1.
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
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Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the town of Salekhard, and its largest city is Noyabrsk, the Nenets people are an indigenous tribe that have long survived in this region. Their prehistoric life involved subsistence hunting and gathering, including the taking of polar bears, yamalo-Nenetsky Avtonomny Okrug is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude. On December 10,1930, Yamal National Okrug was formed based on Ural Oblast, Source, Russian Federal State Statistics Service Source The Nenets make up 5. 9% of the population, preceded by ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and followed by Tatars. Other prominent ethnic groups include Belarusians, Khants, Azerbaijanis, Bashkirs, Komi, due to the areas oil and natural gas wealth, it is one of the few places in Russia where the ethnic Russian population is growing. According to a 2012 survey 42, in addition, 14% of the population declares to be spiritual but not religious, 8% is atheist, and 0. 8% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question. Yamalo-Nenetsky Avtonomny Okrug is Russias most important source of natural gas, the region also accounts for 12% of Russias oil production. The region is of utmost importance to Russias largest company Gazprom, novatek – the countrys second largest gas producer – is also active in the region, with its headquarteres located in Tarko-Sale. List of Chairmen of the Legislative Assembly of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Законодательное Собрание Ямало-Ненецкого автономного округа, Закон №119-ЗАО от17 ноября2010 г. Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Красный Север, спецвыпуск №147/1,20 ноября2010 г. «Устав Ямало-Ненецкого автономного округа», в ред, Закона №140-ЗАО от21 декабря2015 г. «О внесении изменений в Устав Ямало-Ненецкого автономного округа», Вступил в силу15 января1999 г. Опубликован, Красный Север,15 января1999 г
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
4.
Federal districts of Russia
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The federal districts are groupings of the federal subjects of Russia. Plenipotentiary Representatives are appointed by the President and are employees of the Presidential Administration, source, President Vladimir Putin established seven federal districts in May 2000. On January 19,2010 the new North Caucasian Federal District split from the Southern Federal District, on March 2014, after the Russian military intervention in and annexation of Crimea, the Crimean Federal District was established. The legality of this annexation is disputed by most states as well as NATO, on July 28,2016 the Crimean Federal District was abolished and merged into the Southern Federal District in order to improve the governance
5.
Ural Federal District
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Ural Federal District is one of the eight federal districts of Russia. Its population was 12,080,523 according to the 2010 Census, the district was established on May 13,2000 by a decree of the President of Russia. It is located at the border of the European and Asian parts of Russia, the administrative center of the district is the city of Yekaterinburg. The district contributes 18% to Russia’s Gross Regional Product, although its population is only 8. 5% of the Russian total, the district covers an area of 1,818,500 square kilometers, about 10% of Russia. According to the 2010 Census, the district had a population of 12,080,526, the remainder comprises various ethnicities of the former Soviet Union. 79. 9% of the population lived in urban areas. In 2006, the district provided 90% of Russian natural gas production, 68% of oil, industrial production per capita in the district is about 2.5 times higher than the average value throughout Russia. The district provides about 42% of Russian tax incomes, mostly from industry and its major branches are fuel mining and production, metallurgy and metal processing and engineering. The latter two are developed in Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk Oblast which, between them, constitute 83% of Russian metallurgy and 73% of metal processing and engineering. Local ore processing plants can provide only 20% of required copper, 28% chromium, 35% iron and 17% coal, meanwhile, the average distance to import them to the Ural is 2,500 km. The district is governed by the Presidential Envoy, and individual envoys are assigned by the President of Russia to all the Oblasts of the district, pyotr Latyshev was envoy to the Urals Federal District until his death on December 2,2008. Nikolay Vinnichenko succeeded him on this post on December 8,2008, on September 6,2011 Vinnichenko was appointed the envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, and Yevgeny Kuyvashev became the Presidential Envoy in the Urals Federal District. On May 18,2012 Vladimir Putin offered the tenure to Igor Kholmanskikh, an engineer without any political experience. The district comprises the Central and West Siberian economic regions and six subjects, Source for names of federal subjects
6.
Economic regions of Russia
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No federal subject can belong to more than one economic region. Economic regions are grouped into economic zones. An economic region or its parts can belong to more than one economic zone, establishment and abolition of economic regions and economic zones or any changes in their composition are decided upon by the federal government of Russia. The following is the list and composition of the economic regions, sorted by population
7.
West Siberian economic region
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West Siberian economic region is one of twelve economic regions of Russia. This vast plain—marshy and thinly populated in the north, hilly in the south—is of growing importance, mostly due to the abundance of natural resources, oil, coal, wood. There are vast oilfields in the West Siberian petroleum basin, the Kuznetsk Basin around Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk is a center of coal mining, and the production of iron, steel, machinery, and chemicals. Logging is a significant industry throughout the region, hydroelectric stations dam the Ob near Novosibirsk and Kamen-na-Obi. The navigable Ob-Irtysh watershed covers most of area, and the southern part is also criss-crossed by the Trans-Siberian. Agricultural products include wheat, rice, oats, and sugar beets, the official economic statistics give a positive profile to this region. Not only is GDP in total due to its substantial total population. In keeping with this, wage levels are a third above the national average, however, the likelihood of getting paid in full is 14% below the national level. The regions economy is, moreover, relatively low in privatized ex-state enterprises, levels of social welfare are close to the national mean in terms of life expectancy for men and women, and the proportion of students in higher education. However, popular attitudes in the give an negative picture of West Siberia. Compared to other regions, people are less likely to expect life to improve
8.
Tyumen
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Tyumen is the largest city and the administrative center of Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located on the Tura River 2,500 kilometers east of Moscow. Tyumen was the first Russian settlement in Siberia, founded in 1586 to support Russias eastward expansion, the city has remained one of the most important industrial and economic centers east of the Ural Mountains. The central part of Old Tyumen retains many buildings from throughout the citys history. Today Tyumen is an important business center, Tyumen is the transport hub and industrial center of Tyumen Oblast— an oil-rich region bordering Kazakhstan —as well as the home of many companies active in Russias oil and gas industry. Tyumen covers an area of 235 square kilometers and its primary geographical feature is the Tura River, which crosses the city from northwest to southeast. The river is downstream of the city. The left bank of the Tura is a surrounded by gently rolling hills. The Tura is a river with extensive marshlands. The river floods during the melting season in the spring. The spring flood usually peaks in the half of May. The city is protected from flooding by a dike which can withstand floods up to 8 meters high, the highest ever flood water level in Tyumen was 9.15 meters, recorded in 1979. More recently, in 2007, a level of 7.76 was recorded. In the spring 2005, a higher than the critical 8 meters mark was expected. Tyumen has a continental climate with warm, somewhat humid summers and long. The weather in town is very changeable, and the temperature in town is higher than in the surrounding area by a few degrees. The town area also attracts more precipitation, the average temperature in January is −16.7 °C, with a record low of −50 °C. The average temperature in July is +18.6 °C, with a high of +38 °C. The average annual precipitation is 457 millimeters, the wettest year on record was 1943, with 581 millimeters, and the driest was 1917, with only 231 millimeters
9.
Federal subjects of Russia
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Since March 18,2014, the Russian Federation constitutionally consists of 85 federal subjects, although the two most recently added subjects are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Three Russian cities of importance have a status of both city and separate federal subject which comprises other cities and towns within federal city keeping old structure of postal address. In 1993, there were 89 federal subjects listed, by 2008, the number of federal subjects had been decreased to 83 because of several mergers. In 2014, Sevastopol and the Republic of Crimea became the 84th and 85th federal subjects of Russia, every federal subject has its own head, a parliament, and a constitutional court. Federal subjects have their own constitution and legislation, subjects have equal rights in relations with federal government bodies. The federal subjects have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council and they do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy. Composition of post-Soviet Russia was formed during the history of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the USSR, the Federation Treaty was included in the text of the 1978 Constitution of the Russian SFSR. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the system became de jure closer to other modern federal states with a republican form of government in the world. There are several groupings of Russian regions, Federal subjects should not be confused with the eight Federal districts which are not subdivisions of Russia, are much larger and each encompass many federal subjects. Federal districts were created by Executive Order of the President of Russia specially for presidential envoys, an official government translation of the Constitution of Russia in Article 5 states,1. Another translation of the Constitution of Russia gives for article 65, each federal subject belongs to one of the following types, b. ^ According to Article 13 of the Charter of Leningrad Oblast, however, St. Petersburg is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ According to Article 24 of the Charter of Moscow Oblast, however, Moscow is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ Not recognized internationally as a part of Russia, the merging process was finished on March 1,2008. No new mergers have been planned since March 2008, Федерального конституционного закона №7-ФКЗ от30 декабря2008 г. Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Российская газета, №237,25 декабря1993 г
10.
Time in Russia
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There are eleven time zones in Russia, which currently observe times ranging from UTC+02,00 to UTC+12,00. Daylight saving time is not used in Russia, since 4 December 2016, the time zones are as follows, Daylight saving time in Russia was originally introduced on 30 June 1917 by a decree of the Russian Provisional Government. However, it was abandoned by a Decree of the Soviet government five months later, Daylight saving time was re-introduced in the USSR on 1 April 1981, by a decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The usage of daylight saving time continued after the Soviet collapse but ended in 2011, on 27 March 2011, clocks were advanced as usual, but they did not go back on 30 October 2011, effectively making Moscow Time UTC+4 permanently. In the Russian Empire, most of the observed solar time. During the late 19th century, Moscow Mean Time was introduced on 1 January 1880,2,30,17 corresponds to 37. 6166667°, the longitude of Moscow. Other parts of Russia kept solar time for several years. At this time, Russia had the Julian calendar with 12 or 13 days less date compared to Western Europe, so it is possible to say the Moscow actually had GMT-285,29,43, GMT-309,29,43 and GMT-309,28,41. Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar on Thursday,14 February 1918, after the Soviet Union was created, Moscow Time became UTC+2 and the various other time zones were introduced throughout Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, for example Irkutsk Time GMT+7. Between 1917-1922 the time was ordered, with daylight savings time some of those years. On 21 June 1930, the Soviet Union advanced all clocks by one hour, Moscow Time was now GMT+3 and Irkutsk Time GMT+8. On 1 April 1981, daylight saving time was re-introduced, clocks were moved one hour forward on 1 April, on 1 April 1981,00,00,00, Oymyakonsky District changed its time zone from MSK+6 to MSK+8. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+9 to UTC+12, on 1 April 1982,00,00,00, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug changed its time zone from MSK+10 to MSK+9, thus eliminating Anadyr Time. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+14 to UTC+13, on 27 March 1988,02,00,00, Saratov and Volgograd oblasts changed its time zone from MSK+1 to MSK. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+5 to UTC+4, on 23 May 1993,00,00,00, Novosibirsk Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+8 to UTC+7, on 28 May 1995,00,00,00, Altai Krai and Altai Republic changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. On 30 March 1997,02,00,00, Sakhalin Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+8 to MSK+7, on 1 May 2002,03,00,00, Tomsk Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. On 1 January 2004,00,00,00, New Siberian Islands, Tomponsky District, the following time zone changes occurred on 28 March 2010, which, in particular, led to abolition of two of the eleven time zones
11.
Vehicle registration plates of Russia
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Vehicle registration plates are the mandatory number plates used to display the registration mark of a vehicle, and have existed in Russia for many decades. Most motor vehicles which are used on roads are required by law to display them. The current format uses a letter followed by 3 digits and two more letters, to improve legibility of the numbers for Russian cars abroad, only a small subset of Cyrillic characters that look like Latin characters are used. Finally, the number and letters RUS are included, as well as the national flag. There is a different format for trailers, motorcycles, mopeds and scooters plates are made of square reflective plates and its format is 4 digits at the top and two letters at the bottom. Some autonomous regions are not required to have the flag on the licence plates, vehicles used by certain organisations or categories of persons carry special plates, Special plates in the above categories never carry the Russian flag, except for trailers. There are special reserved for government officials. The license plates for government officials originally had a larger flag instead of the regional code. Rich businessmen, prominent politicians and crime lords often use para-legally acquired special licence plates to get preferential treatment from the transport police, often, this is used in conjunction with a flashing siren. The Society of Blue Buckets is a protest movement that opposes this trend, as of 2014, there are new codes for Russian plates, number 82 for the Republic of Crimea and 92 for Sevastopol. The Russian Federation then officially annexed Crimea from Ukraine and now administers it as two federal subjects, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Ukraine, backed by most of the community, refuses to accept the annexation. As per GOST provision, only 1,726,272 combinations may be issued within one administration unit, in certain regions, the amount of vehicles exceeds that number, and the combination may not be reused after a vehicle was taken off the registration. All this creates an issue of running out of numbers, a short-term solution was introducing more codes for those regions. Introduction of new license plate is being considered as a future solution. In the following years some codes were reassigned or discontinued, as the populous regions started running out of license plate combinations, new codes past code 89 were assigned to them as well. Additional triple-digit codes were created by adding a 1 or a 7 to the regional code. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs Order 282 from March 28,2002, 1Code 059 is a former code for Syria
12.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
13.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
14.
Urals Federal District
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Ural Federal District is one of the eight federal districts of Russia. Its population was 12,080,523 according to the 2010 Census, the district was established on May 13,2000 by a decree of the President of Russia. It is located at the border of the European and Asian parts of Russia, the administrative center of the district is the city of Yekaterinburg. The district contributes 18% to Russia’s Gross Regional Product, although its population is only 8. 5% of the Russian total, the district covers an area of 1,818,500 square kilometers, about 10% of Russia. According to the 2010 Census, the district had a population of 12,080,526, the remainder comprises various ethnicities of the former Soviet Union. 79. 9% of the population lived in urban areas. In 2006, the district provided 90% of Russian natural gas production, 68% of oil, industrial production per capita in the district is about 2.5 times higher than the average value throughout Russia. The district provides about 42% of Russian tax incomes, mostly from industry and its major branches are fuel mining and production, metallurgy and metal processing and engineering. The latter two are developed in Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk Oblast which, between them, constitute 83% of Russian metallurgy and 73% of metal processing and engineering. Local ore processing plants can provide only 20% of required copper, 28% chromium, 35% iron and 17% coal, meanwhile, the average distance to import them to the Ural is 2,500 km. The district is governed by the Presidential Envoy, and individual envoys are assigned by the President of Russia to all the Oblasts of the district, pyotr Latyshev was envoy to the Urals Federal District until his death on December 2,2008. Nikolay Vinnichenko succeeded him on this post on December 8,2008, on September 6,2011 Vinnichenko was appointed the envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, and Yevgeny Kuyvashev became the Presidential Envoy in the Urals Federal District. On May 18,2012 Vladimir Putin offered the tenure to Igor Kholmanskikh, an engineer without any political experience. The district comprises the Central and West Siberian economic regions and six subjects, Source for names of federal subjects
15.
Autonomous okrugs of Russia
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As of 2014, Russia comprises eighty-five federal subjects, of which four are autonomous okrugs. Originally called national okrug, this type of unit was created in the 1920s. In 1990, ten autonomous okrugs existed within the RSFSR, between 2005 and 2008, the three autonomous okrugs in which the titular nationality constituted more than 30% of the population were abolished. Since then, three more have been abolished, leaving four, the ten autonomous okrugs in 1990 were, The table below also includes autonomous okrugs which have since changed status. Autonomous republics of the Soviet Union Autonomous oblasts of the Soviet Union Federal subjects of Russia Republics of Russia
16.
Russian Census (2010)
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The Russian Census of 2010 is the first census of the Russian Federation population since 2002 and the second after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Preparations for the census began in 2007 and it took place between October 14 and October 25, the census was originally scheduled for October 2010, but was moved to 2013 allegedly for financial reasons, although it was also speculated that political motives were influential in the decision. However, in late 2009 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the Government of Russia allocated 10.5 billion rubles in order to conduct the census as originally scheduled, Results showed the population to stand at 142.9 million. Since the previous 2002 census, population has decreased by 2.3 million, according to the 2010 census, urban population is 105.3 million, rural population is 37.5 million. The urbanisation rate is currently 73. 7%, the median age is 38 years. The ethnic composition is dominated by Russians, demographics of Russia Russian Census 2010 final results Results of 2010 All-Russia population census Official website of the 2010 Census
17.
Ural Mountains
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The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and they have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the sector of the Russian economy. As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock and it might have been a borrowing from either Turkic stone belt, or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural and he sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр elevation, upland or Mansi ур ала mountain peak, top of the mountain, tatischev believes that this oronym is set to belt and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- gird. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects, hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, the Evenk geographical term era mountain has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain, turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, in 1430 the town of Solikamsk was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472, with the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers, the Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581, in 1597 Babinovs road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones, iron and copper smelting works emerged
18.
Natural gas
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It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal matter are exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years. The energy that the plants originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of bonds in the gas. Natural gas is a fuel used as a source of energy for heating, cooking. It is also used as fuel for vehicles and as a feedstock in the manufacture of plastics. Natural gas is found in underground rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal beds. Petroleum is another resource and fossil fuel found in proximity to. Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms, biogenic and thermogenic, biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. In petroleum production gas is burnt as flare gas. The World Bank estimates that over 150 cubic kilometers of gas are flared or vented annually. Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, most, Natural gas is often informally referred to simply as gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal. However, it is not to be confused with gasoline, especially in North America, Natural gas was used by the Chinese in about 500 BCE. They discovered a way to transport gas seeping from the ground in crude pipelines of bamboo to where it was used to salt water to extract the salt. The worlds first industrial extraction of gas started at Fredonia, New York. By 2009,66000 km³ had been used out of the total 850000 km³ of estimated remaining reserves of natural gas. An annual increase in usage of 2–3% could result in currently recoverable reserves lasting significantly less, unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields. If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was expensive to pipe to the end user. In the 19th century and early 20th century, unwanted gas was burned off at oil fields
19.
Fuel industry
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Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure. Coal is composed primarily of carbon, along with quantities of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen. A fossil fuel, coal forms when plant matter is converted into peat, which in turn is converted into lignite, then sub-bituminous coal, after that bituminous coal. This involves biological and geological processes that take place over time, throughout history, coal has been used as an energy resource, primarily burned for the production of electricity and heat, and is also used for industrial purposes, such as refining metals. Coal is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide, the extraction of coal, its use in energy production and its byproducts are all associated with environmental and health effects including climate change. Coal is extracted from the ground by coal mining, since 1983, the worlds top coal producer has been China. In 2015 China produced 3,747 million tonnes of coal –47. 7% of 7,861 million tonnes world coal production, in 2015 other large producers were United States, India, European Union and Australia. The word originally took the col in Old English, from Proto-Germanic *kula. In Old Turkic languages, kül is ash, cinders, öčür is quench, the compound charcoal in Turkic is öčür kül, literally quenched ashes, cinders, coals with elided anlaut ö- and inflection affixes -ülmüş. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests in low-lying wetland areas, due to natural processes such as flooding, these forests were buried underneath soil. As more and more soil deposited over them, they were compressed, the temperature also rose as they sank deeper and deeper. As the process continued the plant matter was protected from biodegradation and oxidation and this trapped the carbon in immense peat bogs that were eventually covered and deeply buried by sediments. Under high pressure and high temperature, dead vegetation was slowly converted to coal, as coal contains mainly carbon, the conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called carbonization. The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period provided ideal conditions for coal formation, the exception is the coal gap in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where coal is rare. Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants — this coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae, in its dehydrated form, peat is a highly effective absorbent for fuel and oil spills on land and water. It is also used as a conditioner for soil to make it able to retain. Lignite, or brown coal, is the lowest rank of coal, jet, a compact form of lignite, is sometimes polished and has been used as an ornamental stone since the Upper Palaeolithic
20.
Tura River
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The Tura River, also known as Dolgaya River is a historically important Siberian river which flows eastward from the central Ural Mountains into the Tobol River, a part of the Ob River basin. The main town on it is Tyumen, from about 1600 to 1750 the Tura River was the main entry point into Siberia. Most people and goods entering or leaving passed through the house at Verkhoturye. There are a number of mining towns in the upper Tura basin and it is located in the Sverdlovsk Oblast and Tyumen Oblast in Russia. It is 1,030 kilometres long with a basin of 80,400 square kilometres. The Tura River is navigable within 753 kilometres of its mouth and it freezes up in late October through November and stays under the ice until April of the first half of May. The Tura basin is fan-shaped with the Tura on the north side and the Pyshma River on the south
21.
Tobol River
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Tobol is a river which is the main tributary of the Irtysh. Its length is 1660 km, and the area of its basin is 395,000 km². The Tobol River was one of the four important rivers of the Khanate of Sibir, in 1428 the khan was killed in a battle with the forces of Abul-Khayr Khan at the Battle of Tobol. In the 16th century, the Tobol was the terminus of the portage route leading westward to the Vishera
22.
Tavda River
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The Tavda River is a Siberian river that drains part of the central Ural mountains into the Tobol River. It is north of the Tura River and south of the Konda River and it is located in Sverdlovsk Oblast and Tyumen Oblast. It is formed by the confluence of the Lozva and Sosva Rivers, the Tavda is 719 kilometres long, and its drainage basin covers 88,100 square kilometres. The river freezes up in early November and stays icebound until late April and its main tributary is the Pelym River. The Tavda is navigable and is used for timber rafting, the town of Tavda is located on the shores of the Tavda River, as is Pelym, the earliest Russian settlement east of the Urals. The Tavda and its tributaries, the Sosva, Lozva and Pelym all flow southeast. They are shaped like the letter Щ, but with a longer tail, the Sosva flows southeast, turns somewhat northeast near the town of Sosva, picks up to Lozva and gains the name of Tavda. This continues east, picks up the Pelym and flows southeast into the Tobol between Tiumen and Tobolsk
23.
Ishim River
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Ishim River is a river running through Kazakhstan and Russia. It is 2,450 kilometres long, its discharge is 56.3 cubic metres per second. It is a tributary of the Irtysh River. The Ishim River is partly navigable in its lower reaches, the upper course of the Ishim passes through Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. In Russia, the travels through a vast marshland for its course. The river freezes from late November until March, according to the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Astana was chosen as the capital in part due to the presence of the river. Since 1998, the Ishim River in Astana has been managed, for flood management and maintaining water level, in order to provide for recreational use. In central Astana, near the city park, there is now a beach and pedalo boat rental, meanwhile, if the river had not been dammed. Another dam will be constructed upstream of the city, for flood control. The city authorities also have plans for deepening the river. To maintain the level of water flow, water is pumped to the Ishim from the Irtysh River, over the Irtysh–Karaganda Canal
24.
Irtysh River
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The Irtysh River is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the tributary of the Ob River. The rivers source lies in the Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria close to the border with Mongolia, the Irtyshs main tributaries include the Tobol River and the Ishim River. The Ob-Irtysh system forms a drainage basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia. The name Black Irtysh is applied by some authors, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan, to the course of the river. The term White Irtysh, in opposition to the Black Irtysh, was used in the past to refer to the Irtysh below lake Zaysan. In Kazakhstan and Russia, tankers, passenger and freight boats navigate the river during the ice-free season, Omsk, home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, functions as the largest river port in Western Siberia. On the Kazakhstan section of the river there are three major hydroelectric plants, namely at Bakhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Shulbinsk. The worlds deepest lock, with a drop of 42 metres, plans exist for the construction of several more dams. Three dams have been constructed on the Chinese section of the Irtysh as well, the Keketuohai Dam, the Kalasuke Dam, in 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstans capital, Astana. In the last years of the 20th century and the early 2000s, a more major project. Increased water use in China has caused significant concerns among Kazakh, opened in 1896, this is the oldest bridge on the river. Tobolsk, on the Tyumen-Surgut line As the Kuytun–Beitun Railway in Chinas Xinjiang is being extended toward Altay City, numerous highway bridges over the Irtysh exist in China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. There are no bridges of any kind on the Irtysh downstream of Tobolsk, a number of Mongol and Turkic peoples occupied the river banks for many centuries. In 657, Tang Dynasty general Su Dingfang defeated Ashina Helu, qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate, at the Battle of Irtysh River, helus defeat ended the Khaganate, strengthened Tang control of Xinjiang, and led to Tang suzerainty over the western Turks. The Khanate of Sibir was conquered by the Russians in the 1580s, farther east, Tara was founded in 1594, roughly at the border of the taiga belt and the steppe to the south. In the 17th century the Dzungar Khanate, formed by the Mongol Oirat people, became Russias southern neighbor, the Chinese Qing Empire conquered Dzungaria in the 1750s. Concerns were raised in Russia about the possibility of a Chinese fleet sailing from Lake Zaysan down the Irtysh, a Russian expedition visited Lake Zaysan in 1764, and concluded that such a riverine invasion would not be likely
25.
Ob River
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The Ob River, also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the worlds seventh-longest river. It forms at the confluence of the Biya and Katun Rivers which have their origins in the Altay Mountains and it is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean. The Gulf of Ob is the worlds longest estuary, the Ob is known to the Khanty people as the As, Yag, Kolta and Yema, to the Nenets people as the Kolta or Kuay, and to the Siberian Tatars as the Umar or Omass. Possibly from Proto-Indo-Iranian *ap-, river, water, the Ob forms 25 km southwest of Biysk in Altai Krai at the confluence of the Biya and Katun rivers. Both these streams have their origin in the Altay Mountains, the Biya issuing from Lake Teletskoye, the Obs entire main course is within Russia, though its tributaries extend into Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia. The river splits into more than one arm, especially after joining the large Irtysh tributary at about 69° E, from the source of the Irtysh to the mouth of the Ob, the river flow is the longest in Russia at 5,410 kilometres. Other noteworthy tributaries are, from the east, the Tom, Chulym, Ket, Tym and Vakh rivers, and, from the west and south, the Vasyugan, Irtysh, and Sosva Rivers. The combined Ob-Irtysh system, the fourth-longest river system of Asia, is 5,410 kilometres long, the river basin of the Ob consists mostly of steppe, taiga, swamps, tundra, and semi-desert topography. The floodplains of the Ob are characterized by many tributaries and lakes. The Ob is ice-bound at southern Barnaul from early in November to near the end of April, the Ob River crosses several climatic zones. The upper Ob valley, in the south, grows grapes, melons and watermelons, the most comfortable climate for the rest on the Ob are Biysk, Barnaul, and Novosibirsk. The Ob is used mostly for irrigation, drinking water, hydroelectric energy, the navigable waters within the Ob basin reach a total length of 15,000 km. Until the early 20th century, an important western river port was Tyumen, located on the Tura River. In the eastern reaches of the Ob basin, Tomsk on the Tom River was an important terminus, Tyumen had its first steamboat in 1836, and the middle reaches of the Ob have been navigated by steamboats since 1845. Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena, in 1916 there were 49 steamers on the Ob,10 on the Yenesei. The Trans-Siberian Railway, once completed, provided for more direct, but the Ob river system still remained important for connecting the huge expanses of Tyumen Oblast and Tomsk Oblast with the major cities along the Trans-Siberian route, such as Novosibirsk or Omsk. A dam was built near Novosibirsk in 1956, which created the then-largest artificial lake in Siberia, the project never left the drawing board, abandoned in 1986 due to economic and environmental considerations. In its early years of operation, the Mayak plant released vast quantities of contaminated water into several small lakes near the plant
26.
Irtysh
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The Irtysh River is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the tributary of the Ob River. The rivers source lies in the Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria close to the border with Mongolia, the Irtyshs main tributaries include the Tobol River and the Ishim River. The Ob-Irtysh system forms a drainage basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia. The name Black Irtysh is applied by some authors, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan, to the course of the river. The term White Irtysh, in opposition to the Black Irtysh, was used in the past to refer to the Irtysh below lake Zaysan. In Kazakhstan and Russia, tankers, passenger and freight boats navigate the river during the ice-free season, Omsk, home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, functions as the largest river port in Western Siberia. On the Kazakhstan section of the river there are three major hydroelectric plants, namely at Bakhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Shulbinsk. The worlds deepest lock, with a drop of 42 metres, plans exist for the construction of several more dams. Three dams have been constructed on the Chinese section of the Irtysh as well, the Keketuohai Dam, the Kalasuke Dam, in 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstans capital, Astana. In the last years of the 20th century and the early 2000s, a more major project. Increased water use in China has caused significant concerns among Kazakh, opened in 1896, this is the oldest bridge on the river. Tobolsk, on the Tyumen-Surgut line As the Kuytun–Beitun Railway in Chinas Xinjiang is being extended toward Altay City, numerous highway bridges over the Irtysh exist in China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. There are no bridges of any kind on the Irtysh downstream of Tobolsk, a number of Mongol and Turkic peoples occupied the river banks for many centuries. In 657, Tang Dynasty general Su Dingfang defeated Ashina Helu, qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate, at the Battle of Irtysh River, helus defeat ended the Khaganate, strengthened Tang control of Xinjiang, and led to Tang suzerainty over the western Turks. The Khanate of Sibir was conquered by the Russians in the 1580s, farther east, Tara was founded in 1594, roughly at the border of the taiga belt and the steppe to the south. In the 17th century the Dzungar Khanate, formed by the Mongol Oirat people, became Russias southern neighbor, the Chinese Qing Empire conquered Dzungaria in the 1750s. Concerns were raised in Russia about the possibility of a Chinese fleet sailing from Lake Zaysan down the Irtysh, a Russian expedition visited Lake Zaysan in 1764, and concluded that such a riverine invasion would not be likely
27.
Rock ptarmigan
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The rock ptarmigan is a medium-sized gamebird in the grouse family. In Japan, it is known as the raichō, which means thunder bird and it is the official bird of Gifu, Nagano, and Toyama Prefectures and is a protected species nationwide. The rock ptarmigan is 34–36 cm long with a wingspan of 54–60 cm and it is smaller than the willow ptarmigan by about 10%. The males song is a loud croaking, the rock ptarmigan is seasonally camouflaged, its feathers moult from white in winter to brown in spring or summer. The breeding male has upper parts with white wings and under parts. In winter, its plumage becomes completely white except for the black tail and it can be distinguished from the winter willow ptarmigan by habitat—the rock ptarmigan prefers higher elevations and more barren habitat, it is also smaller with a more delicate bill. The rock ptarmigan is a species which breeds across arctic and subarctic Eurasia and North America on rocky mountainsides. Because of the habitat in which it lives, it has only a few predators—such as golden eagles—and it can be surprisingly approachable. It has been introduced to New Zealand, South Georgia, the Kerguelen Islands, during the last ice age, the species was far more widespread in continental Europe. The rock ptarmigan feeds primarily on birch and willow buds and catkins when available and it also eats various seeds, leaves, flowers, and berries of other plant species. Insects are eaten by the developing young, apart from the comb, the male rock ptarmigan has no ornaments or displays that are typical for grouses in temperate regions. Studies on other grouses have shown that much variation in comb size, the males comb has been the focus of studies regarding sexual selection. The correlation to size disappeared after the first year, but the correlation to comb condition remained and this is consistent with another study of the same population of L. muta that showed that mating success overall is correlated to comb condition. Exceptions were first-time breeders, in which the size of the comb influenced mating success, the rock ptarmigan becomes sexually mature at six months of age and commonly has up to six chicks. Because of this high breeding rate, the size of the population is affected very little by factors such as hunting, the ptarmigans genus name, Lagopus, is derived from Ancient Greek lagos, meaning hare, + pous, foot, in reference to the birds feathered legs. The species name, muta, comes from New Latin and means mute and it was for a long time misspelt mutus, in the erroneous belief that the ending of Lagopus denotes masculine gender. However, as the Ancient Greek term λαγωπους is of feminine gender, and the name has to agree with that. The word ptarmigan comes from the Scottish Gaelic tàrmachan, literally croaker, the silent initial p was added in 1684 by Robert Sibbald through the influence of Greek, especially pteron, wing, feather, or pinion
28.
Walrus
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The walrus is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the living species in the family Odobenidae. Adult walruses are easily recognized by their prominent tusks, whiskers, adult males in the Pacific can weigh more than 2,000 kg and, among pinnipeds, are exceeded in size only by the two species of elephant seals. Walruses live mostly in shallow waters above the shelves, spending significant amounts of their lives on the sea ice looking for benthic bivalve mollusks to eat. Walruses are relatively long-lived, social animals, and they are considered to be a species in the Arctic marine regions. The walrus has played a prominent role in the cultures of many indigenous Arctic peoples, who have hunted the walrus for its meat, fat, skin, tusks, and bone. During the 19th century and the early 20th century, walruses were widely hunted and killed for their blubber, walrus ivory, the population of walruses dropped rapidly all around the Arctic region. Their population has rebounded somewhat since then, though the populations of Atlantic and Laptev walruses remain fragmented, the origin of the word walrus is thought by J. R. R. Tolkien to derive from a Germanic language, and it has been attributed largely to either the Dutch language or Old Norse and its first part is thought to derive from a word such as Dutch walvis whale. Its second part has also hypothesized to come from the Old Norse word for horse. For example, the Old Norse word hrossvalr means horse-whale and is thought to have passed in an inverted form to both Dutch and the dialects of northern Germany as walros and Walross. An alternate theory is that is comes from the Dutch words wal shore, the species name rosmarus is Scandinavian. The Norwegian manuscript Konungsskuggsja, thought to date from around AD1240, refers to the walrus as rosmhvalr in Iceland and rostungr in Greenland. Several place names in Iceland, Greenland and Norway may originate from sites, Hvalfjord, Hvallatrar and Hvalsnes to name some. The archaic English word for walrus—morse—is widely thought to have come from the Slavic languages, compare морж in Russian, mursu in Finnish, morša in Northern Saami, and morse in French. The coincidental similarity between morse and the Latin word morsus supposedly contributed to the reputation as a terrible monster. The compound Odobenus comes from odous and baino, based on observations of walruses using their tusks to pull out of the water. The term divergens in Latin means turning apart, referring to their tusks, the walrus is a mammal in the order Carnivora
29.
Arctic fox
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The Arctic fox, also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in cold environments and it has a deep thick fur which is brown in summer and white in winter. Its body length ranges from 46 to 68 cm, with a rounded body shape to minimize the escape of body heat. The Arctic fox preys on any small creatures such as, lemmings, voles, ringed seal pups, fish, waterfowl and it also eats carrion, berries, seaweed, insects, and other small invertebrates. Arctic foxes form monogamous pairs during the season and they stay together to raise their young in complex underground dens. Occasionally, other members may assist in raising their young. The Arctic fox lives in some of the most frigid extremes on the planet, the fox has a low surface area to volume ratio, as evidenced by its generally compact body shape, short muzzle and legs, and short, thick ears. Since less of its area is exposed to the Arctic cold. Its paws have fur on the soles for additional insulation and to help it walk on ice and its fur changes color with the seasons, in most populations it is white in the winter to blend in with snow, while in the summer it is greyish-brown or darker brown. In some populations, however, it is a steely bluish-gray in the winter, the fur of the Arctic fox provides the best insulation of any mammal. The Arctic fox has such keen hearing, it can determine exactly where an animal is moving under the snow. When it has located its prey, it pounces and punches through the snow to catch its victim, Arctic foxes do not hibernate and are active all year round. They build up their fat reserves in the autumn, sometimes increasing their weight by more than 50%. This provides greater insulation during the winter and a source of energy when food is scarce and they live in large dens in frost-free, slightly raised ground. These are complex systems of tunnels covering as much as 1,000 m2 and are often in eskers and they have multiple entrances and may have been in existence for many decades and used by many generations of foxes. Arctic foxes tend to form pairs in the breeding season. Breeding usually takes place in April and May, and the period is about 52 days. Litters tend to average five to eight kits, but exceptionally contain as many as 25, both the mother and father help to raise the young which emerge from the den when 3 to 4 weeks old and are weaned by 9 weeks of age
30.
Polar bear
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The polar bear is a carnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is a bear, approximately the same size as the omnivorous Kodiak bear. A boar weighs around 350–700 kg, while a sow is about half that size, although most polar bears are born on land, they spend most of their time on the sea ice. Their scientific name means maritime bear and derives from this fact, Polar bears hunt their preferred food of seals from the edge of sea ice, often living off fat reserves when no sea ice is present. Because of expected habitat loss caused by change, the polar bear is classified as a vulnerable species. For decades, large-scale hunting raised international concern for the future of the species, for thousands of years, the polar bear has been a key figure in the material, spiritual, and cultural life of circumpolar peoples, and polar bears remain important in their cultures. Constantine John Phipps was the first to describe the polar bear as a species in 1774. He chose the scientific name Ursus maritimus, the Latin for maritime bear, the Inuit refer to the animal as nanook. The Yupik also refer to the bear as nanuuk in Siberian Yupik, the bear is umka in the Chukchi language. In Russian, it is usually called бе́лый медве́дь, though a word still in use is ошку́й. In the Norwegian-administered Svalbard archipelago, the bear is referred to as Isbjørn. The polar bear was considered to be in its own genus. The bear family, Ursidae, is thought to have split off from other carnivorans about 38 million years ago, the Ursinae subfamily originated approximately 4.2 million years ago. The oldest known polar bear fossil is a 130,000 to 110, 000-year-old jaw bone, fossils show that between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, the polar bears molar teeth changed significantly from those of the brown bear. Polar bears are thought to have diverged from a population of bears that became isolated during a period of glaciation in the Pleistocene or from the eastern part of Siberia. The evidence from DNA analysis is more complex, the mitochondrial DNA of the polar bear diverged from the brown bear, Ursus arctos, roughly 150,000 years ago. The mtDNA of extinct Irish brown bears is particularly close to polar bears, when the polar bear was originally documented, two subspecies were identified, Ursus maritimus maritimus by Constantine J. Phipps in 1774, and Ursus maritimus marinus by Peter Simon Pallas in 1776. This distinction has since been invalidated, one alleged fossil subspecies has been identified, Ursus maritimus tyrannus became extinct during the Pleistocene
31.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
32.
Regional parliaments of Russia
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The federal structure of Russia includes 83 regional parliaments. The biggest regional parliament is the State Assembly of Bashkortostan which consists of 120 deputies, the smallest one is the Assembly of Deputies of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug which consists of 11 deputies. In the table are marked in bold parliaments, elected solely by the proportional system, politics of Russia Composition of the German State Parliaments
33.
Constitution of Russia
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The current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted by national referendum on December 12,1993. Russias constitution came into force on December 25,1993, at the moment of its official publication, the current Constitution is the most long-lived in the history of Russia, except for Stalins constitution. The 1993 Constitutional Conference was attended by over 800 participants, sergei Alexeyev, Sergey Shakhray and sometimes Anatoly Sobchak are considered as co-authors of the constitution. The text of the constitution was inspired by Mikhail Speranskys constitutional project, a constitutional referendum was held in Russia on 12 December 1993. Of all registered voters,58,187,755 people participated in the referendum, of those,32,937,630 voted for adoption of the Constitution. It replaced the previous Soviet-era Constitution of April 12,1978 of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the constitution is divided into two sections
34.
Lead
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Lead is a chemical element with atomic number 82 and symbol Pb. When freshly cut, it is bluish-white, it tarnishes to a dull gray upon exposure to air and it is a soft, malleable, and heavy metal with a density exceeding that of most common materials. Lead has the second-highest atomic number of the stable elements. Lead is a relatively unreactive post-transition metal and its weak metallic character is illustrated by its amphoteric nature and tendency to form covalent bonds. Compounds of lead are found in the +2 oxidation state. Exceptions are mostly limited to organolead compounds, like the lighter members of the group, lead exhibits a tendency to bond to itself, it can form chains, rings, and polyhedral structures. Lead is easily extracted from its ores and was known to people in Western Asia. A principal ore of lead, galena, often bears silver, Lead production declined after the fall of Rome and did not reach comparable levels again until the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, global production of lead is about ten million tonnes annually, Lead has several properties that make it useful, high density, low melting point, ductility, and relative inertness to oxidation. In the late 19th century, lead was recognized as poisonous, Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates in soft tissues and bones, damaging the nervous system and causing brain disorders and, in mammals, blood disorders. A lead atom has 82 electrons, arranged in a configuration of 4f145d106s26p2. The combined first and second ionization energies—the total energy required to remove the two 6p electrons—is close to that of tin, leads upper neighbor in group 14. This is unusual since ionization energies generally fall going down a group as an elements outer electrons become more distant from the nucleus, the similarity is caused by the lanthanide contraction—the decrease in element radii from lanthanum to lutetium, and the relatively small radii of the elements after hafnium. The contraction is due to shielding of the nucleus by the lanthanide 4f electrons. The combined first four ionization energies of lead exceed those of tin, for this reason lead, unlike tin, mostly forms compounds in which it has an oxidation state of +2, rather than +4. Relativistic effects, which become particularly prominent at the bottom of the periodic table, as a result, the 6s electrons of lead become reluctant to participate in bonding, a phenomenon called the inert pair effect. A related outcome is that the distance between nearest atoms in crystalline lead is unusually long, the lighter group 14 elements form stable or metastable allotropes having the tetrahedrally coordinated and covalently bonded diamond cubic structure. The energy levels of their outer s- and p-orbitals are close enough to allow mixing into four hybrid sp3 orbitals
35.
Copper
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Copper is a chemical element with symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of copper has a reddish-orange color. Copper is one of the few metals that occur in nature in directly usable metallic form as opposed to needing extraction from an ore and this led to very early human use, from c.8000 BC. Copper used in buildings, usually for roofing, oxidizes to form a green verdigris, Copper is sometimes used in decorative art, both in its elemental metal form and in compounds as pigments. Copper compounds are used as agents, fungicides, and wood preservatives. Copper is essential to all living organisms as a trace dietary mineral because it is a key constituent of the enzyme complex cytochrome c oxidase. In molluscs and crustaceans, copper is a constituent of the blood pigment hemocyanin, replaced by the hemoglobin in fish. In humans, copper is found mainly in the liver, muscle, the adult body contains between 1.4 and 2.1 mg of copper per kilogram of body weight. The filled d-shells in these elements contribute little to interatomic interactions, unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in copper are lacking a covalent character and are relatively weak. This observation explains the low hardness and high ductility of single crystals of copper, at the macroscopic scale, introduction of extended defects to the crystal lattice, such as grain boundaries, hinders flow of the material under applied stress, thereby increasing its hardness. For this reason, copper is supplied in a fine-grained polycrystalline form. The softness of copper partly explains its high conductivity and high thermal conductivity. The maximum permissible current density of copper in open air is approximately 3. 1×106 A/m2 of cross-sectional area, Copper is one of a few metallic elements with a natural color other than gray or silver. Pure copper is orange-red and acquires a reddish tarnish when exposed to air, as with other metals, if copper is put in contact with another metal, galvanic corrosion will occur. A green layer of verdigris can often be seen on old structures, such as the roofing of many older buildings. Copper tarnishes when exposed to sulfur compounds, with which it reacts to form various copper sulfides. There are 29 isotopes of copper, 63Cu and 65Cu are stable, with 63Cu comprising approximately 69% of naturally occurring copper, both have a spin of 3⁄2
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Chromite
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Chromite is an iron chromium oxide, FeCr2O4. It is a mineral belonging to the spinel group. Magnesium can substitute for iron in variable amounts as it forms a solution with magnesiochromite. It is by far the most industrially important mineral for the production of chromium, used as an alloying ingredient in stainless. Chromite is found as orthocumulate lenses of chromitite in peridotite from the Earths mantle and it also occurs in layered ultramafic intrusive rocks. In addition, it is found in rocks such as some serpentinites. Ore deposits of chromite form as early magmatic differentiates and it is commonly associated with olivine, magnetite, serpentine, and corundum. The vast Bushveld igneous complex of South Africa is a layered mafic to ultramafic igneous body with some layers consisting of 90% chromite making the rare rock type. The Stillwater igneous complex in Montana also contains significant chromite, the only ores of chromium are the minerals chromite and magnesiochromite. Most of the time, economic geology names chromite the whole chromite-magnesiochromite series, the two main products of chromite refining are ferrochromium and metallic chromium, for those products the ore smelter process differs considerably. Chromite is also used as a material, because it has a high heat stability. The chromium extracted from chromite is used in plating and alloying for production of corrosion resistant superalloys, nichrome. Chromium is used as a pigment for glass, glazes, and paint and it is also sometimes used as a gemstone. In 200214,600,000 metric tons of chromite were mined, the largest producers were South Africa, India, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, Finland, Iran, and Brazil with several other countries producing the rest of less than 10% of the world production. Afghanistan has significant deposits of high grade ore, which is mined illegally in Khost Province. In Pakistan, chromite is mined from the rocks in mainly the Muslimbagh killa Saifullah District. Most of the chromite is of metallurgical grade with Cr2O3 averaging 54%, recently, the biggest user of chromite ore has been China, importing large quantities from South Africa, Pakistan, and other countries. The concentrate is used to make ferrochrome, which is in used to make stainless steel
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Sverdlovsk Oblast
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Sverdlovsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia located in the Urals Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Yekaterinburg, formerly known as Sverdlovsk, most of the oblast is spread over the eastern slopes of the Middle and North Urals and the Western Siberian Plain. Only in the southwest does the oblast stretch onto the slopes of the Ural Mountains. The highest mountains all rise in the North Urals, Konzhakovsky Kamen at 1,569 metres, the Middle Urals is mostly hilly country with no discernible peaks, the mean elevation is closer to 300 to 500 metres above sea level. Principal rivers include the Tavda, the Tura, the Chusovaya, and the Ufa, the area is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude. Rich in natural resources, the oblast is especially famous for metals, minerals, marble and it is mostly here that the bulk of Russian industry was concentrated in the 18th and 19th centuries. The area has continental climate patterns, with cold winters. Only in the southeast of the oblast do temperatures reach +30 °C in July, before the first Russian colonists arrived to the region, it was populated by various Turkic and Ugric tribes. By the 16th century, when the Middle Urals were under influence of various Tatar khanates, the Russian conquest of the Khanate of Kazan in the 1550s paved the way further east, which was now free from Tatar depredations. The first surviving Russian settlements in the date back to the late 16th – early 17th centuries. At that time, those small trading posts were governed under Siberian administration in Tobolsk, after the 1708 administrative reform, Verkhoturye, Pelym and Turinsk became a part of the new Siberian Governorate, in 1737 their territories were assigned to the Kazan Governorate. During the 18th century, rich resources of iron and coal made Ural an industrial heartland of Russia, after getting control over Ural mines, the Demidov family put the region in the forefront of Russian industrialization. Yekaterinburg, Nevyansk and Tagil ironworks, founded in the 1700s to 1720s, throughout the 18th and 19th century those newly founded factory towns enjoyed a status of special mining-metallurgical districts allowed to have a certain rate of financial and proprietary autonomy. During the 1781 reform middle Ural finally got its own administration in the form of the Perm Governorate. When in 1812 the Russian government legalized gold digging for its citizens, entrepreneurs of the Perm Governorate also started the gold rush in West Siberia, soon Yekaterinburgers began to dominate the Russian market of precious metals and gemstones. After the emancipation reform of 1861, major Middle Uralian industries that were dependent on serf labor entered decline. In 1878, Perm and Yekaterinburg were connected with a railroad, in 1888, railroads reached Tyumen, emergence of railroad transportation helped to revitalize economy of Ural. The Bolsheviks established their power in Yekaterinburg and Perm during the first days of the October Revolution of 1917, in early 1918 dethroned Nicholas II and his family were transferred under custody to Yekaterinburg
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