ Group. Very often you can still see the Russian-made car
brands Zhiguli, Moskvich, Lada Niva and Oka, as well as trucks KAMAZ,
Ural and others. Meanwhile, Russian automakers are cooperating with
foreign concerns. Volkswagen Group Rus is currently working with GAZ,
Ford with Sollers, Renault-Nissan and AwtoWAZ, as well as General Motors
(GM) with Avtotor. As a result, new assembly plants have been created
and are currently being built in Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod, Togliatti, St.
Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Russia's arms industry is coordinated by the
state arms exporter Rosoboronexport. Rosoboronexport coordinates the
work of the various defense companies and merges them into a group
through investments.
The chemical industry of Russia is one of
the main branches of the national economy of Russia, the share of which
in the volume of commodity production reaches 6%. The chemical complex
of Russia includes 15 large industrial groups specializing in the output
of a diverse production. The leading companies in this field are the
highly profitable, oil-processing enterprises and producers of chemical
fertilizers. In addition, the production of chemical fibers, plastics
and automobile tires is highly developed in Russia. The economy of
Russia is also characterized by the production of building materials,
light industry (mainly textile industry) and the food industry.
The leading local retail chains by a large margin include the X5 Retail Group (which includes the Pyatyorochka and Perekryostok chains, among others), Magnit, and the Metro Group and Auchan are leading among the international chains. The banking market is dominated by such state institutions as Sberbank, WTB, Rosselkhosbank and Vneshekonombank. Sberbank alone, the former working People's Savings Bank of the Soviet Union, holds about half of all savings deposits. Only Sberbank has a nationwide branch network. On average, the share of state-controlled banks in the total market is about 50%. The largest Russian private banks (Gazprombank, Alfa Group, MDM Bank, Rosbank) are part of industrial holdings and mainly perform tasks within the framework of the holding.
The most important trading partner of Russia in terms of supply
structure is Germany, which supplies mainly finished industrial products
such as machinery, equipment and high-end technology to Russia. In
return, Russia was Germany's largest crude oil supplier and covered
around a third of Germany's natural gas needs. German-Russian trade
increased by 8.4% to EUR 61.9 billion in 2018. German imports from
Russia increased by 14.7% year-on-year and amounted to around EUR 36
billion. Exports to Russia also increased by 0.6% to EUR 25.9 billion.
The all-time high was reached in 2012. The People's Republic of China
replaced Germany as the most important foreign trade partner in 2010,
the Netherlands, Ukraine, Italy, Belarus and Turkey are also of
importance for Russia, which from 2022 took the second place. In 2012,
Russia was the world's second largest exporter of crude oil and the
world's largest exporter of natural gas. The export of energy sources
and electricity accounts for 62.8% of total exports (metals, metal
products: 9.9%, chemicals: 4.1%). However, despite its significant
position as a supplier of raw materials, Russia's share of global trade
in goods is comparatively small. It is 2%, almost a third of the share
of Germany.
Russia's exchange of goods with foreign countries
decreased in 2019. On a US dollar basis, trade turnover decreased by
3.1% compared to the previous year, amounting to the equivalent of
around 595 billion euros. Imports of goods and services increased by
2.2%, while exports decreased by 6%. For the first time in ten years,
exports thus slowed GDP growth. Asia accounted for 69 percent of
Russia's foreign trade at the end of 2023.
The country has natural landscapes worth seeing, including UNESCO
World Natural Heritage, as well as sights of high cultural value. In
2010, 2.4 million foreign tourists visited Russia, while 13.1 million
Russians traveled abroad for recreation. Domestic tourism brought it to
29.1 million travelers. Although the flow of tourists from Asia and
South America is increasing, guests from Europe – with Germany at the
top – make up the majority of visitors to Russia. Thus, the number of
arrivals of holiday and business travelers had also continuously
increased; while there were around 360,000 Germans who visited the
country in 2002, 558,000 German visitors came in 2008. However, only
66,000 of these were German holiday trips and the rest were business
trips as well as family and friendship visits. In 2017, 580,000 Germans
visited the Russian Federation. Individual tourists were often deterred
by visa procurement and language barriers, while the country is more
popular with tour groups.
Tourists have long been deterred by an
unattractive brand image, according to which "Russia is an uncomfortable
country" and "not ready to accept tourists. That the people there are
unfriendly and that the danger lurks everywhere around, “ said Alexander
Radkov, head of the State Tourism Agency Rostourismus, in 2012. Despite
increased activities by the Federal Tourism Agency, an effective PR and
marketing strategy has so far been lacking, which causes the country's
bad image in the West, among other things. could be influenced by media
coverage, which mainly contains news about attacks, corruption and lack
of freedom.
Tourism in Russia is mainly concentrated in the two
metropolises of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. St. Petersburg is
considered the Venice of the North and has a rich cultural offer and a
historic city center, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Typical for
St. Petersburg are the White Nights with the Neva bridges folded up from
the end of May to the middle of July. In addition, boat trips on the
Volga River are offered, as well as sightseeing tours of Old Russian
cities northeast of Moscow, the so-called Golden Ring with more than 20
cities. Nature holidays are possible mainly in Karelia and the Altai
Mountains (World Natural Heritage). The Trans-Siberian Railway
(Transsib) runs on about 9300 km from Moscow via Yekaterinburg,
Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, Irkutsk, which is also called the
"Paris" of Siberia, as well as the region around Lake Baikal, also a
UNESCO World Natural Heritage, to Vladivostok. The Transsib is used by
individual tourists on the regular trains of the Russian Railways as
well as by group travelers who book trips on special trains.
Kaliningrad, the former Königsberg, is also attracting more and more
German visitors. The Curonian Spit, a narrow headland, declared a UNESCO
World Heritage Site in 2000, is located partly in the Kaliningrad
Oblast, partly in Lithuania.
In domestic tourism, the seaside
resorts of the Black Sea coast, as well as a number of North Caucasian
thermal spring resorts, such as Kislovodsk or Pyatigorsk, are of
importance. 400 km are located between the northernmost and the
southernmost point of the Russian Black Sea coast. It is on this
relatively small stretch of coast, which is located at the same latitude
as the seaside resorts of the Adriatic Sea and the Italian and French
Mediterranean coasts, that the majority of Russia's seaside resort
business is concentrated during the season from May to October.
Ski tourism in the North Caucasus is becoming increasingly popular. The
corresponding infrastructure was expanded, especially for the 2014
Winter Olympics in Sochi.
With a size of 17,075,400 km2, the country's special attention is
paid to the widest possible and functioning infrastructure. After
Russia's political turnaround, the volume of traffic had initially
mostly reduced due to the economic downturn, but then experienced strong
growth. The current infrastructure still largely dates back to the times
of the Soviet Union and is now in need of modernization, and the
existing transport systems generate hardly any network effects. The
expansion and modernization of the transport infrastructure is therefore
a high priority for the Russian government. In 2005, the government
adopted a strategy for the renewal of transport routes, focusing on
continued modernization and improvements in rail, road and air
transport, as well as the rehabilitation of the country's ports. In
addition, concessions and other public-private partnership models are to
be pushed forward in the transport sector in order to mobilize private
investors' financing resources in this sector as well.
Despite
difficult conditions, Russia wants to establish itself programmatically
as an important hub in Asia-Europe traffic and partly also on the
north-south axis from northern Europe towards India. To this end, the
logistics infrastructure is to be expanded, especially at the Moscow and
Saint Petersburg hubs.
While the transport infrastructure of
Russia is well developed west of the Urals as a whole, the
infrastructure of roads and railways in the Trans-Urals and Siberia is
technically outdated at best and not competitive. The biggest traffic
obstacle to the economic connection of the vast territories of Siberia
to the booming South and Southeast Asian states is the lack of transport
routes in the north-south direction. As a result, Vladimir Putin and Xi
Jinping agreed in 2015 to integrate the Eurasian Economic Union and the
Silk Road Belt Initiative, respectively initiated by Russia and China,
into one project, the Central Eurasia Initiative. The aim is to develop
a logistical strategy for a new transport framework for Siberia and the
Far East of Russia.
In the Logistics Performance Index, which is
compiled by the World Bank and measures the quality of infrastructure,
Russia ranked 75th among 160 countries in 2018.
Since 2000, the trend towards the street has been clearly visible in
Russia. The road density is very low with 40 m of road per km2. This is
due, among other things, to the very low population density in large
parts of the country. The road network in Russia is of very different
quality, its expansion cannot keep up with the ever-increasing traffic
on the roads. The density of the network decreases sharply from west to
east: the further you move from Moscow to the east, the more the road
conditions deteriorate. Nevertheless, the majority of freight traffic
between Western Europe and Russia is carried out by road – in transit
via Poland and Belarus or via the Northern Route via Poland and the
Baltic republics, as well as via Finland. The difference in the gauge of
the railways also contributes to this.
The Russian highway and
trunk road network together covers about 540,000 km (2001), two thirds
of which are fixed. Only since 2003 there has been a spatially and
seasonally continuous road connection from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific
Ocean. The trunk roads are usually not developed as motorways or
expressways outside the conurbations and even with larger wide roads,
the directional carriageways are not separated from each other by
guardrails. The main long-distance highway in Russia is European Route
30, which ends in Siberia.
The share of transportation costs in
production costs is up to 20% due to poor roads. The poor infrastructure
costs the country up to 9% of its economic output; transport experts
estimate that at least 32 billion euros would have to be invested
annually in the expansion of roads.
There are relatively many
fatal accidents in road traffic. In 2013, there were a total of 18.9
traffic fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants in Russia. By comparison,
there were 4.3 deaths in Germany in the same year. A total of 27,000
people were killed in road traffic as a result. The country's
motorization rate is in the upper midfield worldwide. In 2017, there
were 324 motor vehicles per 1000 inhabitants in the country. With about
46.9 million vehicles, Russia has the fifth largest fleet of all
countries. 14 of the previous 60 car brands were officially distributed
in Russia at the beginning of 2024. These were the three Russian Lada,
GAZ and UAZ, as well as eleven Chinese ones.
Almost half of the passenger transport takes place in local
transport, mainly via the bus network, which exists in 120 cities. In
addition, 90 Russian cities have a trolleybus network, in 66 cities
there are trams and suburban trains, and in seven cities there is also a
metro, as well as in four other suburban railway lines.
In the
1990s, many of the good local transport networks fell into disrepair and
were increasingly supplemented or replaced by private bus or scheduled
taxi companies. Also recently, tram or trolleybus systems have been
decommissioned in favor of buses in several large cities (for example,
the trolleybus in Arkhangelsk and the tram in Ivanovo in 2008, or the
tram in Voronezh in 2009).
As a means of mass transportation over long distances, the railway
occupies an important part of the transport market in Russia. Due to the
great distances, the connection of the Far East was a great challenge in
the early 20th century, which the country was able to create with the
famous Trans-Siberian Railway. At the same time, the Baikal-Amur highway
from Lake Baikal to the Amur River was built at the end of the 20th
century to open up the Far East of Siberia. Through these two and the
branching routes, the country is developed in a west-east direction. For
example, it can reduce the transport of goods between Pusan and Helsinki
from about 47 days by sea to about 16 days.
In May 2001, the
Russian government decided to implement the railway reform. The main
goals were the liberalization of the railway market and the release of
tariffs in railway transport. As part of the railway reform, the former
Ministry of Railways (MPS) was dissolved in October 2003 and Russia's
second largest state-owned enterprise, the Rossiyskiye zheleznye dorogi
(RZhD), was founded. In recent years, 85 private railway companies have
also been established in Russia, which now transport more than 25% of
the goods and own about 30% (about 200,000 freight wagons) of the total
freight wagon inventory in Russia. The route network in Russia is
operated by the RZhD. In total, the well-developed railway network
(broad gauge with 1520 mm gauge) covers about 87,000 km, of which almost
half (40,000 km) is electrified. On the island of Sakhalin there are
almost 1000 km in 1067 mm width. In addition, there are an additional
30,000 km of non-public industrial railways (all data 2004). While road
freight transport has been the dominant mode of transport in Western
Europe for decades and rail has a subordinate importance, the truck has
only been able to catch up in Russia since 2000. Therefore, rail has an
above-average market share of freight transport in Russia at 83%.
Russia has a significant number of ports and navigable waterways.
72,000 km of inland waterways connect the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the
inland lakes and the White Sea in the European part of Russia. Important
waterways here are the Volga, the Kama, the Nizhny Novgorod Oka, the
Vyatka, the Don and the canals connecting these rivers.
In
Siberia, 24,000 km are navigable. Due to the drainage of the large
rivers Ob, Yenisei and Lena into the Polar Sea, there is no east-west
access by water; due to ice formation, the Polar route is only possible
for a few months in summer, but this period is extended by climate
change. The navigability of the rivers and canals is severely impaired
by meteorological influences (water level) and poor construction. Since
1990, a reduction in the stock of the inland waterway fleet has been
observed in Russia. The number of inland waterway vessels in 2002 was
still about 8800, of which 8000 were cargo ships and 800 passenger
ships. The main Russian inland ports are Arkhangelsk, Perm, Yaroslav,
Saratov and Cheboksary.
Maritime shipping is one of the rapidly
growing transport sectors in Russia. The main reason for this is the
increasing export volume of crude oil and petroleum products. The most
important seaports are located in St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad on the
Baltic Sea, Novorossiysk and Sochi on the Black Sea, as well as
Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Magadan and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the
Pacific Ocean; Murmansk is the only year-round ice-free (North) Atlantic
port. In 2003, the cargo turnover in Russian ports amounted to 285.7
million tons. Ferry traffic is important for freight traffic between the
Russian heartland and the exclave of Kaliningrad.
In Russia and the Soviet Union, aviation was of great importance from an early age due to the area of the country. National air traffic connects remote areas, the development of which by land was never worthwhile. At the time of the Soviet Union, the state-owned Aeroflot was the largest airline in the world and its prices were sometimes cheaper than those of the railway. Tickets for flights to the Far East of Russia are still subsidized by the state. In addition to Aeroflot, which continues to be semi-state, the Rossiya, S7 Airlines and UTair, which are also affiliated with the state, fly as larger companies. The number of airports in Russia decreased from 1302 to 496 between 1992 and 2011, the number of international airports increased from 19 to 70, and 55 airfields had a paved runway of more than 3000 m in length. Several international airlines also fly to other Russian cities besides Moscow. The largest and most important airports are Sheremetyevo-2 and Domodedovo near Moscow. The aircraft fleet of Russia in 2011 included about 6000 aircraft, of which almost 2000 were cargo aircraft. Government subsidies and regulations are used to revitalize the Russian aviation industry. In the fall of 2018, the government issued an order to Sberbank and VTB banks to establish a large regional airline, with the help of which an upgrade of regional airports was to be achieved to relieve the burden on the Moscow hub. In January 2020, President Putin instructed the government to form a company for the development of remote eastern regions with a fleet consisting entirely of Russian aircraft. This society was created on the basis of the Red Wings. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Western sanctions, the Russian authorities granted permission to 21 airlines to operate foreign aircraft without a valid airworthiness certificate, which led to a ban on flying over the EU. Russia itself closed the airspace and eleven airports (Anapa, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Gelendzhik, Krasnodar, Kursk, Lipetsk, Rostov-on-Don, Simferopol and Elista) along the war zone initially for seven days, after which the measures were extended dozens of times. China also refused to allow the double-registered aircraft to use its airspace. In 2023, Russian air carriers transported 105 million passengers. Four-fifths were domestic passengers. Flights to 40 countries were planned for 2024 (2022: 32).
In the 1990s, the Russian space industry suffered from major
financing problems, so that many programs came to a standstill. Due to
the improvement of the economic situation, Russian space travel was able
to recover. The state-owned company Roskosmos, as the national space
agency, is responsible for the country's civil space program; its
headquarters are located in the Star City near Moscow. It was
established in 1992 as an authority and took over the essential
resources of Soviet space flight. Roskosmos currently uses three space
stations: the Plessetsk Cosmodrome near Arkhangelsk, the Vostochny
cosmodrome in the Amur region and the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan,
the main base of Soviet and Russian space travel. Russia has been one of
the most successful suppliers of commercial missile launches for
decades.
In July 2005, a new space program for the years 2005 to
2015 was approved by the Russian government. The goal was to ensure the
world level of Russian space flight and consolidate Russia's position
among the world's leading space powers. Priority was given to the
development and use of space technology and services, as well as the
construction of spacecraft for manned flights, transport and
interplanetary missions, including a reusable space system. Russia is a
major participant in the ISS, for the supply of which, since the
termination of the space shuttle program, the Soyuz rocket with the
Soyuz spacecraft and the Progress space transporter are increasingly
being used.
Furthermore, the scientific and technical foundations
for a manned flight to Mars and a new generation space station are to be
created. As a first step, Russia wanted to bring its satellite fleet up
to the world standard by 2015, primarily with the help of Western
elements. In addition, at this time from the new Vostochny cosmodrome in
the Amur region, the first unmanned launches with modernized versions of
the previous launchers were supposed to take place. In fact, the older
Soyuz-2.1 model has been launching there since 2016. The first manned
launches of spaceships with the new Angara A5 launch vehicle were
planned by Vostochny for 2020; this is postponed to the mid-2020s. At
the same time, missions for in-depth exploration of the Moon and the
planet Venus are planned for the 2020s.
The Russian space
industry had been interwoven with that of Ukraine since Soviet times;
several rockets such as the Dnepr and the Zenit were jointly developed
and produced. Due to the war with Ukraine, this cooperation broke up, so
Russia lost about half of its selection of launchers. New in-house
developments such as the Soyuz-5 and -6 are expected to compensate for
this in the course of the 2020s.
The freedom of the press is severely restricted and continues to decline, according to Reporters without Borders, Russia was ranked 149th out of 180 countries in 2019, only 164th in 2023. The Russian presidential administration, regardless of the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution, has a direct influence on reporting, its deputy head Alexei Gromov gives the heads of major state and private TV channels the framework of the desired coverage on a weekly basis at an appointment in the Kremlin administration's offices. Furthermore, guidelines with language regulations and lines of reasoning are written and sent to the broadcasters. Below the Kremlin administration, the Federal Service for Supervision in the Field of Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) provides supervision such as control and censorship of both the media landscape and private communication in electronic media, i.e. the Internet. This plays an important role, Russians are increasingly switching to Telegram channels in 2022 to get information after the spell of remaining domestic media such as Western social networks, the Kremlin is also using this opportunity through channels close to it to influence public opinion. Facebook Instagram has been blocking almost all independent media since February 2022, and these can only be reached via VPN, just like Facebook or Instagram. Independent media left the country, the Duma adopted a censorship law in March 2022, according to which, with the threat of high prison sentences, it is now allowed to report only according to official state sources.
Since the collapse of the Soviet system, there have been many periods
of restructuring in the Russian media sector. State reforms privatized
the media market at the beginning of the 1990s. Since then, many
newspapers, publishers and television stations have formed alliances
with oligarchs to ensure their survival. However, they came under their
control, who exert political influence over the media through
manipulations. The media empires of Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir
Gusinsky (Media Most), which contradict President Putin, were smashed by
court order. The largest Russian media holdings are Gazprom-Media and
WGTRK, the All-Russian State Television and Radio Corporation. Although
media censorship is practiced by Roskomnadzor (the regulatory body for
Mass Media, Communication and Protection of Cultural Heritage),
according to the Russian Constitution, Chapter 2, Article 29, freedom of
opinion and speech is guaranteed. Propaganda and agitation that incites
social, racial, national and religious enmity is prohibited, as is the
relativization of the role of the Armed Forces in the Second World War.
Most Russians prefer television as the number one source of information,
followed by newspapers. According to Roskomnadzor, there are 66,032
media listed in Russia (as of 2012). These include 5,254 TV channels,
3,769 radio stations, 28,449 newspapers and 21,572 magazines.
As
early as 2016, Andreas Umland pointed out that the channels of state
television are not mass media in the Western sense, their propagandistic
instrumentalization, their aggressiveness and hostility to the truth –
which in the domestic channels goes far beyond what is being
disseminated abroad at Russia Today – is unimaginable for those who are
not familiar with the language. The nationalism spread in them serves
only to preserve the power of the regime and its kleptocratic elites,
the approach is pragmatic in this respect. Hannes Adomeit draws a
connection between the given structure of the media and the strategic
interests of the country defined from above: "In order to organize the
work of the Russian state media "more effectively", the RIA Novosti news
agency - the largest and most modern agency in Russia – merged with the
foreign channel Golos Rossii (Voice of Russia) to form the international
information agency Rossiya Segodnya (Russia today) and included the new
media group in the "List of Strategic companies of Russia", which have a
special significance for the country's defense capability and security.“
Television is the main and often the only source of information for
85% of the Russian population and is therefore particularly suitable as
a propaganda tool of the government, which carefully controls the
content orientation of the programs. In most parts of Russia, three
nationwide and one to two regional TV channels can be received. In
Moscow, depending on the location, more than a dozen television
providers are available for terrestrial reception. The Pervy canal, dt.
First Channel, is the channel with the largest coverage in the country
and can be received by 99.8% of the Russian population, the weekly
audience at the channel reaches over 80% of the population. Part of the
Russian television channels is operated by the state media concern
WGTRK. Its offer includes the Rossiya 1 channel, which, according to its
own data, is received by about 98.8% of the Russian population. Also, a
sports channel called Sport (Russian Sport) and a cultural channel
called Rossiya K are operated by WGTRK. In addition, since 2005 there
has been the internationally oriented, including English-language
channel Russia Today, based in Moscow, whose stated goals are to present
the Russian view of international events to the audience. Developments
within Russia are also to be examined here from a Russian perspective.
Russia Today is considered a propaganda tool initiated directly from the
Kremlin, the idea for its creation is attributed to Mikhail Lessin. The
channel has a strong staff (in 2011 it had more employees worldwide than
Fox News) and spreads conspiracy theories, it has managed to gain a
large number of viewers in the West. Its importance increased from the
2009 Georgian War and the reporting was increasingly used offensively.
Vesti is one of the main news channels of Russia. He is a part of
Telekanal Rossija and RTR. The TV channel Russian TV international is
produced specifically for Russians living abroad.
In the 1990s,
several private TV channels developed in Russia, some of them
nationwide, which also had independent and also government-critical
information broadcasts in the program. At the beginning of the 2000s,
however, the nationally receivable channels came under the indirect
control of the state or were closed and replaced by state channels.
Thus, sport broadcasts today on the frequency of TW-6. Russia broadcasts
with the television standard SECAM (variant Eastern Europe). Russia
plans to introduce DVB-T in the long term (in the 2010s). Allegedly,
such devices are to be subsidized so that the population can purchase
the relatively expensive device.
For decades, the daily press of the USSR was provided with
information mainly through the semi-official press agency TASS. After
the collapse of the USSR, a free press developed in Russia, but today it
is again facing increasing repression by the government. Freedom House
rates the freedom of the press as "not free" and with a general downward
trend (in 2002 the country was still listed as "partially free"). In the
Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking, Russia ranks 164th in
2023; in Europe, only Turkey (ranked 165th) performed worse.
In
the spring of 2017, journalist Nikolai Andrushchenko was killed.
According to the report of Reporters Without Borders, the death of the
victim is directly related to his journalistic activity.
Among
the print media, the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets is considered the
most popular in the country. According to its own data, the tabloid
reaches about 1.3 million readers. She is also the most affordable. The
most important daily newspaper is Komsomolskaya Pravda, with a
circulation of 830,000 copies today. The daily newspaper Rossiyskaya
gazeta (circulation: 430,000 copies) is a bulletin of the Russian
government based in Moscow. Russian laws and decrees come into force
only with the publication in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Since 1993, RIA
Novosti has been a state information and analysis agency with its own
correspondents in more than 40 countries.
In addition to the state–owned Radio Rossii, there are numerous private radio stations - mostly local stations. Some Moscow stations also have licenses in the regions. Until its forced interruption in 2022, the Echo Moskvy channel was considered the only remaining representative of media critical of the government. Nowadays, Russian radio stations use the FM frequencies (87.5 MHz to 108.0 MHz), which are also common in Germany, under the English designation "FM". In Soviet times, the so-called OIRT band (65.9 to 73.1 MHz) was used, where individual stations still run today under the name VHF. Many Russian apartments have a radio plug, with which one can receive from one to three transmitters in the manner of wire radio. The simple devices do not require any further power supply and often have a volume control as the only control element. The extensive foreign broadcasting service is operated under the name Voice of Russia.
The history of the Internet in Russia begins in September 1990, when
the top-level domain ".su" was registered for the then Soviet Union.
This domain is partially used by Russian websites to this day. In March
1994, the official top-level domain ".ru" was registered for Russian
Internet addresses. Sites under this domain make up a considerable part
of the Russian Internet – often called runet for short. Meanwhile, the
country also has a Cyrillic top-level domain (.rf). The Russian Internet
segment ranked fourth worldwide with a total of more than 3.6 million
domain names in 2012.
In the 2000s, the number of Internet users
throughout Russia increased continuously: while in 2000 there were only
3.1 million users (2.1% of the population) nationwide, in 2007 their
number was already 28 million (19.5%). With more than 50 million
Internet users, Russia became the European leader in 2011. In 2016, 102
million Russians, or 71.3% of the population, used the Internet. The
most significant Internet projects of the Runet include the search
engines Rambler and Yandex, the online network W Kontakte, as well as
the information and news portals RBC Information Systems, Lenta.ru and
Gazeta.ru . The most famous providers include major telecommunications
companies such as CenterTelekom, MGTS, North-West Telecom or
VolgaTelekom. In the course of state support for the expansion of the
Internet, social media activities in Russia recorded an exceptionally
strong boost, and corresponding platforms play an important role in
Russia. Especially popular are the platforms created in Russia
Vkontakte.ru and Odnoklassniki.ru , which showed higher growth rates
than international ones, such as Facebook. LiveJournal was also used
more than average in Russia in an international comparison, and finally
Russian. The gross reach of social networks in 2010 was about 49.2
million of people living in Russia. Since then, many regulations have
been issued with vague formulations that allow the authorities to crack
down on services and users. From 2018, all communication content would
have to be stored (and made available to the state), a postponement of
this obligation by 5 years had to be considered due to the effort in
2017.
The All-Russian telecommunications company Rostelecom is the largest
enterprise of this industry in Russia. Since April 1, 2011, it has
included the regional branches Dalny Vostok (Far East), Sibir, Ural,
Volga, Jug (south), Severo-Zapad (North-West) and Zentr (center). The
mobile market is mainly shared by the three largest Mobile TeleSystems
providers in the country, Beeline and MegaFon, as well as some smaller
regional providers. This industry experienced rapid growth in Russia
from the year 2000 onwards: in 2000, less than 1% of the Russian
population owned a mobile phone, in 2006 the nationwide number of mobile
phones already exceeded the population and amounted to a good 155
million as of March 31, 2007.
In 2019, it was decreed by law that
Internet data traffic must run on its own servers, so that independence
from abroad is guaranteed from now on.
The vast majority of the Russian postal system is handled by the
state-owned company Pochta Rossii. In 2002, it was spun off from the
simultaneously dissolved Federal Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications, which was also responsible for postal traffic in
Soviet times. Today, the Pochta Rossii offers its services in a total of
over 42,000 post offices, which are distributed nationwide throughout
Russia. The number of employees in the company amounts to about 415,000
throughout Russia. Since the beginning of the 21st century, post offices
in many cities have been offering a wide range of services. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, in addition to basic postal services
– such as sending and receiving letters, parcels and telegrams, as well
as the post giro – there were also complementary services, including
public computer workstations with Internet access.
In the field
of letter delivery, Pochta Rossii is a monopolist in Russia. Since the
1990s, internationally active courier companies such as DHL or TNT
Express have also been active in the parcel post sector in Russia.
The population is very unevenly distributed within Russia. 85% of the population (about 123 million people) live in the European part (23% of the total area) and 15% (about 22 million people) in the far larger Asian part (77% of the total area). The population density varies from 362 inhabitants/km2 in the capital and its environs (Moscow region) and below 1 inhabitant/km2 in the northeast and the Russian Far East. On average, it is 8.3 inhabitants/km2. Since in many cases a considerable proportion of the population lives in the respective regional capital, the population density in rural areas is rarely higher than 40 to 50 inhabitants / km2, even in the relatively densely populated central Russian administrative regions.
Russia's population fell from 147.0 million at the census in January
1989 to 142.2 million by 2007. After that, the population decline slowed
down, so that the population in 2010 was 141.9 million. Due to the
results of the 2010 census, the population figure was corrected. The
fertility rate fell from two to 1.16 births per woman between 1988 and
1999. At the same time, the mortality rate among men doubled from 9.4
(in 1970) to 18.7 per 1,000 population (in 2005). The average life
expectancy of men fell from 63.9 years in 1986 to 57.5 years (1994). By
2004, it had increased to 58.9 years; in 2011 it was 64.3 years, in 2014
it was 70.36 years. The higher male death rate leads to an excess of
women. In 2010, there were 10.7 million more women than men in Russia.
The main cause: unhealthy lifestyle due to alcohol, smoking, as well as
road accidents, suicide and murder. At 56.7%, various heart diseases are
considered the most common cause of death, and cancers are also very
common. The number of deaths due to drug use, tuberculosis and HIV has
increased noticeably since the end of the Soviet Union. In 2015, there
was talk of an annual increase of 10% in HIV infections, mainly due to
drug use. The head of the Federal Center for the Prevention and Control
of AIDS, Vadim Pokrovsky, spoke in mid-2015 about fifteen regions of
Russia with a generalized epidemic with more than 1% infected
population, similar to South Africa. According to data at the beginning
of the World Aids Conference in 2018, new infections in Eastern Europe
and Central Asia were the only region in the world to increase between
2010 and 2016, 80% of which affected Russia, where the number of new
infections in 2017 was twice as high as in 2005, according to UNAIDS. In
2019, the Consumer Protection Agency counted just over one million
infected and about 80 new infections every day, according to Vadim
Pokrovsky.
The Russian government has launched several national
programs aimed at helping to increase the birth rate. Since 2007,
parents have received a one-time state allowance (maternity capital) of
almost 10,000 euros from their second newborn child (in 2012). Thus, the
number of births in Russia had increased from 1.48 million (2006) to 1.9
million (2012). In 2018, families received discounted mortgages and
grants, in some cases from the first child; $ 9 billion was budgeted for
3 years. In February 2019, President Vladimir Putin declared that he
would not put up with the falling birth rate and announced further
relief for families with children.
Russia has one of the highest
abortion rates in Europe, Pyotr Tolstoy, the deputy chairman of the Duma
called a figure of almost 1.5 million abortions per year, with according
to statistics only 1.3 million births in 2022. The Ministry of Health,
on the other hand, calls the number of 400,000 abortions, with a
decreasing trend. The liberal abortion law is to be drastically
tightened according to ideas from the church and politics.
The
share of the urban population remained constant at 73%.
Particularly highly educated people tended to emigrate, partly because
of the prevailing legal uncertainty. This trend also slowed down at
times as a result of the government's demographic policy efforts. After
the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014,
significantly more highly qualified people left the country again during
the following economic downturn. In the spring of 2018, the head of the
Russian Academy of Sciences complained about a number of 44,000
emigrants who were missing from Russian research.
From 2003 to
2006, Russia was the second largest immigration country in the world. in
2017, 8.1% of the population were migrants. The regions of origin are
mainly the poorer, southern former Soviet republics of Central Asia and
the Caucasus, but increasingly also Africa and Southeast Asia. However,
the majority of immigrants so far are the descendants of Russians who
were settled in other republics during the empire and the Soviet era and
mostly returned to Russia together with their families. After the
annexation of Crimea, the influx was dampened by the economic downturn,
but also by protectionism and nationalism – in the first half of 2017,
immigration no longer equalized mortality.
Within the Russian
total population, especially Muslim peoples such as Chechens and Ingush
have high birth rates, but other Muslim groups such as Circassians,
Tatars or Bashkirs do not.
The population of Russia is expected
to continue to decline in the coming decades, similar to other European
countries, the ILO expects a decrease to 130 million inhabitants by
2050. Assuming a net migration of 300,000 people per year, the decline
would be only slightly pronounced. By 2012, the situation stabilized
somewhat, the number of inhabitants increased slightly and amounted to
about 143.5 million. For the period from 2015 onwards, a deterioration
in the demographic situation was expected due to the low birth rates of
the 1990s. This slight population growth turned into a negative
demographic development again in the further course of the 2010s. In
2020, according to Rosstat, the decline in the Russian population again
included more than 500,000 people in one year for the first time since
2005. In 2021, the Russian authorities expected a population decline of
1.2 million people by 2024. The invasion of Ukraine further worsened the
situation: after the start of the war, the population shrank by at least
524,000 people, between "January and April 2023, 3.1% fewer children
were born than in the same period last year, which is a negative
record".
"St. Petersburg is the head, Moscow is the heart, Novgorod is the
father, Kiev is the mother of Russia.“
- Russian characterization of
Russia's historical centers
Already from 800, Kievan Rus was
characterized by many city-like settlements, which is why the
Scandinavian Varangians called the area Gardarike ("Empire of Cities").
Among the oldest surviving cities in this area are Novgorod, Smolensk,
Pskov, Rostov, Murom and Beloosero, all of which were founded back in
the first millennium AD. In the 11th and 12th centuries, other cities in
the center of Russia were founded by Slavic settlers. It was during this
period that Moscow, Yaroslavl, Tver, Vladimir, Vologda, Kirov, Tula,
Kursk, Kostroma, Ryazan and, a little later, Nizhny Novgorod were
formed. Due to the size of the country, a large number of large cities
were necessary as bases. With the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan in the
middle of the 16th century, Russian colonists founded further cities in
the east, southeast and south. Numerous cities were initially founded as
border fortresses. In the south, these were bases of the Verhauline line
against the Crimean Tatars, such as Oryol (1566) and present-day
Voronezh (1586). Further east, on the Volga, other cities such as Samara
(1586), Tsaritsyn (1589) and Saratov (1590) were built during this time.
In Siberia, after its conquest, numerous Cossack forts, so-called
ostrogs, were created. Later, such cities as Tobolsk, Irkutsk, Bratsk,
Tomsk and Yakutsk grew out of them. Cities in the Ural and Altai
Mountains, such as Perm (1723), Yekaterinburg (1723) or Barnaul (1730),
arose in the era of Peter the Great in connection with the ores and
precious minerals present there. With the decline of the Crimean Tatars
and the further advance of Russia into the Caucasus, new fortresses and
cities arose in the 18th century. in 1784 Stavropol and Vladikavkaz were
founded, in 1793 Krasnodar, in 1805 Novocherkassk, in 1818 Grozny, in
1844 Port Petrovsk.
Despite the foundations, large parts of the
premises retained their rural character. The farmer belonged to one of
My (farming community). Outside the agglomerations, cities represented
isolated phenomena and formed only a wide-meshed network. Until 1712,
Moscow functioned as the capital, and then, according to the will of
Peter I, it was replaced by Saint Petersburg, newly founded in 1703, in
order to officially resume the status of the capital in 1918. In the
19th century, there was even frequent mention of the two capitals.
Industrialization at the end of the 19th century. The beginning of the
twentieth century brought a significant impetus to the subsequent
urbanization in all parts of the country. It led to the emergence of
numerous new cities and the rapid growth of old ones. Many Russian
cities appeared as a result of an administrative restructuring of
several neighboring village settlements into one urban-type settlement.
To this day, the founding of new cities and urban surveys are a
characteristic of Russian urbanization.
More than half of all
Russian cities have been founded only in the last 90 years, especially
in the 1960s. That is why among the 160 major Russian cities, where half
of the Russian population lives, there are many new cities (about a
quarter). Major Russian cities are primarily industrial and
administrative centers, but they also have other high-level functions.
Examples of new big cities are Magnitogorsk, Novokuznetsk or Bratsk, the
grown ones include Samara and Tambov, among others.
At the time
of the Soviet Union, urban development was planned and controlled
centrally. The type of the Socialist City prevailed. These include, for
example, the formation of new types of cities, for example, the capitals
of small national republics (including Cheboksary, Nalchik) or science
cities (for example, Dubna). The massive urbanization policy pursued in
the Soviet era led to the fact that today 73% of the population lives in
urban settlements. As a result of the political and economic upheavals
in Russia in the 1990s, the cities emerged as independent and
self-responsible municipal units. For this purpose, they received local
and regional control instances. However, with the new state borders,
highly organized, specialized production and distribution processes also
collapsed. Many cities were suddenly cut off from the previous networks.
Formerly centrally located cities suddenly represented border cities and
were geopolitically peripheral. As a result, the functional structure
and the economic development base of Russian cities changed
fundamentally and led to shifts in the city system of Russia, with ups
and downs. So far, the main winners of the transformation have been the
metropolises, above all Moscow. Due to the lack of capital for the
extraction and transportation of raw materials under extreme conditions,
many mining towns in the North faced a survival crisis.
The ten
largest cities of Russia (former names from Soviet times in
parentheses):
Moscow - Central Russia (12.23 million inhabitants)
Saint Petersburg (Leningrad) - North-Western Russia (5.28 million
inhabitants)
Novosibirsk - Siberia (1.60 million inhabitants)
Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) - Ural (1.46 million inhabitants)
Nizhny
Novgorod (Gorky) - Volga (1.26 million inhabitants)
Kazan - Volga
(1.23 million inhabitants)
Chelyabinsk - Ural (1.20 million
inhabitants)
Omsk - Siberia (1.18 million inhabitants)
Samara
(Kuibyshev) - Volga (1.17 million inhabitants)
Rostov–on-Don -
southern Russia (1.13 million inhabitants)
Strictly speaking, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya would literally be
translated as "Russian Federation" (from Rossiya "Russia"), and not
"Russian Federation". They deliberately did not choose Russkaya
Federatsiya ("Russian Federation") as the state designation in order to
include non-Russian nationalities as well. If we are talking about the
Russian people or the Russian-speaking culture, we therefore speak of
russkiy (Russian) in Russian, but for the Russian state, on the other
hand, we use the adjective rossiyskiy (Russian). Nevertheless, the
adjective "Russian" is usually used in German in both cases. The use of
the word "Russian" is largely limited to specialized publications. The
official translation of the Constitution of Russia also uses this
variant.
Even today, the Russian Federation sees itself as a
multi-ethnic state. The largest group is the Russians, who make up the
majority of the population at 79.8%, but there are almost 100 other
peoples living on the territory of the country. Despite the
heterogeneity, the Russian population is dominant throughout the country
in all urban and industrial areas, and the titular nations often form
the minority even in their "own" territories. Thus, only 23 peoples or
titular nations number more than 400,000 people. The degree of ethnic
identification varies.
The largest minorities are Tatars (4.0%),
Ukrainians (2.2%), Armenians (1.9%), Chuvash (1.5%), Bashkirs (1.4%),
Germans (0.8%) and others. The smaller minorities include, for example,
the Meschetes and various minorities of the Jewish faith. The
non-Russian minorities speak predominantly languages from the circle of
Turkic languages, Caucasian languages, Uralic languages (Samoyedic
languages), Altaic or Paleosiberian languages. For many non-Russian
peoples, republics with extensive autonomy were established. While some
minorities, such as Armenians, Koreans and Germans, are spread over the
most diverse regions of Russia, there are also several indigenous
peoples in European Russia. The number of nationalities is large in the
Caucasus region, which came to Russia only in the last third of the 18th
century.
Russian is the only official language in force everywhere, but at the
same time, in the individual autonomous republics, the respective
national language is often used as the second official language. In some
republics there are also three or more official languages; in Dagestan,
where more than 30 indigenous ethnic groups live, there are 14 official
languages.
The use of regional languages is promoted in the
classroom, in the mass media and in cultural policy. The governments and
parliaments of the republics consider this an indispensable condition in
order to prevent the extinction of ethnic groups. However, the mastery
of the indigenous mother tongue among many non-Russian ethnic groups is
decreasing.
Russian, as well as almost all regional official
languages in Russia, is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. There is a
guideline that all respective languages must be written in Cyrillic. The
exceptions are Yiddish in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which has hardly
been spoken there for decades, as well as Karelian, Finnish and Wepsian
in Karelia, which, however, have only a subordinate official status
there.
In Tatarstan, as the only exception, from 2001 to 2004,
against the resistance of the Russian-speaking population resident in
Tatarstan, Tatar was written exclusively in Latin script. This practice
was banned by the Russian Constitutional Court in November 2004 on the
grounds that a uniform script was necessary for the unity of Russia.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the associated
disappearance of the atheistic state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, a
return to religious values took place. The most widespread religions in
Russia are Christianity – primarily the Russian Orthodox faith - as well
as Islam. In addition, numerous other denominations are represented,
such as the Roman Catholic faith, Protestantism, Judaism, Buddhism, as
well as traditional beliefs of some ethnic groups. About a third of the
population describes themselves as atheists or non-denominational.
While, immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, there was
widespread religious liberality and facilitated successful missionary
activities for foreign and financially powerful religious communities,
the 1997 Religious Law privileges the so-called "traditional religions"
of the Orthodox Church, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism. Since 2016, there
have been restrictions on missionary activities, which were initially
aimed at Islam, but also affect free churches and new religious
movements. in 2012, regulations for the protection of religious feelings
had already been created, which are applied in practice in the spirit of
the Russian Orthodox Church. As for belonging to individual
religious groups, there are no reliable figures, since the members of
churches and parishes in Russia are not registered, and there is no
church tax. Surveys often deviate significantly from each other. In
2012, for example, the Foundation for Public Opinion (FOM) found that
only 41 percent were Orthodox, compared to 13 percent atheists and only
6.5 percent Muslims. Another 25 percent, however, described themselves
as agnostics or said they believed in a higher God-like power. The
All-Russian Center for Opinion Research (VCIOM), on the other hand,
assumed 75 percent Orthodox and only 8 percent atheists in 2010, its
figures are also quoted by the Russian Embassy in Germany.
Deviating from the surveys mentioned, the proportion of Orthodox people
is usually given as between 51 and 72%, that of other Christians with a
combined barely 2%, that of Buddhists with just under 1% and that of
Jews with about 0.35%. The Fischer Weltalmanach and the Religious
Freedom Report of the US State Department state that 14% are Muslims.
In 2006, the CIA World Factbook assumed the following rough
estimates for practicing believers, i.e. those who actively practice
their faith: 15 to 20% Russian Orthodox, 10 to 15% Muslims, 2% other
Christian denominations.
The Interreligious Council of Russia
(russ. Meschreligiosny sowet Rossii / Interreligious Council of Russia
(MSR)) unites leading representatives of the four most important
denominations of the country: the Russian Orthodox Church, Islam,
Judaism and Buddhism. He is under the leadership of the Patriarch of the
Russian Orthodox Church Kirill and has an advisory influence on
legislative processes and decisions of interest. The Council for
Cooperation with Religious Associations under the President of the
Russian Federation is located in the Russian Presidential Chancellery
and serves to coordinate the President with religions.
in 2020, a
religious reference was incorporated into Article 67 of the Russian
Constitution: the Russian state preserves its thousand-year history and
unity and the memory of the ancestors who "transmitted ideals and faith
in God to us, as well as continuity in the development of the Russian
state".
The Russian Orthodox faith dates back to the early Middle Ages. The
close contacts to this religious trend resulted from the trade mainly
focused on Constantinople and the close contacts with Byzantium.
Princess Olga of Kiev (893-924) was the first ruler of the Rurikid
dynasty to be baptized, but she could not enforce the Christian faith in
the empire. After the siege of Constantinople (860), more and more
Orthodox missionaries came to the country from 911, allegedly Varangians
and Russians who had participated in the attack of 860 are said to have
already returned baptized. Under Olga's grandson, Vladimir the Saint,
the Christianization of Rus began in 988/989, during which the Kievan
population was converted in mass baptisms. After Vladimir's death in
1015, the previously pagan peoples continued to be Christianized for
decades. Byzantium at that time conducted its church policy in conscious
opposition to Rome, imparting anti-Roman tendencies to the Eastern Slavs
in their conversion. The Church of Kiev, as a particular church of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, was initially administered by exarchs,
which had no effect on the political independence of the Kiev Grand
Dukes. The Orthodox Church and its values still form a supporting social
pillar of the Russian Empire to this day.
After the destruction
of Kievan Rus in the Mongol Storm and under the subsequent Golden Horde,
the Kiev metropolitan moved first to Vladimir in the 14th century, then
to Moscow in 1328. In the 15th century, the Russian Orthodox Church
finally broke away from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in
Constantinople, after the latter had agreed to make concessions to the
Pope as a result of the political decline of Byzantium. The conception
of Moscow as the Third Rome, the only one that upholds the "true
Christian faith", was born. in 1589, a separate patriarchate was
established. Peter I abolished this and in 1721 instead put at the head
of the church the Most Holy Governing Synod, which was abolished in
Soviet Russia in 1918. The Soviets first restored the patriarchate,
before a Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church was re-established in
1988.
In Russia before 1917, adherents of the Russian Orthodox
Church were not allowed to convert to another denomination, even if it
was Christian, and were not allowed to marry "non-Christians". This
church was the only religion allowed to proselytize; children from
"mixed" marriages with non-Orthodox were considered Orthodox. It was not
until the revolution of 1905 that the laws were relaxed. After the
Communists came to power, mainly members of this church were suppressed,
since it was considered a symbol of autocracy. Between 1918 and 1939,
ca. 40,000 Orthodox clergy executed. The 77,800 municipalities from 1917
were reduced to about 3100 by 1941.
The Russian Orthodox Church
is experiencing a state-sponsored revival, especially in rural areas.
Many monasteries were founded or re-established. The church currently
has about 100 million members, but only 5 to 10% of them are regular
worshippers. Religious education in schools was reintroduced in 2006.
The Russian Orthodox Church sees itself as a representative of the
interests of the people, without being in opposition to the government.
The state itself, on the other hand, sees the church as a guarantor of
the cohesion of society. According to the theologian Thomas Bremer, the
majority of the population trusted the Church in 2008 and sees it as an
institution that conveys values and strengthens internal cohesion in
society. In 2022, he saw a great closeness of the Church to the state,
which fits into historical patterns: traditionally, there is no real
separation between the state and the church, the community is always
preferred over individuals and particular identities. The West is
perceived as dangerously individualistic and "decadent", while
traditional values such as nation or family or marriage between a man
and a woman are – in the opinion of the Church – affirmed and protected
again in Russia after the end of the Soviet Union. The Russian Orthodox
Church thus provided Putin with a justification for rule, a "religious
basis for the political demarcation that Russia has made against the
West.“
According to Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, the Russian
Orthodox Church is part of the Putinist ruling structure today (2023),
Patriarch Kirill has a formative past in common with Vladimir Putin in
the Soviet KGB. The concept of the Russki Mir is militantly represented
by the Church, the war against Ukraine is not justified on its own, but
transfigured into a "divine service": "The symbiotic closeness between
the Russian Orthodox Church and the regime under Putin has parallels to
clerical-fascist currents of the 1920s and 1930s". The faith is
"declared rather than actually lived".
In the course of history,
there have been separations from the Orthodox faith. The oldest spin-off
is the Old Orthodox or Old Believers. Other faiths that emerged from
Orthodoxy are the Molokans. From them, in turn, the Duchoborzes emerged.
Both religious communities reject wealth, try to lead a life of modesty
and are looking for a truly biblical community. The community of
subbotniki was founded by some serfs. These refer primarily to the Old
Testament. Many of these sects or groups were subjected to arbitrary
persecution in the tsarist empire.
In Russia, in addition to the Russian Orthodox orientation, there are
other Christian denominations:
The Roman Catholic Church in
Russia was unpopular due to the Byzantine influences. Thus, it took
until 1705 for Peter I to allow the construction of a Roman Catholic
church for the first time. The Catholics were subject to very strict
state controls. If the Bolsheviks were primarily concerned with the
control of the Orthodox Church after the October Revolution, the
Catholics were later observed more closely again. By 1930, all the
structures of the church had been dissolved. After 1945, there were only
20 communes in the Russian part of the Soviet Union, which were
forbidden to establish connections with each other. Today there are
about 200 Catholic parishes with about 400,000–800,000 members in
Russia. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Moscow) was restored
and returned to its purpose. Since 2010 there has been an Apostolic
Nuncio in Moscow again. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was banned
in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia Oblast together with the Knights of
Columbus and Caritas. Members of the church had kept weapons in church
buildings and participated in anti-Russian protests, the Catholic French
newspaper La Croix reports that the priests were deported in Melitopol.
The Protestant Church in Russia used to be widespread almost only among
the Russian Germans and in their colonies. Only after the revolution of
1905, other denominations were also legalized for Russians and
Ukrainians. However, there were also successful missionary attempts
among the local population by the Russian-German Adventists and Baptists
before the relaxation of the religious laws. Protestantism experienced a
heyday in the 1920s, despite the atheism of the government of the Soviet
Union (especially the Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists and
Pentecostals). However, the Baptists, Gospel Christians and Pentecostals
were forced into centralist orders in order to be able to control them
better. The same thing happened with the Seventh-day Adventists and the
Mennonites in 1963. During the period of Stalinism, many Evangelical
Christians of all stripes were executed and persecuted. The missionary
activity of free churches is now being deliberately hindered. In
Russian-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk, according to reports in the
evangelical newspaper Christianity Today, Evangelical communities are
now being hindered, oppressed, assessed as extremist and their buildings
partially confiscated, a Christian library has been deliberately
destroyed.
Like most denominations, it was also impossible for the
New Apostolic Church (NAC) to proselytize in Russia before the fall of
the Berlin Wall (1989) and the Iron Curtain. Since then, the number of
New Apostolic Christians in Russia has been growing steadily. While
there were 23,500 at the turn of the millennium, the New Apostolic
Church today has almost 40,000 believers. It has also been recognized by
the state since the beginning of the 1990s.
As of April 2017, there
are about 170,000 active Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. In the Soviet
Union, especially from the outbreak of the Second World War until 1965,
many Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned and deported to Siberia (see
Operation North). For several years now, the Russian state has brought a
total of seven lawsuits against Jehovah's Witnesses. The European Court
of Human Rights has repeatedly sentenced Russia to pay damages for its
actions against the religious group. On 20. In April 2017, the community
was classified as an extremist organization by Russia's Supreme Court
and banned. The property of all regional associations was confiscated.
The witnesses were accused of distributing writings "in which other
religions would be devalued and which called for the refusal of civic
duties such as military service and participation in elections". The
human rights organization Human Rights Watch criticized the court
decision. The domestic secret Service FSB carried out raids and arrests
to prevent further activity, temporarily arrested Jehovah's Witnesses
reported mistreatment such as beatings and electric shocks.
The number of Muslims is estimated at about 17-20 million people, of
which 90% are Sunnis. They come from different peoples, including 20
smaller ones in Dagestan alone, but also Tartars, Chechens and labor
migrants (of various nationalities) from Central Asia. Islam in Russia
has been widespread in the North Caucasus since the 7th century and is
therefore older on today's Russian territory than the first Russian
foundation of the state and the Christianization of the country. In 922,
the Volga Bulgars also converted to Islam, and in the 13th century they
gave it to the Turks. It was passed on to the Tatars in the XVIII
century. The indigenous peoples of the Caucasus and the Turkic peoples
are mostly Sunni believers. Already at the end of the 19th century,
11.1% of the total population of the Russian Empire was of Muslim
origin. In today's Russia, the proportion of Muslims, at around 14%, is
about as large as it was once in the Soviet Union. From 1990 to 1994,
the "Islamic Party of Rebirth" existed in Russia. In addition, there is
also an "Islamic Party of the Rebirth of Tajikistan" as well as numerous
other organizations and spin-offs. Centers of Islam in Russia today, in
addition to Kazan and Moscow, are also Ufa and Dagestan. According to
research by Novaya gazeta, the increasing importance of Islam in the
Caucasus in 2018 is accompanied by a loss of trust in the state.
Through the Russian Mufti Council and the Central Spiritual
Administration of the Muslims of Russia, the state is trying to
institutionalize and control Islam. Persecution and repression, which
were chosen by the authorities as a means in the wake of the struggle of
terrorist Salafist and Wahabi groups against the state, have not proven
themselves in regions with a larger Islamic share of the population, but
rather led to Islamist radicalization. That is why the state
increasingly chose the means of regional power–sharing, religious
organizations (see Muftiate) are organized and privileged regionally in
and from their republics and – for example for construction activities -
financially supported, but are legally obliged to report the names of
their members. They must register in their republics of origin, they are
forbidden to expand beyond the geographical restriction assigned to
them, by law they are preferred over small communities. Foreign
assistance is administratively prohibited or complicated, the state
takes a very close look at the finances of organizations. In order to
control influences from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, missionary activity
requires a permit and is limited to registered personnel. Individual
Muslim texts such as those of the Turkish Sufi master Şefik Can are
prohibited. Mosques that resist inclusion and self-finance through
donations are gradually being closed or taken over by the umbrella
organizations to which the educational institutions such as the Russian
Islamic University in Ufa are subordinate. Friday sermons are
prescribed. On the whole, these strategies work better in the Volga
republics than in the North Caucasus, where the Russian state was
subjected to Islamist and violent challenges in the 1990s and 2000s. In
order to preserve Chechnya as part of Russia, Moscow has waged two wars
there since 1994, reached an agreement with a resistance group and used
it as a loyal leadership. The current head of the Caucasus Republic,
Ramzan Kadyrov, rules Chechnya with an iron hand, for which he receives
considerable payments from Moscow, with which he finances Islamic
structures in (and outside) the republic. Under him, Sharia regulations
were enforced, in deviation from Russian laws, for example, there are
plural marriages and morality police-like control. On the one hand, his
Islam intervenes strongly in the lives of the inhabitants of Chechnya,
on the other hand, he is oriented towards the Sufi, i.e. traditional
Islam of the region and combats Salafism and Wahabism. However, Salafist
influences and connections to the Gulf region have been incorporated
into the ideology and politics developed by Kadyrov, so that there has
already been talk of a kind of "state Salafism". Kadyrov took up
traditional ideas of clan and family ties, as well as Chechen
nationalism, which he linked with Russian, and combined this with a
Puritan idea of Islam, which came from the Gulf region.
In the
wake of the strong political emphasis on "traditional values" by the
Russian state, the Orthodox Church and organized Islam are deliberately
brought closer to each other, the security authorities are working
closely with the muftiates.
The history of Jews in Russia can be traced back to the 4th century,
when Jews from Armenia and Crimea also settled in Tmutarakan. In the
late 8th or early 9th century, a large part of the Khazars converted to
Judaism. After the destruction of the Khazar Empire by Svyatoslav I
(969), Judaism was essentially limited to Kiev, the Crimea and the
Caucasus. In the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Jews were first mentioned in
1471. Until the time of Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584), Jews were
tolerated except for some laws directed against them. From 1721 they
were expelled from the Russian Empire, until this became impossible due
to the incorporation of the eastern parts of Poland (in 1793 and 1795).
From 1791 the Jews had to live within the settlement area, which was
located on the present territory of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic
States.
In the 19th century, leading officials such as Konstantin
Pobedonostsev supported anti-Semitic currents in the population. Thus,
many pogroms occurred in southern Russia in 1881, after the Jews were
falsely accused of plotting against Alexander II. The May laws of 1882
expelled the Jews from the rural areas even in the settlement area;
quotas limited the number of Jews admitted to higher education to 3-10%.
Between 1880 and 1920, more than two million Jews fled from Russia,
especially to America. in 1903, new pogroms broke out, which intensified
again in the Russian Revolution and led to between 70,000 and 250,000
victims among the Jewish civilian population. During Stalinism, the
Jewish Autonomous Oblast with the main town of Birobidzhan was founded
in the Russian Far East, where only a few Jews settled. Compared to the
decades before, there are only a few Jews left today, as many of them
have emigrated to Germany or America, but most have emigrated to Israel.
Today there are 87 synagogues in Russia, most of them in St. Petersburg
and in Moscow, including the Moscow Memorial Synagogue. The Jews in
European Russia are mostly Ashkenazim, to the east of which there are
also some mountain Jews and Bukharian Jews, who are counted among the
Mizrachim.
Two rabbis are recognized as chief rabbis of Russia.
The Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, left Russia in protest
in 2022 after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, according to him,
pressure is being exerted on the community leaders to support the war.
Many Jews have since left the country.
In Russia, the Tibetan form of Buddhism is also widespread, although it was originally limited to the Asian peoples (Kalmyks, Tuvinians). Just like clergymen and followers of practically all other religions, Buddhist monks were persecuted and oppressed in the Soviet Union during the Communist rule. Kalmykia is the only republic with a Buddhist majority. Since the political turnaround in Russia and the successor states of the Soviet Union, on the other hand, the Buddhist communities have again recorded an increase in membership among members of the traditionally Buddhist peoples, but also on the part of Russians and other nationalities.
Shamanism is again widespread among the indigenous population in Siberia; especially among the small peoples of the Russian North. Although today most of the inhabitants of Siberia are Christians, nevertheless they do not see it as a contradiction to practice the rituals of their ancestors.
The Soviet Union was an imperial united nation-state, i.e.
nationality was a political instrument for the consolidation of Soviet
power, and many different mentalities also meet in today's Russia.
However, the fusion of these peoples and denominations, as well as
influences of Western and Eastern imprints, also created striking
peculiarities that manifest themselves in the stereotype of the "Russian
soul". This term still shapes the image of Russia to this day; in
Western countries, the term served Russophiles and critics of the
Western way of life as a projection to their own civilization, which was
perceived as cold to the feelings. The "Russian soul" is described as a
tendency to extreme opposites, which arose as a result of the historical
development of Russian folk culture. These extremes are expressed, for
example, in the pursuit of the absolute extreme, combined with the
readiness for a sudden change of direction; in addition, there is a
pronounced devotion to fate, a penchant for patience, a tendency to
superstition, the ability to suffer or even a very strong attachment to
one's homeland. The all-or-nothing mentality already mentioned knows no
compromise and no golden mean. Also known is the openness of expressions
of feelings, positive and negative, which are often given more weight in
comparison with rational considerations, which often irritates Western
foreigners. It is also important to maintain a strong sense of
solidarity and community.
Russian society is traditionally
characterized by collectivism, belonging to a group is very important.
This value system is originally based on the way of life of the rural
village community, the Mir. Since land has also been a common property
for a long time, people in Russia have always defined themselves by the
community and paid attention to the coherence of their own behavior and
their own expression of opinion with those of the collective.
The
family is an important reference group for many Russians, especially in
the countryside people live closely together in every respect. Often
several generations live there in one apartment or in one house. The
family supports each other financially and helps each other with
childcare and elderly care, domestic violence is widespread. On the part
of the state, in view of the demographic crisis, the ideal of
"traditional family values" is emphasized, every woman should have three
children, in fact, families with only one child are common. The
collective orientation is sometimes still evident today in everyday
professional life. The college is experienced as a community and it
seems very important to strengthen this group orientation. Nepotism
(nepotism) in the procurement of jobs or contracts is a side effect.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, educated
sections of the population in the major cities in particular, who were
able to benefit from the newly gained freedom of travel, have been
guided by the principles of individualism, which has resulted in a
massive tension within society and has become a central theme in
contemporary literature and film making. People close to education,
ambitious and critical were increasingly looking for opportunities to
live abroad after the striking break with the Western world in 2014; in
2015, the Duma even discussed a ban on foreign language teaching,
because it promotes emigration. In 2019, the Lewada Center conducted a
representative survey in which 53% of respondents in the age group
between 18 and 24 years stated that they wanted to move abroad. Only
about 20% of the Russian population has a passport and has been abroad
at least once.
In 2014, 43% of all managerial posts in Russia
were held by women; in percentage terms, more than in any other country
in the world.
Health protection of citizens in Russia is a set of measures of a
political, economic, legal, social, cultural, scientific, medical,
sanitary—hygienic and anti-epidemic nature aimed at preserving and
strengthening the physical and mental health of each person, maintaining
his long-term active life, providing him with medical care in case of
loss of health.
At the end of 2007, there were about 6.8 thousand
hospital facilities, 1522 thousand hospital beds (107.2 per 10 thousand
people). In 2017, the number of hospital beds decreased to 1.2 million.
From 2000 to 2015, the number of hospitals in Russia decreased by half —
from 10.7 to 5.4 thousand. According to the National League for Patient
Protection, about 50,000 people die in Russia every year as a result of
poor-quality medical care; According to the Compulsory Medical Insurance
Fund (FOMS), medical errors account for about 10% of all medical
services rendered, or 800 thousand per year.
The number of
private clinics in Russia does not exceed 5-10% of their total number.
There are 707 thousand doctors of various specialties in Russia (at the
end of 2007); according to the Russian Ministry of Health (2016), there
are 543.6 thousand doctors of various specialties in Russia.
In
2016, healthcare spending in Russia amounted to about 3.6% of GDP, which
is below the average for the EU (7.2%) and the OECD (6.5%), and for the
BRICS it exceeds spending in China (3.1% of GDP) and India (1.4% of
GDP). Despite the reduction in the bed stock, the number of hospital
beds per 1,000 people in Russia is 1.6 times higher than the EU average.
In 2011-2017, infant mortality decreased by 36%. In 2011-2017, within
the framework of the national Health project, about 300 polyclinics,
1800 paramedic stations, and about 600 specialized points for providing
care for heart attacks and strokes were built.
According to a
2014 report from the Bloomberg consulting company, Russia ranked last
51st in terms of quality and efficiency of healthcare, while in 2013 it
did not meet the rating criteria; in the 2015 report, the national
health system rose 1-2 positions in the ranking, taking 49-50 place.
In the period 2010-2014, there was a significant decrease in the
infant mortality rate; infant mortality in Russia became lower than in
many European countries, which indicates the progress of the Russian
health care system in this area.
According to experts (prof. N.
Korchazhkina), the number of sanatorium-resort institutions and the
number of people who received sanatorium treatment in Russia is
decreasing from year to year, which indicates the low availability of
sanatorium treatment for the population. Due to the ban on substitution
therapy for drug addicts and the lack of sexual education, the HIV
epidemic continues in Russia. Russia is the leader in the rate of HIV
spread in Europe. In terms of life expectancy, Russia ranks 110th (2015)
- 105th (2017), which correlates with low overall health care costs in
Russia. However, over the past 12 years, the average life expectancy in
Russia has increased by about six years, reaching the figures of the
Soviet Union in 1989, and amounting to 71.87 years in 2016.
According to the 2016 data from The Lancet medical journal, Russia is
ranked 119th among the world's countries in the population health
ranking. According to the head of the Center for Strategic Research A.
L. Kudrin, Russia is among the outsiders in terms of the health of the
male population. According to a study by the international analytical
company The Economist Intelligence Unit (2016), the Russian healthcare
model is at the end of the rating in terms of effectiveness and focus on
results — at the level of Nigeria, Brazil and South Africa, which is due
to a reduction in real financing of Russian healthcare and affects the
level of quality of life, according to which Russia ranks 72 in this
rating- the 8th place out of 80. According to a UN report assessing the
"level of happiness" in the country based on the sum of complex
indicators of the level of safety, health, education, and life
satisfaction, Russia in 2017 was in 49th place in the world, bypassing
all the republics of the former USSR, with the exception of the Baltic
states; in 2018, Russia moved to 59th the place.
After the collapse of the USSR, poverty rose to more than 40% of the
population by 1999 and then fell noticeably. In 2002, the share was
19.6%, and by 2011 it had decreased to 12.8% of the population, or 18
million Russians. Officially, the subsistence minimum was 170 euros for
a person of working age; for children, the value is insignificantly
lower, for pensioners it is 125 euros. The standard of living improved
very differently regionally. While especially in Moscow and St. When
some neighborhoods began to shine in new splendor, poverty was still
great in some regions. In Chechnya and Dagestan, more than half of the
people lived in poverty; other poor regions are Ingushetia, Tuva and
Kabardino-Balkaria, Mari El, Kalmykia, Buryatia and Altai and Mordovia.
In 2011, the average wage was € 576 per month. The large income
differences could be reduced from 2005, especially the middle income
class increased significantly in percentage terms. In 2010, pensions
exceeded the subsistence level for the first time in many years and,
according to forecasts, should increase to 268 euros by 2014. In 2012,
about half of the population belonged to the low-income class, which
cannot finance central social needs such as housing or additional
education. In fact, in 2014, the average pension was 10, 000 rubles,
which was equal to 160 euros. Pensions and salaries had to be frozen.
Since 2014, funds from the second, funded pillar of pension provision
have been used to cover financial needs. The areas with the highest
unemployment figures in Russia by 2021 were Dagestan, Ingushetia and
North Ossetia.
Reducing poverty was one of President Putin's
five-year goals in spring 2019: almost 19 million Russians were
considered poor, which corresponded to 12.9% of the population.
The poorer segments of the population suffered from double-digit
increases in consumer prices until 2009, which decreased again by 2012.
From 2014 to 2019, real income decreased. In order to combat poverty, a
new calculation basis was introduced in the autumn of 2021, with which
the number of the poor suddenly fell by 2.8 million. Although social
benefits were increased by inflation of 8% at the beginning of 2022, the
price increases for food were much higher. In particularly poor regions,
the Russian Armed Forces are considered the only way for young men to
escape poverty and ever be able to provide for a family.
The
unemployment rate had begun to decline with the overcoming of the
financial crisis in 2008. In growth regions such as Moscow, Kaluga and
St. Petersburg, unemployment tended to zero. According to the
International Labour Organization standards, unemployment was 7.1% in
2005, 7.6% in 2010 and 6.6% in 2011. By 2014, it dropped to 5.2% and
began to rise again. The unemployment benefit was between 60 and 70
euros per month. However, due to a special feature of Russian labor law,
unemployment is a problematic indicator of the economic situation:
company-related dismissals are mostly inadmissible in Russia, instead
employers are allowed to unilaterally reduce labor remuneration.
Therefore, Russian employees prefer to stay in their company even in the
event of a shortage of orders and accept high wage losses, instead of
taking advantage of the rather symbolic unemployment benefits of 20 to
110 euros in 2019.
The United Nations Development Programme ranks
the Russian Federation among the states with a very high level of human
development. The Gini coefficient was 37.7 in 2016.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 1,540.2
thousand crimes were registered in January-September 2020, which is 1.2%
more than in the same period of 2019. As a result of criminal attacks,
17.5 thousand people died, 27.1 thousand people suffered serious harm to
their health. Rural areas account for 39.3% of the dead (6.9 thousand
people); urban—type cities and towns account for 67.6% of people whose
health has been seriously harmed (18.3 thousand people).
For
comparison, in 2011, the internal affairs bodies reviewed 24.6 million
applications, reports and other information about incidents. For almost
every twelfth report (8.1%), a decision was made to initiate a criminal
case. As a result of criminal attacks, 40.1 thousand people died (4.5%),
49.4 thousand people suffered serious harm to their health (2.8%). Rural
areas account for 41.0% of deaths (16.4 thousand people); cities and
towns that are not the centers of federal subjects — 35.8%; persons
whose health has been seriously harmed — 17.7 thousand people.
According to Rosstat, in 2010, 1,800 crimes per 100,000 people were
registered in Russia, in terms of the entire population of 2.63 million
crimes. In 2011, 16.4 thousand murders were registered, which is 12%
less than in 2010.
The employment rate of the Russian population has been quite high
since Soviet times, when the birth rate decreased and the number of
women involved in the economy increased dramatically.
After the
labor market crisis during the "shock therapy" of the 1990s, the renewed
economic growth allowed to reduce unemployment and increase employment.
As of March 2013, the economically active population in Russia amounted
to 75.2 million people (about 53% of the total population of the
country). Of these, 71.0 million people were employed in the economy and
4.3 million people (5.7%) were not employed, but were actively looking
for work. At the same time, different regions of Russia vary greatly in
terms of employment, unemployment and the level of attracting foreign
labor. In 2013, according to the ILO, there were 4,137 million
unemployed people in Russia.
Despite the fact that women in
Russia are actively engaged in the economy, many employers in Russia
still practice explicit discrimination based on gender and age. Another
problem of employment in Russia, despite the low unemployment rate, is
the fairly widespread employment in the informal sector of the economy,
which has increased significantly since perestroika. This phenomenon has
its pros and cons.
According to a VTsIOM survey, unemployment is
one of the social problems of concern to the population of Russia.
In terms of corruption, Transparency International gave Russia less
than 3 points (2011-1996), which, according to this organization, is a
very poor indicator. However, according to a study by the British
auditing company Ernst & Young conducted in the spring of 2012,
corruption risks in Russia decreased significantly in 2011 and in many
respects became lower than the global average. More than 1,500 top
managers of the largest companies from 43 countries of the world took
part in the Ernst & Young study. So, if in 2011 39% of managers surveyed
in Russia stated the need to pay bribes in cash to protect business or
achieve corporate benefits, then in 2012 there were 16% of such people.
At the end of 2011, the international consulting company
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and Transparency International published
reports according to which the scale of corruption in Russia is
decreasing. The PWC report noted that "the wide public response that
this topic causes, and the measures taken by the Russian government in
the legal field, as well as work within companies to strengthen
compliance systems and create a culture of ethical behavior among
employees, are all bearing fruit."
In recent years, Russia's
position in the corruption perception index has remained stable. From
2015 to 2017, she scored 29 points each, in 2018 she lost one point, and
in 2019 the indicator remained unchanged. More significant changes were
observed in Russia's position in the ranking: in 2015 — 119th, in 2016 -
131st, in 2017 — 135th, in 2018 - 138th. These fluctuations are
associated not only with changes in the ranking of other countries and
with the inclusion or exclusion of some countries from the index, but
also with the fact that systemic anti-corruption was replaced by
targeted criminal cases, existing anti-corruption tools did not develop,
and the Convention on Civil Liability for Corruption is still not
ratified by Russia.
Mikhail Zadornov, head of VTB 24 Bank, said
that, in his opinion, the level of corruption in Russia is currently
higher than in the 1990s. According to the international Organization of
Certified Accountants ACCA, Russia is among the five countries with the
highest level of shadow economy. Regarding the fight against corruption,
the Russian Prosecutor General's Office reported on the dismissal of
1,303 officials in 2018 in connection with corruption investigations.
"In the absence of political will for real change, anti-corruption
is doomed to remain a cargo cult. Targeted measures taken by the
authorities responsible for combating corruption, as well as local
amendments to legislation, are not able to radically change the
situation in our country — for this it is necessary to build an
inclusive system of coordinating the interests of public actors, which
will not allow the authorities to make rash decisions in the interests
of a narrow group of people," says Anton Pominov, director of the Center
Transparency International — R.
At the time of the Soviet Union, Russian nature was heavily polluted:
littered by factory waste, chemically and radioactively contaminated.
Even today there are serious environmental problems in Russia – but also
a growing environmental awareness among the population. The citizen's
right to a healthy environment and reliable information about its
condition is enshrined in Article 42 of the Russian Constitution.
However, environmental protection has a comparatively low priority in
Russian politics, which is repeatedly criticized by international
environmental organizations such as WWF or Greenpeace. For example, in
the past, common environmental standards were often insufficiently
complied with when developing new oil or natural gas deposits. A
well-known example of recent times is the development of the Sakhalin II
assisted areas, in which environmental requirements are said to have
been violated to a greater extent. In addition, there is widespread
corruption within state environmental authorities, which allows multiple
violations of environmental regulations during the construction of
houses or mass illegal logging. Also, a large number of contaminated
sites from the Soviet times, including dilapidated factories that cannot
comply with today's environmental standards, significantly pollute the
environment in parts of the country. Some cities with such factories,
such as Norilsk or Dzerzhinsk, are considered an ecological emergency
zone.
The more the quality of life increased, the more important
and urgent environmental issues were discussed in Russia's public and
politics. Since 2004, isolated efforts of the Russian state power to
promote environmental and climate protection have become visible. Thus,
in Russia, the ratification of the Kyoto Agreement was completed on
November 5, 2004 with the president's approval of the decision of the
State Duma. On January 30, 2008, President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev
expressed his support for the rapid development of the domestic market
for innovative technology in environmental protection. Meanwhile, the
government has plans to increase energy efficiency in Russia in order to
limit the significant loss of thermal energy for the housing sector.
According to the Constitution of Russia, obtaining basic general
education is mandatory. Parents or persons replacing them are obliged to
ensure that their children receive basic general education.
A
total of 31.5 million people study in Russia (2016). The adult literacy
rate (2015) is 99.8%.
The education system in modern Russia
includes pre-school, general and vocational education. General education
has the following levels: primary general, basic general and secondary
(full) general education, and also includes special (correctional) and
additional education for children. Vocational education is also divided
into levels: secondary vocational and higher vocational education, in
addition, it includes postgraduate and additional vocational education.
The main types of educational institutions in Russia are:
pre-school education (up to 6-7 years old): nursery, kindergarten;
Primary general education (years 6-11, grades 1-4): school, lyceum,
gymnasium, boarding school;
basic general education (12-16 years old,
grades 5-9): school, lyceum, gymnasium, college, boarding school;
secondary general education (16-18 years old, grades 10-11): school,
lyceum, gymnasium, college, boarding school;
secondary vocational
education (after 9th grade): vocational school, vocational lyceum,
technical school, college;
higher and postgraduate professional
education: institute, academy, university.
In Russia in the
2005/06 academic year, there were 60.5 thousand general education
institutions: primary, basic and full secondary schools, boarding
schools, gymnasiums, lyceums, etc. (46,794, according to 2015 data).
They have over 15.6 million students (2018). At the same time, about 2
thousand educational institutions, which educate 0.3 million people, are
special, that is, designed for children with disabilities and
development. About 3.5 thousand educational institutions are
institutions of primary vocational education, in which over 1.5 million
people study. About 300 such educational institutions have been
established at correctional labor institutions of the Ministry of
Justice. Due to the demographic decline, the number of students has been
decreasing in recent years.
There are about 7 million students in
the country (including 3.5 million full-time students) and 1,068
universities, including 413 non-governmental ones (2005). In addition,
there are 2.9 thousand institutions of secondary vocational education
(including 217 non-governmental ones), in which about 2.5 million people
study. In accordance with the legislation, vocational education
institutions must undergo periodic certification, licensing and state
accreditation. Educational institutions that do not have state
accreditation do not have the right to issue state—issued educational
documents (diplomas, certificates), and those that do not have a license
do not have the right to conduct educational activities at all. The
concept of "attestation" does not apply to institutions, but to
educational programs, as well as to graduates of universities and
secondary educational institutions.
In 2008, there was a massive
transfer of higher education to a two—tier bachelor's and master's
degree system (see the Bologna Process). Single-level system (with the
qualification of "specialist") It has been preserved primarily for
education in the field of medicine, for the needs of defense and
security, and in some other cases.
According to the UN, Russia
ranks 1st in the world in terms of the number of citizens receiving
engineering education.
From 2010 to 2017, the number of free
(budget) places in higher education institutions increased in Russia
(2010 — 43.43%; 2017 — 49.91%), but at the same time the cost of paid
education increased significantly, which runs counter to the global
trend of reducing fees in higher education institutions and, according
to some It reduces the overall accessibility of higher education in
Russia. In the ranking of national higher education systems (2017),
according to the international network of universities Universitas 21,
Russia took the 33rd place. According to the World Education Index
(2018), a combined indicator of the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) calculated as an adult literacy index and an index of the total
proportion of students receiving education, Russia ranked 32nd in the
world. According to the rating of the effectiveness of national
education systems (Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational
Attainment; 2016), a rating measuring the achievements of countries in
the field of education according to the British company Pearson
Education, Russia took 34th place.
Science as a social institution originated in Russia under Peter I,
when he sent several expeditions to Siberia and North America, including
Vitus Bering and Vasily Tatishchev, the first Russian historiographer.
In 1725, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (now the Russian Academy
of Sciences, the main organizational center of fundamental science in
the Russian Federation) was opened. A university was opened under her,
on the basis of which St. Petersburg University was later opened.
Academician Mikhail Lomonosov made a great contribution to the
development of Russian science. In 1755, based on the project of M. V.
Lomonosov and under the patronage of I. I. Shuvalov, Moscow University
was founded.
In the XVII—XIX centuries, universities were founded
in Dorpat, Vilna, Kazan and Kharkov. By the end of the XIX century, the
composition of universities was replenished with Warsaw, Kiev, Odessa
and Tomsk.
In 1869, scientist D. I. Mendeleev discovered one of
the fundamental laws of nature — the periodic law of chemical elements.
In 1904, I. P. Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in the
field of digestive physiology, and in 1908 — I. I. Mechnikov — for his
research on the mechanisms of immunity. In 1909, the University was
founded in Saratov.
Scientists from Russia became the founders of
the following new scientific fields: physical chemistry (M. V.
Lomonosov, D. I. Mendeleev), organic chemistry (one of the founders —
A.M. Butlerov), non-Euclidean geometry (N. I. Lobachevsky, B. Riemann),
metallography (D. K. Chernov, P. P. Anosov, G. Sorbi), cryobiology (P.
I. Bakhmetyev), biogeochemistry (V. I. Vernadsky), geochemistry (V. I.
Vernadsky together with F. Clark, A. E. Fersman, V. Goldschmidt, A. P.
Vinogradov), gerontology (I. I. Mechnikov), heliobiology (A. L.
Chizhevsky), petrochemistry (one of the founders — N. D. Zelinsky),
theoretical cosmonautics (K. E. Tsiolkovsky, A. A. Sternfeld),
aerodynamics (N. E. Zhukovsky), military field surgery (N. I. Pirogov),
psychophysiology (I. M. Sechenov), reflexology (I. M. Sechenov, I. P.
Pavlov, V. M. Bekhterev), peasant studies (one of the founders — A.V.
Chayanov), tectology (A. A. Bogdanov), intensive care (V. A. Negovsky,
S. S. Bryukhonenko), one of the founders of sociology is P. A. Sorokin,
soil science (V. V. Dokuchaev), one of the founders of transplantology
is V. P. Demikhov.
During the Soviet period, science achieved its
greatest success in the field of natural sciences, where ideological
control by the country's leadership was minimal. According to some
experts (prof. N. Ya. Azarov), there was a "cult of science" in the
USSR. Physicists I. E. Tamm, I. M. Frank, P. A. Cherenkov, L. D. Landau,
N. G. Basov, A.M. Prokhorov, P. L. Kapitsa, as well as chemist N. N.
Semenov and mathematician L. V. Kantorovich (received in 1975 the
Economics Prize). Mathematicians S. P. Novikov (1970) and G. A.
Margulies (1978) were awarded the Fields Prize, the most prestigious
award for mathematicians. Thanks to the established scientific schools
under the leadership of I. V. Kurchatov, S. P. Korolev and other
scientists, nuclear weapons and cosmonautics were created in the USSR.
At the same time, the development of biology was hindered by the
campaign against genetics launched by T. D. Lysenko in the mid-1930s,
and a number of other scientific disciplines suffered significantly.
During the Soviet period, the number of scientific institutions
increased significantly. In addition to academic and university
education, industry and factory sectors have also emerged in science.
The latter were largely transferred to self-financing during the
post-Soviet reforms.
At the end of the 20th century, Russian
science went through a severe crisis. The starting point for the
beginning of the transformation of scientific institutions and the
growing crisis in science is considered to be 1987, when the resolution
of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the
USSR "On the transfer of scientific organizations to full economic
accounting and self-financing" was adopted, applied research and
development were recognized as goods, the transition to payment for
scientific and technical products at negotiated prices was carried out,
for the first time A reduction in the number of researchers has begun.
There is not enough renewal of research, equipment and human resources
for the development of industry. The process of "conservation of
backwardness" of the technological basis of economic sectors is
deepening. Tens of thousands of scientists who now work abroad have left
the country due to a sharp reduction in science funding.
Despite
the crisis of the 1990s, Russian scientists held high positions at the
international level in some fields of science, in particular, four
Russian physicists were awarded the Nobel Prize: Zhores Alferov in 2000,
Alexey Abrikosov and Vitaly Ginzburg in 2003, and Konstantin Novoselov
in 2010. Mathematicians V. G. Drinfeld (1990), E. I. Zelmanov (1994), M.
L. Kontsevich (1998), V. A. Voevodsky (2002), G. Ya. Perelman (2006), A.
Yu. Okunkov (2006), S. K. Smirnov (2010) were awarded the Fields Prize.
Mathematicians M. S. Pinsker (1978), A. S. Holevo (2016) was awarded the
Shannon Prize, the most prestigious award in the field of information
theory. Mathematicians M. L. Gromov (2002), Y. G. Sinai (2014), G. A.
Margulis (2020) were awarded the Abel Prize in Mathematics, an analogue
of the Nobel Prize. The Poincare Prize, the highest award in the field
of mathematical physics, was awarded to M. L. Kontsevich (1997), Y. G.
Sinai (2009), A.M. Borodin (2015). At the beginning of the XXI century,
several hundred thousand scientists worked in Russia, most of them
(about half a million) were candidates and doctors of sciences.
There are about 4 thousand organizations engaged in scientific research
and development in Russia. About 70% of these organizations are owned by
the state.
The reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences carried
out by the government of D. A. Medvedev caused considerable criticism of
scientists, since by 2019 the Ministry of Education and Science planned
to dismiss about 8 thousand scientists, which is due to a reduction in
the share of the state program "Development of Science and Technology"
in total budget expenditures from 0.98% in 2015 to 0.87% in 2019.
There are thousands of scientists working in Russia with a large
volume of international citations (dozens and hundreds of references to
their work).
In the field of mathematics and programming, Russia
has retained its scientific potential and occupies a leading position in
the world; at the Olympiads in mathematics and programming, Russian
participants take the first places. In 1994-2011, the number of annual
patent applications for inventions in Russia increased from 25,745 to
41,414. In 2011, about 4 times more patent applications were filed in
Russia than in the rest of the CIS countries combined.
Russian achievements in the field of space research go back to
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of theoretical cosmonautics. His work
inspired leading Soviet rocket scientists such as S. P. Korolev, V. P.
Glushko and others, who contributed to the success of the Soviet space
program in the early stages of the space race.
In 1957, the
world's first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik—1, was launched; in
1961, the world's first human space flight was successfully carried out
by Yuri Gagarin. The achievements of Soviet and Russian cosmonautics
also include the flight of the world's first female cosmonaut Valentina
Tereshkova (1963) and the world's first spacewalk by cosmonaut Alexei
Leonov (1965). Luna-9 was the first spacecraft to land on the moon,
Venus-7 was the first to land on another planet (on Venus), Mars-3 was
the first to make a soft landing on Mars. In addition, the first in the
world were the Lunokhod-1 planetoid, the Salyut series orbital stations
and the Mir multi-module orbital station.
After the collapse of
the Soviet Union, some government-funded space exploration programs,
including the Buran space shuttle program, were closed, while the
participation of the Russian rocket and space industry in commercial
activities and international cooperation intensified. After the American
Space Shuttle space flight program ended in 2011, the Soyuz rocket
became the only means of delivering astronauts and cargo to the
International Space Station.
As part of the Russian lunar program
for 2022, it is planned to launch a spacecraft to the Moon. Roscosmos is
developing the Eagle spacecraft, which is planned to be launched into
lunar orbit with a crew on board in 2029. In February 2019, it was
announced that Russia was planning its first crewed mission to land on
the moon in 2031.
Russian culture consists of a European high culture and a grown
Russian folk culture. At times, Russia saw itself as the radical other
of the West, also because Russian culture took a different development
over a long time compared to Western European culture, due to its
location on the periphery of Western cultural development. Furthermore,
the schism of 1054 led to a completely different unfolding of Orthodox
Christianity with a growing rejection of Catholicism. The Russian
conception of the state and law, which originates from Byzantine
Caesaropapism, in contrast to the Roman legal tradition in the West,
also contributed to the demarcation of Russian culture from Western
European (cf. Legal History of Russia). In contrast to the development
of nation-states in the rest of Europe, the transformation into a
multi-ethnic empire took place in Russia from 1550 onwards, which helped
to shape cultural development.
Russian culture continues to be
characterized by temporally different phases of development in relation
to Western European culture. This can be explained by the geocultural
peripheral location and simultaneous expansion of Russia to the east,
which cause a different pace of evolution in the interplay of slowed and
accelerated catch-up and development phases, as a result of which social
upheavals and political radicalization have repeatedly occurred in
Russian history. According to this, Russia can be regarded as a
translation culture, but not in passive imitation, but out of the need
to catch up and outbid. This creates productive interactions by modeling
one's own according to the imitated stranger and thus produces something
new.
Russia's cultural history begins largely with its
Christianization (988/989) at the end of the 10th century, whereby, at
the request of the Kiev prince Vladimir I, Byzantine culture in its
Slavicized forms gained supremacy among the Russians for the next seven
centuries. This was followed by a rapid flourishing of her writing, art
and architecture after the introduction of Christianity.
Orthodoxy in particular necessitated a different understanding of
culture based on perseverance and traditions. The religious worldview
and the church's conception of the text determined and slowed down the
cultural development in the Moscow Empire. A solidification of the
Russian Orthodox culture began in 1500, after the impetus of Byzantium
had come under Ottoman rule through the fall of Constantinople. Under
Peter I, a forced secularization and Europeanization of social life
began from the 17th century onwards. The first emperor of the Russian
Empire brought Western European architects and artists to the country
and wanted to achieve a change in the internal attitude through external
Europeanization – for example, the removal of beards and the adoption of
the European dress code. However, the Europeanization of Russia reached
only a small upper class. Russia found its connection to European
culture in the 19th century and belonged to its avant-garde around 1900.
In addition to a westernized high culture of the upper class,
traditional Russian folk culture persisted among the people, so that
until 1914 two cultures still existed side by side. In the Soviet Union,
then, under Stalin, Socialist realism was declared the only binding
cultural norm. Non-system-compliant written or sung forms of expression
of culture could only appear as samizdat in the underground. In the new
Russian state, Russian culture experienced a new crisis in the 1990s.
Thus, in the 1990s, the Russian artists first had to overcome the
resulting standstill with the elimination of state subsidies and
competition in capitalist mass culture.
The residential buildings in Russia have long been built in block construction (Isba). These log houses can still be found in the villages today. They are usually painted in blue or green shades and have fanciful carved, mostly white window frames. Blue and green, as the colors of Orthodoxy, are designed to drive away evil spirits.
Russian traditional crafts form an important aspect of Russian folk culture. In the forest zone of North-Eastern Russia, the craft of woodturning and woodcarving developed. In places where clay was present, the ceramic craft developed. Lace was made in the northern regions of Russia with its extensive flax fields. The Urals, with its rich deposits of iron ore, as well as semi-precious and ornamental stones, is famous for its casting art, weapons jewelry and jewelry items. Famous are the Dymkovo ceramic toys (see Anna Afanasyevna Mesrina), Khokhloma, ceramics from Gzhel and lacquer miniatures from Palekh. Matryoshka is the most popular Russian souvenir. Already a few years after its appearance, the Matryoshka was demonstrated at the Paris World Exhibition of 1900, where she earned a medal and gained worldwide fame.
Traditional Russian clothing included a caftan, a kossovorotka and ushanka for men, a sarafan and a kokoshnik for women, with a lapti made of raffia and valenki (felt boots) as the usual footwear. The traditional clothes of the Cossacks from southern Russia include burka and papacha.
Russian cuisine, originally a typical peasant cuisine, uses many ingredients from fish, poultry, mushrooms, berries and honey. Bread, pancakes are eaten, kvass, beer and vodka are drunk. Vodka is a part of Russian culture. According to Russian chronicles, the first distilleries appeared in Russia in the 12th century. Initially, vodka was used for medicinal purposes. Russian vodka is made from cereals. Traditionally, in Russia, preference is given to a pure, unflavored vodka, which is usually drunk at room temperature in company. Something salty (for example, salted cucumbers, salted mushrooms or salted herring) is often served with vodka. Tasty soups and stews such as shchi, borsch, rassolnik, ucha, solyanka and okroshka characterize Russian cuisine. Russian dough dishes such as piroshki, blini and syrniki are also famous. Kiev cutlet, bœuf stroganoff, pelmeni and shish kebab are popular meat dishes, the last two are of Tatar and Caucasian origin. Other common meat dishes are cabbage rolls (russ. Cabbage rolls) are usually filled with meat. Typical Russian salads are vinaigrette (russ. vinaigrette), Olivier salad and herring in a fur coat (russ. Сельдь под шубой). Tea has been drunk in every household in Russia since the 17th century, so that a proper tea culture developed in Russia. For the preparation of tea, a samovar is traditionally used in Russia, it is considered a kind of national symbol in Russia. In addition to the traditional Russian desserts, such as baranki, prjaniki, varenje and pastila (resp. Sefir), oriental sweets, such as halva, gosinaki and lokum, as well as various chocolates and cakes are also served for tea.
Russia's large number of ethnic groups has distinct traditions of folk music. Typical Russian musical instruments are gusli, balalaika, shaleika and garmon. The Russian people have a rich dance folklore. Reports on Russian dances can be found since the 11th century. Dances play a huge role for the Russian people. In many dances, the national features of the Russian character are very clearly expressed. The oldest type of Russian dance is the so-called khorovod, a round dance of a group of participants holding hands. The second type of dances characteristic of Russian dance art is the improvisational dances. They are performed as solo dances (male or female), in pairs or by several dancers. The individuality of the dancer is particularly strongly expressed in these dances. The pereplyas is a kind of competitive dance, where each dancer, performing in turn, strives to outdo the other by his dance mastery, imagination and better execution of movements.
Russia has a distinct steam bath culture, the banya. Visiting the banja is a ritual. Important discussions, business negotiations and political meetings are still taking place there to this day. There is also a banya in the Kremlin. According to the old Russian tradition, one carefully knocks oneself off with weniks – dried bundles of birch branches dipped in warm water.
For recreation and relaxation, Russian city dwellers like to spend weekends or their holidays at a dacha, a country house or a cottage with a garden. For three centuries, the dachas have been part of Russian history and culture. The dacha is also often mentioned in many Russian ballads and in Russian literature. From the middle of May, the dacha season begins. Around St. Petersburg and Moscow there are a lot of dachas-suburbs, which throughout their history have moved further and further away from the city.
Also known are the Russian fairy tales, which have their origins in the pagan period of Rus. They formed the basis for the famous Soviet fairy tale films. They have also brought fairy-tale characters such as "Father Frost", the "Snow Maiden" or the "Witch Baba Jaga" to Central Europe.
Russian hospitality even in the most difficult economic times is proverbial. When receiving an invitation, the host deliberately tries to prepare as many different dishes as possible. This shows that nothing is saved for the guests. To this day, the custom of handing out a round loaf with a salt vessel in the middle to the most important guest lives on official occasions. Bread has long been the main food in Russia. Salt was rare and therefore very expensive.
A very common street scene in winter in the 19th century was the Troika, the typical Russian team of three. For this purpose, three horses are harnessed side by side in front of a carriage or a sled. A bell hangs on the arch, which is constantly tinkling during the ride and keeps the horses at a trot. The troika originates from the Valdai Heights, a hilly landscape between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and is now cultivated as folklore.
National holidays in Russia are the so-called Day of the Unity of the
People on November 4, which commemorates the liberation of Moscow from
Polish-Lithuanian foreign rulers in 1612, as well as the Day of Russia
on June 12 on the occasion of the declaration of state sovereignty of
the Russian SFSR on this day in 1990. In addition, there are several
public holidays every year, of which the New Year Festival is celebrated
(continuously from January 1 to January 5). The New Year celebration was
extended in 2005, but the most important national holiday for the
Communists, the Day of the October Revolution on November 7, was
abolished. Russian Orthodox Christians do not celebrate Christmas on
December 24, as is the case with Christians of other denominations.
According to the Julian calendar, they celebrate the feast of the
Epiphany on January 7. During the Soviet era, religious festivals were
not allowed. However, since January 7 was declared an official holiday
in 1991, Christmas has been celebrated properly in Russia again. Holy
Evening on the 6th. January in Russia is called Sochelnik.
Every
year the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the Feast of Epiphany. It is
one of the oldest Orthodox holidays and dates back to the baptism of
Jesus in the Jordan River. Despite the frost, millions of Russians are
drawn to the ice hole every year on the night of January 18-19. On this
one day of the year, the water of all the rivers and lakes of Russia is
sacred, especially if it was previously blessed by an Orthodox priest.
Participants must completely submerge three times. Before each immersion
of the head, they cross themselves. The procedure is designed to cleanse
believers from sins and give them new strength.
The "Victory Day"
over National Socialist Germany (on May 9) still has a high priority
among the population. At the beginning of May, festively dressed war
veterans come together all over Russia and commemorate the fallen
comrades. Often such a meeting begins at a tomb or tomb of the Unknown
soldier or at an Eternal Fire. After that, the memorial service will be
continued either at an official reception or privately at a festive
table. On Victory Day, carnations are given to war veterans. Every year,
on Victory Day, military parades are held in many cities of Russia
(2011: 23).
If a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday,
it is customary to set up a non-working bridge day on Monday or Friday
by declaring the previous Saturday or the following Sunday as working
days in return.
Moscow and St. Petersburg are the cultural centers of Russia with a huge number of cultural institutions. Moscow alone has more than 120 theaters, five opera houses, six professional symphony orchestras, as well as numerous museums and galleries. The Moscow Bolshoi Theatre enjoys a worldwide reputation, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow are home to world-renowned art collections. Cultural scenes have also developed in other regional centers, for example in Novosibirsk (theater, opera), Yekaterinburg (theater, contemporary dance) and Nizhny Novgorod (contemporary art).
In Russia, literature enjoys a very high esteem. However, the usual
and valid patterns of poetics and genre theory in Western Europe, as
well as literary epoch names, are used differently in Russia, because
they are time-shifted and in a different function. The Romanesque period
in Kievan Rus corresponded to the "period of stylistic simplicity" (11th
century).), the "Age of Ornamental style" (12th and 13th c.), for the
following centuries from the 14th to the 16th century. there are common
ideological and geopolitical epoch names ("Period of intellectual
disputes" and "Moscow literature"). In the 17th and 18th centuries, the
imitation of Baroque style methods led to a late harmony with the
Western European style of the time.
The basic stock of spiritual
texts and genres adopted from Byzantine historiography laid the
foundation of the Church Slavonic tradition, which in the Slavic Middle
Ages was considered literature and a literary text. There was the
dominance of a spiritual-ecclesiastical concept of literature (i.e.
reading and writing – similar to icon painting – for the benefit of the
soul). On the other hand, the aesthetic function, individual style,
fictionality (separation of truth and poetry), literary genres in the
modern sense and a modern concept of authorship were missing. Literature
with a non-predominant spiritual function in ancient Russia (before
1700) is comparatively little represented. The literary transition to
modern times took place in the name of the most solid and direct
possible connection of Russia with Western Europe under Peter the Great.
At the beginning of the 18th century, literature fulfilled primarily
educational and representative functions for the state. Around 1800,
literary communication emancipated itself from the demands of the court,
educational institutes and patronage. For the first time, Russian
authors were able to publish their works on their own book market. For
decades, the genre of the realistic social novel dominated, which made a
lasting impression on readers in Europe. The Russian realist novel
developed its own methods for depicting reality and developed
metastandpoints regarding the destabilizing effect of Western
modernization on traditional ways of life and social structures.
Pushkin is considered the founder of modern Russian literature. Other
world-class Russian writers are: Mikhail Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lev
Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev, the exile Vladimir Nabokov and
Ivan Bunin, the first Russian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
In 1990, books in Russia had a total circulation of
1.6 billion books. In 2004, there were only 562 million. The author with
the highest circulation was Darya Dontsova with 99 volumes and a
circulation of 18.1 million books.
In 2016, the Russian
Booksellers' Association complained about the increased prices for both
production and sales by small booksellers with trading fees. For
example, there is only one bookstore per 58,000 inhabitants in Moscow;
the 12 million inhabitants of Moscow shared 199 bookstores compared to
the 3 million inhabitants of Paris with their 700 bookstores.
In the XVIII century, a galaxy of secular
writers and poets appeared in Russia. Among them are poets and writers
V. K. Trediakovsky, A. D. Kantemir, M. V. Lomonosov, G. R. Derzhavin, N.
M. Karamzin; playwrights A. P. Sumarokov and D. I. Fonvizin. The
dominant artistic style of literature at that time was classicism. It is
replaced by sentimentalism (M. M. Kheraskov, M. N. Muravyov, N. M.
Karamzin, I. I. Dmitriev, etc.).
The most famous Russian writers
and playwrights of the XIX and XX centuries in the world: A. S.
Griboyedov, N. V. Gogol, A. I. Herzen, I. A. Goncharov, A. N. Ostrovsky,
D. V. Grigorovich, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, F. M. Dostoevsky, I. S.
Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, I. A. Bunin, A. I.
Kuprin, I. E. Babel, M. A. Bulgakov, V. V. Nabokov, V. G. Korolenko, A.
P. Platonov, K. G. Paustovsky, V. F. Tendryakov, A. I. Solzhenitsyn, V.
P. Astafyev, V. G. Rasputin, V. N. Voinovich, F. A. Iskander, the
Strugatsky brothers, S. D. Dovlatov and many others. Their works have
been translated into all major modern languages of the world, they have
become an integral part of world culture.
The most famous Russian
poets in the world are: V. A. Zhukovsky, K. N. Batyushkov, A. S.
Pushkin, M. Y. Lermontov, A.V. Koltsov, E. A. Baratynsky, A. A. Fet, I.
F. Annensky, F. I. Tyutchev, N. A. Nekrasov, A. A. Blok, S. A. Yesenin,
K. D. Balmont, A. Bely, V. Ya. Bryusov, D. S. Merezhkovsky, N. S.
Gumilev, I. Severyanin, O. E. Mandelstam, V. V. Mayakovsky, E. G.
Bagritsky, M. I. Tsvetaeva, M. A. Voloshin, S. Cherny, B. L. Pasternak,
A. A. Akhmatova, V. Khlebnikov, N. A. Zabolotsky, I. A. Brodsky, N. M.
Rubtsov, A. T. Tvardovsky, K. M. Simonov, A. A. Tarkovsky, V. S.
Vysotsky, E. A. Yevtushenko, R. I. Rozhdestvensky, A. A. Voznesensky, B.
A. Akhmadulina, Ya. V. Smelyakov, E. A. Asadov, Yu. V. Drunina, L. A.
Rubalskaya, Yu. I. Vizbor, B. Sh. Okudzhava, R. G. Gamzatov and many
others.
Four Russian writers were awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature: Ivan Bunin (1933, in exile), Boris Pasternak (1958), Mikhail
Sholokhov (1965) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1970). And in 1987, the
poet Joseph Brodsky received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
According to Nikolai Lossky, the characteristic features of Russian
philosophy are: cosmism, sophiology, conciliarity, metaphysicality,
religiosity, intuitionism, positivism, realism (ontologism). Some
researchers note eschatological motives in the philosophy of Russia.
Among the most famous Russian philosophers who belonged to various
philosophical trends and made a significant contribution to the treasury
of Russian and world culture: A. N. Radishchev, P. Ya. Chaadaev, A. S.
Khomyakov, P. V. Kireevsky, N. G. Chernyshevsky, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N.
Tolstoy, N. F. Fedorov, G. V. Plekhanov, M. A. Bakunin, P. A. Kropotkin,
V. S. Solovyov, V. V. Rozanov, K. E. Tsiolkovsky, D. L. Andreev, V. I.
Vernadsky, N. O. Lossky, V. I. Lenin, S. N. Bulgakov, N. K. Roerich, N.
A. Berdyaev, A. A. Bogdanov, N. Y. Danilevsky, P. A. Florensky, F. A.
Stepun, I. A. Ilyin, S. L. Frank, P. A. Sorokin, E. P. Blavatsky, A. F.
Losev, S. A. Yanovskaya, V. V. Zenkovsky, A. A. Zinoviev, E. V.
Ilyenkov, A. L. Chizhevsky, G. I. Gurdjieff, S. N. Trubetskoy, L. I.
Shestov, G. G. Shpet, M. M. Bakhtin, S. S. Averintsev, A. M.
Pyatigorsky.
One of the oldest forms of Russian painting is icon painting. She
inherited the traditions of the Byzantine masters, but at the same time
Russian icons have their own style. Russian Russian icon painting is
characterized not so much by realism as by symbolism; the symbolism of
Russian icon painting has influenced many artists, in particular, the
influence of the Russian icon on his work was emphasized by Henri
Matisse. The central theme in Russian iconography has become the theme
of forgiveness. Not only God and saints are present on Russian icons,
but also ordinary mortals. In Russian iconography, the writing comes
from the center, the central figure, around which the figures of the
second plan are symmetrically arranged, in addition, a special color
scheme is used and, unlike the Byzantine tradition, purple is not used —
the color of the emperor. Alipiy Pechersky, Grigory the Iconographer,
Andrey Rublev, Daniil Cherny, Dionysius, Gury Nikitin, Simon Ushakov,
Fyodor Zubov and others raised the level of Russian icon painting to the
world level.
The first realistic portraits appeared in Russia in
the XVII century. The middle — end of the XVIII century in Russia was
marked by the work of such major painters as D. G. Levitsky and V. L.
Borovikovsky. Since that time, Russian painting has followed global
trends. Outstanding Russian artists of the XIX century: F. A. Bruni, S.
F. Shchedrin, O. A. Kiprensky, K. P. Bryullov, A. A. Ivanov, I. K.
Aivazovsky, A. I. Kuindzhi, V. A. Tropinin, A. G. Venetsianov, P. A.
Fedotov. The academic trend prevails in the painting of this time. The
second half of the XIX century — the heyday of realistic painting (A. K.
Savrasov, V. D. Polenov). The Wanderers develop the direction of
critical realism in painting, their works are often filled with social
themes. The most famous artist of critical realism is Ilya Repin. By the
end of the 19th century, trends akin to French impressionism were
developing in Russia. Without breaking with the realistic direction,
artists become more free and virtuosic in their techniques, which is
most vividly embodied in the works of Valentin Serov. Russian Russian
artist Vasily Vereshchagin is one of the most famous Russian battle
artists, who personally participated in the Central Asian campaigns of
the Russian army.
At the beginning of the XX century, Russian
artists actively searched for new expressive forms, many new artistic
trends appeared, for example, symbolism (M. A. Vrubel, M. V.
Dobuzhinsky), decorative trends corresponding to modernity, avant-garde
art (V. V. Kandinsky, K. S. Malevich). In the middle and late XX
century, the artists I. E. Grabar, A. A. Rylov, M. Chagall, N. P.
Krymov, I. I. Brodsky, B. V. Johanson, S. V. Gerasimov, M. A. Feigin, Z.
E. Serebryakova, V. F. Stozharov, Yu. A. Vasnetsov, E. E. Moiseenko, P.
P. became widely known. Konchalovsky, D. D. Zhilinsky, V. M. Oreshnikov,
G. G. Ryazhsky, T. N. Yablonskaya, K. F. Yuon, V. V. Meshkov, A. A.
Plastov, N. M. Romadin, P. P. Ossovsky, S. A. Chuikov, A. A. Deineka, M.
S. Saryan, F. P. Reshetnikov, A. A. Mylnikov, N. I. Nesterova, B. Ya.
Ryauzov, O. P. Filatchev, O. G. Vereisky, E. G. Bragovsky, K. A.
Vasiliev, M. M. Shemyakin, E. K. Okas, Ya. D. Romas, V. S. Alfeyevsky.
There are 25 World Heritage Sites in Russia, 14 of which are UNESCO
World Heritage Sites (as of 2013); among them are the old towns and
historical centers of Derbent, Yaroslavl, Saint Petersburg, Veliky
Novgorod, Vladimir or the Kremlin of Kazan and Moscow, as well as the
wooden churches of Kizhi Pogost.
The early architecture of Russia
is based on that of the Byzantine Empire: early religious buildings,
like the Byzantine ones, are based on the Greek Cross, which is crowned
by five domes. Examples of this are the St. Sophia Cathedral in
Novgorod, or the Church of St. Demetrius in Vladimir. Western European
influences spread with the Baroque. Baroque influences (Russian Baroque)
began to appear in Russia at the end of the 17th century (Church of the
Mother of God-Icon from Vladimir to Kurkino in Moscow).
An
independent Russian style had probably originally developed only in the
field of wooden buildings, of which, due to the building material, no
buildings older than the 17th century have been preserved. The churches
that emerged from it are distinguished by a simpler central layout and a
large octagonal central tower. These have become more and more
decorative over time. A famous example is St. Basil's Cathedral on
Moscow's Red Square from 1555. However, it achieved its breakthrough in
Saint Petersburg, founded by Tsar Peter I. European architects such as
Andreas Schlüter or Domenico Trezzini came to Russia, they built
buildings such as the Menshikov Palace or the Peter and Paul Fortress.
World-class architecture was achieved by the master builders under
Catherine II (Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli). The palaces such as the
Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Peterhof Palace or the Catherine Palace
show a large and huge Rococo style on the facades and are exorbitantly
luxuriously furnished inside.
With classicism, which began in
Russia at about the same time as in the rest of Europe, for the first
time original Russian builders such as Ivan Yegorovich Starov began to
occupy a prominent position. Most of the buildings of St. Petersburg's
city center are still classicist in style. A prime example of this is
Rossistraße in Saint Petersburg, named after the architect Carlo Rossi,
whose entire layout, including the houses, follows a strictly geometric
overall pattern. However, in the religious buildings such as St. Isaac's
Cathedral, classicist and historicist style elements mix.
At the
beginning of the 20th century, avant-garde currents were strong
throughout Russian culture. After the October Revolution, its advocates
were able to implement it for several years. An example here is El
Lissitzky or novel prototypes for housing construction, industrial
construction and for public administration. International architects
such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Peter Behrens and Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe were able to build in Moscow. However, under Stalin's rule, a
setback to monumentally increased classical patterns quickly occurred.
The confectionery style began to become predominant, representativeness
was clearly in the foreground over artistic designs. In the late Soviet
phase of the 1970s, until the collapse of the Soviet Empire, unique,
partly futuristic buildings were built in all the constituent republics,
whose radical aesthetics and idiosyncratic formal language stood in
contrast to the conformist state architecture. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, a historicizing architectural style has become
increasingly modern, which is looking for points of reference in
traditional Russian architecture. Examples of this, among many other
buildings, are the rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, or
the cathedral of the same name in Kaliningrad.
Russian music goes back a long way. Its origins lie in the pagan
customs of the Eastern Slavs. After the adoption of Christianity, church
music first developed. Originally from Byzantium, she quickly acquired
national Russian features. In the 11th century, a special type of
Orthodox church singing, the so-called Znamenny raspev, emerged. Only in
the 16th-17th centuries did the lyrical folk song spread. Some songs are
world famous, such as. Song of the Volga Tugs, Kalinka, Katyusha,
Cossack lullaby, Dubinushka, Korobeiniki, Black Eyes.
The
beginnings of Russian art music began to develop in the 18th century and
have been influenced by Western European music since Peter the Great.
The most important composer of this period was Dmytro Bortnyanskyj,
whose works include both art music and the a cappella chants of Orthodox
church music, which can be seen in typical Russian. Yevstignei Ipatovich
Fomin, the most important opera composer in Russia of the late 18th
century, was still influenced by the West. For the first time, phrases
from Russian folk music are increasingly appearing in the operas and
orchestral pieces of Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky, paving
the way for a national Russian composer school. Following this, the
so-called group of Five was formed from five young composers (Alexander
Borodin, César Cui, Mili Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov), which set itself the task of specifically making the
peculiarities of Russian folk music usable for symphonies, operas, tone
poems and chamber music.
In contrast to this, a countercurrent
oriented more towards Western music (especially German Romanticism)
developed, which was founded by Anton Rubinstein. It also included the
most important Russian composer of the 19th century, Pyotr Tchaikovsky,
whose works (symphonies, operas, ballets, chamber music works) helped
Russian music to gain greater recognition abroad for the first time. The
following composers, such as Anatoly Lyadov, Sergei Taneyev, Anton
Arensky, Alexander Grechaninov, Alexander Glazunov and Vasily
Kalinnikov, primarily focused on a reconciling union of the
Western-international and Russian-national styles in their compositions.
While Sergei Rachmaninov independently developed Tchaikovsky's style in
his piano concertos and symphonies, it was with Alexander Scriabin,
creator of an idiosyncratic harmonic system, that musical modernity
first made its appearance in Russia.
Expressionism is represented
in Russian music by the early works of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei
Prokofiev. In the 1920s, many composers experimented with new musical
means of design, including the young Dmitri Shostakovich, whose early
works are particularly characterized by a satirical tone. Most of the
older composers, on the other hand, adhered to Romanticism, such as
Glazunov, Reinhold Glière and Nikolai Myaskovsky, and later also
Prokofiev. From the mid-1930s, on Stalin's orders, the doctrine of
Socialist Realism became binding for Russian musicians, which forbade
avant-garde experiments and called for "popular" art. This compulsion
gradually eased only after Stalin's death in 1953. The main
representatives of a Soviet musical culture subsequently became, in
addition to Shostakovich, above all Dmitri Kabalevsky and the Armenian
Aram Khachaturian. Since about 1980, the once frowned-upon avant-garde
elements have again become noticeable in Russian compositions, for
example with Edisson Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke. By
contrast, composers such as Polish-born Mieczysław Weinberg or Boris
Tchaikovsky maintained the tradition of following Shostakovich.
In addition to the traditional popular music from the time of the Soviet
Union, the so-called estrada, there are a number of different genres of
Russian pop music. The poet, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky, whose
songs were mostly written in the 1960s and 1970s, is regarded as an
important Russian songwriter/chansonnier of the 20th century. At the
beginning of the 1980s and during the period of perestroika, a vital,
Russian-speaking rock music scene developed in Russia, which
complemented the established bands such as Maschina Vremeni. The
figurehead of these years is generally considered to be the frontman of
Kino, Wiktor Zoi, who died in 1990, whose songs and lyrics were
influential for many bands of the following years. In addition to
original Russian bands such as Kino, Ljube, Aquarium, DDT and Nautilus
Pompilius, or the punk bands Grashdanskaya Oborona and Sector Gasa, pop
culture in the field of music was strongly influenced by the
international mainstream.
In the 1990s, an extensive underground
was established in the cultural centers of the country, but especially
in St. Petersburg, which still covers the entire spectrum of music to
this day. Towards the end of the century, Russian MTV also launched.
During this time, a large number of rock bands were founded and
disbanded, but above all, the formations founded in the 1980s already
celebrated great success. The first bands of the underground culture
were also able to gain many listeners, such as Leningrad. Semfira also
became very famous during this time. At the latest since the beginning
of this decade, Russian popsa has also held significant market shares.
This is danceable music with a high proportion of electronica, which has
a particularly teenage target group and is musically completely oriented
towards internationally successful projects (Valerija, VIA Gra). The duo
T.A.T.U. is the only internationally successful Russian pop band so far.
Another genre, which was largely marginalized in the times of the Soviet
Union, has also been experiencing a renaissance in recent years – the
Russian chanson. A popular star of this direction is the singer Mikhail
Schufutinsky.
Russian medieval actors buffoons have been known since the XI
century. Among them were musicians, singers, dancers, pranksters, and
wild animal trainers.
The theater in the modern sense appeared in
Russia thanks to foreigners. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Emperor Peter
I were engaged in the development of theatrical business. After the
death of Peter the Great, theatrical art in Russia began to decline. But
during the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, the musical and
theatrical business was revived: on August 30, 1756, a theater was
established in St. Petersburg (now the Alexandrinsky Theater). Empress
Catherine II attached high educational importance to the theater, but
for the most part the Russian theater of that time remained a
high-society entertainment.
Already in April 1896, 4 months after
the first Paris cinematographic sessions, the first cinematographic
devices appeared in Russia. In May of the same year, Camille Cerf
carried out the first documentary cinematographic filming in Russia of
the celebrations in honor of the coronation of Emperor Nicholas II. Film
screenings quickly became fashionable entertainment, the first permanent
cinema opened in St. Petersburg in May 1896 on Nevsky Prospekt.
The first Russian art films were adaptations of fragments of classic
works of Russian literature ("The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov",
"The Idiot", "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai"), folk songs ("The Hoot
Merchant") or illustrated episodes from Russian history ("The Death of
John the Terrible", "Peter the Great"). In 1911, the first full-length
film in Russia, The Defense of Sevastopol, was released.
In 1925,
director Sergei Eisenstein created the film "Battleship Potemkin",
recognized by art critics as one of the best films of all time.
Three Soviet and one Russian films won the Oscar in the category "Best
Foreign Language Film" (in parentheses — the year of the Oscar):
"War and Peace" by Sergei Bondarchuk (1969);
Akira Kurosawa's Dersu
Uzala (co-produced by the USSR and Japan) (1976);
"Moscow does not
believe in Tears" by Vladimir Menshov (1981);
"Tired of the Sun" by
Nikita Mikhalkov (1995).
Animation was successfully developed in
the Soviet years. The cartoon "Hedgehog in the Fog" by Yuri Norstein in
2003 in Tokyo was recognized as the best cartoon of all time by a survey
of 140 film critics and animators from different countries.
Representatives of Russian ballet who achieved world fame were such outstanding dancers as Matilda Kshesinskaya, Olga Spesivtseva, Vaclav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, George Balanchine (who laid the foundation for American ballet and modern neoclassical ballet art in general), Maris Liepa, Rudolf Nureyev, Galina Ulanova, Konstantin Sergeev, Maya Plisetskaya and many others others.
Russia has one of the world's largest museum collections of cultural
heritage. Russian museums are among the top ten most visited museums in
the world.
The basis of the modern museum world of Russia is 2027
museums of the Ministry of Culture of Russia, which contain about 60
million items and are visited by about 70 million people annually.
Russian Russian Federation is a world leader in the number of museums
included in the list of the largest museums in the world: the
Kunstkammer in St. Petersburg, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the
Tretyakov Gallery, the Armory, the Russian Museum (the largest museum of
Russian art in the world). The State Hermitage Museum is included in the
list of the 10 best museums in the world, according to National
Geographic magazine, the State Historical Museum is the largest national
historical museum in Russia.
Russia is one of the world leaders in terms of the size of the
library fund: there are about 39 thousand libraries in the country,
which are visited by about 30% of the country's population. There are
several world-class libraries in the country, the Russian National
Library, according to the analytical company World atlas, ranks fifth in
the world in terms of its library collection.
Russian archives
are among the largest archives in the world.
Folk epics and fairy tales typical of the peoples inhabiting Russia
have brought us folk wisdom from the depths of centuries.
Artistic crafts in Russia were formed on the basis of folk art, which,
thanks to professional artists and merchants at the beginning of the XX
century, was transformed into professional decorative art: Dymkovsky
toy, Filimonovskaya toy, Orenburg down shawl, Palekh miniature,
Abashevskaya toy, Khokhloma, Gzhel, Khludnevskaya toy, Gorodetsky
painting, Bogorodskaya carving.
The first periodicals appeared in Russia at the beginning of the
XVIII century, but the print media received wide development only at the
end of the XIX century.
As of the end of the 2000s, there are
more than 170 daily newspapers in Russia, both central and local, with a
total circulation of about 4.8 million copies, as well as more than 425
non-daily newspapers and magazines with a total circulation of about 7.8
million copies. Leading national newspapers (one-time circulations,
thousand copies): Izvestia (150 thousand copies), founded in 1917, the
former body of the governing institutions of the Soviet government;
Kommersant (125 thousand copies), founded in 1989; Komsomolskaya Pravda
(955 thousand copies), founded in 1925, former organ of the Central
Committee of the Komsomol; Moskovsky Komsomolets (700 thousand copies),
founded in 1919, the former organ of the Moscow City Komsomol Committee;
Nezavisimaya Gazeta (40 thousand copies), founded in 1990; Novaya Gazeta
(284 thousand copies), founded in 1993; Novy Vzglyad (307 thousand
copies), founded in 1992; "Parliamentary Newspaper" (56.5 thousand
copies), founded in 1996, organ of the Federal Assembly of Russia;
"Pravda" (100 thousand copies), founded in 1912, organ of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party; "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" (166 thousand
copies), founded in 1990, organ of the Government of the Russian
Federation; "Soviet sport" (180 thousand copies), founded in 1924.
Leading Russian news agencies: TASS (founded in 1904); Rossiya
Segodnya (founded in 2013); Interfax (founded in 1989).
The
center of the State bibliography and statistics of the Russian press is
the Russian Book Chamber. As a branch of TASS, the Chamber
systematically publishes bibliographic indexes. The final data on the
output of printed materials are published in the statistical yearbook
"Annual Bibliographic Index of books of Russia" (since 1954). There are
republican book chambers in Bashkiria, Chuvashia and Tatarstan.
Russian scientist A. S. Popov is one of the inventors of radio, who
for the first time in Russia carried out the transmission of
electromagnetic waves at a distance. Radio broadcasting has been
conducted in Russia since 1924, and television broadcasting since 1931.
Until 1991, the management of television and radio broadcasting was
carried out by Gosteleradio, broadcasts were carried out on three
All-Union radio and two all-Union television programs. Local television
broadcasts were conducted by local television studios on the 2nd
program, except for the Leningrad Television Studio and the Main
Editorial Office of broadcasts for Moscow and the Moscow Region of
Central Television, which transmitted their own "third" programs, local
radio broadcasts - by local television and radio broadcasting committees
on the 1st program. There was a wired radio broadcasting network: The
1st program was mixed and consisted of local broadcasts and broadcasts
of the First All-Union program, the 2nd program broadcast the Second
All-Union program, the 3rd - the Third All—Union program.
In
1992-1995, the management of broadcasting on the 1st federal TV channel,
the 1st (headline "Radio 1") and the 2nd (headline "Mayak") federal
radio channels was carried out by the Russian State Television and Radio
Company Ostankino (RGTRK Ostankino), broadcasting on the 2nd federal TV
channel (headlines "Russian Television", "RTR", "Russia") and the 3rd
federal radio channel (headline "Radio of Russia") - the All—Russian
State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK). Local radio and television
broadcasts were carried on the 2nd TV and 3rd radio channels by local
state television and radio companies (since 2004 - branches of VGTRK),
except for Moscow and St. Petersburg, which transmitted their own
"third" television channels. Wired radio broadcasting continued to
exist: the first channel remained mixed and consisted of local
broadcasts and broadcasts of the third federal radio channel, the second
channel transmitted the second federal radio channel, the third — the
first federal radio channel.
In 1995, RGTRK Ostankino was
abolished, instead a joint—stock company with state participation Public
Russian Television was created, the All-Russian State Radio Company
Mayak (in 1998 it was transferred under the management of VGTRK, since
2004 - its branch) and the All-Russian radio station Radio 1 (in 1997 it
was abolished, and the broadcasting of the first radio channel and the
third channel of wired broadcasting was transferred to various
commercial radio stations). The Russian state radio company "Voice of
Russia" broadcasts abroad, and since 2014 — the International News
Agency "Russia Today". At the same time, commercial television was
widely distributed, represented by such companies as NTV Television
Company (in 2001 it came under the control of Gazprom Joint Stock
Company, controlled in turn by the state), Moscow Independent
Broadcasting Corporation (in 2002 it stopped broadcasting), REN TV,
etc., as well as commercial radio broadcasting. There are several wired
(cable) television networks.
Non-working holidays in the Russian Federation are:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6 and January 8 — New Year holidays;
January 7 — Christmas;
February 23 — Defender of the Fatherland Day;
March 8 — International
Women's Day;
May 1 — Spring and Labor Day;
May 9 is Victory Day;
June 12 — Russia Day;
November 4 is National Unity Day.
During
non-working holidays, work is allowed that cannot be suspended due to
production and technical conditions (continuously operating
organizations), work caused by the need to serve the public, as well as
urgent repair and loading and unloading operations.
In Russia, sport has a relatively high priority, which can be
attributed to the comprehensive sports promotion in the USSR (cf. Sport
in the Soviet Union). In 2008, Russia had 2687 stadiums with 1500 seats
and more than 3762 swimming pools and 123,200 sports facilities. Popular
sports are important, the number of members in sports clubs is 22.6
million people, including 8.1 million women. The most popular team sport
among Russians is football (cf. Football in Russia), which is
experiencing a boom – favored by strong financial sponsorship from the
economy. Ice hockey (see Ice hockey in Russia) is the second most
popular team sport. Basketball is the third most popular team sport, but
chess and tennis are also very popular. Russia has already produced
numerous world-class athletes. Russian athletes dominate especially in
the sports of athletics, winter sports, figure skating, gymnastics and
weightlifting. No other nation has more current and former world chess
champions and grandmasters than Russia.
Including the
participation as part of the Soviet Union, Russia has participated in
the Summer Olympic Games 19 times and the Winter Olympic Games 17 times
so far. So far, athletes from Russia and the Soviet Union have been able
to win Olympic medals at sports competitions in 1911, taking second
place in the eternal medal table. In 1980, the then Soviet capital
Moscow hosted the Summer Olympics for the first time. The Black Sea
resort of Sochi hosted the Winter Olympics in Russia for the first time
in 2014. In addition, Russia is often the venue of international
competitions, such as World and European Championships. For example, in
2018, Russia hosted the Football World Cup for the first time, which
took place in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, but also in the exclave of
Kaliningrad, among other places. In motorsport, Russia has a former
Formula 1 driver in Vitaly Petrov and an active one in Daniil Kvyat. The
DTM and the Superbike World Championship have also been guests in
Moscow.
Russia is also a domain in ice speedway sports and the
Russian ice speedway pilots have been world ice speedway champions in
series. The cities of Togliatti and Balakovo are the centers of Russian
speedway motorcycle racing.
In boxing, the country is also one of
the top in the world. Since the end of the Soviet Union, Russian amateur
boxers have won 10× gold, 6× silver and 15× bronze at the Olympic Games
since 1996. Together with 14× gold, 19× silver and 18× bronze at the
Olympic Games from Soviet times, Russia is currently in 2nd place in the
eternal medal table with a total of 84 Olympic medals, behind the USA
with 114 medals and ahead of Cuba with 73 medals (as of the 2016
Olympics). From 1993 to 2017, Russian boxers also won 45 gold medals at
world championships.
Rugby union is also becoming increasingly
popular. The Russian national team has so far qualified for two Rugby
Union World Championships (2011 and 2019), but has not yet reached the
knockout stage. Russia is one of the participants in the European Rugby
Union Championship, where it meets other emerging national teams.
Especially matches against political rival Georgia are attracting a lot
of interest and are considered a kind of "David vs Goliath", also due to
Russia's negative winning record against its southern neighbor. Since
2021, Russia and Romania have been playing the Kiseleff Cup; this trophy
is named after Duke Pavel Kiselyov, a Russian who played a decisive role
in drafting the first constitution for the two principalities of
Wallachia and Moldova (today's Romania and Moldova). The home stadium is
the Central Stadium in Sochi.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
accuses Russia of carrying out systematic, state-controlled doping for
years; the manipulations were "directed, controlled and monitored" by
the Ministry of Sports, supported by the FSB domestic intelligence
Service and concerned almost all sports, especially in the Russian
Athletics Federation there is a "deep-rooted culture of fraud". Numerous
positive doping samples from Russian athletes were exchanged at the 2013
World Championships in Athletics in Moscow, but also at the 2014 Winter
Olympics in Sochi and at the 2015 World Swimming Championships in Kazan.
In November 2015, WADA revoked the accreditation of the Russian national
anti-doping agency RUSADA; a few days later, the World Athletics
Federation (IAAF) excluded the Russian track and field athletes from all
international competitions - including the Olympic Games in Rio de
Janeiro – until further notice. Also, the Russian weightlifters were not
allowed to compete in Rio after a corresponding decision of the World
federation IWF.
Russian sports science research is also affected
by this. While training science has long benefited from the successes of
athletes through systematic planning and development, such as the
periodization of athletic training, the innovation lead has shrunk in
recent years, as the methods have proven to be less successful with a
simultaneous reduction in doping. A long-term analysis of the leading
Soviet / Russian training scientific journal Theory and Practice of
Physical Culture (Moscow) showed that the literature used in the journal
was getting older and older, and today, with an average age of
literature of 15 years, the journal has deteriorated by more than ten
years compared to the 1980s. Meanwhile, the inclusion of covert doping
methods is also being published, as nanotechnology still largely eludes
the controls of WADA.
In December 2019, the World Anti-Doping
Agency (WADA) banned the Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA for four
years and imposed an Olympic ban on the Russian team after various
doping scandals - including the manipulation of athletes' data. The
proceedings on Russian state doping are scheduled to be heard at the
International Court of Sport (CAS) in autumn 2020. The CAS set the date
for the hearing as 2 to 5 November. RUSADA has filed an objection to the
CAS against this.