General Information About Russia
Russia [ˈɹʌʃə] (help·info) (Russian: Россия, Rossiya), or[9] the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация?·i, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a transcontinental country extending over much of northern Eurasia. It is a semi-presidential republic comprising 83 federal subjects. Russia shares land borders with the following countries (anticlockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland (Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It is also close to the U.S. state of Alaska, Iran, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and Japan across relatively small stretches of water (the Bering Strait, the Caspian Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and La Pérouse Strait, respectively).
At 17,075,400 square kilometers, Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than an eighth of the Earth’s land area; with 142 million people, it is the ninth largest by population.[2] It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 11 time zones and incorporating a great range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's greatest reserves of mineral and energy resources,[10] and is considered an energy superpower. It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's unfrozen fresh water.[11]
The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs. The Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD.[12] Founded and ruled by Vikings and their descendants, the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century and adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988,[13] beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.[13] Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated and the lands were divided into many small feudal states. The most powerful successor...
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