Russia Notes

ECONOMY AND PEOPLE

  • Changing economics faced many challenges transitioning from command to market economics

  • negative aspects: weak banking system, foreign debt, unstable currency, and corruption

  • progress: privatization reforms to balance and cut inflation

  • increase in small businesses

  • growing middle class

transitioning to a market economy included:

  • restructuring agriculture privatizing industry

  • opened the market to foreign investors

  • managed natural resources more efficiently

trade and interdependence

  • Russia expanded international trade and is working to build a global relationship

  • energy and fuel accounts for 53% of export

RUSSIA REVOLUTION QUESTIONS

  1. Who was the Russian Monarch in 1990

    1. Sir Nicholas II

  2. What were the conditions for workers in Russian factories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?

    1. Very poor

  3. What was Vladimir Lenin’s background and which philosopher inspired his ideas about revolution?

    1. Son of a state officer

  4. What was the Provisional Government? Was it successful? Why? Why not?

    1. It was a failure to support workers

  5. What was the role of democracy in Czarist Russia?

    1. Capitalism

  6. What happened in St. Petersburg on Sunday, January 9th, 1905

    1. The red terror occurred

  7. Why did Russia’s participation in WW1 intensify the country’s march toward revolution?

    1. To push for another revolution

  8. Why did the Civil War break out after the Bolshevik takeover?

    1. Relations with the Soviet Union

  9. What happened to Russia’s royal family?

    1. Executed

  10. What was the “Red Terror”

    1. The war

  11. How did Stalin’s rapid industrialized drive affect Russia

    1. Forced to manufacture clothing

  12. Why did Stalon launch the Great Terror, and what were the results?

    1. Resisting would equal labor comps of murder

POPULATION, CULTURE, GEOGRAPHY

1922-1991: THE SOVIET ERA

  • Over 70 ethnic groups inhabit Russia, but 80% of the population is 1 of them: Russia

  • Major groups: Russian Slavs, Caucasian peoples, Turkish peoples, 75% in the western, 25% live in Siberia

  • Soviet government has a lasting effect on culture language: Russian, Religion: mostly, Eastern Orthodox, gov control on education, health career, family life

PEOPLE AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT

  • Damaged caused by Soviet-Era industrialization pose problems to this day

  • nuclear wastes during the Cold War Era

  • Chernobyl Fire in 1986

  • Water quality-industrialization polluted lakes of Rivers

  • Soil quality-toxic waste dumps, aging storage containers, broking pipelines, fertilizer, and pesticides poisoned soil

  • Air quality industries, vehicle emissions, and burning coal have produced acid rain and pollution

Managing resources

  • The World Bank’s sustainable forestry pilot program is helping Russia manage its forests

  • people have come together to oppose mining operations in Kamchatka

  • pipelines that you through the wilderness may leak/break

  • global warming is causing the world’s longest peat bog to defrost, releasing methane into the atmosphere

REVOLUTION AND CHANGE

  • Inequality in society led to revolution

  • Halfhearted reforms Alexandria II’s weak reforms

  • American and French revolution

  • Soviet ERA - Nicholas II abdicates the throne

  • Bolshevik seizes control (emergence of communism)

  • 1922 - USSR/Soviet Union emerged

  • 1924 - Joseph Stalin leads Russia

  • After WWII, the Soviet Union becomes a superpower

  • Cold War for the next. decades

  • Karl Marx wrote the communist manifesto, ruthless leaders study it

Movements for change

  • reasons communism tell

  • weakening economy

  • discrepancies between work and benefits

  • leaders enjoyed

  • Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power and brought change

  • Boris Yeltzen becomes the first president of the Russian Republic (still has traits of dictatorship)

  • New Russia faced many obstacles when transitioning from a command economy to a market economy