Russia
Shelby Tipling
Standard I: Defining the Region/ Standard V: Distinctive Physical Geography
Standard VI: Distinctive Human Geography/ Standard II: Geographic Diversity
Before Russia was Russia, it was the Soviet Union. It contained Russia and most of its surrounding countries. Russia was the leader of the Soviet Union and was where countries went to when they needed help. Many countries idolized Russia and followed the Russian culture. In the 1990s, the Soviet Union started to fall apart. Countries started to break away from Russia, and Russia did not take it well. Their economy fell hard when the Ukraine declared independence because Russia's largest naval base was in the Crimean Peninsula and lost billions of dollars to recreate the size of what they lost. Along with the Ukraine, Russia temporarily lost the control in oil power when the Caucasus and Central Asia distanced itself away from what was now turning into the Russian Federation. As Russia was falling apart, Chechnya started to gain independence and Russia was not with that idea at all. They sought to overthrow the Chechen government in order to keep Chechnya with Russia. It ended up turning into a war that upturned 100,000 casualties in a country that has only about 1 million people in it. After this, Russia's international reputation was demolished. The only thing that was keeping Russia by the string was its oil and the ethnic Russians in its neighboring countries. As the years progressed, Russia regained the power of oil from the neighboring countries along with other major oil companies. It is able to use the oil as a foreign policy. Today, Russia is the renowned world leader in oil and are beginning to make a comeback from their fall in 1991. The Ukraine is debating on whether or not to join Russia again and most of its neighboring countries have a large percentage of their population that are ethnically Russian.