Unit 3: Russia
Russia is the largest country in the world in terms of physical area. It is nearly twice the size of the United States. Russia's extensive landscapes include major metropolitan areas such as Moscow, vast territories in the Arctic north, the immense forests of Siberia, the deepest lake in the world, massive grain farms, volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula, and mountain communities in the Caucasus.
Russia is rich in natural resources, but its population is slowly declining and sees extremes of wealth and poverty. Russia recently invaded Ukraine to expand its territory, creating a war that is draining its resources and prompting other countries to boycott Russian goods. Russia is becoming increasingly isolated.
This unit explores Russia's physical characteristics, cultural diversity, and environmental challenges. We examine the historical development patterns of Russia and its economy and the human landscape of Russia today in the early 2020s.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 3 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- describe Russia's climate and physical landscape and how they have influenced the human landscape;
- relate the concepts of relative and absolute location and distance decay to Russia and its territorial aspirations;
- describe Soviet Russia's approach to socialism and how it impacted its economic development;
- describe Russia's pattern of human settlement in terms of the core-periphery concept and how it has impacted the environment; and
- summarize the methods the government used to impose a Russian and Soviet identity on the population and its long-term effects on the human landscape.
3.1: Maps of Russia
Let's begin our examination of Russia by studying some maps of the region.
Study these maps of Russia so you are familiar with the locations of its major cities, landforms, and regions. Pay attention to the major oceans, seas, and waterways that surround Russia.
3.2: Russia's Physical Geography
It is hard to overestimate Russia's vastness. Its northern latitude and size contribute to the continental climate which dominates the realm. Temperatures are extreme because most of its territory is far from the ocean's moderating effects. Winters are extremely cold, and summers are hot. Precipitation is highly variable.
Although Russia's physical landscape ranges from Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world, to Mount Elbrus, a dormant volcano in the Caucasus Mountains, it has large contiguous areas with little variation in elevation.
Russia's extensive plains, steppes, and plateaus are covered in forests, grasses, and wetlands. Because parts of Russia extend into the Arctic, the tundra covers its northern extent. Russia's diverse physical geography is vulnerable to environmental threats due to the effects of global climate change and the settlement patterns it has practiced within its borders.Read this text to learn more about the massive expanse that is Russia. Make sure you can answer these questions.
- What is the significance of Kaliningrad?
- Can you distinguish between the steppe, taiga, and tundra biomes of Siberia?
- What key factors affect Russia's climate?
- Why does Russia's population tend to live on the Northern European Plain of Russia?
- What is the impact of the Yenisei River on Siberia?
- What is the significance of Lake Baikal?
- Why is there so much seismic activity on Russia's Pacific coast?
- What are the challenges of building on permafrost?
- How does distance decay and Tobler's First Law of Geography apply to Russia
Watch this video. Note that also it devotes five minutes to countries that are part of the regions of North Africa and Southwest Asia, which we will study in Unit 7: Transcaucasia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) and Central Asia (Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).
3.3: Russia's Settlement Patterns and Environmental Challenges
Russia's settlement patterns are due to its geography and past governmental policies. It is not surprising that vast areas of Russia remain sparsely populated, given its size.
The thematic map in Figure 3.1 shows that Russia's population density (the number of people per unit area) is much higher west of the Ural Mountains (an area some call European Russia). The map shows circular areas of high population density at the base of the Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas. With the exception of St. Petersburg, population densities are highest below 56° north latitude.
Read this text to learn more about the role climate plays in Russia's population distribution, why Russia's population is declining, and why we see an urban-to-rural shift rather than the other way around.
Environmental damage often coincides with human settlement. Many of Russia's environmental challenges date back to Soviet-era industrial practices. Sewage and chemical pollutants from the country's industrial centers and urban areas have contaminated the air, waterways, and bodies of water, including the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea (the world's largest inland body of water by area), and Lake Baikal (the world's oldest and deepest lake). Let's look at some examples.
Until its closure in 2009, the Bajkal'sk Paper Mill, shown in Figure 3.2, was a major source of Lake Baikal's pollution. In spite of its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, proposed oil and gas exploration now threatens Lake Baikal's biodiversity.Oil exploration and production pollution, including oil spills, have contaminated the Siberian tundra and taiga environments. Nuclear waste is dumped in the Arctic waters of the Barents Sea. Given their remoteness, concern for these vast ecosystems and the humans who live there have only received recent attention. Coal-burning utilities, mining, and smelting activities in and around Siberian cities reduce air quality. The smog in Krasnoyarsk, a Siberian city on the Yenisei River, causes Black Sky emergencies.
Overfishing depletes fish stocks in the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. These waters are the source of Russia's increasingly rare, caviar-producing wild sturgeon. The thematic map in Figure 3.3 summarizes these environmental issues. Note that this damage coincides with the pattern of human settlement.
3.4: Russian History and Expansion
Russia is the only country that comprises an entire region in this course. Although its area is smaller in 2022 than it was in the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire, Russia is still the largest country in the world (17 million km2). Canada is the second largest country at 9.9 million km2.
Russia covered much less area when it first appeared as a state. The East Slavs, a subgroup of Slavic tribes that emerged in northeastern Europe about 1,500 years ago, were the ancestors of today's Russians. The East Slavs moved toward the area we call European or Western Russia. In Figure 3.4, the arrows that point to the northeast (north of the Dnieper River toward the Don River) represent the East Slavic migration. These immigrants settled in the Grand Duchy of Moscow, a territory centered in present-day Moscow.
Moscow remains Russia's primary core area, followed by St. Petersburg.
Read this text which describes Russia's territorial growth, including the rise of St. Petersburg, Peter the Great's eponymous city. Although the Bolsheviks brought the political era of Imperial Russia to an end in 1917, their territorial aspirations were equally ambitious. In 1922, the Soviet Union adopted its neighboring republics and annexed others to rival the size of Imperial Russia.
3.5: Russian Multiculturalism and Tensions
Imperial Russia was home to many ethnic groups that spoke and practiced many different languages and religions. The Russian czars were unsuccessful in their attempts at Russification. They forced residents to speak Russian and convert to Russian Orthodoxy, but individual identity remained tied to one's ethnic group. This attempt to create a Russian identity was less successful the farther people lived from Moscow, the center of power.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) included 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), with the largest population, is ethnically Russian. The remaining SSRs included Georgians, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, and others. Figure 3.6 shows a thematic map of the ethnic composition of each SSR.
These SSRs had little autonomy – the Soviet central government diluted their influence by moving ethnic Russians to live in their regions. Keep this relocation in mind as you interpret the map in Figure 3.6, which uses data from 1979 after the Soviet Union had moved ethnic Russians into these SSRs. Note that the Kazakh SSR shows a slightly higher percentage of Russians in their population than ethnic Kazakhs.
In addition, many members of these ethnic groups were exiled to the hinterlands of the Soviet Federated Socialist Republic to separate them from the historic homeland of their people. It is common to find ethnic Russians who have lived in Kazakhstan (the former Kazakh SSR) and ethnic Ukrainians who have lived in Siberia (part of the former Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) for generations.
Read this text to learn about the lasting consequences of this resettlement.Sovietization (not the same as Russification) occurred during the Soviet Union (1917–1991). The word soviet comes from the Russian word for "council" or "assembly". Toward the end of the Russian Empire, councils or soviets of workers formed in many large cities to address poor working conditions. These soviets took political and economic action to fight the Czarist Russian Empire and are credited with contributing to the success of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Sovietization promoted a Soviet way of life, mentality, and culture and forced citizens to speak Russian and use the Cyrillic script. Its leaders used propaganda to promote the idea of a collective Soviet people and Soviet socialist patriotism.
Today, the Russian government uses the Internet, radio, and television to reach its population. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, the government has curtailed access to any information that the Russian government does not sanction. Unless Russians can connect to a virtual private network (VPN), residents only receive positive news about the war in Ukraine and negative news about those who oppose the Russian war efforts.
This article explains how Stalin used aircraft to disseminate newspapers and films about the glory of the Soviet Union to peasants across the country.
3.6: The Economy and Government during the Soviet Era
In this section, we see the perils associated with ignoring geography when making economic decisions. Russia's size poses formidable challenges when it comes to governance and the implementation of its economic goals. The Soviet Union's approach (1917–1991) proved costly and made life especially difficult during the Cold War.
Read this text to learn more about the implementation and consequences of the communist system in Russia.
We use the terms socialism and communism to describe the Soviet Union's approach to its economy. Many people mistakenly use the two interchangeably. Watch this video for a general explanation of the key differences between these two ideologies.
Life was harsh for most Russians when the Soviet Union tried to implement socialism. The collectivization of agriculture and the dispersal of industrial development proved inefficient and deadly. Millions of people died due to poor government decision-making. The impact of Ukraine's experience as a former Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) continues today.
Read this article which was updated shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The authors highlight the role the past is playing in Ukraine's resistance to Russia's invasion.
3.7: The Russian Federation
Political, economic, and social uncertainty characterized the post-Soviet transition. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russian Federation, began reforming the Russian economy by privatizing state-owned enterprises. These reforms occurred so quickly that the transfer of state property and assets was handled informally.
Well-connected entrepreneurs, who were successful on the black market during the Soviet era, became wealthy due to corrupt deals they made with former Soviet officials and newly-elected politicians. They exploited the voucher privatization system, which was intended to distribute national wealth among the general public and employees of privatized enterprises. Instead, the vouchers ended up in the hands of these well-connected entrepreneurs, who became known as oligarchs.
Oligarchs are wealthy individuals who have undue political influence. They are often associated with corruption and are motivated by their own interests. During this time, the oligarchs of Russia weakened the economic conditions for average Russians by putting their money in Swiss bank accounts rather than investing in the Russian economy.
Russia's depressed economy created dire conditions for ordinary Russians. Well-connected entrepreneurs became wealthy overnight, while millions of Russians became poverty-stricken. Extreme corruption, criminal gangs, and organized crime increased dramatically. Although the long food lines had disappeared and access to Western goods and consumer products became much more widely available, Russians were increasingly dissatisfied with Yeltsin's leadership. Vladimir Putin replaced Yeltsin when he resigned in 1999. Putin has continued to serve as the president of the Russian Federation with the exception of one term.
In 2000, the Russian economy improved when it began to export vast quantities of natural resources, including oil, natural gas, metals, and timber. Foreign investment in Russia increased in the mid-2000s as the Russian economy grew. Although Russia began to establish itself as a significant contributor to the global economy, its infrastructure and manufacturing base requires modernization, its birth rate and life expectancy remain low, and poverty and social problems affect much of the population.Read this text for more on the challenges Russia faces during the post-Soviet era.
Russia's relationship with the West seemed hopeful until tensions deteriorated when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Collaboration with Western countries, such as building a new space station with the United States, seems unlikely in the near future.
Despite this political climate, the geographic distance between Russia and the United States remains unchanged. The boundary between Russia and the United States (part of North America) coincides with the International Dateline (180° longitude) – the border runs between the two Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait. Big Diomedes is the easternmost location in Russia, and Little Diomedes is the westernmost location in the United States.
Using the scale of the navigation map in Figure 3.7, we see the distance between the United States and Russia is less than 2.5 mi (3.8 km). Notice that the scale on this map uses statute miles as the unit of measure. The statute is used to distinguish the mile from international or nautical miles and measures 5,280 ft or 1609.34 m. The caption mentions the International Peace Bridge, a hypothetical bridge or tunnel that could connect Asia and North America if it were ever built.
Unit 3 Assessment
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Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
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