History of the Russian Federation
The modern history of Russia began with the Russian Republic of the Soviet Union gaining more political and economical autonomy amidst the imminent dissolution of the USSR during 1988–1991, proclaiming its sovereignty inside the Union in June 1990, and electing its first President Boris Yeltsin a year later. The Russian SFSR was the largest republic of the Soviet Union, but it had no significant independence before, being the only Soviet republic to not have its own branch of the Communist Party.
Russia's GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP) from 1991 to 2019 (in international dollars)
Russian male life expectancy from 1980 to 2007
A street flea market in Rostov-on-Don, 1992
An abandoned radiotelescope facility near Nizhny Novgorod (2006; by 2008 the telescopes had been removed)
The Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group indigenous to Eastern Europe, who share a common Russian ancestry, culture, and history. Russian, the most spoken Slavic language, is the shared mother tongue of the Russians; Orthodox Christianity has been their majority religion since the formation of a Russian identity in the Middle Ages. They are the largest Slavic nation and the largest European nation.
East Slavic tribes and peoples, 8th–9th century
The Baptism of Kievans, by Klavdy Lebedev
Grandma's Fairy Tales, by Vassily Maximov
Ethnic Russians in former Soviet Union states in 1994