Россия

From RationalWiki
(Redirected from Russian Federation)
Jump to: navigation, search
Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to the left and right of Russia. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilizational space, where Russia unites the civilizational communities of East and West.
—Vladimir Yakunin, Russian oligarch[1]

Russia is where invasions go to die[2] the largest country in the world, situated between Europe and Asia, or encompassing the majority of Europe, or taking up all of Northern Asia.[3]

As the successor to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation includes 83 oblasts, republics, autonomous republics, territories, districts and federal cities. This is even more complicated than it sounds. Imagine if the US had 83 states that occasionally had shooting wars against each other (instead of just the one).

After experimenting with anarchy in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, Russia is, thanks to Vladimir Putin, an enlightened "sovereign democracy",[4] which has cut assassinations of journalists down to only two or three a year,[5][6] and doesn't cut off the gas supply every time a foreign country criticizes it. Their democracy is now so successful that the United Russia party scored 238 out of 450 Duma seats in the 2011 elections with only minimal widespread electoral fraud.[7] One of their many favorite pastimes is subsisting in the delusion that NATO is out to get them, while NATO's favourite pastime is trying to find some purpose (read: enemy) for a military alliance without one.

Apparently, the country is also adding the spectator sport of public creationist silliness, as demonstrated by a protest by Russian Orthodox YECs outside of Moscow's Charles Darwin museum.[8] In addition, the newer competitive events of passing laws against free speech in order to combat Teh Ev1l Gay and beating up detaining human rights activists[9] and Pastafarians[10] seem to be crowd favorites as well.

Contents

[edit] Сибирь

       Siberian Federal District        Geographic Russian Siberia        Historical Siberia (and present Siberia in some usages)

Siberia is the Asian portion of Russia ("portion" being two thirds of the country, though one quarter of the population). It was notorious as the destination of prisoners of conscience exiled within the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. So notorious is the association of the words Siberia and prison that the place is routinely described as the destination of all Russian prisoners, even when they are sent to Mordovia, as far west of Siberia itself as London is from Warsaw.[11] And, beside that, Siberia is a major source of oil and gas. Siberia has almost every known natural resource to offer, from timber to diamonds to abandoned barrels of nuclear waste.

Today, Siberia is a mostly-settled region with several large cities connected by a network of highways and railroads; indeed, Novosibirsk, the unofficial "capital of Siberia," is the third largest city in Russia with a population of 1.47 million. Settlement far away from established urban centers is still impractical due to the harsh climate and long travel distances,[12] but at least the era of the phrase "send them to Siberia" in the sense of imprisonment or exile is almost over. However, the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in a Siberian penal colony[13] shows that this assumption is a bit premature.

[edit] См. также

[edit] Внешние ссылки

[edit] Сноски

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support