Russia, country that stretches over a massive expanse of jap Europe and northern Asia. Once the leading republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; ordinarily called the Soviet Union), Russia became associate freelance country when the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Gregorian calendar month 1991.

Russia may be a land of superlatives. out and away the world’s largest country, it covers nearly doubly the territory of Canada, the second largest. It extends across the full of northern Asia and therefore the jap third of Europe, spanning eleven time zones and incorporating a good vary of environments and landforms, from deserts to dry steppes to deep forests and Arctic field. Russia contains Europe’s longest watercourse, the Volga, and its largest lake, Ladoga. Russia is also home to the world’s deepest lake, Baikal, and therefore the country recorded the world’s lowest temperature outside the North and South poles.

The inhabitants of Russia ar quite numerous. Most ar ethnic Russians, however there are over one hundred twenty different ethnic teams gift, speaking several languages and following disparate non secular and cultural traditions. Most of the Russian population is targeted within the European portion of the country, particularly within the fertile region close Moscow, the capital. Moscow and St. siege (formerly Leningrad) ar the 2 most vital cultural and monetary centres in Russia and ar among the foremost picturesque cities within the world. Russians are inhabited in Asia, however; starting within the seventeenth century, and notably pronounced throughout abundant of the twentieth century, a gradual flow of ethnic Russians and communicative folks stirred eastward into geographic region, wherever cities like metropolis and Irkutsk currently flourish.