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Portal:Russia

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Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. Russia is a highly urbanised country, with 16 of its population centres having more than 1 million inhabitants. Its capital and largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia's second-largest city and its cultural capital.

The East Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated; the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the unification of Russian lands, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. At the expense of millions of lives, the Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological dominance and international influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space. (Full article...)

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Portrait of Ivan IV by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1897

Prepared stroganina on a table

Stroganina (Russian: строганина, literally "shavings") is a dish of the northern Russians and indigenous people of northern Arctic Siberia consisting of raw, thin, long-sliced frozen fish. Around Lake Baikal, the dish is referred to as raskolotka. Traditional stroganina is made with freshwater whitefish salmonids found in the Siberian Arctic waters such as nelma, muksun, chir, and omul. Rarely, it is made with sturgeon. This dish is popular with native Siberians, and is present in Yakutian cuisine, Eskimo cuisine, Komi cuisine and Yamal cuisine. In Kaliningrad it is made with Sarda. It is often paired with vodka. (Full article...)

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Olga Alexandrovna c. 1910

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia (Russian: Ольга Александровна; 13 June [O.S. 1 June] 1882 – 24 November 1960) was the youngest child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II.

Olga was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg. Olga's relationship with her mother, Empress Marie, the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, was strained and distant from childhood. In contrast, she and her father were close. He died when she was 12, and her brother Nicholas became emperor. In 1901, at 19, she married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, who was privately believed by family and friends to be homosexual. Their marriage of 15 years remained unconsummated, and Peter at first refused Olga's request for a divorce. The couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had fallen in love several years before. During the First World War, Olga served as an army nurse and was awarded a medal for personal gallantry. At the downfall of the Romanovs in the Russian Revolution of 1917, she fled with her husband and children to Crimea, where they lived under the threat of assassination. Her brother Nicholas and his family were shot and bayoneted to death by revolutionaries. (Full article...)

In the news

10 December 2024 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
Southern front of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
A Russian missile strike on a private clinic in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, kills three civilians and injures 11 others. (Al Arabiya)
10 December 2024 – Belarus–Russia relations, Nuclear risk during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirms the presence of nuclear weapons in his country, including Russia's Oreshnik missile system. (AP)
10 December 2024 – Russia–Ukraine relations
The Russian Federal Security Service arrests a German-Russian man in Russia for allegedly planning to sabotage a rail line in Nizhny Novgorod, on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine. (DW)
8 December 2024 – Syrian civil war
Russian state media reports that Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow, Russia, and that he and his family have been granted asylum by the Russian government. (Euronews) (Sky News)
8 December 2024 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War

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Mikhail Gorbachev
If the Russian word "perestroika" has easily entered the international lexicon, this is due to more than just interest in what is going on in the Soviet Union. Now the whole world needs restructuring, i.e. progressive development, a fundamental change.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World
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  1. ^ In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Fyodorovich and the family name is Stravinsky.