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Interesting Facts about Russia
Geography:
Russia is the largest country in the world with an area of 17.1 million sq. km. This is about 1/8th of the total land mass.
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Forests cover about 60% of the country. Russia has 2.5 million rivers and 3 million lakes. 10% of its areas is covered by swamps but the internal waters are distributed unevenly. Russia has 35 national parks and 84 nature reserves on its territory.
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Russia is a European country, but two thirds of its territory is in Asia.
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Russia is spans across 10 time zones from West to East.
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Russia shares its borders with 16 countries. Russia has the largest border in the world totaling to over 60 thousand km in length. With a land border of over 20 thousand km in length, it has the second-longest land border of any country.
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Moscow with a population of over 11 million is the capital of the Russian Federation. In terms of population, Moscow is one of the top 20 most populated cities in the world.
Features of Russian mentality:
Russians are accustomed to living in difficult conditions and harsh climate. This could be one of the reasons why an average Russian has highly developed sense of wit and the ability to survive most difficult situations. It is not unusual for even wealthy Russians to carry out repairs in their homes on their own or fix broken home appliances or machinery. However, the amount of wastage in a Russian household is very high and disproportionate to the income.
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Russians have an old saying ‘The tsar is good, the boyars are bad’. With the fall of the monarchy, nothing has changed except the name.
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Often Russian live for today and do not think about the future.
‘Today is mine and I cannot care less for tomorrow’
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Moscow is one of the most expensive and richest cities in the world. Salary levels in Moscow are usually 3 times higher than in other parts.
The literacy rate in Russia is 99%. There are about 3 million students and 567 higher educational institutions including 48 universities in Russia.
Other interesting facts:
Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev spent a total of 803 days in orbit, which is a world record. He also holds the world record of spending the longest time travelling among the people of our planet. According to the relativity theory, the greater the speed at which an object moves, the more it slows down for a while. It is calculated that due to the several space flights undertaken by Krikalev, he has returned 1/48 seconds younger than if he had remained on the earth all the time. In other words, the astronaut returned from orbit 1/48 seconds later than was expected under normal circumstances.
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One of the most respected occupations in Russia was of the one who sowed turnips.
Turnips have very small seeds - in a kilogram there are over a million seeds. It is not possible to sow these seeds by hand. The seeds had to be spit into the soil and anyone with this ability was greatly valued.
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Before Ivan the Terrible, alcoholic beverages in Russia had an alcohol content of 1-6%. People used to drink only on holidays and never too much. Imported wine had an alcohol content of less than 11% and was expensive and hence affordable only by aristocrats. It was drunk in the Greek way by diluting the wine with water. Drinking more than once or twice a month was considered a disgrace.
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Yekaterinburg is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the city with the highest per capita consumption of mayonnaise.
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The world’s first ever monument to an enema has been set up in Inozemtsevo Settlement of the Stavropol Region. The monument is a sculptural composition depicting three children, each holding a giant enema. It was the famous painting Venus and Mars by Sandro Botticelli that inspired the author of the masterpiece Svetlana Avakova to create such a work of art.
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Street Layout both parallel and perpendicular to itself and forms a crossroads with myself.
In Novosibirsk, Planirovochnaya Street runs both parallel and perpendicular to itself at the same time. The street forms a crossroad with a part of itself.
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The first artificial heart too was set up in Russia. The instrument was designed and tested on animals in 1936 by Vladimir Demikhov. He bought the electric motor for the artificial heart with the money sent by his parents for a new suit.
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Famous personalities like David Duchovny, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg, Natalie Portman, Mila Yovovoch, Winona Ryder, Sean Penn etc have their ancestral roots in Russia. The Great-grandmother of actress Whoopi Goldberg came from Odessa.
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The world's first video recorder was introduced by the American company Ampex in 1956. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence. He was a colonel in the Royal Army before the revolution and had the right to the title ‘Your Excellency’.
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The music for the Thai Royal Anthem was written by Russian composer Peter Shchurovsky. This was the national anthem of Thailand till 1932.
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Russia has given the world several leading scientists and engineers. Few of the inventions are: Yablokov and Lodygin invented the first electric light bulb. Popov invented wireless telegraph. Sikorsky invented helicopters. Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii invented color photography and Zworykin invented the television.
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The Nevyansk Tower located in the Sverdlovsk Region was equipped with a lightning rod for a quarter century before it was designed by Benjamin Franklin.
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Two of the five founders of Hollywood studios came from Russia including the founder of MGM. Mayer throughout his life was not very good at English and always had difficulty reading scripts.
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One of the greatest ballerinas of the XX century, Pavlova Anna Pavlovna was born on February 12, 1881 in St. Petersburg. In 1907, Anna Pavlova first performed the short ballet ‘The Swan’ (later ‘The Dying Swan’) at a charity ball at the Mariinsky Theater. This became one of the symbols of the Russian ballet of the 20th century.
The Pavlova dessert is believed to have been created in honor of the dancer either during or after one of her tours to Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s. The nationality of its creator has been a source of argument between the two nations for many years. Anna Pavlova died on January 23, 1931 in The Hague.
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During its grand opening on Jan. 31, 1990, the McDonald’s on Pushkin Square in Moscow shattered McDonald’s record for first-day sales, serving more than 30,000 customers.
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The metro station Ploshchad Revolyutsii (or Revolution Square) has a total of 76 bronze sculptures depicting the people of the Soviet Union, including soldiers, farmers, athletes, writers, aviators, industrial workers, and schoolchildren.
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The walls and passageways of over twenty stations of the Moscow Metro contain various fossils. Corals, sponges and various molluscs that lived in the warm seas of the Mesozoic Era are now forever imprinted in stone.
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Yekaterinburg was the first city in Russia in which gold was found and mining began in 1745.
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In 1913, agriculture was the main pillar of the Russian economy and gave 55.7% of its revenue. Despite this there was rapid growth in industrial production. With 5.3% of its revenue from industrialization, Russia was the fifth largest industrialized nation in the world after U.S. - 36%, Germany - 16%, Great Britain - 14% and France - 6%. Since then Russia has gradually increased its rate of development in industrialization and has been the most industrialized nation in the world.
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Collimating sight was invented in Russia in 1917. They have been used on mortars and field guns since World War I. It continues to be used as the main sights for guns on attack planes and bombers.
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The Vasyugan Swamp located in Siberia is the largest swamp in the world. It occupies an area of 53-55 thousand sq. km.
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Russian Emperor Nicholas II was the first head of state to officially announce the idea of world disarmament when he offered it to the heads of state of Europe in The Hague in 1998.
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Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, a Russian family was one of the largest in the world - 8 children were considered a small number, usually they were 12-14. Currently an average Russian family has 1.2 children which is one of the lowest amongst all the nations of the world.
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Every monarch of the Romanov dynasty left his heir a country bigger in size than what he received from his father.
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Khrushchev's famous phrase at the UN Assembly ‘I’ll show you Kuzka’s mother’ is a Russian idiom that is generally understood as a threat. The meaning of the phrase was utterly incomprehensible and translators translated it differently, borrowing another phrase that Khrushchev was famous for using ‘We will bury you’. Ever since that famous translation, ‘Kuzka’s Mother’ became a metaphor for USSR’s atomic bomb in all the following Cold War crises.
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The urban settlement Polar in Murmansk region is 4 times larger in area than Moscow and is the largest area within the Russian Federation. With a population of just over 17,000 people, Polar covers an area of 4620 sq. km.
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One of the pups of the Soviet Space dog Strelka was named Pushinka and was presented to President John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline by Nikita Khrushchev in 1961. A Cold War romance bloomed between Pushinka and a Kennedy dog
named Charlie resulting in the birth of 4 pups that JFK joking referred to as pupniks
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The most experience and strongest barge haulers were called ‘Shishka’ (Pine Cone). This gave rise to the expression ‘Bolshaya Shishka’ (Big Shot) to refer to an important person.