Facts about Russia

Russia, an independent country officially known as the Russian Federation (in Russian, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya). By far the world’s largest country, Russia is almost twice the size of the next largest country, Canada. Russia sprawls across eastern Europe and northern Asia. It possesses mineral resources unmatched by any other country. Four-fifths of the people live in the European part of Russia, west of the Ural Mountains. The capital, Moscow, is an administrative, commercial, industrial, and cultural hub in the heart of European Russia.

In the 14th and 15th centuries a powerful Russian state began to grow around Moscow. Russia emerged as a great world power during the reign of Peter the Great, who built Saint Petersburg as Russia’s new “window on the West” and moved the seat of government there in 1712. The massive Russian Empire reached its greatest size in 1914, before World War I. Moscow regained its capital status after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when militant socialists called Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian monarchy. In 1922 they founded the world’s first communist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union). Russia was the largest and most powerful Soviet republic.

The USSR had a totalitarian political system in which Communist Party leaders held political and economic power. The state owned all companies and land, and the government controlled most aspects of the economy. After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, Russia began transforming itself into a more democratic society with an economy based on market mechanisms and principles. For many Russians the transformation brought a severe decline in standard of living. At the same time, Russia became more integrated with the global economy and benefited from improved relations with the countries of the European Union as well as its neighbors in Asia.
"Russia," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2008
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