The Ural Mountains (Russian: ?????????? ?????, Uralskiye gory) (also known as the Urals, the Riphean Mountains in Greco-Roman antiquity, and known as the Stone Belt) are a mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia. They are usually considered as the natural boundary between Europe and Asia.
The Federal Assembly of Russia (Russian: ??????????? ????????, transliteration: Federalnoye Sobraniye or Federalnoje Sobranije) is the legislature of the Russian Federation, according to the Constitution of Russian Federation, 1993. It was preceded by the Congress of People’s Deputies of Russian Federation.
It consists of the State Duma, which is the lower house, and the Federation Council, which is the upper house. Both houses are located in Moscow.
The first post-Soviet Duma in 1993 is the Fifth Duma, following the first four of 1906-17.
All bills, even those proposed by the Federation Council, must first be considered by the State Duma. Upon adoption by a majority of the full State Duma membership, a draft law is considered by the Federation Council, which has fourteen days to place the bill on its calendar. If the Federation Council rejects a bill passed by the State Duma, the two chambers may form a conciliation commission to work out a compromise version of the legislation.
The West Siberian Plain (Russian: ????????-?????????? ????????) is a large plain that occupies the western portion of Siberia and Russia, between the Ural Mountains in the west and the Yenisei River in the east, and by the Eastern Sayan Mountains and the Baikal Mountains on the south. It has been described as the world’s largest unbroken lowland—more than 50 percent is less than 330 feet (101 m) above sea level—and covers an area of about 2.6–2.7 million km² which is about one third of Siberia,extending from north to south for 2,400 km, from the Arctic Ocean to the foothills of the Altay Mountains, and from west to east for 1,900 km from the Yenisei River to the Ural Mountains.
The plain has eight distinct vegetation regions: tundra, forest-tundra, northern taiga, middle taiga, southern taiga, sub-taiga forest, forest-steppe, and steppe. The number of animal species in the West Siberian Plain ranges from at least 107 in the tundra to 278 or more in the forest-steppe region.
Winters on the West Siberian Plain are harsh and long. The climate of most of the plains is either subarctic or continental. Two of the larger cities on the plain are Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk.
The Soviet war in Afghanistan, also known as the Soviet-Afghan War or just the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet forces supporting the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the mujahideen resistance. The latter group found support from a variety of sources including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations in the context of the Cold War. This conflict was concurrent to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War.
Initially Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on August 7, 1978. The final troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989. Due to the interminable and inconclusive nature of the war, the conflict in Afghanistan has often been referred to as the Soviet equivalent of the United States’ Vietnam War.
The East Slavs are a Slavic ethnic group, the speakers of East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the medieval state of Kievan Rus, by the seventeenth century they evolved into the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples.
Russians have been successful at a number of sports and continuously finishing in the top rankings at the Olympic Games. During the Soviet era, the national team placed first in the total number of medals won at 14 of its 18 appearances;with these performances, the USSR was the dominant Olympic power of its era.Since the 1952 Olympic Games, Soviet and later Russian athletes have always been in the top three for the number of gold medals collected at the Summer Olympics. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow while the 2014 Winter Olympics will be hosted by Sochi.
Early Russian painting focused on icon painting and vibrant frescos inherited by Russians from Byzantium. As Moscow rose to power, Theophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev are vital names associated with the beginning of a distinctly Russian art. The Russian Academy of Arts was created in 1757, aimed to give Russian artists an international role and status. Notable portrait painters from the Academy include Ivan Argunov, Fyodor Rokotov, Dmitry Levitzky and Vladimir Borovikovsky. Realism flourished in the 19th century and the realists captured Russian identity. Russian landscapes of wide rivers, forests, and birch clearings, as well as vigorous genre scenes and robust portraits of their contemporaries asserted a sense of identity. Other artists focused on social criticism, showing the conditions of the poor and caricaturing authority while critical realism flourished under the reign of Alexander II.
While in the industrialized nations of the West, motion pictures had first been accepted as a form of cheap recreation and leisure for the working class, Russian filmmaking came to prominence following the 1917 revolution when it explored editing as the primary mode of cinematic expression Russian and later Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention in the period immediately following the 1917 revolution, resulting in world-renowned films such as Battleship Potemkin. Soviet-era filmmakers, most notably Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, would become some of the world’s most innovative and influential directors.
The two widest separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (5,000 mi) apart along a geodesic line. These points are: the boundary with Poland on a 60 km long (40-mi long) spit of land separating the Gulf of Gda?sk from the Vistula Lagoon; and the farthest southeast of the Kuril Islands, a few miles off Hokkaid? Island, Japan. The points which are furthest separated in longitude are 6,600 km (4,100 mi) apart along a geodesic. These points are: in the West, the same spit; in the East, the Big Diomede Island (Ostrov Ratmanova). The Russian Federation spans 11 time zones.
Russia is the largest country in the world in terms of area but unfavorably located in relation to major sea lanes of the world. Despite its size, much of the country lacks proper soils and climates for agriculture, being either too cold or too dry.