Russia (Failed Bolsheviks)

Russia (Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossija), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a country in Eurasia. At 22,597,600 square kilometres (8,724,900 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-sixth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern; about 77% of the population live in European Russia.

Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and most of Eastern Europe, Russia spans twelve time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Mongolia, and Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.

The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus' ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east.

Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Federation became the largest continuous democratic entity in the world and the world's first constitutionally democratic socialist state. The Russian Federation played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower. The post-war era of the Russian Federation saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Russian Federation had the world's second largest economy and the largest standing military in the world.

The Russian economy ranks as the second largest by both nominal GDP and purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the second largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is one of three superpowers along with the United States and China, and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).