Russia (World War Z)

**Russia**, officially known as the **Holy Russian Empire**, is a massive transcontinental state located in Northern Eurasia. An expansionist theocracy under the iron-fisted rule of Tsar Andrew I, the new Russian government has been able to increase their population by 50% from post-war lows within 20 years of initiating the Ryzhkov Program, a breeding program that has propelled the Russian population on a course to surpass the United States within the next three decades. The empire is incredibly sizable and includes all the ex-Soviet Central Asian Republics, the Transcaucasian nations, Belarus and most recently, Ukraine. Border adjustments were made in the middle-east under a treaty with India after their expansion into former Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian territory. Due to Japan's seizure of southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, and the United Nations declaration of dominion over Kaliningrad, a political deadlock between Russia and the UN has given given rise to a new pseudo-Cold War. With the Holy Russian Army ever increasing in size and power, many people fear of a possible Russian campaign to liberate their former territory, a prospect that keeps the entire world on edge.

## Government and administration

Since the transformation of the Russian Federation in the Holy Revolution, Russia has been governed under a system of tsarist autocracy with virtually all power held by the tsar/emperor. Although technically a pseudo-constitutional monarchy due to ruling alongside a legislature, there are no real limits to the head of state's power and the tsar has little accountability to both the 12-man Holy Synod and 100-man State Duma.

From its initial creation until the 1905 Revolution, the Russian Empire was controlled by its tsar/emperor as an absolute monarch, under the system of tsarist autocracy. After the Revolution of 1905, Russia developed a new type of government which became difficult to categorize. In the Almanach de Gotha for 1910, Russia was described as "a constitutional monarchy under an autocratic tsar." This contradiction in terms demonstrated the difficulty of precisely defining the system, essentially transitional and meanwhile *sui generis*, established in the Russian Empire after October 1905. Before this date, the fundamental laws of Russia described the power of the Emperor as "autocratic and unlimited." After October 1905, while the imperial style was still "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias", the fundamental laws were remodeled by removing the word *unlimited*. While the emperor retained many of his old prerogatives, including an absolute veto over all legislation, he equally agreed to the establishment of an elected parliament, without whose consent no laws were to be enacted in Russia. Not that the regime in Russia had become in any true sense constitutional, far less parliamentary. But the "unlimited autocracy" had given place to a "self-limited autocracy." Whether this autocracy was to be permanently limited by the new changes, or only at the continuing discretion of the autocrat, became a subject of heated controversybetween conflicting parties in the state. Provisionally, then, the Russian governmental system may perhaps be best defined as "a limited monarchy under an autocratic emperor."