Russia - a place with a rich and fascinating history...
Russia, also known as the Russian Federation, is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Asia and Europe. With an area of 17,075,400 km, Russia is the largest country in the world, covering almost twice the territory of the next-largest country, Canada, and has significant mineral and energy resources. Russia has the world's eighth-largest population.
The term ‘Russia' is often confused with the term ‘Soviet Union', but there are very important differences between the history of Russia, and the history of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was a Union of states that was created in 1922 and lasted until 1991. The Soviet Union was founded after the communist revolution in 1917 overthrew the Russian Csar. By 1940 the Soviet Union consisted of 15 republics including Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Georgian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Latvian SSR, Kyrgyz SR, Tajik SSR, Armenian SSR, Turkmen SSR, and the Estonian SSR.
For the next 70 years it ruled its people under communist principles of state ownership of land and property, official state Atheism, and a tight control over media and freedoms such as the freedom of speech and the freedom to practice religion. The Soviet Union stood up against the Germans in World War 2 and came out triumphant, but they also as a people suffered terribly under the control of Joseph Stalin who ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist.
But the Soviet Union emerged after World War 2 as a superpower, spreading its ideology of communism to Eastern Europe where it created a bloc of Nations that fought a long ‘Cold War' with the United States and Europe. For decades the Soviet Union was considered an enemy of the West, and both sides built up massive armies and supplies of nuclear weapons. Fortunately there was never a direct war between the two superpowers, but the cold war meant that both sides had to build and maintain large armies, diverting resources that could have been used to help both societies build a stronger education system, or protect their environment.
The Soviet Union's economic policies of state ownership and control of the means of production eventually lead to its collapse as the system could no longer meet the needs of the people. The Soviet Union official was disbanded in 1991 and all of the former republics became independent states.
Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin had been elected President of Russia in June 1991 in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. In October 1991, as Russia was on the verge of independence, Yeltsin announced that Russia would proceed with radical market-oriented reform along the lines of "shock therapy".
After the disintegration of the USSR, the Russian economy went through a crisis. Russia took up the 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. The largest state enterprises (petroleum, metallurgy, and the like) were controversially privatized for the small sum of $US 600 million, far less than they were worth, while the majority of the population plunged into poverty. In far regions of Russia such as Chukotka the transition was especially difficult as they had become accustomed to support from the central government far away in Moscow. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly formed Russia did not have the resources to support the people living there.
After Yeltsin's presidency in the 1990s, the recently appointed Prime Minister (who was also head of the FSB from July 1998 through August 1999) Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000.
Information adapted from Wikipedia
