CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING RUSSIA THE NEW RUSSIA NORWAY FROM EUROPE TO ASIA he Russian Federation nine time ones and straddles two continents On May 25 Russian teenagers are celebrating the Last Bell the end of their final term at school The boys dress in Smarts ts The girls wear formal black dresses with sashes and lacy ribbons in their hair Presentations are given to teachers with speeches laughter and tears CHILDREN OF CHANGE Ki When today s teenagers leave school they face a very different future from their parents and grandparents In the last hundred years Russia has experienced rule by an emperor two world wars European Russia occupies the vast plain that FINLAND stretches from Central Europe to the Ural KALININGRAD ESTONIA DAVIA Mountains The Caucasus Mountains and St Petersburg the coasts of the Black Sea and the Caspian BELARUS Sea are in the south Elbrus is Europe s Moscow highest mountain pe soaring to 18 500 Nizhny Novgorod feet 5 600 m Asian Russia extends all UKRAINE the way from the Urals to the volcanoes of the Pacific Rim This region of plains and Samara plateaus is known as Siberia It is crossed by Sar of Rostov na Dou Vol three of the ten longest rivers in the world Black Sear the Yenisey Ob Irtysh and Amur Baikal is world s deepest lake and may hold as much as 20 percent of the world's fresh water GEORGIA oU revolutions civil war communism and capitalism Even the national borders have altered Great social and economic anges have swept across the land Today Russia is more prosperous than at any time in its history But what kind of nation has it become How would today s teenagers ike it to be in the fi uture A GIANT NATION Russia is the largest nation on Earth It occupies about one eighth of the planet s surface What happens there affects almost every part of the world With an area of 6 6 million square n miles 17 mi ion sq k is about 1 8 times the size of the United States Russia s bleak dee frozen tundra borders the Arctic coast Fart her south are he great forests known as taiga In the far south grassy steppes are bordered by high mountains Russian summers can be warm and sunny but the winters are snowy and bitterly cold School grade luates in the city of Vladimir line up for the Last Bell ceremony
WRANGE ISIAN Anadyr Arctic Ocean East Siberian Sea Barents Set Murmansk SKIY MTS Kauna Sea sk SI BE RIA Okhotsk Sea of Okhorne Yakutsk Ira Ri Perm R US S AN FED E R A T I O N ta Yekaterinburg a Omsk Tomsk N F Khabarovsk Krasnoyarsk Novosibirsk Irkutsk LAKHSTAN INA Vladivostok Sent of Japan IAPAN NORTH KOREA MONGOLIA SPOTLIGHT ON RUSSIA Russias largest park is Yugod Va It takes in some of the Ural Mountains which divide Europe from Asia FULL NAME Russian Federation SHORT NAME Russia AREA 6 6 million square miles 17 million sq km POPULATION 143 million CAPITAL Moscow 10 5 million SECOND CITY St Petersburg 4 8 million LONGEST RIVER Yenisey 3 440 miles 5 540 km HIGHEST MOUNTAIN Elbrus 18 500 feet 5 633 m RESOURCES Oil natural gas coal gold iron ore chromium nickel copper tin lead phosphates timber fish
PEOPLE AND NATION BIG HISTORY THE AGE OF EMPIRE In 2012 President Vladimir Putin made a Russia s story began in the Middle Ages speech about Russia s future He called on fifth to fifteenth centuries AD when a people to seek guidance from their cor patchwork of cities and small states grew up past Russia s eventful history certainly offers in the lands of the Eastern Slavs Over time many lessons the most powerful city became Moscow capital of Muscovy Its rulers forged all Russia into a single empire Over the centuries this empire expanded westward southward and eastward across Siberia Many of Russia s emperors or tsars were harsh rulers while other European peoples were gaining more rights and freedoms Russia s peasants remained serfs REVOLUTION AND CIVIL WAR Revolutions broke out in 1905 and in 1917 during World War IL A group called the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seized power They founded the Russian Communist Party which aimed to give power to the workers The ruling tsar Nicholas II was shot and killed in 1918 In a civil war that lasted until 1922 the communist Red Army defeated their opponents who were known as the Whites A new state was formed as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR or Soviet Union Lenin 1870 1924 was a revolutionary His ideas influenced world politics throughout the 20th
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING RUSSIA Joseph Dzhugashvili or Stalin 1878 1953 was a ruthless dictatorial leader COLD WAR AND REFORM After the war Soviet power dominated Eastern Europe The Cold War from 1945 to 1991 was a period of tension betwees the Soviet Union on one side and the United States and Western Europe on the other Political reform followed Stalin s death in 1953 But it was not until Mikhail During the Cold War both sides were Gorbachev was in power 1985 91 that Russia really began to change Gorbachev s aims included perestroika restructuring the system and glasnost openness and relations with the West began to thaw In 1991 a conservative group within the Communist Party tried to force Gorbachev from power They failed but the Soviet Union collapsed Fourteen regions broke away to become independent nations The new Russian Federation with a multiparty political system and a capitalist economy was born armed with nuclear weapons and developed rocket technology STALIN S RUSSIA Lenin died in 1924 Joseph Stalin cunning politician soon won control He pushed through reforms in industry and farming at great human cost Millions of people died in a famine in 1932 33 Many people were murdered or sent to grim labor camps At the start of World War II in 1939 Russia and Germany agreed not to attack each other But in 1940 Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union The extraordinary Russian resistance and counterattack was crucial to Germany s defeat in 1945 This Great Patriotic War is still commemorated across Russia every May
