Human Geography of Russia and

the Republics: A Diverse Heritage

CHAPTER 16 SECTION 1
RUSSIA AND THE WESTERN REPUBLICS
Russia today
 A Human Perspective

• In the 1500s, the Russian leader Ivan the Great put

an end to two centuries of foreign rule in his
homeland.
• Russia then enter into a period of explosive growth.
From Moscow, Russia expanded at a rate of 55
square miles a day for the next four centuries. It
made so much advancement that they took control of
Alaska by the late 18th century.
• Alaska was sold to the U.S. in 1867.
 A History of Expansion
Russia’s growth had lasting effects on nearly lands and peoples.
 1. In the 9th century, Viking from Scandinavia through the Baltic sea
to take advantage of the river trade.
 They made settlement what is now Kiev & adopted the customs of the
local Slavic population.
 Expansion was halted in the 13th century with the arrival from
Mongolia called Tatars.
 The Mongol warriors is legendary. They sacked Kiev between 1237
and 1240.
 They controlled the region until the 1500s, when Ivan the Great,
prince from Moscow, put an end to their rule.
 By the end of 17th century, Russia extended their empire to the
Pacific Ocean.
 It added more people who belong to different ethnic groups, with
different language and different religions.
Peter the Great:1683 to 1725
 Peter was a grandson of Tsar Michael Romanov (who
was crowned as Tsar in 1613).
 In 1682 Peter was proclaimed Tsar at the tender age
of 10.
 But due to power struggles between different political
forces in the country, the young Tsar was forced to
rule jointly with his brother Ivan, under the patronage
of their sister Sofia.
 In 1689, after a failed coup d'etat, Sofia was
overthrown and exiled to a convent. When Tsar Ivan
died in 1696, Peter remained monarch and engineered
a series of reforms that were to put Russia among the
major European powers of the day.
 2. Peter opened Russia to the influences of the West
and invited the best European engineers,
shipbuilders, architects, craftsmen and merchants to
come to Russia and modernize the country.
 Hundreds of Russians were sent to Europe to get the
best education possible and learn the different arts
and crafts that would sustain Russia in its future
growth.
 Russia lags behind Western Europe

 Russia’s territorial growth was rapid, but its progress in other

ways less impressive.
 In science and technology, it lagged behind Europe.
 Peter the Great move the Russia’s capital from Moscow to the
a city close to the Baltic Sea and name it St. Petersburg to
provide direct access to Western Europe by Sea.
 He made great strides to modernize Russia, but it still was
behind the West. By the mid 1800s, the Industrial Revolution
had arrived in many Western Europe, but it did not happen in
Russia until the end of the century.
 It resulted in harsh working conditions, low wages, and other
hardships.
 People, started getting upset with the czars who ruled Russia.
Russia and Soviet Expansion
 The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

 Catherine II (Catherine the Great) defeated Napoleon

and brought Russia closer to being a world power
towards the end of the 18th century.
 The period of the czars continued until the Russian
Revolution of 1917.
 3. The Communist Party, led by V.I. Lenin, took control
of the government. It also took control of the economy
and gave is leaders control of all important economic
decisions.
 By 1922, the Communist Party had organized all the
different people from the regions and created the Union
of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or the Soviet
Union for short.
 They move the capital back to Moscow in 1918.
 Building a Command Economy

 Under Communist rule, a command economy was

implemented.
 5. It had been inspired by the work of Karl Marx, a
German philosopher who had studied the history of
Economic Systems.
 He believed the capitalist systems was doomed because
it concentrated wealth in a few & left everyone else in
poverty.
 In a communist society, citizen would own property
together and share the wealth.
 The government took control of the state’s wealth, land,
mines, factories, banks, and transportation systems.
 6. Collective farms were common. By 1939, 9 out 10
farms were collective.
Large teams of laborers were
moved to the farms to work together.
 
World War II

Communism
 After Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph
Stalin took control of the
government.
He was considered by most to be a
ruthless dictator.
His regime is known for Stalinism,
which was the inhumane, rapid
industrialization of the U.S.S.R.
Stalin sent millions of
Soviets who did not conform to the
Stalinist ideal to forced-labor
camps.
Historians believe about 20 million
Soviets died from starvation,
executions,
and life in the labor camps.
 Cold War
 Stalin installed pro-Soviet
government in all countries
that had been liberated
from Germany.
 4. U.S. leaders fear a new
expansion was beginning
and that Stalin would be
spreading communism.
 Diplomats called it the
Cold War.
 The Cold War escalated
numerous times to
potential World Wars, but
never reached that point.
The most notable events
were the Berlin Blockade,
the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, the Cuban
Missile Crisis, and the
Soviet-Afghan War.
 Fall of the Soviet Union & The Russian Federation
 The Cold War ended during the
time of Mikhail Gorbachev’s
reign as ruler.
 Gorbachev introduced
openness within the country
and a time of restructuring to
modernize the country.
 The U.S.S.R. was the 2nd largest
economy in the world before its
collapse.
 The Soviet Union collapsed in
1991, forming 15 new and
independent republics.
 Boris Yeltsin was elected
President of Russia in 1991, in
the first direct presidential
election in Russian history.
 Russia Today

 Prime Minister – Vladimir Putin

 World’s leading natural gas exporter
 World’s 2nd leading oil exporter
 7th highest GDP in the world
 2nd largest number of billionaires in the
world (101), with Moscow being the city
with the most billionaires. Moscow has
been voted the 2nd most expensive city to
live in the world two years in a row.
 Currency is the ruble. ($1 U.S. dollar =
$23.8 Rubles)
 Russian Culture

 Shrinking population (decreased over 200,000 people in 2007)

 1. Russians make up 70% of Russia, but 70 other nationalities also live
there.
 Russia has a free education system guaranteed to all citizens by the
Constitution. (literacy rate – 99.4%). Competitive entry makes
schooling very strong.
 Free, universal health care for all citizens.
 As a result of the large difference in life expectancy between men and
women and because of the lasting effect of World War II, where Russia
lost more men than any other nation in the world, the gender
imbalance remains to this day and there are 0.859 males to every
female.
 Culture cont.

 Virtually all Russians speak Russian, the official

state language. Approximately 7 million speak
English (2nd most spoken language)
 2. Religions (Orthodox Christian – 20%, Islam –
11%, other Christian – 2%, non-religious – 50-
60%)
 3. onion-domed churches; Literature-Pushkin,
Dostoyevsky; Music-Tchaikovsy, Stravinsky; Ballet-
Baryshnikov.
 Classical music and ballet are world famous in
Russia. Tchaikovsky composed Swan Lake, The
Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty.
 4. Dachas-small, plain houses, often with gardens
for growing vegetables; Customs: Banyas, weekly
cleaning rituals involving a dry sauna, a steam
bath, and a plunge into ice-cold water.
 Sports in Russia

 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow

(boycott by U.S. due to Russian invasion
of Afghanistan in 1979)
 Since the 1952 Olympics, Soviet/Russian
athletes
have always been in the top 3 for the
number of gold medals awarded in
Summer Olympics.
 The 2014 Winter Olympics
will be held in Sochi, Russia.
 Site of the 2007 World Ice1980 Summer
Olympics held in Moscow (boycott by
U.S. due to Russian invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979)