Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation

GEOGRAPHY

Geography: translation

Covering more than 17 million square kilometers, Russia is the world’s largest country. The Russian Federation sits on two continents and occupies 13 percent of the earth’s surface; it covers one-quarter of the European continent and nearly 30 percent of Asia. Russia is relatively synonymous with northernEurasia, that is, the northernmost third of the Eurasian supercontinent. From the westernmost point inKaliningrad Oblastto Chukotka’s easternmost islands, Russia is over 8,000 kilometers wide; from the northern reaches of Franz Josef Land to the country’s southern border, the country is more than 3,500 kilometers long.
Despite the apparent monotony of the Russian landscape, it possesses every significant ecological environment except for tropical rainforests. The Russian landmass is divided between four principal biomes:tundra, found in the country’sFar North;taiga, accounting for more than half of the country, and most of its Asian territory; temperate broadleaf forests and steppe-forests, found mostly in European Russia and along theKazakhstanborder; and semiaridsteppe, which dominates extreme southern European Russia. Nearly one-quarter of the world’s forests and half of its bogs are found in Russia, making the country vital to global biogeochemical cycles and the production of oxygen. Russia’sclimateis mostly continental; however, extremes exist in the country’s higher and lower latitudes.Due to expansive, varied, and sparsely populated territory, Russia— particularly Asiatic Russia—is home to a wide variety ofwildlife, including many critically endangered species such as the Amur leopard, Saiga antelope, and Siberian white crane. Russia’s sable and Beluga sturgeon are internationally known for their fur and caviar, respectively.
The country has a number of major mountain ranges; from west to east, the largest are: theCaucasus, theUrals, Altay, Sayan, Byrranga, Yablonovy, Stanovoy, Verkhoyansk, Chersky, Dzhugdzhur, Kolyma, Kamchatka, and Anadyr. Mount Elbrus, at 5,642 meters, is Russia’s (and Europe’s) highest point. The major lowlands are the East European Plain and the West Siberian Plain, which are divided by the Urals. The Central Siberian Plateau occupies much of the central part of Asiatic Russia.
A large portion of the Earth’s freshwater reserves are also found in the country.Lake Baykal, the largest freshwater lake by volume, is located in Asiatic Russia; other important bodies of water include the lakes of Onega, Ladoga, and Peipus and the Kuybyshev and Rybinsk reservoirs. Russia’s prodigious waterways include the European rivers of theVolga, Don, Kuban, Pechora, Kama, and Oka; its most important Asian rivers are the Ob, Irtysh, Yenisey, Lena, Amur, Indigirka, and Kolyma. These rivers empty into the various seas and oceans that lie on Russia’s borders, including theSea of Azov, theBaltic Sea, theBlack Sea, theCaspian Sea, the seas of theArctic Ocean(White,Barents, Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian), the Sea of Japan, theSea of Okhotsk, and the Bering Sea. The country’s major islands and island chains include Franz Josef Land,Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, theKuril Islands, andSakhalin. Important peninsulas include the Kola, Taymyr, Yamal, Kamchatka, and Chukchi.
Russia commands the largest share of the world’s natural resources, including valuable commodities such asoil,natural gas, uranium, iron ore, aluminum, gold, silver, and diamonds, as well as other precious metals. Due to Leninist attitudes toward the natural world, the Soviet Union paid little attention to the negative aspects of industrialization, mineral resource extraction, and land use. This has resulted in extensivepollutionof the country’s rivers, lakes, air, and soil, including radioactive contamination associated withChernobyland other nuclear power accidents. Little has been done during the post-Soviet period to improve the situation, although Russia is party to a number of international agreements dedicated toenvironmentalissues. However, the ecological situation in the European part of Russia improved significantly in the 1990s because of the collapse of many industries.
Less than 10 percent of the landmass—mostly in European Russia and along its southern Asiatic rim—is used for farming, as the taiga proves unsuitable for most forms of traditionalagriculture. However, Russia is still one of the world’s largest countries in terms of farmed land, despite suffering from soil degradation and erosion wrought by poor farming practices.
At the metalevel, Russia can be divided into the European core (including the most densely populated areas of Russia, which lie north of the Black Sea), theNorthern Caucasusand its hinterlands, the Russian Far North,Siberia, and theRussian Far East.
In the contemporary Russian Federation, the highest level of internal political geographic division is theFederal Districts; from west to east, these seven units are the Northwestern, Central, Southern, Volga, Urals, Siberian, and Far Eastern. Each district is comprised of between 6 and 18federal subjects. Each subject, whetherethnic republic,krai,oblast, autonomous oblast,autonomous okrug, or federal city, is then subdivided into smaller administrative districts, known asraions. Russia is home to the world’s largest subnational political unit,Sakha, as well as the world’s third largest,Krasnoyarsk Krai(the state of Western Australia is the second largest). Russia’s urban geography is dominated by its two historical capitals:MoscowandSt.Petersburg. Other major cities include Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Ufa, and Chelyabinsk. Overall, Russia has approximately 150 urban areas with a population in excess of 100,000. In Asiatic Russia, proximity to theTrans-Siberian Railwayis a key requirement for economic and demographic success.
With nearly 60,000 kilometers of international borders, Russia has more neighbors than any other country. Most of these countries are part of the so-callednear abroad, or former Soviet republics, and includeEstonia,Latvia,Lithuania,Belarus,Ukraine,Georgia,Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan; its border with the latter is the longest unbroken territorial border in the world. Russia also neighborsNorway,Finland,Poland(via the Kaliningrad exclave annexed fromGermanyafter World War II),China,Mongolia, andNorth Korea. Since its recognition of Georgia’s breakaway republics ofAbkhaziaandSouth Ossetiain 2008, these states can also be considered to be on the Russian frontier. Russia’s maritime boundaries abut those of theUnited StatesandJapan(and potentiallyCanada, based on recent Russian claims to the Arctic basin), and Russia shares jurisdiction of the Caspian withTurkmenistanandIran(in addition to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan).
As a result of a millennium-long history of territorial expansion, Russia incorporated a panoply of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups in the fabric of the country. As a “settler empire,” Russia’s ethnic geography is shaped by the historic expansion ofCossacksand otherethnic Russianssouthward from the European (or Muscovy) core toward the Caucasus and eastward into Siberia and north-eastern Eurasia, sometimes referred to by some geographers as the “boreal empire.” In theVolga-Ural regionand the North Caucasus, significant populations ofethnic minoritiesremain, while in Siberia and the Far East, Russian migration significantly diluted the former demographic dominance of indigenous peoples, with the exception of some ethnic republics such asTuva.
In terms ofeconomicgeography, the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg are the dominant nodes of activity, alongside Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok, and other regional centers of finance, commerce, andindustry. The central and southern parts of European Russia, formerly dominated by agriculture, experienced massive industrialization in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), while the Kuzbass enjoyed an expansion ofminingduring the 1930s. Subsequent wartime conditions—relocation of factories from occupied territories—contributed to the development of an industrial base in the Urals. It is in these areas that Russia’s population density is the highest, upward of more than 100 persons per square kilometer in Moscow and parts of southern Russia. The vast majority of Russia, however, has a population density of fewer than one person per square kilometer, and migration patterns suggest that this statistic will only decrease in the coming decades except in areas associated with hydrocarbon exploitation such as Krasnoyarsk andKhantiya-Mansiya. Severe poverty afflicts certain regions of the North Caucasus,Kalmykiya,Nenetsiya,Taymyriya, and much of the Russian Far East, whereas the European part of Russia, especially Moscow, enjoys a high level of development.
See alsoIndigenous peoples of the North.

  1. geography—ltgt география...Англо-русский геоэкологический словарь
  2. geography—geography translation nounADJECTIVE economic historical human physical political cultural social the cultural geographyu of the South...Collocations dictionary
  3. geography—Geography translationarrival citybirthplace effectcopyright trapdisease clusterflyover countryghost farmergreen urbanismleft coastmonster countrypurple statequake lakerur...Dictionary of new words
  4. geography—geography translation geography UKu USu digrfi nounu [Cu] pluralu geographies an area where a company operates or sells a product The company added that there had been...Financial and business terms
  5. geography—GEOGRAPHY translation Israel is a small country whose land borders except with Egypt Jordan and the sea are not permanent and recognized and whose size has not been deter...Historical Dictionary of Israel
  6. geography—GEOGRAPHY translation The key element in the development of Mesopotamian cultures was the gradual adaptation to the ecological conditions of the region. The original home...Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia
  7. geography—geography translationSynonyms and related wordsEarth Gaea Ge Tellus Terra biosphere cartography chorography cosmical geology dynamic geology geodesy geodetic satellite ge...Moby Thesaurus
  8. geography—[grf]география...Англо-русский большой универсальный переводческий словарь
  9. geography—география physical geography физическая география...Англо-русский геологический словарь
  10. geography—география...Англо-русский онлайн словарь
  11. geography—география...Англо-русский онлайн словарь
  12. geography—gene geography plant geography soil geography zoological geography...Англо-русский словарь биологических терминов
  13. geography—n география...Англо-русский словарь Лингвистика-98
  14. geography—geography [dgrf] nu география...Англо-русский словарь Мюллера
  15. geography—n coll гениталии половые органы...Англо-русский словарь непристойных выражений
  16. geography—сущ. география dialect geography economic geography linguistic geography physical geography political geography...Англо-русский словарь общей лексики
  17. geography—nгеография землеописание наука изучающая природные факторы в контексте их социальнотерриториального расположения.strong география землеописание наука изучающая природны...Англо-русский словарь по социологии
  18. geography—population geography...Англо-русский словарь по экономике
  19. geography—n. география...Англо-русский словарь редакция bed
  20. geography—география математическая география...Англо-русский технический словарь
  21. geography—сущ. общ. географияа комплекс наук изучающих природные условия Земли ее население экономические ресурсы и материальное производство economic geographyб научная дисциплина...Англо-русский экономический словарь
  22. geography—n...Англо-украинский словарь
  23. geography—географя...Англо-український словник
  24. geography—n географя....Англо-український словник Балла М.І.
  25. geography—[dgrf] nphysical [political economic] geography физическая [политическая экономическая] географияthe geography of Mars география Марса ареографияgeography of the Moon ...Новый большой англо-русский словарь
  26. geography—geography [dgrf] ni география physical [political economic] физическая [политическая экономическая] география the of Mars география Марса ареография of the Moon сел...Новый большой англо-русский словарь II
  27. geography—dgrf n география physical political economic физическая политическая экономическая география the of Mars география Марса ареография of the Moon селенография I d...Новый большой англо-русский словарь под общим руководством акад. Ю.Д. Апресяна