Contents:-I. INTRODUCTION
II. LAND AND RESOURCES
A. European Plain
B. Ural Mountains
C. West Siberian Lowland
D. Central Siberian Platform
E. East Siberian Uplands
F. Southern Mountain Systems
G. Rivers, Lakes, Coastline, and Seas
H. Climate
I. Natural Resources
J. Plants and Animals
K. Conservation
L. Environment
III. POPULATION
A. Population Characteristics
B. Principal Cities
C. Religion
D. Languages
E. Education
F. Research
G. Culture
H. Cultural Institutions
IV. ECONOMY
A. Agriculture
B. Forestry
C. Fishing
D. Mining
E. Oil
F. Gas
G. Coal
H. Other Minerals
I. Manufacturing
J. Tourism
K. Energy
L. Transport
M. Currency and Banking
N. Commerce and Trade
O. Labour
V. GOVERNMENT
A. Executive and Legislature
B. Political Parties
C. Judiciary
D. Sub-Federal Administration and Local Government
E. Health and Welfare
F. Defence
G. International Organizations
VI. HISTORY
A. Origins of the Russian People
1. Invasions by Early Inhabitants
2. The House of Rurik
3. The Decline of Kiev
4. The Mongol Invasion
B. The Growing Importance of Moscow
1. The Expansion of Muscovy
2. Time of Troubles
3. Romanov Rule
C. The Russian Empire
1. Peter the Great
2. Peter’s Successors
3. Catherine the Great
4. Paul I and Alexander I
5. Nicholas I
6. Alexander II
D. The End of the Empire
1. The Revolution of 1905
2. World War I
E. Russian Revolution and the Soviet Era
F. Post-Soviet Russia
1. Yeltsin’s Presidential Rule
2. Elections and Economic Reform
3. The Putin Era
Description:-
I INTRODUCTION
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| Climate |
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The Russian Federation today comprises 89 territorial units: 21 republics, 10 autonomous okrugs (areas), 6 krays (territories), 49 oblasts (regions), 1 autonomous oblast, and two federal cities (Moscow and St Petersburg) with oblast status. In geographical extent Russia is the largest country in the world. Spanning two continents—Europe and Asia—it has a total area of 17,075,200 sq km (6,592,770 sq mi), and a total land area of 16,888,500 sq km (6,520,686 sq mi), equivalent to about one ninth of the world’s land area. North to south the country extends for more than 4,000 km (2,400 mi) from the archipelago of Franz Josef Land (in Russian, Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa) in the Arctic Ocean to the Caucasus Mountains. From west to east the maximum extent is almost 10,000 km (6,200 mi) from the Kaliningrad exclave on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea to Ratmanov (also known as Big Diomede) Island in the Bering Strait that separates eastern Siberian Russia from Alaska. Moscow (in Russian, Moskva) is the capital of Russia.
Russia’s 19,913 km (12,373 mi) of land boundaries abut on more countries than those of any other nation. On the north it is bordered by a number of arms of the Arctic Ocean comprising, west to east: the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas. On the east it is bordered by several arms of the Pacific Ocean, comprising, north to south: the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, and the seas of Okhotsk and Japan (East Sea). In the extreme south-east, Russia borders the north-eastern tip of North Korea. On the south it is bordered, east to west, by China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Black Sea. On the south-west it is bordered by Ukraine, and on the west it is bordered, south to north, by Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, the Gulf of Finland, Finland, and Norway. The Kaliningrad oblast (formerly Königsberg in East Prussia) is separated from the rest of Russia by Belarus and Lithuania. It is bordered by the latter on the north and east, by Poland on the south, and the Baltic Sea on the west.
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| Great Kremlin Palace |
The principal island possessions of Russia lie in Arctic and Pacific waters. Farthest north, in the Arctic Ocean, is the Franz Josef Land archipelago, consisting of about 100 islands. The other main Arctic possessions, from west to east, include the two islands that constitute Novaya Zemlya, Vaygach Island, the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, the New Siberian Islands (Novosibirskiye Ostrova), and Wrangel Island. Between these principal island possessions are numerous smaller islands and island chains. In the Pacific Ocean are the Kuril Islands, which extend in an arc south-west from the southern tip of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula to Japan, and the large island of Sakhalin, which separates the seas of Okhotsk and Japan. The southernmost islands of the Kuril chain are claimed by Japan.
Russia is a member of the UN, having inherited the USSR’s seat, and is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is also a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the voluntary association of former Soviet republics that was formed on the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991; 12 of the 15 former republics are now members. In contrast to most other member states, Russia views the CIS as a vehicle for closer economic, political, and military integration, but its efforts to this end have met with little success. On May 23, 1997, Russia and Belarus signed a charter forming a union involving cooperation in a variety of spheres, including foreign policy, economic reform, energy, and transport.
II LAND AND RESOURCES
Russia can be divided into three broad geographical regions: European Russia, consisting of the territory lying west of the Ural Mountains; Siberia, stretching east from the Urals almost to the Pacific Ocean; and Far Eastern Russia (or the Russian Far East), including the extreme south-east and the Pacific coastal fringe. The majority of the country lies north of latitude 50° N, and a sizeable portion lies north of the Arctic Circle. In terms of climate and vegetation it therefore lies, broadly, within the Temperate and Polar zones. However, its sheer size means that Russia contains a wide variety of biomes, including the steppes of the south, the deserts of Central Asian Russia, the taiga of the subarctic regions, and the tundra of the polar north. The country’s agricultural resource base is limited by climate and, to a lesser degree, soils. The vastness of Russia’s territory and its varied geological formations, however, provide a rich mineral resource base that is unmatched by any other country in the world.
Both the forest-steppe and the steppe have fertile soils and together form a region, known as the black-earth belt, that is the agricultural heartland of Russia. The forest-steppe has black chernozem soils that are high in humus (organic material) content and have the right balance of nutrients for the cultivation of most crops. The forest-steppe has a better moisture supply than the steppe during the growing season, and consequently is the best agricultural area of Russia. The soils of the steppe, known as brown-steppe soils, are not quite as rich in humus as the chernozems to the north, but are very high in the minerals that are the main source of plant nutrients.
Russia’s geology is extremely complex and its varied landscapes reflect the impact of different physical processes, containing features that have evolved separately during different geological epochs. Very simply, the republic consists, in the west and north, of the world’s largest plain, fringed, on the south and east, by a discontinuous belt of mountains and plateaux. The upland and mountain regions include most of Siberia and extend to the margins of the Pacific.
A European Plain
European Russia is primarily a rolling plain with an average elevation of about 180 m (590 ft). The terrain has been formed by millions of years of water, wind, and glacial action on nearly horizontal strata (layers) of sedimentary rocks. In some places, notably the north-western border region with Finland, the softer sedimentary rocks have been eroded away, exposing the underlying basement complex of hard igneous and metamorphic rocks. The topography is generally mountainous in these areas of outcropping, particularly in the north, where a maximum elevation of 1,191 m (3,906 ft) is reached in the Khibiny Mountains of the central Kola Peninsula. Otherwise, the relief of the European Plain, with minor exceptions, is modest.
Other surface features owe their origins to glaciation during the Pleistocene ice age. Among these are several broad marshy areas, such as the Meshchera Lowland south-east of Moscow along the Oka River. This flat, poorly drained area was a lake when glacial ice blocked the streams that now partly drain it. The retreat of the glaciers, beginning about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, left behind a terminal moraine that runs east from the border with Belarus, then north of Moscow to the Arctic coast west of the Pechora River. The region to the north of this boundary is poorly drained and has numerous lakes and swamps.
B Ural Mountains
The European Plain terminates in the east at the Ural Mountains, a series of mountain ranges that were formed about 250 million years ago when, as a result of continental drift, Siberia collided with Europe during the formation of the ancient continent of Laurasia (see Plate Tectonics). Millennia of erosion have worn much of the mountains away and, today, the Urals are topographically unimpressive. The average elevation is only about 600 m (1,970 ft); Gora Narodnaya (“People’s Mountain”) in the north, is the highest point, at 1,894 m (6,214 ft) above sea level. The Urals are, however, important because they contain a wide variety of mineral deposits, including mineral fuels, iron ore, non-ferrous metals, and non-metallic minerals.
C West Siberian Lowland
To the east of the Urals the plain region continues in the West Siberian Lowland. This expansive and extremely flat area is poorly drained, and is generally marshy or swampy.
D Central Siberian Platform
Just east of the Yenisey River the rolling upland of the Central Siberian Platform begins. Elevations here average about 500 to 700 m (1,650 to 2,300 ft) above sea level. In all areas rivers have dissected, or eroded, the surface and in some places have formed deep canyons. The region’s geological structure is complex; a basement of igneous and metamorphic rocks is covered in many places by thick sedimentary rocks and volcanic lavas. The Central Siberian Platform is rich in a variety of minerals.
E East Siberian Uplands
To the east of the Lena River the topography consists of a series of mountains and basins. The higher ranges in this region, such as the Verkhoyansk, Cherskogo, and Kolyma, generally reach maximum elevations of about 2,300 to 3,200 m (7,550 to 10,500 ft). On the eastern margins with the Pacific Ocean, the mountains are higher and steeper, and volcanic activity becomes prevalent. This volcanism is caused by contemporary plate tectonic activity, that is, by the collision between the Pacific and North American plates at this point. Earthquakes are also characteristic of this area. There are 120 volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula, 23 of which are currently active; the highest, Mount Klyuchevskaya, reaches an elevation of 4,750 m (15,584 ft). The volcanic mountain chain of Kamchatka continues southward in the Kuril Islands, which contain about 100 volcanoes, 35 of which are active. The formation of these islands is also the result of the collision between the two plates.
F Southern Mountain Systems
The southern border of European Russia includes the young, seismically active Caucasus Mountains, which extend between the Black and Caspian seas. The Caucasus Mountains comprise two major folded mountain chains divided along their entire extent by a lowland, with the older northern chain, the Greater Caucasus (Bolshoi Kavkaz), forming part of Russia’s southern border. Geologically complex, the mountain system is composed of limestone and crystalline rocks with some volcanic formations. The Greater Caucasus reaches a maximum elevation of 5,642 m (18,510 ft) on Mount Elbrus, an extinct volcano that is the highest peak in Europe. Other mountain ranges continue north-eastward along the southern border of central and eastern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. Among them are the Altai, Sayan, Yablonovyy, and Stanovoy ranges.
G Rivers, Lakes, Coastline, and Seas
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| Baikal Lake |
The longest rivers of Russia are located in Siberia and Far Eastern Russia. The largest single river system is the Ob-Irtysh; these rivers together flow some 5,410 km (3,362 mi) from western China, where the Irtysh rises, north through western Siberia to the Arctic Ocean. The second longest system is the Onon-Shilka-Amur, which flows out of northern Mongolia eastward along the Chinese-Siberian border for 4,416 km (2,744 mi) to the Pacific coast opposite Sakhalin Island. Among individual rivers, the Lena is longest; rising west of Lake Baikal in Irkutsk Oblast, it flows north through Siberia and Far Eastern Russia for about 4,300 km (2,670 mi) to the Arctic Ocean. The next longest are the Irtysh and the Ob, followed by the Volga. With a length of 3,531 km (2,194 mi), the Volga is by far the longest river in Europe. Together with its two main tributaries, the Kama and the Oka, it drains a large portion of the eastern European Plain south-east to the Caspian Sea. The fifth longest river, the Yenisey, flows north from Mongolia through eastern Siberia to the Arctic Ocean. Its main tributary, the Angara River, drains Lake Baikal. The Yenisey, which delivers 623 cu km (149 cu mi) of water to the Arctic Ocean yearly, has the largest flow of any river system in the country. It is followed by three other Asian rivers—the Lena, the Ob, and the Amur—and by one European river, the Volga. All other rivers have much smaller flows.
Historically the Volga is probably the most important Russian river. Navigable for virtually its entire length, it was the focus of early Russian trade routes, and many trading posts, fortresses, and towns developed along it during the medieval period, notably Yaroslavl, Uglich, Kostroma, and Nizhniy Novgorod. In more recent times it has been the focus of a system of waterways (rivers and canals) running from the Gulf of Finland to the Caspian Sea. Many other rivers are significant, either because they serve as transport routes or power sources in densely populated areas, or because they flow through arid regions where irrigation is essential for agriculture. Outstanding among these is the Don, which crosses the populous southern European Plain and drains south to the Black Sea and the interconnected Sea of Azov. On the northern European Plain, the Narva and Daugava (Western Dvina) rivers flow north-west to the Baltic Sea; the Pechora, Northern Dvina, Mezen, and Onega rivers flow to the Arctic Ocean and the White Sea. On the northern Caucasian Plain the two most important rivers for irrigation purposes are the Kuban, which flows west to the Sea of Azov, and the Terek, which flows east to the Caspian Sea.
The Soviet government took an active role in building large dams for power generation, irrigation, flood control, and navigation purposes, and some river basins have been almost completely transformed by the formation of series of huge reservoirs. The most extensive construction has taken place on the Volga-Kama system and on the Don on the European Plain, and on the upper portions of the Yenisey-Angara system and Ob-Irtysh system in Siberia.
Many natural lakes occur in Russia. The Caspian Sea, in the south, is the largest inland body of water in the world, with a surface area of about 371,000 sq km (143,250 sq mi). Although called a sea, it is actually a saline lake that occupies the southern end of the Caspian Depression, an area of lowland that straddles the Europe-Asia boundary in Russia and neighbouring Kazakhstan. Rivers drain into it, but water escapes only through evaporation, and over a period of time the concentration of natural salts increases. The second-largest body of water in Russia is Lake Baikal, which has a surface area of about 31,470 sq km (12,150 sq mi). Lake Baikal is the world’s deepest and oldest freshwater lake, with a maximum depth of 1,637 m (5,371 ft); it is estimated to be about 20 million years old, compared with the 20,000 years of most freshwater lakes. It also contains the greatest volume of water, about 23,000 cu km (5,520 cu mi), equivalent to about one fifth of the Earth’s unfrozen fresh surface water. The next two largest lakes, Ladoga and Onega, lie in the so-called Great Lakes Region of north-western European Russia; both have outlets to the Gulf of Finland. Like the many other freshwater lakes in this region, Ladoga and Onega owe their origin to the heavy glaciation of the area during the Pleistocene ice age.
H Climate
The harsh climate prevalent in most of Russia reflects its high latitude and the absence of moderating maritime influences. Winters are generally long and very cold; and summers are short with temperatures ranging from hot to relatively cool. The high mountains running along the country’s southern boundary largely prevent the penetration of maritime tropical air masses from the south. In the north, the Arctic Ocean is frozen right up to the coast during the long winter, preventing the ameliorating influence of relatively warm ocean waters. Because Russia lies in the northern hemisphere’s westerly wind belt, warm influences from the Pacific Ocean do not reach far inland in the east. This is particularly true in winter, when a large, cold, high-pressure cell, centred over Mongolia, spreads over much of Siberia and Far Eastern Russia.
The primary marine influence thus comes from the Atlantic Ocean in the west. However, by the time Atlantic air reaches Russia it has crossed the entire western part of Europe and undergone considerable modification. It penetrates most easily during summer, when a low-pressure system exists over much of the country; this warm, moist Atlantic air may push east well into central Siberia. Because this is the principal moisture-bearing air mass to reach Russia, most of the territory receives a fairly pronounced summer maximum of precipitation. This is fortunate for agriculture, because in most of the better farming areas the moisture supply is limited. In a number of areas, however, the distribution of summer rainfall is not advantageous—the early summer is often subject to drought, while the middle and late summer months may bring considerable rain and clouds that interfere with the harvest. This is particularly true in Far Eastern Russia, where a monsoonal inflow of Pacific air occurs during middle and late summer. In northern regions, especially from Moscow northward, featureless, overcast skies are so common, particularly during winter, that the Russians have a special name for the phenomenon: pasmurno, which may be translated as “dull, overcast, dreary weather”.
Despite the overcast skies, annual precipitation in most of the country is only light to modest. This is because much of the time the air is cool, so its capacity to hold water vapour is low. Across the European Plain, average annual precipitation decreases from more than 800 mm (31 in) in the west, to less than 400 mm (15y in) along the Caspian Sea coast. Throughout Siberia and Far Eastern Russia, annual precipitation ranges generally between 508 and 813 mm (20 and 32 in); in higher elevations annual totals may reach 1,016 mm (40 in) or more, although intermontane basins may receive less than 305 mm (12 in).
Because the climate of Russia is largely continental in type, it is characterized by temperature extremes. The coldest winter temperatures occur in eastern Siberia; air from the Atlantic Ocean tempers conditions somewhat in the west. Verkhoyansk in north-eastern Siberia is often called the “cold pole of the world”. During January, temperatures average -48.9° C (-56° F) and have reached a minimum of -67.8° C (-90° F). Absolute temperatures during winter are higher along the Arctic and, especially, the Pacific coasts; Vladivostok, for example, on the Pacific coast averages a relatively mild -14.4° C (6° F) in January; the July average is 18.3° C (65° F). However, the winds in these regions are strong, and wind-chill factors below -50° C (-58° F) have been recorded along portions of the Arctic coast. The same conditions that make for extremely cold temperatures during winter in the far north-east—isolation from the sea and narrow valleys between mountains—restrict air movement during the summer. This allows for strong heating under nearly continuous daylight at these high latitudes. During July, temperatures in Verkhoyansk average 15° C (59° F) and have reached as high as 35° C (95° F). The city has an absolute temperature range of 102.8° C (185° F), by far the greatest on Earth.
Russia encompasses a number of distinct climatic zones, which generally extend across the country in east-west belts. Along the Arctic coast a polar climate prevails, extending inland in the far east on upper mountain slopes. To the south of this zone is a broad belt of subarctic climate; in the west it reaches almost as far south as the city of St Petersburg, broadening east of the Urals to cover almost all of Siberia and Far Eastern Russia. Most of European Russia is characterized by a more humid-temperate continental climate. This belt is widest in the west; it stretches from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, then tapers eastward to include a narrow strip of the southern West Siberian Lowland. Temperate conditions are also found in the extreme south-eastern portion of Far Eastern Russia, including Vladivostok. Moscow, which lies in the temperate continental climate zone, has average temperatures of -9.4° C (15° F) in January and 18.9° C (66° F) in July. St Petersburg, which is subject to the moderating influences of the Baltic Sea, averages -8.3° C (17° F) in January and 17.8° C (64° F) in July.
A broad belt of drier steppe climate with cold winters and hot summers begins along the Black Sea coast and extends north-eastward across the lower Volga region, the southern Urals, and the southern part of western Siberia. It continues eastward in isolated mountain basins along the extreme fringes of Siberia and Far Eastern Russia, and in the northern Caucasian Plain.
I Natural Resources
Russia contains the greatest reserves of mineral resources of any country in the world. It is especially rich in mineral fuels, containing the world’s largest natural gas reserves, second-largest coal reserves, and eighth-largest oil reserves. It is also among the world leaders in deposits of iron ore, asbestos, zinc, nickel, cobalt, diamonds, potassium, lead, gold, platinum, and uranium.
Coal deposits are scattered throughout the country, but by far the largest fields lie in the Donbass (bordering Ukraine), Pechora (Arctic Circle), Kuzbass, or Kuznetsk (western Siberia), and Kansk-Achinsk (central Siberia) basins. The most developed fields are in western Siberia, the north-eastern European-Arctic region, the Moscow region, and the Urals. The country’s major oil reserves are located in western Siberia and the Volga-Ural region. Smaller deposits, however, exist in many other parts of the country, such as the Azov Sea-Black Sea area and Bashkortostan republic. The principal natural-gas deposits are in the Tyumen oblast of western Siberia, on the border with Kazakhstan; in the Orenburg oblast of south-western Russia; in the Komi republic of north-eastern European Russia; and the Yakutia (Sakha) republic in the Siberian north-east. The primary iron-ore deposits are found in the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly halfway between Moscow and Ukraine; smaller deposits are scattered throughout the country. Deposits of manganese are scattered through the Urals. Other important iron alloys, such as nickel, tungsten, and molybdenum, occur in adequate or even abundant quantities.
Russia is also well endowed with most of the non-ferrous metals, except aluminium, which is one of the country’s major mineral deficits. Aluminium ores are found primarily in the Urals, north-western European Russia, and south-eastern Siberia. Copper, on the other hand, is abundant: reserves are found in the Urals, the Noril’sk area of eastern Siberia, and the Kola Peninsula. A large deposit east of Lake Baikal became commercially exploitable when the Baikal-Amur Magistral Railway was completed in 1989.
Lead and zinc ores are abundant (often found in conjunction with copper, gold, silver, and a variety of rare metals) in the northern Caucasus, Far Eastern Russia, and the western edge of the Kuznetsk basin in Siberia. Russia has some of the world’s largest gold reserves, primarily in the Russian far east, Siberia, and the Urals. It is also a major producer of precious stones, notably diamonds. Output, mainly of industrial diamonds, accounts for about 25 per cent of the world total by value. Important deposits are located in or near the Arctic Circle. Mercury deposits have been found in the Chukchi okrug in the far north-east. Large asbestos deposits exist in the central and southern Urals and in eastern Siberia. Raw materials for the chemical-manufacturing industries are abundant in Russia. These include potassium and magnesium salt deposits in the Kama River district of the western Urals. Some of the world’s largest deposits of apatite (a mineral from which phosphate is derived) are found in the central Kola Peninsula; other types of phosphate ores are found in other parts of the country. Common rock salt is found in the south-western Urals and south-west of Lake Baikal. Surface deposits of salt are derived from salt lakes along the lower Volga Valley. Sulphur is found in the Urals. High-grade limestone, used for the production of cement, is found in many parts of the country, but particularly near Belgorod in central European Russia and in the Zhiguli Hills area of the middle Volga region.
J Plants and Animals
The broad zones of natural vegetation and soils of Russia correspond closely with the country’s climatic zones. In the far north a tundra vegetation of mosses, lichens, and low shrubs grows where the summers are too cool for trees. Permafrost, or permanently frozen subsoil, is found throughout this region. The ground is frozen to great depths and only a shallow surface layer thaws in summer allowing plants to grow.
Forests cover some 45 per cent of Russia, the greater part lying in Siberia. Taken altogether, the country’s forests account for nearly 25 per cent of the world’s forest area. The forest zone is divisible into a large northern part, the coniferous boreal forest, or taiga, and a much smaller southern area of mixed coniferous-deciduous forest.
The taiga lies south of the tundra; it occupies the northern 40 per cent of European Russia and extends to cover much of Siberia and Far Eastern Russia. Much of this region also has permafrost. Although the vast taiga zone is made up predominantly of coniferous trees, in some places small-leaved trees, such as birch, poplar, aspen, and willow, add to the diversity of the forest. In the extreme north-western part of European Russia the taiga is dominated by pines, although significant numbers of fir, birch, and other trees are also present. Eastward to the western slopes of the Urals, pines are still common, but firs predominate, and in some areas almost pure stands of birch exist. The taiga of the West Siberian Lowland is made up primarily of various species of pine, but along the southern fringes of the forest birch becomes dominant. Throughout much of the Central Siberian Platform and the mountains of the far eastern region, larch, a deciduous member of the pine family, becomes dominant.
The trees of the taiga zone are generally small and rather widely spaced. In some areas, where the local drainage is poor, there are no trees at all, and marsh grasses and bushes form the vegetative cover. The soils of the taiga are podzolic in character and infertile, having been leached of most of their plant nutrients by the abundance of acidic groundwater.
The mixed-forest zone, comprising both coniferous and broadleaf deciduous trees, occupies the central portion of the eastern European Plain from St Petersburg in the north to the border with Ukraine in the south. Coniferous evergreen trees dominate the forest in the north, while broadleaf trees are dominant in the south. The principal broadleaf species are oak, beech, maple, and hornbeam. A similar forest of somewhat different species prevails throughout much of southern Far Eastern Russia, along the middle Amur River valley and south along the Ussuri River valley. Grey-brown forest soils are found in the mixed-forest zone. They are not as infertile as those of the taiga, and with proper soil management, careful farming, and heavy fertilization they can be kept quite productive.
To the south, a narrow zone of forest-steppe separates the mixed forest from the steppes. Although now largely under cultivation, the forest-steppe has a natural vegetation of grassland with scattered groves of trees. Averaging about 150 km (95 mi) in width, this zone stretches east across the middle Volga valley and southern Ural Mountains into the southern portions of the West Siberian Lowland. Isolated areas of forest-steppe can also be found in the southern intermontane basins of eastern Siberia.
A mixture of grasses with only a few stunted trees in sheltered valleys is the natural vegetation of the Russian steppe, a large region that includes the western half of the North Caucasian Plain and a belt of land extending eastward across the southern Volga valley, the southern Urals, and parts of western Siberia. Like the forest-steppe zone, virtually all of the Russian steppe is now under cultivation.
Animal life is varied and, in places, abundant, throughout many parts of Russia. The wildlife of the tundra along the Arctic coast, northern Pacific coast, and offshore islands is surprisingly diverse, and includes the polar bear, seals, walrus, the polar fox, reindeer, pika, marmot, and the white hare. Birdlife includes white partridges, snowy owls, gulls, and loons. Geese, swans, and ducks migrate into the region during the summer, which is characterized by the appearance of millions of mosquitoes, gnats, and other insects. Fish abound in the streams. The taiga forest serves as a habitat for the European elk, brown bears, reindeer, the lynx, the sable, and a variety of forest birds, such as owls and the nightingale. Swamps in this zone have been stocked with muskrats from Canada; along with squirrels, the muskrat is now the main source of pelts legally trapped in the wild. The broadleaf forests contain wild boars, deer, wolves, foxes, minks, and a variety of birds, snakes, lizards, and tortoises. The forests of south-eastern Far Eastern Russia are the habitat of the large Siberian tiger, as well as of the Amur leopard, bears, and musk and other species of deer. The steppe is inhabited primarily by rodents such as marmots, hamsters, and five species of suslik, a type of ground squirrel. Human activities have led to the extinction, or near-extinction of most large grazing mammals, and their predators. Those that remain include the saiga antelope, although this is under renewed threat (see Conservation below), the steppe polecat, and the Tatar fox. Birdlife indigenous to the area includes the demoiselle crane, the steppe eagle, and the great and little bustard, finches, pratincoles, and kestrels and other falcons. The Caucasus region has a wide variety of wildlife, including mountain goats, the chamois, the Caucasian deer, the wild boar, the porcupine, the Anatolian leopard, the jackal, squirrels, bear, and such game fowl as the black grouse, turkey hen, and stone partridge. Reptiles and amphibians are also numerous.
K Conservation
During the Soviet era one of the world’s most important conservation and nature protection systems was established in the USSR, centred on the state nature reserves (zapovednik). These are often very large areas that are closed to all human activities except those relating to fundamental environmental research and conservation. The 89 Russian zapovednik, owned by the federal government and classified as federal natural resources, constitute approximately 40 per cent of the world’s strict scientific reserves. The country also has 29 natural monument areas and about 1,500 smaller, special-purpose reserves (zakasniki) that were established to protect endangered ecosystems, such as the steppe, or particular animal species or plants. In addition, 25 national parks and a large number of nature parks have been created over the past decade. Today, the zapovednik are still closed to the public, although under increasing pressure because of lack of funding to maintain staff and research. Lack of funds has led to the closure of a number of zakasniki, however, and many more are being opened up to tourism as a way of generating funds.
Lack of funds is not the only effect on conservation of the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent economic and political changes. The reduction in border controls, growing poverty, increased opportunities for private enterprise, and the growth of organized crime have created major problems. The opening up of the economy to foreign investment, for example, has increased significantly the destruction of the Siberian forest. Western and Asian logging firms are now working in the area, and it is estimated that some 38,850 sq km (15,000 sq mi) of forest are now being cut every year. For conservationists the problem is made worse by the fact that up to 40 per cent of the trees cut down are left to rot in situ because of poor infrastructure and transport problems. Deforestation has been particularly bad in the Irkutsk oblast and the Khabarovsk kray, and parts of Sakha (Yakutia) republic in recent years.
Russian wildlife has been especially badly hit by recent economic and political changes. According to both local conservation experts and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), there has been an explosion in poaching, including into previously closed areas, and in smuggling. Russia is today one of the world’s major centres of the illegal wildlife trade, supplying particularly the Chinese traditional medicines market. The Siberian tiger, the world’s largest tiger, is hunted both for its pelt and “medicinal” parts, and is now on the verge of extinction in the wild, with only about 150 animals thought to be left; the species is, however, considered safe from total extinction thanks to the world’s largest and longest captive breeding programme.
Other animals severely affected by the wildlife trade include the musk deer, the Saiga antelope, the Amur and Anatolian leopards, the polar bear, brown and black bears, the Horsefield’s tortoise, the wild sable, the ibex, the walrus, and falcons and owls. It is estimated, for example, that more than half of Russia’s musk deer, which live in far south-eastern Russia and which are hunted for their glands, have been killed since the early 1990s. The Saiga antelope nearly became extinct at the end of the 19th century, but protection enabled its numbers to recover to more than 1 million by the end of the 1980s. It is under renewed threat today from hunters seeking its horn for the medicinal market; they are attracted by the high prices, which are well above most state wage levels. The leopards, like the Siberian tiger, are hunted for their bones and skins, while the bears are hunted for their pelts and gall bladders, which play an important role in Chinese traditional medicine.
It is not only the wildlife trade that is affecting Russian wildlife. The Baikal seal, known also as the nerpa, is the world’s only freshwater seal. It is being threatened by illegal hunting to supply mink and sable farms with meat, by pollution, and by excessive culling to protect fish stocks. Overfishing, the vast majority of it illegal, is the main problem facing the sturgeon, whose eggs are eaten as caviare. The WWF has estimated that the world’s sturgeon population has declined by up to 70 per cent in recent years; most of the damage is being done in the Caspian Sea, the source of 90 per cent of the world’s caviare.
L Environment
Although Russia contains huge tracts of unspoilt forest and tundra, the preoccupation with heavy industrialization, agricultural expansion, and the defence industries during the Soviet era has left it with huge environmental problems. These range from unsafe nuclear power plants and decommissioned nuclear submarines, to air, water, and soil pollution, and soil degradation. Almost 15 per cent of Russian territory is thought to be severely environmentally damaged, with much larger areas also facing serious problems.
The worst-affected areas include the major industrial cities, parts of western Siberia and the Arctic, as well as the Nikel area of the Kola Peninsula in north-eastern Russia, near the border with Norway. Environmental monitoring in Norway has shown that some 750 sq km (290 sq mi) around the Nikel nickel smelter has suffered “total environmental deterioration”; in another 2,000 sq km (772 sq mi) there has been extensive damage to vegetation. In western Siberia and inside the Arctic Circle, probably the major causes of environmental degradation are the oil industry and mining. Waste products from both industries are discharged into rivers. In addition, large areas have been affected by oil spills and by leaks from the country’s ageing oil pipeline network. Up to 10 per cent of production is believed to be lost in transit each year, while individual large spills have topped 500,000 tonnes.
One aspect of the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl (now in Ukraine) has been to focus attention on the safety and environmental aspects of the nuclear power facilities of the former USSR. Russia has the lion’s share: more than 50 industrial and research reactors. All are suffering from the effects of age and inadequate maintenance, and many also suffer from labour problems. Additionally, 16 are of the unsafe RBMK (Chernobyl) type. Between 1992 and 1994 more than 260 accidents were reported in these 50-plus reactors, some of them potentially as serious as the Chernobyl breach. Russia also faces a legacy of nuclear-related problems from its defence industry, including: what to do with more than 100 nuclear reactors from decommissioned submarines, the environmental impacts of past nuclear testing, and the dumping of nuclear waste in the northern Barents Sea and in the Kara Sea. The latter is the most radioactive sea on the planet, according to Russian environmentalists, and is located next to Russia’s main underground nuclear testing ground, the island of Novaya Zemlya. Underground nuclear testing also took place in the Sakha republic in north-eastern Siberia during the 1970s and 1980s; dead forests now surround the test sites and the permafrost is radioactive.
More than 80 million Russians live in areas where concentrations of air pollutants are well in excess of permissible levels as a result of industrial emissions and, increasingly, pollution from motor vehicles. It is estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of all children’s diseases are the result of air pollution, while general respiratory diseases like bronchial asthma have increased sixfold since the early 1990s. Another problem affecting human health relates to water supplies. A large percentage of rivers generally, and drinking water supplies in particular, are polluted by industrial effluents, by the run-off of fertilizers and pesticides from agricultural land, and by sewage, only a small percentage of which is properly treated before discharge. The pollution of many rivers, including the Don, Moskva, Northern Dvina, Tobol, Ufa, and Ural, is at critical levels. Some rivers, such as the Tom’, Obi, and Yenisey, have been characterized by environmentalists as “open sewers”. The health impact of water pollution ranges from reduced life expectancies and increased levels of still births and congenital deformities in the worst-affected areas, to a doubling of cases of intestinal infections, including dysentery, typhoid, and viral hepatitis.
Such pollution has had a significant role in the environmental problems facing the Black and Caspian seas, albeit not all of Russia’s making in both cases. Marine life in the Black Sea is close to extinction because of the impact of the heavily polluted rivers that feed it. In addition to raw sewage, nitrates and phosphates from agriculture, detergent residues, and heavy metals, the Black Sea has also been affected by radioactive contamination from Chernobyl. The Caspian Sea receives about 25 per cent of Russia’s annual sewage production. It is also contaminated by the dumping of solid waste, and by spills and other pollution from the offshore oil industry. Pollution is not yet as bad as in the Black Sea, however, and efforts are being made to develop coordinated environmental policies.
Since about 1992, the government has begun establishing environmental policies. An environment ministry has been set up and progressive legislation has been passed, introducing a pollution-fee system. Taxes are levied on air and water emissions, and on solid waste disposal, with the resulting revenues channelled to environmental protection. This legislation has yet to have a significant impact, however, in part due to the many other problems facing the country. In the early 1990s less than 5 per cent of the money raised from pollution taxes was used for environmental protection. Many of the worst polluters are the heavy industrial concerns set up during the Soviet era in remote areas, like Nikel, where problems associated with minimal pollution controls have been compounded by lack of maintenance. The government does not have the necessary funding to modernize them, but with no alternative sources of employment in many of these areas it has also generally been reluctant to close them down.
Environmental concerns within the population are also growing; a Green Party and various lobbying organizations have been established. Environmental protest has a long history in some areas, notably Lake Baikal. Concern about the impact of industrial development began in the 1960s with the construction of the huge Baikalsk pulp and paper mill on the southern shore. Lobbying led to the imposition of strict emission controls on the plant, which environmentalists have continued to monitor. In 1992 Lake Baikal was made into a national park; in 1996 it became a World Heritage site. The lake is one of three natural World Heritage sites recently established in Russia—the others being the Virgin Komi Forest in the Ural Mountains (listed 1995) and the Kamchatka Peninsula (1996)—and the government is seeking to have more sites included on the list as part of environmental protection efforts.
III POPULATION
With a total population of about 145,470,200 (2001), Russia is one of the world’s most populous countries. More than 100 nationalities inhabit Russia, making it one of the largest multinational states in the world. Russians, a Slavic people, are the predominant nationality, comprising more than 80 per cent of the total population. The largest of the non-Russian minorities, the Tatars, comprise only 3.8 per cent of the total. The Ukrainians (3 per cent) and the Chuvash (1.2 per cent) are the only other minorities constituting more than 1 per cent of the population. Other minorities include Avars, Armenians, Bashkirs, Belorussians, Jews, Germans, Mari, Moldovans, and Udmurts.
A Population Characteristics
The overall population density of Russia is about 9 people per sq km (22 people per sq mi). Population distribution across the country, however, is extremely uneven. The population density of a particular area generally reflects the land’s agricultural potential, with localized population nodes occurring at mining and industrial centres. Most of the country’s people are concentrated in the so-called fertile triangle, which has its base along the western border between the Baltic and Black seas, and then tapers eastward across the southern Urals into south-western Siberia. Although the majority of the population remains concentrated in European Russia, there was substantial eastward migration after World War II, especially to southern Siberia and Far Eastern Russia as new industries and farming areas were opened up.
Throughout much of rural European Russia the population density averages about 25 people per sq km (65 per sq mi). The country’s heaviest population densities are found in sprawling urbanized areas, such as the Moscow oblast. More than one third of Russia has a population density of less than 1 person per sq km (2.6 per sq mi). This includes part of northern European Russia and huge areas in Siberia.
The demographic structure of Russia has undergone profound changes over the past decade or so, with the greatest changes during the 1990s. Like other economically more developed countries, Russia’s birth and fertility rates have been declining over many decades. Official figures, however, show that this trend has intensified since the mid-1980s. The birth rate has halved, from nearly 20 live births per 1,000 population in the mid-1980s to 9.35 per 1,000 in 2001. During the same period the total fertility rate—the average number of children born to a woman during her reproductive life—has registered one of the largest falls among the economically more developed countries. Russia’s total fertility rate during the second half of the 1980s averaged 2.1 children born per woman, the rate usually considered to be the minimum necessary to maintain existing population levels. By 2001 it had fallen to just 1.3 children born per woman, one of the lowest rates in the world.
Mortality rates, by contrast, have shown a dramatic reversal of the downward trend that has characterized the modern era. The overall death rate has jumped from about 10.5 per 1,000 in the mid-1980s to 13.8 per 1,000 in 2001. Infant mortality rates have also risen, from 19.9 deaths per 1,000 live births in the late 1980s to 20 per 1,000 in 2001. The rise in mortality is reflected in the sharp decline in life expectancy during the 1990s, from an average of almost 69 years for the population as a whole at the early 1990s to 67 years in 2001. This is one of the worst figures among economically more developed countries, comparing for example with an average life expectancy of about 77 years in the countries of the EU. The average figure also conceals sharp differences between the sexes. Male life expectancy has fallen since the start of the 1990s, from an average of 64 years to just 62 years in 2001. The decline in female life expectancy, however, has been less, from 73 years to 73 years.
The impact of these demographic changes means that in Russia deaths outnumber births. In 1989 there were 1.6 million deaths and 2.2 million births; by 1995 the figures had reversed, with 2.2 million deaths and 1.4 million births. The result is a rapidly declining population that is beginning to cause concern to the authorities, who fear depopulation of many of the more remote areas. Russia’s population growth rate is now -0.35 per cent (2001). Overall, the country’s population has fallen by more than 600,000 since 1992; if the effects of migration are excluded the decline is nearer 2 million.
The change in Russia’s population structure reflects a variety of factors. The large drop in male life expectancy, for example has been attributed to the high levels of alcohol consumption and smoking among Russian men, as well as to the psychological stresses created by the rapid changes in the economy, rising unemployment, and increased uncertainty. Russian researchers have identified the greatest rise in mortality among poorly educated, unemployed urban males, who have been unable to adapt to the country’s new economic conditions. A general deterioration in health levels due to a worsening of people’s diet as a result of rising food prices, and to poor environmental conditions, especially air and water pollution, have contributed to the general rise in mortality levels. So too have the shortages of medicines and vaccines, and the deterioration in state-run medical services generally, that have resulted from funding cuts. There has been a marked increase in levels of preventable diseases such as diphtheria and tuberculosis, as well as in bronchial asthma and other respiratory diseases, dysentery, and typhoid.
B Principal Cities
Almost 77 per cent of the population lives in urban areas. Russia became a country of large cities despite government restrictions during the Soviet period designed to limit the populations of major urban centres. Thirteen cities have more than 1 million inhabitants; most of these are in European Russia. Another 80 have populations of between 1 million and 200,000. The largest city by far is Moscow, the capital, with a population of 8,297,900 (1999 estimate). St Petersburg (called Leningrad during the Soviet era), which served as the national capital from 1712 to 1918, is the country’s second city. It is situated on the Gulf of Finland, a leading port and a primary industrial centre, and has a population of 4,695,400 (1999 estimate). The third-largest city, Nizhniy Novgorod, the largest city on the Volga and a major automotive and shipbuilding centre, has a population of 1,361,500 (1999 estimate). Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia, has a population of 1,402,100 (1999 estimate). Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals, has a population of 1,270,700 (1999 estimate). Samara (Kuibyshev), a commercial centre of the middle Volga region and the primary refining centre for the Volga-Urals oilfields, has 1,170,800 inhabitants (1999 estimate). Omsk, the second-largest city in western Siberia and the region’s chief petrochemical centre, has 1,157,600 people (1999 estimate).
The other cities with more than 1 million inhabitants include Chelyabinsk, the second-largest urban centre in the Ural Mountains; Kazan, capital of the Tatar republic, located on the middle Volga; Perm’, the major industrial centre in the Kama River region to the west of the Urals; Ufa, an important petrochemicals centre in the southern Urals; Rostov, a commercial, industrial, and transport centre in southern European Russia on the lower Don River; and Volgograd, a centre of machinery production and other industrial activity, on the lower Volga.
C Religion
Religious expression, which was controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and strictly discouraged for nearly seven decades, has unfolded in a myriad of different beliefs, sects, and religious denominations since the dissolution of the USSR. Missionaries from abroad and other proselytizers have introduced a wide variety of religious beliefs and new-age philosophies to Russia. The religious revival, however, has resulted primarily in the resurgence of traditional religions, particularly Orthodox Christianity, but also other forms of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism.
Russian Orthodox Christianity (see Orthodox Church), adopted by the Eastern Slavs from the neighbouring Byzantine Empire in the 10th century, is the primary religion in Russia, with an estimated 35 million to 40 million adherents (about one quarter of the population). The head of the Russian Orthodox Church is the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia (from 1990 Alexii II of St Petersburg and Novgorod), assisted by the seven-member Holy Synod. The Church is widely respected by Russian non-believers, who see it as a symbol of Russian heritage and culture. Orthodox holidays are officially observed by the Russian government, and politicians attend major Church festivals. The Church is divided, however, on its role in a post-Soviet society. An anti-Semitic, highly nationalistic, intolerant faction is opposed by another group advocating a more tolerant, ecumenical approach to worldly affairs. Another challenge to its authority outside Russia has been the resurrection of the Uniate Church in Ukraine, which observes Orthodox rites but recognizes the supremacy of the Roman Catholic pope.
Other traditional Christian denominations include the Old Believers, whose schism from the Orthodox Church dates from the 17th century; the Armenian Apostolic Church; and the Roman Catholic Church. In the mid-1990s there were estimated to be 300,000 Roman Catholics in European Russia and 122,000 in Siberia.
Most Muslims in Russia practise the Sunni form of Islam. Islam is the dominant religion among peoples of the north Caucasus, such as the Chechen and the Ingush, and in the middle Volga region, among the Tatars, Chuvash, and Bashkirs. Buddhism has been an official religion in Russia since the mid-18th century, and is most widespread in the Buryatia republic, where the Central Spiritual Department of Buddhists of Russia has its seat, in the Kalmykia and Tuva republics, and in parts of the Irkutsk and Chita oblasts. There are also newly established communities in Moscow and St Petersburg. Although many Jews have left Russia (and previously the USSR) since the relaxation of emigration rules during the 1970s, the country still has a sizeable Jewish population—around 656,000 in the mid-1990s—living mainly in urban areas, but also in small communities around the country including Yevreyskaya (Birobidzhan), the Jewish autonomous oblast in the far east.
Since the passing of the 1990 law allowing religious freedom, there has been a rapid rise in the number of other religious groups. Although the most dramatic growth has been among evangelical Christian sects, including Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-Day Adventists, other groups have also established themselves—including Japan’s Aum Shinri Kyo fringe cult, which was implicated in the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack. The rise in non-traditional religions generally, and particularly the presence of large numbers of well-financed foreign missionaries, has created considerable unease and resentment within conservative religious and nationalist circles in Russia. In July 1996 Aleksandr Lebed, then the Russian security chief, reflected the feelings of many ordinary Russians when he called for the banning of all foreign religions. Yeltsin rejected such action, but many local administrations, particularly in strongly Muslim and Buddhist areas, are reported to have taken independent action, issuing restrictive decrees and laws.
D Languages
More than 100 languages are spoken in Russia, and some of the republics have declared their own local state languages. The Russian language, however, is the most commonly spoken in business, government, and education. Russian was established as the dominant language during the Soviet period, reflecting the dominance of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the former USSR and the dominance of Russians within the state government and bureaucratic structures. As a result, Russians speak their native tongue almost exclusively—in 1989 only 4.1 per cent of Russians throughout the former USSR could speak another indigenous language—while most other ethnic groups are bilingual. Millions of non-Russians have adopted Russian as their mother tongue. The government of the former USSR helped many smaller ethnic groups to develop their own written alphabets and grammars; however, through educational policies, it also ensured the dominance of the Russian language.
E Education
Russian education and cultural institutions and activities, highly constrained and monitored, as well as financed, by the Soviet state for nearly seven decades, were granted much greater freedom during the late 1980s, under the policy of glasnost (Russian, “openness”) of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Liberalization accelerated with the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the USSR. Ideological training has disappeared; new teaching methodologies have been developed and promoted in public schools, including a new approach to Soviet and Russian history; private schools have been established; and the bans on a variety of forms of artistic expression have been lifted. However, although now free of ideological and political interference, Russia’s educational system and cultural institutions have been severely affected by the impact of the liberalization of the country’s economy generally, and by the collapse of government finances in particular. State funding has been cut or, in many cases, ended and even where theoretically still provided has often failed to materialize.
Russia inherited a well-developed, comprehensive system of education that was probably one of the greatest achievements of the Soviet period. The Soviet authorities established an extensive network of pre-school, elementary, secondary, and higher-education institutions that transformed national educational levels. Literacy levels were brought up to almost 100 per cent, compared with a predominantly illiterate population in 1917, secondary-level education became the norm, with a sizeable minority going on to higher education, and the country became a world leader in many areas of research. It also provided free continuing education for adults. At the age of six or seven, children in the USSR entered primary school for an intensive course from grades one to four. Intermediate education began with grade five and continued until grade nine. After that, children entered upper-level schools, specialized institutions, or vocational-technical programmes, which included on-the-job training.
Nurseries, kindergartens, and other early-education facilities were particularly well developed in Russia during the Soviet period. In 1989 nearly 70 per cent of pre-school-age children attended a state-run facility—one of the highest proportions among the former Soviet republics. The system of specialized secondary and vocational-technical education was also well developed. In 1989 Russia had 2,595 specialist secondary institutions, or 57 per cent of the total in the former Soviet republics. Such schools were set up to train skilled and semi-professional workers such as technicians, nurses, and elementary-school teachers, who generally function as assistants to professional graduates of higher educational institutions. Vocational-technical schools offer students a chance to complete a general secondary education while obtaining occupational training.
Russia has some 70,000 primary and secondary schools, including some 447 non-state schools (1994). More than 21 million pupils were enrolled in 1994, equivalent to about 95 per cent of the total school-age population; 40,000 of the total were in private schools. Although primary and secondary education are still free in the state sector, schools are facing increasing shortages of equipment and books, and school buildings are generally in a poor state of repair; many schools lack basic facilities such as running water or sewerage. There is also a growing problem of staff shortages. Teachers’ salaries are very low (equivalent to about 73 per cent of the average national wage in 1994) and the status of the profession, which is dominated by women, has fallen considerably in recent years. Many teachers, particularly those with marketable skills like foreign languages, have left to take up jobs in the expanding and more lucrative private sector, while the number of entrants to the profession is falling. The problem of low wages has been compounded by the government’s financial problems, which have led to a large backlog of unpaid wages in the public sector generally. Schoolteachers have been in the forefront of strikes to protest against the backlog.
The impact of economic liberalization and government financial shortages on the pre-school sector has been even more profound. The state nursery sector, set up originally to support the Soviet Union’s large number of working women, by caring for children aged 6 months to 3 years, had virtually ceased to exist by the end of 1995. To help compensate for this loss, the government in 1994 increased maternity-leave provision from 1 to 3 years, and many women have taken advantage of this, although the additional leave is unpaid. Private crèches have been set up, but the cost of their fees mean that they are out of the reach of most parents. Kindergarten provision for children aged 3 to 6 years has continued. However, many of the free workplace facilities of the Soviet era have been closed down by privatized state industries, while nurseries still in the state sector have lost their subsidies, forcing them to charge fees.
The number of higher educational institutions has expanded since the collapse of the USSR, rising from 514 in 1990 to 553 in 1994. The increase reflects mainly the rapid growth of non-state higher educational institutions during the 1990s. In 1994 there were 157, equivalent to 28 per cent of total higher educational institutions. However, the number of students enrolled in higher education has fallen, from 2.8 million in 1990, to just over 2.5 million in 1994, of whom 4 per cent were in the non-state sector. The fall in numbers has been due partly to Russia’s changing demographic structure, but mainly to the introduction of tuition charges for students. Although the fees are generally low, except in the most prestigious universities, by the end of 1996 the only university still providing completely free access was Kazan State University in Tatarstan republic. Founded in 1804, Kazan State University is the third oldest university in Russia, and also one of the most prestigious. The others included Moscow State University (founded 1755), St Petersburg State University (1819), and Novosibirsk State University (1959). Other important universities are located in Rostov, Nizhniy Novgorod, Tomsk, Vladivostok, and Voronezh. The number of universities has increased since 1991, created from numerous small institutes in cities of republics across the federation. Notwithstanding this, universities still comprise only a small proportion of higher educational establishments; the vast majority are institutes that specialize in vocational training.
Undergraduate training in higher educational institutions generally involves a four- or five-year course of study for full-time students. However, a large minority take their degree by correspondence course or attend on a part-time basis. Students completing undergraduate courses can enrol for graduate training for a one- to three-year term. Graduate students who successfully complete their courses of study, comprehensive examinations, and the defence of their dissertations receive candidate of sciences degrees, which are roughly equivalent to doctoral degrees in the West. A higher degree, the doctor of sciences, is awarded to established scholars who have made outstanding contributions to their disciplines.
F Research
During the Soviet era the state channelled large amounts of funding into research and the USSR achieved a prestigious reputation in a wide variety of fields, including nuclear physics, space science and technology (including astronomy), medicine, Earth sciences, and the biological sciences. Research was, and still is, carried out not only in universities but also in a large number of independent research institutes; in 1996, Russia had more than 1,000 such institutes of various kinds, for pure and applied research. Those relating to pure research are mainly organized within coordinating academies. The most important of these is the Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), which is the chief coordinating body for research in the natural and social sciences in Russia, controlling a network of around 300 research establishments. There are also specialized academies for the agricultural sciences, the arts, the medical sciences and education.
G Culture
Russia has an enormous cultural legacy, notably from the 19th century; its achievements in music, ballet, drama, literature, and film are particularly renowned. Russia has produced some of the most famous names in 19th and 20th century music, notably the composers Alexander Borodin, Mikhail Glinka, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninov, Nicolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Aleksandr Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, and Peter Illich Tchaikovsky. Other famous names are the singer Chaliapin and the musicians Vladimir Horowitz, Anton Rubinstein, and Emil Gilels. Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky are among the Russian composers who have had a close association with the ballet. Of all the performance arts, ballet is arguably the one most closely associated with Russia. It was the main home of classical ballet as it developed during the second half of the 19th century, largely under the direction of French-born choreographer Marius Petipa. In the 20th century the company of Sergei Diaghilev, Ballets Russes, with legendary names like dancer Anna Pavlova and the dancer-choreographers Vaslav Nijinsky and Michel Fokine, provided the impetus that revitalized ballet all over the world. In the modern era, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Kirov Ballet continue the classical tradition. Famous names include Galina Ulanova, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Irek Mukhamedov.
The 19th century was also probably the richest period for Russian writers, beginning with poet and author Aleksandr Pushkin, and including Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenyev, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Anton Chekhov. Famous names of the 20th century include Maksim Gorky, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Sholokhov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Joseph Brodsky. In the visual arts the most famous names include Andrei Rublev and Theophanes the Greek, artists whose work in the late 14th and early 15th centuries marked the supreme achievement in icon painting. More recent names include the artists Wassily Kandinsky, Ilya Repin, Léon Bakst, Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, and Vladimir Tatlin. Russia’s noted film-makers include Andrey Tarkovsky, Mark Donskoy, and Sergey Eisenstein.
For more details of Russian culture see Russian Cinema; Russian Literature.
H Cultural Institutions
Russia has a huge number of museums of all kinds, including outdoor museums of architectural preservation. Most of the major ones are in Moscow and St Petersburg. Best known to tourists are the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, one of the world’s finest museums, and the Armoury Museum in the Moscow Kremlin. Also in Moscow are the State Tretyakov Gallery, with a collection devoted to Russian art, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, the Folk-Art Museum, the Central Museum, and the Museum of the Revolution, as well as many other smaller, more specialized collections. The Permanent Exhibition of National Economic Achievements in Moscow offers a large display of achievements in science, industry, and agriculture. To the north-east of Moscow there is a string of a half-dozen old kremlin (citadel) towns that served as seats of government for city-states during the Middle Ages. These have been restored as part of a tourist circuit known as the Golden Ring.
Russia also has thousands of libraries of various kinds. Best known is the Russian State Library in Moscow, which is one of the largest library collections in the world. Other leading libraries include the State M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library in St Petersburg, the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Moscow State University Library.
The best-known theatres in Moscow are the Bolshoi (“big”) Theatre, the Maly (“small”) Theatre, and the Moscow Art Theatre. In addition, many of the larger productions of the Bolshoi ballet and opera companies are presented in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, which seats 6,000 people. Other theatres of note in the capital are the Moscow Central Children’s Theatre, the Moscow Young Spectators Theatre, the Moscow Central State Puppet Theatre, the Moscow Art Theatre, the Academic Musical Theatre, the Operetta Theatre, and the Theatre Art Institute. St Petersburg has the Mariinsky Theatre, the Maly Opera Theatre, and the Pushkin Academic Drama Theatre.
Russia’s cultural institutions have been greatly affected by the heavy cuts in public spending and the country’s other economic problems. The generous subsidies given to the arts during the Soviet era have left the country with an enviable cultural infrastructure, but one that is also extremely expensive to maintain. Russia’s theatres, orchestras, opera companies, circuses, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions were all totally dependent on state funding. State patronage also supported writers, artists, and film-makers. A number of cultural institutions have been forced to close down, while many others are on the brink of closure. Some are attempting to compensate for funding cuts by raising finance commercially, such as through corporate sponsorship and donation, although this is a route open so far only to the most famous. Foreign tours have been a vital source of finance for some institutions, such as the Kirov and Bolshoi ballet companies. There have also been attempts to pressure the government and local authorities to release funds that have been allocated but not disbursed, a common occurrence. In October 1996, for example, the country’s museum directors mounted public protests in an attempt to persuade the Ministry of Culture to release funding allocated for maintenance.
IV ECONOMY
As in other former Soviet republics, Russia has experienced formidable economic difficulties since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Efforts to move from the old centrally planned economy to a market-oriented one have met with varying degrees of success. The break-up of the USSR into 15 independent states destroyed important economic links that have been only partially replaced. As a result of this dislocation and of the government’s failure to implement a consistent reform programme output dropped by more than one third between 1990 and 1996. Real gross domestic product (GDP) declined by some 40 per cent during the same period, a much greater drop than occurred in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Real investment has declined by similar percentages, while during the first half of the 1990s both inflation and unemployment rose sharply. The value of Russia’s currency, the rouble, dropped rapidly, from the highly artificial official rate of 0.6 rouble per US$1 in 1988 to more than 1,000 roubles per US$1 in 1993. Official unemployment was about 8 per cent, but real levels of unemployment and underemployment were much higher than this. In addition, the government had inherited both a large government deficit and a large foreign debt from the Soviet period; the deficit in 1993 equalled about one fifth of total GDP, while Russia’s foreign debt was in the region of US$80,000 million.
In January 1992 the government launched an economic reform programme aimed at giving new life to a process that had stagnated since the initial introduction of economic reforms by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s. The measures were met with widespread resistance by industrial managers and conservative members of the State Duma. Largely in response to this resistance (and to the annoyance of the government) the Central Bank of Russia extended large subsidies to inefficient enterprises in 1992. In mid-1993, however, the bank began to adhere to governmental directives on subsidies, and other elements of the reform programme began to be implemented. By the end of 1995 nearly all prices had been freed, defence spending slashed, the old centralized distribution system ended, private financial institutions established, foreign trade decentralized, and the world’s largest privatization programme was well under way. By 1995 the non-state sector was producing about 70 per cent of GDP, compared with about 60 per cent in 1993. On the other hand little or mixed progress had been made in other areas that were key to providing a solid foundation for the transition to the market economy. For example, the legislation permitting the private ownership, selling, and renting of land was not passed until October 1993, when President Yeltsin issued a decree that repealed a ten-year moratorium on reselling land that had been imposed by the legislature. The State Duma continued, however, to prevaricate on the introduction of legislation that would allow the development of a land market as a source of capital, and the fledgling securities market remained largely unregulated.
During 1995 and 1996 there were some indications that the economy was starting to move out of extreme recession. Inflation had been cut to less than 32 per cent by September 1996, from 130 per cent in 1995 and 849 per cent in 1993, while the decline in output, real GDP, and gross capital investment had slowed considerably. In 1995 and 1996 real GDP fell by 4 per cent and 2 per cent respectively, compared with 12.6 per cent in 1994; industrial output declined by 3 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, compared with almost 21 per cent in 1994; and gross capital investment fell by 13 per cent and 7 per cent respectively, compared with 24 per cent in 1994. By late 1996 most analysts were projecting modest growth in all these indicators in 1997. However, official figures published in June 1997 indicated that the long-awaited upturn in Russia’s economy was still some time away. The government was projecting that GDP, industrial output, and investment would continue to fall, by between 2 and 4 per cent, during 1997.
The causes of the Russian economic crisis have been, as already indicated, the disruption of traditional trade patterns and a delay in enacting economic reforms. Trade between Russia, other former Soviet republics, and Eastern European countries has declined markedly since the late 1980s, when Eastern European countries achieved independence from Moscow, and the Soviet-controlled, centralized system of trade and production began to disintegrate. Trade between Russia and other republics of the former USSR has suffered from disputes over terms of trade, especially over the price of Russian oil exports. In the last year, however, a new problem has emerged: the government’s acute shortage of finance. These financial shortages, which have led to difficulties in meeting budget deficit targets and to major arrears problems in paying public sector wages, are due almost entirely to problems in collecting taxation. By 1996 tax evasion had become rampant. By the end of November of that year, the government was owed an estimated US$9,000 million by large corporations alone, with more outstanding from the republics and regions. Of the total owed by large companies, more than half was owed by oil and gas companies, which in turn are owed large amounts by creditors. The huge state-owned gas production, distribution, and marketing company, Gazprom owed the government US$2,700 million, but was itself owed some US$10,000 million for gas shipments within Russia and the CIS generally. As a result of the revenue shortfalls, the government by the end of December 1996 owed an estimated US$8,000 million in past wages in a wide variety of sectors.
A Agriculture
Most of Russia’s farmland lies in the black-earth belt of the forest-steppe and steppe zones that make up the so-called fertile triangle. The fertile triangle has its base along the country’s western border, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and tapers eastward to the southern Urals, where it narrows to a strip about 400 km (250 mi) wide extending across the south-western fringes of Siberia. East of the Altai Mountains, agriculture is found only in isolated mountain basins along the southern fringes of Siberia and the far eastern region. Areas outside this fertile wedge are unsuitable for crops without human modification. To the north, the growing season is too short without the aid of greenhouses. To the south, the climate is too dry without irrigation. During the Soviet period extensive irrigation works were constructed along the Kuban and other rivers in southern European Russia to support agriculture there; the main irrigated areas of the former USSR, however, are located in the independent Central Asian republics. Agriculture in Russia is generally highly mechanized, and heavily dependent on inputs of fertilizers, insecticides, and equipment such as tractors and harvesters.
In 1999 the agricultural sector accounted for 6.60 per cent of GDP. Production, however, has declined sharply since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, after rising slightly in the period from 1986 to 1990. In the years 1991 to 1994 output declined by an average of almost 7 per cent a year, with a further decline of 8 per cent in 1995. Thus, overall, in the first half of the 1990s agricultural output fell by more than one third compared with 1990. The decline slowed somewhat in 1996 to about 4 per cent and was expected to level out in 1997. The largest decline was in grain production, which fell by almost 25 per cent between 1990 and 1991, and by another 25 per cent between 1992 and 1994. There was also a significant decline in livestock numbers, which fell by about 30 per cent between 1991 and 1995.
The decline in livestock numbers was partly attributable to lack of animal feed. The decline in crop production resulted from a variety of factors, including lack of reliable credit facilities to purchase inputs like seed and fertilizers; sharp rises in the price of mechanical, chemical, and fuel inputs; and growing shortages of agricultural machinery generally, and spare parts in particular. In 1996, for example, lack of funding meant that barely 50 per cent of land requiring fertilizers was treated. In the same year, as in 1995, much of the harvest was simply not collected because of lack of equipment. Such problems are largely a result of the changes in the Russian economy generally over the past decade, and in the agricultural sector in particular. During the Soviet era agricultural production, like the rest of the economy, was totally state controlled with pricing, interest rates, and profitability centrally administered.
Efforts to move the agricultural sector towards a market structure have also been implanted in an uneven fashion. At the end of 1991 and in early 1992, special measures were introduced to reorganize the collective and state farms, into which the agricultural sector was then divided. Each was required to register and decide whether it would retain its old status as a public-sector enterprise, or become a private one, such as a joint-stock company, partnership, or co-operative. By the end of the registration period, 66 per cent had opted for the private route. By 1995 almost 95 per cent of agricultural land was held in private ownership arrangements. At the same time there was a rapid growth in private family-run farms, consisting of the household plots of rural people, and the private plots of urban dwellers. It was this small-scale sector—which is far less dependent on machinery, fertilizers, and credit than the large-scale sector—that played a key role in maintaining food production during the first half of the 1990s. By 1994 such farms were producing an estimated 89 per cent of potatoes, 68 per cent of vegetables, 44 per cent of cattle and poultry, and 40 per cent of milk. The large-scale sector remained primarily responsible for grain and sugar-beet production. The expansion of the small-scale sector was encouraged in part by the opening up of agricultural marketing. The state’s role in buying agricultural produce has steadily declined, being most noticeable in vegetables, sunflower seeds, potatoes, and eggs.
Although private farming has been allowed, land reform has not proceeded as fast as was initially hoped. The right to own land is stated in the 1993 Constitution, but many uncertainties and legal ambiguities remain, particularly with regard to establishing a market in land. A presidential decree authorizing the free sale of land came into effect in March 1996, despite strong opposition in the State Duma, which is dominated by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and other conservative groups.
Despite the problems facing agriculture, Russia remains a major producer of grain, notably wheat, barley, oats, and rye, of potatoes, and of livestock. In 2000 the country produced 37 million tonnes of wheat, 13 million tonnes of barley, and 6 million tonnes of rye. The output of potatoes was 32 million tonnes. Production of other crops included (in tonnes): oilseed, 1.47; sugar beet, 16 million; dried peas and other pulses, 0.91 million; and vegetables, 11.4 million. Other important grains include maize, millet, buckwheat, and paddy rice. Various types of temperate-climate fruits, such as apples, pears, plums, and cherries, are grown extensively, and the country also produces significant quantities of watermelons, grapes, peaches and nectarines, and various kinds of berries. In the far north, reindeer herding and trading is a major occupation among the native peoples. Elsewhere, the main livestock kept are cattle (27.5 million head, 2000), sheep (14 million), pigs (18.3 million), goats (2.09 million), chickens (347 million), and horses (1.75 million).
B Forestry
Russia accounts for more than 96 per cent of the total forest reserves in the former USSR, and contains about one fifth of the world’s forests and about one third of the world’s coniferous forests, the majority of which are located in Siberia. The country is one of the leading producers of timber and wood products; most timber production consists of softwoods, mainly varieties of pine, fir, and larch. The principal commercial hardwood tree is birch. About one fifth of all timber felled is used as firewood, and another fifth is used in raw form, for telephone poles, log cabins, and other uses. The primary areas of timber production are north-western European Russia, the central Ural Mountains, southern Siberia in the vicinity of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and southern Far Eastern Russia.
The most accessible and valuable stands of timber were heavily harvested during the Soviet period, and less valuable tree species have become dominant in many areas that were once prime forest land. Remaining forests are located in less accessible areas of Siberia and northern European Russia. These forests, especially in Siberia, contain a high proportion of larch, a difficult and expensive species to exploit because of its high density and resin content. Large-scale exploitation of these less-accessible forests has not proved to be cost-effective, due to difficulties in extracting, transporting, and processing larch logs. Technological improvements and changes in the world timber market, however, could make the logging of larch forests more economically attractive.
Timber production has been particularly affected by the disruption of economic ties in the post-Soviet period. Roundwood removals in 1993 were 26 per cent lower than in 1992, with a similar decline in sawn timber production—a higher percentage of decline than that of the industrial sector. Roundwood removals in 1999 totalled 111 million cu m (3.92 billion cu ft).
C Fishing
Russia’s fishing industry is one of the largest in the world, exceeded in production only by those of Japan, China, and the United States. During the Soviet period, the per capita consumption of fish rose to about 23 kg (50 lb) a year, however, it has declined since 1991 as a result of reduced catches, rising prices, and increasing poverty among large sectors of the population. Fishing is concentrated in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans, and inland lakes and rivers. However, as a result of efforts to expand fishing activities during the 1960s and 1970s, Russian fleets now operate in most areas of the world’s oceans, and fish-farming is carried out in erosion-control ponds, and in rural irrigation reservoirs and ditches. In the 1980s the USSR ranked second only to Japan in the quantity of fish caught annually; in the late 1980s the annual catch was about 10.9 million tonnes. During the 1990s, however, there has been a sharp decline in catches; in 1997 the annual catch was just 4.72 million tonnes. The decline is the result of a variety of factors, including declining stocks in certain waters and problems with maintenance and financing of the fishing fleet.
Marine fisheries account for about 93 per cent of the catch and inland fisheries about 7 per cent. The salt-water Caspian Sea accounts for the majority of the catch from inland waters; freshwater lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and ponds account for the remainder. Astrakhan is the major port on the Caspian Sea.
Outstanding among commercial species caught in inland waters is the sturgeon of the Caspian Sea. Another huge fish is the Kaluga sturgeon, or Amur queen, found in the Amur River—it is the world’s largest freshwater fish.
About 30 per cent of the Russian fish catch comes from the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Much of the Atlantic fishing fleet is based at ports on the Baltic Sea. The Kaliningrad exclave is the largest Russian fishing port on the Baltic; another important Baltic port is St Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland. The principal commercial species taken in the Baltic Sea are herring and sprat. Murmansk and Arkhangelsk (Archangel) are the outstanding fishing ports on the western Arctic coast. Many fishing ports are located on the coasts of the Black and Azov seas in the south.
About 60 per cent of the Russian fish catch is taken in the Pacific Ocean and its marginal seas. Vladivostok is by far the largest fishing port and fish-processing centre of the Pacific region; many other fishing ports are scattered along the mainland coast as well as on Sakhalin Island. Because of its cold waters, the Sea of Okhotsk is one of the richest of Russian fishing grounds. It is especially known for salmon, but the Kamchatka crab is also fished. Other common species taken in the Pacific include herring, flounder, smelt, mackerel, and cod, as well as the marine mammals—walrus and seal.
During the Soviet era the USSR was the world’s leading whaling nation, with the main flotilla based in Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. The USSR was (and Russia is) a member of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) set up in 1946 to conserve whale stocks. Although Soviet commercial whaling in the North Pacific ceased in 1979, whaling continued in the seas surrounding Antarctica until the imposition in 1986 of the moratorium on commercial whaling agreed by the IWC in 1982. Official statistics released by the Russian government to the IWC in 1996, indicated, however, that Soviet catches had been deliberately under-reported to the IWC between 1974 and 1986—by up to 90,000 kills, including tens of thousands of then-protected species. Russia is no longer involved in commercial whaling, although the State Fishing Committee did suggest in early 1997 that a resumption in the White Sea was under consideration “to protect cod stocks”. The people of the Kamchatka peninsula are allowed to hunt up to 100 grey whales annually for subsistence purposes under IWC regulations.
D Mining
Although only about 2 per cent of the workforce is employed in mining, the sector is of vital importance to the Russian economy as a whole. It accounts for some 70 per cent of foreign exchange earnings, provides the vast majority of the country’s energy requirements, and is the source of raw materials for much of industry. Mining’s importance derives from the fact that Russia’s mineral resources are diverse and abundant; it is particularly rich in energy-bearing minerals. The country’s mineral resources are also generally well developed, although they can be expensive to extract because many are located in remote areas with extreme climatic conditions.
The sector has been badly affected by the problems associated with Russia’s economic restructuring over the past decade, notably shortages of finance for developing new resources, for maintenance, and for purchasing modern equipment. Other problems include shortages of spare parts; rising costs, especially of transport; a deteriorating transport infrastructure; poor management; and labour problems, including overstaffing and strikes. These problems have been exacerbated, in some cases, by the major structural changes that have affected the mining sector during the 1990s, including privatization, joint-ventures with foreign companies, and the removal of many controls over mineral exports.
The former USSR was the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels, with Russia accounting for the majority of output—about 90 per cent of all oil produced in the Soviet Union, almost 80 per cent of all natural gas, and 56 per cent of all coal. Russia also has some of the largest reserves of energy-bearing minerals, including the world’s largest natural gas reserves, second largest coal reserves, and eighth largest oil reserves.
E Oil
Proven oil reserves are around 50 million barrels, but total reserves are much larger than this; estimates range between 80 billion and 130 billion barrels. Western Siberia has more than two thirds of proven reserves and also accounts for more than two thirds of current production, mainly from a number of very large oilfields, classified as super-giants. The second largest source of oil is the Volga-Urals region, with about 20 per cent of proven total reserves and about 25 per cent of production. Smaller reserves are located in the Arctic area of north-eastern European Russia (Pechora), in the south-eastern area of the Russian far east, near Sakhalin Island, and in the Barents Sea. Oil production was first developed during the Soviet era in the Caspian Sea region of the now-independent Azerbaijan republic. By the 1950s, however, the focus of oilfield development had shifted to the Volga-Urals area. The Western Siberian super-giants began to come onstream during the 1970s, compensating for natural production declines in the Volga-Urals fields. The Arctic region is a much smaller producer at present, but is expected to increase in significance because it is the focus of many joint ventures with western oil companies. Other new oil developments are located in western Siberia, near the border with Kazakhstan, and near Sakhalin Island.
As in other parts of the mining sector, production has declined significantly during the 1990s, although the actual downturn began at the end of the 1980s; Soviet (and Russian) production peaked at 12.5 million barrels per day (b/d) in 1988. Russian production fell by 11 per cent in 1991, by about 14 per cent in 1992, and by almost 12 per cent in 1993, with further declines in 1994 and 1995, when output reached a low of 5.8 million b/d. There was some recovery in 1996, with further stabilization projected for the rest of the decade. Production in 1999 was 6.31 million b/d. Around 60 per cent of production is consumed domestically; the remainder is exported, predominantly outside the CIS. The sharp decline in output was due to a variety of factors, including depletion of worked reserves, lack of investment and maintenance, and technical management problems. The decline was aggravated by the concentration of production in a small number of very large fields; of some 1,000 producing fields, just 90 account for about three quarters of total output. The problems in just one super-giant field, for example, have accounted for around one third of the production decline since the end of the 1980s.
Restructuring and privatization of the oil sector began in 1993. It is now divided into 10 partly privatized, vertically integrated companies, in which the state interest varies between 17 and 51 per cent, 4 regional companies consolidating operations in the Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Komi, and Chechen republics, and a small-number of state-owned enterprises. The largest Russian oil-sector company is Lukoil, a vertically integrated company that produced almost 20 per cent of national output in the mid-1990s, and which also has substantial refining capacity. More than 100 foreign companies were operating in joint ventures in Russia by 1996, the vast majority involved in rehabilitation and technical service activities in existing fields. Only one third of foreign companies operating in Russia were involved in direct oil production by 1996, but they accounted for about 6 per cent of total production.
The quadrupling of car usage since 1992 means that Russia’s oil refineries, most of them built during the 1940s and 1950s and needing major modernization, are no longer able to keep up with domestic demand for petrol and diesel. A number of Western oil companies have, in response, started operating in the retail market.
F Gas
Russia’s natural gas reserves total some 50 trillion cubic m (1,748 trillion cubic ft) of proven reserves, and another 212 trillion cubic m (7,500 trillion cubic ft) of potential reserves. Around three quarters of proven reserves are located in some 20 super-giant fields in the Tyumen oblast in western Siberia. The first fields to be developed were in European Russia with various fields in western Siberia coming onstream from the late 1960s. Between 1991 and 1996, natural gas output fell by almost 10 per cent, from a peak of 640 billion cubic metres (22.6 trillion cubic ft), but was expected to stabilize and then rise again at the end of the decade. In 1999 production was 590 cubic metres (20.8 trillion cubic ft). Production in the western Siberian fields is declining, and interest is now focused on the Yamal Peninsula and the Sakha (Yakutia) republic of northern Siberia. Most of the production is expected to be exported via the new multi-billion dollar Yamal pipeline, due for completion around 2010, when some 156 million cu m (5.5 billion cu ft) a day is due to be exported to Europe. At present some 30 per cent of Russian gas is exported, the majority of it to European markets; the remainder to CIS countries.
The industry is dominated by Gazprom, the giant company that is the world’s largest producer of natural gas. It controls more than 95 per cent of production in the 100 largest fields in Russia and more than 20 per cent of the world’s natural gas reserves, oversees production companies, owns and operates Russia’s 138,400-km (86,000-mi) gas pipeline network, runs a variety of trading houses and marketing joint ventures, and contributes about 7 per cent of Russia’s GDP. The first steps towards privatization began in 1994, and in 1996 1 per cent of the company’s stock was sold on the international markets, raising more than US$370 million. The Russian government now has a 40 per cent stake in the company, and plans to sell up to 15 per cent of this. Other shareholders are residents of local producing regions (33 per cent), workers in the gas industry (15 per cent), Gazprom itself (10 per cent), and various minor shareholders (2 per cent). The gas pipeline network, like its oil counterpart, has been poorly maintained and is in need of major repair works. A five-year programme was begun in the mid-1990s to rehabilitate the main trunk network; estimates put the repair costs of the full network at between US$3 billion and US$12 billion.
G Coal
Russia’s coal reserves are estimated at around 200 billion tonnes, comprising both hard, or black, coal and soft, or brown, coal (lignite); the country also has sizeable peat reserves. The leading areas of hard coal production include the Kuznetsk coal basin in western Siberia and the Pechora basin of Arctic north-eastern European Russia. The Kansk-Achinsk basin in central Siberia and the Moscow basin are the leading areas of brown coal production. Other production areas include the Chelyabinsk, Lena, South Yakutia, Taymyr, and Zyryanka basins in Siberia, the Raychikhinsk basin in Russia’s far south-east, and the Donets basin in European Russia.
Coal production has declined steadily since 1990, when production reached around 400 million tonnes. In 1995 Russia’s 260 mines produced around 260 million tonnes, with some indications that production might rise slightly in 1996. In 1999 production was 251 million tonnes. However, the industry still faces major problems of antiquated machinery, over-staffing, and inefficient production. Of 1995 output, the most inefficient 130 mines produced only 10 per cent of the total; the most efficient 5 mines, more than 25 per cent. The World Bank (see International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) has estimated that around half of Russia’s 900,000 miners will have to leave the industry by the end of the decade. In 1994, 17 mines were closed and more than 90,000 miners were laid off; the following year the World Bank provided US$500 million to support the closure of another 80 mines before the end of the century, including funds for the creation of a social safety net for displaced workers. Many mines are in more remote areas where there is no alternative employment in the case of closure. The government proved slow to implement such potentially socially disruptive plans, not least because of the unrest it was already facing over the US$470 million in wage arrears owed to miners. In 1997 the state was due to transfer management of five of the most profitable mines to boards of trustees, as an initial step towards their eventual sale to the private sector.
H Other Minerals
Iron ore deposits near Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains have been largely depleted. Russia is also a notable exporter of copper (168,000 tonnes in 1990) and nickel (127,000 tonnes in 1990). Copper and nickel ores are mined primarily in the Urals, although sizeable deposits of nickel are also located in the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk. Bauxite deposits are located primarily in the Urals and north-west European Russia near St Petersburg. Lesser deposits are found in western Siberia near Kemerovo and in the far eastern region near the mouth of the Amur River. Tin is mined in north-eastern Siberia, and lead and zinc are mined in Siberia and the far eastern region. Manganese deposits are located in the Urals, western Siberia, and the far eastern region.
Russia is one of the world’s leading producers of gold, which is mined in the Urals, in western Siberia, and in eastern Siberia in the valley of the Lena River. The impact of lack of investment has been particularly great on gold. Gold production fell from 136.2 tonnes in 1993 to 126 tonnes in 1999.
It is also one of the largest producers of diamonds, accounting for around 25 per cent of the world market in value; output in 1999 was some 11.5 million carats, produced mainly from mines in Siberia. Russia is moving to take over the marketing of its own diamonds. Its arrangement with De Beers Consolidated Mines of South Africa, which marketed the majority of Russia’s diamonds via its Central Selling Organization (CSO) arm, finally collapsed in January 1997 after more than a year of efforts to renegotiate the marketing agreement, which had lapsed in 1995. Control of diamond-marketing combined with a restructuring of production is expected to strengthen the industry in the long term. However, in the short term it could present some difficult problems. For example, following the collapse of the De Beers agreement, Almazy Rossii-Sakha, Russia’s largest diamond producer, lost a US$500 million loan facility agreed with western banks to provide capital for development of new mines and the refurbishment of existing ones. In October 1997 Russia re-entered the De Beers cartel, when an agreement was reached to sell 40 per cent of the production of the Almazy Rossii-Sakha mining company to De Beers, until the end of 1998.
I Manufacturing
The structure of Russian industry was greatly affected by theoretical assumptions of Soviet planners concerning the role of industry in economic growth. In accordance with Soviet theory, heavy industry was promoted above all other sectors, with the greatest emphasis on the machine-building and metalworking industries because they provide the means for more production. The products of these industries are diversified, ranging from fine tools, instruments, and computers to industrial machines of all sorts, transport and communications equipment, agricultural machinery, mining equipment, and space vehicles. Industrial output for national defence also received high priority in Soviet-era planning. Russian industries are very technologically advanced in the production of certain items, such as aerospace technology, but the overall level of technology is generally well below the levels of other highly industrialized countries. The machine-building industries are usually located in the largest cities because they are labour intensive.
In planning the industrialization of the former USSR, the Soviet government devoted particular attention to the geographical location of the vast industrial complexes. Initially, Soviet manufacturing enterprises in Russia were concentrated in the Moscow and St Petersburg areas. Simultaneously, work was begun on the electrification of areas in the Urals known to have large coal and mineral reserves, and planning began for the electrification of various Siberian regions. As the so-called Five-Year Plans progressed, and as the electric-power areas increased, huge new manufacturing complexes were installed to take maximum advantage of these natural resources. As a result, production increased in the eastern regions. This significant expansion was accomplished by developing the new eastern industrial regions, rather than by reducing the production of the older centres; indeed, the older industrial regions continued to increase their output.
Today the manufacture of transport equipment is concentrated in central European Russia. Railway locomotives are produced at Kolomna, Murom, and Lyudinovo, all of which are located near Moscow. Railway rolling stock is built in plants at Tver, north-west of Moscow, and at Bryansk, south-west of Moscow. Underground carriages are manufactured in Mytishchi, a northern suburb of Moscow; Engels, in the Volga Valley, is the main centre for manufacturing trolley buses. A large railway-carriage plant in the Minusinsk Basin in eastern Siberia services the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur railways.
The largest shipbuilding centre is in St Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Lesser shipyards are located in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, in Arkhangelsk (Archangel) on the White Sea, and at certain ports on the Pacific coast. Most of the country’s river craft are built in the Volga-Kama river basin. The oldest, and still the largest, river craft shipyard is located in the city of Nizhniy Novgorod; other riverboat manufacturing plants are in Moscow, Rybinsk, and Kostroma on the upper Volga.
The motor-vehicle manufacturing industry is limited in Russia because the Soviet government gave low priority to vehicular traffic as compared with railways and other forms of transport; several large-scale car and lorry factories, however, are located in Russia. These factories produced about 87 per cent of all lorries and cars manufactured in the former USSR in 1990. The largest construction project in the former USSR during the eighth Soviet Five-Year Plan (1966-1970) was the establishment of the Volga Motor Vehicle Plant at Togliatti, in eastern European Russia. This plant’s capacity is about 660,000 cars a year, or about half the passenger-car production of the former USSR; the plant, however, has been running well below capacity in recent years. Other important car assembly plants are in Moscow, Izhevsk, and Nizhniy Novgorod. The largest construction project during the ninth Five-Year Plan (1971-1975) was the Kama River Truck Plant in Naberezhnye Chelny. Lorries are also produced in Nizhniy Novgorod, Moscow, Simbirsk on the Volga, and Miass in the Urals. During 1997 Fiat, Renault, and General Motors were involved in plans or discussions to establish joint ventures with Russian vehicle manufacturers.
The manufacture of agricultural machinery is an important industry in Russia. In 1990 Russia accounted for 60 per cent of the total production of agricultural machinery in the former USSR, once the largest producer of tractors in the world and a sizeable exporter. Most of the principal producing plants are in European Russia, in Volgograd, Vladimir, Bryansk, and Lipetsk. Chelyabinsk in the Urals and Rubtsovsk in the Altay region of Siberia are also major production centres. Self-propelled combines and other farm machinery are produced in Rostov.
Russia is also a major producer of textiles. The former USSR led the world in the production of virtually all kinds of textiles, with the majority of its productive capacity located in the Russian cities of Moscow, Ivanovo, Kostroma, Tver, and Vladimir, where textile production has been based for more than a century. In the late 1980s the annual production of cotton yarn in the former USSR stood at 1.7 million tonnes, well ahead of that of its second-place competitor, the United States. The country was by far the world’s largest producer of linen fabrics (1.2 billion sq m/1.4 billion sq yd) and woollen yarn (465,000 tonnes). It was second only to Japan in the production of natural silk woven fabric. The USSR also led in the production of rayon and acetate fibres, but lagged in synthetic fibres derived from non-cellulosic materials. In general, the country was somewhat behind the rest of the developed world in the technology of synthetic fibres and plastics. Textile production in Russia has suffered greatly from the disruption of ties with other former Soviet republics, as the other republics were a major source of textile raw materials. Nearly all of the country’s raw cotton, for example, came from the Soviet republics in Central Asia and the republic of Azerbaijan, but with a shortage of supplies from these countries, many Russian textile mills were forced to close. Total textile production in Russia fell by more than 50 per cent in 1992. However, from 1994 it began to recover as a result of the resumption of cotton imports from the Central Asian Republics, and from the United States.
Russia has traditionally been a major producer of leather goods, and the former Soviet government greatly expanded and dispersed the industry. The former USSR ranked as world leader in the production of leather footwear, manufacturing approximately 820 million pairs of shoes and boots each year.
The food industries form another major manufacturing sector in Russia. Initially, flour mills were built in the major grain-producing areas, but newer flour mills are generally located in consuming areas. A considerable portion of the country’s fresh fruits and vegetables are tinned or preserved in the growing areas, because transport and refrigeration facilities are not adequate to market fresh produce at great distances.
In general, industrial output in Russia has declined sharply during the 1990s, accelerating a general slowdown in industrial growth that took place during the last years of the USSR. Overall industrial production declined by about 50 per cent between 1990 and 1994, with the drop in production of certain items being even greater. By 1994 average capacity utilization rates were around 42 to 45 per cent, compared with 75 per cent in 1991. The decline began to slow during 1995 and 1996 with industrial output falling by 3 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, in real terms, compared with more than 20 per cent in 1994. The contraction in output has affected all sectors, the only variation being in the pace of decline during the first half of the 1990s.
One of the worst hit sectors has been the iron and steel industry, where output deteriorated by more 60 per cent between 1990 and 1994 due to a variety of factors, notably the decline in the domestic market as a result of recession generally and the collapse in demand for the armaments industry and machine-building in particular. In 1988, for example, the year in which iron and steel production peaked at about 103 million tonnes, the country still had to import almost 6 million tonnes to meet demand from local industries. Domestic usage of steel was 440 kg (968 lb) per capita, the second highest in the world after Japan; in 1993 it had dropped to just 140 kg (308 lb) per capita. Also important in accounting for the decline were production problems related to outdated plant and lack of finance for maintenance, spare parts, or new equipment; around 60 per cent of the plant has exceeded its useful life, while production methods are dominated by outdated, energy-intensive, and highly polluting processes. Since 1995 production in the sector has started to pick up as new export markets have been developed to replace the loss of the domestic market; exports now account for 40 per cent of production, with China, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, western Europe, and North America the main markets.
Russia’s light and consumer industries, including clothing and footwear manufacture, have been particularly hard hit by the opening up of the Russian market to imports. According to official statistics, the output of this sector fell by around 75 per cent between 1990 and 1994. Imported clothing accounted for around 40 per cent of the total clothing market. The main decline was in larger plants; smaller enterprises, which are of considerable significance in this sector, were not so badly hit. The food industry has also been affected by competition from imports, although to a lesser extent.
The majority of the manufacturing sector is now in the non-state sector; in 1995 the percentage of privatized enterprises averaged 77 per cent, accounting for almost 90 per cent of production, and ranging from 91 per cent in the ferrous metals industry, to 83 per cent among chemical industries, and around 81 per cent each in the light industrial sector and food industries. In general, this has not yet helped overcome the main problem facing the industrial sector, the need to modernize its capital stock in order to increase productivity and reduce costs.
J Tourism
Tourism was a major source of foreign exchange for the former USSR, and despite political differences with many Western countries, the Soviet government developed procedures to cater to this activity. A huge state organization, Intourist, handled all touring arrangements, and many beryozka, or hard-currency, stores were established to sell a wide variety of souvenirs to foreign tourists. Student travel was handled by Sputnik, the international youth excursion bureau. Each year about 7 million people visited the USSR; slightly more than half of these visitors were from the countries of Eastern Europe. The Soviet government encouraged domestic travel, and each year millions of Soviet citizens visited parts of the country remote from their own homes. The capital city of Moscow, in particular, was the destination of many Soviet holidaymakers.
In post-USSR Russia, tourism continues to be an important source of business, although it has declined greatly as a foreign currency earner due to a decline in the number of foreign visitors since 1993 and a sharp rise in Russians travelling outside the country for their holidays. Private tour companies have exploded in number, and there has been significant foreign investment in upgrading hotels in the main tourist centres. The country contains a wide variety of cultural attractions including tsarist retreats near St Petersburg, the Old Town of Novgorod, the Golden Circle of medieval towns surrounding Moscow, and numerous museums, galleries, theatres, and architectural points of interest in the cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. Resorts on the Black Sea provide holiday destinations although they are less popular with foreign and domestic tourists these days. Cruises along the Volga are also popular. The Caucasus Mountains offer a variety of alpine sports, such as skiing, hiking, camping, mountain-climbing, and fishing. Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world and home to numerous unique animal and plant species, attracts thousands of visitors annually. Holiday rides on the Trans-Siberian Railway are also in great demand. Receipts from tourism amounted to some US$7,434 million in 1999.
K Energy
Russia is the only large developed country in the world with adequate energy supplies. It is not only self-sufficient in the production of mineral fuels, but also able to export considerable quantities of them. Coal accounted for most of Russia’s energy production until 1955, after which a gradual shift to oil and natural gas took place. By the 1970s oil and natural gas had become the country’s primary energy sources, and the former USSR became the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels. In 1990, Russia produced most of the USSR’s energy output—90 per cent of all oil, 79 per cent of all natural gas, and 56 per cent of all coal. Energy output has declined significantly following the dissolution of the USSR, although natural-gas production increased slightly between 1990 and 1992.
Russia has more than 600 thermal plants accounting for about 68 per cent of total generating capacity (529 billion kWh, 1999).
Other important sources of energy in Russia are hydroelectric and nuclear power. Russia—especially Siberia—has vast water-power resources, and water-power accounted for about 13 per cent of the total yearly electrical production in the former USSR; it now accounts for 19 per cent of the Russian Federation’s electricity output. Important hydroelectric stations are located on the major rivers of European Russia, notably on the Volga and Don rivers. The largest hydroelectric installations, however, are on the great rivers of Siberia, particularly on the Yenisey and Angara. Russia’s 29 nuclear power plants account for about 13 per cent of total energy production in Russia, with most of the country’s nuclear-energy capacity located in European Russia, especially the north-west. The country’s two largest cities, Moscow and St Petersburg, depend on nuclear energy for about one fifth to one third of their electrical needs. The Chernobyl’ accident of 1986 prompted Soviet officials to abandon plans to greatly expand nuclear capacity, but in 1992 the Russian government announced plans to expand nuclear energy production in the country.
L Transport
The Russian transport network is partly state-owned and nationally integrated. The overall transport network is much less dense, however, than those of most other developed nations. The Soviet government considered transport expenditures an unproductive but necessary part of the economy. Emphasis was therefore placed on the types of facilities that move the greatest amount of goods and people at the least cost, often sacrificing convenience to the consumer in order to maximize efficiency. The transport network is dominated by railways; motor traffic plays a minor role. A great network of oil and gas pipelines facilitated the rapid expansion of the oil and natural-gas industries, and maritime shipping has facilitated the growth of foreign trade.
Passenger transport is also dominated by railways, although in recent years buses have taken over much commuter traffic, and airlines, now privatized, account for a great deal of long-distance travel. The density of the railway network generally corresponds to the regional population density. The network is relatively dense in most of European Russia south of St Petersburg, but is sparse in Siberia and the far eastern region. Russian railway lines carry the heaviest freight traffic in the world. The densest traffic on a single line occurs on the western Siberian section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, where trains occasionally run as frequently as once every three minutes. To relieve some of the traffic, parallel lines were built in western Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. A new line, the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), was built through Siberia and the far eastern region to the north of the present Trans-Siberian Railway.
The former Soviet government neglected motor transport because of the high costs of constructing and maintaining roads as well as the higher overall shipping costs. About half of the roads are surfaced with concrete or asphalt; the rest are gravel. Few of the country’s roads are more than two lanes wide. Like the railway network, the road network is most dense in the European part of the country. There were about 749,700 km (465,841 mi) of paved roads in 1995, principally in European Russia; the road network in Siberia and the Far East is sparse. In 1994 the World Bank granted Russia a loan of US$300 million to finance the construction of 10,000 km (6,213 mi) of roads to the west of the Urals. There are about 10.5 million cars in the federation, equal to a ratio of 14 people per vehicle.
In the late 1980s the merchant fleet of the former USSR ranked among the largest in the world, with more than 6,700 vessels and an aggregate displacement of 29.2 million deadweight tonnes. In 2000 it was only 4,755 vessels, totalling about 10 million deadweight tonnes. The principal civilian seaports in Russia include Novorossiysk on the Black Sea; St Petersburg and Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea; Nakhodka, Vostochnyy, Vladivostok, and Vanino on the Pacific coast; and Murmansk and Arkhangelsk (Archangel) on the Arctic coast.
The Volga is the most important inland waterway in Russia. It carries more than half the river traffic of the country. Navigation on this system was enhanced by the construction of seven major dams as well as the Volga-Don Canal in the south and the Volga-Baltic Waterway in the north; the Volga-Don Canal provides a sea outlet through the Black Sea, the Volga-Baltic Waterway, through the Baltic Sea. Major ports along the Volga are Rybinsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Volgograd, and Astrakhan. Another major port, Rostov, is on the Sea of Azov near the mouth of the Don River. The ports of Moscow are provided with connections to the Volga system through the Moscow Canal that runs north from Moscow to the Volga. In Siberia and the far eastern region, rivers are the only transport system in areas remote from the railway. Most Siberian rivers, including the Lena, Yenisey, and Ob’, flow north to the Arctic Ocean, thus limiting their importance in a region where eastern-western links are vital. The eastward-flowing Amur River is the chief navigable stream of the far eastern region.
M Currency and Banking
The basic monetary unit of Russia is the rouble, consisting of 100 kopeks. For decades the former USSR did not allow the rouble to circulate in world markets, instead setting an arbitrary value relative to foreign currencies; the official conversion rate in 1991 was 0.57 rouble per US$1. Beginning in late 1991 the Russian government took decisive steps to liberalize rouble convertibility, after which the value of the rouble plummeted: in 1992 the rouble’s value fell to less than one hundredth of a US$1. Following currency reforms announced in August 1997, and implemented on January 1,1998, the Russian Central Bank changed the denomination of the rouble. The existing rouble, which had become unwieldy with exchange rates of approximately 6,000 roubles to US$1, was divided by 1,000, and once more divided into 100 kopeks (28.439 roubles equal US$1; 2001).
The structure of banking in Russia has changed significantly since the mid-1980s. In the last years of the USSR, the subsidiary banks of Gosbank, the federal bank of the USSR, were converted into commercial banks and relicensed under the new State Bank of Russia (central bank). The five large Soviet sectoral banks (a general savings bank, the foreign trade bank, and banks for the social sector, agriculture, and construction and industry) were either converted to commercial banks or closed. The remaining sectoral banks are no longer assigned specialized functions or clientele by the government, although they have retained much of their former clientele through inertia. The converted sectoral banks are much larger than recently established commercial banks. Assets of the largest former sectoral bank exceeded 110 billion roubles in mid-1991, versus 1.5 billion roubles on average for the leading new commercial banks. The two types of banks also differ in the clientele they serve; former sectoral banks primarily serve state enterprises, while the new commercial banks generally serve private businesses. Foreign bank branches have been operating since November 1992. In November 1993 the Russian government issued regulations restricting the activities of foreign-owned banks.
Led by its chair, who opposed radical reform, the State Bank of Russia became politically involved in the early 1990s in the struggle between the government and the Supreme Soviet over economic reform. The bank, which was nominally subordinate to the Supreme Soviet, issued credits far in excess of government requests (up to 50 per cent over government guidelines according to some estimates), which hindered reform efforts by supporting inefficient enterprises and fuelling inflation. Under the 1993 constitution, the State Bank of Russia is independent of direct government or legislative control, although its chair will be appointed by the State Duma acting under the president’s recommendations.
N Commerce and Trade
From the end of World War II in 1945 until the mid-1980s, political considerations dictated that the former USSR’s principal trading partners be socialist countries, notably those of Eastern Europe. Even before the political upheavals at the close of the 1980s, however, both the USSR and its socialist allies had found it necessary to import more advanced technology from the West. By 1987 members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON or CMEA) accounted for 60 per cent of Soviet exports and 64 per cent of imports, while developed countries supplied 23 per cent of Soviet imports and purchased 21 per cent of exports. Among the socialist countries, the former East Germany was the USSR’s leading trade partner, followed by the former Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The USSR’s main trading partners outside the socialist bloc were the former West Germany, Italy, and Japan.
In recent years the pattern of Russia’s external trade has changed considerably. Developed Western countries now account for more than half of Russia’s trade activities outside of the former Soviet republics (60 per cent in 1994). Germany is Russia’s leading trading partner (excluding trade with the former Soviet republics), with 17 per cent of total trade in 1994. In contrast, former COMECON countries comprised only 18 per cent of total exports from Russia (excluding trade with the former Soviet republics), and less than 15 per cent of total imports to Russia. Developing countries accounted for roughly 11 per cent of Russia’s total trade outside the former USSR.
Another notable change in Russia’s external trade has been a sharp decline in trade volumes. In 1992 exports to areas outside of the former USSR were less than two thirds of the 1988 export level, while imports were less than half of the 1988 level. Foreign trade fell even further in 1993, due in part to the introduction of new import tariffs and additional controls on strategically sensitive exports. Attempts to determine Russia’s true trade balance, however, are complicated by the existence of barter trade and the illegal transfer of Russian assets abroad. Barter trade constituted an estimated 45 per cent of total exports and 30 per cent of total imports in 1994. Goods are bartered primarily with the former Soviet republics, most of whom still receive Russian fuel at subsidized prices. As to the illegal transfer of Russian assets, some estimates place the total amount of illegal capital outflow to date at US$30 billion or more.
O Labour
The total workforce in Russia numbered about 77,632,200 in 1999. Although many people have continued to work in state-owned enterprises, the number has decreased steadily as a result of privatizations and closures; in 1993 about 41 per cent of the workforce was employed outside the state sector and the number has increased since. Industry, including mining and construction, is the country’s leading employment sector, with about 31 per cent of the total workforce. Agriculture, forestry, and fishing account for about 16 per cent of all employment, and the trade and transport sectors about 8 per cent each. About 25 per cent of all workers are employed in community, social, and personal services. About 8 per cent of the population was unemployed at the end of 1996 according to the International Labour Organization (ILO); the official unemployment figure was less than half this. However, the true unemployment rate is much higher than the ILO total; another 5 per cent was on short-time work or “administrative” leave.
Outside the educational and health sectors, where the workforce is overwhelmingly female, women have borne the brunt of employment uncertainties in Russia. They tend to be the first to be laid off by companies anxious to avoid payment of relatively generous child allowance payments and maternity leave. It is estimated, in fact, that almost 70 per cent of Russia’s unemployed are women; the figure also includes an increasing number of young people.
Even those in work are not necessarily well off. State wages in particular are very low, normally between 65 and 80 per cent of the average Russian wage, depending on the sector. As a result, many people are forced to take second jobs; in 1995 more than 8 million people admitted to having a second job. Overall, within Russia, income differentials have widened sharply. According to official statistics more than one third of the population has an income below the official minimum wage, which is itself only about 10 per cent of the average wage.
The organization of labour has changed little since the Soviet period. Trade unions are dominated by organizations that succeeded the official trade unions of the USSR with their leadership, property, and apparatus intact. Their parent organization is the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (the Russian acronym is FNPR), the successor to the Soviet-era All Union Central Council of Trade Unions, which claims 50 million members, or nearly 70 per cent of the total workforce. However, a number of independent trade unions have formed outside the FNPR, including those representing clock, railway, metallurgical, and air-traffic-control workers. Altogether, such unions have a total membership of about 3 million. However, they have played a significant political role, notably through the Independent Trade Union of Mineworkers, which played an important role in the collapse of the USSR by coordinating efforts to counter the influence of the conservative FNPR. More recent attempts by the government to reduce the FNPR’s powers prompted most member unions to express support for conservative parties.
The FNPR unions initially retained a number of powers from the Soviet period, including control over social-security funds, the ability to automatically deduct union fees from workers’ paypackets, and the right to veto proposals by management to fire workers. In 1993 the administration of the social security system was transferred outside the FNPR.
V GOVERNMENT
Russia was the last of the republics of the former USSR to establish its own government institutions. Its territorial boundaries were established early in the Soviet period. However, largely because of its political and economic dominance of the USSR at the federal level, it failed to develop many of the administrative and cultural institutions that characterized other Soviet republics. Only during the last two years of the USSR were such Soviet institutions as a Congress of People’s Deputies and a Supreme Soviet, a Communist Party structure, and a KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, Russian for “Committee for State Security”) established in Russia. Even with these institutions, until the dissolution of the USSR real power in Russia continued to be exercised largely by the ethnically Russian-dominated central authorities of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In addition, power relations between the various governmental institutions were not firmly established during the Soviet period, and since independence the lack of clear lines of authority has aggravated the power struggle between reformers and conservatives in the country.
The initial stage in achieving Russian sovereignty was the election of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies in March 1990. In May the Congress narrowly elected the reformer Boris Yeltsin as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (permanent working body of the Congress) of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR); Yeltsin had been sacked from the CPSU Politburo in 1987 for criticizing the pace of reform. In June 1990, pending the promulgation of a new constitution to replace the one adopted by the RSFSR in 1978, the Congress declared the RSFSR to be a sovereign republic and its laws to be supreme over all-Union legislation. In June 1991 Yeltsin was the victor in direct elections for the RSFSR presidency; Aleksandr Rutskoy became the vice-president. In the first week of December, in the face of growing popular opposition to federal government proposals to create a new federation to replace the USSR, Yeltsin met with his counterparts from Belarus and Ukraine. Together they proposed the creation of a much looser association, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). At the same time they announced that the 1922 Union Treaty establishing the USSR was annulled, and that the USSR had ceased to exist. Their statement was formalized in the Alma-Ata Declaration of December 21, 1991, which established the CIS. On December 25, the Russian Supreme Soviet changed the name of the newly independent republic from the RSFSR to the Russian Federation.
During the next year or so politics in Russia reached a stalemate between Yeltsin and the Congress, which with considerable success blocked, overturned, or ignored his initiatives for drafting a new constitution, conducting new elections, and making further progress on democratic and economic reform. This opposition, led by Ruslan Khasbulatov, Yeltsin’s successor as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, included not only conservative groups, but also regions of the Federation seeking greater autonomy, and industrial bureaucrats grown accustomed to large state subsidies during the Soviet era. A referendum held on April 25, 1993, roundly endorsed both Yeltsin’s performance as President and his socio-economic policies. Buoyed by this victory, Yeltsin, in June, convened a special Constitutional Conference with delegates from all major political and social organizations, and the federations constituent territories. In July it produced a draft constitution that provided for a presidential system with a bicameral parliament and a government subordinate to both the president and legislature. The Congress rejected the draft, however, precipitating a showdown with Yeltsin. On September 21, he dissolved both the Congress and Supreme Soviet and announced elections, scheduled for December 12, for the bicameral Federal Assembly envisaged in the draft constitution. His move precipitated an attempted putsch by opposition delegates, including Khasbulatov and Rutskoy, and their armed supporters, who on September 27 took over the White House (parliament building) in Moscow. Yeltsin, on October 4, ordered the army to take over the White House, following armed conflict the previous day between rebel supporters and Yeltsin loyalists, forcing the rebels to surrender. Yeltsin subsequently pressed his advantage, accelerating the drafting of the constitution. The final version, which increased the president’s powers at the expense of the legislature, and which deleted references to the sovereignty of the federation’s constituent republics included in earlier drafts, was completed in time to be submitted for popular approval in a referendum held at the same time as the elections for the new Federal Assembly—which went ahead as scheduled on December 12. The constitution was approved by 58.4 per cent of the electorate that participated in the referendum, and came into effect on the same day.
The 1993 Constitution declares Russia to be a democratic, federal, law-based, and secular state with a republican form of government. The state is based on the separation of powers between the executive, legislature, and judiciary, and on federal principles that define the powers of and relationships between the organs of the Russian Federation and its constituent territorial units. Ideological pluralism and a multi-party political system are recognized, and individuals have the right to freedom of movement, expression, conscience, and religion, and the right to peaceful assembly, to own land, to engage in legal entrepreneurial activity, and to housing. Censorship is prohibited. The constitution also commits the federation to the protection of motherhood and childhood, and to providing free education and health services within the state system.
A Executive and Legislature
The executive is headed by a president, who has broad powers under the 1993 constitution. The president is head of state and serves as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and chairs the Security Council, the central defence decision-making body. Together with the defence minister, the president has control of the nuclear launch codes. The president is also in charge of foreign policy and, according to the constitution, defines “the basic direction” of economic policy. The president has the power to appoint the chairman (prime minister) of the government, subject to ratification by the State Duma. If the State Duma rejects the candidate for prime minister, the president can dissolve the legislature and call for new elections.
On the nomination of the prime minister, the president appoints the deputy prime ministers and ministers, and can also dismiss them; the ministers of defence, the interior, and foreign affairs report directly to the president. The president can draft laws to submit to the Federal Assembly, and must approve all laws passed by the Federal Assembly for them to become effective. The president’s right of veto can, however, be over-ridden by a two thirds majority of both houses of parliament.
Any Russian citizen aged at least 35 and with a minimum of 10 years residency in Russia can stand for election as president, providing his or her candidacy is supported by 1 million signatures, no more than 7 per cent of which may come from any one of the federal territories. Election is by direct universal suffrage of citizens aged 18 or over. The winning candidate must receive at least 50 per cent of votes cast; if no single candidate passes the 50 per cent threshold, a run-off election is held. The term of office is four years and no individual may serve more than two consecutive terms. In the event of the president’s death, illness, or other incapacity, the prime minister assumes the presidential duties, but not the full presidential powers; the right to dissolve the parliament or to order a referendum, for example, are not included.
The other component of the executive is the government of the Russian Federation, which comprises the prime minister, deputy prime ministers, and federal ministers. The government’s responsibilities are to submit the federal budget to the State Duma and to supervise its execution, to carry out foreign policy, and maintain law and order. A vote of no confidence in the government may be adopted by the State Duma, which the president can choose to ignore. If there is a second no-confidence vote within three months the president must either announce the government’s resignation or dissolve the State Duma preparatory to new elections.
Under the 1993 constitution, Russia’s national legislature, the Federal Assembly, is a two-chamber body comprising the State Duma (lower chamber) and the Federation Council (upper chamber). The 450 members of the State Duma are elected by popular vote under a mixed system. Half of the deputies are elected from single-member constituencies on a first-past-the-post basis. The other half are elected by proportional representation from party lists in a single, all-federation constituency; to be allocated seats a party must receive at least 5 per cent of the vote. Deputies are elected for four-year terms, must be at least 21 years of age, and may not hold any other form of paid employment. The Federation Council has 178 seats, two for each of the 89 territorial units that make up the Russian Federation; the heads of a territory’s administration (governor) and legislature (chairman) serve ex-officio in this body.
The State Duma approves the president’s nomination for prime minister, and is also able to hold a confidence vote on the government. It approves and can dismiss the head of the central bank, and has the right to declare amnesties and to begin impeachment proceedings against the president. The Federation Council has the power to confirm border changes within the federation, approve the introduction of martial law or a state of emergency by the president, and vote on the deployment of the armed forces outside the federation’s borders. It is also empowered to schedule presidential elections, to approve the appointment of Constitutional Court and Supreme Court judges, and to approve and dismiss the general prosecutor.
The State Duma has the prime responsibility for passing federal laws for approval by the president, although both houses, like the president, have the right to initiate legislation. The approval of both houses is required for only certain categories of legislation relating to: the federal budget and taxes; finance, foreign currency, and credit and customs regulation; the ratification and rejection of international treaties; the status and protection of borders; and the declaration of war or peace. The Federal Council does, however, have the right to vote on other legislation passed by the State Duma if it chooses. If it does not vote on a particular piece of legislation within 14 days it is automatically passed to the president for approval. If it does vote and rejects a piece of legislation, the State Duma can pass it unchanged if on a second vote two-thirds of Duma deputies approve it. Otherwise committees of both houses are formed to make amendments which are submitted to the State Duma for approval.
B Political Parties
Since the late 1980s the political scene in Russia has undergone a dramatic change from a single-party, totalitarian state to a fractious, emerging multi-party democracy. The monolithic Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) has been replaced by hundreds of political groupings, factions, movements, and parties that span a wide political spectrum from Beer Lovers, to Monarchists, to Communists. There are more than 60 legally registered nationwide parties. The parties range in size from a few members to more than half a million members.
Political groups can be divided into three general categories: democratic, nationalist-patriotic, and centrist. The democratic political movement grew rapidly during the last years of the USSR when the term “democratic” was used synonymously with “anti-Communist”. With the breakup of the USSR, democrats lost much of their focus and a great deal of their political following, although they are still influential. Democrats seek to transform Russia into a modern, Western-style, democratic-capitalist country, and they generally support President Yeltsin and his policies. The leading democratic groups are Russia’s Democratic Choice Party and Yabloko. The nationalist-patriotic group is a disparate mix that includes left-wing patriots and neo-Nazi Nationalists who reject foreign values and models of development, and seek the revival of Slavic awareness and a strong state. The somewhat misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) is the most prominent party of the far-right movement. The third category, the centrist group, includes both conservative and liberal tendencies. It includes the largest party in numerical terms, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), which claims 500,000 members. The Russian Communist Party was banned by President Yeltsin in 1991, but the ban was overturned by the Constitutional Court in November 1992 and the party reconstituted itself as the CPRF. Other centrist groups include the Democratic Party of Russia, a liberal-conservative group that broke away from the Democratic Russia Movement in a dispute over the dissolution of the USSR, the conservative, pro-government Our Home is Russia Party, and the centrist Women of Russia.
The first elections to the State Duma on December 12, 1993, produced no decisive majority for any one group or party. However, there was a high level of support for extreme nationalist elements, with the LDPR emerging as the largest single party with 64 seats. Pro-Communist groups also did well, with the CPRF taking 48 seats and its main ally, the Agrarian Party, 33 seats. Russia’s Democratic Choice was the best performing of the pro-democracy groups, with a total of 58 seats, while Yabloko took 23. However, Russia’s Choice subsequently emerged as the largest group, following the realignment of independents and parties into parliamentary factions, with some 76 seats. New Regional Policy, comprising 64 centrist independents, was the second-largest faction, followed by the LDPR.
These deputies were elected for just a two-year term; subsequent elections were to be for four-year terms. The December 17, 1995, elections resulted in a further strengthening of the pro-Communist groups, as well as a further weakening of the pro-democratic groups, and a decline in support for the extreme right. In voting on the party lists, only four parties gained the minimum 5 per cent, the CPRF with 22.3 per cent of votes cast, the pro-government Our Home is Russia with 10.1 per cent, the LDPR (11.2 per cent), and the liberal grouping Yabloko (6.9 per cent); Russia’s Choice won just 3.9 per cent. The total picture, including constituency deputies, reinforced the CPRF’s dominance. It ended up with 157 deputies, and combined with the support of close allies such as the Agrarian parties, and other small parties and independent deputies, was able to achieve a majority in the state Duma. Our Home is Russia emerged as the second-largest party in the Duma with 55 seats, followed by the LDPR with 51 (down from 64 deputies in 1993), and Yabloko (up to 45 seats from 23 in 1993). Russia’s Choice emerged with just 9 seats.
C Judiciary
The highest judicial body in Russia is the Constitutional Court, a 19-member body originally created in October 1991 by the Congress of People’s Deputies, the highest legislative authority under the 1977 constitution. Yeltsin suspended the court in the autumn of 1993. It was modified by the newly elected State Duma in April 1994. According to the Duma’s legislation, judges will be appointed for 12 years, instead of life terms, as was the case under the 1977 constitution. The court’s mandate is to rule on the constitutionality of legislative and executive actions, and to settle disputes about competence among State bodies. Its members are expected to act in a non-partisan manner. The Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority on civil, criminal, administrative, and other cases within the jurisdiction of the common plea courts. The Supreme Arbitration Court is the highest authority in settling economic and other disputes within the jurisdiction of the courts of arbitration. The judges of three higher courts are appointed by the Federal Council on the recommendation of the president; judges of other federal courts are appointed by the president. A new civil code was introduced in 1993 and the criminal justice system is being reformed.
D Sub-Federal Administration and Local Government
According to the 1993 Constitution the Russian Federation comprises 89 “subjects of the federation” (federal territorial units), of which 32 are ethnically based units that are direct successors to earlier ethnically based Soviet political units, and the remainder are purely administrative divisions. The former comprise the 21 republics, 1 autonomous oblast (region), and 10 autonomous okrugs (autonomous areas). The administrative divisions are the 49 oblasts, 6 krays (territories), and the federal cities of Moscow and St Petersburg, which have oblast status. These political divisions vary in size from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), which has a total area of more than 3.1 million sq km (1.2 million sq mi), to the Ingush Republic, which has a total area of 3,750 sq km (2,934 sq mi). The titles of many of the ethnically based units, however, have changed considerably. For most of the period after World War II, the RSFSR contained 16 autonomous republics, 5 autonomous oblasts, and 10 autonomous okrugs. In late 1990 the term “autonomous” was dropped from the names of the republics, and on July 3, 1991, 4 of the 5 autonomous oblasts became republics: Adygea, Altay, Karachay-Cherkessiya, and Khakassia. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Yevreyskaya (Birodidzhan), located on the Amur River in the far eastern region, was the only autonomous oblast not elevated to the rank of a republic. In 1992 the former Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic was divided into the Chechen Republic and the Ingush Republic.
Although the republics are based on indigenous, non-Russian ethnic groups, Russians make up a sizeable portion of the population in each republic. Non-Russian ethnic groups constitute a clear majority in only five of the republics, while Russians are the majority in nine.
After the dissolution of the USSR, the ethnic republics sought more autonomy within Russia. A treaty on relations between the federal government and the republics was signed in March 1992, outlining the rights and responsibilities of both levels of government. The treaty was signed by all but two of the republics, the Republic of Tatarstan and the Chechen Republic, both of whom agitated for complete independence from Russia. The treaty was eclipsed, however, by the approval of a new constitution in 1993 which superseded the treaty agreement. Under the 1993 constitution, the republics are granted greater rights than the other administrative divisions. They are allowed to have their own constitutions and state languages, as well as legislation. The other administrative areas have charters instead of constitutions, and their own legislation. Leaders of these administrative regions, many of which are much richer and more populous than the ethnic republics, have protested against their regions’ inferior status in relation to the republics.
Russia’s constituent republics are: Republic of Adygea; Republic of Altay; Republic of Bashkortostan; Republic of Buryatia; Chechen Republic; Republic of Chuvash; Republic of Dagestan; Ingush Republic; Kabardino-Balkar Republic; Republic of Kalmykia; Karachay-Cherkess Republic; Republic of Karelia; Republic of Khakassia; Republic of Komi; Republic of Mari El; Mordovian Republic; North Ossetian Republic; Republic of Sakha (Yakutia); Republic of Tatarstan; Republic of Tuva; Udmurt Republic.
Although Russia is constitutionally a federation, the precise distribution of powers between the federal government and the territorial units is still evolving. The federal government has a number of exclusive powers, including amendment of the constitution, regulation and protection of the rights of minorities and individual citizens, regulation of the national economy, foreign policy, foreign trade relations, defence and security, the judicial system, space activities, and the protection of territorial borders and air space. Most regional issues, including the management of natural resources, health, the environment, education, housing, and protection of the traditional lifestyles of small ethnic groups, are described as the joint responsibility of the federal government and the governments of the territorial units.
In practice, however, many of the regions have gained a significant amount of autonomy, especially in economic areas. Since 1994, in an effort to diffuse regional protests against central control, President Yeltsin has drawn up special accords with some 26 of the 89 territorial authorities, giving them a variety of special tax concessions, and in some cases allowing them to withhold payment of taxes to the central government entirely.
E Health and Welfare
Health-care was formerly directly financed by the State, but a health-care insurance system financed by employers was introduced in 1993. The post-Soviet health-care system has suffered from insufficient funding and it is reported that as many as 20 per cent of hospitals lack hot running water and 18 per cent have an inadequate sewerage system. There has been a sharp rise in serious infectious diseases, with the incidence of confirmed cases of tuberculosis rising by 20 per cent between 1994 and 1995. A WHO report in October 1997, on multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, included Russia as one of several “hot zones” in the world where multi-drug resistance among TB patients was significant. In 2001 there aws an infant mortality rate of 20 deaths per 1,000 live births, and there was a ratio of 1 doctor to 243 people recorded in 1999. Expenditure on health in 1998 accounted for 1.44 per cent of total expenditure. Early alcohol-related deaths and low birth rates have both contributed to a major demographic trend of negative population growth.
F Defence
The structure of the armed forces in Russia has changed radically in the post-Soviet period. Immediately after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the armed forces were controlled by the military command of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which inherited the massive Soviet arsenal. In May 1992, however, Russia created its own military structure in response to the formation of separate armies by several CIS states, notably Ukraine. The CIS military command continued to function for another year, although its power was greatly reduced. It was finally abolished in June 1993 and most of its functions transferred to the Russian military command. In the 1999 Russia had about 1,004,100.0 troops in the army, navy, and air force. While military reformers have pressed for a purely professional army, this is still too costly, and therefore men aged 18 or older must serve as conscripts for 18 months in the army or 24 months in the navy or air force. Defence policy is formulated by the Security Council, an executive body established in May 1992.
The state of readiness of the Russian armed forces has declined substantially since independence. The defence establishment is beset by a host of problems, including job insecurity, inadequate housing, ageing equipment, and low morale. Despite these problems, the Russian army is engaged in peacekeeping missions in Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan, and elsewhere; in 1994 it became embroiled in a civil war in the Chechen Republic. Almost all of these military actions are in former Soviet republics, except for air strikes against rebel Tajik forces in Afghanistan.
Following the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 and the establishment of the CIS, member states of the CIS concluded a series of agreements on military cooperation and coordination. Since 1993, however, opposition to the idea of joint CIS forces has grown as the other republics have formed their own national armies and several have sought membership of NATO.
G International Organizations
Russia is a member of the UN, the Arctic Council (AC), the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Council of Europe (CE), the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Partnership for Peace (PFP).
VI HISTORY
In this section, before the revolution of 1917, the term “Russia” refers to the Russian Empire or, more narrowly, to the land of the “Great” Russians—that is, the land of the people known today just as Russians. “Great Russia” was one of the three Slavic lands ruled by the first tsars of the Russian Empire, whose full title was “Grand Prince and Tsar of the Great, the Little, and the White Russians”. Today the “Little” Russians are known as Ukranians; only the “White” Russians, or Belorussians are still known by their historical name. References after December 25, 1991, relate to the independent Russian Federation.
At its greatest extent, in 1914, the Russian Empire included about 22 million sq km (8.5 million sq mi), an estimated one sixth of the land area of the Earth, divided into four general regions: Russia proper, comprising the easternmost part of Europe and including the Grand Duchy of Finland and most of Poland; the Caucasus; all of northern Asia, or Siberia; and Russian Central Asia, divided into the regions of the Steppes, in the south-west, and Russian Turkistan, in the south-east.
A Origins of the Russian People
During the pre-Christian era the vast territory that became Russia was sparsely inhabited by groups of nomadic tribes, many of which were described by Greek and Roman writers. The largely unknown north, a region of extensive forests, was inhabited by tribes later known collectively as Slavs, the ancestors of the modern Russian people. Far more important was the south, where the indeterminate region known as Scythia was occupied by a succession of Asian peoples, including, chronologically, the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians. In these early times, Greek traders and colonists established many trading posts and settlements, particularly along the north coast of the Black Sea and in the Crimea.
A1 Invasions by Early Inhabitants
Migratory movements by exterior peoples were facilitated by the stretches of open plain. Such migrations resulted in successive invasions, the establishment of settlements, and the assimilation of new ethnological elements. Thus, in the early centuries of the Christian era, the Asian peoples of Scythia were displaced by the Goths, who established an Ostrogothic kingdom on the Black Sea. In the 4th century ad the invading Huns conquered and thereafter expelled the Goths, destroying Scythia. The Huns held the territory constituting present-day Ukraine and the region of Bessarabia (now mostly within the republic of Moldova) until their defeat in western Europe in 451. Later came the Avars, followed by the Magyars, and the Khazars, who remained influential until about the mid-10th century.
Meanwhile, during this long period of successive invasions, the Slavic tribes dwelling north-east of the Carpathian Mountains had begun a series of migratory movements. As these migrations took place, the western tribes eventually evolved as the Moravians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks; the southern tribes as the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and the slavicized Bulgars; and the eastern tribes as the modern Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians. The Eastern Slavs became renowned traders, and the systems of rivers and waterways extending through the territory from the Valday Hills facilitated the establishment first of Slav trading posts, notably at Kiev (now in Ukraine) in the south, and Novgorod, in the north. Eventually these early Slavic people began to cultivate the land, and towns and villages were established protected by citadels, or kremlins, build from wood cut from the abundant forests. Gradually they occupied the area extending from what is now St Petersburg south to Kiev and spoke a language quite similar to modern Russian. The Valday Hills region in north-western Russia is the high point of the eastern European plain and the source of most of its rivers. The easy portages in this region allowed the transport of goods from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Most of the expansion and migratory movements of the Eastern Slavs were along the river routes from the Valday Hills. Control of this strategic region was an important element in the Russian domination of eastern Europe.
A2 The House of Rurik
The political organization of the Eastern Slavs was still largely tribal; they had created no unified system through which their constant tribal conflicts could be resolved. By the 9th century they were also coming under pressure from Scandinavians, Vikings known locally as Varangians, who, stimulated by land-hunger, began migrating south, combining trade and piracy with colonization. According to Russian tradition recorded in the Primary Russian Chronicle, the chief source of much of early Russian history, internal dissension and feuds among the Eastern Slavs around Novgorod became so violent that they voluntarily chose to invite one of the Varangian princes, Rurik, or Ryurik, to unite them. Contemporary historians believe that he probably came to power through conquest. However, whether “invited” or not, in around 862 Rurik was established, with his brothers, as ruler of Novgorod. According to the chronicle, two other Scandinavians, Dir and Askold, possibly legendary figures, gained control of Kiev, although it may have remained in Slavic hands. Thus, 862 is considered the beginning of the Russian Empire. From the Rus came the name Rossiya, or Russia, meaning “land of the Rus”. (It is debated, however, whether Rus is derived from ruotsi—the “red-bearded ones”—the Finnish name for the Swedes, or from Rukhs-As, from the name of an Alanic tribe of southern Russia.) The establishment of Rurik and the dynasty he founded initiated a period of internal consolidation, expansion of Slav territory, and the spread of the Slavic people, notably towards the north-east and north-west, where the native Finnic strains were largely absorbed or replaced by Slavs.
Rurik was succeeded in 879 by his son Igor (reigned 913-945), a child for whom Oleg, Rurik’s kinsman, ruled as regent. Prince Oleg, realizing the value of the Kiev region, had the rulers of that city killed in 882 and then united the two centres, establishing his capital at Kiev two years later. He extended the rule of the state known as Kievan Rus considerably, subduing neighbouring tribes. In the early 10th century he led his armies as far south as Constantinople (now Istanbul), called Tsaringrad by the Slavs. After a successful attack he “hung his shield on the gate of Tsargard”, meaning that he collected tribute and, subsequently, in 911, concluded a commercial treaty with Byzantium. This was the first authentically dated event in Russian history. From that time cultural and trade relations with the Byzantine Empire became steadily closer as Kievan Rus relaxed its links with Scandinavia. Igor assumed power in 913, and in 945 he was succeeded by his widow, Olga, who was baptized a Christian in Constantinople in 957. In 962 Olga abdicated in favour of her son, Svyatoslav, the first prince of Kievan Rus to bear a Slav and not a Scandinavian name. Svyatoslav, who was a great military leader and also a militant pagan, devoted himself to strengthening the Kievan Rus position in the south. He led his troops successfully against the Khazars in the south-east. He was less successful in his attacks on the Bulgars and on the Pechenegs, a warlike, nomadic tribe of the Black Sea steppes, at whose hands he was eventually killed, in 972. Svyatoslav built a great empire, and commerce and crafts increased during his reign.
The empire was divided among the prince’s three sons, causing dynastic conflicts that were ended in 980, when the youngest son, Vladimir I (see Vladimir, St), later known as Vladimir the Great, became sole ruler. The most significant event of his reign was his conversion to Byzantine Christianity in 988 and the institution of that religion as the official religion of the Russian people. His conversion was the result of a deliberate decision to select a monotheistic religion for his people, and Muslim as well as Christian missionaries were invited to the court to debate the merits of their religions. Legend has it that he rejected Islam because it forbids alcoholic drink. After subsequently casting off his many pagan wives and concubines, Vladimir married Anne, sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II. From its inception, the Russian Orthodox Church differed from its Byzantine parent. Services were offered in liturgical Slavonic, and the Church enjoyed a large measure of autonomy, even though it remained under the canonical authority of the patriarch of Constantinople and the Russian ruler was in fact its supreme head. Monasteries and churches were built in Byzantine style, however, and Byzantine culture ultimately became the predominant influence in such fields as architecture, art, and music.
Upon the death of Vladimir in 1015, his dominions were divided among his sons, and strife immediately developed. Vladimir’s eldest son, Svyatopolk, called The Accursed (reigned 1015, 1018-1019), held the supreme power and, to secure his position, murdered his brothers Boris and Gleb. Svyatopolk was, in turn, defeated and deposed by his brother Yaroslav the Wise, Prince of Novgorod. Yaroslav attempted to recreate the empire of his grandfather, Svyatoslav, and by 1036 had succeeded in making himself ruler of all Russia. With him, Kiev Rus reached its greatest power. Yaroslav made Kiev an imperial capital with magnificent buildings, including the notable Hagia Sophia of Kiev (Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom). Schools were opened, and the Grand Duke revised the first Russian law code, the Russkaya Pravda (Russian Truth). To consolidate the position of his heirs, Yaroslav devised a system of precedence, grading the various principalities from the smallest to Kiev, the most powerful, so that, as a grand duke of Kiev died, each vassal below him was moved to a larger principality, ending with the throne of Kiev.
A3 The Decline of Kiev
Although this unique pattern of precedence was nominally practised, Yaroslav’s death in 1054 signalled the decline of Kiev. His sons shared the empire, and each prince tended to divide his lands among his own sons. Russia became a group of petty states almost continuously at war with one another. One final attempt was made to unite the country by Yaroslav’s grandson, Vladimir II Monomachus, but his death in 1125 ended efforts to form an alliance, and the fragmentation continued. Other states challenged Kiev’s supremacy, particularly Galicia and Volhynia in the west; Suzdal, in the upper and central parts of the Volga basin; Chernigov and Novgorod-Severskiy, in the Desna basin; Polatsk, which included the basins of the Daugava (also known as Western Dvina) and the Beresina; Smolensk, occupying the upper parts of the basin of the Daugava and the Dnepr; and Novgorod, by far the largest, occupying the land bounded by the Gulf of Finland, Lake Peipus, the upper reaches of the Volga, the White Sea, and the Northern Dvina River.
The decline of Kiev was due in part to loss of trade following the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 and the consequent migration of the people of Kiev to the north. Novgorod became a flourishing commercial state, which rose to a dominant position and in the 13th century was made the site of a major factory of the Hanseatic League. Kiev also lost its importance as the great national and cultural centre, its place taken by the cities of Suzdal, Vladimir, and, ultimately, Moscow (founded as a village about 1147). Russia became a loose federation of city-states, held together by a common language, religion, traditions, and customs and ruled by members of the multitudinous House of Rurik, usually at war with one another. Difficulties resulted also from depredations on the frontiers. In the west the Poles, Lithuanians, and the Teutonic Knights encroached on Russian territory. In the south it was constantly raided by the Polovtzy nomads; one of these raids was the subject of the Russian epic The Lay of Igor’s Host.
A4 The Mongol Invasion
In the early 13th century a greater danger than any of these menaced Russia from the east. In 1223 the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan appeared in the south-east. The Polovtzy sent for help to the Russian princes, who came to their aid against this common, greater foe. In 1223, in the Battle of the Kalka River (now Kalmius River), the Polovtzy-Russian coalition was completely routed. After their victory, however, the Mongols were recalled to Asia by the Khan and retreated as rapidly as they had come. For 12 years, they made no move in the direction of Russia. Then, in 1237, Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, led the Mongols back to eastern Russia. On their northward march they captured and destroyed every town from Kiev to Moscow.
The Mongol sweep was finally halted by the difficult terrain of the forests and swamps south of Novgorod, and Batu Khan was forced to change the direction of his armies. In 1240 he swept over the south-west, destroying Kiev after a desperate defence by that city. The Tatars ravaged Poland and Hungary and progressed as far east as Moravia. In 1242 Batu established his capital at Sarai on the lower Volga (near modern Volgograd), and founded the khanate known as the Golden Horde, which was virtually independent of the Mongol Empire.
In addition to the havoc it created in Russia, the Mongol invasion was determinative in later Russian history. Tatar control destroyed the elements of self-government by representative assembly that had developed in some Russian cities, arrested the progress of industry and culture, and kept Russia more than two centuries behind the countries of western Europe. Tatar customs, law, and government made their influence felt. The region of Kiev was largely depopulated because of massacres and because much of the Russian population had fled west to escape the Mongol advance. One group, culturally influenced by the Poles and Lithuanians, eventually became known as Belorussians, or White Russians. A second group, formed of the Slavic population from the region of Kiev and adjacent regions, became known as Little Russians, or Malorussians. The region of old Kiev, influenced by foreign languages and customs that were superimposed on the traditions of the old Rus, came to be called Ukraine. In northern Russia, the inhabitants became the principal group of Russian Slavs known as the Great Russians, modified principally by various branches of the Finno-Ugrian population.
Although the Mongols did not attack Novgorod, north-western Russia was menaced by invaders from the west at the same time. The Swedes descended from the Baltic and sought to penetrate the territories of Novgorod. In 1240 a Swedish army landed on the banks of the Neva, and the Prince of Novgorod, Alexander Yaroslavevich, led a Russian army to meet them. The prince so completely defeated the Swedes that he was thenceforth known as Alexander Nevsky, meaning “of the Neva”. Two years later the Teutonic Knights, a religious military order, advanced from the west. Alexander led his troops to meet the Germans, crossing the frozen Lake Peipus, and routed them. Faced with continuing danger in the west, Alexander, rather than risk invasion from the south, adopted a policy of loyal submission to the Golden Horde and conciliation with the Khan. In 1246 Alexander succeeded his father as Grand Prince of Novgorod and in 1252 was invested by the khan as Grand Prince of Vladimir and Suzdal. Most of the Russian princes followed Alexander’s example, paying tribute and considering themselves vassals of the Tatar rule. In 1299 the metropolitan bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church fled the ruined city of Kiev and took up residence in the town of Vladimir, seat of the grand prince.
B The Growing Importance of Moscow
The town of Moscow, in the principality of Vladimir Suzdal, occupied an exceedingly favourable geographical position in the centre of Russia and on the principal trade routes. In 1263 Alexander Nevsky gave Moscow to his younger son, Daniel, progenitor of a line of powerful Muscovite princes. These rulers were astute men who worked closely with the khans. As Mongol favourites they gradually extended their lands by annexing surrounding territories. In 1328 Daniel’s son, Ivan I, Prince of Muscovy was appointed Grand Prince by the Khan. He moved the seat of the grand prince from Vladimir to Moscow, and seems to have influenced the metropolitan of the Russian Church to follow suit. Thus, given the sanction of the Church, the Muscovite princes began to organize a new Russian state, with themselves as rulers. Beginning with Ivan, the Princes of Muscovy styled themselves princes “of all Russia”. He was helped in his claim by the fact that he collected large tributes from the northern territories for the khanate, earning him the nickname Ivan “Moneybags” (Kalita).
In the mid-14th century internal dissensions weakened the power of the Golden Horde. During the reign of Ivan II (1353-1359), the khans lost the right to appoint the grand prince. Ivan II’s son, Dmitry, led the first successful Russian revolt against the Mongols. In 1380 his decisive victory over the Mongols at Kulikovo, on the banks of the Don River, gave him his surname Donskoy (“of the Don”) and marked the turning point of Mongol power. Muscovite strength grew steadily thereafter.
B1 The Expansion of Muscovy
Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, and the Russian Orthodox Church thereafter considered Moscow the “third Rome”, successor to Constantinople and the centre of Christian Orthodoxy. The title of the Metropolitan of Kiev was changed to “the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia”, and the Church came under the authority of the Grand Prince, further enhancing the power of Muscovy. The two-headed eagle of Byzantium was incorporated into the Muscovite arms and regarded as the symbol of Holy Russia. A large factor in this investiture of Moscow as a holy, imperial city was the marriage in 1472 of Grand Prince Ivan III Vasilyevich to Zoë (Sophia), niece of the last Byzantine emperor. The Grand Prince began to regard himself as the Tsar (derived from “caesar”), the autocratic sovereign, rather than the head of the nobility. He incorporated into Muscovy the states of Novgorod in 1478 and Tver in 1485. In 1480, taking advantage of strife among the Mongols which had divided the Golden Horde into several separate khanates, he refused to pay the annual tribute. The Mongols were too disorganized to enforce payment, and the date is regarded as the end of Tatar domination. Once free of Tatar rule, Ivan turned his attention to the western part of former Kievan Rus, then controlled by Lithuania and Poland. He invaded Lithuanian territory in 1492 and 1500; at the end of hostilities in 1503 Moscow controlled many of the borderlands. During his long reign (1462-1505) Ivan, who became known as “the Great” (Veliky), also rebuilt Moscow; the Uspensky (Assumption) and Blagoveshchensky (Annunciation) cathedrals in the Kremlin date from this period, as do the Granovitaya (Palace of Facets) and most of the Kremlin walls and towers. Ivan’s son and successor, Basil III Ivanovich (1505-1533), followed his father’s aggressive policy of expansion to the west; he annexed Pskov in 1510, captured Smolensk in 1514, and absorbed the nominally independent grand duchy of Ryazan in 1521. Russian policy thus became, externally, the continued territorial aggrandizement of Muscovy and, internally, the formalization of autocratic rule with concomitant social change.
Ivan IV Vasilyevich (1547-1584), called The Terrible or Awesome, became ruler in 1533 at the age of three, and during his long minority the state was continually torn by a struggle for dominance among the boyar, or noble, class. In 1547 Ivan assumed the throne and became the first Muscovite Grand Prince to be formally crowned as Tsar; in the same year he married Anastasia Romanovna, a member of the Romanov family. Ivan opposed the old nobility because of the strife that had disrupted his childhood, and in 1549 he called the first Zemsky Sobor, an irregular national assembly, representing all classes of Russian society except the peasants. His aim was to consolidate his autocratic position by weakening the power of the boyars and the Church. In December 1564, Ivan left Moscow and announced that he had abdicated; the following January he agreed to resume the throne after receiving absolute powers. Returning to Moscow, he seized half of Muscovy as his personal property. This territory, called the oprichnina, was a separate administrative unit ruled directly by the Tsar. Ivan distributed it among his supporters as rewards for military and personal service, thereby establishing a new service corps called oprichniki. In return for the land, the oprichniki acted as Ivan’s personal police force. When the boyars, resentful of their diminishing power, plotted against him, Ivan resorted to torture, exile, and execution to repress them.
In 1552 Muscovite armies conquered and annexed the Tatar kingdom of Kazan; Astrakhan, another Mongol stronghold, became a Russian territory in 1556. Ivan ordered the construction of St Basil’s Cathedral to commemorate these victories. The pacification of the southern and eastern frontiers opened the eastern territories to Russian colonization. Muscovy borderlands were increasingly settled by warlike mercenaries known as Cossacks, many of them runaway peasants. They were concentrated particularly in the Don River basin and around the lower Volga. Some Cossacks went farther north, and in 1581 a Cossack hetman (leader) Yermak Timofeyevich led an expedition east across the Ural Mountains for the Stroganov family, one of the wealthiest families in Russia, which had an exclusive licence to operate factories in the Urals and beyond. Ivan warned Yermak against stirring up the wild tribesmen of the area but forgave him when, between 1581 and 1583, he brought most of the Ob’ River basin under Russian rule, thus beginning the conquest of Siberia. It was Ivan who agreed to allow the Cossacks to keep runaway peasants, and to keep their landholdings and a semblance of political autonomy in return for them becoming his frontier guards, and agreeing “to do battle for the Crown” whenever required. Thus the Cossacks became free landholders who could, in a matter of hours, assemble themselves into fully armed cavalry units to fight the tsar’s enemies—at home or abroad. In the west, Ivan led his forces to the Baltic Sea and between 1558 and 1583 fought the Livonian War against Poland and Sweden for possession of the Baltic. As a result of his eventual defeat Russia lost her far northern territories and access to the Baltic. During his reign Ivan concluded several trade treaties with England. He also imported many foreign technical and professional experts, a practice continued throughout the history of the Russian monarchy. Although Ivan’s name is perpetuated as The Terrible for the savage cruelty and excesses of his later reign, he founded a strong Russian state and set the pattern for supreme tsarist rule.
Shortly before his death Ivan had killed his eldest son and heir (also Ivan) in a fit of rage. His next son, Fyodor I, was sickly and feeble-minded, and during his reign (1584-1598) he was dominated by his brother-in-law, the powerful boyar Boris Godunov, who had been elected Regent. Directed by Boris, the Russian state continued to increase in wealth and prestige. The discontent of the peasants was augmented in 1597, however, by a law binding the serfs to the soil and legalizing serfdom. In 1598, Fyodor died childless, ending the House of Rurik; Ivan’s third son, Dmitry Ivanovich, had died in suspicious circumstances in 1591. Boris was elected Tsar by a Zemsky Sobor (National Assembly). Although he ruled with ability, his hold on the throne was uneasy because of the widely held belief that he had murdered Dmitry. The mystery surrounding Dmitry’s death made possible the appearance of pretenders to his name and ranks, inaugurating a period of unrest and revolt that was known as the Smutnoye Vremya (Time of Troubles).
B2 Time of Troubles
In 1604 a pretender to the throne calling himself Dmitry I, and known as the False Dmitry, gained Polish and Lithuanian support, as well as the backing of various discontented boyars. Three months after the death of Boris in 1605, Dmitry I entered Moscow at the head of a Polish army and was crowned Tsar; he was murdered the following year. The boyars then elevated Prince Basil Shuysky to the throne. This move was opposed by the Cossacks and rebellious peasants, who chafed under oppressive serf laws and feared the severity of boyar rule. They rose in southern Russia and joined a second pretender, Dmitry II, who was already advancing on Moscow. At the same time King Sigismund III of Poland, himself desirous of the Russian throne, invaded from the west, and Sweden, at the request of Basil, sent armed support for the boyar tsar. After a long period of fighting and intrigue Basil was deposed in 1610, and the throne was left vacant. Some boyars advanced the candidacy of Wladislaw, the son of Sigismund, and a Polish army entered Moscow, setting itself up as the Russian authority. The entire country then fell into a state of anarchy.
The situation was at last resolved by the initiative of Kuzma Minin, a Nizhniy Novgorod butcher, who succeeded in raising a national army in north-east Russia. Under Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky, who gained the help of some Cossacks, this army marched on Moscow and in 1612 expelled the Poles. In 1613 a Zemsky Sobor, representing the chief towns and the Church, elected Michael Fedorovich Romanov, member of an influential boyar family and great-nephew of Anastasia Romanovna, as Tsar. Michael thus founded the House of Romanov that would rule Russia for the next 300 years.
B3 Romanov Rule
Although social discontent had been one of the primary characteristics of the period known as the Time of Troubles, no real reforms ensued. The greatest effects of the chaotic period were the irreparable ruin of the old boyar nobility and the rise in power of the small landed nobility.
Under the first two Romanovs, Michael Fedorovich (1613-1645) and his son, Alexis I (1645-1676), new laws gave the noble landlords more power over serfs. A law code (Ulozhenie) adopted in 1649 only increased the number of refugee serfs, many of whom fled to the Cossack settlements along the lower Volga, Dnepr, and Don rivers. In 1670, under the leadership of a Don Cossack hetman, Stenka (Stephen) Razin, a great agrarian revolt began in south-eastern Russia; it was quelled with great difficulty by the Tsar’s troops a year later. This first major peasant revolt set the pattern for later uprisings by the serfs, who directed their anger at the landed nobility who enslaved them, rather than at the Tsar.
Russia, meanwhile, was advancing to the status of a European power, and in the urban centres influences from western Europe were at last penetrating the isolation caused by the Mongol invasion. Reform in the traditional viewpoints and practices of Moscow was necessary to form a basis for cultural reconciliation with its former territories, regained against Poland and Lithuania. In 1654 the Cossacks of Ukraine, rebelling against Polish rule, offered their allegiance to Tsar Alexis. In the resulting war with Poland (1654-1667), Russia was victorious, regaining Smolensk (lost in 1611) as well as the eastern Ukraine, including Kiev. The reincorporation of Ukraine hastened reforms in the rituals of the Russian Church. Ukraine was a metropolitan district of the patriarchate of Constantinople and, in order to integrate western Russia with Moscow, the Ukrainian Church had to be induced to accept the Moscow patriarch. The Russian religious leader Nikon, who had become patriarch of Russia in 1652, introduced reforms into the Russian rituals that caused a great schism (1654) in the Orthodox Church, as many of the Russian clergy and laity refused to abandon their centuries-old rituals. At a Church council in 1667 the traditionalist dissenters, who were called the Old Believers, or Raskolniki, were declared schismatics. Thus, millions of Old Believers found themselves excluded from full participation in Russian life. Many were tortured or hanged; many more fled to the northern woods to escape persecution.
Alexis was succeeded by his eldest son, Fyodor III in 1676; during his short rule, Russia successfully fought its first war against the Ottoman Empire. On Fyodor’s death in 1682 there was a new struggle for the throne. His half-brother, Peter the Great, was named Tsar (Peter I), but Peter’s older half-sister, Sophia Alekseyevna, succeeded in having her own brother, the weak-minded Ivan V, declared Senior Co-Ruler, with herself as Regent. After an attempt to deprive Peter of his right to the throne and, this failing, to assassinate both him and his mother, Sophia was forced to resign all power in 1689.
C The Russian Empire
The accession of Peter I to the tsardom in 1682 at the age of 22 marked the beginning of a period during which Russia became a major European power. With an intense curiosity, he opened Russia to the West and became the first tsar to travel extensively outside the country, bringing back with him many new ideas.
C1 Peter the Great
Peter was greatly attracted by the culture of Western Europe, particularly that of Prussia, and to the naval technology of England. In 1695 he initiated the construction of the Russian navy. The following year, the ships were used to great effect against the Turks in the Sea of Azov, at the mouth of the Don, giving Russia an outlet to the Black Sea. In 1697 Peter led a technical and diplomatic mission to England, France, and Germany; he was absent from Russia for 18 months, during which time he worked as a shipbuilder in the Netherlands. Peter attempted, by decrees and forced reforms, to transform the traditional society of Moscow into a Western one and to make Russia a major power in Europe. He decreed the reorganization of the Russian army and navy, government, and society along Western lines. By direct orders, he encouraged the development of Russian industry and trade, technical training, education, and the sciences, instituting the first census and state postal service. He also tolerated new religions, allowing the practices of Catholics, Lutherans, and Protestants, and expressed approval of Galileo’s then-heretical theories about the solar system. During his reign, Peter also began a series of great territorial acquisitions. His greatest military campaigns were in the west, and his principal conflict, the Great Northern War (1700-1721), was with the strongest Baltic power of the time, Sweden. Control of the Baltic Sea was necessary for the creation of a great navy and the expansion of Russian foreign trade. Peter’s forces were badly defeated by the Swedes at Narva (now in Estonia) in 1700. The Swedes, however, did not pursue the Russians, thus enabling Peter to reorganize his forces and attack Swedish bases in Livonia. In 1703 he began the construction, at the cost of many lives (100,000 workers died in the first year alone) and under difficult working conditions, of his new and resplendent capital city of St Petersburg. Built on marshland territory taken from Sweden, St Petersburg within a decade was a city of 35,000 stone buildings (builders of traditional Russian wooden buildings risked banishment), many designed by well-known foreign architects. In 1714 it became Russia’s capital, when the government moved there from Moscow. By the time of Peter’s death in 1725, the city had more than 75,000 inhabitants. During the next 150 years, especially during the reign of Catherine the Great, St Petersburg was the focus of Russia’s golden age, attracting writers, dancers, artists, composers, and scientists.
The Russian army crushed the Swedes at Poltava, in 1709, and Russia gained supremacy in the Baltic. By the terms of the Treaty of Nystad (August 30, 1721), Russia acquired Livonia, Estonia, Ingria, part of Karelia, and several Baltic islands. With Russian dominance in northern Europe, the Byzantine conception of the tsar was exchanged for the Latin conception and title of Emperor; when Peter was formally proclaimed Emperor in 1721, the Muscovite state became the Russian Empire.
C2 Peter’s Successors
Peter’s strong rule was followed by a period of weakness on the throne. His son, Alexis, had been charged with treason and died in prison in 1718, probably from torture. The throne went to Peter’s second wife, Catherine I. After her death in 1727 it passed to a succession of rulers as a result of intrigues and coups, often engineered by the palace guards. Peter II, the son of Alexis, was chosen Emperor after Catherine; he was succeeded in 1730 by Anna Ivanovna, daughter of Ivan V. Anna, a Duchess of Courland, firmly established the court at St Petersburg and filled it with her Prussian favourites; she ruled as a despot. She was succeeded in 1740 by Ivan VI, an eight-week-old grand-nephew. A palace conspiracy the next year placed Elizabeth Petrovna, youngest daughter of Peter the Great, on the throne. Under her rule (1741-1762) a national revival took place. In a war with Sweden (1741-1743), Russia gained a portion of Finland. The Empress also joined Austria and France in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) against Prussia. Her nephew and successor, Peter III, was an admirer of King Frederick II of Prussia, and at his accession in 1762 concluded a separate peace with Frederick. Peter was swiftly deposed and murdered in the same year. His wife, a German princess (named Sophie) by birth, ascended the throne as Catherine II; she became known as Catherine the Great.
C3 Catherine the Great
Catherine was the first of the successors of Peter the Great to understand and further his policies. With striking success, she carried out ambitious plans for Russian expansion. Her campaigns took two main directions. First, she turned her armies against the Ottoman Empire in order to acquire warm-water Black Sea ports necessary for Russian commerce. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774, Russia acquired territory in the Crimea, and the Tatar Crimea region was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1783. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1787 to 1792 Russia acquired all the territory west to the Dniester River, including the Black Sea port of Ochakov. The second phase of Catherine’s wars dealt with territories in the west; there, as a result of the three partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795), Russia gained 468,000 sq km (180,000 sq mi) of land with about 6 million inhabitants. Catherine’s domestic policies echoed the westernization of Peter’s reign. She chose French culture as a guide and spared no expense to fill the St Petersburg court with the cream of European talent; it was after her reign that the city was first called “the Venice of the North”. For a time she appeared to be interested in the liberal theories espoused by such French writers as Voltaire, with whom she corresponded. In 1767 Catherine issued an outline of proposed legal and administrative reforms, particularly in regard to serfs, but they were not carried out because of the opposition of the nobility. Her own opposition was stirred by a Cossack and peasant uprising led by the Zaporozhian Cossack Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachov. The rebellion, the worst of the agrarian uprisings that studded Russian history, was suppressed in 1775; Pugachov was executed and the Zaporozhian Cossacks liquidated. Catherine, instead of relaxing the oppressive serf laws, strengthened them. Such changes did not prevent peasant revolts, which continued sporadically through most of the rest of the imperial era, but they did serve to constrain Russia even more tightly within a social structure that was becoming increasingly outdated and incapable of meeting the challenges and changes of the emerging modern world. After the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, the empress discarded her liberal views entirely.
C4 Paul I and Alexander I
Catherine was succeeded in 1796 by her son Paul I. He inaugurated some reforms in the treatment of serfs, limiting their obligatory work for landowners to three days a week. In foreign affairs he joined Austria, Britain, Naples, and the Ottoman Empire in the Second Coalition against France. A despotic and unbalanced ruler, he was assassinated in his palace in 1801 by a conspiracy that was led by the nobility.
His son, Alexander I (1801-1825), had been Catherine’s favourite grandson. Imbued with the liberal policies of her early reign and educated by the Swiss thinker Frédéric César de La Harpe, Alexander began his reign by granting amnesty to political prisoners, projecting a constitution for the empire, and repealing many of his father’s restrictive measures. His advanced domestic policies, however, were soon abandoned because of involvement in foreign wars. In 1805 Russia joined Britain, Austria, Sweden, and Naples in the Third Coalition against Napoleon I. After French armies crushed Prussia in the Battle of Jena on October 14, 1806, and defeated Russia at Friedland on June 14, 1807, Alexander changed sides and allied Russia with France by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807). Under this agreement, which divided Europe into French and Russian spheres of interest, Alexander, in return for helping France against Britain, was allowed freedom of action against Sweden and Turkey. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1806 to 1812, Russia received Bessarabia from Turkey. The Russo-Swedish War of 1808 and 1809 ended with Russian acquisition of the Åland Islands and all of Finland. In 1806, as a result of war with Iran following the Russian annexation of Georgia in 1801, Russia had also acquired Dagestan, Baku, and other areas. Meanwhile, relations with France were deteriorating in the face of Napoleon’s ambition to control all of Europe and Alexander’s desire to extend Russian territory to Constantinople; the problems took a personal turn when Alexander refused Napoleon the hand of his sister. On June 24, 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 troops. Initially his efforts to conquer Russia appeared successful, culminating in the Battle of Borodino on September 7, 1812. Ultimately, however, the campaign was a disaster for the French emperor. The Russian generals, led by General Kutuzov, opting to “lose Moscow and save the army”, retreated to regroup their forces and plan the engage-and-avoid campaign that was to prove Napoleon’s downfall. His troops entered Moscow on September 14, but the city was deserted and much of it had been burned by the Russians. Napoleon’s repeated requests for negotiations were ignored, and, increasingly starved of supplies and an enemy to engage, his forces began to disintegrate into bands of marauders as discipline collapsed. On October 19, Napoleon abandoned Moscow and the French were forced to fall back in a retreat which quickly became a rout. Exposed to hunger, cold, and Kutuzov’s constant guerrilla attacks in a country devastated by the Russian “scorched-earth” policy only 30,000 French troops made it back across the ice of the Berezina River, the western border of Russia. After the French retreat from Moscow, Alexander, who entered Paris on March 14, 1814, at the head of the Russian army, became a central figure in the alliance that accomplished the overthrow of Napoleon. In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, most of the duchy of Warsaw was awarded to Russia.
Although the last decade of Alexander’s reign was marked by reaction and repressive measures, closer intellectual intercourse between Western Europe and Russia resulted in the radicalization of many members of the Russian intelligentsia, particularly students, the upper middle class, and the younger landed nobility. Exposed to the economic, social, and political changes in the rest of Europe, they increasingly viewed Russia as a despotic state with an intricate, corrupt bureaucracy, that was little concerned with the oppressed masses. They began to form secret political societies demanding, among other things, the abolition of serfdom. The revolutionary tradition that culminated in the Russian Revolution of 1917 was thus initiated.
C5 Nicholas I
After Alexander’s sudden death in 1825 without issue, the throne passed to his youngest brother, Nicholas I. Taking advantage of some uncertainty regarding the succession, a group of young officers and nobles organized on December 14, 1825, a revolt in an effort to form a constitutional monarchy, or even a republic. Nicholas suppressed the revolt within hours, and ordered the immediate execution of the leaders of the Decembrists, as the conspirators became known; another 120 were exiled to Siberia. The conspiracy confirmed Nicholas’s distrust of liberalism, and he reacted by decreeing further reactionary measures, including a new secret police to compel complete obedience to the emperor, strict censorship of all publications, and removal of all material regarded as politically dangerous from school texts and curricula. The revolutionary fervour that gripped western Europe in 1848, was also felt in Russia. Another revolutionary secret society, known as the Petrashevists, was formed. The young Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a member of this group, which advocated emancipation of the serfs though an uprising. The secret police uncovered their activities, and they were arrested and sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia, including Dostoyevsky. Afterwards Nicholas began a vigorous campaign against liberal ideas in education and in intellectual circles in general. University chairs of history and philosophy were abolished as potentially dangerous, and student bodies were reduced to 300 in each university. Despite such repressions, the first half of the 19th century was a period of considerable artistic, literary, and scientific achievement.
Nicholas made some efforts to expand the empire. This expansion took three directions: south-west towards the Mediterranean, involving interference in the Balkan provinces of Turkey; south into the Caucasus and Central Asia; and east to the Pacific Ocean. A war with Iran began in 1826 and ended two years later with the Russian acquisition of part of Armenia, including the strategic city of Yerevan. At the same time Nicholas espoused the cause of the Greek revolutionaries, and a Russian fleet joined the British and French vessels that destroyed the Turkish fleet in the Battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827. In the resulting Russo-Turkish War of 1828 and 1829, Turkey was defeated. The Treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829) gave Russia suzerainty over the peoples of the Caucasus and the Emperor a protectorate over Moldavia and Walachia, with rights of interference.
A major Polish revolt against Russian rule began in 1830. Polish nationalists expelled their Russian governor and organized a provisional government. Russian troops forced the capitulation of the rebel leaders the following year. As a result, scarcely any autonomy was left to Poland.
Increasing Russian power in the Middle East was regarded as a threat by other European powers, particularly after Russian forces appeared in the Dardanelles by agreement with Turkey in 1833. Britain, France, Prussia, and Austria formed a bloc to circumvent Russian plans for eventual mastery of Constantinople. In 1853, after Nicholas invaded the Danubian principalities, Turkey declared war on Russia. In the Crimean War (1853-1856) that followed, Russia was faced by British, French, and Sardinian, as well as Turkish, troops and was utterly defeated.
C6 Alexander II
Nicholas died in 1855, and peace was concluded a year later by his son, Alexander II. Russia was compelled to relinquish Kars and part of Bessarabia, the Black Sea was neutralized, and the Russian protectorate over the Danubian principalities was abolished. This setback in the south-west, however, had little effect on Russia’s continuing advance to the Pacific Ocean and towards the Persian Gulf. Russia had completed the conquest of Siberia in the 1650s, and subsequently the search for new lands further east began in earnest. Initially led by explorers like Ivan Moskvilin and Vasily Poyarkov, Semyon Dezhnev, and Yerofey Khabarov, it was followed by the start of settlement. The Kamatchka peninsula had been conquered at the end of the 17th century. In 1850, following the establishment of the first settlements on Kamatchka in the previous century, a Russian settlement was established on the estuary of the Amur River. The northern half of the island of Sakhalin was occupied in 1855. Three years later the entire Amur region and the coast south to the city of Vladivostok (founded in 1860) was annexed. In Central Asia the empire was extended south almost to the border of India, with the annexations of Toshkent (1865), Bokhara (1866), Samarqand (1868), Khiva (1873), and Kokand (1876). Merv (now Mary) was annexed in 1884, three years after Alexander’s death.
Domestically, Alexander’s early reign was an era of reform, made necessary by the debacle of the Crimean War, which had exposed the archaic nature of Russia’s political and social institutions. In 1861 he decreed the emancipation of the serfs. This necessitated a reform of local government, and in 1864 zemstvos, or elected district assemblies, were introduced in European Russia to deal with local issues such as education, public welfare, agricultural development, road-building, and health services. Each zemstvo was elected indirectly by three separate electoral colleges: nobility, townsmen, and peasantry. The nobility inevitably dominated, and in 1890 the right of peasant election was virtually abolished. Zemstvos were subsequently set up in other areas, but not in the frontier regions or the main towns (which had their own municipal councils from 1870). With no central representative parliament before 1805, the zemstvos played an important role in the formation of the political intelligentsia; many deputies and officials held radical views.
The judicial system was also revised and trial by jury instituted for serious criminal offences. Other changes included the encouragement of secondary education and university reform, and changes in army administration and the substitution of conscription for an inequitable forced levy. The emperor refused, however, to countenance a constitution or the organization of a representative national assembly. Revolutionary movements increased and adopted definite policies and aims. One prominent group advocated nihilism, which aimed to tear down the basis of the existing society and build a new (but indeterminate) one on its ruins. The narodniki, a populist movement, worked for a peasant uprising. Revolutionaries were also prominent in Poland, and in 1863 the Poles rose in a second major rebellion against Russia. After it was quelled, Poland was deprived of the last vestiges of its autonomy and was extensively Russified. Such developments, combined with an assassination attempt in 1866, led Alexander to give way to reactionary elements in the court, and return to the despotism of the past.
Russia resumed its expansionist policies during the 1870s. The overthrow of Napoleon III, a principal opponent of Russian interference in the Balkans, enabled Russia to widen its sphere of influence there. When Serbia and Montenegro revolted against Turkey in 1876, Russia intervened on their behalf. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and 1878, Alexander obtained major concessions from Turkey, but these were largely negated by a conference of the European powers at Berlin, fearful of Russian domination of the Dardanelles.
D The End of the Empire
The essential failure of the war combined with Alexander’s growing despotism increased popular discontent with the government. A secret terrorist group, the Narodnaya Volya (“The People’s Will”), in 1879 condemned Alexander to death for failing to summon a constituent assembly. After several failed attempts they finally succeeded on March 13, 1881, when Alexander was blown up by a bomb thrown by a Polish student.
Ironically, Alexander had, unknown to the public, given his consent finally to limited constitutional reform only that morning. These proposals were abandoned on his death by his son, Alexander III, who reacted to the assassination by instituting rigid censorship and police supervision of intellectual activities. The power of the zemstvos was drastically curbed, and Russification programmes were forced upon the many racial minorities within the empire. The oppression of Jews was particularly severe. They were forced to live in certain areas, not permitted to enter specific professions, and killed in great numbers (see Pogrom).
Political discontent was driven underground and revolutionary propaganda was eagerly accepted by Russian factory workers. The theories of Karl Marx found many supporters; the first Russian Marxist group was formed in St Petersburg in 1883. An intensified programme of industrialization had resulted in a great increase in the number of industrial workers. Such cities as St Petersburg and Moscow became notorious for the miserable working and living conditions of factory labourers.
In the last years of his reign, Alexander encouraged the development of Russia’s far eastern territories, authorizing construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. During this period the close relations with Germany and Austro-Hungary developed by his father—the Dreikaiserbund (“League of the Three Emperors”) collapsed in the face of Alexander’s concerns over Germany’s expansionist policies. In 1894 he concluded a secret military alliance, the Dual, or Franco-Russian, Alliance, with France.
Nicholas II, eldest son of Alexander III, ascended the throne in 1894. Although well intentioned, he was a weak ruler, out of touch with his people, easily dominated by others and a firm believer in the autocratic principles taught him by his father. His wife, Princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt, a granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria, became a fanatical believer in the Russian autocratic tradition and encouraged Nicholas to reject all reform proposals. She bore him four daughters and a son, Alexis, who suffered from haemophilia, which was carried in Queen Victoria’s line. In their vain attempts to effect a cure for him, Nicholas and Alexandra became prey to quacks and religious fanatics, notably the Siberian starets (holy man) Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin.
Autocracy, oppression, and police control increased under Nicholas. They were met by an upsurge of terrorist acts. From outside Russia political leaders, including notably Vladimir Ilich Lenin, directed the Socialist movement. The Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in 1898. In 1903 it split over policy into two factions: the Mensheviks (moderates) led by Julius Cedarbaum, who took the conspiratorial name of Martov; and the Bolsheviks (the revolutionary faction) led by Lenin. Although outwardly reunited in 1906, the two groups remained fundamentally deeply divided. In foreign affairs, Russia’s expanding interests in Dongbei clashed head on with those of the Japanese Empire. The resulting friction led to a Japanese attack on February 8, 1904.
D1 The Revolution of 1905
Needing popular support for the prosecution of the war with Japan, the government permitted a congress of zemstvos to meet in St Petersburg in November 1904. When the demands of the congress for reform went unheeded by the government, they were adopted by Socialist groups. A demonstration was called by students and labour leaders. On January 22, 1905, thousands of people led by Georgy Apollonovich Gapon, a revolutionary priest, marched to the Winter Palace carrying icons and chanting “God save the tsar”. Their aim was to present a petition to Nicholas asking for an amnesty for political prisoners, the summoning of a constituent assembly, and an eight-hour working day. Nicholas was not in residence and the marchers were fired on by imperial troops. Hundreds were killed and wounded, and the event has become known in Russian history as Bloody Sunday.
The massacre precipitated a series of events that became known as the Revolution of 1905. Strikes and riots protesting against the killings began throughout the industrialized sections of Russia. The rush of events, combined with continued disaster in the war against Japan, influenced the government to make concessions. The Emperor promised a limited consultative parliament, called the State Duma, and issued decrees granting freedom of worship to Old Believers (April 29) and more liberty for Poland (May 16). These concessions were considered totally inadequate and the agitation for reform intensified. There were strikes, peasant revolts, and assassinations. Soldiers and sailors mutinied, most famously on the Battleship Potemkin of the Black Sea fleet. On October 14, a soviet, or council of workers’ delegates, was formed at St Petersburg to lead a general strike. The strike, from 20 to 30 October, paralysed European Russia, and was accompanied by uprisings of nationalist groups, peasant unrest, and turmoil throughout the empire. To this was added the complete defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. On October 30 the Tsar yielded and agreed to establish a constitution and a legislative Duma. For the first time a prime minister was appointed, initially Sergey Witte, who as minister both of finance and communications during the 1880s and 1890s was a key figure in the increasing industrialization of Russia. He was quickly replaced, however, by Pyotr Stolypin, who had attracted Nicholas’s attention by his ferocious suppression of uprisings in Saratov province during 1905. The “October Manifesto” split the revolutionaries. Many of the Mensheviks favoured participation in the Duma. The Bolsheviks opposed it, and the St Petersburg Soviet continued resistance until their arrest in December brought about a violent workers’ rebellion in Moscow, which was brutally quelled by army troops. Order was restored by equally drastic methods in the countryside. By early 1906, the government was again in control.
The first Duma was elected on a broad suffrage in the spring of 1906 and sat from May 10 to July 21. Before the meeting, however, the government had announced the Fundamental Laws, which reserved the prerogative to legislate by decree to the Emperor. They also limited the Duma’s financial powers. As a result the session was occupied with a campaign for recognition of rights and ended in deadlock. A second Duma met from March 5 to June 16, 1907. It was even more radical, and on its dissolution, a new electoral law increased the representative weight of the middle classes at the expense of workers and peasants. The revolutionary movement again began to mount. It was met by ruthless repression, directed by Stolypin and targeted particularly against minorities. Meanwhile, with the conservative middle classes now the dominant influence, the third Duma sat from the end of 1907 to 1912, and enacted various moderate reform measures. The fourth Duma (1912-1916) was less effective, mainly due to the outbreak of World War I; in November 1916, however, it gave Nicholas clear warning of impending revolution without fundamental changes in the regime.
D2 World War I
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 put a temporary halt to the revolutionary activities of the radicals. The war was directly precipitated when Russia refused to stand aside while Austria invaded Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The fourth Duma, then in session, rallied popular support to the government.
By the end of 1914 severe reverses had been inflicted on the Russian army, notably in East Prussia. The reverses increased in 1915 and, except for temporary victories, the defeat began to assume the proportions of the Crimean and Japanese disasters. By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the country had suffered 5.5 million casualties. Lack of supplies and transport, and the inefficiency of military leaders, further demoralized the troops. Desertions mounted, and the war became unpopular throughout Russia, where the civilian population faced serious food shortages. Repression and corruption in the government continued, and the country’s problems were exacerbated by the petty feuds that increasingly divided it. In the last 12 months of Nicholas’s rule there were four different prime ministers, three war ministers, and three foreign ministers. The emperor was dominated by his German-born wife, Alexandra, who was distrusted by the Russians and who was largely under the control of Rasputin. Rasputin was rumoured to have become the chief influence in the empire, controlling even military decisions. His presence at court was so resented, not least as a danger to the survival of the monarchy, that in December 1916, a group of aristocrats, including members of the imperial family, murdered him. Revolutionary agitation increased based round two main groups: the liberal intelligentsia, who believed that Russia could still win the war and be transformed into a democratic republic; and the Bolsheviks, who believed the war was already lost and wanted to carry out a complete political, economic, and social transformation of Russia. The first group led the February Revolution; the second, the October Revolution (dated on the Julian calendar). In February 1917, riots began in St Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in 1914). When troops were ordered to fire upon the rioters, they joined them instead. Demands for changes in the government finally resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II and his son on March 15, leaving the administration to a provisional government initially headed by Prince Lvov, and from July by Aleksandr Kerensky. The abdications ended the Russian Empire.
The provisional government, which favoured the establishment of a republican democracy, continued to prosecute the war. However, Kerensky’s attempts to mount a major offensive in the summer of 1917 were bitterly resented by ordinary Russians dreading another winter of war, and hampered by conflict with the Petrograd Soviet, which had been revived earlier in the year. After ten years of forced exile, Lenin returned to Petrograd to plan the Bolshevik takeover. On October 25, taking advantage of splits in the Kerensky government, he gave the command that launched the October Revolution. Ten days later troops of revolutionary forces, the Red Army, stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd and Bolsheviks took control of the state. Lenin then changed the name “Bolshevik” to “Communist”, and on November 7, 1917 (25 October in the Julian calendar), the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was proclaimed as the territorial successor of the Russian Empire. In 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established, comprising the territory of the former Russian Empire, less the newly independent Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; the RSFSR, with re-drawn boundaries, became one of 15 constituent republics of the USSR.
E Russian Revolution and the Soviet Era
For detailed information about the Russian Revolution, see Russian Revolution. For the history of the territory of the former Russian Empire after the Russian Revolution and before the independence of the Russian Federation on December 25, in 1991, see Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
F Post-Soviet Russia
Shortly after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, a power struggle emerged between conservative and reformist forces in Russia. President Boris Yeltsin, who was elected in June 1991 by popular vote, originally was granted sweeping powers by the Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD), one of the two legislative bodies that existed under the 1978 constitution. Yeltsin used his powers to initiate a programme of sweeping economic reform and to establish a network of regional appointees in order to bypass local legislatures dominated by neo-Communists. Conservatives, led by Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former Yeltsin ally, sought to reduce Yeltsin’s powers after he launched a campaign of radical economic reform in early 1992. At a meeting of the Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD) in December 1992, the acting prime minister Yegor Gaidar (1992), the chief architect of the government’s plan for economic reform, was replaced by Viktor Chernomyrdin, a long-time member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Minister of the Gas Industry of the former USSR. The CPD also rescinded several powers granted to Yeltsin, including control over local administrators. That same month the Constitutional Court limited Yeltsin’s ban on the CPSU and the Russian Communist Party to the national organization, effectively legalizing the latter in Russia. Yeltsin protested at the reduction of his powers, and an agreement was reached with the CPD at the end of 1992 to hold a popular referendum on a new constitution. Conservatives in local and national legislative bodies resisted the organization of a national referendum, however, prompting Yeltsin to declare emergency presidential rule on March 20, 1993. Yeltsin’s announcement of emergency rule was condemned by the Constitutional Court Chairman Valeriy Zorkin, Khasbulatov, Vice-President Aleksandr Rutskoy, and others. Both sides subsequently modified their positions: Yeltsin never formally issued a decree on emergency rule, and conservatives allowed the referendum to take place on April 25, 1993.
Yeltsin scored a resounding victory at the polls, but the referendum failed to resolve the power struggle. In September 1993 Yeltsin removed Rutskoy as vice-president on charges of corruption, an action opposed by the parliament. In the same month Yeltsin issued a decree dissolving parliament, due to the resistance of conservative deputies to the work of the Constituent Assembly. The parliament responded by denouncing Yeltsin’s actions as unconstitutional and declaring Rutskoy as president. About 100 deputies and several hundred armed supporters, led by Khasbulatov and Rutskoy, occupied the parliament building, also known as the White House, and refused to disband. A tense stalemate between government and rebel forces lasted several days. It was broken when rebel supporters staged an attack on the mayor’s office and a television centre. The government responded by shelling the parliament building and arresting the occupiers. More than 140 people died in the rebellion and its dispersal by government forces. On October 4, 1993, Rutskoy and Khasbulatov were taken prisoner and charged with inciting mass disorder.
F1 Yeltsin’s Presidential Rule
Yeltsin’s victory over conservative forces was short-lived, however. The December 1993 elections gave an unexpected boost to the ultra-nationalist and Communist parties, especially the Liberal Democratic Party, led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In February 1994 the newly elected State Duma cleared Rutskoy, Khasbulatov, and others of charges relating to the October 1993 uprising, and it granted amnesty to the organizers of the August 1991 coup against the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin responded to the gains made by ultra-conservatives by declaring his willingness to run for a second term, in order to keep the presidency out of the hands of reactionaries.
Throughout 1994 reformers were turning away from a state that was now in the hands of conservative managers, even as Yeltsin reiterated the democrats’ slogans of marketization and privatization with one voice while with another trying to present himself as the defender of Russia’s national interest, warning the West not to try to bring Eastern Europe into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and negotiating a place for Russia at the Bosnian peace table. Yeltsin recognized that public opinion was easily aroused by threats of discrimination against the 25 million Russians who, after the demise of the Soviet Union, found themselves living in the former Soviet republics, the so-called “near-abroad”, where some communities did indeed endure hardship. He saw that strong gestures and actions to protect them might earn his beleaguered regime credit. How to balance such legitimate aims with the rabble-rousing potential of Zhirinovsky’s posturing on the same issues was Yeltsin’s dilemma.
The fear, repeatedly expressed, that failure to achieve political harmony in Moscow would lead to civil war elsewhere became a reality in 1994, when Russian forces invaded the breakaway republic of Chechnya in the Caucasus. This tiny part of the Russian Federation had proclaimed itself independent in 1991, at a time when virtually every part of the former Soviet Union was doing so. In keeping with the spirit of the new democracy, and preoccupied with problems closer to home, the government at first made no move to bring the errant Chechens back into the fold. (During the early 1990s Chechens outstripped the reputation of all other ethnic groups as mafia bosses and strong-arm gangsters in Moscow, and feeling against them was strong among Russians.) Chechnya, however, was not only a dangerous precedent for other potential separatists: it was also an oil source and controlled the oil pipeline from Central Asia and the Caspian Sea to Russia. The government decided to bring the Chechens to heel by means of a “short, sharp operation”.
The question quickly arose of whether Yeltsin was in control of his own policy and indeed of his armed forces. It was even unclear whether he had given the order to invade, or whether other forces had taken the decision for him. In either case, the answer would be alarming, for loss of control by a reform-minded leader could only mean the rise to power of men whose goals were anti-democratic.
Yeltsin’s advice was by now coming from at least two sources: his liberal advisers of the perestroika period who wanted to keep him on the path of reform and democratic methods, and another group led chiefly by senior military figures on the 13-member Security Council—a body he had created to circumvent a fractious Duma—who wanted him to reassert Russia’s authority. He was thought above all to be influenced by an eminence grise, former KGB major-general Aleksandr Korzhakov, who had command of 30,000 troops whose sole purpose was “to protect the president’s interests”.
The Chechen crisis was a severe test of the new regime’s will. When senior Russian officers refused to attack Chechen civilians, and untrained, ill-equipped conscripts complained to TV crews that they did not know why they had been sent to Chechnya, it became clear that the line of command was seriously flawed. As pictures of the war were shown nightly on Russian television, a powerful anti-war public mood arose: mothers of young soldiers held protest meetings on the streets and some even travelled to Chechnya to find their sons and take them home. The Russian government responded by intensifying the fighting, while proclaiming the war would be ended by political means. The war was still going on, however, despite the government’s assertions to the contrary, when United States president Bill Clinton and other Western leaders attended Victory Day jubilee celebrations in Moscow in May 1995.
In April 1995 a standby loan of US$6.8 billion to Russia was agreed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As the national economies of the former Soviet republics continued to flounder, and their newly invented currencies became worthless compared even to the Russian rouble, economic ties, notably between Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, increased bilaterally, and in May 1995 Belarus signed a treaty of economic union with Russia. Efforts to create a “Slavonic union” between Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus were frustrated by the wrangle between Russia and Ukraine over control of the Black Sea Fleet and sovereignty over Crimea, where the population was overwhelmingly Russian.
By the summer of 1995, Yeltsin’s personal standing and that of his administration had sunk to the point where it was confidently expected that his supporters would be defeated in the December elections—should he permit them to take place—and that he would be an unlikely victor in the presidential election due in 1996. His difficulties were compounded when Chechen fighters raided the town of Budyonnovsk inside Russia, itself, on June 14, killing more than 140 people and taking more than 1,000 women and children hostage. The prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, negotiated a peaceful end to the hostage drama, winning much praise for his calmness and decisiveness. The events also discredited the Security Council, and increased public disenchantment with nationalistic military adventures. Yeltsin himself suffered what was reported as a mild heart attack in July; but the relatively muted public reaction suggested growing political and economic stability.
F2 Elections and Economic Reform
A peace agreement between the Russian government and Chechen rebels was signed in July 1995, without resolving the actual political status of the region, and proved to be short-lived. In December national elections gave the revived Communist Party 157 seats out of 450 in the Duma, with the radical nationalist Liberal Democratic Party securing a further 51. Yeltsin responded by dismissing several free-market reformers from his Cabinet in January 1996, while other prominent liberals resigned in protest at his policies. In March 1996 the Duma passed a resolution effectively revoking the 1991 formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States: Yeltsin instantly dismissed it as invalid, while it was condemned by the majority of CIS members. A new IMF three-year credit package of more than US$10 billion was also agreed in March, despite evident slowing of state privatization, as Yeltsin announced a unilateral ceasefire in Chechnya.
Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov all entered their candidacies for the 1996 presidential elections in April, while Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin stood aside, as the death of the Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was announced in Chechnya. The first round of presidential polling in June was held against a background of economic resurgence combined with widespread concern over deteriorating law and order, and nostalgia for Russia’s Soviet-era superpower predominance. Yeltsin finished the June polls with a narrow lead over Zyuganov, while Gorbachev and the maverick Zhirinovsky were eliminated from the contest, which underlined the pivotal role of the third-placed candidate, General Aleksandr Lebed. Immediately afterwards, Yeltsin appointed Lebed to a new post of national security advisor, with responsibility for security and law and order: Lebed promptly sacked Yeltsin’s defence minister and close ally Pavel Grachev, widely implicated in the 1994 fiasco in Chechnya, with this and other sackings blamed on a plot to destabilize the second round of polling. Yeltsin duly scored a convincing win in the second round of presidential voting in July 1996, with over 50 per cent of the poll and a clear lead of more than 10 per cent over his Communist rival Zyuganov.
In his new position as national security advisor, Lebed played a central role in the establishment of a final peace accord with the Chechen rebels. Following a major assault on Groznyy by the rebels in August 1996, he negotiated a gradual withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. In addition, the peace accord dictated that the Moscow-installed government in Groznyy should be removed and a new government for the republic elected. Also, in exchange for Russian withdrawal, it was agreed that a final decision on Chechnya’s political status would be postponed for five years. The withdrawal of Russian troops was finally completed on January 6, 1997, ahead of schedule and in the run-up to elections for a new Chechen government and president, held on January 27. Victor in the presidential elections was Aslan Maskhadov, the military leader primarily responsible, with Lebed, for negotiating the peace accord. He immediately promised to pursue the issue of Chechen independence from Russia, “using only political means”. The war had left many tens of thousands of civilians dead and much of the republic’s housing and industrial capacity destroyed.
Yeltsin saw his victory in the 1996 presidential elections as a clear mandate for the continuation of the reform programme. He reorganized his Cabinet, bringing in new reformers as well as retaining loyalists such as Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Chief of Staff Anatoly Chubais in key positions. Lebed, however, who had gained widespread popularity as a “man of the people” rather than a party politician, continued to criticize government actions, especially aspects of the reform programme. In October he was sacked as national security advisor, and went on in December to launch a new political party, the Russian Popular Republican Party.
Lebed had also called for Yeltsin to hand over the presidency, at least temporarily, saying that his illness had left him unable to carry out his duties properly, and the country effectively leaderless. Since his election, Yeltsin, weakened by the rigours of campaigning had largely vanished from the public eye. Based in a sanatorium preparing for a quintuple heart bypass operation, he came to rely heavily upon his daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, who rapidly became one of the most influential figures in the administration. Together with Chubais, she controlled access to the visibly ailing president, who underwent the operation in November. Yeltsin’s return to full-time duties was delayed by a bout of pneumonia, which heightened doubts concerning his future. A bid in early February 1997 by the Communist bloc in the State Duma to oust him from office on health grounds failed through lack of support and procedural errors. Yeltsin finally returned to full-time duties at the end of February.
His effective eight-month absence from office, however, had been felt both in the domestic and foreign affairs fields. At home, the problems of the Russian Federation’s governability were reaching critical proportions centred on the tax collection problems that were hindering the government’s ability to implement policies and undermining even more its popularity with an electorate increasingly angry with the growing backlog of unpaid wages and pensions. Another key problem was the relationship between the federal government and the 89 territorial regions of the federation, especially the republics. The legacy of Soviet economic policy severely affected the regions. Many were heavily reliant in terms of both employment and income on large, obsolescent, and inefficient large-scale enterprises that had little chance of survival in the very different economy of the new Russia without large-scale subsidies, which the central government could no longer afford to make. Yeltsin tried to counter growing rumbles of discontent in the regions by relieving many of their tax obligations to the central coffers. This, however, tended only to worsen the central government’s financial situation without addressing the growing political instability in many regions.
Yeltsin used his annual state-of the-nation address, delivered to both houses of parliament in March 1997, to demonstrate that he was back in full control. Vowing to tackle corruption and the economy, he promised sweeping changes to the government, which he denounced for failing the needs of the people. He appointed Chubais, a dedicated reformer, as a first deputy prime minister and ordered Chernomyrdin to implement a reshuffle of the Cabinet within a week. The move was seen as a signal that the economic reform programme, which had largely stagnated during 1996 as a result of the elections and Yeltsin’s illness, was to be resumed. Although well received by Western observers and Russian “Westernizers”, Chubais’ appointment was generally unpopular domestically. The seven newcomers to Chernomyrdin’s 27-member government included mostly reformers and relatively young men—notably 37-year-old Boris Nemtsov, reform-minded governor of Nizhniy Novgorod oblast, who became the other first deputy prime minister, beside Chubais. The latter was given overall responsibility for economic reform, and also became finance minister; Alexei Kudrin, an ally of Chubais, was appointed first deputy finance minister. In addition, in a move to streamline the government, the ministries of industry, defence industries, and construction were abolished, as were several of the state committees. A number of conservative ministers lost their jobs or were demoted. Conservative interior minister Anatoly Kulikov, foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, and defence minister Igor Rodionov retained their posts. Rodionov was sacked in May by Yeltsin, however, along with Viktor Samsonov, chief of general staff, for failing to carry out planned cutbacks in and reform of the armed forces. Rodionov was replaced by Igor Sergeyev, head of Russia’s nuclear missile force.
The last changes in the Cabinet had to be rushed through because of plans by the trade unions to organize a nationwide protest, involving picketing, rallies, and marches, against wage and pension arrears totalling almost US$9 billion. Some 20 million people were expected to participate, including around 7 million Russians already on strike over this and related issues. On the eve of the strike, Chernomyrdin and the new economic team headed by Chubais and Nemtsov promised that state and private employers would pay up to US$2 billion in back wages and pensions by the end of March. The remaining back pensions would be cleared by the end of June, debts to teachers by May, and other government debts by the autumn. The announcement proved partly effective in that the actual numbers participating in the protests were much lower than 20 million, although probably not as low as the 2 million official figure.
It was unclear as to where the finances for the payments would come from, particularly given the drastic cuts in government spending announced by Chernomyrdin in May, along with measures to squeeze some of the worst tax defaulters, such as the gas giant Gazprom. The cuts, already being implemented, were a response to the tax collection shortfalls, estimated at one third of tax revenues in the first quarter of 1997. The proposals were rejected by anti-government groups in the Duma, headed by the Communists, many of whom called for the government to increase the money supply in order to provide companies and the government with the cash to pay the backlog of bills, wages, and pensions. It was not likely, however, that deputies would push the issue to a vote of confidence, and this was one area where the government was expected to refuse to compromise. One of the few successful areas in the reform programme since 1995 was the cutback in inflation and the stabilization in the value of the rouble as a result of stringent controls over money supply. By mid-1997 the rate of inflation had remained below 3 per cent a month for more than 15 months, while the rouble had traded within a predictable range for more than a year, attracting foreign capital at a rate unseen for several years.
On his return to full-time work Yeltsin also attempted to resume firm control over Russia’s foreign policy, particularly with regard to NATO. During his illness Russian objections to proposed extensions of NATO to include former Eastern bloc countries—notably Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—and eventually former-RSFSR member republics, such as the Baltic states, had become particularly strident. More extreme nationalists were predicting that an expanded NATO alliance would be followed by an invasion of Russia. Although Yeltsin continued to express public concern about the implications for Russia of an expanded NATO, he also went ahead with negotiations that, on May 27, led to the signing of an agreement between the two sides. Under the Founding Act for NATO-Russia, signed by Yeltsin in Paris, NATO formally agreed to give Russia a voice in the alliance and made it a member of a new NATO council to set European security policy without, however, the right to veto. In the run-up to the agreement NATO strengthened previous assurances that no NATO nuclear weapons would be deployed within the territories of new Eastern European members.
In July 1997 the president announced a cut in Russia’s armed forces by some 500,000 personnel, to 1.2 million, by the end of 1998; this move prompted opposition from military sympathizers in the Duma. In a separate decree, however, he promised to settle outstanding wage arrears in the armed forces, which had long been a cause of resentment in the ranks. The privatization auction of the Norilsk Nickel mining group provoked a further financial scandal in August, and is thought to have resulted in the replacement of Alfred Kokh, the deputy prime minister and the chairman of the committee responsible for supervising the privatization programme. Russia joined the Paris Club of creditor countries in September, and under the terms of the agreement would be able to recoup some of the US$140 billion that it was owed. An agreement on debt restructuring was also signed with the London Club of creditor nations in October, to deal with debts assumed by Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also in October, Russia ended two years of controversy with De Beers, when it rejoined the diamond cartel after operating independently since 1995.
The execution, in early September of two convicted murderers and a subsequent double execution in Chechnya under Shari’ah law, attracted censure from the Russian authorities. President Yeltsin approved a controversial law dealing with religious freedom, which restricted the denominations allowed to function freely to those religions that had existed continuously and enjoyed legal status in Russia for 15 years. There was renewed concern over Yeltsin’s health in December, but a connection with his previous heart problems was denied. Also in December the State Duma accepted the draft budget for 1998, after President Yeltsin had warned of the imminent collapse of the currency if the budget was rejected. In late March 1998 Yeltsin sacked Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his entire government, and appointed the relatively unknown 35-year-old Sergei Kiriyenko, formerly of the energy ministry. A month-long test of wills between Yeltsin and the Duma ensued, until the Duma capitulated in April and confirmed the appointment.
After just a few months in office, Kiriyenko was dismissed as premier, and Viktor Chernomyrdin reappointed in his place by Yeltsin. The Duma twice rejected Chernomyrdin, but by September had accepted Yeltsin's compromise candidate, Yevgeny Primakov, as prime minister; the appointment was regarded by many observers as a major political defeat for the president. Yeltsin surprised even regular Kremlin observers, when he dismissed four of his senior advisors in December, in a move that was interpreted as an attempt to bolster his authority. Yeltsin's deteriorating health continued to give cause for concern when he was admitted to hospital with an acute stomach ulcer, in January 1999. The initiation of air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by NATO forces in late March resulted in Yeltsin ordering an end to cooperation with NATO, and calls in the Duma for the despatch of arms and volunteers to the region. Tensions were heightened by the visit of Prime Minister Primakov to Slobodan Miloševic in Belgrade, in late March. Former prime minister Chernomyrdin attempted to find a solution to the conflict in the Balkans, and his rounds of shuttle-diplomacy involving Miloševic, European leaders and President Clinton's envoy eventually paved the path for the acceptance of peace terms in early June. However, Chernomyrdin was later accused by deputies in the Duma of betraying Russia's interests and of giving too much to the West.
In April the IMF announced an agreement to resume lending to Russia. The IMF had frozen cooperation with Russia in August 1998 after Russia defaulted on its foreign debt and devalued the rouble. The new agreement would provide Russia with approximately US$4,500 million over 18 months. In May 1999 Yeltsin suddenly sacked Primakov and his Cabinet, accusing the premier of acting too slowly in addressing the country’s economic ills. Many analysts said Yeltsin dismissed Primakov because the president was concerned about the former prime minister's growing power, political independence, and popularity. It came at a time when Yeltsin’s increasingly difficult relations with the Duma had led to an attempt to impeach the president on charges that included undermining the Russian military, starting the disastrous war in Chechnya, and causing widespread hardship by destroying Russia's economy. The impeachment effort failed and the Duma backed Yeltsin’s choice to replace Primakov, the Russian interior minister Sergei Stepashin, in the first ballot. Stepashin announced that his first priority would be to push through reforms of Russia's tax and banking systems.
When it became apparent that the West had not considered the position of the Russians in the policing of the peace deal achieved by Chernomyrdin, Russian troops embarrassed NATO forces in Kosovo when they became the first of the peacekeeping forces to reach the province's capital Priština, taking control of the airport in June. Russian officials later claimed the early movement of troops had been in error when a deal was finally reached in July as to the position of the Russians in the peacekeeping force.
The last full-time crew of the space station Mir landed in Kazakhstan in August marking the end of an era in space exploration. The 13-year-old space installation, which has made over 77,000 orbits round the Earth, hosted more than 100 cosmonauts, and experienced some 1,600 breakdowns, was only built to last 5 years. It gained notoriety in its last years for a series of dramatic incidents experienced by residents of the ageing craft. Russia could no longer fund the orbiting laboratory and the demise of Mir has brought to an end Russia's independent role at the forefront of space exploration; the country committed its resources to the building of the international space station, a project led by the United States. Mir’s mission was eventually terminated and the remains of the station brought down to Earth in March 2001.
Earlier, in August 1999, Yeltsin had again abruptly dismissed his prime minister and Cabinet. While he gave no reason for his action, it had become clear that Yeltsin believed Stepashin would not be an effective candidate as his successor in the presidential elections due in 2000: the government shake-up came just days after the formation of a new political alliance called Fatherland-All Russia between Russian regional governors and Yuri Luzhkov, the popular mayor of Moscow, which was also joined by Yevgeny Primakov. As Stepashin’s successor Yeltsin nominated the head of the Federal Security Board and former KGB spy Vladimir Putin. Putin immediately had to deal with the incursion of Islamic rebels from Chechnya into Dagestan—tensions had been rising again in the area since the ending of the last war in Chechnya in 1996. A wave of terrorist bombings that struck three Russian cities in August and September, killing nearly 300 people and injuring hundreds of others compounded these fears. Putin accused Islamic separatists despite the denial of Chechen leaders and in September Russian warplanes began a campaign of air strikes in Chechen territory, bombing industrial targets near Groznyy and suspected rebel bases throughout Chechnya.
The Russian electorate welcomed this firm action, and this was reflected in the elections for the Duma in December. The new Unity coalition that had been formed in October with the public support of Yeltsin and Putin won 72 seats, second only to the Communists who won 113 seats, down from 152. This backing for the prosecution of the war against Chechnya led to the ground invasion of Chechnya shortly after the election results had been announced.
On December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin stunned the world, and wrong-footed his political opponents, by announcing his resignation as president, naming Putin as acting president and nominating him as his favoured successor. It had been expected that Yeltsin would cling on to power until the June 2000 elections, but his resignation brought forward the date of the presidential election to the end of March, ensuring that Putin could take advantage of the wave of popularity he was enjoying as a result of his prosecution of the war.
F3 The Putin Era
In the weeks that followed his taking control as acting president, Putin sent out a number of conflicting signals as to his true intentions. It appeared likely that he would continue with the economic reforms of his predecessor; however, commentators in the West were unsure as to the likely style of his government, doubting his commitment to democratic processes, and whether he would look to root out the corruption that was so damaging to the last months of Yeltsin's presidency.
In January Putin fired Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin's daughter and a powerful Kremlin adviser, and seven days later he dismissed Pavel Borodin, controller of the Kremlin's property empire. Both Dyachenko and Borodin had been at the centre of allegations of corruption under investigation by Swiss and Russian authorities. Meanwhile, Putin continued to prosecute the war against Chechnya despite increasing pressure from the West, with both the EU and the IMF threatening to withdraw financial aid to Russia. Groznyy finally fell to the Russian troops after a devastating siege in February, but the war continued in the southern mountains of the breakaway republic. The Russian government came under increasing criticism for alleged atrocities committed in the course of the war and for the treatment of prisoners; these allegations were subsequently investigated by human rights organizations. Just a month before presidential elections, Russia reached an agreement with the London Club of creditors on debt repayments.
In March, Putin claimed a convincing victory in the presidential elections, becoming Russia’s second democratically elected president. He won almost 53 per cent of the vote in the first round, with his nearest challenger, the Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov, polling 29 per cent. Other possible contenders for the presidency such as former prime ministers Viktor Chernomyrdin and Yevgeny Primakov had dropped out of the race in January in the face of Putin’s overwhelming popularity. An encouraging report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OEDC), published in the same month, stated that Russia had made considerable progress towards the implementation of free market economics and expressed the need for further comprehensive tax and banking reforms.
Before the new government was inaugurated in May, Putin combined his post as prime minister with his function of president-elect. He was formally inaugurated as president on May 7, 2000, and appointed the former first deputy prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, as premier. The new Cabinet was restructured, with four ministries—CIS Affairs, Economics, Science, and Trade—abolished and two new ministries created (Science, Industry, and Technology; and Economics, Development, and Trade). The first major step towards centralization of power came shortly after the presidential inauguration, when Putin signed a decree on new federal districts (“super-regions”), which were superimposed on the country’s 89 constituent republics and regions. Presidential envoys were appointed in each new district to report back to the Kremlin and to supervise the implementation of legislation from Moscow. This effectively reduced local autonomy and powers of local authorities. In total, seven district were established: Central, with Moscow as the capital; North-West (capital St Petersburg); North Caucasus, later renamed the Southern District (capital Rostov-on-Don); Volga (capital Nizhniy Novgorod); Ural (capital Yekaterinburg); and Far Eastern (capital Khabarovsk).
Progress was made in relations with the United States when, during President Bill Clinton’s fifth visit to Moscow, both leaders signed a pact on a joint early warning system, the Centre for Monitoring Missile Launches, and also agreed on the timing and manner of disposing of 34 tonnes each of weapons’ grade plutonium. In June, Putin toured Western Europe to meet heads of state and to gain support for his internal and international policies.
In an effort to bring the situation in Chechnya under control, Putin introduced, in early June, direct presidential rule in the breakaway republic, appointing Mufti Akhmed Kadyrov, a Muslim cleric, to the post of presidential representative. Kadyrov’s appointment proved extremely unpopular with the supporters of the Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, and tensions continued throughout the year. Internally, Putin attempted to assert control over media and various branches of business, which led to his prolonged conflict with business leaders known as “oligarchs”, in particular with Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, and with the owners of privately owned publishing houses and radio and television stations.
In the summer, the world’s attention was captivated by the sinking of a Russian nuclear submarine, the Kursk, with 118-man crew, which occurred on August 12 during a naval exercise in the Barents Sea. Putin faced severe internal and international criticism and anger for his handling of the tragedy, which left no survivors. Reports from Moscow were indicative of a power struggle over the fate of the Kursk between reformers and hardliners, especially as the Russian side initially refused Western help. Two other major incidents in Moscow during the same months further highlighted the level of social chaos on one hand, and the deteriorating state of the infrastructure on the other. A bomb explosion in a busy underpass in the centre of Moscow killed 12 people on August 8, and on August 27 the Ostankino television tower, the tallest free-standing structure in Europe, was destroyed by fire.
In a further attempt to rationalize military spending, Russia’s defence minister, Igor Sergeyev, announced in September plans for a dramatic reduction of the armed forces by up to one third. The army had already been reduced to 1.2 million personnel, which would be further cut by 350,000 by 2003. All sections of the military are affected, including the Strategic Rocket Force, Russia’s long-range nuclear missile divisions. Later in the year, in November, the Russian Security Council approved measures aimed at the reduction of the country’s armed forces by 600,000 personnel by 2005—a 20 per cent cut.
A possible attempt to appease leaders of Russia’s 89 constituent regions and republics, whose powers were drastically reduced with the creation of “super-regions”, was made in September when a new body, called the State Council of the Russian Federation, was created. As its role was defined as advisory and consultative, and membership was described as voluntary, many observers and regional leaders doubted whether the Council would have any authoritative function.
In October, a joint Russian-Norwegian mission began a salvage operation of the Kursk submarine. The diving team halted the operation in November, having recovered 12 bodies. Two notes found on the bodies threw some light on the circumstances of the tragedy.
At the end of December, both houses of the legislature approved a new anthem and national symbols. The new national anthem uses the music of the Soviet anthem, composed by Aleksandr Aleksandrov in 1943, but with different words (penned by the author of the original Soviet song, Sergei Mikhalkov). The Soviet anthem had been abolished in 1993 but an attempt to introduce a tune by Mikhail Glinka proved unpopular. The old tsarist colours of white, blue, and red were accepted as Russia’s flag, and the double-headed eagle, also a tsarist symbol, was approved as a national emblem. The Soviet red flag was preserved as the banner of the Russian armed forces.
In a move that was interpreted as a further attempt to centralize power, the Duma passed a new law, in February 2001, reducing the number of political parties by banning small groupings. Parties of fewer than 10,000 members with branches in fewer than 45 provinces would no longer be legal. The move outlawed about 90 out of the estimated 180 political groupings in Russia.
In early 2001, reacting to new defence initiatives in the United States and to the perceived threat of NATO’s expansion eastward, Russia formulated a European alternative to the proposed US national defence system, the NMD (National Missile Defence) programme. The Russian plan, known as Euro-Pro, was fully outlined in February. The proposal featured a mobile shield of anti-missiles, capable of intercepting and destroying missiles within 3,500-km (2,175-mi) range, which could be moved quickly across large distances. It was emphasized that Euro-Pro would abide by the terms of the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty. Both France and Germany showed signs of interest in the programme, whereas the US government ultimately agreed to discuss the plan with Russia. The first negotiation meeting took place in Cairo between the Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov and the US secretary of state Colin Powell.
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