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 Josef Stalin (1928-53) 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 (1985-91) 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.
Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic
political system and market economy to replace the strict social,
political, and economic controls of the Communist period. A determined
guerrilla conflict still plagues Russia in Chechnya. . LOCATION:
Northern Asia (that part west
of the Urals is included with Europe), bordering the Arctic Ocean,
between Europe and the North Pacific Ocean CLIMATE: Ranges
from steppes in the south through humid continental in much of
European Russia; subarctic
in Siberia to tundra climate in the polar north; winters vary from
cool along Black Sea coast to frigid in Siberia; summers vary from
warm in the steppes to cool along Arctic coast BORDERS:
Azerbaijan 284 km, Belarus 959
km, China (southeast) 3,605 km, China (south) 40 km, Estonia 294
km, Finland 1,313 km, Georgia 723 km, Kazakhstan 6,846 km, North
Korea 19 km, Latvia 217 km, Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast) 227
km, Mongolia 3,485 km, Norway 196 km, Poland (Kaliningrad Oblast)
206 km, Ukraine 1,576 km