Principal Cities

Approximately three-fourths of Russia’s population lives in urban areas. Russia became a country of large cities despite government restrictions during the Soviet period designed to limit the populations of major urban centers. Thirteen cities have more than 1 million inhabitants, most of these in European Russia. The largest city by far is Moscow, the capital. Saint Petersburg served as the national capital from 1712 to 1918; it is a leading port and a primary industrial center situated on the Gulf of Finland. Other major cities include Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia; Nizhniy Novgorod, the largest city on the Volga River and a major automotive and shipbuilding center; Yekaterinburg, the largest city in the Urals; and Samara, a commercial center of the middle Volga region and the primary refining center for the Volga-Urals oil fields.

Other large cities include Omsk, in western Siberia’s chief petrochemical center; Chelyabinsk, in the Ural Mountains; Kazan’, capital of the republic of Tatarstan, located along the middle course of the Volga River; Perm’, a major industrial center in the Kama River region to the west of the Urals; Ufa, an important petrochemical center in the southern Urals; Rostov-na-Donu, a commercial, industrial, and transportation center in southern European Russia on the lower stretch of the Don River; and Volgograd, a center of machinery production and other industrial activity, on the lower course of the Volga River.

Culture

The history of Russian literature, music, ballet, and drama includes some of the greatest artists and works ever produced. Much of this art flowered in Russia during the 19th century, and major cultural figures of the period include such writers as Aleksandr Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, and Anton Chekhov, and such composers as Mikhail Glinka, Peter Tchaikovsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky, and Aleksandr Borodin. Drama, ballet, and opera also have their traditions rooted in the 19th century; a prominent figure in theater at this time was Konstantin Stanislavski, who founded the Moscow Art Theater in 1898. Under the influence of the Soviet government, however, Russian cultural works of the 20th century were heavily censored, and many outstanding writers and artists were stifled or forced to publish their works abroad. The great tradition of Russian literature was carried on by a few writers of the Soviet period, such as Maksim Gorkiy, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was exiled in the 1970s because of his controversial work, which includes the famous novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962; translated 1963); Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994. See Also Russian Literature.

Music, dance (especially classical ballet), and film fared somewhat better during the Soviet period. Famous composers of the period included Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergey Prokofiev. Important filmmakers of the early Soviet period were Sergey Eisenstein, known for his mastery of montage; Lev Kuleshov; and Vsevold Pudovkin. Andrey Tarkovsky, who lived abroad from the late 1960s until his death in 1986, was one of the most notable directors of the late Soviet period.

Russian achievements in literature, music, ballet, and drama are also well represented in a wide variety of cultural institutions. Russia maintains a huge number of museums of all kinds, including outdoor museums of architectural preservation. Most of the country’s major cultural institutions are in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Best known to tourists are the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, one of the world’s great museums, and the Armory Museum in the Moscow Kremlin. Also in Moscow are the Tretyakov Gallery, with a collection devoted to Russian art, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Folk-Art Museum, and the Museum of the Revolution, as well as many other smaller, more specialized collections. The Permanent Exhibition of National Economic Achievements in Moscow offers a large display of contemporary achievements in science, industry, and agriculture. To the northeast of Moscow there is a string of a half-dozen old kremlin (citadel) towns that served as seats of government for city-states during the Middle Ages. These have been restored as part of a tourist circuit known as the Golden Ring.

Russia also has thousands of libraries of various kinds. Best known is the Russian State Library in Moscow, which houses more than 30 million volumes in some 250 languages—one of the largest library collections in the world. Other leading libraries include the M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library in Saint Petersburg, with about 28.5 million volumes; the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with about 19 million volumes; and Moscow State University Library, with about 6.6 million volumes.

The best-known theaters in Moscow are the Bolshoi (“Big”) Theater, the Maly (“Small”) Theater, and the Moscow Art Theater. In addition, many of the larger productions of the Bolshoi ballet and opera troupes are presented in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, which seats 6000 people. Other theaters of note in Moscow are the Central Children’s Theater, the Obraztsov Puppet Theater, the Moscow Art Theater, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, the Operetta Theater, and the Theater Art Institute. Saint Petersburg has the Mariinskiy Theater of Opera and Ballet, the Maly Theater, and the Pushkin Dramatic Theater.

Government

Executive

In the Russian government, power is concentrated in the executive branch, which is headed by a president. The president has sweeping powers under the 1993 constitution. He or she is directly elected to a six-year term and cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. The president serves as the commander in chief of the armed forces and chairs the Security Council, the central defense decision-making body. Along with the defense minister, the president has control over Russia’s nuclear weapons. The president also has the power to appoint the prime minister, who is second in command. The appointment is subject to ratification by the State Duma; if the State Duma rejects the candidate for prime minister three times, the president can dissolve the legislature and call for new elections.