Emily Sebastian - The Geography of Russia

Published in 2019 by Britannica Educational Publishing (a trademark of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.) in association with The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
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First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sebastian, Emily, editor.
Title: The geography of Russia / edited by Emily Sebastian.
Description: New York : Britannica Educational Publishing, in Association with Rosen Educational Services, 2019. | Series: Societies and Cultures: Russia |
Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: Grades 712.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017047202| ISBN 9781538301814 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: GeographyRussiaJuvenile.
Classification: LCC DK18.8 .G46 2019 | DDC 914.7dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047202

Manufactured in the United States of America

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R ussia is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; commonly known as the Soviet Union), Russia became an independent country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Russia is a land of superlatives. By far the worlds largest country, it covers nearly twice the territory of Canada, the second largest. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and the eastern third of Europe, spanning 11 time zones and incorporating a great range of environments and landforms, from deserts to semiarid steppes to deep forests and Arctic tundra. Russia contains Europes longest river, the Volga, and its largest lake, Ladoga. Russia also is home to the worlds deepest lake, Baikal, and the country recorded the worlds lowest temperature outside the North and South poles.

The inhabitants of Russia are quite diverse. Most are ethnic Russians, but there also are more than 120 other ethnic groups present, speaking many languages and following disparate religious and cultural traditions. Most of the Russian population is concentrated in the European portion of the country, especially in the fertile region surrounding Moscow, the capital. Moscow and St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) are the two most important cultural and financial centres in Russia and are among the most picturesque cities in the world.

Russians are also populous in Asia, however; beginning in the 17th century, and particularly pronounced throughout much of the 20th century, a steady flow of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people moved eastward into Siberia, where cities such as Vladivostok and Irkutsk now flourish.

Russias climate is extreme, with forbidding winters that have several times famously saved the country from foreign invaders. Although the climate adds a layer of difficulty to daily life, the land is a generous source of crops and materials, including vast reserves of oil, gas, and precious metals. That richness of resources has not translated into an easy life for most of the countrys people, however; indeed, much of Russias history has been a grim tale of the very wealthy and powerful few ruling over a great mass of their poor and powerless compatriots. Serfdom endured well into the modern era; the years of Soviet communist rule (191791), especially the long dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, saw subjugation of a different and more exacting sort.

Covering the eastern third of Europe as well as the whole of northern Asia, Russia extends nearly halfway around the Northern Hemisphere.

Travel and tourism account for several million jobs in Russia. Some 20 million foreign visitors travel to Russia each year, though many of these visitors are seasonal workers from former Soviet republics. Thanks to a combination of its rich history and its vast, varied landscape, Russia is home to both cultural heritage sites and natural ones.

R ussia is bounded to the north and east by the Arctic and Pacific oceans, and it has small frontages in the northwest on the Baltic Sea at St. Petersburg and at the detached Russian oblast (province or region) of Kaliningrad (a part of what was once East Prussia annexed in 1945), which also abuts Poland and Lithuania. To the south Russia borders North Korea, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. To the southwest and west it borders Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as Finland and Norway.

Extending nearly halfway around the Northern Hemisphere and covering much of eastern and northeastern Europe and all of northern Asia, Russia has a maximum east-west extent of some 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometres) and a north-south width of 1,500 to 2,500 miles (2,500 to 4,000 km). There is an enormous variety of landforms and landscapes, which occur mainly in a series of broad latitudinal belts. Arctic deserts lie in the extreme north, giving way southward to the tundra and then to the forest zones, which cover about half of the country and give it much of its character. South of the forest zone lie the wooded steppe and the steppe, beyond which are small sections of semidesert along the northern shore of the Caspian Sea. Much of Russia lies at latitudes where the winter cold is intense and where evaporation can barely keep pace with the accumulation of moisture, engendering abundant rivers, lakes, and swamps. Permafrost covers some 4 million square miles (10 million square km)an area seven times larger than the drainage basin of the Volga River, Europes longest rivermaking settlement and road building difficult in vast areas. In the European areas of Russia, the permafrost occurs in the tundra and the forest-tundra zone. In western Siberia permafrost occurs along the Yenisey River, and it covers almost all areas east of the river, except for south Kamchatka province, Sakhalin Island, and Primorsky kray (region).