Russia (Alternity)

Russia, officially the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация/Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a nation in northern Eurasia and is the largest nation on Earth, spanning the entire north of the Asian continent, with coasts on both the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, though much of the nation's Arctic Coast is ice-locked for nine months out of every year. Russia shares borders with Korea, Manchuria, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Caucasia and Ukraine to the south, Baltica and Poland to the west, and Finland to the west-northwest, as well as maritime borders to the east with Japan's Karafuto Island Prefecture across the Tartar Strait and the US state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.

Russia has a long and turbulent history of warfare that began with Mongol invasions in the 13th century (around 1237 AD), the beginning of the reign of the Tsars in the 16th century, followed by the birth of the Russian Empire in 1721. Next came World War I and the October Revolution in the early 20th century, the inception of the Soviet era in 1922, a costly victory in World War II (in which over 23 million Russian soldiers and civilians died; roughly 14% of the national population at the time), minor involvement in Korea and the Indochina, and most notably the Cold War with the United States from 1948 to 1991. The Cold War brought about Russian technological innovation throughout the last half of the 20th century, including the first artificial orbital satellite (Sputnik 1) in 1950, Yuri Gagarin's first human flight into space in 1961, the Soyuz launch vehicles still in use today from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Salyut series of space stations, the current Mir Space Station (launched in 1986) and also-current Buran space shuttle. In 1989, a series of revolutions in Eastern Europe saw the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the independence of these nations (including the reunification of East and West Germany and tearing-down of the Berlin Wall) after Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms of glasnost and perestroika ultimately failed. These events culminated in the dissolution of the USSR on Christmas Day, 1991, and the formation of the current Russian Federation.