Russia

Russia, officially the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация), is a transcontinental country in eastern Europe and northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world by land area and stretches from the Baltic and Black Seas to the Pacific Ocean and Arctic. Its capital and largest city is Moscow.

The present Russian Federation emerged from the destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) had been the largest republic of the USSR, containing most of its territory, population and industrial base. The Soviet planned economy was dismantled during the late 1980s and 1990s and replaced by capitalist property relations, mass privatisation and a new class of private owners.

Vladimir Putin has been the dominant figure in Russian politics since becoming prime minister in 1999 and acting president at the end of that year. He served as president from 2000 to 2008 and again from 2012 onward. Mikhail Mishustin has served as prime minister since 2020.

Russia remains a capitalist state, although the federal government controls or holds major stakes in several strategic sectors. Its foreign policy since the 2000s has increasingly opposed the US-led unipolar order and further expansion of NATO. Russia maintains close relations with the People's Republic of China, participates in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and officially supports the development of a multipolar international system.

History

Rise of Moscow

The modern Russian state developed from the East Slavic principalities which emerged from medieval Rus'. Following the fragmentation of Rus' and the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, Moscow gradually became one of the main political centres of northeastern Rus'.

The rulers of Moscow expanded their territory through war, inheritance and diplomacy. Under Ivan III, who ruled from 1462 to 1505, Moscow absorbed Novgorod and other neighbouring territories and increasingly asserted itself as the centre of a unified Russian state. Ivan ceased paying tribute to the Great Horde, and the confrontation on the Ugra River in 1480 ended the remaining political dependence of Moscow upon the Horde.

Ivan III also adopted the title Sovereign of All Rus'. Central authority became stronger at the expense of the old regional aristocracy, while the territory controlled from Moscow continued to expand.

Tsardom of Russia

In 1547 Ivan IV was crowned Tsar of All Russia, establishing the Tsardom of Russia. His reign saw major territorial expansion, including the conquest of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 and Astrakhan in 1556, bringing the Volga under Russian control and opening further expansion into Siberia.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also saw the further development of serfdom. Peasants were increasingly tied to landed estates and placed under the authority of the nobility. The Law Code of 1649 consolidated many of these relations.

After the dynastic and social crisis known as the Time of Troubles, the Romanov dynasty came to power in 1613. The state continued expanding eastward through Siberia and southward towards the Caucasus and Black Sea region.

Russian Empire

Peter I adopted the title Emperor in 1721 following Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, after which the state became known as the Russian Empire. Peter's government reorganised the military and state administration, expanded manufacturing and founded Saint Petersburg as a new capital.

These reforms strengthened the state but did not abolish the feudal exploitation of the peasantry. Serfdom remained one of the foundations of the imperial social order. Noble landowners possessed extensive power over the peasants attached to their estates.

The empire expanded considerably during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into the Caucasus, Central Asia, Poland, Finland and the Black Sea region. Expansion created a large multinational empire containing dozens of peoples, languages and religions.

Serfdom was formally abolished under Alexander II in 1861. More than twenty million privately owned serfs received personal freedom, although the settlement generally required peasants to make redemption payments for land and left much of the countryside poor and unequal.

Capitalist industry developed rapidly during the later nineteenth century, especially in mining, metallurgy, railways and the large cities. This created an increasingly concentrated industrial working class alongside the much larger peasant population. Labour organisations and revolutionary socialist movements expanded under conditions of low wages, long working hours, political repression and continued rural poverty.

The revolution of 1905 forced Nicholas II to concede an elected State Duma, but the monarchy retained substantial power. Russia entered the First World War in 1914. Military defeats, food shortages and economic breakdown deepened the crisis of the imperial system.

Russian Revolution

The February Revolution of 1917 overthrew Nicholas II and ended the monarchy. Power was divided between the bourgeois Provisional Government and the growing system of workers' and soldiers' soviets.

The Bolsheviks argued that the bourgeois government could not solve the questions of war, land or workers' power. By the autumn of 1917 they had won majorities in several of the most important soviets.

The October Revolution transferred state power to the soviets. The Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets approved the formation of a Soviet government led by the Bolsheviks.

The new government withdrew from the First World War, transferred landed estates to peasant control and began nationalising major industry. It soon faced civil war, foreign intervention and economic collapse.

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the principal Soviet republic during the Civil War. The Red Army defeated the main White armies and foreign-backed forces by the early 1920s.

Socialist period

On 30 December 1922 the RSFSR joined the Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Transcaucasian Soviet republics in forming the Soviet Union. The founding treaty established the USSR as a federation rather than simply extending the Russian republic over the other Soviet territories.

The RSFSR was by far the largest union republic. Much of the Soviet Union's heavy industry, scientific institutions, armed forces and natural resources were located within it, but the economic system operated on an all-union basis rather than as a separate Russian national economy.

During the 1930s, socialist industrialisation transformed the Soviet economy. Heavy industry, electricity generation, machine-building and transport expanded rapidly, while agriculture was collectivised. The USSR developed from a predominantly agrarian country into a major industrial power.

The Soviet Union bore the main burden of the European war against Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War. Much of western Russia was occupied and devastated. The battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk were among the decisive campaigns of the war, and millions of Soviet citizens from all nationalities were killed.

Post-war reconstruction restored industry and housing across the devastated western regions. The Soviet Union became one of the world's leading industrial, scientific and military powers and developed nuclear energy, spaceflight and an extensive system of public education, healthcare and social provision.

The later Soviet period saw slower economic growth and increasing problems in planning and administration. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika and glasnost introduced greater enterprise autonomy, market mechanisms and political liberalisation. These reforms weakened central economic planning and the authority of the Communist Party while strengthening forces seeking either capitalist restoration or republican independence.

Destruction of the Soviet Union

The RSFSR Congress of People's Deputies adopted a declaration of state sovereignty on 12 June 1990. The declaration asserted the supremacy of Russian republican law but still spoke of building an updated Soviet Union rather than immediately leaving it.

A USSR-wide referendum was held on 17 March 1991. In the RSFSR, turnout was about 75.4 percent and 71.3 percent of participating voters supported preserving the Soviet Union as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics.

Despite the vote, the Union continued to disintegrate during 1991. Boris Yeltsin, elected president of the RSFSR, became the main political rival of Gorbachev and increasingly transferred authority from Soviet institutions to the Russian republican government.

On 8 December 1991 the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belavezha Agreement establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States. On 21 December, eleven former Soviet republics signed the Alma-Ata Declaration, which stated that the USSR had ceased to exist. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on 25 December and the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist the following day.

The Russian Federation continued the USSR's permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and inherited much of its diplomatic, military and nuclear infrastructure.

Capitalist restoration

The Yeltsin government rapidly dismantled the remaining institutions of the planned economy. Price controls were abolished in January 1992 and large parts of state industry were privatised during the following years.

The results were severe. Output collapsed, inflation destroyed savings and real wages fell. Industrial production declined while wealth became concentrated among a small group of businessmen who acquired former Soviet assets during privatisation.

The process created the class of capitalists commonly known as the Russian oligarchs. The 1995 loans-for-shares programme transferred stakes in major natural-resource enterprises to private financial groups on highly favourable terms.

Political conflict over the reforms produced the constitutional crisis of 1993. Yeltsin issued Decree No. 1400 on 21 September, attempting to dissolve the Congress of People's Deputies and Supreme Soviet. Parliament rejected the decree and declared that Yeltsin had violated the constitution. The standoff ended on 4 October when military units loyal to Yeltsin shelled and stormed the parliament building.

A new constitution was adopted in December 1993. It abolished the remaining Soviet constitutional institutions and established the present system built around a powerful presidency and the bicameral Federal Assembly.

The Russian economy remained unstable throughout the decade and suffered another major financial crisis in 1998. By the end of the Yeltsin period, the social and economic destruction of the 1990s had badly damaged the standing of both the government and the liberal market reforms associated with it.

Putin period

Vladimir Putin became prime minister in August 1999 and acting president after Yeltsin resigned on 31 December. He won the presidential election in March 2000.

The economy recovered rapidly during the early 2000s. Rising oil and gas revenues were important, but industrial production, wages and domestic consumption also recovered from the depressed levels of the 1990s.

The new government strengthened federal authority and reduced the independent political power exercised by some oligarchs. Several strategic industries came under greater state control, while state corporations expanded in sectors such as energy, defence, railways and nuclear power.

This was not a restoration of socialism. Private ownership, markets, wage labour and capitalist accumulation remained the basis of the economy. The change was instead from the particularly weak and oligarch-dominated state of the Yeltsin period towards a more centralised capitalist state with stronger control over strategic sectors.

Russia also began pursuing a more independent foreign policy. Putin's 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference openly criticised the attempted construction of a unipolar world and the use of military force by the United States and its allies.

At the 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members" of the alliance. Russia opposed this policy and increasingly treated NATO's movement into the former Soviet space as a direct security issue.

Crimea and Donbass

Relations between Russia and Ukraine deteriorated sharply following the Maidan in 2014.

Crimea held a referendum on 16 March 2014 and subsequently joined Russia under Russian constitutional law. Russia regards Crimea and Sevastopol as federal subjects. Ukraine and most United Nations member states continue to recognise the peninsula as Ukrainian territory.

At the same time, the Russian Spring developed in Donetsk and Lugansk. The Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic were proclaimed during the anti-Maidan uprising and fought Ukraine in the War in Donbass.

Russia provided political, humanitarian, economic and military support to the republics but did not formally recognise them until 21 February 2022.

Special Military Operation

On 24 February 2022 Russia began what it officially calls the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Putin stated that its objectives included the defence of Donbass and the "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine.

The conflict developed into a major war involving large-scale Western military and financial support for Ukraine. NATO states have supplied weapons, training, intelligence and other forms of assistance to the Ukrainian state.

In September 2022 the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye Region and Kherson Region held referendums on accession to Russia. Russia admitted the four territories as federal subjects in October. Ukraine and most UN member states reject the referendums and Russian sovereignty over these territories.

The Russo-Ukrainian War remains ongoing, as of September 2026.

Politics

Russia is a federal republic with a strong presidency. The president is head of state and has extensive powers over the executive, foreign policy, defence and senior state appointments. The Federal Assembly consists of the State Duma and Federation Council.

Vladimir Putin was elected to another presidential term in March 2024. Mikhail Mishustin remains prime minister.

United Russia has been the principal governing party since the early 2000s and has held the largest bloc in the State Duma. Putin is formally independent rather than a party member.

The other major parliamentary parties include the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), A Just Russia — Patriots — For Truth, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and New People. The CPRF is the largest communist organisation in the country and officially describes the construction of socialism and defence of the working population as its principal objectives.

The political order built under Putin differs considerably from that of the Yeltsin years. The federal government has greater control over regional administrations, the security apparatus and strategic industries, while the political influence of independently acting oligarchs has been reduced. The underlying economic system remains capitalist.

Soviet political and economic attitudes have remained strong among the population. A Levada Center survey conducted in August 2021 found that 49 percent of respondents preferred the Soviet political system, compared with 18 percent who preferred the contemporary Russian system and 16 percent who preferred a Western-style political system. In the same survey, 62 percent preferred an economy based on state planning and distribution, while 24 percent preferred one based primarily on private property and market relations.

Economy

Russia has a capitalist mixed economy with substantial state ownership in strategic sectors. The Constitution protects private, state, municipal and other forms of property and guarantees freedom of economic activity.

The state retains major positions in natural gas, nuclear energy, railways, defence production, banking and other industries. Gazprom is majority state-controlled, Rosatom is a state corporation and Russian Railways is state-owned. Large privately owned firms operate alongside them in energy, metals, retail, finance, agriculture and manufacturing.

Oil and natural gas remain important export industries. Russia is also a major producer of metals, fertilisers, wheat, nuclear technology, military equipment and other industrial goods.

The structure of the economy continues to reflect both the Soviet industrial inheritance and the consequences of capitalist restoration. Russia retained substantial scientific, engineering and heavy-industrial capacity after 1991, but the 1990s also produced deindustrialisation and greater dependence on commodity exports.

Western sanctions expanded considerably after 2014 and especially after February 2022. Russia responded by redirecting a larger share of trade towards China, India and other non-Western markets, increasing domestic production in some sanctioned sectors and expanding the use of currencies other than the US dollar in international trade.

State ownership in itself does not make the economy socialist. Production remains largely organised through commodity exchange, profit and wage labour, with private capital controlling a large part of productive property.

Debate over imperialism

The classification of modern Russia has produced disagreement among Marxists.

One current argues that Russia does not occupy the same position in the world system as the major Western imperialist powers. Writers associated with this view point to Russia's comparatively limited role in global finance, the importance of raw-material exports, its smaller stock of foreign assets and the continuing dominance of Western financial institutions and multinational corporations in the world economy. Stansfield Smith, writing for MR Online, has argued on this basis that Russia does not fulfil the central features of imperialism identified by Vladimir Lenin.

Other communist organisations disagree. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), for example, describes Russia as a capitalist imperialist power and treats the conflict with NATO as a rivalry between competing capitalist blocs for markets, resources and spheres of influence.

The disagreement concerns how Lenin's analysis of monopoly capital, finance capital, capital export and the division of the world should be applied to the contemporary Russian economy. Both positions distinguish the Russian Federation from the socialist Soviet Union.

Foreign relations

NATO and the United States

Russian relations with the United States and NATO were relatively cooperative during much of the 1990s and early 2000s. Russia joined NATO's Partnership for Peace and later participated in the NATO-Russia Council.

At the same time, NATO expanded into eastern Europe. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined in 1999, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004.

Documents from the diplomacy surrounding German reunification show that Western officials discussed limits on NATO's eastward military presence in 1990. US Secretary of State James Baker used the phrase "not one inch eastward" during talks with Mikhail Gorbachev. No treaty was concluded prohibiting later NATO enlargement, and the subsequent meaning of these discussions remains disputed.

Russia's relationship with NATO deteriorated increasingly after the 2008 Bucharest declaration concerning Ukraine and Georgia, the 2014 Maidan and the beginning of the Donbass conflict.

Multipolarity

Russian foreign policy increasingly presents the post-Cold War concentration of international power around the United States as unsustainable.

Putin's 2007 Munich speech rejected the idea of a single global centre of power and argued that new centres of economic and political influence were emerging.

The Russian government's 2023 Foreign Policy Concept explicitly calls for a multipolar system of international relations and identifies closer relations with China, India and other non-Western states as priorities.

Russia is a member of BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation.

China

Relations with the People's Republic of China have become increasingly important since the 2000s. The two countries cooperate extensively in trade, energy, diplomacy and military exercises and share opposition to a unipolar international system dominated by the United States.

China became a particularly important trading partner following the expansion of Western sanctions against Russia after 2022.

Russia and China are not bound by a military alliance comparable to NATO, and both governments continue to pursue their own national interests. Their strategic partnership is nevertheless one of the main relationships shaping the emerging multipolar order.

Infrastructure

Russia inherited an extensive transport, energy and communications network from the Soviet Union. Rail transport remains particularly important because of the country's enormous territory.

Russian Railways is state-owned and operates one of the largest railway systems in the world. The Trans-Siberian Railway connects European Russia with Siberia and the Pacific coast, while numerous branch lines serve industrial regions, mining areas and neighbouring countries.

Civil aviation is also important for the northern, Siberian and Far Eastern regions, where settlements are separated by very large distances. Aeroflot, originally the Soviet state airline, was reorganised and partially privatised during the capitalist restoration of the 1990s, although the Russian state remains a major shareholder.

Russia also inherited a large electrical grid, pipeline network, nuclear-power industry and scientific infrastructure from the USSR.

Demographics

Russia is a multinational state containing more than one hundred recognised ethnic groups. Russians form the majority of the population, alongside Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Chuvash, Avars, Armenians and numerous other peoples.

Russian is the state language throughout the federation. Individual republics may recognise additional state languages.

The country has experienced long-term demographic problems since the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods. Birth rates fell sharply during the social and economic crisis of the 1990s, while mortality increased. The population later stabilised for periods but ageing and low fertility have remained major issues.

The demographic effects of the 1990s cannot be separated from the collapse in living standards accompanying capitalist restoration. More recent migration and wartime population movements have added new pressures.

Culture

Russian culture developed through the interaction of the many peoples of the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and modern federation.

Russian literature includes writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Russian and Soviet music, theatre, cinema and ballet have had major international influence.

The Soviet period produced a distinctive mass culture shaped by socialist education, industrialisation, anti-fascism and the expansion of public access to literature, music, cinema and science. Soviet films, songs and commemorations of the Great Patriotic War remain widely recognised in contemporary Russia.

The Soviet space programme remains another major part of popular historical identity. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961, and Soviet achievements in science and engineering continue to hold an important place in Russian public culture.

The Russian Orthodox Church has regained considerable public influence since the destruction of the Soviet Union. Islam is also historically established across large parts of the federation, particularly in the North Caucasus and Volga regions, alongside Buddhism, Judaism and other religions.

See also

• Soviet Union
• Vladimir Putin
• People's Republic of China
• NATO
• Multipolarity
• Maidan
• War in Donbass
• Donetsk People's Republic
• Lugansk People's Republic
• Russo-Ukrainian War
• Great Patriotic War