Russia

Russia: capital Moscow, population 143.5M, area 17,098,242 km². The 9th most populous country, in Europe. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Russia extends across northern Eurasia from the Baltic region to the Pacific. Its immense distances encouraged engineering on a continental scale, including the Trans-Siberian Railway, while its writers and composers reshaped literature, opera and ballet. Lake Baikal, old manuscript finds and the first human orbital flight reveal very different layers of its story.

• Construction of the 9,289-kilometre Trans-Siberian Railway began in 1891; continuous tracks connected Moscow and Vladivostok by 1916 after crossing eight time zones.
• In Soviet Russia, Wednesday 31 January 1918 was followed by Thursday 14 February, dropping 13 calendar days when the Gregorian system was adopted.
• Sputnik 1 entered orbit on 4 October 1957, circling Earth every 96.2 minutes and transmitting radio signals for 22 days.
• Nina Akulova found Novgorod's first birch-bark letter on 26 July 1951; more than 1,100 such medieval messages have since emerged there.

• Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table in 1869, leaving deliberate gaps that correctly anticipated gallium, scandium and germanium before their discovery.
• Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace appeared in serial form from 1865 to 1867, before the complete four-volume edition was published in 1869.
• Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth on 12 April 1961, completing the Vostok 1 mission in about 108 minutes.
• Ivan Pavlov received the 1904 Nobel Prize for research on digestive glands, then became associated worldwide with experiments on conditioned reflexes in dogs.

• Lake Baikal is about 25 million years old and 1,642 metres deep, holding roughly 20 percent of Earth's unfrozen surface fresh water.
• The Moscow Kremlin's brick walls run for 2,235 metres around 27.5 hectares and are punctuated by 20 towers built in differing designs.
• The Hermitage traces its collection to 1764, when Catherine II acquired 225 paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky.
• Peterhof's parks contain four cascades and over 150 fountains, supplied without pumps by a gravity system that has operated for more than 300 years.

• Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris on an Elektronika 60 computer in 1984, combining the Greek numerical prefix tetra with the word tennis.
• The first Russian matryoshka set, made around 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin and designed by Sergey Malyutin, nested eight painted wooden figures.
• The House of Fabergé produced 50 Imperial Easter eggs between 1885 and 1916 for the Romanov family; 43 are known to survive.
• Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker premiered at Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre on 18 December 1892, sharing the programme with his opera Iolanta.

What is the capital of Russia?

The capital of Russia is Moscow.

What is the population of Russia?

Russia has about 143.5M people — the 9th most populous country in the world.

How big is Russia?

Russia covers 17,098,242 km², making it the 1st largest country by area.

Which region is Russia in?

Russia is in Eastern Europe, Europe.