Overview of Russia
The Russian Federation is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. With an area of 17,075,400 square kilometres, it is the largest country in the world, covering almost twice the territory of either Canada, China, or the United States. It ranks seventh in the world in population, following China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan.
Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia has been an independent country since the dissolution of the union in December 1991. Under the Soviet system it was called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
Most of the area, population, and industrial production of the Soviet Union, then one of the world's two superpowers, lay in Russia. Consequently, with the breakup of the USSR, Russia was again vying for an influential role on the world stage. This influence is notable, but is still far from that of the former Soviet Union.
Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the 300-year old Romanov Dynasty. The Communists under Vladimir Lenin seized power soon after and formed the USSR.
The brutal rule of Joseph Stalin strengthened Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a cost of tens of millions of lives. The Soviet economy and society stagnated in the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize Communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 splintered the USSR into 15 independent republics.
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