Final Exam: Chapter 9 (Russian Domain) Flashcards
Soviet Union:
- dissolution in 1991
- 75 years of communist control
- caused environmental degradation
- nuclear threat
- religion was discouraged and persecuted
Ural Mountains
- physically separates European Russia from Siberia
- ancient rocks contain valuable mineral resources
Lake Baikal
- world’s largest freshwater reserve
- affected by water pollution
- contains 20% of Earth’s unfrozen fresh surface water
Nuclear waste
- Siberia suffered regular nuclear fallout when tests were conducted
- Russian Arctic poisoned
- Novaya Zemlya served as an unregulated dumping ground for nuclear waste
- Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown in 1996
Population (growth)
- growing immigrant population, many of them undocumented
- 200 million
permafrost
a cold-climate condition of unstable, seasonally frozen ground underlain by a permanently frozen layer that limits vegetation growth and causes problems for railroad construction.
Ukraine
- capital city: Kiev (2.8 mil)
- aging and declining population
Caucasus
- south russia
- major earthquakes
- heavy rainfall
- people speak a complicated mosaic of Caucasian, Indo-European, and Altaic
languages.
Urbanization
- In Moscow 2014, government embraced an urban plan that emphasized continued decentralization and automobile-oriented sprawl
- St.Petersburg’s buildings, bridges, adn canals give it an urban landscape
- pg.303
Siberia
- lake Baikal
- permafrost
-pg. 295
Vladivostok
- south east russia
- linked to European Russia by the trans-Siberian railroad
- population 600,000
Migration
- most moved eastward
- Russification, the Soviet policy of resettling Russians into non-
Russian portions of the Soviet Union
-
Mikrorayons
large, Sovietera
housing projects of the 1970s and 1980s. Mikrorayons are typically
massed blocks of standardized apartment buildings, ranging from 9 to
24 stories in height. The largest of these supercomplexes contain up to
100,000 residents.
Slavic peoples
- a northern branch of the Indo-European ethnolinguistic family.
(pg 308)
Finno-Ugric
The Finno-Ugric peoples include Finnish-speaking settlers who
dominate sizable portions of the non-Russian north.
Russification
the Soviet policy of resettling Russians into non-
Russian portions of the Soviet Union
Bolsheviks
a faction of Russian communists
representing industrial workers
- espoused the
doctrine of communism, a belief based on the writings of Karl Marx
that promoted the overthrow of capitalism by the workers, large-scale
elimination of private property, state ownership and central planning
of major sectors of the economy (both agricultural and industrial), and
one-party authoritarian rule
Cold war
the Soviet Union and the
United States became antagonists in a global Cold War of military
competition that lasted from 1948 to 1991.
Perestroika and Glasnost
Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika,
or restructuring of the planned centralized economy, was an admission
that the Soviet economy increasingly lagged behind those of western
Europe and the United States.
- glasnost - greater openness
Gas and Energy
- the Siberian Gas Pipeline was
built to link the Arctic’s energy-rich fields with growing demand in
Europe. - Gazprom, the huge Russian
natural gas company, was privatized in 1994, but since 2005 state control
of its activities has increased.
Corruption and human trafficking
widespread problem. Armenia,
Ukraine, Moldova, and rural districts of Russia are major sources of
young women who are forced into prostitution in Europe and the Middle
East. It is a multibillion-dollar business, involving the large-scale
participation of organized crime and hundreds of thousands of young
women.
Alcoholism
Alcohol use in Russia (more than 15 liters [4 gallons] of pure alcohol
per person annually) remains far above the global average (6.13 liters
[1.6 gallons]).
- Russian leaders initiated an antidrinking campaign
in 2010, calling their country’s plight “a national disaster.” An ambitious
goal was set to reduce alcohol consumption by 50 percent within
the next decade.
