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Essay on Russia
Introduction
Russia is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Europe and Asia. With an area of 17,075,200 square kilometers (6,595,600 sq mi), it is the largest country in the world (by land mass), covering almost twice the territory of the next largest country, Canada. It ranks as the world's eighth largest population. Formerly the dominant republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia is now an independent country, and an influential member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, since the Union's dissolution in December 1991.
History
At the beginning of the 16th century the Russian state set the national goal to return all Russian territories lost as a result of the Mongolian invasion and to protect the borderland against attacks of hordes. The noblemen, receiving a manor from the sovereign, were obliged to serve in the army. The manor system became a basis for the nobiliary horse army. At the close of this Russian Revolution of 1917, a Marxist political faction called the Bolsheviks seized power in St. Petersburg and Moscow under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin.
The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party. A bloody civil war ensued, pitting the Bolsheviks' Red Army against a loose confederation of anti-socialist monarchist and bourgeois forces known as the White Army. The Red Army triumphed, and the Soviet Union was formed in 1922. (Freeze, 1997)
In the mid 1980s, the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. He introduced the landmark policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), in an attempt to modernize
Soviet communism. Glasnost meant that the harsh restrictions on free speech that had characterized most of the Soviet Union's existence were removed, and open political discourse and criticism of the government became possible again. Perestroika meant sweeping economic reforms designed to decentralize the planning of the Soviet....
