Talk:Russia

Semi-protected edit request on 24 August 2021

What about the current Olympics? The drug problems. The fact that Russia wasn't allowed to compete in Tokyo. What happened to that entire section. Russian Censorship? 2601:81:8484:BA10:157B:FA12:BB8A:9E4D (talk) 16:14, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 September 2021

Please remove the low-quality, spammy external link https://www.gairegaurav.com.np/2021/09/russia-geography-people-tourism-economy.html. 120.150.121.92 (talk) 14:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC) 120.150.121.92 (talk) 14:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:15, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Birth rate in Russia is actually high for European Standards

The Birth Rate in Russia is actually 1,82.--88.66.149.94 (talk) 15:52, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 November 2021

103.218.133.243 (talk) 11:50, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

{{Democrat Republic of Russia}]

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:07, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 November 2021

In the part science and technology you can add how Yuri Kondratyuk was crucial to the US lunar landing since he developed LOR years before in

around 1929 Sam.washington2124 (talk) 04:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. — IVORK _Talk 05:24, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Why is Russia not marked as "under a dictatorship"?

Belarus is marked like this, but why not Russia? 85.115.248.233 (talk) 02:35, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia content is based on what is found in reliable sources. If you have such sources declaring that Russia is under a dictatorship, you are welcome to add such content. But do read what's behind that link carefully, to be sure that your sources ARE reliable. HiLo48 (talk) 22:37, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Geography section

Hello. I read the geography section, and in my opinion it can have a little tweak. After the opening sentence, there is a sentence referring to how Russia spans the northernmost corner of Eurasia, and before that sentence can somebody put this sentence -- "It covers most of the landmass of Eurasia" - and then change the previous sentence to "and spans the northernmost corner of the latter" and put it after? Thanks. 45.118.63.5 (talk) 13:16, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Distances

Distances: how to measure

When we talk about the distance between two points on Earth, a significant portion of readers might visualize taking a piece of string and spanning it over a globe (model of the Earth) from one point to the other. The path along the string is the shortest distance between these points along the surface of the Earth (a straight line beneath the surface is not considered when measuring countries). Mathematically this is called the distance along a geodesic line, here the distance along an arc (section) of a great circle. Another significant portion of readers might visualize a straight line on a common type of world map. The difference between these points of view would be negligible if we talked about the extension of mainland Portugal, but they are significant when we talk about a country that is "wrapped" nearly halfway around the North Pole. For this reason, when we indicate the distance between two remote points of Russia, we should make clear to the reader along which path the distance has been taken.

One webtool for measuring distances is www.distance.to. It allows not only place names as an input, but also coordinates, which is useful for places which are not in the place name list, like the Vistula Spit or specific islands of Franz Josef Land, or whenever the quality of the places-coordinates list of the tool is not satisfactory. Direct coordinate input only works with non-negative values (northeast) below 90°. Distances across the dateline are not correctly displayed as a graph, but are numerically correct in the examples checked.

With this tool, a query for the distance from Smolensk to Ust-Kamchatsk gives a result of 6,881 km and shows a path between these two points that passes over mainland Russia, but also over a short streches of the Polar Sea, (near Novaya Zemlya). This looks unexpected if we are used to distorted images of Russia on flat maps.

The 55½°N circle of latitude passes closely between Smolensk (54.78°N) and Ust-Kamchatsk (56.23°N). The path along this circle of latitude from the Smolensk meridian (32.05°W) to the Uts-Kamchatsk meridian (162.47°W) is 8,216 km long (school maths). As the two places are not situated exactly on this meridian, a small correction can be added to the east-west extension between them: 8,320 km ±170 km ( that is ±2 %, from 1 - cos54.78°/cos55.5° = 1.018 = 102%).

So the statements "Smolensk, in the west, is about 6.900 km apart from Ust-Kamchatsk, in the east" and "Russia extends over more than 8.000 from west to east between Smolensk and Ust-Kamchatsk" are both true. (Similar to saying "The endpoints of this horseshoe are 10cm apart. The iron extends 20cm between them.".) The difference in wording between "Russia extends" and "the points are ... apart" is significant.

In spite of bad quality of the places-coordinates list, "distance.to" gives mathematically correct results. It shows a distance of 10.007½ km both from 0°N 0°E to 0°N 90°E and from 0°N 0°E to 89.999999°N 0°E, so it models Earth as a sphere with a circumference of 40.030 km. The results for the distance between two points A and B can be verified as follows: express in cartesian coordinates the vectors a and b on a unit sphere (r=1) that point from the Earth's center to A and B. That gives : a1=r·cos(long)·sin(lat), a2=... etc. From the dot product equation a•b=1·1·cosθ the distance between A and B can be calculated as 40.030km × acos(a1·b1+a2·b2+a3·b3).Tim2007viatge (talk) 22:34, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Distances between easternmost and westernmost points

Russia's westernmost point is at the Vistula Spit in Kaliningrad Oblast. Rounded to 1°/100, it is located at 54.46°N 19.64°E in OpenTopoMap (coordinates are shown in the URL) and also in GoogleMaps, just 200m away from the location in the List of extreme points of Russia. Russia's easternmost point is at Big Diomede Island in the Bering Strait. It is located at 65.78°N 169.01°W in OpenTopoMap and also in GoogleMaps, 2km away from the location in the List of extreme points of Russia.

The distance calculator tool "distance.to" returns a distance of 6,624.66km between Russia's westernmost point and "Diomedes-Islands" (Which it locates on the Big Diomede Island. Enter "Diomede-Islands" to "Nome, AK, USA" to see this). Another distance calculator tool "calcmaps" [1] returns a distance of 6,614.83km for a startpoint drawn on the Vistula Spit near the border and an endpoint drawn on the Bering Street Island labelled "Little Diomede" (There is just 1 Diomede Island on that map. The 2 Diomede Islands are just about 5km apart). My own calculation, using the method sketched further above on this talk page, gives 6.622,79km. So these 3 computations all give about 6,600km. My edit of 05:52, 9 December 2021 shows with school maths that a route with a length of about 6,667km exists between these points and says that this is still a bit more than the most direct route. This was my first edit of the Russia article and it deleted the following statement, because I consider it false: "Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia's westernmost part along the Baltic Sea, is about 9,000km apart from its easternmost part, Big Diomede Island".

This statement in the Wikipedia was a bad reformulation of a 1996 book by Glenn E. Curtis which says "Russia extends about 9,000 kilometers from westernmost Kaliningrad Oblast, the now-isolated region cut off from the rest of Russia by the independence of Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania, to Ratmanova Island (Big Diomede Island) in the Bering Strait.". To understand why I call this reformulation bad, please see further above in this talk page, where I use the Smolensk-to-Ust-Kamchatsk example to explain why the difference in wording between "Russia extends" and "the points are ... apart" is significant.

Even in the original wording of Curtis, I find it problematic to use a formulation that couples "9,000 kilometers" with "westernmost ... eastermost" points in Kaliningrad and Bering Strait. Given that these points are just about 6,600km apart, I think there needs to be a clear formulation which saves the reader from the fallacy of believing that a plane, missile or whatever, travelling from one point to the other, has to cover a distance of 9,000km.

In my first edit of the article, I did an intent to "salvage" Curtis' 9,000km by interpreting them as a west-to-east distance along the 60°N circle of latitude. However, at that time I hadn't paid attention to how Curtis continues after the above quote. He writes "This distance is roughly equivalent to the distance from Edinburgh, Scotland, east to Nome, Alaska.". The interval beeing compared (Kaliningrad to middle of Bering Strait) lies within the interval chosen for comparison (Schotland to east coast of Bering Strait), if we interpret it as a distance along a west-to-east path. The increase is over 15%, from a 171° span to a 198° span. An east-to-west interpretation of this comparison is as unproductive as saying "The 171cm distance from this person's ankles to his eyes is similar to the 198cm distance from his feet to the top of his head".

After demonstrating that 9,000km is not the distance between these two points (which is 6,600km) and showing on this talk page that Curtis cannot be meaningfully referring to the length of a path in east-to-west direction, how else can we couple "9,000km" with the two endpoints - and make this relation clear to the reader? In my third edit of the article, I asked in the edit description <<How is "distance" defined in the "9000km" literature? Do geographers have a concept "distance on a route inside (former) national territory" or "distance on a route that goes over land as far as possible"?>>.

If it is "distance on a route that goes over land as far as possible", than it is not "Russia", but "Russia together with Lithuania, ..." that extends from one extreme point to the other. (Plus, Big Diomede is an Island).

I suspect it is "distance on a route inside former national territory" and the 1996 book reused an older statement about the Soviet Union. Adapting this to the westernmost point of Russia's contiguos mainland would have required a burdensome re-estimation of the distance. The clumsy (in my opinion) parenthesis "the now-isolated region cut off from the rest of Russia by the independence of Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania" is a clue that nurishes my suspicion.Tim2007viatge (talk) 22:39, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

"First Europeans to Sail to North America"

In the history section it says "In 1648, Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov, two Russian explorers, discovered the Bering Strait, and became the first Europeans to sail to North America." I'm not sure if this is an error in wording but it is blatantly untrue as by 1648 there were already many well established European colonies in North America and they certainly didn't fly there. Also the first Europeans to Sail to North America were Vikings. 2607:F0B0:7:81E1:1C3E:C7E7:C87A:DF10 (talk) 20:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

You're right, it's blatantly false as written. Even if there are some arguments to put on doubt the Viking arrival to the mainland (although consensus has increased in the last decades), the Spanish explorers reached North America in the 1520s, well before the date given. I'd remove that, and let the Bering part for now. Also, someone with access should check the source. --Urbanoc (talk) 20:46, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I removed the full sentence. If someone wants to re-add the Bering discovery bit (the only one that sounds right...), he/she/they need to come with a book page of a reputable source, as it's not a minor claim. --Urbanoc (talk) 13:58, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Adding information to the article

Russian lands were generally referred to as Muscovy until PETER I officially declared the Russian Empire in 1721; the new name sought to invoke the patrimony of the medieval eastern European Rus state centered on Kyiv in present-day Ukraine; the Rus were a Varangian (eastern Viking) elite that imposed their rule and eventually their name on their Slavic subjects

[CIA - The World Fact Book, Russia, Government, Country name, etymology. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/russia/#government] — Preceding unsigned comment added by QuasEditor (talk • contribs) 17:54, 10 December 2021 (UTC)