that have overlapping jurisdictions governing the securities market, including the Central Bank, the Anti-Monopoly Committee, the Ministry of Finance, and certain Parliamentary committees. This has not been an easy task. Also, although legislation gives the commission the power to levy civil and even criminal penalties, it must rely upon the police and tax inspectors to enforce any penalties. Enforcement has remained a problem, but much progress has been made since 1996. See also: PRIVATIZATION; STOCK MARKET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure. New York: Madison Wesley. Gustafson, Thane. (1999). Capitalism Russian-Style. New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Russian Federation (formerly the RSFSR, one of the fifteen republics of the USSR) covers almost twice the area of the United States of America, or 17,075,200 square kilometers (6,591,100 square miles). It is divided into eighty-nine separate territories. The country reaches from Moscow in the west over the Urals and the vast Siberian plains to the Sea of Okhotsk in the east. The Russian Federation is bounded by Norway and Finland in the northwest; by Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine in the west; by Georgia and Azerbaijan in the southwest; and by Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China along the southern land border. The Kaliningrad region is a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea and is bordered by Lithuania and Poland.
The Russian Federation was established in 1991, when the USSR disintegrated and the former RSFSR became an independent state. A declaration of state sovereignty was adopted on June 12, 1991 (now a national holiday), and official independence from the USSR was established on August 24, 1991. The Russian Federation replaced the USSR as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The term Russia has been applied loosely to the Russian Empire until 1917, to the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from 1917 to 1991, to the Russian Federation since 1991, or even (incorrectly) to mean the whole of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The term has also been used to designate the area inhabited by the Russian people, as distinguished from other Eastern Slavs and from non-Slavic peoples.
Moscow, the ninth largest city in the world, the largest Russian city, and the capital of the Russian Federation, was founded in 1147. The city’s focal point is Red Square, bound on one side by the Kremlin and its thick red fortress wall containing twenty towers. The tsars were crowned there; in fact, Ivan the Terrible’s throne is situated near the entrance. The second largest city, St. Petersburg, is situated northwest of Moscow and was known as a cultural center with elegant palaces. The city is spread over forty-two islands in the delta of the Neva River.
The terrain of the Russian Federation consists of broad plains with low hills west of the Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia; and uplands and mountains along the southern border
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regions. Although the largest country in the world in terms of area, the Russian Federation is unfavorably located in relation to the major sea lanes of the world. Despite its size, much of the country lacks proper soils and climates (either too cold or too dry) for agriculture. It does, however, have enormous resources of oil and gas, as well as numerous trace metals.
Since 1991, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of the Communist period. The country adopted a constitution on December 12, 1993, and established a bicameral Federal Assembly (Federalnoye Sobraniye). Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was elected to the office of president of the Federation on May 7, 2000, with 52.9 percent of the vote, as opposed to 29.2 percent for the Communist representative, Gennady Zyuganov, and 5.8 percent for the democratic centrist, Grigory Yavlinsky. See also: GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; PUTIN, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH; RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLIC; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKO- LAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Archie, ed. (2001). Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin: Political Leadership in Russia’s Transition. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Herspring, Dale R., ed. (2003). Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain. Lanham, MD: Rowman amp; Littlefield. Kotkin, Stephen. (2001). Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malia, Martin. (1999). Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum. Cambridge, MA: Belnap Press. Satter, David. (2003). Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shevtsova, Lilia. (2003). Putin’s Russia. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sunlop, John B. (1993). The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
The Russian Geographical Society is one of the world’s oldest geographical societies, dating to 1845 (“Imperial Russian Geographical Society”). The name reappeared in 1917 after the October Revolution, only to be replaced by the “State Geographical Society” (1926-1938). After 1938, the organization became identified with the USSR until 1991, when it became the Russian Geographical Society again.
In 1917 the Geographical Society was composed of eleven subdivisions and 1,000 members. By 1971, membership had soared to 19,000 individuals, who sent delegates to an All-Soviet Geographical Congress held every five years. Between congresses, the affairs of the society were administered by a scientific council, selected by the delegates at the congress, and its presidium led by a president. Past presidents include Yuri Shokalsky, Nikolai Vavilov, Lev Berg, Yevgeny Pavlovsky, and Stanislav Kalesnik. Sergei Lavrov serves currently. By 2003, membership had again declined to one thousand.
In 1970 the Geographical Society, based in Leningrad, supervised fourteen geographical societies in the constituent republics, fifteen affiliates in the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR), and approximately one hundred sub-branches. Between 1947 and 1991, the society authorized discussion of more than sixty thousand scientific papers, the convening of a wide array of scientific conferences, and All-Union Congresses in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, and several other Soviet cities. The Geographical Society also provided practical expertise and consultation to the Soviet government on issues pertaining to geography and regional development, and organized or sponsored twenty to fifty scientific expeditions every year. Society members were urged to popularize the results of their research at public meetings. More than fifty of the affiliates published their own journals, the most famous of which is the Moscow affiliate’s Problems of Geography (Voprosy geografii, first published in 1946).
As of 2003, the Moscow affiliate alone could claim a mere 200 to 300 employees, who existed on paper only, coming to the offices in the affiliate’s twenty-story skyscraper simply to retrieve their biweekly $35 salary. Former members provided consulting to the Russian government, while the more ambitious went into business.
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See also: GEOGRAPHY; IMPERIAL RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHY SOCIETY
Harris, Chauncy D. (1962). Soviet Geography: Accomplishments and Tasks. New York: American Geographical Society.
The chief code of law in Kievan Rus, the Pravda Russkaya, or “Rus Justice,” survives in about one hundred copies that may be grouped into three basic versions: Short, Expanded, and Abbreviated. The so-called Short version, usually thought to be the oldest, is attested in only two fifteenth-century copies and several from much later. Essentially a list of compensations to be paid for physical wrongs, the first section is sometimes linked with Grand Prince Yaroslav (1019-1054), whose name appears in the heading, but nowhere in the text. The second section attributes to several of Yaroslav’s successors a codification of law, providing fees for the homicide of the
