Social Stratification in Russia

For centuries, the aristocratic and merchant classes were nearly castelike, with endogamous marriage, a strict social hierarchy, and highly codified behaviors. Peasants and serfs constituted a largely impoverished rural population. After emancipation in 1861, as Russia developed slowly along capitalist lines, peasants migrated to factories in urban areas, where they formed an impoverished industrial working class. Strikes and protests and the radicalization of the intelligentsia led to the revolution of 1905, which prompted limited constitutional and social reform along with a reactionary crackdown on political opposition.

Widespread destitution, the ravages of World War I, and ineffective political leadership set the stage for the revolutionary activity of February 1917 in which the government was overthrown; this was followed by the political revolution of October 1917, in which the Bolsheviks took power and introduced communist ideology and social transformation. In the civil war of 1917–1921 and under Stalin in the 1930s, aristocrats, merchants, and well-off peasants were killed, imprisoned, exiled, or forced to emigrate and their property was confiscated.

The Soviet Union was supposed to be ruled by councils (Soviets) formed from the working masses. The creation of social and economic equality was the goal of early communist ideologues. However, Soviet society evolved into a class-stratified and class-conscious state where communist elites and some professionals had special access to goods, services, and housing. Bureaucratic workers and shop clerks used their control of services or goods to benefit themselves through a set of practices known as blat. However, education, health care, and other social services were available to all.

Although they had special privileges, most Communist Party officials did not accrue wealth. Postsocialist privatization has allowed many of them to build large fortunes, by parlaying their political status into direct ownership of state resources and industries. A new entrepreneurial class has developed, some of whose members have become fabulously wealthy. More slowly, a middle class is emerging in the cities, formed of intellectuals newly employed in business ventures and midlevel management and service personnel. Most of the population is impoverished, because of industrial collapse, inflation, financial crises, and privatization structures that benefit only the powerful. In 2000, 37 percent of the population lived below the minimum subsistence level of $34 per month. In some regions of Siberia and the Far East, the provision of critical services such as heating, fuel, and water has collapsed. Coal miners and industrial workers have faced severe shortages of critical supplies such as soap, long-term wage arrears, and the collapse of medical clinics and schools

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Urbanism, Architecture, and the Use of Space of Russia

In 1851, 92 percent of the population lived in rural villages, and at the time of the 1917 revolution, the population was more than 80 percent rural. The Soviet period brought movement to the cities as people tried to escape the harsh conditions on state-run collective farms. More than half of the rural population today is over age 65, because young people continue to migrate to the cities. Although there are still tens of thousands of small villages, many are disappearing as people die or depart.


By 1996, 73 percent of the population was urban, with most people living in high-rise apartment blocks constructed after the 1950s. Much of the urban population retains strong material and psychological ties to the countryside. Many people own modest dachas within an hour or two of their apartments and on weekends or in the summer work in their gardens, hike, hunt or gather in the forests, and bathe in lakes and rivers. Many other people retain ties to their natal villages or those of their parents or grandparents.
The largest cities are Moscow, nine million people; Saint Petersburg, nearly five million, Nizhnii Novgorod and Novosibirsk, 1.4 million each; Yekaterinburg, 1.3 million; and Samara, 1.2 million. After the end of the communist era, many places were rededicated with their prerevolutionary names.
Cities such as Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, and Yaroslavl grew around the old fortresses (kremlins) and monasteries that formed their centers and near the gates where artisans and traders peddled their goods. The old cities reflect their complex and often violent histories through the coexistence of multiple styles. In the European regions, Byzantine churches from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries stand in the shadows of modernist high-rises, with Renaissance, Baroque, or Neoclassical architecture nearby. These variegated cityscapes may be covered with grime, reflecting the proximity of industrial enterprises and the lack of funds for maintenance. In the wealthiest city centers, the post-Soviet years have brought varying degrees of urban revitalization.
Other cities were built almost from scratch and reflect a passion for grandiose urban planning. Saint Petersburg was built to secure access to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. Catherine the Great saw to it that Petersburg became a European city, with streets, avenues, and plazas, designed in an elegant Venetian style. In the Soviet era, ambitious building projects led to the founding and construction of industrial cities such as Magnitogorsk, Russia's "Steeltown," in the 1930s.
The central parts of most cities have important governmental, commercial, and religious buildings. Intermingled with these edifices are multistoried nineteenth-century town houses now used for commercial purposes or housing, and neighborhoods of walk-up apartment blocks. Farther out from the center stand rows of white apartment towers dating from the 1960s. Reaching from ten to thirty stories, these mammoth buildings house the majority of the population in small apartments. Although they are often distant from city centers and industrial areas, these apartments have provided privacy and security to millions of families. They are spacious compared to the barracks or communal apartments in which many families lived until the 1950s. Almost all the cities share this general layout, although some have avoided the fires and demolition campaigns that destroyed millions of traditional wooden structures in the past.
A modern grandiosity characterizes the state buildings constructed in Soviet cities from the 1930s to the 1950s. As the capital, Moscow was virtually transformed, but other cities were also reshaped by Stalinist architectural projects, which juxtaposed monumentalist neoclassicism with revolutionary modernism and industrial futurism. In the 1930s, subway systems were constructed beneath the largest cities, including the vast Moscow Metro.
Immensity in architecture and wide boulevards and plazas often result in inhospitable urban spaces. In the Soviet period, many amenities were unavailable or overburdened. Commercial venues were organized in a top down fashion through state planning, and shopping was a challenge. Some goods and services were located in distant neighborhoods, although day care centers and schools were always close. The commercial privatization of the post-Soviet years has brought new stores, restaurants, and cafés that offer a variety of food and manufactured goods. This has occurred to a lesser extent in provincial towns and villages, many of which have experienced a decline in public services.
An important element of urban life are the enormous public parks and forested areas within or adjacent to city boundaries. The result of this prerevolutionary and Soviet urban planning remains a source of pleasure and recreation. People spend hours strolling or sitting on benches to talk, smoke, play chess, or read. Smaller urban parks sometimes center on a statue of a writer or political leader; ten years after the end of communist rule, statues of Lenin still anchor parks and plazas. Statues often serve as meeting places, and a park may have a special identity as the gathering place for a subcultural group such as hippies, punks, gays, or literati.
The huge public plazas in many cities have been central to political life for centuries. Moscow's Red Square and Manezh are historically significant spaces used for government ritual, revolutionary protest, parades, concerts, holiday celebrations, and state funerals.
Until recently, when new wealth has allowed a small proportion of the population to build private homes and mansions on urban fringes, domestic existence has meant living in small apartments. Because of limited space, the largest room serves as living room, bedroom, and dining room for many families. Domestic furnishing is highly consistent, in part because until the 1990s all furniture was purchased from state stores, where variation was limited. Among the characteristics of Russian taste are functional furniture, of oriental-type carpets on the walls, and large wardrobes instead of closets. The bath and toilet are commonly located in small separate rooms side by side. Narrow balconies are used for storage, tools, laundry, and sitting.
Family members spend much of their time at the kitchen table, eating and drinking tea while talking, reading, watching television, cooking, or working on crafts. When guests come, all sit around one table for the entire gathering, which may continue for hours. Wedding parties usually take place at the home of the family of the bride or groom, and everyone squeezes around an extended table.
Although public spaces within and around apartment blocks are often decrepit and dirty, the threshold to a family's apartment marks a crucial transition zone to private space, which is clean and tidy. Shoes are remain just inside the doorway to keep dirt from the interior of the home.

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The Russian Language

Of Russia's estimated 150m population, it is thought that over 81% speak the official language of Russian as their first and only language. Most speakers of a minority language are also bilingual speakers of Russian. There are over 100 minority languages spoken in Russia today, the most popular of which is Tartar, spoken by more than 3% of the country's population. Other minority languages include Ukrainian, Chuvash, Bashir, Mordvin and Chechen. Although few of these populations make up even 1% of the Russian population, these languages are prominent in key regional areas.

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Russian climate

Russian Federation is a very big country, that’s why the climate differs: there is an cold arctic climate in the north Siberia and there is a sub-tropical hot climate near the Black Sea. The biggest part of Russia is situated in the north and there is a little amount of places, where Russian people can enjoy sun.

The northern part of Russian Federation has a moderate continental climate, which is the best for people live. This type of climate is formed by the western wind rose, which very often brings the cyclones and also there is a warm weather. Also in one of the Russian Federation’s region there is Gulf Stream influence, which is formed the russian climate of the Murmansk region. But the influence of the global warming is also can feel in Russian Federation – winters became warmer, there is less snow.

But in Russian Federation there is a part with continental climate – it’s a central part of the country. In the Siberia and Ural Mountains area there is a continental climate, there are relatively warm summers and very cold winters. The lowest temperature was fixed in the level of seventy one degrees below zero in nineteen twenty six in Republic of Yakutia – in the north part of Russian Federation

In the Sochi city and some other towns in the south of Russian Federation, there is a sub-tropical climat

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Population of Eastern Europe

Tsar-Russia				Soviet Union
1500 1550 1600 1650	6.0 11.0 13.0 - 15.0 15.0	1820 1830 1840 1850	48.6 56.1 62.4 68.5	1917 1926 1931 1939	184.6 147.0 161.0 170.5
1722 1750 before 1789	14.0 23.0 25.0	1860 1870 1880	74.1 84.5 97.7	1940 1950 1960	191.7 181.0 214.2
1795 1800 1810 1815	29.0 35.5 40.7 45.0	1890 1900 1910	11.,8 132.9 160.7	1970 1980 1990 2000	242.8 265.5 288.6 (290.5)

In this section Eastern Europe is defined as the territory of old Tsar-Russia and the former Soviet Union. This Russia was a large but scarcely populated country on the outskirts of Europe until the 18^th century. It was Peter the Great who transformed Russia into a major European power and he and his successors expanded Russia to the west. But Russia did not have the largest population in Europe at that time, it was the rapid population growth during the 19^th century that made Russia to the giant state that dominated Europe’s modern history. The First World War ended in disaster with great losses of territory and the communist revolution 1917 transformed the country into the Soviet Union. This state re-conquered several of the lost territories during the Second World War, but a chronic bad economy prompted its dissolution 1991. The Soviet Union was then replaced by the considerably smaller Russian Federation.

Russian Federation

1926 1931 1939 1960 1970 1979 1990 1991 2000 2010

93.5 111.2 109.3 118.9 130.1 137.6 148.0 148.6 146.0 142.9

The state that today is Russia was originally a part republic of the Soviet Union. It is an independent state since 1992. Russia population is decreasing despite of a large immigration from the other former Soviet republics and there are no signs that this trend is going to change.

Russian Provinces and Soviet Republics

	1811	1838	1851	1863	1885	1897	1914	2000	2010
Bessarabia Caucasus Turkestan	0.300	0.790	0.874 2.7	1.0 4.2	1.5 7.3 3.7	1.9 9.3 5.3	2.7 12.7 7.1
	1926	1931	1939	1960	1970	1979	1990
Belarus Ukraine Moldavia	5.0 29.0	5.2 31.4	5.6 40.0 3.4	8.1 41.9 2.9	9.0 47.7 3.6	9.5 49.8 3.9	10.3 51.8 4.4	10.4 49.2 4.5	9.8 46.4 4.1
Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan	2.7 0.9 2.3	2.9 1.0 2.5	3.5 1.3 3.2	4.0 1.8 3.7	4.7 2.5 5.1	5.0 3.0 6.0	5.5 3.3 7.1	5.0 3.4 7.9	4.7 3.3 9.0
Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Turkmenistan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan	6.1 4.6 1.0 1.0 1.0	7.1 4.7 1.1 1.1 1.2	6.1 6.3 1.3 1.5 1.5	9.3 8.1 1.5 2.1 2.0	13.0 11.8 2.2 2.9 2.9	14.7 15.4 2.8 3.5 3.8	16.7 20.3 3.6 4.4 5.3	16.8 24.1 4.3 4.5 6.1	15.2 27.4 5.0 5.4 6.9

Most of Bessarabia became the Soviet republic of Moldavian. Caucasus consisted of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Turkestan consisted of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

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Capital and Major Cities of Russia

MOSCOW  is the capital city of Russia with a population of some 9,500,000.
   
The other main cities in descending order of size are:


     ST. PETERSBURG (Leningrad);    approximately          5,100,000
   
     NOVOSIBIRSK                            approximately          1,400,000
   
     NIZHNY NOVGOROD                approximately          1,400,000
   
     YEKATERINBURG                       approximately         1,310,000

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The history of Russia

W ith the dissolution of the Soviet Union there has been an enormous resurgence of interest in Russia's pre-Soviet past, as well as a great deal of debate and reconsideration of the Soviet era itself. This shift has not resulted in a simple vilification of everything Soviet or a naive embrace of all that preceded it, but it has spurred an unprecedented effort to regain the ancient Russian national heritage. Churches are being restored all across the country, great Russian writers and artists whose works were banned are once again being honored, and the individual character of ancient cities and communities is once again becoming established. Next year, the city of Moscow is celebrating its 850th Anniversary, a celebration that will mark the recovery, as well as the commemoration, of its glorious past.

For most western visitors, the bulk of Russia's history is nothing more than a compendium of hazy legends and sensationalist rumors--from scurrilous stories about Catherine the Great to tabloid television reports of the miraculous survival of the children of Nicholas II. However, the factual history of the country is no less compelling than its fabulous history, and even a brief introduction to the great and not-so-great figures of its past make a visit far more rewarding.

The history of Russia begins with that of the Eastern Slavs and the Finno-Ugric peoples. The state of Garðaríki ( "the realm of towns"), which was centered in Novgorod and included the entire areas inhabited by Ilmen Slavs, Veps and Votes, was established by the Varangian chieftain Rurik in 862 (the traditional beginning of Russian history).[1] Kievan Rus', the first united East Slavic state, was founded by Rurik's successor Oleg of Novgorod in 882.[2] The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988,[3] beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.[4] Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state because of the Mongol invasion of Rus' in 1237–1240. During that time a number of regional magnates, in particular Novgorod and Pskov, fought to inherit the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. After the 13th century, Moscow came to dominate the former cultural center.[4] By the 18th century, the Grand Duchy of Moscow had become the huge Russian Empire, stretching from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth eastward to the Pacific Ocean. Expansion in the western direction sharpened Russia's awareness of its separation from much of the rest of Europe and shattered the isolation in which the initial stages of expansion had occurred. Successive regimes of the 19th century responded to such pressures with a combination of halfhearted reform and repression. Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, but its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to increase revolutionary pressures. Between the abolition of serfdom and the beginning of World War I in 1914, the Stolypin reforms, the constitution of 1906 and State Duma introduced notable changes to the economy and politics of Russia,[5] but the tsars were still not willing to relinquish autocratic rule, or share their power.[6]

The Russian Revolution in 1917 was triggered by a combination of economic breakdown, war weariness, and discontent with the autocratic system of government, and it first brought a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists to power, but their failed policies led to seizure of power by the Communist Bolsheviks on 25 October. Between 1922 and 1991, the history of Russia is essentially the history of the Soviet Union, effectively an ideologically based state which was roughly conterminous with the Russian Empire before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The approach to the building of socialism, however, varied over different periods in Soviet history, from the mixed economy and diverse society and culture of the 1920s to the command economy and repressions of the Joseph Stalin era to the "era of stagnation" in the 1980s. From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called themselves, beginning in March 1918.[7] However, by the late 1980s, with the weaknesses of its economic and political structures becoming acute, the Communist leaders embarked on major reforms, which led to the fall of the Soviet Union.[8]

The history of the Russian Federation is brief, starting from the late 1991. Russia was recognized as the legal successor to the Soviet Union on the international stage.[9] However, Russia has lost its superpower status as it faced serious challenges in its efforts to forge a new post-Soviet political and economic system. Scrapping the socialist central planning and state ownership of property of the Soviet era, Russia attempted to build an economy with elements of market capitalism, with often painful results.[8] Even today Russia shares many continuities of political culture and social structure with its tsarist and Soviet past.

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