Russia

1. Russia

2. Russia Reference

3. Environmental Geography • Declining sturgeon harvest • Black market and Russian mafia • Russian domain occupies a major portion of the world’s largest landmass • Home to some of best farmlands, metal resources, petroleum reserves • Large seasonal temperature extremes • The European West • Ukraine and Belarus cover eastern portions of European Plain • Cold winters and cool summers • Podzol soils – acidic soils that limit agricultural output and ability of the region to support a highly productive farm economy

4. Environmental Geography • The European West (cont.) • Chernozem soils – fertile “black earth” soils that have proven valuable for commercial wheat, corn, and sugar beet cultivation and for commercial meat production • The Ural Mountains and Siberia • Urals make European Russia’s eastern edge • Poor farming land • Siberia located east of the Urals • Taiga – coniferous forest zone • Permafrost – a cold-climate condition of unstable, seasonally frozen ground that limits the growth of vegetation and makes problematic the construction of even simple tracks.

5. Ural Mountains

6. Siberia

9. Environmental Geography • The Russian Far East • Longer growing seasons and milder climates • Influence of monsoon rains of East Asia • Seismically active • The Caucasus and Transcaucasia • Located on European Russia’s extreme south • Between the Black and Caspian seas • Caucasus Mountains • A Devastated Environment • Air and Water Pollution • Poor air quality in hundreds of cities

10. Kamchatka Peninsula

11. Caucasus Mountains

12. Environmental Geography • A Devastated Environment (cont.) • Air and Water Pollution (cont.) • Legacy of Soviet Union • Water pollution from industrial sources • Lake Baikal pollution • The Nuclear Threat • Soviet expansion of nuclear weapons and nuclear power after 1950 • Fallout from above-ground testing • Nuclear explosions for seismic testing and oil exploration • Dumping of nuclear wastes • Chernobyl accident • Construction of new nuclear plants • Possibility of warehousing of international nuclear wastes

13. Environmental Geography • The Post-Soviet Paradox • Soviet Union’s demise brought environmental recovery in some areas • Consolidation of nuclear warhead storage • Increasing environmental awareness • Demise has also contributed to more environmental degradation • Casual handling of waste materials • Cities having to finance their own cleanup projects • Possible smuggling of weapons’ grade fuel out of Russia • Increased exploitation of resources to obtain cash

15. Population and Settlement • More than 200 million residents • Most live in cities • Population Distribution • European Russia: 110 million; Siberia: 35 million; Belarus and Ukraine: 60 million • The European Core • Region contains largest cities, biggest industrial complexes, and most productive farms • Supports higher population densities • Moscow metropolitan area: 8.5 million people • St. Petersburg on Baltic Sea • Volga River industrial region • Ural Mountains settlement region

17. Population and Settlement • Siberian Hinterlands • Sparsely settled landscape, with increasing distance between cities • Trans-Siberian Railroad – a key railroad corridor to the Pacific completed in 1904 • An alignment of isolated but sizable key urban centers follow it • Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) Railroad -- newer (1984) line that runs parallel, but further north, of Trans-Siberian

18. Trans-Siberian Railway

19. Population and Settlement • Regional Migration Patterns • Eastward Movement • Trans-Siberian Railroad accelerated pace of eastward movement • Greater political freedom than enjoyed under the Tsars • Tsars – czars; authoritarian leaders who dominated politics of pre-1917 Russian Empire • Political Imperatives • Leaders from both the imperial and Soviet eras forcibly moved selective populations to new locations • Gulag Archipelago – a vast collection of political prisons • Russification – Soviet policy of resettling portions of Soviet Union

20. Population and Settlement • New International Movements • Reverse Russification in newly independent non-Russian countries • By 2000, 6 million Russians had left former Soviet republics • Also movement to other regions • U.S., Israel, Finland • The Urban Attraction • Rural-to-urban migration • Greater freedom of mobility as compared to the Soviet period

21. Population and Settlement • Inside the Russian City • Core area that contains superior transportation connections, upscale stores and shops, most desirable housing, most important offices • No inner-city decay • No sprawling decentralized suburbs • Stozgorods (socialist neighborhoods) – fully planned public housing projects that ring the inner city • Chermoyuski – large uniform apartment blocks built during the 1950s and 1960s • Poorly constructed Soviet housing

22. Population and Settlement • Inside the Russian City • Mikrorayons – large housing projects of the 1970s and 1980s further out from city centers • Massed blocks of high-rise apartment buildings supposed to form self-contained communities • Greatest growth in recent years has been on the urban fringe • Dacha – elite cottage communities on urban fringe, for more well-to-do residents, especially for use in summers • The Demographic Crisis • Declining populations in the region • Attempts to better the healthcare system, to increase birthrates, and to foster immigration • Pattern of smaller families likely to continue

23. Cultural Coherence and Diversity • The Heritage of the Russian Empire • As other European nations carved out empires elsewhere in the world, the Russians expanded eastward and southward into Eurasia • Origins of the Russian State • Slavic peoples – defined linguistically as a distinctive northern branch of the Indo-European language family • Originated in modern Belarus • Intermarried with the Varangians (Rus) • Interacted with the Byzantine Empire and adopted Christianity and a Cyrillic alphabet • Eastern Orthodox Christianity – a form of Christianity historically linked to Eastern Europe and church leaders in Constantinople (modern Istanbul)

24. Cultural Coherence and Diversity • The Heritage of the Russian Empire (cont.) • Growth of the Russian Empire • By 14th century, a new and expanding Russian state was formed • The Russian peoples were divided into three distinctive, but closely related peoples: Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians • 16th and 17th centuries: expansion further east • Cossacks – seminomadic Slavic-speaking Christians who migrated to seek freedom in steppes • 1700’s expansion into the Baltic (Peter the Great) • 19th century expansion into Central Asia

26. Cultural Coherence and Diversity • The Heritage of the Russian Empire (cont.) • The Legacy of the Empire • Russian expansion was one of the greatest the Earth ever witnessed • The region, however, is still diverse • Modern-day tensions with western Europe • Russians believe they are heirs of Greek and Roman traditions • Long history of authoritarianism

27. Cultural Coherence and Diversity • Geographies of Language • Region is dominated by Slavic languages • The Belorussians and Ukrainians • Majority of Belorussians live in Belarus, and most people in Belarus are Belorussians • Russian speakers dominate large parts of eastern Ukraine • Outside of Ukraine, Ukrainians are scattered in communities in southern Russia and southwest Siberia • Patterns Within Russia • 80% of Russia’s population claims a Russian linguistic identity • Large enclaves of other peoples in Russia • Finno-Ugric speakers, Altaic speakers, Eskimo-Aleut speakers

28. Russia Languages

29. Cultural Coherence and Diversity • Geographies of Language (cont.) • Transcaucasian Languages • A large variety of languages in this small region • No fewer than three language families are spoken in this region • Caucasian, Altaic, and Indo-European speakers • Geographies of Religion • Religious revival after the downfall of the Soviet Union • Mostly Eastern Orthodox Christianity • Roman Catholicism in western Ukraine • Islam in North Caucasus, Volga region, and Kazakstan border • Judaism in larger cities of European west • Buddhism in Russian interior

30. Cultural Coherence and Diversity • Russian Culture in Global Context • Soviet Days • Modernism in art was viewed as decadent • Social realism – an artistic style devoted to the realistic depiction of workers harnessing the forces of nature or struggling against capitalism • Turn to the West • By the 1980s, U.S. mass consumer culture had an impact on the region’s art • After the fall of the Soviet Union, a deluge of Western culture

31. Cultural Coherence and Diversity • Russian Culture in Global Context (cont.) • Russians and the Net • By 2003 an estimated 7 million Russian people will be using the Net • Threefold increase from 1999 • The Music Scene • Western popular music adopted • Generation of western-style music from within • Reactions from more conservative elements within Russia • Extreme nationalists and Eastern Orthodox Church

32. Geopolitics • Geopolitical Structure of the Former Soviet Union • Russian Empire collapsed in 1917 • Bolsheviks – a faction of Russian communists representing the interests of the industrial workers • Seized power in Russia after fall of Russian Empire • Bolsheviks transformed the spatial and economic structure of the country • The Soviet Republics and Autonomous Areas • Established 15 “union republics” based on nationality • Autonomous areas – created by Soviets to give regions of varying sizes as special ethnic homelands, but within structure of existing republics

33. Geopolitics • Geopolitical Structure (cont.) • Centralization and Expansion of the Soviet State (cont.) • Soviet state remained centralized, and union republics had no autonomy under Stalin • Enlargement of the Soviet Union after World War II • Port of Kaliningrad remained an exclave • Exclave – a portion of a country’s territory that lies outside its contiguous land area • Stalin erected an “Iron Curtain” • Term coined by Winston Churchill for ideological and political barrier between democracy and communism that has historically prevented cooperative solutions

34. Geopolitics • Geopolitical Structure (cont.) • Centralization and Expansion of the Soviet State • The Soviet Union and the U.S. became antagonists in a global Cold War • Escalation of military competition between the two nations • End of the Soviet System • Glasnost – policy of greater openness during the 1980s that was enacted by Gorbachev • Several republics demanded independence • Perestroika – planned economic restructuring to make production more efficient and more responsive to needs of Soviet citizens • December 1991, all 15 republics had become independent states and the Soviet Union ceased to exist

35. Geopolitics • Current Geopolitical Setting • Russia and the Former Soviet Republics • Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a looser political union that included all but three of the former republics • 1996: Russian and Belarus political and economic union • 1998: Russia and Ukraine economic linkages • 2000–2001: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova formed the GUAM group • Designed to facilitate trade (oil) through the Caspian–Black Sea corridor

36. Geopolitics • Current Geopolitical Setting • Russia and the Former Soviet Republics • Denuclearization – return of nuclear weapons from outlying republics to Russian control and partial dismantling • Movement of tactical nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad exclave • Devolution and the Russian Federation • March 1992: signing of a new Russian Federation Treaty • Granted Russia’s internal autonomous republics greater political, economic, and cultural freedoms • Autonomous republics located along northern slope of the Caucasus, central Volga Valley, southern border of Siberia • Greater autonomy gives greater economic freedom, but could fragment Russia more politically

37. Russia’s Republics

38. Geopolitics • Current Geopolitical Setting (cont.) • Regional Tensions • Efforts to achieve greater autonomy in Siberia, Caucasus (Chechnya) • The Shifting Global Setting • Collapse of Soviet Union resulted in crash of Russian global power • Economic productivity and technological prowess, and not the control of large territory determines political success • Today, greater cooperation with China • Japan, Russia, and the Kuril Islands • Limited nuclear arsenal • Serves as intermediaries in diplomatic negotiations • 1990s: economic declines, but stabilization in 2000 and 2001 • Difficult to determine true economic potential of the region

39. Economic and Social Development • The Legacy of the Soviet Economy • During the Soviet period, most of what is Russia’s current economic infrastructure was established • Centralized economic planning – a system in which state controlled production targets and industrial output • Stressed the development of huge, basic industries • Nationalized agriculture, collective farms • Development of roads, rail lines, canals, dams, and communications networks • Overall, there were economic improvements, improvements in literacy, but inefficient agricultural system

40. Economic and Social Development • The Post-Soviet Economy • Problems of unstable currencies, corruption, and changing government policies plague the system • Redefining Regional Economic Ties • Less predictable flows of foreign trade between Russia and its former republics • Russia is still the economic power of the region • Privatization and Economic Uncertainty • 1992, the freeing of price controls increased inflation • Privatization led to economic abuses and corruption • Continued struggle in agricultural sector • 2/3 of country’s farmland was privatized by 2000 • Privatization of service, heavy industry, and natural resource sectors

41. Russia Industry

42. Economic and Social Development • The Post-Soviet Economy (cont.) • The Russian Mafia • It’s estimated that the Russian mafia controls 40% of the private economy and 60% of the state-run enterprises • More liberal economic policies after the fall of the Soviet Union allowed the Russian mafia to flourish • Has global connections as well • A Fraying Social Fabric • Increased rates of violent crime, high unemployment, rising housing costs, declining welfare expenditures • Russian middle-class represents only 10% to 15% of the population • Increased domestic violence

43. Economic and Social Development • The Post-Soviet Economy (cont.) • A Fraying Social Fabric (cont.) • Limited healthcare expenditures • Alcoholism, smoking, and AIDS • Growing Economic Globalization • A New Day for the Consumer • Western consumer goods available to all who can afford • Luxury goods • Attracting Foreign Investment • Region struggles to attract outside capital • Strongest global ties are with U.S. and western Europe

44. Russia Foreign Investment

45. Economic and Social Development • Growing Economic Globalization • Globalization and Russia’s Petroleum Economy • One of the strongest links between Russia and the global economy • Most exports today go to western Europe • Local Impacts of Globalization • Moscow has benefited the most • St. Petersburg and Omsk have seen growing global investment • Less competitive industrial centers have been hard hit