Russia: Major Geographic Qualities

1. Russia is the largest territorial state in the world. Its area is nearly twice as large as the next rankingcountry (Canada).

The Russian state constitutes a world geographic realm because of its territorial size, relativelocation, and substantial population; it is about three times as large as the contiguous UnitedStates and it extends across 11 time zones from its eastern frontier (the volcano-studdedKamchatka Peninsula) to its western port of St. Petersburg. The western half of Russia isbisected by the north-south trending Ural Mountains, which extend from the island of NovayaZemlya in the Arctic Ocean to the border with Kazakhstan.

Its total area is 17,075,200 km²; land: 16,995,800 km², water: 79,400 km². Comparatively, it isslightly more than 2.2 times the size of Australia; slightly more than 1.7 times the size ofCanada; slightly more than 70 times the size of the UK; and slightly more than 1.8 times the sizeof the U.S.

2. Russia is the northernmost large and populous country in the world; much of it is cold and/or dry.Extensive rugged mountain zones separate Russia from warmer subtropical air; and the country liesopen to Arctic air-masses.

As the northernmost populous country on Earth, Russia has virtually no natural barriers againstthe onslaught of Arctic Air. Winters are long, dark, and bitterly cold in most of Russia; summersare short and growing seasons limited. Many a Siberian frontier outpost was doomed by cold,snow, and hunger. To make matters worst, precipitation totals range from modest to minimalbecause of the warm, moist air carried across Europe from the North Atlantic Ocean loses muchof its warmth and moisture by the time it reaches Russia. Russia’s climatic continentality (inlandclimatic environment remote from moderating and moistening maritime influences) ischaracterized by most frigid climatic conditions on the planet.

Climate and weather have always challenged Russia’s farmers. Conditions are most favorable inthe west, but even there temperature extremes, variable and undependable rainfall, and shortgrowing seasons make farming difficult. During the Soviet period, fertile and productive Ukrainesupplied much of Russia’s food needs, but even then Russia often had to import grain.

(Physical Map of Russia showing its land elevation and depth)

3. Russia was one of the world's major colonial powers. Under the czars, the Russians forged the world'slargest contiguous empire; the Soviet rulers who succeeded the czars took over and expanded thisempire.

Russia, like Britain, France, and other European powers, expanded through colonialism. Yetwhereas the other European powers expanded overseas, Russian influence traveled overland intoCentral Asia, Siberia, China, and the Pacific coastlands of the Far East. What emerged was notthe greatest empire but the largest contiguous empire in the world. At the time of the Russo-Japanese (1904), the Russian czar controlled more than 8.5 million square miles (22 millionkm2), just a tiny fraction less than the area of the Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution. Thus,the communist empire, to a large extent, was the legacy of St. Petersburg and European Russia,not the product of Moscow and the socialist revolution.

The czars embarked on their imperial conquests in part because of Russia’s relative location:Russia always lacked warm-water ports. Had the Revolution not intervened, their southwardpush might have reached the Persian Gulf or even the Mediterranean Sea. Czar Peter the Greatenvisaged a Russia open to trading with the entire world; he developed St. Petersburg on theBaltic Sea into Russia’s leading port.

Centuries of Russian expansionism did not confine itself to empty land or unclaimed frontiers.The Russian state became an imperial power that annexed and incorporated many nationalitiesand cultures. This was done by employing force of arms, by overthrowing uncooperative rulers,by annexing territory, and by stoking the fires of ethnic conflict. By the time the ruthless Russianregime began to face revolution among its people, czarist Russia was a hearth of imperialism,and its empire contained peoples representing more than 100 million nationalities. Thecommunists who forged the Soviet Union did not liberate these subjugated peoples. Rather, theychanged the empire’s framework, binding the peoples colonized by the czars into a new systemthat would in theory give them autonomy and identity. In practice, it doomed those peoples tobondage and, in some cases, extinction.

4. For so large an area, Russia’s population of under 145 million is comparatively small. The populationremains heavily concentrated in the westernmost one-fifth of the country.

Russia’s difficulties are underscored by the country’s population data. The population of 144million (2004) is shrinking because of the dislocation, turmoil, fears, and uncertainties arisingfrom the post-Soviet transition. This population decline now amounts to about 1 million per year.Male life expectancy has dropped from 66 in the mid-1960’s to 59 in the early 2000’s; it is alsodeclining for women. Among males, alcoholism, suicide, and other manifestations of socialdisorder drive down life expectancy. In the general population, drug abuse, heavy smoking, andpoor diets are to blame. The incidence of disease is rising. Tuberculosis is taking a heavy toll;AIDS cases are multiplying rapidly; cancer rates are rising. Russia confronts a health crisis thatthreatens to overshadow all its problems. (See graph for some statistical figures of Russia’spopulation growth)

The population of Russia is 141,927,297 as of 1 January 2010. The population hit a historic peakat 148,689,000 in 1991, just before the breakup of the Soviet Union, but then began a decade-long decline, falling at a rate of about 0.5% per year due to declining birth rates and rising deathrates. However the decline began to slow considerably in recent years, and in 2009 Russiarecorded annual population growth for the first time in 15 years, with growth of 23.3 thousand.

Russia's population density is 8 people per square kilometer (22 per square mile), making it oneof the most sparsely populated countries in the world. The population is most dense in theEuropean part of the country, centering around Moscow and Saint Petersburg. 73% of thepopulation is urban.

5. Development in Russia is concentrated west of the Ural Mountains; here lie the major cities, leadingindustrial regions, densest transport networks, and most productive farming areas. National integrationand economic development east of the Urals extend mainly along a narrow corridor that stretches fromthe Southern Urals region to the southern Far East around Vladivostok.

At the heart of the Russian Core lies the Central Industrial Region. Some geographers prefer tocall this the Moscow Region, thereby emphasizing that for over 250 miles (400 km) in alldirections from the capital, everything is oriented toward this focus of the state. Moscow hasmaintained its centrality: roads and railroads converge in all directions from Ukraine in the

south; from Mensk (Belarus) and the rest of Eastern Europe in the west; from St. Petersburg andthe Baltic Coast in the northwest; from Nizhniy Novgorod (formerly Gorkiy) and the Urals in theeast; from the cities and waterways of the Volga Basin in the southeast (a canal links Moscow tothe Volga, Russia’s most important navigable river); and even to the sub-arctic northernperiphery that faces the Barents Sea.

The major cities of the realm are: Baki (Baku), Azerbaijan; Irkutsk, Russia; Kazan, Russia;Moscow, Russia; Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia; Novosibirsk, Russia; St. Petersburg, Russia;Tbilisi, Georgia; Vladivostok, Russia; Volgograd, Russia; Yekaterinburg, Russia; and Yerevan,Armenia.

6. Russia is a multicultural state with a complex domestic political geography. Twenty-one internalrepublics, originally based on ethnic clusters, continue to function as politico-geographical entities.

When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Russia’s former empire devolved into 14 independentcountries, and Russia itself was a changed nation. Russians now made up 83 percent of thepopulation of under 150 million, a far higher proportion than in the days of the Soviet Union.Nut numerous minority peoples remained under Moscow’s new flag, and millions of Russiansfound themselves under new governments in the former Republics.

The spatial framework of the still-evolving Russian Federation is complex. It consisted of 89entities: 2 Autonomous Federal Cities, 21 Republics, 11 Autonomous regions (Okrugs), 49Provinces (Oblasts), 6 Territories (Krays). Moscow and St. Petersburg are the two AutonomousFederal Cities. The 21 Republics, recognized to accommodate ethnic minorities in thepopulation, lie in several clusters. (See map of 21 Republics)

These 21 Republics are: (1) Adygea; (2) Altai; (3) Bashkortostan; (4) Buryatia; (5) Dagestan;(6)Ingushetia; (7) Kabardino-Balkaria; (8) Kalmykia; (9) Karachay-Cherkessia; (10) Karelia;(11) Komi; (12) Mari El; (13) Mordovia; (14) Sakha (Yakutia); (15) North Ossetia-Alania; (16)Tatarstan; (17) Tuva; (18) Udmurtia; (19) Khakassia; (20) Chechnya; and, (21) Chuvashia

7. Its large territorial size notwithstanding, Russia suffers from land encirclement within Eurasia; it hasfew good and suitably located ports.

Except for its very long Arctic coastline (which is most of the times covered with ice), Russia isencircled basically by lands; on its western side is Europe, on its southern flank, its formerterritories—the Central Asian Republics, and on its eastern edge, East Asian countries. Suchencirclement limits Russia’s advantage in terms of good and suitably located ports. Thus, Russiahas historically justified interference in nearby countries affairs in the name of its own nationalsecurity and its desire to achieve a warm water port for its navy and access to shipping lanes.

Ports in Russia are among one of the means of transporting goods and freights from onedestination to another. The former Soviet Union had 92 seaports but after its disintegration only41 ports belong to Russian Federation. The development of the Ports is one of the majorconcerns for the Russian federal and regional governments. They are determined to rebuild theinfrastructure of the ports so that international trade can be increased through its own ports.(Mapsoftheworld.com, 2009)

8. Regions long part of the Russian and Soviet empires are realigning themselves in the post-communistera. Eastern Europe and the heavily Muslim Southwest Asia realm are encroaching on Russia’s imperialborders.

When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Russia’s former empire devolved into 14 independentcountries, and Russia itself was a changed nation. Russians now made up about 83 percent of thepopulation of under 150 million, a far higher proportion than in the days of the Soviet Union. Butnumerous minority peoples remained under Moscow’s new flag, and millions of Russians foundthemselves under new governments in the former Republics.

Russian minorities in Estonia, Latvia, Moldova, and other former colonies continue to look toMoscow for support when their privileges or rights are abridged. In Moscow, the geographicconcept of a Near Abroad took hold, a sphere of influence in the former Soviet periphery whereRussia would reserve the right to protect the interests of its kin. As time went on, and Russianexpatriates either returned home or adjusted to their new situation, that notion lost its urgency.Still Russia projected its power onto small neighbors when it perceived the need and opportunity,as it did in the Georgian province of Abkhazia, where its actions fomented secessionist ideas andhad the effect of destabilizing the government in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital.

Among former Soviet republics, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine have enjoyed the closest politicaland economic ties. These three, along with Kazakhstan, agreed in 2003 to form a “CommonEconomic Space” that also signaled closer political ties. Elsewhere, Georgia, Ukraine,Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova formed the GUUAM group, dedicated to facilitating tradethrough the Caspian-Black Sea corridor.

9. The failure of the Soviet-communist system left Russia in economic disarray. Many of the long-termcomponents of the country's infrastructure broke down in the transition to the post-communist order.

Fundamental economic changes have transformed the Russian domain since the demise of theSoviet Union. Much of the highly centralized state-controlled economy of state-run operationsand private enterprise. The changeover has been very difficult. Fundamental problems ofunstable currencies, corruption, and changing government policies plagued the system for muchof the 1990’s. In Russia, steel output declined from almost 70 million tons in 1992 to less than 50million tons at the end of the decade.

The Russian economy underwent tremendous stress as it moved from a centrally plannedeconomy to a free market system. Difficulties in implementing fiscal reforms aimed at raisinggovernment revenues and a dependence on short-term borrowing to finance budget deficits led toa serious financial crisis in 1998. Lower prices for Russia's major export earners (oil and

minerals) and a loss of investor confidence due to the Asian financial crisis exacerbated financialproblems. The result was a rapid decline in the value of the ruble, flight of foreign investment,delayed payments on sovereign and private debts, a breakdown of commercial transactionsthrough the banking system, and the threat of runaway inflation. Russia, however, appears tohave weathered the crisis relatively well. As of 2009 real GDP increased by the highestpercentage since the fall of the Soviet Union at 8.1%, the ruble remains stable, inflation has beenmoderate, and investment began to increase again. (Wikipedia, 2010)

10. Russia long has been a source of raw materials but not a manufacturer of export products, exceptweaponry. Few Russian (or Soviet) automobiles, televisions, cameras, or other consumer goods reachworld markets.

Russia is one of the most industrialized of the former Soviet republics. However, years of verylow investment have left much of Russian industry antiquated and highly inefficient. Besides itsresource-based industries, it has developed large manufacturing capacities, notably in machinery.Russia inherited most of the defense industrial base of the Soviet Union, so armaments are thesingle-largest manufactured goods export category for Russia. Efforts have been made withvarying success over the past few years to convert defense industries to civilian use. (Wikipedia,2010)

REGIONAL ISSUE—Russia: CHECHNYA

IN SUPPORT OF RUSSIAN CONTROL OVER CHECHNYA

"As a policeman here in Moscow, I strongly support thegovernment and the army in their efforts to establish controlover the criminal elements trying to take control of Chechnya.Let us remember what happened there. When the Russiangovernment back in 1991 had to take charge of our countryand its many components, there was lots of opposition. TheTatars (also Muslims, like the Chechens) talked aboutestablishing an independent state in their republic. TheKalmyks, the Udmurts, the Bashkirs, the Chuvash and manyothers proclaimed that they wanted everything ranging fromautonomy to independence. There were even Russiansdemanding it in places like Yekaterinburg and Primorskiy. Butthe government under President Yeltsin negotiated all theseclaims and gave those people reasons to want to stay underthe Russian flag. Except the Chechens. Nothing was going tosatisfy them. "And the Chechens were even given their own republicafter the changeover from Soviet to Russian administration.In 1991 they still shared their territory with the Ingush, whoare also Muslims, in the so-called Chechen-Ingush Republic.So what did the Chechens do? They installed their separatistleader as ruler of the republic and started fighting with theIngush minority. To help solve this crisis, Russia'sgovernment divided the republic's territory into two, the larger,richer part including the capital and the oilfields for theChechens and the remainder for the Ingush. "But it wasn't good enough for the Chechens. Theyattacked the Russians living in Chechnya, causing the armyto move in to protect Russians and Russian interests. Theybroke the truce that followed. Then they mounted a full-scalewar from their mountain hideouts and caused us hideouscasualties. They didn't care that their capital was totally

WHY CHECHNYA DESERVES INDEPENDENCE

"My grandparents were born in what is today the Russiancolony of Chechnya, and they died a horrible deathsomewhere in Soviet Central Asia. I am here to avenge theirdeaths and to punish the Russians for what they did to mypeople. "Russians seem to think that we are fighting forindependence just because we want it. Why aren't we like allthose other minorities that have come to terms with their livesunder Moscow's heel? Well, in our case there is more to it.We fought the Russian imperialists to a standstill less thantwo centuries ago, when the czars' armies colonized Islamicpeoples from the Caucasus to Central Asia. Yes, we wereeventually defeated, but those Russians never reallypenetrated our mountain hideouts. Then came the Soviets,who thought they did us a big favor by creating one of those"Autonomous Republics" for us along with the poor Ingush.But look at the map. They combined our traditional homelandwith a stretch of flatland to the north, which was full ofRussian farmers and oilmen. Do you think Groznyy was aChechen town? Think again. 0r look for a mosque on thosephotographs of the 'good old days.'

"But we might have put up with it all except for whathappened during the war between the Soviets and theGermans, World War ll. Some of us Chechens were happy tosee the Germans do to the Soviets what the Soviets haddone to us, but Josef Stalin accused us all of collaboratingwith the enemy. In a few short months he packed all 500,000of my people on trains and sent them to exile in Kazakhstan.Thousands died on the trains and were simply thrown ontothe tracks. Many more, probably about 125,000, perished inthe desert. I don't know where or when my grandparents died,but my parents survived.

destroyed; these Muslim warlords fought among themselveseven as they fought us. Next they started using terror to gettheir way. Remember the autumn of 1999, when they blew upapartment buildings in Moscow, causing more than 300dead? And how about what they did in Dagestan, where theytook over a bunch of villages and declared an "independentChechen republic"? Not to mention that hospital full ofdoctors, nurses, and patients, whom they took hostage,eventually killing hundreds of innocent victims. These arepeople to whom we should entrust the government of anindependent country on our borders? Never. "So don't criticize us when it comes to our strategies todeal with these barbarians. Foreign governments say that theRussian army does terrible things to captured Chechens, butwhat about the treatment of Russian soldiers by Chechenrebels? War is brutal, and this is a war for the soil of MotherRussia. "lf we give up in Chechnya, other minorities will get ideasabout independence too, and that would be the end of thenation. There is nothing to negotiate. Russia must and willprevail."

"We got our homeland back because the Soviet dictatorKhrushchev reinstated our Republic in 1957, and thesurvivors straggled back. But nobody ever forgot what wasdone to us. We're not talking of a few hundred hostages here.We're talking about the killing of a quarter of a nation. Still, wetried to restart our society under those atheist Soviets,keeping our Islamic practices quiet and private. But then theSoviet Empire collapsed and we got our chance. ln 1991 wedeclared our independence from the new Russia, and at firstit seemed that the Russians would be sensible and approve. "But before long the Russians changed their minds andtried to intervene in our internal affairs. We managed todefeat the Russian army once again, and the war devastatedGroznyy, but the Russians would not even considerindependence. We got assistance from Muslims elsewhereand money from many sources, but we can see that Russiawill not give us what we want. So we turn to any means wecan to wound the Russian bear, and we will chase it out ofChechnya with the help of Allah. "

Summarized five themes in understanding Russia’s geography

Environmental geography: Many areas within the Russian domain suffered severe environmentaldamage during the Soviet Era (1917-91), and today, air, water, toxic chemical, and nuclear pollutionplague many portions of the region.

The Russian domain faces many environmental challenges. The breakup of the Soviet Union andsubsequent opening of the region to international public scrutiny revealed some of the world’s severeenvironmental degradation. Studies suggest that nearly 65 million Russians live in areas of chronicallypoor air quality and that the drinking water is unsafe in half of the country.

The frenetic pace of seven decades of Soviet industrialization took its toll across the region. Evenin some of the most remote reaches of Russia, careless mining and oil drilling, the spread of nuclearcontamination and rampant forest cutting have resulted in frightening environmental damage. Forexample, since the 1980’s the global environmental costs of Siberian forests lost to lumbering andpollution may have exceeded the more widely publicized destruction of the Brazilian rain forest.

Poor air quality plagues hundreds of cities and industrial complexes throughout the region.Building of large clusters of industrial processing and manufacturing plants in concentrated areas, oftenwith minimal environmental controls, has produced an ongoing legacy of fouled air that stretches fromBelarus to Russian Siberia. A traditional reliance on abundant, but low-quality coal also contributes topollution problems. In effect, large numbers of urban residents across the region suffer from chronicrespiratory problems.

Degraded water is another hazard that residents of the region must cope with daily. Municipalwater supplies are always constantly vulnerable to industrial pollution, flows of raw sewage, anddemands that increasingly exceed capacity. For example, the Baltic Sea near the city of St. Petersburghas reached a critical level of pollution that killed fish and threatens to permanently damage the region’secosystem. The biggest problem is that 30 percent of all the residential and industrial waste that entersthe sea via the Neva River is unfiltered raw sewage, a toxic mix of heavy metals and human waste that israpidly killing the Baltic.

Settlement and population: Unlike most world regions, one of the key demographic challenges facingthe Russian domain is its declining population, given the rising death rates and low birthrates recentlyexperienced by the region.

Striking differences in population densities exist between European and Asian portions of theRussian domain. The more favorable agricultural setting of the European West historically encouragedhigher densities of population than did the more inhospitable conditions found across central andnorthern Siberia. Although Russian efforts over the past century have encouraged a wider dispersal ofthe population, it remains heavily concentrated in the west. European Russia is home to 100 millionpersons, while Siberia although far larger, holds some 35 million. When one adds the 65 millioninhabitants of Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, the imbalance between east and west becomes even morestriking.

Recently, Russia acknowledged that the country faced a crisis of persistently decliningpopulations. Government officials pledged to improve the nation’s health-care system, provide moreincentives for increasing birthrate, and foster immigration. The success of those initiatives remains to beseen, however, and government studies in 2000 predicted that Russia’s population could fall by astartling 25 million by 2030. The region’s demographic crisis appears related to the fraying social fabricand uncertain economic times. Many Russian families report that they simply do not have sufficientincomes to support children. The health of women of childbearing age also has declined, while problempregnancies, maternal childbirth death rates, and birth defects are on the rise. Similarly, sharp increasesin death rates, especially among Russian men, appear related to many stress-related conditions, such asalcoholism and heart disease. Murder and suicide rates have climbed rapidly in the past 20 years.Perhaps, 20 to 30 percent of the increase in death rates may be attributed to the region’s increasinglytoxic environment.

Cultural coherence and diversity: Although Slavic cultural influences dominate the region, many non-Slavic minorities shape the cultural and political geography of the domain, including varied indigenouspeoples in Siberia and a complex collection of ethnic groups in the Caucasus Mountains.

For hundreds of years, Slavic peoples speaking the Russian language expanded their influencefrom an early homeland in central European Russia. Eventually, this Slavic cultural imprint spread northto the Arctic Sea, south to the Black Sea and Caucasus, west to the shores of the Baltic, and east to thePacific Ocean. In this process of diffusion, Russian cultural patterns and social institutions spreadwidely, and they also influenced scores of non-Russian ethnic groups that continued to live under therule of the Russian Empire. The legacy of that Slavic expansion continues today. It offers Russians arich historical identity and sense of nationhood. It also provides a meaningful context in which tounderstand the way present-day Russians are dealing with forces of globalization and how non-Russiancultures have evolved within the region.

Approximately 80 percent of Russia’s population claims a Russian linguistic identity. Russiansinhabit most of European Russia, but there are large enclaves of other peoples. The Russian zoneextends across southern Siberia to the Sea of Japan. In sparsely settled land of central and northernSiberia, Russians are numerically dominant in many areas, but they share territory with variedindigenous peoples. Finno-Ugric (Finnish-speaking peoples), though small in number, dominate sizableportions of the non-Russian north. While many have been culturally Russified, distinct Finnish-speakingpeoples such as the Karelians, Komi, and Mordvinians remain a part of Russia’s modern culturalgeography. Altaic speakers also complicate the country’s linguistic geography. This includes the VolgaTatars. Yakut peoples of northeast Siberia also represent Turkish speakers within the Altaic family.

Geopolitical framework: President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to centralize Russian political power hascontributed to economic stability within the region, but many observers fear democratic freedoms and amore open Russian society may suffer under Putin’s regime.

The geopolitical legacy of the former Soviet Union still weighs profoundly upon the Russiandomain. After all, the bold lettering of the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” dominated the Eurasianmap for much of the 20th century, and the country’s global political reach left no corner of the world

untouched. Many of the present political uncertainties that plague the region stem from the Sovietperiod. Former Soviet republics continue to struggle to define new geopolitical identities for themselves.Neighboring states persist in eyeing the region with trepidation, the legacy of former Soviet political andmilitary power. Present demands for more local political control within countries such as Russia,Ukraine, and Georgia can still be understood in the context of the Soviet era, when a highly centralizedpolitical apparatus gave little voice to regional dissent. At the same time, Russia’s new regional andglobal visibility and its desire to recentralize authority in Moscow have raised concerns elsewhere withinthe domain, in Europe, and in the U.S.A.

Within Russia, further pressures for devolution, or more localized political control, produced theMarch 1992 signing of the Russian Federation Treaty. The treaty granted Russia’s internal autonomousrepublics and its lesser administrative units greater political, economic, and cultural freedoms, includingmore control of their natural resources and foreign trade. Defined essentially along ethnic lines, 21regions possess status as republics within the federation and now have constitutions that often runcounter to national mandates.

Economic and social development: Russia’s large supplies of oil and natural gas have made it a majorplayer in the global economy, but future prosperity increasingly hinge on unpredictable world prices forfossil fuels.

Russia’s oil and gas industry remains one of the strongest economic links between the region andthe global economy, and the diverse international connections it has forged suggest the increasingimportance of the sector to the region’s future. The statistics are impressive: Russia’s energy productionnow makes up 25 percent of its entire economic output. Russia has 35 percent of the world’s natural gasreserves (mostly in Siberia), and it is the world’s largest gas exporter. AS for oil, Russia is by far theworld’s largest non-OPEC producer, and it is the second largest oil exporter in the world (behind SaudiArabia). It far outpaces the United States in annual output (major oilfields are in Siberia, the VolgaValley, the Far East, and the Caspian Sea region), and it possesses more than twice the proven reservesof the United States.

The Russian Mafia. Organized crime is pervasive in Russia and controls many aspects of theeconomy. The government’s own interior ministry estimates that the Russian mafia controls about 40percent of the private economy and 60 percent of state-run enterprises. The mafia provided criticalcapital and jobs to many unemployed young men in the unstable months immediately following thecollapse of communism. Today, bribery and protection are part of the cost of doing business acrossmuch of the Russian domain. Various local and regional crime organizations have divided up much ofthe economy. More than 8,000 syndicates now exist in Russia alone. While one group might control theconstruction business in a Moscow suburb, another syndicate oversees drug dealing and prostitution, andstill another helps to funnel illegal CD’s and DVD’s to eager consumers.

Fraying Social Fabric. Tough economic times and political uncertainties have contributed to afraying social fabric within the Russian domain. Rates of violent crime increased late in the Sovietperiod and have risen further since the fall of communism. Organized criminal activities have profitedfrom fewer state restrictions on economic activity, and street crime has escalated with growing urbanpoverty and insecurity. Unemployment, rising housing costs, and declining social welfare expenditureshave hit many families. Often, both husband and wife work multiple low-paying jobs with few benefitsand long hours. Women are paying an especially heavy price amid the current economic and socialproblems. Beatings and rapes are common. A survey in Moscow suggested that one-third of divorcedwomen had experienced domestic violence, while a women’s rights group in Ukraine reported that rapewas an all-too-common crime in many villages.