Russia

Made by: Lyamkina Yulia

The Russian Federation

• Flag and coat of arms

Some interesting facts• Capital

(and largest city)-Moscow

• Ethnic groups  79.8% Russian

3.8% Tatar2.0% Ukrainian

1.2% Bashkir 1.1% Chuvash

12.1% others

• Government: Federal semi-presidential republic 

•  President: Dmitry Medvedev•  Prime Minister: Vladimir Putin • Chairman of the Federation

Council: Sergey Mironov• Chairman of the State Duma:Boris

Gryzlov

•Legislature: Federal Assembly

• Upper House : Federation Council

• Lower House : State Duma•Currency: Ruble (RUB)• Area  Total : 17,075,400 km2

6,592,800 sq mi 

• Russoa-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 (counterclockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (via Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland ( Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Geography

• The Russian Federation stretches across a large extent of the north of the super-continent of Eurasia. Because of its size, Russia displays both monotony and diversity. As with its topography, its climates, vegetation, and soils span vast distances.From north to south the East European Plain is clad sequentially in 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 taiga. The country contains 23 World Heritage Sites and 40 UNESCO Biosphere reserves

Topography

• The two widest separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (5,000 mi) apart along a geodesic line.

The plains of Western Siberia, Vasyugan River, Tomsk Oblast

Sochi, Krasnodar Krai

Climate • The climate of the Russian Federation formed

under the influence of several determining factors. The enormous size of the country and the remoteness of many areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental and subarctic climate, which is prevalent in European and Asian Russia except for the tundra and the extreme southeast. Mountains in the south obstructing the flow of warm air masses from the Indian Ocean and the plain of the west and north makes the country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences.

Imperial Russia• Under the Romanov dynasty

and Peter I (Peter the Great), the Russian Empire became a world power. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede West Karelia and Ingria (two regions lost by Russia in the Time of Troubles), Estland, and Livland, securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade

Government and politics

• According to the Constitution, which was adopted by national referendum on 12 December 1993 following the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, Russia is a federation and formally a semi-presidential republic, wherein the President is the head of state[89] and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Russian Federation is fundamentally structured as a representative democracy.

Entrance to the Kremlin Senate, part of the Moscow Kremlin and the working residence of the Russian president

• The White House, the seat of the Russian Government

• President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin

The federal government is composed of three branches:

• Legislative: the bicameral Federal Assembly, made up of the State Duma and the Federation Council adopts federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has power of impeachment, by which it can remove the President.

• Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Cabinet and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.

• Judiciary: The Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of Arbitration 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.

Map of the federal subjects of the Russian Federation

Foreign relations and military

• The Russian Federation is recognized in international law as continuing the legal personality of the former Soviet Union. Russia continues to implement the international commitments of the USSR, and has assumed the USSR's permanent seat on the UN Security Council, membership in other international organizations, the rights and obligations under international treaties and property and debts. Russia has a multifaceted foreign policy

• Leaders of the BRIC nations in 2008: Manmohan Singh of India, Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Hu Jintao of China and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

• Russian paratroopers at an exercise in Kazakhstan

Economy

• The economic crisis that struck all post-Soviet countries in the 1990s was twice as intense as the Great Depression in the countries of Western Europe and the United States in the 1930s.Even before the financial crisis of 1998, Russia's GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s. Since the turn of the century, rising oil prices, increased foreign investment, higher domestic consumption and greater political stability have bolstered economic growth in Russia

A Rosneft petrol station. Russia is the world's leading natural gas exporter and the second leading oil exporter.

• Russia is Europe's key oil and gas supplier

Demographics

• Ethnic composition • Russians79.8%• Tatars3.8%• Ukrainians2.0%• Chuvash1.1%• Chechen0.9%• Armenians0.8%

• According to preliminary estimates, the resident population of the Russian Federation on 1 January 2009 was 141.9 million people

Education

• Russia has a free education system guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution,and has a literacy rate of 99.4%. Entry to higher education is highly competitive.As a result of great emphasis on science and technology in education, Russian medical, mathematical, scientific, and space and aviation research is generally of a high order

Moscow State University

Language

• Russia's 160 ethnic groups speak some 100 languages.According to the 2002 census, 142.6 million people speak Russian, followed by Tatar with 5.3 million and German with 2.9 million speakers.Russian is the only official state language, but the Constitution gives the individual republics the right to make their native language co-official next to Russian

Countries where the Russian language is spoken

Religion

• Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism are Russia’s traditional religions, deemed part of Russia's "historical heritage" in a law passed in 1997. Estimates of believers widely fluctuate among sources, and some reports put the number of non-believers in Russia as high as 16–48% of the population.

• Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, demolished during the Soviet period, was reconstructed from 1990–2000

Classical music and ballet• Russia's large number of ethnic groups have

distinctive traditions of folk music. Music in 19th century Russia was defined by the tension between classical composer Mikhail Glinka and his followers, who embraced Russian national identity and added religious and folk elements to their compositions, and the Russian Musical Society led by composers Anton and Nikolay Rubinstein, which was musically conservative. The later Romantic tradition of Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era whose music has come to be known and loved for its distinctly Russian character as well as its rich harmonies and stirring melodies, was brought into the 20th century by Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the last great champions of the Romantic style of European classical music

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), composer

• The Bolshoi Theatre. Currently, it is undergoing a four-year, $730 million restoration