Russia in brief
The nation, officially the Russian Federation, best place for Tourism In Russia which is commonly referred to as Russia, is located partly in Eastern Europe and partly in North Asia; it borders the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east.
Russia borders 14 countries, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, and Ukraine.
It shares maritime borders with Japan, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States.
Russia’s territory covers an area of 17,098,242 km², approximately 11% of the Earth’s landmass. The Russian Federation is the largest country in the world (by area); it is more than twice the size of the contiguous United States. However, large parts of Russia are uninhabited or uninhabitable because permafrost (soil that remains frozen throughout the year and is unsuitable for agriculture) covers more than 60% of Russia’s territory.
Russia is a country with a low population density (8.5 people/km², compared with Germany 226 people/km², and the USA about 33 people/km²). Russia has a population of 145.8 million people (in 2021), it is number 9 in the top 10 most populous countries, but is plagued by a drastic population decline since the 1990s.
Most Russians live in the westernmost fifth of the country in the European part of Russia.
The capital and largest city is Moscow, the core of political power and the center of culture and trade. St. Petersburg, the former imperial capital, is Russia’s second-largest city and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. However, Tourism In Russia is very good.
Russian Federation | Rossiyskaya Federatsiya | Российская Федерация
Background:
The defeat of the Russian Empire in World War I led to the seizure of power by communists and the formation of the USSR.
The brutal rule of Josef STALIN (1924-53) strengthened Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at the 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. However, 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 a market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of the communist period. Russia shifted toward a centralized authoritarian state under President Vladimir PUTIN (2000-2008, 2012-present) in which the regime seeks to legitimize its rule through managed elections, populist appeals, and a foreign policy focused on enhancing the country’s geopolitical influence.
The most recent example of this is Russia’s role in the Libyan Civil War, where it played all sides to get a seat at the negotiating table. Libyan and U.S. officials accuse Russia of deploying fighters through a private security contractor, the Wagner Group, to key battleground areas in Libya in the past months.
Since early November 2021, there has been increasing evidence that Russia is planning an attack on Ukraine.
On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine.
Government:(Tourism In Russia)
Federation.
Independence: 24 August 1991.
Geography:
Location: Northern Asia, bordering the Arctic Ocean, between Eastern Europe and the North Pacific Ocean (the Russian portion west of the Urals belongs to Europe).
Area: 17 million km² (6.5 million sq. mi.); about 1.8 times the size of the United States.
Terrain: Broad plain with low hills west of the Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia; uplands and mountains (Caucasus range) along southern borders.
Climate: Northern continental, from subarctic to subtropical.
People:
Nationality: Russian(s).
Population: 145.8 million (in 2021)
Ethnic groups: Russian 81%, Tatar 4%, Ukrainian 3%, other 12%.
Religion: Russian Orthodox, Islam, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Protestant, Buddhist, other.
Language: Russian (official); more than 140 other languages and dialects.
Literacy: 98%.
Natural resources: Petroleum, natural gas, timber, furs, precious and nonferrous metals.
Agriculture products: Grain, sugar beets, sunflower seed, vegetables, fruits, beef, and milk.
Industries: Complete range of mining and extractive industries producing coal, oil, gas, chemicals, and metals. All forms of machine building from rolling mills to high-performance aircraft, space vehicles, and shipbuilding. Road and rail transportation equipment; communications equipment; agricultural machinery, tractors, and construction equipment; electric power generating and transmitting equipment; medical and scientific instruments; consumer durables, textiles, foodstuffs, and handicrafts.
Exports – commodities: petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood and wood products, chemicals, and a wide variety of civilian and military manufactures. Russia is the second-largest conventional arms exporter after the United States.
Exports partners: China 14%, Netherlands 10%, Belarus 5%, Germany 5% (2019)
Imports – commodities: machinery, vehicles, pharmaceutical products, plastic, semi-finished metal products, meat, fruits and nuts, optical and medical instruments, iron, steel.
Imports partners: China 20%, Germany 13%, Belarus 6% (2019)
Currency: Russian Ruble (RUR)
Official Sites of Russia (Tourism In Russia)
View of the Kremlin, with the Kremlin Wall, the towers, and the Grand Kremlin Palace (right). The ‘fortress inside a city,’ is overlooking the Moskva River in the center of Moscow. The term Kremlin is also often used to refer to the government of Russia. Tourism In Russia is the best.
Political system
Russia is a federal republic and, in theory, a multi-party representative democracy, wherein the President is the head of state, and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The President is also the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Russia’s legislature is the bi-cameral Federal Assembly of Russia (parliament), which consists of the State Duma (lower house), and the Federation Council (upper house), headed by the Chairman of the Federation Council (speaker).
Official Russian Government websites
These websites are very helpful for Tourism In Russia
Russian Government
Russia’s Home Page.
President of Russia
The official website of Russia’s president, who is again, Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s bicameral Federal Assembly (Legislative)
Council of Federation
The upper chamber of the Russian parliament.
State Duma
The State Duma is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a government institution in charge of the foreign policy and foreign relations of Russia. Its official website also provides information about diplomatic and consular missions of Russia abroad.
Diplomatic Missions: (Tourism In Russia)
Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN
Russia is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Embassy of the Russian Federation in the USA
Washington D.C.
Statistics (Tourism In Russia)
Goskomstat
State Committee of the Russian Federation on Statistics.
Interstate Statistical Committee of the CIS
Official statistical information on the social and economic situation in the CIS countries.
The House of the Government of the Russian Federation in Moscow (left). The building at the Moskva River is known as the Russian White House; it serves as the office of the Russian government and is the workplace of the Russian Prime Minister. The building in the background is the Kudrinskaya Square Building, one of seven Stalinist skyscrapers in the city.
Online News from Russia – Major Russian Newspapers and News Agencies
News Agencies (Tourism In Russia)
Interfax
Russian News Agency (in Russian).
Interfax Information Services Group
The international website of Interfax.
Prime
Russian business news agency.
RIA Novosti
Russian state-owned domestic news agency with a tendency to create its own reality.
Tass
Formerly Itar-Tass, Russian News Agency.
Russian Newspapers in Russian (Tourism In Russia)
Delovoy Peterburg
dp.ru is a Saint Petersburg based daily business newspaper.
Izvestia
The online portal of the broadsheet newspaper with national and international news.
Kommersant
A major daily liberal newspaper.
Komsomolskaya Pravda
Nationwide daily tabloid newspaper.
Moskovsky Komsomolets
The online version of the Moscow-based daily newspaper.
The Moscow Times
Independent English-language and Russian-language online newspaper.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Russian daily newspaper for an educated politicized audience.
Novaya Gazeta
The Russian newspaper is well known for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. The newspaper is suspending its online and print activities until the end of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
Government-owned Russian newspaper.
Trud
Trud (English: Labor), is a full-color newspaper and a voice of the “center-left,” published in Moscow.
Vladnews
Vladivostok News on-line.
TV (Tourism In Russia)
Russia-1 (Россия-1)
A state-owned Russian television channel.
Channel One Russia
State-controlled Channel One Russia was the first television channel to broadcast in the Russian Federation.
Public Television of Russia
Russian television station, established in 2013.
NTV (Cyrillic: НТВ)
Homepage of the critical TV-Station (in Russian).
RT (Russia Today)
Russian propaganda TV and online magazine funded by the Russian government.
International News sources about Russia (Tourism In Russia)
Al Jazeera
Russia news from Al Jazeera.
The New York Times
Russia related news from The New York Times.
Reuters
Russia related news from Reuters, the international news organization.
Arts & Culture of Russia
Murnau with railway and castle (1909).
Painting: Wassily Kandinsky (Tourism In Russia)
Arts & Culture (Tourism In Russia)
Museums
Imperial egg “Rosebud”, one of the jewelled eggs created by the House of Fabergé, in St. Petersburg.
Image: Mikhail Ovchinnikov (Tourism In Russia)
The State Hermitage Museum
The second-largest art museum in the world presents the development of world culture and art from the Stone Age to the 20th century.
The Moscow Kremlin (Tourism In Russia)
The Kremlin complex serves as the official residence of the President of Russia and as a museum.
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
The museum houses one of the most representative collections of European art in Russia, ranging from antiquity to modernity.
The State Russian Museum
The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg houses the most extensive collection of Russian art in the world.
The State Tretyakov Gallery
One of the largest museums in Russia with more than 100,000 works of art, the museum of the history of Russian art presents icons, paintings, graphics, and sculpture.
Museums in Russia (official list)
Detailed information about any Russian museum. The official list of Russian museums, more than 3000 museums are listed.
Bulgakov Museum Moscow
Mikhail Bulgakov was a Russian writer, physician, and playwright, and author of The Master and Margarita and Heart of a Dog.
Performing Arts (Tourism In Russia)
Bolshoi Ballet
Famous Russian classical ballet in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Golden Mask (Tourism In Russia)
Russian performing arts festival and the site for the National Theater Award.
Mariinsky Theatre
The historic theater for opera and ballet in Saint Petersburg opened in 1860. It was here, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov had their premieres.
Moscow Art Theatre
A renowned drama theater, founded in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Libraries (Tourism In Russia)
National Library of Russia
The country’s oldest state library, St. Petersburg.
Russian State Library
The largest library in Europe and the second-largest in the world, is located in Moscow.
More Russian Art (Tourism In Russia)
Portrait of a Philosopher. (Tourism In Russia) Painting: Lyubov Popova (1915)Marc Chagall
Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin (1887–1985).
Peter Carl Fabergé
Imperial Court Jeweler to the Russian Tsars and inventor of the famous Fabergé egg.
Wassily Kandinsky
(1866–1944), Russian painter and theorist, and a pioneer of abstract art. Art blog with Kandinsky artworks and quotes.
Kazimir Malevich
Wikipedia entry for the Polish-Ukrainian Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist (1879–1935).
Lyubov Popova
Wikipedia entry for the Russian avant-garde artist, painter, and designer.
Alexander Rodchenko
Wikipedia entry for the St. Petersburg-born Russian artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer.
Pavel Tchelitchew
MoMA collection of the Russian-born surrealist painter.
Russian avant-garde
Wikipedia entry for the large, influential wave of modern avant-garde art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and clashed with the state-sponsored Socialist Realist direction of the 1930s.
Russian Art + Culture (Tourism In Russia)
International guide to the world of Russian art and culture. The organization is also the founder of the Russian Art Week in London.
Transportation (Tourism In Russia)
Space
Roscosmos
The Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities is in charge of a broad spectrum and different types of space flight and cosmonautics programs.
Air (Tourism In Russia)
Aeroflot
The Russian flag carrier.
East Line Group
Group of companies for air transportation and airport management at Domodedovo International Airport.
Rossiya Airlines
The Russian airline is headquartered in Saint Petersburg.
Siberia Airlines (S7 Airlines)
Russia’s biggest domestic airline.
Transaero
Transaero Airlines was a Russian airline; it filed for bankruptcy on 1 October 2015.
Ural Airlines
Russian airline based in Yekaterinburg.
UTair
UTair is a Russian low-cost airline and one of the five largest air carriers; it is the largest Russian helicopter airline.
Moskovsky railway terminus in Saint Petersburg.
Image: A.Savin
Rail (Tourism In Russia)
Russian Railways
The official website of Russian Railways (JSC), with information on passenger and freight transportation, online services, infrastructure, and railway maps. The wholly state-owned railway is Russia’s fifth-largest company.
Railway Ticket Reservation Center
Railway adventure in Russia.
Trans-Siberian Railway
Railway guide with a photo-gallery of stations, views, and bridges.
Vladivostok icebreaker beside Soviet submarine S-189, anchored in Saint Petersburg. The icebreaker was built at Vyborg Shipyard. In the background, you can see the Norwegian cruise liner MS Black Watch. (Tourism In Russia)
Tourism in Russia
Ergaki is a nature park located in the south of the Krasnoyarsk Krai in the Western Sayan mountain range in southern Siberia.
Image: Andrea Gennad
Destination Russia – Travel and Tour Guides (Tourism In Russia)
Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Novosibirsk, Ergaki, Kamchatka, Lake Baikal, Sochi, Vladivostok, Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Find accommodation, hotels, attractions, festivals, events, tourist boards, biking, skiing, hiking, climbing, cruising, diving, adventure tours, and much more.
Travel Russia
Travel in Russia, very official information by The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation’s Federal Agency for Tourism.
Travel Guide to Russia
Russian National Tourist Office in the UK.
Russian National Group
Russian National Tourist Office in the US.
WayToRussia.Net
A comprehensive guide to Russia and a travel services directory.
Wikivoyage: Russia
Wikivoyage entry for Russia.
City Guides (Tourism In Russia)
Moscow
Tourism In Russia
Moscow city website.
Tourism In Russia
Moscow tourism web site.
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
The official portal to St. Petersburg, offering a wide variety of information about the city and its life.
Visit Petersburg
Official city tourism portal of St. Petersburg.
Perm
City of Perm
Official web-site.
Hotel
Grand Hotel Europe
Russia’s oldest operating grand hotel founded in 1703.
Caucasus
Troubled borderland
BBC News about the Caucasus region.
What is Russia famous for?
On the upper reaches of the Volga near the town of Myishkin. The Volga is the longest river in Europe with 3690 km.
Russian Symbols
The red Kremlin star.The five-pointed filled red star is a symbol often associated with communist ideology. The hammer (workers) and sickle (peasants) and a red star were the symbols on the red flag of the Soviet Union (1955–1991).
The pentagonal red Kremlin stars replaced the gilded eagles on Moscow’s Kremlin towers that had symbolized Imperial Russia. Today the double-headed eagle can be seen again on the state seal of the Russian Federation; it is modeled after the medieval original.
The Russian bear (Russian: Русский медведь, romanized: Russky medved). The Eurasian brown bear is the national animal of Russia. The bear was a widely used symbol for Russia, dating back to the 16th century. The bear was especially often used in political cartoons by the West and other countries as a symbol for Russia, and not always in a flattering context.
Geography
Russia is the largest country in the world, bordering 14 nations and two breakaway states (Abkhazia and South Ossetia). The vast country stretches across the northern part of Eurasia and is divided by the Ural Mountains into European Russia (west) and Siberia in Asia (east). Russia would be even bigger if it had not sold Alaska.
The Ural mountain range forms the (conventional) boundary between Europe and Asia.
Siberia, the vast region east of the Urals is known for its Gulag camps, Permafrost and the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The Russian Volga is the longest river in Europe with 3690 km.
Lake Ladoga near St. Petersburg is the largest lake located entirely in Europe. The lake is the largest freshwater lake in Europe and Asia and the deepest lake in the world (1,743 m).
Mount Elbrus is the highest mountain in Russia (and Europe) at 5,642 meters.
The Kamchatka Peninsula and the neighboring Kuril Islands are part of the Circum-Pacific Belt, also known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of active volcanoes, geysers, hot springs, earthquakes and tsunamis.
Architecture (Tourism In Russia)
The Crimean bridge connects mainland Russia with the Crimean Peninsula.
Image: RosavtodorThe onion-shaped domes of Eastern Orthodox churches such as Saint Basil’s Cathedral (1482–95) in Moscow.
Stalinist style skyscrapers, such as Moscow’s Seven Sisters.
Kremlins, Russian citadels, the most famous is the Kremlin in Moscow, within its tower studded walls are five palaces, and four cathedrals.
The Crimean Bridge is the longest bridge in Russia and in Europe. The 19 km (12 mi) long bridge spans the Kerch Strait between the Russian mainland and Russian occupied Crimean Peninsula. Planning for the bridge began in 2014, shortly after the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Russian Culture
Hermitage museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg is the largest art museum in the world by gallery space. In 1764, Empress Catherine the Great purchased a series of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. These works of art formed the basis and the beginning of the Hermitage Museum collection.
Ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre, the Bolshoi Ballet was an internationally renowned classical ballet company based at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow – until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when many of its talents left the company. Putin has ensured that the country’s leading ballet companies have lost their talents.
Moscow State Circus – The name Moscow State Circus is used for a variety of circuses. The Russian Circus experienced its heyday during the Soviet era, when acts from many Russian circuses joined together to tour the world under the title “The Moscow Circus.”
Amber Room – The Amber Room in the Catherine Palace, the summer residence of the Russian tsars near Saint Petersburg, was a chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. The room was built in Prussia in the 18th century; it was dismantled and finally disappeared during the Second World War.
Other symbols for Russian culture are the Samovar (a richly decorated tea boiler), the Balalaika (a Russian string instrument), Matryoshka dolls (hollow wooden dolls, designed to nest inside one another)
Russian staple food
Borscht, Shchi, and Solyanka, Blini, Beef Stroganoff, Bublik, Pelmeni, Shashlik, Kaviar and Vodka; Tea from a Samovar.
Russian Arts (Tourism In Russia)
Russian Painters
Chagall, Naum Gabo, Kandinsky, Malevich, Popova, Ilya Repin, Rodchenko, Valentin Serov, Pavel Tchelitchew.
Russian Literature
Bulgakov, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Nabokov, Pasternak, Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Turgenev.
Russia History
Zaporozoic Cossacks write a letter to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire.
Painting: Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844 – 29 September 1930)
Russia’s history begins with the formation of the Kiev Empire (from 980 to 1240), the Kiev Rus, the first East Slavic empire, which was formed in the 10th century. Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod became the first major cities of the new union of immigrants from Scandinavia with the Slavs and the Finnish-Ugric people.
History of Russia
Part of a series on the History of Russia by Wikipedia.
Russia profile – Timeline
BBC article about significant events in Russia’s history.
Timeline of Russian history
Wikipedia page with a timeline of Russian history, covering important legal and territorial changes and political events in Russia and its predecessor states.
H-Russia
Russian and Soviet history – bibliographical, research and teaching aids
Museum of History of Moscow.
History of Russia
Comprehensive articles about Russia’s history by HistoryWorld.
Russia | Geography, History, Map, & Facts
Entry at Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Russian conquest of Siberia
Wikipedia entry for the time when Siberia became part of Russia.
Map of the Soviet Union
Political map of the Soviet Union.
Aerial view of Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island (literally Hare Island) in the Neva River in Saint Petersburg. The Peter and Paul Fortress is a citadel from the early 18th century, the origin and historical center of the city of St. Petersburg.
In the end we find out that Russia is one of the tourist country and they are very supportive to tourists for Tourism In Russia.