Russia facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Russian Federation
Российская Федерация (Russian)
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Anthem:
Государственный гимн Российской Федерации Gosudarstvennyy gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii "State Anthem of the Russian Federation" |
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_-_All_Territorial_Disputes.svg)
Recognised territory of Russia is shown in dark green; claimed but internationally unrecognised territory is shown in light green.
Show globe Show region with labels Show map of Europe |
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| Capital and largest city
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Moscow 55°45′21″N 37°37′02″E / 55.75583°N 37.61722°E |
| Official and national language | Russian |
| Recognised regional languages | 35 regional official languages |
| Ethnic groups
(2021; including Crimea)
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| Religion
(2024)
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| Demonym(s) | Russian |
| Government | Federal semi-presidential republic under an authoritarian dictatorship |
| Vladimir Putin | |
| Mikhail Mishustin | |
| Legislature | Federal Assembly |
| Federation Council | |
| State Duma | |
| Formation | |
| 882 | |
| 1157 | |
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• Principality of Moscow
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1282 |
| 16 January 1547 | |
| 2 November 1721 | |
| 15 March 1917 | |
| 30 December 1922 | |
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• Declaration of State
Sovereignty |
12 June 1990 |
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• Russian Federation
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12 December 1991 |
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• Current constitution
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12 December 1993 |
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• Union State formed
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8 December 1999 |
| Area | |
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• Total
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17,098,246 km2 (6,601,670 sq mi)(within internationally recognised borders) |
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• Water (%)
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13 (including swamps) |
| Population | |
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• 2024 estimate
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• Density
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8.4/km2 (21.8/sq mi) (187th) |
| GDP (PPP) | 2024 estimate |
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• Total
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 $6.909 trillion (4th) |
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• Per capita
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$47,299 (43rd) |
| GDP (nominal) | 2024 estimate |
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• Total
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$2.184 trillion (11th) |
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• Per capita
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$14,953 (65th) |
| Gini (2020) | ▼ 36.0 medium |
| HDI (2022) | 0.821 very high · 56th |
| Currency | Ruble (₽) (RUB) |
| Time zone | UTC+2 to +12 |
| Driving side | right |
| Calling code | +7 |
| ISO 3166 code | RU |
| Internet TLD | |
146,150,789
Russia (Russian: Россия), officially called the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация) is a country that is in Eastern Europe and in North Asia. It is the largest country in the world by land area. About 146.7 million people live in Russia according to the 2019 census. The capital city of Russia is Moscow, and the official language is Russian.
Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has borders over water with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the United States by the Bering Strait.
Russia is a very large and diverse country. From 1922 to 1991, it used to be the main part of the Soviet Union. It was a country based on Communism, but today its government is a federal semi-presidential republic. It has elements of democracy. The President is chosen by direct election, but challenging candidates do not have access to the mass media, and so have almost no chance of winning. Its current President is Vladimir Putin. The President rules the country, and the Russian Parliament plays a secondary role.
Contents
Size and resources
At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the world's eighth most populous nation with a population of 146.7 million as of 2021. Russia produces a lot of energy made from oil and natural gas.
Extending from eastern Europe across the whole of northern Asia, Russia spans eleven time zones and has a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources, and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves, and its lakes contain about one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
Governance
According to the Constitution of Russia, the country is an asymmetric federation and semi-presidential republic, wherein the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Russian Federation is fundamentally structured as a multi-party representative democracy, with the federal government composed of three branches:
- Legislative: The bicameral Federal Assembly of Russia, made up of the 450-member State Duma and the 170-member Federation Council, adopts federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse and the power of impeachment of the President.
- Executive: The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Government of Russia (Cabinet) and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
- Judiciary: The Constitutional Court, Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the Federation Council on the recommendation of the President, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.
The president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term (eligible for a second term, but not for a third consecutive term). Ministries of the government are composed of the Premier and his deputies, ministers, and selected other individuals; all are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister (whereas the appointment of the latter requires the consent of the State Duma).
History
The roots of Russia's history began when the East Slavs formed a group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. The Vikings and their descendants founded the first East Slavic state of Kievan Rus' in the 9th century. They adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988. This form of Christianity influenced Russian culture greatly. Kievan Rus' eventually broke up and the lands were divided into many small feudal states. The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow. This area served as the main force in later Russian unification and the fight against the Golden Horde from Asia. Moscow slowly gained control of the regions around it and took over the cultural and political life of Kievan Rus'.
In the 18th century, the nation had expanded through conquest, annexation and exploration to become the Russian Empire, the third-largest empire in history. It stretched from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth eastward to the Pacific Ocean and Alaska. The empire was ruled by an emperor called the Tsar.
Peter the Great ruled Russia from 1689 until 1725. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to a new city named Saint Petersburg. He made Russian society more modern in many ways. The government began building ships for the Russian navy.
The Russo-Japanese War started in 1904 and ended in 1905 with Japan winning the war. The Russian defeat was one of the reasons for later revolutions.
In October 1917, the Bolsheviks (later called "Communists"), influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, took over the country and murdered the Tsar and other people who stood against them. Once they took power, the Bolsheviks, under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, created the first Marxist Communist State.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, Josef Stalin ruled as an absolute dictator of Soviet Russia, and destroyed anything and anyone that was against his rule, including taking the property of farmers and shopkeepers. Many millions of people starved and died in the resulting famines. Stalin also removed, or "purged", all military personnel who were not loyal to him, and many were killed or sent to prison camps, or gulags, for many years. Even in the gulags, many prisoners died.
Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany agreed not to attack each other in 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the agreement and attacked in Operation Barbarossa. The attack was part of World War II. The war lasted in Europe until May 1945, and Russia lost more than 20 million people during that time. In spite of this large loss, Russia was one of the winners of the war and became a world superpower.
From 1922 to 1991, Russia was the largest part of the Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). People sometimes used the name "Russia" for the whole Soviet Union, or sometimes "Soviet Russia". Russia was only one of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics. The republic was in fact named the "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic" (RSFSR).
The Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s. Russia took over the place of the USSR in the United Nations (UN).
History of present Russian Federation
Boris Yeltsin was made the President of Russia in June 1991, in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. Wide-ranging reforms took place, including privatization and free trade laws. Radical changes "(shock therapy) were recommended by the United States and International Monetary Fund. A major economic crisis followed. There was 50% decline in GDP and industrial output between 1990–95.
The privatization largely shifted control of enterprises from state agencies to individuals with inside connections in the government system. Many of the newly rich businesspeople took billions in cash and assets outside of the country . The depression of state and economy led to the collapse of social services. Millions went into poverty, from 1.5% level of poverty in the late Soviet era to 39–49% by mid-1993. The 1990s saw extreme corruption and lawlessness, the rise of criminal gangs and violent crime.
The 1990s had many armed conflicts in the North Caucasus. There were both local ethnic battles and separatist Islamist insurrections. Since the Chechen separatists declared independence in the early 1990s, a Chechen War was fought between the rebel groups and the Russian military. Terrorist attacks against civilians caused hundreds of deaths. The most notable of these were the Moscow theater hostage crisis and Beslan school siege.
Russia took responsibility for settling the USSR's external debts, even though its population made up just half of the population of the USSR at the time of its dissolution. High budget deficits caused the 1998 Russian financial crisis and resulted in further GDP decline.
On 31 December 1999 President Yeltsin resigned, or quit being the president. The job of president was given to the recently appointed Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. Putin then won the 2000 presidential election. Putin stopped the Chechen rebellion quickly.
High oil prices and initially weak currency followed by increasing domestic demand, consumption and investments has helped the economy grow for nine straight years. This improved the standard of living and increasing Russia's influence on the world stage. While many reforms made during the Putin presidency have been criticized by Western nations as un-democratic, Putin's leadership led to stability, and progress. This won him widespread popularity in Russia.
On 2 March 2008, Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of Russia, whilst Putin became Prime minister. Putin returned to the presidency following the 2012 presidential elections.
Geography
Russia is the largest country in the world; its total area is 17,075,200 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi). This makes it larger than the continents of Oceania, Europe and Antarctica. It lies between latitudes 41° and 82° N, and longitudes 19° E and 169° W.
Russia's territorial expansion was achieved largely in the late 16th century under the Cossack Yermak Timofeyevich during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, at a time when competing city-states in the western regions of Russia had banded together to form one country. Yermak mustered an army and pushed eastward where he conquered nearly all the lands once belonging to the Mongols, defeating their ruler, Khan Kuchum.
Russia has a wide natural resource base, including major deposits of timber, petroleum, natural gas, coal, ores and other mineral resources.
Cities in Russia with more than one million people are, in order:
- Moscow
- Saint Petersburg
- Novosibirsk
- Yekaterinburg
- Nizhniy Novgorod
- Samara
- Omsk
- Kazan
- Ufa
- Chelyabinsk
- Rostov on Don
- Krasnoyarsk
- Volgograd
The most western point of Russia is near Kaliningrad, formerly named Königsberg. The most eastern point of Russia is Diomid island, 35 km from Chukotka (Russia) and 35 kilometres (22 mi) from Alaska (USA). The most southern point is in Caucasus, on the border with Azerbaijan. The most northern point is on Franz Josef Land archipelago in Arctic Ocean, 900 kilometres (560 mi) from the North Pole.
Topography
The two most widely separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (4,971 mi) apart along a geodesic line. These points are: a 60 km (37 mi) long Vistula Spit the boundary with Poland separating the Gdańsk Bay from the Vistula Lagoon and the most southeastern point of the Kuril Islands. The points which are farthest separated in longitude are 6,600 km (4,101 mi) apart along a geodesic line. These points are: in the west, the same spit on the boundary with Poland, and in the east, the Big Diomede Island. The Russian Federation spans 11 time zones.
Most of Russia consists of vast stretches of plains that are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Russia possesses 10% of the world's arable land. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, which at 5,642 m (18,510 ft) is the highest point in both Russia and Europe) and the Altai (containing Mount Belukha, which at the 4,506 m (14,783 ft) is the highest point of Siberia outside of the Russian Far East); and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes of Kamchatka Peninsula (containing Klyuchevskaya Sopka, which at the 4,750 m (15,584 ft) is the highest active volcano in Eurasia as well as the highest point of Asian Russia). The Ural Mountains, rich in mineral resources, form a north-south range that divides Europe and Asia.
Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km (22,991 mi) along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as along the Baltic Sea, Sea of Azov, Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea, Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, and the Sea of Japan are linked to Russia via the Arctic and Pacific. Russia's major islands and archipelagos include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz Josef Land, the Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. The Diomede Islands (one controlled by Russia, the other by the United States) are just 3 km (1.9 mi) apart, and Kunashir Island is about 20 km (12.4 mi) from Hokkaido, Japan.
Russia has thousands of rivers and inland bodies of water, providing it with one of the world's largest surface water resources. Its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's liquid fresh water. The largest and most prominent of Russia's bodies of fresh water is Lake Baikal, the world's deepest, purest, oldest and most capacious fresh water lake. Baikal alone contains over one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water. Other major lakes include Ladoga and Onega, two of the largest lakes in Europe. Russia is second only to Brazil in volume of the total renewable water resources. Of the country's 100,000 rivers, the Volga is the most famous, not only because it is the longest river in Europe, but also because of its major role in Russian history. The Siberian rivers Ob, Yenisey, Lena and Amur are among the longest rivers in the world.
Climate
The enormous size of Russia and the remoteness of many areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental climate, which is prevalent in all parts of the country except for the tundra and the extreme southwest. Mountains in the south obstruct the flow of warm air masses from the Indian Ocean, while the plain of the west and north makes the country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences.
Most of Northern European Russia and Siberia has a subarctic climate, with extremely severe winters in the inner regions of Northeast Siberia (mostly the Sakha Republic, where the Northern Pole of Cold is located with the record low temperature of −71.2 °C or −96.2 °F), and more moderate winters elsewhere. Both the strip of land along the shore of the Arctic Ocean and the Russian Arctic islands have a polar climate.
The coastal part of Krasnodar Krai on the Black Sea, most notably in Sochi, possesses a humid subtropical climate with mild and wet winters. In many regions of East Siberia and the Far East, winter is dry compared to summer; other parts of the country experience more even precipitation across seasons. Winter precipitation in most parts of the country usually falls as snow. The region along the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea coast, as well as some areas of southernmost Siberia, possesses a semi-arid climate.
Throughout much of the territory there are only two distinct seasons—winter and summer—as spring and autumn are usually brief periods of change between extremely low and extremely high temperatures. The coldest month is January (February on the coastline); the warmest is usually July. Great ranges of temperature are typical. In winter, temperatures get colder both from south to north and from west to east. Summers can be quite hot, even in Siberia. The continental interiors are the driest areas.
Biodiversity
From north to south the East European Plain, also known as Russian Plain, is clad sequentially in Arctic tundra, coniferous forest (taiga), mixed and broad-leaf forests, grassland (steppe), and semi-desert (fringing the Caspian Sea), as the changes in vegetation reflect the changes in climate. Siberia supports a similar sequence but is largely taiga. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves, known as "the lungs of Europe", second only to the Amazon Rainforest in the amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs.
There are 266 mammal species and 780 bird species in Russia. A total of 415 animal species have been included in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation as of 1997 and are now protected. There are 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Russia, 40 UNESCO biosphere reserves, 41 national parks and 101 nature reserves. Russia still has many ecosystems which are still untouched by man— mainly in the northern areas taiga and in subarctic tundra of Siberia. Over time Russia has been having improvement and application of environmental legislation, development and implementation of various federal and regional strategies and programmes,and study, inventory and protection of rare and endangered plants, animals, and other organisms, and including them in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation.
Demographics
Russia is one of the most sparsely populated and urbanised countries in the world; it had a population of 142.8 million according to the 2010 census, which rose to 146.7 million as of 2021. It is the most populous country in Europe, and the ninth-most populous country in the world; with a population density of 9 inhabitants per square kilometre (23 per square mile).
Russia is a multinational state, home to over 193 ethnic groups. In the 2010 Census, roughly 81% of the population were ethnic Russians, while rest of the 19% of the population were minorities; while around 84.93% of the Russia's population was of European descent, of which the vast majority were Slavs, with minorities of Germanic, Baltic-Finns and other peoples. There are 22 republics in Russia, designated to have their own ethnicities, cultures, and languages. In 13 of them, ethnic Russians consist a minority. According to the United Nations, Russia's immigrant population is the third-largest in the world, numbering over 11.6 million; most of which are from post-Soviet states, mainly Ukrainians.
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Largest cities or towns in Russia
2024 estimate |
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| Rank | Pop. | |
| 1 | Moscow | 13,149,803 |
| 2 | Saint Petersburg | 5,597,763 |
| 3 | Novosibirsk | 1,633,851 |
| 4 | Yekaterinburg | 1,536,183 |
| 5 | Kazan | 1,318,604 |
| 6 | Krasnoyarsk | 1,205,473 |
| 7 | Nizhny Novgorod | 1,204,985 |
| 8 | Chelyabinsk | 1,177,058 |
| 9 | Ufa | 1,163,304 |
| 10 | Samara | 1,158,952 |
Culture and Religion
Music and ballet
World-renowned composers of the 20th century included Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Russia has produced some of the greatest pianists: Anton Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Vladimir Ashkenazy are among the all-time greats.
Russian composer Tchaikovsky created famous ballets such as The Nutcracker. The impressario Sergei Diaghilev was responsible for the development of ballet in the early 20th century with the Ballets Russes. Dance companies at the Mariinsky Theatre and the Bolshoi Ballet produced many famous dancers.
Literature
Russians have contributed many famous works of literature. Alexander Pushkin is considered a founder of modern Russian literature. He was a poet from the 19th century.
Other famous poets and writers of the 19th century were Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Lermontov, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol (he was born in what is now Ukraine, but during his lifetime Ukraine was a part of Russia), Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are considered by many people to be two of the greatest novelists ever. Three Russians won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 20th century: Boris Pasternak (1958), Mikhail Sholokhov (1965) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1980). Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita was also a novel of the highest quality.
Sports
Soccer, ice hockey and basketball are among the most popular sports. Boxing, gymnastics, weightlifting, and tennis are also popular sports. Track suits are popular clothing items for many Russians. Sports people to gain world fame include former tennis world number one Maria Sharapova, who has won three Grand Slam titles, and was the world's highest paid female athlete in 2008.
Since the 1952 Olympic Games, Soviet and later Russian athletes are in the three in gold medals collected at the Summer Olympics. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow while the 2014 Winter Olympics will be hosted by Sochi.
Chess
Chess is the main intellectual sport in Russia. In the 20th century there were nine Russian World Chess Champions, more than all other nations combined.
Religion
The main religion in Russia is the Russian Orthodox Church. It is one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Related pages
Images for kids
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The Kurgan hypothesis places the Volga-Dnieper region of southern Russia and Ukraine as the urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
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Kievan Rus' in the 11th century
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Sergius of Radonezh blessing Dmitry Donskoy in Trinity Sergius Lavra, before the Battle of Kulikovo, depicted in a painting by Ernst Lissner
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Tsar Ivan the Terrible, in an evocation by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1897.
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Napoleon's retreat from Moscow by Albrecht Adam (1851).
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Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and the Romanovs were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
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Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky during a 1920 speech in Moscow
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The Battle of Stalingrad, the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, ended in 1943 with a decisive Soviet victory against the German army.
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The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.
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Mikhail Gorbachev in one-to-one discussions with Ronald Reagan in the Reykjavík Summit, 1986.
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Vladimir Putin takes the oath of office as president on his first inauguration, with Boris Yeltsin looking over, 2000.
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Topographic map of Russia
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The Moscow International Business Center in Moscow. The city has one of the world's largest urban economies.
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The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest railway line in the world, connecting Moscow to Vladivostok.
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Wheat in Tomsk Oblast, Siberia
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Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), polymath scientist, inventor, poet and artist
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Mir, Soviet and Russian space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001.
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Peterhof Palace in Saint Petersburg, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is the most iconic religious architecture of Russia.
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Moscow State University, the most prestigious educational institution in Russia.
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The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, at night.
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The Scarlet Sails being celebrated along the Neva in Saint Petersburg
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), in a 1893 painting by Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov
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Kvass is an ancient and traditional Russian beverage.
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Ostankino Tower in Moscow, the tallest freestanding structure in Europe.
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Maria Sharapova, former world No. 1 tennis player, was the world's highest-paid female athlete for 11 consecutive years.
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See also
In Spanish: Rusia para niños
