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USSR

USSR

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, abbreviated USSR ( (СССР) ; tr.: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik [SSSR])), more commonly known as the Soviet Union (; tr.: Sovetsky Soyuz) was an officially socialist state founded in 1922, centered on Russia, and dissolved in 1991. From 1945 until its dissolution it was historically notable as one of the world's two superpowers. The formation of the Soviet Union was the culmination of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which overthrew short-lived Provisional Government (established after Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on March 15, 1917), and later the Red Army victory in the violent Russian Civil War from 1918-1920. The geographic boundaries of the Soviet Union varied with time, but by 1945 it approximately corresponded to that of historic Imperial Russia, with the notable exclusions of Poland and Finland. The geographic size of the Soviet Union remained from 1945 until its dissolution. The Soviet Union, founded three decades before the Cold War, became a primary model for future Communist states; the socialist government and the political organization of the country were defined by the only permitted political party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

History

The Soviet Union is traditionally considered to be the successor of the Russian Empire. The last Russian monarch, Tsar Nicholas II, ruled until March 1917 and was eventually executed. The Soviet Union was established in December 1922 as the union of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by Bolshevik parties. By Soviet historiography, revolutionary activity in Russia began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was abolished in 1861, its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament, the State Duma, was established in 1906, after the 1905 Revolution but political and social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages. A spontaneous popular uprising in Petrograd, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's physical well-being and morale, culminated in the toppling of the imperial government in March 1917 (see February Revolution). The autocracy was replaced by the Provisional Government, whose leaders intended to establish democracy in Russia and to continue participating on the side of the Allies in World War I. At the same time, to ensure the rights of the working class, workers' councils, known as soviets, sprang up across the country. The radical Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, agitated for socialist revolution in the soviets and on the streets. They seized power from the Provisional Government in November 1917 (see October Revolution). Only after the long and bloody Russian Civil War of (1918-1921), which included combat between government forces and foreign troops in several parts of Russia, was the new communist regime secure. In a related conflict, the "Peace of Riga" in early 1921 split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and Soviet powers. From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks called themselves beginning in March 1918. After the extraordinary economic policy of war communism during the Civil War the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy). Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to contend for power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating his rivals within the party, notably Lenin's more obvious heir Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin became the sole leader of the Soviet Union by the end of the 1920s. In 1928 Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. In industry the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization; in agriculture collective farms were established all over the country (see Collectivisation in the USSR). The Soviet Union became a major industrial power; but the plan's implementation produced widespread misery for some segments of the population. Collectivization met widespread resistance from peasants, resulting in a bitter struggle against the authorities in many areas, famine, and estimated millions of casualties. Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s, when Stalin began a purge of the party (see Great Purges). Yet despite this turmoil, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II. Although Stalin tried to avert war with Germany by concluding the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which involved the invasion of Poland, in 1939, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It has been debated that the Soviet Union had the intention of invading Germany once it was strong enough. The Red Army stopped the Nazi offensive, with the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 being the major turning point, and drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945 (see Great Patriotic War). Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as an acknowledged superpower. superpower after the fall of Nazi Germany]] During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first rebuilt and then expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. The Soviet Union aided postwar reconstruction in Eastern Europe, set up the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, supplied aid to the eventually victorious communists in the People's Republic of China, and saw its influence grow elsewhere in the world. Meanwhile, the Cold War, turned the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, into foes. Joseph Stalin died on March 5 1953. In the absence of an acceptable successor, the highest Communist Party officials opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly, although a struggle for power took place behind the facade of collective leadership. Nikita Khrushchev, who won the power struggle by the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of repression and eased repressive controls over party and society (see de-Stalinization). During this period the Soviet Union launched the first satellite Sputnik 1 and man Yuri Gagarin into orbit. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive, and foreign policy toward China and the United States suffered reverses. Khrushchev's colleagues in the leadership removed him from power in 1964. Following the ouster of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued, lasting until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in Soviet political life. Brezhnev presided over a period of Détente with the West while at the same time building up Soviet military strength; the arms buildup contributed to the demise of Détente in the late 1970s. Another contributing factor was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. After some experimentation with economic reforms in the mid-1960s, the Soviet leadership reverted to established means of economic management. Industry showed slow but steady gains during the 1970s, while agricultural development continued to lag. Throughout the period the Soviet Union maintained parity with the United States in the areas of military technology but this expansion ultimately crippled the economy. In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, transitional figures with deep roots in Brezhnevite tradition, the energetic Mikhail Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy (see Perestroika) and the party leadership. His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of government regulations. In late 1980s constituent republics of the Soviet Union started declaring sovereignty over their territories or even independence citing Article 72 of USSR Constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede. Many republics proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as "The War of Laws." In 1989 Russian SFSR, which was then the largest constituent republic (with about 2/3 of population and territory) convened a Congress of Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Congress. On June 12, 1989 the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the USSR's laws. The period of legal uncertainty continued for the next three years as constituent republics slowly growing de-facto independent. A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on March 17, 1991, with the population voting for preservation of the Union in most republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost, and in the summer of 1991 an new Union Treaty was designed and agreed upon by most republics which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation. The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup - an attempted coup d'état against Mikhail Gorbachev by conservative members of the Communist Party, referred to as "Hardliners" by the Western media. After the coup was defeated, Yeltsin came out as a hero while Gorbachev's power was greatly reduced. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were immediately granted independence, while the other 12 republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union. On December 8 1991 Presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed Belavezha Accords which declared the Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place. While doubts remained over their authority to dissolve the Union, on 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned as the president of the USSR and turned the powers of his office over to Boris Yeltsin. The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning nation. Many organizations such as the Red Army and Police forces continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992, but were slowly phased out or absorbed by the newly independent nations.

Politics

Supreme Soviet] The government of the Soviet Union administered the country's economy and society. It implemented decisions made by the leading political institution in the country, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In the late 1980s, the government appeared to have many characteristics in common with democratic political systems. For instance, a constitution established all organs of government and granted to citizens a series of political and civic rights. A legislative body, the Congress of People's Deputies, and its standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, represented the principle of popular sovereignty. The Supreme Soviet, which had an elected chairman who functioned as head of state, oversaw the Council of Ministers, which acted as the executive branch of the government. The chairman of the Council of Ministers, whose selection was approved by the legislative branch, functioned as head of government. A constitutionally based judicial branch of government included a court system, headed by the Supreme Court, that was responsible for overseeing the observance of Soviet law by government bodies. According to the 1977 Soviet Constitution, the government had a federal structure, permitting the republics some authority over policy implementation and offering the national minorities the appearance of participation in the management of their own affairs. In practice, however, the government differed markedly from Western systems. In the late 1980s, the CPSU performed many functions that governments of other countries usually perform. For example, the party decided on the policy alternatives that the government ultimately implemented. The government merely ratified the party's decisions to lend them an aura of legitimacy. The CPSU used a variety of mechanisms to ensure that the government adhered to its policies. The party, using its nomenklatura authority, placed its loyalists in leadership positions throughout the government, where they were subject to the norms of democratic centralism. Party bodies closely monitored the actions of government ministries, agencies, and legislative organs. The content of the Soviet Constitution differed in many ways from typical Western constitutions. It generally described existing political relationships, as determined by the CPSU, rather than prescribing an ideal set of political relationships. The Constitution was long and detailed, giving technical specifications for individual organs of government. The Constitution included political statements, such as foreign policy goals, and provided a theoretical definition of the state within the ideological framework of Marxism-Leninism. The CPSU leadership could radically change the constitution or remake it completely, as it did several times throughout its history. The Council of Ministers acted as the executive body of the government. Its most important duties lay in the administration of the economy. The council was thoroughly under the control of the CPSU, and its chairman - the Soviet prime minister - was always a member of the Politburo. The council, which in 1989 included more than 100 members, was too large and unwieldy to act as a unified executive body. The council's Presidium, made up of the leading economic administrators and led by the chairman, exercised dominant power within the Council of Ministers. According to the Constitution, as amended in 1988, the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union was the Congress of People's Deputies, which convened for the first time in May 1989. The main tasks of the congress were the election of the standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, and the election of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, who acted as head of state. Theoretically, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet wielded enormous legislative power. In practice, however, the Congress of People's Deputies met infrequently and only to approve decisions made by the party, the Council of Ministers, and its own Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers had substantial authority to enact laws, decrees, resolutions, and orders binding on the population. The Congress of People's Deputies had the authority to ratify these decisions. The judiciary was not independent. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts and applied the law, as established by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union lacked an adversarial court procedure known to common law jurisdictions. Rather, Soviet law utilised the system derived from Roman law, where judge, procurator and defense attorney worked collaboratively to establish the truth. The Soviet Union was a federal state made up of fifteen republics joined together in a theoretically voluntary union. In turn, a series of territorial units made up the republics. The republics also contained jurisdictions intended to protect the interests of national minorities. The republics had their own constitutions, which, along with the all-union Constitution, provide the theoretical division of power in the Soviet Union. In 1989, however, the CPSU and the central government retained all significant authority, setting policies that were executed by republic, provincial, oblast, and district governments.

Leaders of the Soviet Union

The official leader of the Soviet Union was the First/General Secretary of the CPSU. The head of government was considered the Premier, and the head of state was considered the President. The Soviet leader could also have one (or both) of these positions, along with the position of General-Secretary of the party. :List of Soviet Premiers :(Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (1923-1946); Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (1946-1990); Prime Minister of the USSR (1991)) :List of Soviet Presidents :(Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets (1917-1922); Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1922-1938); Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1938-1989); Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1989-1990); President of the Soviet Union (1990-1991))

Foreign relations

:Main article: Foreign relations of the Soviet Union Foreign relations of the Soviet Union] Once denied diplomatic recognition by the capitalist world, the Soviet Union had official relations with the majority of the nations of the world by the late 1980s. The Soviet Union also had progressed from being an outsider in international organizations and negotiations to being one of the arbiters of Europe's fate after World War II. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the Soviet Union became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions (see Soviet Union and the United Nations). The Soviet Union emerged from World War II as one of the two major world powers, a position maintained for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe (see Eastern Bloc), military strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially into space technology and weaponry. The Soviet Union's growing influence abroad in the postwar years helped lead to a socialist system of states in Eastern Europe united by military and economic agreements. Established in 1949 as an economic bloc of communist countries led by Moscow, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) served as a framework for cooperation among the planned economies of the Soviet Union, and, later, for trade and economic cooperation with the Third World. The military counterpart to the Comecon was the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet economy was also of major importance to Eastern Europe because of imports of vital natural resources from Russia, such as natural gas. Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders and ensured its control of the region by transforming the East European countries into stable allies. Soviet troops intervened in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and cited the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Soviet counterpart to the U.S. Johnson Doctrine and later Nixon Doctrine, and helped oust the Czechoslovak government in 1968, sometimes referred to as the Prague Spring. In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China led to the Sino-Soviet split and a tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The KGB (Committee for State Security), served in a fashion as the Soviet counterpart to both the FBI and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in the U.S. It ran a massive network of informants throughout the Soviet Union, which was used to monitor violations in law. The foreign wing of the KGB was used to gather intelligence in countries around the globe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was replaced in Russia by the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). The KGB was not without substantial oversight. The GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), not publicized by Russia until the end of the Soviet era during perestroika, was created by Lenin in 1918 and served both as a centralized handler of military intelligence and as an institutional check-and-balance for the otherwise relatively unrestricted power of the KGB. Effectively, it served to spy on the spies, and, not surprisingly, the KGB served a similar function with the GRU. As with the KGB, the GRU operated in nations around the world, particularly in Soviet bloc and client states. The GRU continues to operate in Russia today, with resources estimated by some to exceed those of the SVR [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/gru/] [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/svr/c103-gb.htm]. military intelligence]] In the 1970s, the Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States. It perceived its own involvement as essential to the solution of any major international problem. Meanwhile, the Cold War gave way to Détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer clearly split into two clearly opposed blocs. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two superpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). By this time, the Soviet Union had concluded friendship and cooperation treaties with a number of states in the non-communist world, especially among Third World and Non-Aligned Movement states like India and Egypt. Notwithstanding some ideological obstacles, Moscow advanced state interests by gaining military footholds in strategically important areas throughout the Third World. Furthermore, the Soviet Union continued to provide military aid for revolutionary movements in the Third World. For all these reasons, Soviet foreign policy was of major importance to the non-communist world and helped determine the tenor of international relations. Although myriad bureaucracies were involved in the formation and execution of Soviet foreign policy, the major policy guidelines were determined by the Politburo of the Communist Party. The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy had been the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance of hegemony over Eastern Europe. Relations with the United States and Western Europe were also of major concern to Soviet foreign policy makers, and relations with individual Third World states were at least partly determined by the proximity of each state to the Soviet border and to Soviet estimates of its strategic significance. When Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985, it signalled a dramatic change in Soviet foreign policy. Gorbachev pursued conciliatory policies toward the West instead of maintaining the Cold War status quo. The Soviet Union ended its occupation of Afghanistan, signed strategic arms reduction treaties with the United States, and allowed its allies in Eastern Europe to determine their own affairs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 25 December, 1991, the Russian Federation claimed to be the legal successor to the Soviet state on the international stage despite its loss of superpower status. Russian foreign policy repudiated Marxism-Leninism as a guide to action, soliciting Western support for capitalist reforms in post-Soviet Russia.

Republics

Russian Federation)]] The Soviet Union was a federation of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR). The first Republics were established shortly after the October Revolution of 1917. At that time, republics were technically independent from one another but their governments acted in closely coordinated confederation, as directed by the CPSU leadership. In 1922, four Republics (Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belarusian SSR, and Transcaucasian SFSR) joined into the Soviet Union. Between 1922 and 1940, the number of Republics grew to sixteen. Some of the new Republics were formed from territories acquired, or reacquired by the Soviet Union, others by splitting existing Republics into several parts. The criteria for establishing new republics were as follows: # to be located on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to exercise their alleged right to secession; # be economically strong enough to survive on their own upon secession; and # be named after the dominant ethnic group which should consist of at least one million people. The system remained almost unchanged after 1940. No new Republics were established. One republic, Karelo-Finnish SSR, was disbanded in 1956. The remaining 15 republics lasted until 1991. Secession remained theoretical, and very unlikely, given Soviet centralism, until the 1991 collapse of the Union. At that time, the republics became independent countries, with some still loosely organized under the heading Commonwealth of Independent States. Some republics had common history and geographical regions, and were referred by group names. These were Baltic Republics, Transcaucasian Republics, and Central Asian Republics. In its final state, the Soviet Union consisted of the following republics. (See Republics of the Soviet Union for the list and timeline of other Union republics that existed over time.)

Economy

Republics of the Soviet Union power stations in the Soviet Union]] Prior to its collapse, the Soviet Union had the largest centrally directed economy in the world. The government established its economic priorities through central planning, a system under which administrative decisions rather than the market determined resource allocation and prices. Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the country grew from a largely underdeveloped peasant society with minimal industry to become the second largest industrial power in the world. According to Soviet statistics, the country's share in world industrial production grew from 4 percent to 20 percent between 1913 and 1980. Although many Western analysts considered these claims to be inflated, the Soviet achievement remained remarkable. Recovering from the calamitous events of World War II, the country's economy had maintained a continuous though uneven rate of growth. Living standards, although still modest for most inhabitants by Western standards, had improved. Although these past achievements were impressive, in the mid-1980s Soviet leaders faced many problems. Production in the consumer and agricultural sectors was often inadequate (see Agriculture of the Soviet Union and shortage economy). Crises in the agricultural sector reaped catastrophic consequences in the 1930s, when collectivization met widespread resistance from the kulaks, resulting in a bitter struggle of many peasants against the authorities, famine, particularly in Ukraine, but also in the Volga River area and Kazakhstan. In the consumer and service sectors, a lack of investment resulted in black markets in some areas. black market] In addition, since the 1970s, the growth rate had slowed substantially. Extensive economic development, based on vast inputs of materials and labor, was no longer possible; yet the productivity of Soviet assets remained low compared with other major industrialized countries. Product quality needed improvement. Soviet leaders faced a fundamental dilemma: the strong central controls that had traditionally guided economic development had failed to promote the creativity and productivity urgently needed in a highly developed, modern economy. Conceding the weaknesses of their past approaches in solving new problems, the leaders of the late 1980s were seeking to mold a program of economic reform to galvanize the economy. The leadership, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, was experimenting with solutions to economic problems with an openness (glasnost) never before seen in the history of the economy. One method for improving productivity appeared to be a strengthening of the role of market forces. Yet reforms in which market forces assumed a greater role would signify a lessening of authority and control by the planning hierarchy. Assessing developments in the economy was difficult for Western observers. The country contained enormous economic and regional disparities. Yet analyzing statistical data broken down by region was a cumbersome process. Furthermore, Soviet statistics themselves might have been of limited use to Western analysts because they are not directly comparable with those used in Western countries. The differing statistical concepts, valuations, and procedures used by communist and noncommunist economists made even the most basic data, such as the relative productivity of various sectors, difficult to assess.

Geography

The Soviet Union occupied the eastern portion of the European continent and the northern portion of the Asian continent. Most of the country was north of 50° north latitude and covered a total area of approximately 22,402,200 square kilometres. Due to the sheer size of the state, the climate varied greatly from subtropical and continental to subarctic and polar. 11 percent of the land was arable, 16 percent was meadows and pasture, 41 percent was forest and woodland, and 32 percent was declared "other" (including tundra). The Soviet Union measured some 10,000 kilometers from Kaliningrad on the Gulf of Gdańsk in the west to Ratmanova Island (Big Diomede Island) in the Bering Strait, or roughly equivalent to the distance from Edinburgh, Scotland, east to Nome, Alaska. From the tip of the Taymyr Peninsula on the Arctic Ocean to the Central Asian town of Kushka near the Afghan border extended almost 5,000 kilometers of mostly rugged, inhospitable terrain. The east-west expanse of the continental United States would easily fit between the northern and southern borders of the Soviet Union at their extremities.

Demographics and society

The Soviet Union was one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries, with more than 150 distinct ethnic groups within its borders. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. The majority of the population were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%). After all Soviet republics gained independence, Russia remained the largest country in the world by area, and still remains one of the most ethnically diverse.

Nationalities

The extensive multinational empire that the Bolsheviks inherited after their revolution was created by Tsarist expansion over some four centuries. Some nationality groups came into the empire voluntarily, others were brought in by force. Generally, the Russians and most of the non-Russian subjects of the empire shared little in common—culturally, religiously, or linguistically. More often than not, two or more diverse nationalities were collocated on the same territory. Therefore, national antagonisms built up over the years not only against the Russians but often between some of the subject nations as well. For seventy years, Soviet leaders had maintained that frictions between the many nationalities of the Soviet Union had been eliminated and that the Soviet Union consisted of a family of nations living harmoniously together. However, the national ferment that shook almost every corner of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s proved that seventy years of communist rule had failed to obliterate national and ethnic differences and that traditional cultures and religions would reemerge given the slightest opportunity. This reality facing Gorbachev and his colleagues meant that, short of relying on the traditional use of force, they had to find alternative solutions in order to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The concessions granted national cultures and the limited autonomy tolerated in the union republics in the 1920s led to the development of national elites and a heightened sense of national identity. Subsequent repression and Russianization fostered resentment against domination by Moscow and promoted further growth of national consciousness. National feelings were also exacerbated in the Soviet multinational state by increased competition for resources, services, and jobs.

Religious groups

linguistically]] The state was separated from church by the Decree of Council of People's Comissars 1918 January 23. Official figures on the number of religious believers in the Soviet Union were not available in 1989. But according to various Soviet and Western sources, over one-third of the people in the Soviet Union, an officially atheistic state, professed religious belief. Christianity and Islam had the most believers. Christians belonged to various churches: Orthodox, which had the largest number of followers; Catholic; and Baptist and various other Protestant sects. There were many churches in the country (7500 Russian Orthodox churches in 1974). The majority of the Islamic faithful were Sunni. Although there were many ethnic Jews in the Soviet Union, actual practice of Judaism was rare in Communist times. Jews were the victims of state-sponsored anti-semitism and were one of the few Soviet citizens allowed to emigrate from the country. Other religions, which were practiced by a relatively small number of believers, included Buddhism, Lamaism, and shamanism, a religion based on spiritualism. The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied greatly. Because Islamic religious tenets and social values of Muslims are closely interrelated, religion appeared to have a greater influence on Muslims than on either Christians or other believers. Two-thirds of the Soviet population, however, had no religious beliefs. About half the people, including members of the CPSU and high-level government officials, professed atheism. For the majority of Soviet citizens, therefore, religion seemed irrelevant.

Culture

shamanism] All media in the Soviet Union were controlled by the state including television and radio broadcasting, newspaper, magazine and book publishing. This extended to the fine arts including the theatre, opera and ballet. Art and Music was controlled by ownership of distribution and performance venues. Censorship was made in cases where performances did not meet with the favour of the Soviet leadership with newspaper campaigns against offending material and sanctions applied though party controlled professional organizations.
- Soviet education
- Soviet cinema
- Soviet television
- USSR at the Summer Olympics
- USSR at the Winter Olympics
- USSR Chess Championship
- Palace of Culture
- Research in the Soviet Union
- Soviet Ballroom dances
- Soviet Student Olympiads
- Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Holidays

Related articles


- Post-Soviet states
- Prometheism
- List of Soviet Leaders
- List of premiers of the Soviet Union
- List of the presidents of the Soviet Union

Further reading


- Brown, Archie, et al, eds.: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
- Gilbert, Martin: The Routledge Atlas of Russian History (London: Routledge, 2002).
- Goldman, Minton: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Connecticut: Global Studies, Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1986).
- Howe, G. Melvyn: The Soviet Union: A Geographical Survey 2nd. edn. (Estover, UK: MacDonald and Evans, 1983).
- Katz, Zev, ed.: Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (New York: Free Press, 1975).
- Rizzi, Bruno: "The bureaucratization of the world : the first English ed. of the underground Marxist classic that analyzed class exploitation in the USSR" , New York, NY : Free Press, 1985

External links


- [http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art/photography/index.htm Images of the Soviet Union] - a collection of photos showing everyday life in the Soviet Union
- [http://geocities.com/deweytextsonline/isr.htm Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey]
- [http://www.n-wisdom.com/map_volume/world_map/Western_Soviet_Union_map.jpg Map of Western USSR]
- [http://www.angelfire.com/de/Cerskus/english/saitai.html Leonas Cerskus (the highest judge, a God):Crimes against Humanity committed by the Soviet Union]
- [http://koeln.tucker.in/music/gimn_sowjetskowo_sojusa.mp3 Melody of the Soviet National Anthem]
- Vladimir Lenin: What Is Soviet Power? (Text of the speech, )

References


- - [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sutoc.html Soviet Union] Category:Communism Category:Former countries Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia Category:Former countries in Europe ko:소비에트 연방 ja:ソビエト連邦 simple:Soviet Union th:สหภาพโซเวียต

Abbreviation

Abbreviation (from Latin brevis "short") is strictly a shorter form of a word, but more particularly, an abbreviation is a letter or group of letters, taken from a word or words, and employed to represent them for the sake of brevity. For example, the word "abbreviation" can be abbreviated as "abbr." or "abbrev."

Types of abbreviations

Apart from the common form of shortening one word, there are other types of abbreviations. These include apocopations, syllabic abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms and portmanteaux.

Syllabic abbreviations (SAs)

A syllabic abbreviation is an abbreviation formed from (usually) initial syllables of several words, such as Interpol = International + police. Syllabic abbreviations are usually written using lower case, sometimes starting with a capital letter, and are always pronounced as words rather than letter by letter. Syllabic abbreviations should be distinguished from portmanteaus.

Usage of syllabic abbreviations in different languages

Syllabic abbreviations are not widely used in English or French. On the other hand, they prevailed in Germany under the Nazis and in the Soviet Union for naming the plethora of new bureaucratic organizations. For example, Gestapo stands for Geheime Staats-Polizei, or "secret state police". Similarly, Comintern stands for the Communist International. This has caused syllabic abbreviations to have negative connotation, notwithstanding that such abbreviations were used in Germany even before the Nazis came to power, e.g., Schupo for Schutzpolizei. Syllabic abbreviations were also typical for the German language used in the German Democratic Republic, e.g. Stasi for Staatssicherheit ("state security", the secret police) or Vopo for Volkspolizist ("people's policeman"). East Asian languages whose writing uses Chinese-originated ideograms instead of an alphabet form abbreviations similarly by using key characters from a term or phrase. For example, in Japanese the term for the United Nations, kokusai rengō (国際連合) is often abbreviated to kokuren (国連). (Such abbreviations are called ryakugo (略語) in Japanese). The classic example is, of course, shogun. The syllabic abbreviation is frequently used for universities: for instance, Beida (北大, Běidà) for Peking University (Beijing) and Tōdai (東大) for the University of Tokyo.

Usage of syllabic abbreviations in organisations

Syllabic abbreviations are prefered by the US Navy as it increases readability amidst the large number of initialisms that would otherwise have to fit into the same acronyms. Hence DESRON 6 is used (in the full capital form) to mean "Destroyer Squadron 6," while COMNAVFORLANT would be "Commander, Naval Force (in the) Atlantic."

Style conventions

In modern English there are several conventions for abbreviations and the choice may be confusing. The only rule universally accepted is that one should be consistent, and to this end publishers express their preferences in a style guide. Questions which arise include the following:
- Use of upper or lower case letters. If the original word was capitalised, then the first letter of its abbreviation should retain the capital, for example Lev. for Leviticus. When abbreviating words spelt with lower case letters, there is no consistent rule.
- Use of periods (full stops) and spaces, for example when abbreviating United States, should one write "US", "U.S." or "U. S."? Spaces are generally not used between single letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters "U. S.". In American English, the period is usually added if the abbreviation may be interpreted as a word, though some American writers do not use a period here. There is no stop/period between letters of the same word, for example St. and not S.t. for Saint. In modern British English abbreviations are written with full stops if the word has been cut at the point of abbreviation (e.g., "Street" – "St[reet]" – becomes "St."), but not otherwise (e.g., "Saint" – "S[ain]t" – becomes "St"). Thus in the United Kingdom, titles such as "Doctor", "Mister" and "Mistress" are abbreviated as "Dr", "Mr", and "Mrs" respectively, but in Canada and the U.S. as "Dr.", "Mr." and "Mrs." respectively.
- Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since "stood the test of time" by entering the vocabulary as generic words are no longer abbreviated with capital letters nor with any periods—e.g., sonar, radar, laser, and scuba.
- Whether to add an apostrophe for a plural where the plural is not formed by doubling up the last letter: should one write CDs or CD's? The apostrophe is not needed grammatically but sometimes is added to make it clear that the s is not part of the abbreviation. Because the apostrophe most often represents possession or a contraction, some style guides prefer that it not be used at all with abbreviations, but only with individual letters—"Dot all your i's and cross all your t's!" or "Mind your p's and q's!"—or numbers—"The dyslexic student mixes up his S's and 5's." Thus numbers, such as decades, that are understood to represent other concepts, are not written with apostrophes either—e.g., "The U.S. enjoyed an economic boom in the 1990s and the Roaring ’20s", referring to decades, or "I am going to the bank to exchange four 5's for two 10's", where the 5's and 10's refer to banknotes. Conventions followed by publications and newspapers:
- Publications based in the United States tend to follow the style guides of the Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press. The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
  - There is some inconsistency in abbreviation styles, however, as they are not rigorously defined by style guides. Some two-word abbreviations, like "United Nations", are abbreviated with uppercase letters and periods, and others, like "personal computer" (PC) and "compact disc" (CD), are not; rather, they are typically abbreviated without periods and in uppercase letters. A third variation is to use lowercase letters with periods; this is used by Time Magazine in abbreviating "public relations" (p.r.). Moreover, even three-word abbreviations (most U.S. publications use uppercase abbreviations without periods) are sometimes not consistently abbreviated, even within the same article.
  - The New York Times is unique in having a consistent style by always abbreviating with periods: P.C., I.B.M., P.R. This is in contrast with the trend of British publications to completely make do without periods for convenience.
- Many British publications follow some of these guidelines in abbreviation:
  - For the sake of convenience, many British publications, including the BBC and The Guardian, have completely done away with the use of full stops or periods in all abbreviations. These include:
    - Social titles, like Ms or Mr (though these would not have had full stops in any case — see above) Capt, Prof, etc.;
    - Two-letter abbreviations for countries (US, not U.S.);
    - Words are seldom abbreviated with lower case letters (PR, instead of p.r., or pr)
    - Abbreviations beyond three letters (full caps for all except initialisms);
    - Names (e.g., FW de Klerk, GB Whiteley, Park JS). A notable exception is the Economist (e.g., Mr F. W. de Klerk)
    - Scientific units.
  - Acronyms are referred to with only the first letter of the abbreviation capitalised. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation can be abbreviated as Nato, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome as Sars. Initialisms (which are similar to acronyms but which are not pronounced as words) are always written in capitals, for instance the British Broadcasting Corporation is abbreviated to BBC, never Bbc.
  - When abbreviating scientific units, no space is added between the number and unit (e.g., 100mph, 100m, 10cm, 10ºC). Miscellaneous and general rules
- Plurals are often formed by doubling up the last letter of the abbreviation. Most of these deal with writing and publishing: MS=manuscript, MSS=manuscripts; l=line, ll=lines; p=page, pp=pages; s=section, ss=sections). This form, derived from Latin is used in Europe in many places: dd=didots. "The following (lines or pages)" is denoted by ff. One example that does not concern printing is hh=hands.
- A doubled letter also appears in abbreviations of some Welsh names, as in Welsh the double "l" is a separate sound: "Ll. George" for (late British prime minister) Lloyd George.
- Some titles, such as "Reverend" and "Honourable", are spelt out when preceded by "the", rather than as "Rev." or "Hon." respectively. This is true for most British publications, and some in the United States.
- It is usually advised to spell out the abbreviation where it is new or unfamiliar to the reader (e.g., UNESCO in a magazine about music, because it more frequently refers to another entity in another context, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

History

After World War II, the British greatly reduced their use of the full stop and other punctuations after abbreviations in at least semi-formal writing, while the Americans more readily kept its use until more recently, and still maintain it more than Britons. The classic example, considered by their American counterparts quite curious, was the maintenance of the internal comma in a British organization of secret agents called the "Special Operations, Executive" – "S.O.,E." – which is not found in histories written after about 1960. But before that, many Britons were more scrupulous at maintaining the French form. In French, the period only follows an abbreviation if the last letter in the abbreviation is not the last letter of its antecedent: "M." is the abbreviation for "monsieur" while "Mme" is that for "Madame" and "Mlle" for "Mademoiselle". Like many other cross-channel linguistic acquisitions, many Britons readily took this up and followed this rule themselves, while the Americans took a simpler rule and applied it rigorously. Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. The U.S. media tend to abbreviate two-word abbreviations like United States (U.S.), but surprisingly, not personal computer (PC) or television (TV), which is a source of confusion. Many British publications have gradually done away with the use of periods in abbreviations completely.

Examples


- List of classical abbreviations
- List of mediaeval abbreviations
- List of abbreviations in use in 1911
- List of acronyms and initialisms
- The abbreviations used in the 1913 edition of Webster's dictionary

Abbreviation types


- Acronym and initialism
- Apocopation
- TLA
- Syllabic abbreviation
- Portmanteau

See also


- List of syllabic abbreviations
- Neologism, word, term, or phrase which has been recently created
- Internet slang, list of computing and IT abbreviations, list of medical abbreviations, list of government and military acronyms, abbreviations used in CIA World Factbook,
- ISO language code, ISO country code.
- Ditloid

External links


- [http://www.abbreviationz.com/ AbbreviationZ] acronyms, abbreviations & Initialisms directory.
- [http://www.acronyma.com/ Acronyma]—large database of acronyms and abbreviations (over 450,000 entries)
- [http://www.acronymfinder.com/ Acronym Finder]—searchable acronyms and abbreviations site (over 400,000 entries) Category:Abbreviations ja:略語 simple:Abbreviation

Transliteration of Russian into English

There exist many possible systems for transliterating the Cyrillic alphabet of the Russian language to English or the Latin alphabet. Such transliteration is necessary for writing Russian names and other words in English text. It is also essential for the input of Russian text into computer by users who either do not have the keyboard or word processor set up for input of Cyrillic, or else they are not capable of typing rapidly on the distinct Cyrillic keyboard. In the latter case, they would type using a system of transliteration on the QWERTY keyboard and then use an automated tool to convert the text into Cyrillic. Standard Cyrillic-to-English transliteration systems include:
- The United Nations-recommended romanization system (1987), based on GOST. Used in the Russian Federation and increasingly in international cartographic products.
- GOST 16876-71 (1983), from the Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography of the former Soviet Union. Russian abbreviation of GOsudarstvenny STandart, "the State Standard".
- ISO 9:1995, from the International Organization for Standardization.
- America Library Association & Library of Congress (ALA-LC) Romanization tables for Slavic alphabets (1997), used in North American libraries.
- BGN/PCGN 1947 transliteration system (United States Board on Geographic Names & Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use). Note that the transliteration to other languages can be different (for instance: Russian "Воронин" = English "Voronin" = French "Voronine", Горбачёв = Gorbachev = Gorbatchev, etc.).

Conventional transcription of Russian names

The following table describes a method to derive the most common informal transcriptions of Russian names into the Latin alphabet, suitable for English-speakers. It is similar to BGN/PCGN transliteration, with several exceptions.

See also


- Cyrillic alphabet
- Early Cyrillic alphabet
- Volapuk encoding
- Faux Cyrillic
- Kyrillisches Alphabet (from the German Wikipedia) shows how to transliterate between Russian and German.

External links


- [http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Russian.pdf Summary of romanization systems for Russian] (Adobe PDF) by Thomas T. Pederson.
- [http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ru.pdf United Nations-recommended romanization system for Russian] (Adobe PDF)
- [http://www.lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html American Library Association & Library of Congress Romanization]
- [http://RusWin.net Russian transliterated (phonetic) keyboard layout]
- [http://www.eki.ee/knab/p_mm_en.htm Russian toponym translations and transliterations database]
- [http://www.russki-mat.net/trans.htm Transliteration of Russian into various European languages] Category:Romanization Category:Russian language



Russia

The Russian Federation (, transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija), or Russia (Russian: Росси́я, transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija), is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Europe and Asia. With an area of 17,075,200 km² (6,595,600 mi²), it is the largest country in the world (by land mass), covering almost twice the territory of the next-largest country, Canada. It ranks eighth in the world in population. It shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from NW to SE): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (only through Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It is also close to the United States and Japan across stretches of water: the Diomede Islands (one controlled by Russia, the other by the United States) are just 3 km apart, and Kunashir Island (controlled by Russia but claimed by Japan) is about 20 kilometers from Hokkaido. Formerly the dominant republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia is now an independent country, and an influential member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, since the Union's dissolution in December 1991. During the Soviet era, Russia was officially called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Russia is usually considered the Soviet Union's successor state in diplomatic matters. Most of the area, population, and industrial production of the Soviet Union, then one of the world's two superpowers, lay in Russia. After the breakup of the USSR, Russia's global role was greatly diminished, and cannot be compared to that of the former Soviet Union. In October 2005, the federal statistics agency reported that Russia's population has shrunk by more than half a million people dipping to 143 million.

History

Ancient Rus

:This section covers the pre-Russ ancient history of present Russia and its early medieval period, which is historically referred to as Ancient Rus. The vast lands of present Russia were home to disunited tribes who were variously overwhelmed by invading Goths, Huns, and Turkish Avars between the third and sixth centuries C.E. The Iranian Scythians populated the southern steppes, and a Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the western portion of these lands through the 8th century. They in turn were displaced by a group of Scandinavians, the Varangians, who established a capital at the Slavic city of Novgorod and gradually merged with Slavic ruling classes. The Slavs constituted the bulk of the population from the 8th century onwards and slowly assimilated both the Scandinavians as well as native Finno-Ugric tribes, such as the Merya, the Muromians and the Meshchera. Meshchera The Varangian dynasty lasted several centuries, during which they affiliated with the Byzantine, or Orthodox church and moved the capital to Kiev in 1169 A.D. In this era the term "Rhos", or "Russ", first came to be applied to the Varangians and later also to the Slavs who peopled the region. In the 10th to 11th centuries this state of Kievan Rus became the largest in Europe and was quite prosperous, due to diversified trade with both Europe and Asia. Nomadic Turkic people Kipchaks (Polovtsi) conquered southern Russia at the end of 11th century and founded a nomadic state in the steppes along the Black Sea (Desht-e-Kipchak). In the 13th century the area suffered from internal disputes and was overrun by eastern invaders, the Golden Horde of the pagan Mongols and Muslim Turkic-speaking nomads who pillaged the Russian principalities for over three centuries. Also known as the Tatars, they ruled the southern and central expanses of present-day Russia, while its western zone was largely incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland. The political dissolution of Kievan Rus divided the Russian people in the north from the Belarusians and Ukrainians in the west. The northern part of Russia together with Novgorod retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and was largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Nevertheless it had to fight the Germanic crusaders who attempted to colonize the region. Like in the Balkans and Asia Minor long-lasting nomadic rule retarded the country's economic and social development. Asian autocratic influences degraded many of the country's democratic institutions and affected its culture and economy in a very negative way. In spite of this, unlike its spiritual leader, the Byzantine Empire, Russia was able to revive, and organized its own war of reconquest, finally subjugating its enemies and annexing their territories. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Russia remained the only more or less functional Christian state on the Eastern European frontier, allowing it to claim succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Imperial Russia

While still nominally under the domain of the Mongols, the duchy of Moscow began to assert its influence, and eventually tossed off the control of the invaders late in the 14th century. In the beginning of the 16th century the Russian state set the national goal to return all Russian territories lost as a result of the Mongolian invasion and to protect the borderland against attacks of hordes. The noblemen, receiving a manor from the sovereign, were obliged to serve in the army. The manor system became a basis for the nobiliary horse army. The Russian state persistently battled against Nogai-Horde and Crimean khanat which were successors of the Golden Horde. Russians, captivated by nomads, were on sale on Crimean slave markets. In 1571 Crimean khan Devlet-Girei, with a horde of 120 thousand horsemen, devastated Moscow. Annually thousands of Russians became victims of attacks by nomads. Tens of thousand of soldiers protected the southern borderland--a heavy burden for the state--which slowed its social and economic development. Ivan the Great first took the title Tsar (from the Roman Caesar, also written Czar) of Moscow following his marriage to Sofia, a Byzantine Princess (niece of the last Byzantine Emperor) consolidated surrounding areas under Moscow's dominion. At the end of 16 centuries Russian cossacks established the first settlements in Western Siberia. To the middle of 17th century Russian settlements were in Eastern Siberia, on Chukotka, the river Amur, coast of Pacific ocean. In 1648 Cossack Semyon Dezhnev opened the passage between America and Asia. The Russian Empire was born. Russian Empire] Muscovite control of the nascent nation continued after the Polish intervention 1605-1612 under the subsequent Romanov dynasty, beginning with Tsar Michael Romanov in 1613. Peter the Great, who ruled from 1689 to 1725, succeeded in bringing ideas and culture from Western Europe to a Russia which had been affected by primitive nomadic cultures. Catherine the Great, ruling from 1762 to 1796, enhanced this effort, establishing Russia not just as an Asian power, but on an equal footing with Britain, France, and Germany in Europe. She enlarged the Russian territory by the Partitions of Poland. Russia has taken territories with the ethnic Belarus and Ukrainian population, earlier parts of the medieval Kievan Rus'. As a result of victorious Russian-Turkish wars Russia reached to Black sea and has set as the purpose protection of Balkan Christians against a Turkish yoke. In 1783 Russia and Georgian Kingdom (which was almost totally devastated by Persian and Turkish invasions) have signed the treatise of Georgiev according to which Georgia has received protection of Russia. In 1812, having gathered nearly half a million soldiers from France, as well as from all of its vassal states in Europe, Napoleon entered Russia and was defeated by Russian troops. In 1813 Russian army defeated the French armies in Germany. Russia has won in the War of 1877-1878 and Ottoman Empire recognized the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and autonomy of Bulgaria. Unrest of the peasants and suppression of the growing Intelligentsia were continuing problems however, and on the eve of World War I, the position of Tsar Nicholas II and his dynasty appeared precarious. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the Romanovs. At the close of this Russian Revolution of 1917, a Marxist political faction called the Bolsheviks seized power in St. Petersburg and Moscow under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party. A bloody civil war ensued, pitting the Bolsheviks' Red Army against a loose confederation of anti-socialist monarchist and bourgeois forces known as the White Army. The Red Army triumphed, and the Soviet Union was formed in 1922.

Russia as part of Soviet Union

The Soviet Union was to be a transnational worker's state free from nationalism, which Leninism teaches is a ruse used by the bourgeoisie to keep the international working classes from realizing their common exploited position and overthrowing the bourgeois. The concept of Russia as a separate national entity was therefore downplayed in the early Soviet Union. Although Russian institutions and cities certainly remained dominant, many non-Russians participated in the new government at all levels. One of these was a Georgian named Joseph Stalin. A brief power struggle ensued after Lenin's death in 1924. Stalin gradually eroded the various checks and balances which had been designed into the Soviet political system and assumed dictatorial power by the end of the decade. Leon Trotsky and almost all other Old Bolsheviks from the time of the Revolution were killed or exiled. As the 1930s began, Stalin launched the Great Purges, a massive series of political repressions. Millions of people who Stalin suspected of being a threat to his power in some way were executed or exiled to Gulag labor camps in remote areas of Siberia. Stalin forced rapid industrialization of the largely rural country and collectivization of its agriculture. Stalin also strengthened Russian dominance within the Soviet Union as he buttressed his own hold on power. In 1928, Stalin introduced his "First Five-Year Plan" for modernizing the Soviet economy. Most economic output was immediately diverted to establishing heavy industry. Civilian industry was modernized and heavy weapon factories established with German and US assistance. The plan worked, in some sense, as the Soviet Union successfully transformed from an agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse in an unbelievably short span of time, but widespread misery and famine ensued for many millions of people as a result of the severe economic upheaval. In 1939 the USSR was in strong opposition to nazi Germany, and supported the republicans in Spain who struggled against German and Italian troops. However, in 1938 Germany and the other major European powers signed the Munich treaty. Germany then divided Czechoslovakia with Poland. The Soviet government, being afraid of a German attack to the USSR, began diplomatic maneuvers. In 1939 Poland refused to participate in any measures of collective safety, so the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. On September, 17, 1939, when German armies were within 150 kilometers of the Soviet border, the Soviet army invaded eastern portions of Poland, populated by ethnic Ukrainians and Belorussians. The Soviet Union staged an artillery attack it claimed had come from neighboring Finland, and invaded it in an attempt to secure itself against future invasion by Germany (which Finland had good relations with) and to gain control of the country, separating it from Europe, and most importantly, from Germany. This conflict is now known as the Winter War. The invasion was a slight disappointment as only the eastern parts of Finland (Karelia) were occupied. This lead to Finland allying with Germany in order to gain revenge. Germany and its allies (Hungary, Italy, Finland, Romania) invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Although the Wehrmacht reached the outskirts of Moscow, the Red Army stopped the Nazi offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, which became the decisive turning point for Germany's fortunes in the war. The Soviets drove through Eastern Europe and captured Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945 (see Great Patriotic War). About 10 million Soviet citizens became victims of the oppressive policies and war crimes of Germany and its allies in the occupied territory. Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as an acknowledged great power. The Red Army occupied Eastern Europe after the war, including the eastern half of Germany. Stalin installed loyal Communist governments in these satellite states. During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first rebuilt and then expanded its economy, with control always exerted exclusively from Moscow. The Soviets extracted heavy war reparations from the areas of Germany under their control, mostly in the form of machinery and industrial equipment. The Soviet Union consolidated its hold on eastern Europe (see Eastern bloc). The United States helped the western European countries establish democracies, and both countries sought to achieve economic, political, and ideological dominance over the Third World. The ensuing struggle became known as the Cold War, which turned the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, into its foes. Stalin died in early 1953 without leaving any instructions for the selection of a successor. His closest associates officially decided to rule the Soviet Union jointly, but secret police chief Lavrenty Beria appeared poised to seize dictatorial control. General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev organized an anti-Beria alliance and staged a coup d'etat. Beria was arrested in June of 1953 and executed later that year; Khrushchev became the undisputed leader of the USSR. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the earth. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive, and foreign policy toward China and the United States suffered reverses, notably the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he began installing nuclear missles in Cuba and nearly provoked a war with the United States. Over the course of several angry outbursts at the United Nations, Khrushchev was increasingly seen by his colleagues as belligerent, boorish, and dangerous. The remainder of the Soviet leadership removed him from power in 1964. Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued, lasting until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in Soviet political life. Brezhnev is frequently derided by historians for stagnating the development of the Soviet Union. In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. In the mid and late 1980s, the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. He introduced the landmark policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), in an attempt to modernize Soviet communism. Glasnost meant that the harsh restrictions on free speech that had characterized most of the Soviet Union's existence were removed, and open political discourse and criticism of the government became possible again. Perestroika meant sweeping economic reforms designed to decentralize the planning of the Soviet economy. However, his initiatives provoked strong resentment amongst conservative elements of the government, and an unsuccessful military coup that attempted to remove Gorbachev from power instead led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin seized power in Russia and declared the end of exclusive Communist rule. The USSR splintered into 15 independent republics, and was officially dissolved in December of 1991 (see History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)). Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and a market economy to replace the strict centralized social, political, and economic controls of the Soviet era.

Post-Soviet Russia

market economy Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin had been elected President of Russia in June 1991 in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. In October 1991, as Russia was on the verge of independence, Yeltsin announced that Russia would proceed with radical market-oriented reform along the lines of Poland's "big bang," also known as "shock therapy." After the disintegration of the USSR, the economy of Russia went through a crisis. Outside Russia, in the newly independent states, were most of the nonfreezing ports, consumer goods factories, former Soviet pipelines, and significant numbers of the hi-tech enterprises (including the atomic power station). In Russia there was mainly heavy and military industry. Russia has taken up the responsibility for payment of the USSR's external debts, though its population is 50% of the population of the USSR. The largest state enterprises (a petroleum industry, metallurgy) have been privatized for the small sum of $US 600 million, which is far less than they were worth. Russia's Congress of People's Deputies attempted to impeach Yeltsin on 1993-03-26. Yeltsin's opponents gathered more than 600 votes for impeachment, but fell 72 votes short. On 1993-09-21, Yeltsin disbanded the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies by decree, which was illegal under the constitution. On September 21 there was a military showdown, the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993. With military help, Yeltsin held control. The conflict resulted in a number of civilian casualties, and was resolved in Yeltsin's favor. Elections were held on 1993-12-12. Since the Chechnyan seperatists declared independence in the early 1990s, an intermittent guerrilla war (First Chechen War, Second Chechen War) has been fought between disparate Chechen groups and the Russian military. Some of these groups have become increasingly Islamist over the course of the struggle. It is estimated that over 200,000 people have died in this conflict. Minor conflicts also exist in North Ossetia and Ingushetia. After Yeltsin's presidency in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000. Under Putin, the intensified state control of the Russian media has raised Western concerns over Russian civil liberties. At the same time, the rising oil prices, tensions, and war in the Middle East have helped increase Russia's revenue from oil production and export, and have stimulated economic expansion. Putin's presidency has shown improvements in the Russian standard of living, as compared to the 1990s; despite acute crises, human rights abuses, and largely criticized government failures.

Politics

The Russian Federation is a federal republic with a president, directly elected for a four-year term, who holds considerable executive power. The president, who resides in the Kremlin, nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister (or premier), who must be approved by the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, and governors, who must be approved by regional legislatures. The president can pass decrees (executive orders) without consent from Parliament and is also head of the armed forces and of the Russian National Security Council. Russia's bicameral parliament, the Federal Assembly (Russian: Федеральное Собрание, English transliteration: Federalnoye Sobraniye) consists of an upper house known as the Federation Council (Совет Федерации, Sovet Federatsii), composed of 178 delegates, which are appointed by executive and legislative bodies of each of 89 federal subjects for the term of four or five years, and a lower house known as the State Duma (Государственная Дума, Gosudarstvennaya Duma), comprising 450 deputies also serving a four-year term, of which 225 are elected by direct popular vote from single member constituencies and 225 are elected by proportional representation from nation-wide party lists. From the next elections, which are to be held in December 2007, all 450 members of the Duma will be elected from party lists.

Subdivisions

:See also: Federal districts of Russia, Federal subjects of Russia, Republics of Russia, Oblasts of Russia, Krais of Russia, Autonomous Oblasts of Russia, Autonomous Districts of Russia, Federal cities of Russia. Federal cities of Russia The Russian Federation consists of a great number of different federal subjects, making a total of 88 constituent components. There are 21 republics within the federation that enjoy a high degree of autonomy on most issues and these correspond to some of Russia's ethnic minorities. The remaining territory consists of 48 oblasts (provinces) and 7 krais (territories), as well as 9 autonomous okrugs (autonomous districts), and 1 autonomous oblast. Beyond these there are two federal cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg). Recently, seven extensive federal districts (four in Europe, three in Asia) have been added as a new layer between the above subdivisions and the national level.

Geography

federal districts The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the supercontinent of Eurasia. Although it contains a large share of the world's Arctic and sub-Arctic areas, and therefore has less population, economic activity, and physical variety per unit area than most countries, the great area south of these still accommodates a great variety of landscapes and climates. Most of Russia is in zones of a continental and Arctic climate. Russia is the coldest country of the world. Mid-annual temperature is −5,5 °C (for comparison, in Iceland +1,2 °C, in Sweden +4 °C). Most of the land consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. The permafrost (areas of Siberia and the Far East) occupies more than half of territory of Russia. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Russia's and Europe's highest point at 5,633 m) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The more central Ural Mountains, a north-south range that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia, are also notable. Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as more or less inland seas such as the Baltic, Black and Caspian seas. Some smaller bodies of water are part of the open oceans; the Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are part of the Arctic, whereas the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan belong to the Pacific Ocean. Major islands found in them include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz-Josef Land, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. (See List of islands of Russia). Many rivers flow across Russia. See Rivers of Russia. Major lakes include Lake Baikal, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. See List of lakes in Russia.

Borders

The most practical way to describe Russia is as a main part (a large contiguous portion with its off-shore islands) and an exclave (at the southeast corner of the Baltic Sea). The main part's borders and coasts (starting in the far northwest and proceeding counter-clockwise) are:
- borders with the following countries: Norway and Finland,
- a short coast on the Baltic Sea, facing eight other countries on its shores from Finland to Estonia and including the port of St. Petersburg,
- borders with Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine,
- a coast on the Black Sea, facing five other countries on its shores from Ukraine to Georgia,
- borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan,
- a coast on the Caspian Sea, facing four other countries on its shores from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan,
- borders with Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea,
- an extensive coastline that provides access with all the maritime nations of the world, and stretches
  - from the North Pacific Ocean including
    - the Sea of Japan (where the west shore of Russia's Sakhalin lies),
    - the Sea of Okhotsk (where the east shore of Sakhalin and its Kurile Islands lie), and
    - the Bering Sea,
  - through the Bering Strait (where its minor island of Big Diomede is separated by only a few miles from Little Diomede, a part of the US state of Alaska),
  - to the Arctic Ocean, including
    - the Chukchi Sea (where the south and east shores of its Wrangel Island lie),
    - the East Siberian Sea (where its west shore, and the east shores of its New Siberian Islands lie),
    - the Laptev Sea (where their west shores lie),
    - the Kara Sea (where the east shore of its Novaya Zemlya lies),
    - the Barents Sea (where their west shore, the south shores of its Franz-Josef Land the port of Murmansk and important naval facilities lie, and where the White Sea reaches far inland). The exclave, constituted by the Kaliningrad Oblast,
- shares borders with
  - Poland to its south and
  - Lithuania to its north and east, and
- has a northwest coast on the Baltic Sea. The Baltic and Black Sea coasts of Russia have less direct and more constrained access to the high seas than its Pacific and Arctic ones, but both are nevertheless important for that purpose. The Baltic gives immediate access with the nine other countries sharing its shores, and between the main part of Russia and its Kaliningrad Oblast exclave. Via the straits that lie within Denmark, and between it and Sweden, the Baltic connects to the North Sea and the oceans to its west and north. The Black Sea gives immediate access with the five other countries sharing its shores, and via the Dardanelles and Marmora straits adjacent to Istanbul, Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea with its many countries and its access, via the Suez Canal and the Straits of Gibraltar, to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The salt waters of the Caspian Sea, the world's largest lake, afford no access with the high seas.

Spatial extent

The two most widely separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (5000 mi) apart along a geodesic (i.e. shortest line between two points on the Earth's surface). These points are: the boundary with Poland on a 60-km-long (40-mi-long) spit of land separating the Gulf of Gdańsk from the Vistula Lagoon; and the farthest southeast of the Kurile Islands, a few miles off Hokkaido Island, Japan. However, this is confusing because the points which are furthest separated in longitude are "only" 6,600 km (4,100 mi) apart along a geodesic. These points are: in the West, the same spit; in the East, the Big Diomede Island (Ostrov Ratmanova). It is also often mentioned that the Russian federation spans eleven time zones.

Cities

As of 2005 Russia has 13 cities with over a million inhabitants (from largest to smallest): Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ufa, Volgograd and Perm. See also: List of cities in Russia

Economy

More than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is now trying to establish a market economy and achieve more consistent economic growth. Russia saw its comparatively developed centrally-planned economy contract severely for five years, as the executive and legislature dithered over the implementation of reforms and Russia's industrial base faced a serious decline. Moreover, an emergency livestock shortage in 1987, which triggered large-scale international aid, severely bruised the ego, as well as the economy, of the emerging Russian state. After the breakup of the USSR, Russia's first slight recovery, showing the signs of open-market influence, occurred in 1997. That year, however, Asian financial crisis culminated in the August depreciation of the ruble