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Introducer
Mary Dejevsky is chief editorial writer and columnist at the Independent. A Russia specialist by training, she witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union as Moscow bureau chief for The Times. A regular visitor to Russia, as special correspondent for the Independent, she is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London and of Russia's Valdai Club for international specialists in the region.
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I N С V С L о тл л
т н Е Britannicб G и I D Е ТО
RUSSIA
The essential guide to the nation, its people, and culture
Introduction by Mary Dejevsky
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. www.brirannica.com
First print edition published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable ФC Robinson Ltd, 2009
Text © 2009 Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Introduction © 2009 Mary Dejevsky
The right of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. and Mary Dejevsky to be identified as the authors of tins work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copy right. Designs & Patents Act, 1988.
Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the Thistle logo are registered trademarks of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
This cBook edition published by Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
ISBN 978-1-59339-850-7
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Maps vii
Introduction ix
Part 1 Context
Russia - Facts and Figures 3
The Place and the People 13
Part 2 History
Russia before and after the Revolution 33
Post-Stalin Russia to the Fall of Communism,
1953-91 82
135 143
Post-Soviet Russia 104
Part 3 Culture
The Development of the Arts in Russia
Literature
Music 173
The Visual Arts and Film 194
Theatre and Ballet 214
Part 4 Russia Today
10 Governance and the Economy 231
I I Everyday Life in Modern Russia 256
Part 5 Places
12 The Major Sites to Visit 277
Index 321
ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
illustrations
Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed, Moscow © Corbis, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Red Square, Moscow © D. Staquet/DeA Picture Library, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Portrait of Catherine the Great (1729-96) by Fyodor Rokotov (1735-1808). The Moscow State Tretyakov Gallery © RIA Novosti/Top foto.co.uk.
Gallery in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Richard No witz-Na tio n a I Geographic/Getty Images, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Demonstrators gathering in front of the Winter Palace in Petro- grad in January 1917, shortly before the Russian Revolution Hulton Archive/Getty Images, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Mofiument to the Third International; model designed by Vladimir Tatlin, 1920. Reconstruction by U. Linde and P. O. Ultvcdt in the Modern Museum, Stockholm © Tatlin; photograph Moderna Museet, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Soviet leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) addressing a crowd in 1920 © Photo.com/Jupiterimages, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) ©Photo.com/Jupiterimages, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837): portrait copied by Fyodor Igin from original by Orest Kiprensky © RIA Novosti/ Topfoto.co.uk.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) The Bettman Archive, courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960) with companion Olga Iwinskaja and their daughter Irina in the late 1950s © ullstein- bild/To pfoto.co.uk.
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), August 30,1970 © Topfoto.co.uk,
Yury Alekseyevich Gagarin (1934-68) in 1961 Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images, courtesy of En cyclop cedia Britannica Inc.
Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) on a state visit to Poland © Bernard Bisson & Thierry Orban/Sygma/Corbis.
Military parade in Moscow's Red Square in 1985 Tass/Sovfoto, courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
12
230 276 307
Vladimir Putin (b. 1952) President of Russia, The Kremlin, Courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Maps
Physical map of Russia
Political map of present-day Russia
Moscow
The Trans-Siberian Railway
INTRODUCTION
MARY DEJEVSKY
Russia can claim to be one of the most grievously misunderstood countries of the early twenty-first century. A vast land mass, with a harsh climate and declining population, the country boasts as rich a history and as glorious a culture as any in the world. Yet the upheavals it experienced in the twentieth century - from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 to the largely peaceful reversal of that revolution before the century was out - left the country and its people exhausted, while striving to catch up with a European and global mainstream that had largely passed them by.
in between came a brutal civil war, mass emigration of the aristocracy and professional classes, enforced collectivization of agriculture, Stalin's purges, the battle for national survival that was Russia's experience of the Second World War, and ultimate defeat in the Cold War that pitted East against West. By the late 1980s, Russians could do little more than watch as the Soviet empire dissolved around them and the thought-system that had anchored so much of their lives was discredited. Few would have emerged unscathed from such a catalogue of adversity, whether self-inflicted or not.