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Russia: Soviet Union
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From 1922 to 1991 Russia was the largest part in the Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). People sometimes used the name "Russia" for the whole Soviet Union. In reality, Russia was only one of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics. Before then, a king ruled Russia. This king was called czar. In 1917, the Bolsheviks (later called "Communists") took over the country and murdered the czar.
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Russia is one of the most industrialized of the former Soviet republics. However, years of very low investment have left much of Russian industry antiquated and highly inefficient. Besides its resource-based industries, it has developed large manufacturing capacities, notably in metals, food products, and transport equipment. Russia is now the world's third-largest exporter of steel and primary aluminum. Russia inherited most of the defense industrial base of the Soviet Union, so armaments remain an important export category for Russia. Efforts have been made with varying success over the past few years to convert defense industries to civilian use, and the Russian Government is engaged in an ongoing process to privatize the remaining 9,222 state-owned enterprises, 33% of which are in the industrial manufacturing sector.
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Russia has the world’s biggest stockpile of chemical weapons -- more than 40,000 tonnes. The Russian government has pledged to progressively eliminate the stockpile, most of them left over from the Soviet era, by 2012.
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When St. Vladimir accepted Christianity in 989, Russia took the first step in what would become a mission to assume the heritage of Constantinople. After the Grand Dukes of Moscow had shaken off the hold of the remaining Mongol successor states, and the "New Rome" of Constantinople had itself fallen to the Turks in 1453, the way was clear for Moscow to become the "Third Rome" and the Duke the "Tsar of All the Russias." Universal Roman pretentions continued after the fall of the Tsars but, unlike Hitler in Germany, the Communists Lenin and Stalin... tsar-like their power, wished to owe no debt or acknowledge any continuity to the ideology of the earlier empire. The Soviet Union was no successor to Rome or Constantinople but a new synthesis of the dialectic of history. With the Fall of Communism, there may be some rethinking of this.
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Russia's educational system has produced nearly 100% literacy. About 3 million students attend Russia's 519 institutions of higher education and 48 universities, but continued reform is critical to producing students with skills to adapt to a market economy. Because great emphasis is placed on science and technology in education, Russian medical, mathematical, scientific, and space and aviation research is still generally of a high order. The number of doctors in relation to the population is high by American standards, although medical care in Russia, even in major cities, is generally far below Western standards. The unraveling of the Soviet state in its last decades and the physical and psychological traumas of transition during the 1990s resulted in a steady decline in the health of the Russian people. Currently Russia faces a demographic crisis as births lag far behind deaths.
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For nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, investment in Russia was hampered by political instability and economic uncertainty. Since 2001... significantly greater political stability and the global commodities boom have combined to help Russian companies produce strong returns. As a result, the DAXglobal(R) Russia+ Index returned approximately 152.52 percent and 580.90 percent over three- and five-years, respectively* and have a combined market capitalization of approximately $762.45 billion.*
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Soviet Union