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Inna Zobova

Inna Zobova

Inna Zobova (born October 1st, 1976 in Kimsky, Russia) is a model. She was born with a hole in her heart, and at age six underwent surgery to correct it. Later on, she attended the University of Moscow and studied psychology and anthropology. She modeled on the side for extra money. In 1994, she was crowned Miss Russia. She went on the compete in the Miss Universe pageant where she came in third in the National Costume competition. She would've also advanced to the semifinals if it wasn't for a noticeably low score in the preliminary Evening Gown competition that bumped her down to #12, just outside of the Top 10. Two years later, she moved to Paris to work on a modeling career. She was on the covers of Vogue, Allure, Elle and many more magazines. In August 2002, she became the spokesmodel for Wonderbra. Inna resides in Paris, living with her boyfriend, television producer Bruno Aveillan.

External links


- [http://www.askmen.com/women/models_200/218_inna_zobova.html AskMen.com - Inna Zobova]
- [http://www.netglimse.com/celebs/pages/inna_zobova/index.shtml Inna Zobova Biography]
- [http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/5847.html Russian Beauty New Wonderbra Model] Zobova, Inna Zobova, Inna Zobova, Inna Zobova, Inna Zobova, Inna Zobova, Inna Zobova, Inna

1976

1976 (MCMLXXVI) is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January-February


- January 12 - UN Security Council votes 11-1 to admit the Palestinian Liberation Organization
- January 15 - Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison
- January 16 - Trial against jailed members of the Red Army Faction begins in Stuttgart, West Germany
- January 18 - The Scottish Labour Party is formed
- January 21 - The first commercial Concorde flight takes off.
- January 25 - 12 PIRA bombs explode in London's East End
- January 27 - The trial of SLA member Patty Hearst begins. She is found guilty of robbery on March 20
- February 4 - In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000.
- February 4 - 1976 Winter Olympics open in Innsbruck, Austria
- February 11 - Clifford Alexander Jr is confirmed as 1st African-American Secretary of US Army.
- February 20 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands
- February 24 - Cuba's current constitution enacted.
- February 27 - Western Sahara declares independence
- February 28 - Spain gives up territories in Sahara but retains its enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta

March


- March 1 - Merlyn Rees ends Special Category Status for those sentenced for crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Ireland
- March 3 - Fleetwood Mac records Rumours, which will be a blockbuster album in 1977
- March 9-March 11 - Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine, Letcher County, Ky
- March 17 - Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is retried
- March 18 - Harold Wilson resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- March 19 - Actor Nicholas Downs born in Des Moines, Iowa at 6:45am
- March 20 - Patty Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery of a San Francisco bank
- March 24 - Argentina military forces depose president Isabel Peron
- March 27 - The first 4.6 miles of the Washington, DC subway system opens
- March 29 - Military junta of general Jorge Videla comes to power in Argentina
- March 31 - New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985

April-May


- April 1 - Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
- April 4 - Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns as leader of Cambodia and is placed under house arrest
- April 5 - Jim Callaghan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- April 5 - Large crowds lay wreaths at Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs in commemoration of the death of Premier Zhou Enlai. Poems against the Gang of Four are also displayed. This was followed by a police crackdown and became known as the Tiananmen Incident.
- April 13 - An explosion in an ammunition factory in Lapua, Finland kills 40
- April 16 - In India the minimum age for marriage is raised to 21 years for men and 18 years for women; it is to curb population growth
- April 21 - Great Bookie Robbery in Melbourne. Bandits steal A$1.4 Million in bookmakers settlements in Queen Street, Melbourne
- April 23 - Powerful punk rock group The Ramones release their first album which starts a new form of music
- April 25 - Portugal's new constitution enacted
- May 4 - Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 revolutionizes world of wine.
- May 9 - Ulrike Meinhof of RAF is found hanging in an apparent suicide in her cell in Stuttgart-Stannheim prison
- May 11 - President Gerald Ford signs Federal Election Campaign Act.
- May 24 - Washington, DC Concorde service begins

June


- June 1 - UK and Iceland end the Cod War
- June 5 - Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho in the U.S., killing 11 people.
- June 14 - the trial begins at Oxford Crown Court of Donald Neilson, the killer known as the Black Panther.
- June 16 - Soweto riots in South Africa mark the beginning of the end of apartheid
- June 20 - Hundreds of Western tourists are moved from Beirut and taken to safety in Syria by the US military, following the murder of the US ambassador.
- June 20 - Czechoslovakia beat West Germany 5-3 on penalties to win Euro 76, after the game had ended 2-2 after extra time.
- June 27 - Palestinian extremists hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos storms it on July 4
- Sismik incident starts when the Turkish survey ship Sismik entered Greek waters.

July


- July 2 - North Vietnam and South Vietnam united to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam - a Communist country
- July 3 - Supreme Court of the United States rules on Gregg v. Georgia and decides that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment
- July 3 - The great heat wave in the United Kingdom, which is currently suffering from drought conditions, reaches its peak.
- July 4 - United States Bicentennial
- July 4 - Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; one Israeli and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in raid.
- July 7 - German left-wing terrorists Monika Berberich, Gabriella Rollnick, Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett escape from Lehrterstrasse maximum security prison in West Berlin
- July 10 - Explosion in Seveso, Italy, kills a large number of people
- July 16-July 20 - Albert Spaggiari and his gang break into the vault of the Societe Generale Bank in Nice, France
- July 17 - The 1976 Summer Olympics begin in Montreal, Canada.
- July 17 - East Timor is declared the 27th province of Indonesia
- July 19 - Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
- July 20 - Viking program: The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars
- July 21 - A bomb kills Christopher Ewart, British ambassador to the Irish Republic
- July 27 - United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Uganda
- July 28 - Tangshan earthquake flattens Tangshan,China, killing 242,769 people, and 164,851 people are heavily injured
- July 29 - In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag killing one and seriously wounding another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year.
- July 30 - In Santiago, capital of Chile, Cruzeiro from Brazil wins River Plate from Argentina and are the Copa Libertadores de América champions.
- July 31 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1

August


- August 1 - the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II with an elected president as their Head of State.
- August 2 - A gunman murders Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr, and injures Priscilla Davis and Gus Gavrel in an incident at Priscilla's Mansion at Mockingbird Lane in Fort Worth, Texas. T. Cullen Davis, Priscilla's husband and one of the richest men in Texas, was tried and found innocent for Andrea's murder. He was later found innocent of a plot to kill several people, including Priscilla and a judge, and a wrongful death lawsuit. Cullen went broke afterwards
- August 4 - First outbreak of Legionnaire's disease kills 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia
- August 5 - Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand prix; the Great Clock of Westminster (or Big Ben) suffers internal damage and stops running for over nine months
- August 6 - Former UK Postmaster General John Stonehouse is sentenced for seven years for fraud
- August 7 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars
- August 14 - 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland
- August 14 - The Senegalese political party PAI-Rénovation is legally recognized. PAI-Rénovation thus becomes the third legal party in the country.
- August 18 - In North Korea at Panmunjom, two US soldiers are killed while trying to chop down part of a tree in the Demilitarized Zone which had obscured their view
- August 24 - Uruguayan army captures Marcelo Gelman and his pregnant wife. Marcelo is later killed and his wife and child disappears

September-October


- September 3 - Viking program: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars takes the first close-up, color photos of the planet's surface
- September 6 - Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido in Japan and requests political asylum from the United States
- Military Junta in power in Argentina.
- September 17 - Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out.
- September 21 - Seychelles joins the United Nations.
- September 21 - Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
- October - The Damned release New Rose - the first ever single released / marketed as "punk rock".
- October 6 - Cubana Flight 455 crashes due to a bomb placed by anti-Castrist militants, after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4535661.stm]
- October 6 - Students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand to protest the return of ex-dictator Thanom are massacred by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.
- October 12 - The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to the late Mao Tse-tung as chairman of Communist Party of China
- October 19 - Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years in the United States
- October 22 - Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, fifth President of Ireland, resigns after being publicly insulted by the Minister for Defence.
- October 25 - Full pardon given to Clarence Norris, last known survivor of the Scottsboro Boys.

November-December


- November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Rudolph Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War.
- November 15 - First Megamouth Shark is discovered off Oahu in Hawaii
- November 26 - Little known company Microsoft is officially registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.
- December 1 - Angola joins the United Nations
- December 3 - Patrick Hillery is elected unopposed as the sixth President of Ireland.
- December 15 - Samoa joins the United Nations
- December 23 - New volcano, Murara, began erupting in eastern Zaire.

Unknown dates


- Christopher Maier, American murder victim born, died 1997
- First laser printer introduced by IBM - the IBM 3800
- Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, invented by Seymour Cray
- California's sodomy law repealed.
- The term memetics first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.
- Toronto Blue Jays created
- CN Tower built in Toronto - The tallest free standing land structure.
- Diffie-Hellman cryptography proposed
- Plans to move the Nigerian capital from Lagos to Abuja are approved.
- Ebola is first discovered in Zaire
- Women For Sobriety established.

Births

January-March


- January 2 - Paz Vega, Spanish actress
- January 7 - Éric Gagné, Canadian Major League Baseball player
- January 7 - Alfonso Soriano, Dominican Major League Baseball player
- January 11 - Amanda Peet, American actress (born really 1972?)
- January 20 - Gretha Smit, Dutch speed skater
- January 21 - Emma Bunton, English musician (Spice Girls)
- January 28 - Mark Madsen, American basketball player
- January 31 - Buddy Rice, American race car driver
- February 2 - James Hickman, British swimmer
- February 4 - Cam'ron, Harlem, New York rapper
- February 9 - Vladimir Guerrero, Dominican Major League Baseball player
- February 10 - Lance Berkman, baseball player
- February 12 - Silvia Saint, Czech actress
- February 15 - Brandon Boyd, American musician (Incubus)
- February 20 - Ed Graham, British drummer (The Darkness)
- February 28 - Ja Rule, American rapper
- March 5 - Sarunas Jasikevicius, Lithuanian basketball player
- March 8 - Freddie Prinze Jr., American actor
- March 20 - Chester Bennington, American musician (Linkin Park)
- March 22 - Teun de Nooijer, Dutch field hockey player
- March 22 - Reese Witherspoon, American actress
- March 23 - Keri Russell, American actress
- March 24 - Aaron Brooks, American football player
- March 24 - Peyton Manning, American football player
- March 25 - Juvenile, American rapper
- March 26 - Amy Smart, American actress

April-June


- April 6 - Candace Cameron, American actress
- April 13 - Jonathan Brandis, American actor (d. 2003)
- April 18 - Melissa Joan Hart, American actress
- April 25 - Tim Duncan, West Indian basketball player
- April 25 - Rainer Schuettler, German tennis player
- May 3 - Beto, Portuguese footballer
- May 4 - Jason Michaels, baseball player
- May 15 - Tyler Walker, baseball player
- May 19 - Kevin Garnett, American basketball player
- May 20 - Ramón Hernández, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player
- May 25 - Miguel Tejada, Dominican Major League Baseball player
- May 31 - Colin Farrell, Irish actor
- June 8 - Lindsay Davenport, American tennis player
- June 10 - Freddy Garcia, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player
- June 13 - Jason 'J' Brown, English musician (5ive)
- June 23 - Brandon Stokley, American football player

July-September


- July 1 - Patrick Kluivert, Dutch footballer
- July 1 - Ruud van Nistelrooy, Dutch footballer
- July 3 - Andrea Barber, American actress
- July 2 - Gabriel Mughadam, Bodybuilder
- July 4 - Daijiro Kato, Japanese motorcycle racer
- July 8 - Ellen MacArthur, English yachtswoman
- July 9 - Shelton Benjamin, American professional wrestler
- July 9 - Fred Savage, American actor
- July 11 - Eduardo Najera, Mexican basketball player
- July 20 - Alex Yoong, Malaysian race car driver
- July 23 - Judit Polgar, Hungarian chess player
- July 31 - Annie Parisse, American actress
- August 6 - Melissa George, Australian actress
- August 9 - Jessica Capshaw, American actress
- August 9 - Rhona Mitra, English actress
- August 8 - JC Chasez, American singer
- August 12 - Antoine Walker, American basketball player
- August 14 - Alex Albrecht, American television personality
- August 15 - Boudewijn Zenden, Dutch football player
- August 27 - Carlos Moyà, Spanish tennis player
- August 27 - Mark Webber, Australian race car driver
- September 7 - Stevie Case (Killcreek), American video game celebrity
- September 7 - Shannon Elizabeth, American actress
- September 8 - Abi Titmuss, British TV presenter and model
- September 8 - Sjeng Schalken, Dutch tennis player
- September 10 - Gustavo Kuerten, Brazilian tennis player
- September 16 - Tina Barrett, English singer (S Club 7)
- September 22 - Ronaldo, Brazilian footballer
- September 25 - Chauncey Billups, American basketball player
- September 26 - Michael Ballack, German footballer
- September 29 - Andriy Shevchenko, Ukrainian footballer

October-December


- October 1 - Blu Cantrell, American rapper
- October 4 - Alicia Silverstone, American actress
- October 10 - Bob Burnquist, Brazilian skateboarder
- October 19 - Michael Young, baseball player
- October 23 - Ryan Reynolds, Canadian actor
- November 6 - Pat Tillman, American football player (d. 2004)
- November 7 - Mark Philippoussis, Australian tennis player
- November 19 - Jun Shibata, Japanese singer and songwriter
- November 24 - Chen Lu, Chinese figure skater
- November 29 - Anna Faris, American actress
- December 1 - Matthew Shepard, American murder victim (d. 1998)
- December 12 - Dan Hawkins, British guitarist (The Darkness)
- December 13 - Tom Delonge, American musician (Blink-182)
- December 15 - Baichung Bhutia, Indian footballer
- December 17 - Takeo Spikes, American football player
- December 18 - Koyuki, Japanese actress and model

Deaths

January-March


- January 8 - Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China (b. 1898)
- January 10 - Howlin' Wolf, American musician (b. 1910)
- January 12 - Agatha Christie, English writer (b. 1890)
- January 23 - Paul Robeson, American actor, singer, writer, and activist (b. 1898)
- January 30 - Mance Lipscomb, American singer (b. 1895)
- February 1 - Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
- February 1 - George Whipple, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1878)
- February 2 - Zlatyu Boyadzhiev, Bulgarian painter (b. 1903)
- February 6 - Vince Guaraldi, American musician (b. 1928)
- February 9 - Percy Faith, Canadian-born musician and composer (b. 1908)
- February 11 - Lee J Cobb, American actor (b. 1911)
- February 11 - Alexander Lippisch, German aerodynamicist (b. 1894)
- February 11 - Charlie Naughton, Scottish actor (b. 1886)
- February 12 - Sal Mineo, American actor (b. 1939)
- February 13 - Lily Pons, American soprano (b. 1898)
- February 20 - René Cassin, French judge, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1887)
- February 22 - Florence Ballard, American singer (The Supremes) (b. 1943)
- March 6 - Max 'Slapsie Maxie' Rosenbloom, American boxer and actor (b. 1903)
- March 7 - Wright Patman, American politician (b. 1893)
- March 14 - Busby Berkeley, American choreographer and director (b. 1895)
- March 17 - Luchino Visconti, Italian theatre and film director (b. 1906)
- March 19 - Paul Kossoff, British guitarist (Free) (b. 1950)
- March 24 - Bernard Montgomery, British field marshal (b. 1897)

April-June


- April 1 - Max Ernst, German artist (b. 1891)
- April 5 - Howard Hughes, American aviation pioneer, film director, and eccentric (b. 1905)
- April 9 - Dagmar Nordstrom, American composer, pianist, one of The Nordstrom Sisters (b. 1903)
- April 18 - Henrik Dam, Dutch biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1895)
- April 26 - Sid James, South African actor (b. 1913)
- May 9 - Jens Bjørneboe, Norwegian author (b. 1920)
- May 9 - Ulrike Meinhof, German terrorist (b. 1934)
- May 11 - Alvar Aalto, Finnish architect (b. 1898)
- May 14 - Keith Relf, British musician (The Yardbirds) (b. 1943)
- May 26 - Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (b. 1889)
- May 27 - Hilde Hildebrand, German actress, (b. 1897)
- May 31 - Jacques Monod, French biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1910)
- June 10 - Adolph Zukor, Hungarian-born film producer (b. 1893)
- June 15 - Jimmy Dykes, baseball player and manager (b. 1896)
- June 25 - Johnny Mercer, American songwriter (b. 1909)
- June 30 - Firpo Marberry, baseball player (b. 1898)

July-September


- July 1 - Zhang Mintian, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (b. 1900)
- July 4 - Antoni Słonimski, Polish poet and writer (b. 1895)
- July 13 - Joachim Peiper, German military leader (b. 1915)
- August 6 - Gregor Piatigorsky, Russian cellist (b. 1903)
- August 22 - Juscelino Kubitschek, President of Brazil (b. 1902)
- August 25 - Eyvind Johnson, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1900)
- August 26 - Lotte Lehmann, German soprano (b. 1888)
- August 27 - Mukesh, Indian singer (b. 1923)
- September 2 - Stanisław Grochowiak, Polish writer (b. 1934)
- September 9 - Mao Zedong, Chinese leader (b. 1893)
- September 26 - Lavoslav Ružička, Croatian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1887)

October-December


- October 5 - Lars Onsager, Norwegian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1903)
- October 11 - Alfredo Bracchi, Italian author (b. 1897)
- November 12 - Walter Piston, American composer (b. 1894)
- December 2 - Danny Murtaugh, baseball player and manager (b. 1917)
- December 4 - Benjamin Britten, English composer (b. 1913)
- December 6 - João Goulart, President of Brazil (b. 1918)
- December 28 - Katharine Byron, U.S. Congresswoman (b. 1903)

Nobel Prizes


- Physics - Burton Richter, Samuel Chao Chung Ting
- Chemistry - William Nunn Lipscomb, Jr
- Physiology or Medicine - Baruch S. Blumberg, D Carleton Gajdusek
- Literature - Saul Bellow
- Peace - Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan
- Economics - Milton Friedman

Templeton Prize


- Cardinal Suenens Category:1976 ko:1976년 ja:1976年 simple:1976 th:พ.ศ. 2519

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 in 1998, a debt default by the government, and a sharp deterioration in living standards for most of the population. Consequently, the year 1998 was marked by recession and intense capital flight. Nevertheless, the economy started recovering in 1999. Then it entered a phase of rapid economic expansion, the GDP growing by an average of 6.7% annually in 1999-2005 on the back of higher petroleum prices, weaker ruble, and increasing service production and industrial output. The economic development of the country, however, has been extremely uneven: the capital region of Moscow contributes a third to the country's GDP having only a tenth of its population. The recent recovery, made possible due to high world oil prices, along with a renewed government effort in 2000 and 2001 to advance lagging structural reforms, has raised business and investor confidence over Russia's prospects in its second decade of transition. Russia remains heavily dependent on exports of commodities, particularly oil, natural gas, metals, and timber, which account for about 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices. In recent years, however, the economy has also been driven by growing internal consumer demand that has increased by over 12% annually in 2000-2005, showing the strengthening of its own internal market. The country's GDP shot up to reach €1.2 trillion ($1.5 trillion) in 2004, making it the ninth largest economy in the world and the fifth largest in Europe. If the current growth rate is sustained, the country is expected to become the second largest European economy after Germany (€1.9 trillion or $2.3 trillion) and the sixth largest in the world within a few years. The greatest challenge facing the Russian economy is how to encourage the development of SME (small and medium sized enterprises) in a business climate with a young and dysfunctional banking system, dominated by Russian oligarchs. Many of Russia's banks are owned by entrepreneurs or oligarchs, who often use the deposits to lend to their own businesses. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank have attempted to kick-start normal banking practices by making equity and debt investments in a number of banks, but with very limited success. Other problems include disproportional economic development of Russia's own regions. While the huge capital region of Moscow is a bustling, affluent metropolis living on the cutting edge of technology with a per capita income rapidly approaching that of the leading Eurozone economies, much of the country, especially its indigenous and rural communities in Asia, lags significantly behind. Market integration is nonetheless making itself felt in some other sizeable cities such as Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and Ekaterinburg, and recently also in the adjacent rural areas. Encouraging foreign investment is also a major challenge due to legal, some cultural, linguistic, economic and political peculiarities of the country. Nevertheless, there have been significant inflow of capital in recent years from many European investors attracted by cheaper land, labor and higher growth rates than in the rest of Europe. Amazingly high levels of education and societal involvement achieved by the majority of the population, including women and minorities, secular attitudes, mobile class structure, better integration of various minorities in the mainstream culture set Russia far apart from the majority of the so-called developing and even some developed nations. So far, the country is also benefiting from rising oil prices and has been able to pay off much of its formerly huge debt. Equal redistribution of capital gains from the natural resource industries to other sectors is also a problem. Still, since 2003, exports of natural resources started decreasing in economic importance as the internal market has strengthened considerably largely stimulated by intense construction, as well as consumption of increasingly diverse goods and services. Yet teaching customers and encouraging consumer spending is a relatively tough task for many provincial areas where consumer demand is primitive, although some laudable progress has already been made in larger cities especially in clothing, food, entertainment industries. The arrest of Russia's wealthiest businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and corruption in relation to the large-scale privatizations organized under then-President Yeltsin has caused many foreign investors to worry about the stability of the Russian economy. Most of the large fortunes currently prevailing in Russia seem to be the product of either acquiring government assets particularly at low costs or gaining concessions from the government. Other countries have expressed concerns and worries at the "selective" application of the law against individual businessmen. However, some international firms are investing heavily in Russia. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Russia had nearly $26 billion in cumulative foreign direct investment inflows during the 2001-2004 period (of which $11.7 billion occurred last year alone).

Demographics

Despite its comparatively very high population, Russia has a low average population density due to its enormous size. Population is densest in the European part of Russia, in the Ural Mountains area, and in the south-western parts of Siberia; the south-eastern part of Siberia that meets the Pacific Ocean, known as the Russian Far East, is sparsely populated, with its southern part being densest. The Russian Federation is home to as many as 160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. As of the 2002 census, 79.8% of the population is ethnically Russian, 3.8% Tatar, 2% Ukrainian, 1.2% Bashkir, 1.1% Chuvash, 0.9% Chechen, 0.8% Armenian, and the remaining 10.3% includes those who did not specify their ethnicity as well as (in alphabetical order) Avars, Azerbaijanis, Belarusians, Buryats, Chinese, Evenks, Georgians, Germans, Greeks, Ingushes, Inuit, Jews, Kalmyks, Karelians, Kazakhs, Koreans, Maris, Mordvins, Nenetses, Ossetians, Poles, Tuvans, Udmurts, Uzbeks, Yakuts, and others. Nearly all of these groups live compactly in their respective regions; Russians are the only people significantly represented in every region of the country. The Russian language is the only official state language, but the individual republics have often made their native language co-official next to Russian. Cyrillic alphabet is the only official script, which means that these languages must be written in Cyrillic in official texts. The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant Christian religion in the Federation; other religions include Islam, various Protestant faiths, Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Buddhism. Division into different religions takes place primarily along ethnic lines: majority of Russians are Orthodox, majority of people of Turkic descent are Muslim, Judaism is very uncommon among non-Jews. Neopaganism is on the rise, especially among Slavic people. See Religion in Russia for more.

Culture


- Cinema of Russia
- List of famous Russians
- Music of Russia
- Russian architecture
- Russian cuisine
- Russian humour
- Russian literature
  - List of Russian language poets
  - Russian formalism
  - Russian folklore
- Russian music
- Russian painting
- Russian theatre

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