Russia

Country Profile


Official Name:
Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
short form: Rossiya
int'l long form: Russian Federation
int'l short form: Russia
former: Russian Empire, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

ISO Country Code: RU, RUS
Actual Time:
Moscow, Saint-Petersburg:
Sun-May-16  14:19
Local Time = UTC +3h
Actual Time: Novosibirsk:
Sun-May-16  18:19
Local Time = UTC +7h
Daylight Saving Time (DST) March - October

Country Calling Code: +7

Capital City: Moscow (pop. 12.5 million)

Other Cities:
St. Petersburg (4.6 million), Novosibirsk (1.4 million), Nizhniy Novgorod (1.3 million)

...show more

Official Sites of Russia



View of the Kremlin, with the Kremlin Wall, the towers, and the Grand Kremlin Palace (right). The 'fortress inside a city,' is overlooking the Moskva River in the center of Moscow. The term Kremlin is also often used to refer to the government of Russia.
Image: Ed Parsons


Political system
Russia is a federal republic and, in theory, a multi-party representative democracy, wherein the President is the head of state, and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The President is also the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Russia's legislature is the bi-cameral Federal Assembly of Russia (parliament), which consists of the State Duma (lower house), and the Federation Council (upper house), headed by the Chairman of the Federation Council (speaker).



Official Russian Government websites

Note: External links will open in a new browser window.

Russian Government
Russia's Home Page.

President of Russia
The official website of Russia's president, who is again, Vladimir Putin.

Russia's bicameral Federal Assembly (Legislative)
Council of Federation
The upper chamber of the Russian parliament.
State Duma
The State Duma is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a government institution in charge of the foreign policy and foreign relations of Russia. Its official website also provides information about diplomatic and consular missions of Russia abroad.

Diplomatic Missions:
Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN
Russia is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Embassy of the Russian Federation in the USA
Washington D.C.

Statistics
Goskomstat
State Committee of the Russian Federation on Statistics.
Interstate Statistical Committee of the CIS
Official statistical information on the social and economic situation in the CIS countries.



The House of the Government of the Russian Federation in Moscow (left). The building at the Moskva River is known as the Russian White House; it serves as the office of the Russian government and is the workplace of the Russian Prime Minister. The building in the background is the Kudrinskaya Square Building, one of seven Stalinist skyscrapers in the city.
Image: Water-brother
 

Maps of Russia



Map of European Russia (click map to enlarge)
Image: © nationsonline.org

Maps

Map of Russia
Political Map of the Russian Federation.
Map of European Russia
Political map of European Russia.
Google Earth Russian Federation
Searchable map and satellite view of the Russian Federation.
Google Earth Map of Moscow
Searchable map and satellite view of the capital, Moscow.

Google Earth Map of Moscow Kremlin
Labeled map/satellite view of the Moscow Kremlin.

Maps of Russian Cities:
Saint Petersburg
Nizhniy Novgorod
Kazan
Novosibirsk
Yekaterinburg
Rostov-on-Don
Volgograd
Saransk
Samara
Kaliningrad
Sochi
Searchable map and satellite view of Russia's Winter Olympic capital 2014.

Other maps
Russia - Autonomous Areas in Russia
Chechenya (Chechen Republic) Map
Ethnolinguistic Groups of the Caucasus Region

Continent:
Map of Central and Eastern Europe
Political map of Central and Eastern Europe.
Map of the Baltic Sea Area
Political map of the Baltic Sea region.
Map of the Caspian Sea
Map of the Caspian Sea with surrounding Countries.
Map of Europe
Political Map of Europe.
Map of Asia
Reference Map of Asia.
 
 

News of Russia

Russia News

 

Russia has over 400 daily newspapers, but like in the US, TV is the primary news source. Television is the most powerful sector of the Russian media industry. But unlike the US, the leading national networks are either run directly by the state or owned by companies with close links to the Kremlin.
Russia Today (RT), an international English-language news station, is state-funded and aims to present "global news from a Russian perspective." However, many observers have accused the pro-Kremlin TV (RT) of spreading disinformation and conducting an information war both at home and abroad.
With draconian laws, website blocking, and Internet cutbacks, pressure on independent media has grown steadily since the major anti-government protests of 2011 and 2012. Leading independent news outlets have either been brought under control or stifled in their existence.
(Source: BBC, RSF, and nationsonline.org)



Online News from Russia - Major Russian Newspapers and News Agencies

News Agencies
Interfax
Russian News Agency (in Russian).
Interfax Information Services Group
The international website of Interfax.
Tass
Formerly Itar-Tass, Russian News Agency.
Prime
Russian business news agency.

Russian Newspapers (in Russian)
Delovoy Peterburg
dp.ru is a Saint Petersburg based daily business newspaper.
Izvestia
The online portal of the broadsheet newspaper with national and international news.
Kommersant
A major daily liberal newspaper.
Komsomolskaya Pravda
Nationwide daily tabloid newspaper.
Moskovsky Komsomolets
The online version of the Moscow-based daily newspaper.
The Moscow Times
News from Moscow and the rest of the world (in English).
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Russian daily newspaper for an educated politicized audience.
Novaya Gazeta
The Russian newspaper is well known for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
Government-owned Russian newspaper.
Trud
Trud (English: Labor), is a full-color newspaper and a voice of the "center-left," published in Moscow.
Vladnews
Vladivostok News on-line.

TV
NTV (Cyrillic: НТВ)
Homepage of the critical TV-Station (in Russian).
RT (Russia Today)
Russian propaganda TV and online magazine funded by the Russian government.


International Newssources about Russia

Al Jazeera
Russia News from Al Jazeera.
The New York Times
Russia related news from The New York Times.
Reuters
Russia related news from Reuters, the international news organization.

 

Arts & Culture of Russia



Murnau with railway and castle (1909).
Painting: Wassily Kandinsky

Arts & Culture

Museums
The State Hermitage Museum
The second-largest art museum in the world presents the development of world culture and art from the Stone Age to the 20th century.
The Moscow Kremlin
The Kremlin complex serves as the official residence of the President of Russia and as a museum.
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
The museum houses one of the most representative collections of European art in Russia, ranging from antiquity to modernity.
The State Russian Museum
The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg houses the most extensive collection of Russian art in the world.
The State Tretyakov Gallery
One of the largest museums in Russia with more than 100,000 works of art, the museum of the history of Russian art presents icons, paintings, graphics, and sculpture.

Museums in Russia (official list)
Detailed information about any Russian museum. The official list of Russian museums, more than 3000 museums are listed.

Bulgakov Museum Moscow
Mikhail Bulgakov was a Russian writer, physician, and playwright, and author of The Master and Margarita and Heart of a Dog.

Performing Arts
Bolshoi Ballet
Famous Russian classical ballet in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Golden Mask
Russian performing arts festival and the site for the National Theater Award.
Mariinsky Theatre
The historic theater for opera and ballet in Saint Petersburg opened in 1860. It was here, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov had their premieres.
Moscow Art Theatre
A renowned drama theater, founded in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.


Libraries
National Library of Russia
The country's oldest state library, St. Petersburg.
Russian State Library
The largest library in Europe and the second-largest in the world, is located in Moscow.


More Russian Art
Marc Chagall
Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin.

Peter Carl Fabergé
Imperial Court Jeweler to the Russian Tsars and inventor of the famous Fabergé egg.

Wassily Kandinsky
(1866–1944), Russian painter and theorist, and a pioneer of abstract art. Art blog with Kandinsky artworks and quotes.

Lyubov Popova
Wikipedia entry for the Russian avant-garde artist, painter, and designer.

Alexander Rodchenko
Wikipedia entry for the St. Petersburg-born Russian artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer.

Pavel Tchelitchew
MoMA collection of the Russian-born surrealist painter.

Russian Art + Culture
International guide to the world of Russian art and culture. The organization is also the founder of the Russian Art Week in London.

 

Business & Economy of Russia


Moscow International Business Center (Москва-Сити) at Moskva River in the western part of the city.
Image: Deensel


Russia has an upper-middle income economy with state ownership in strategic areas. Following the collapse of the USSR, market reforms in the 1990s led to the privatization of much of Russia's industry and agriculture, with striking exceptions in the energy and defense sectors.
The country's economy is based on oil, gas, precious metals, agriculture, and arms exports. The country relies primarily on energy revenues. Energy makes up 65% of Russia's exports and 25% of its total revenue. ^[3] The Russian government controls the oil and gas industries.


Bank of Russia
The Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

Moscow Central Stock Exchange
The largest exchange group in the Russian Federation.

American-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
The U.S.-Russia Chamber of Commerce (USRCC), a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization headquartered Houston, Texas.

Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation
Our goal is to promote the growth of the Russian economy, clear trade barriers, and support investment initiatives.

Russian National Trade Point
Russia Foreign Trade Center is included in the World Trade Point Federation (WTPF).


Major Russian Companies
The three largest Russian companies are active in the oil and gas sector. Two of them are State-owned enterprises.

Gazprom
Russian energy company majority-owned by the government, headquartered in Saint Petersburg. The company has several hundred subsidiaries and affiliated companies in Europe and Central Asia. ^[4]

Lukoil
Lukoil is the largest non-government owned company group in Russia; the multinational energy corporation is based in Moscow.

Rosneft
Russian oil and gas company whose majority stake is held by the state-owned company Rosneftegaz JSC.

Rostec
Russian state company for the development, production, and export of high-tech industrial products for the civil and military sectors.

Sberbank
Sberbank is a Russian financial conglomerate and the largest multinational bank in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe.

VTB Bank
Russian universal bank with a wide range of banking services.

x5
X5 Retail Group is one of the leading Russian multi-format food retailers. The group manages the supermarkets of several retail chains.

Magnit
Big Russian retail group, mainly active in the European part of Russia.

Rosseti
Russian power utility headquartered in Moscow.

AvtoVAZ
Russian car manufacturer, known mainly for the production of Lada vehicles.

United Aircraft Corporation
UAC is a Russian aerospace and defense consortium consisting of the largest aircraft manufacturers in Russia, Sukhoi, Mikoyan-Gurevich, Tupolev, Ilyushin, and Irkut.

For more major Russian companies, see this list.



Transportation

Space
Roscosmos
The Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities is in charge of a broad spectrum and different types of space flight and cosmonautics programs.

Air
Aeroflot
The Russian flag carrier.

East Line Group
Group of companies for air transportation and airport management at Domodedovo International Airport.

Rossiya Airlines
The Russian airline is headquartered in Saint Petersburg.

Siberia Airlines (S7 Airlines)
Russia's biggest domestic airline.

Transaero
Transaero Airlines was a Russian airline; it filed for bankruptcy on 1 October 2015.

Ural Airlines
Russian airline based in Yekaterinburg.

UTair
UTair is a Russian low-cost airline and one of the five largest air carriers; it is the largest Russian helicopter airline.



Moskovsky railway terminus in Saint Petersburg.
Image: A.Savin


Rail
Russian Railways
The official website of Russian Railways (JSC), with information on passenger and freight transportation, online services, infrastructure, and railway maps. The wholly state-owned railway is Russia's fifth-largest company.

Railway Ticket Reservation Center
Railway adventure in Russia.

Trans-Siberian Railway
Railway guide with a photo-gallery of stations, views, and bridges.
 


Vladivostok icebreaker beside Soviet submarine S-189, anchored in Saint Petersburg. The icebreaker was built at Vyborg Shipyard. In the background, you can see the Norwegian cruise liner MS Black Watch.
Image: DarthWeirdo
 

Tourism in Russia



Ergaki is a nature park located in the south of the Krasnoyarsk Krai in the Western Sayan mountain range in southern Siberia.
Image: Andrea Gennad

Destination Russia - Travel and Tour Guides

Discover Russia. The largest country in the world has a lot to offer when it comes to vacation. When traveling within Russia, you have one-eighth of the total landmass of the planet at your disposal. The western portion of the country is kind of crowded; the further east you go, the lonelier it gets.

Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Novosibirsk, Ergaki, Kamchatka, Lake Baikal, Sochi, Vladivostok, Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Find accommodation, hotels, attractions, festivals, events, tourist boards, biking, skiing, hiking, climbing, cruising, diving, adventure tours, and much more.


Travel Russia
Travel in Russia, very official information by The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation's Federal Agency for Tourism.

Travel Guide to Russia
Russian National Tourist Office in the UK.
Russian National Group
Russian National Tourist Office in the US.
WayToRussia.Net
A comprehensive guide to Russia and a travel services directory.

Wikivoyage: Russia
Wikivoyage entry for Russia.

City Guides

Moscow
Moscow
Moscow city website.
Moscow
Moscow tourism web site.

St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
The official portal to St. Petersburg, offering a wide variety of information about the city and its life.
Visit Petersburg
Official city tourism portal of St. Petersburg.

Perm
City of Perm
Official web-site.
 
Hotel
Grand Hotel Europe
Russia's oldest operating grand hotel founded in 1703.

Caucasus
Troubled borderland
BBC News about the Caucasus region.
 

UNESCO World Heritage Sites



Grand Cascade of Peterhof Palace. "The Russian Versailles," built by Peter the Great at the beginning of the 18th century, is part of a Russian UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Image: Alex 'Florstein' Fedorov
 

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Russia
There are 18 cultural and 11 natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Russia and 25 sites on the Tentative List (see the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites in Russia)


Landscapes of Dauria
The Daurian Steppe eco-region extends from eastern Mongolia into Russian Siberia and northeastern China. Cyclical climate changes, with distinct dry and wet periods, lead to a great diversity of species and ecosystems with global significance. Grassland and forest, as well as lakes and wetlands, serve as habitats for rare animal species.


Putorana Plateau
The subarctic and arctic ecosystems within the Russian Putoransky State Nature Reserve in northern Central Siberia offer pristine taiga, forest-tundra, tundra, and polar desert systems, as well as untouched cold-water lake and river systems.


Cultural and Historic Ensemble of the Solovetsky Islands
The archipelago in the Onega Bay of the White Sea in Arkhangelsk Oblast is renowned as the site of the Solovetsky Monastery. The six islands have been inhabited since the 5th century B.C.; the archipelago preserves significant traces of human settlement dating back two millennia. The site has several churches, built between the 16th and 19th centuries, which bear witness to the presence of the monastic religious communities that have settled on the islands since the 15th century.

 
View of the monastery complex on Solovetsky Islands, Arkhangelsk Oblast of Russia. Solovetsky Islands is an archipelago of six islands in the White Sea, an inlet of the Barents Sea. The Cultural and Historic Ensemble of the Solovetsky Islands is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Image: Alexxx Malev
 

Education in Russia



The Lomonosov University is also known as Moscow State University, a public research university founded in 1755.
Image: I.s.kopytov
 

Education & Research

The Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), a public research university, was the first Russian university founded in 1755.
Russian Academy of Science
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) was established by order of Emperor Peter I in February 1724. Russia's national academy currently includes more than 600 institutions and over 50,000 scientific researchers.
Saint-Petersburg State University
The oldest Russian higher education institution is a state-owned university based in Saint Petersburg, founded in 1724. SPbU is the second-best multi-faculty university in Russia after Moscow State University.
Novosibirsk State University
NSU is a national research university located in Novosibirsk in the southwestern part of Siberia.
Samara State Aerospace University
SSAU trains specialists for the rocket and space, aviation, electronic, metallurgical, and automotive industries.
Samara State University
A leading multi-faculty university in the city of Samara.
Tyumen State University
The first university in the Tyumen Oblast consists of 12 academic institutes and trains specialists in 175 fields.

Project 5-100
Project 5-100 is a special government program for the development of large Russian universities to improve the reputation of Russian higher education and bring at least five universities among the hundred best universities in the world.

Russian Space Research
Astronomical Institute
Astronomical Department of Saint Petersburg State University.
Space Research Institute (IKI)
Investigations of Outer Space.
Google Earth Baikonur Cosmodrome
Satellite view of the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome space launch facility in Kazakhstan.
 

Parts of the Soyuz TMA-16 are transported to the launch pad of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the world's largest operational space launch facility.
Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls
 
 

Environment & Nature



The eruption of Klyuchevskaya Sopka, a stratovolcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula. It is the highest mountain in Siberia and the highest active volcano of Eurasia at 4,750 m (15,580 ft).
Image: ISS Expedition

Russia's environmental issues
The country's environmental problems are man-made, like air pollution from heavy industry, emissions of coal-fired electric plants, and transportation in major cities.
Industrial, municipal, and agricultural pollution of inland waterways and seacoasts. Deforestation; soil erosion; soil contamination from improper application of agricultural chemicals. The problem with nuclear waste disposal, there are scattered areas of sometimes intense radioactive contamination. And there is the issue with urban solid waste management, groundwater contamination from toxic waste, and abandoned stocks of obsolete pesticides.

There are also environmental problems caused by climate change. Arctic permafrost has been diminishing for many centuries. The result is the thawing of soils and the release of methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas, which contributes to an increased rate of global warming.

Arctic Council
The Russian Federation is a member-state of the Arctic Council, a high-level intergovernmental forum that addresses issues faced by states with territory in the Arctic and the indigenous people of the Arctic.

Bellona Foundation
Bellona — St. Petersburg is a branch of the environmental rights organization, the Bellona Foundation, which is headquartered in Oslo.

Russian Environment NGOs: An Endangered Species
Human Rights Watch article about the fact that Russian authorities labeled one of the country’s most prominent environmental groups, Bellona-St. Petersburg, a “foreign agent organization.”

Ecodefense
Anti-nuclear and safe energy movement.

Greenpeace Russia
Greenpeace organization of Russia.

Russia - Friends of the Earth International
Russian Social-Ecological Union / Friends of the Earth Russia.

Socio-Ecological Union
The Socio-Ecological Union is the only international ecological organization born in the USSR.



This composite image of the Lena River delta in the Sakha Republic of Russia was created using 30 years worth of surface water data from the Global Surface Water Explorer: Global Surface Water Explorer
Image: Daniel Coe

 

Russia History



Zaporozoic Cossacks write a letter to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire. ^[5]
Painting: Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844 – 29 September 1930)


Russia's history begins with the formation of the Kiev Empire (from 980 to 1240), the Kiev Rus, the first East Slavic empire, which was formed in the 10th century. Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod became the first major cities of the new union of immigrants from Scandinavia with the Slavs and the Finnish-Ugric people.

History of Russia
Part of a series on the History of Russia by Wikipedia.

Russia profile - Timeline
BBC article about significant events in Russia's history.

H-Russia
Russian and Soviet history - bibliographical, research and teaching aids
Museum of History of Moscow.

History of Russia
Comprehensive articles about Russia's history by HistoryWorld.

Russia | Geography, History, Map, & Facts
Entry at Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Russian conquest of Siberia
Wikipedia entry for the time when Siberia became part of Russia.
 


Aerial view of Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island (literally Hare Island) in the Neva River in Saint Petersburg. The Peter and Paul Fortress is a citadel from the early 18th century, the origin and historical center of the city of St. Petersburg.
Image: Andrew Shiva

 

Indigenous People of Russia



Buryats - Native Peoples of Siberia (1895). Image from a Library of Congress collection.
Original image at Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife

Not every Russian is an ethnic Russian, which are an East Slavic ethnic group native to European Russia. Ethnic Russians make up approximately 80% of the population of the country. There are about 160 other indigenous peoples and ethnic groups living within the country's borders. At Wikipedia, you will find a list of Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.

Ancient Siberia
Permanent exhibition at the Novosibirsk State Museum of Local History & Nature.

Culture Center of the Northern Asian First Peoples' Art
For foreigner's & our first people's information, founded '96 in Ulan -Ude (Buryatia, Russia).

Museum Complex Ivan Slovtsov
The museum in Tyumen houses the collections of Ivan Slovtsov and Nikolai Chukmuldin.

Khanty-Mansiysk
The Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous District is a member of the Russian Federation, named after the native peoples Khanty and Mansi.

Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON)
a public organization that aims to protect human rights and uphold the interests of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East of Russia

TuvaOnline
Site related to the Republic of Tuva, the former Tannu Tuva, a country in south Siberia, and a member of the Russian Federation (in Russian), see also Friends of Tuva.
 
 

Additional Information

Search

Rambler
Russian search engine and one of the largest Russian web portals. (in Russian).

Russia On The Net
Was one of the first Russian Net directories. The domain is now on sale for about 150.000 $US.

Sources and additional Information on Russia

Amnesty International: Russia
Amnesty International is a non-governmental organization focused on human rights.

BBC Country Profile: Russia
Country profiles by the British public service broadcaster.

FAO: Russia
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a UN agency that leads international efforts to defeat hunger.

Freedom House: Russia
The U.S. government-funded non-profit organization whose goal is to promote liberal democracies worldwide.

GlobalEDGE: Russia
Russia's economic ranking by the Global business knowledge portal.

The Heritage Foundation: Russia
Index of Economic Freedom by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank.

Human Rights Watch: Russia
HRW conducts research and advocacy on human rights.

OEC: Russia
The Observatory of Economic Complexity provides the latest international trade data.

Reporters Without Borders: Russia
RSF (Reporters sans frontières) is an international NGO that defends and promotes media freedom.

Wikipedia: Russia
Wikipedia's Russia page in many languages.

The CIA World Factbook -- Russia
The CIA World Factbook intelligence on Russia.