RUSSIA: PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA 5 ROUBLES / 1909

COUNTRY INFORMATION

Name: Rossiya
Capital: Moscow
Government: federation
Currency: Russian ruble (RUR)
Official language: Russian
Other languages spoken: many minority languages
Religions: Russian Orthodox 15-20%, Muslim 10-15%, other Christian 2%
Ethnic groups: Russian 79.8%, Tatar 3.8%, Ukrainian 2%, Bashkir 1.2%, Chuvash 1.1%, other or unspecified 12.1%
Famous people: Fedor Dostoevsky, Yuri Gagarin

Brief History. The defeat of the Russian Empire in World War I led to the seizure of power by the Communists and the formation of the USSR. The brutal rule of Josef Stalin (1924-53) strengthened Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a 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, but 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 market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of the Communist period. A determined guerrilla conflict still plagues Russia in Chechnya.

RUSSIA

Wednesday, 15 October 2008

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA 5 ROUBLES / 1909

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