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Portal:Russia

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Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. Russia is a highly urbanised country, with 16 of its population centres having more than 1 million inhabitants. Its capital and largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia's second-largest city and its cultural capital.

The East Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated; the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the unification of Russian lands, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. At the expense of millions of lives, the Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological dominance and international influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space. (Full article...)

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Konstantin Makovsky

In this month

Portrait of Ivan IV by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1897

A serving of shchi. This variant contains saffron milk-caps, a type of mushroom.

Shchi (Russian: щи, IPA: [ɕːi] ) is a Russian-style cabbage soup. When sauerkraut is used instead, the soup is called sour shchi, while soups based on sorrel, spinach, nettle, and similar plants are called green shchi (Russian: зелёные щи, IPA: [zʲɪˈlʲɵnɨje ɕːi]). In the past, the term sour shchi was also used to refer to a drink, a variation of kvass, which was unrelated to the soup. (Full article...)

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El Lissitzky in a 1924 self-portrait

El Lissitzky (Russian: Эль Лиси́цкий, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky Russian: Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, listen; 23 November [O.S. 11 November] 1890 – 30 December 1941), was a Soviet Jewish artist, active as a painter, illustrator, designer, printmaker, photographer, and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union.

Lissitzky began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia. He started teaching at the age of 15, maintaining his teaching career for most of his life. Over the years, he taught in a variety of positions, schools, and artistic media, spreading and exchanging ideas. He took this ethic with him when he worked with Malevich in heading the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when he developed a variant suprematist series of his own, Proun, and further still in 1921, when he moved to Weimar Republic. In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. This continued until his deathbed, where in 1941 he produced one of his last works – a Soviet propaganda poster rallying the people to construct more tanks for the fight against Nazi Germany. (Full article...)

In the news

24 December 2024 –
The Russian cargo ship MV Ursa Major, allegedly used to evacuate military personnel and equipment from Russian bases in Syria, sinks in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain following an explosion in its engine room. The Russian Foreign Ministry says that 14 of 16 crew members are rescued, while two remain missing. (Politico)
24 December 2024 – Russia–United States relations
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Gene Spector, an American citizen of Russian descent, is sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Moscow court for espionage. (CNN)
23 December 2024 –
A team of scientists at the North-Eastern Federal University in Sakha Republic, Russia, unveil the highly preserved remains of a 50,000-year-old female juvenile woolly mammoth named Yana. The researchers say Yana was roughly about one-year-old when she died, likely from drowning, and was discovered in the Batagaika crater by locals. (BBC News)
22 December 2024 – Russia–Slovakia relations
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico holds a previously unannounced meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. (The Moscow Times)
21 December 2024 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
Attacks in Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine

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Leonid Brezhnev
We bow our heads in respect for those Soviet women who displayed exceptional courage in the severe time of war. Never before but during the days of the war the grandeur of spirit and the invincible will of our Soviet women, their selfless dedication, loyalty and affection to their Homeland, their boundless persistence in work and their heroism on the front manifested themselves with such strength.
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