Russia is the largest country in the world. It is so big that it's located in two different continents: Europe and Asia. It is nearly twice the size of the United States. Russia is a former member of the USSR, or the Soviet Union, along with other countries such as the Ukraine and Belarus. It is now the Russian Federation.
In Russia are some well known geographical features such as Siberia, the Asian area of the country, which has different regions that provide one-fifth of the world's trees and four of the twelve largest rivers in the world. A frozen layer of soil in the ground called permafrost that is nearly a mile deep covers all of Siberia, which stretches from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The Volga River in European Russia is one of the world's longest. The Ural Mts. are also an important feature, extending for 1,500 miles. It's made up of mountains worn down by erosion, and these mountains contain important natural resources and fossil fuels such as oil. The Urals act like a boundary between European and Asian Russia, but these two continents together are often referred to as Eurasia.
Russia is notoriously famous for its long, cold winters. Not all of the country is like this though, especially places along the coasts such as the Black Sea which are generally warm. But in some parts of the country winter weather begins around October and ends in about May. Imagine over seven months of snow!
a full-length view of the Winter Palace of the tsars
From 1613-1917, a family called the Romanovs ruled Russia as tsars (also spelled czars from the word ceaser ). Tsars were like royalty, they were the crowned jewels of Russia, and they ruled in a capitalist system. But the common man under the tsar was not usually a happy person, especially around the early twentieth century during the rule of Russia's last royal family of tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, his four young daughters, and his son. In 1917, the successful Bolshevik Revolution was the reason Nicholas II gave up his throne.
About 150,000,000 people live in this country. The nationality of most people is Russian, but their ethnic groups vary from Tatar to Ukrainian and several others. The religion of most of the people is Russian Orthodox, but several people have no religion. This is partly because when Russia was a communist state in the USSR, the government discouraged religion, and many people continued not to practice after the Soviet Union collapsed.
The language of Russia is Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. This alphabet has thirty-three characters borrowed from Latin and Greek. In Russia, children are required to go to school for ten years. They attend public school Mon.-Sat. from about eight o'clock to one o'clock. There are also specialty technical and trade schools which train its students early for their careers. Since Russia excels in many fields of the arts, there are also schools for music, dance, art, foreign language, etc. An example is a school in St. Petersburg, Russia for dancing children, the Vaganova Choreographic Institute, meets the educational requirements for their students and trains them sometimes up to six or seven hours a day in dance. Such a prestigous school requires strict auditions to even enter. There are also important universities, such as Moscow University.
