Extending from eastern Europe across the whole of northern Asia, Russia spans eleven time zones and has a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources, and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves, and its lakes contain about one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
Russia is a federal semi-presidential republic. It has a president and a parliament. Russia consists of 85 federal subjects (territorial units). All subjects of the federation shall be equal. All entities are subject to the uniform federal law. Subjects of the federation have two representatives in the parliament. Subjects of the Russian Federation do not have a right to secession from it. Important issues are decided by the Federation President; lesser powers are given to the member republics.
At the end of the twentieth century, Russia experienced many political changes. Some people fought to leave from the federation.
Elections are held at all levels. According Steve White, the present government made it clear that they had no plans of making a "second edition" of the American or British political system, but rather a system that was closer to Russia's own traditions. Richard Sakwa wrote that the Russian government is considered legitimate by the majority of the Russian people. It seeks to deliver a set of public goods without trying to fit to extra-democratic logic to achieve them. Whether the system is becoming less autocratic (dictatorial) is debatable.
There are four big political parties in Russia. United Russia (Единая Россия) is the biggest party.
The United Russia is the ruling party, which supports the government. The other parties in the Duma (Russian parliament) do not criticize the government strongly, for fear of losing their places in the Duma. Many opposition parties, such as the People's Freedom Party and the Other Russia, have been unable to register due to the strict rules. In the 2000s the government led a war in Chechnya, and in the process, civil liberties and independent media were restricted. Corruption is widespread and human rights, especially in the North Caucasus, are frequently violated. In 2008 Putin's government was in a war with Georgia in a dispute over a region with many ethnic Russians.
The roots of Russia's history began when the East Slavs formed a group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. The Vikings and their descendants founded the first East Slavic state of Kievan Rus' in the 9th century. They adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988. This form of Christianity influenced Russian culture greatly. Kievan Rus' eventually broke up and the lands were divided into many small feudal states. The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow. This area served as the main force in later Russian unification and the fight against the Golden Horde from Asia. Moscow slowly gained control of the regions around it and took over the cultural and political life of Kievan Rus'.
In the 18th century, the nation had expanded through conquest, annexation and exploration to become the Russian Empire, the third largest empire in history. It stretched from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth eastward to the Pacific Ocean and Alaska. The empire was ruled by an emperor called the Tsar.
Peter the Great ruled Russia from 1689 until 1725. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to a new city named Saint Petersburg. He made Russian society more modern in many ways. The government began building ships for the Russian navy.
The Russo-Japanese War started in 1904 and ended in 1905 with Japan winning the war. The Russian defeat was one of the reasons for later revolutions.
In October 1917, the Bolsheviks (later called "Communists"), influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, took over the country and murdered the Tsar and other people who stood against them. Once they took power, the Bolsheviks, under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, created the first Marxist Communist State.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, Josef Stalin ruled as an absolute dictator of Soviet Russia, and destroyed anything and anyone that was against his rule, including taking the property of farmers and shopkeepers. Many millions of people starved and died in the resulting famines. Stalin also removed, or "purged", all military personnel who were not loyal to him, and many were killed or sent to prison camps, or gulags, for many years. Even in the gulags, many prisoners died.
Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany agreed not to attack each other in 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the agreement and attacked in Operation Barbarossa. The attack was part of World War II. The war lasted in Europe until May 1945, and Russia lost more than 20 million people during that time. In spite of this large loss, Russia was one of the winners of the war and became a world superpower.
From 1922 to 1991, Russia was the largest part of the Soviet Union, or the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR). People sometimes used the name "Russia" for the whole Soviet Union, or sometimes "Soviet Russia". Russia was only one of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics. The republic was in fact named the "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic" (RSFSR).
The Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s. Russia took over the place of the USSR in the United Nations (UN).
Boris Yeltsin was made the President of Russia in June 1991, in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. Wide-ranging reforms took place, including privatization and free trade laws. Radical changes "(shock therapy) were recommended by the United States and International Monetary Fund. A major economic crisis followed. There was 50% decline in GDP and industrial output between 1990–95.
The privatization largely shifted control of enterprises from state agencies to individuals with inside connections in the government system. Many of the newly rich business people took billions in cash and assets outside of the country . The depression of state and economy led to the collapse of social services. Millions went into poverty, from 1.5% level of poverty in the late Soviet era, to 39–49% by mid-1993. The 1990s saw extreme corruption and lawlessness, rise of criminal gangs and violent crime.
The 1990s had many armed conflicts in the North Caucasus. There were both local ethnic battles and separatist Islamist insurrections. Since the Chechen separatists declared independence in the early 1990s, a Chechen War was fought between the rebel groups and the Russian military. Terrorist attacks against civilians caused hundreds of deaths. The most notable of these were the Moscow theater hostage crisis and Beslan school siege.
Russia took 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. High budget deficits caused the 1998 Russian financial crisis and resulted in further GDP decline.
On 31 December 1999 President Yeltsin resigned, or quit being the president. The job of president was given to the recently appointed Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. Putin then won the 2000 presidential election. Putin stopped the Chechen rebellion quickly, but violence still occurs in the Northern Caucasus at times.
High oil prices and initially weak currency followed by increasing domestic demand, consumption and investments has helped the economy grow for nine straight years. This improved the standard of living and increasing Russia's influence on the world stage. While many reforms made during the Putin presidency have been criticized by Western nations as un-democratic, Putin's leadership led to stability, and progress. This won him widespread popularity in Russia.