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, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Caucasia and Ukraine to the south, Baltica to the west, and Finland to the west-northwest, as well as maritime borders with Japan's Karafuto Island Prefecture across the Tartar Strait and the United States across the Bering Strait with Alaska.

Russia has a long and turbulent history of warfare that began with the Kievan Rus' in 882 AD, followed by Mongol invasions in the 13th century (around 1237 AD), the reunion of the Rus' states through the Duchy of Moscow and independence from the Mongols forty-six years later, the beginning of the reign of the Tsars in the 16th century, followed by the Russian Empire in 1721, World War I and the October Revolution in the early 20th century, the beginning 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 Vietnam, and most notably the Cold War with the United States from 1948 to 1991. The Cold War brought about Russian technological innovation throughout the era, including the first artificial orbital satellite (Sputnik 1) in 1948, 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 (first used in 1989). In 1989, a series of revolutions in Eastern Europe saw the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the independence of these nations (including the German reunification and collapse of the Berlin Wall) after Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms of glasnost and perestroika failed. These events culminated in the dissolution of the USSR on Christmas Day, 1991 and the formation of the current Russian Federation.