Does Russia have mandatory military service?

Conscription in Russia (in Russia is known as or ""universal military obligation"" or ""liability for military service"") is a 12-month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18–27, with a number of exceptions. The mandatory term of service was reduced from two years in 2007-2008. Avoiding draft is felony under Russian criminal code and punishable by up to 2 years of imprisonment.

Conscription in Russia

Prior to Peter I, the bulk of the military was formed from the nobility and people who owned land on condition of service. During wars additional recruiting of volunteers and ordinary citizens was common. Peter I introduced a regular army consisting of the nobility and recruits, including conscripts. The conscripts to the Imperial Russian Army were called "recruits" in Russia (not to be confused with voluntary recruitment, which did not appear until the early 20th century). The system was called "recruit obligation" ().

Russian tsars before Peter maintained professional hereditary musketeer corps (streltsy in Russian) that were highly unreliable and undisciplined. In times of war the armed forces were augmented by peasants. Peter I formed the Imperial Russian Army built on the German model, but with a new aspect: officers not necessarily from nobility, as talented commoners were given promotions that eventually included a noble title at the attainment of an officer's rank. Conscription of peasants and townspeople was based on quota system, per settlement. Initially it was based on the number of households, later it was based on the population numbers.

The term of service in the 18th century was for life. In 1793 it was reduced to 25 years. In 1834 it was reduced to 20 years plus 5 years in reserve and in 1855 to 12 years plus 3 years of reserve.

After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War during the reign of Alexander II, the Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin introduced military reforms, with an initial draft presented in 1862. On January 1, 1874, a statute concerning conscription was approved by the Tsar by which military service was made compulsory for all males at the age of 20. The term of actual service was reduced for the land army to 6 years followed by 9 years in the reserve. This measure created a large pool of military reservists ready to be mobilized in the event of war, while permitting the maintenance of a smaller active army during peacetime. Most naval conscripts had an obligation for 7 years service, reflecting the more extended period required for technical training.

Immediately prior to the outbreak of World War I, the Imperial Government imposed compulsory service of three years for entrants to infantry and artillery regiments and four years for cavalry and engineers. After completing this initial period of full-time service, conscripts passed into the first class reserves for seven years. Final obligation for compulsory service ended at age 43, after eight years in the second reserves.

The large population numbers available permitted military service ce exemptions on a larger scale than in other European armies of the period. Muslims, Finns and members of other minorities were generally exempted from conscription, as were about half of the Russian Christian population. Only sons were not normally required to serve.

The first all-union conscription law of 1925 was tailored for the mixed cadre-militia structure of the peacetime Red Army after the Civil War. Draft-age was 21 years. Terms of service varied between one year in territorial formations and 2 to 4 years in the cadre army. Only "workers and peasants" were seen worthy to serve in combat units. Men of other social background were restricted to rear or labor services or had to pay a military tax.

The 1936 Soviet Constitution declared the military service "holy duty" of all male Soviet citizens. Any reservations regarding social or national background were dropped. 1939 service law was promulgated with a lowered call-up age of 19 years. The Red army had adopted a full-cadre structure in the course of the 1930s.

During the Great Patriotic War (World War II) all able-bodied men of ages 18–51 were subject to draft with the exception of specialists declared vitally necessary in industry, which was revamped for military/defense production.

Post-World War II demobilisation of the Soviet Armed Forces was completed in 1948.
According to the 1949 service law, service terms were 3 years in ground forces and 4 years in the navy.

The late Soviet Armed Forces were manned by mandatory draft (with some exceptions) for all able-bodied males for 2 years (3 years for seagoing parts of the Navy and Border troops), based on the 1967 Law on Universal Military Service. A bi-annual call-up in spring and autumn was introduced then, replacing the annual draft in fall. The conscripts were normally sent to serve far away from their place of residence.

Men were subject to draft at the age of 18. The draft could be postponed due to continued education. Since the early 1980s Soviet Union had the mandatory student draft until it was abolished in the spring of 1989. Students were drafted for two or three year military service typically from the middle of the second or the third year of college.

Most universities had an obligatory Military Chair which were in charge of military training of all able-bodied male students to become reserve officers of a particular military specialty depending on the university.

The two-year conscription term in force since 1967 continued until in 2006, the Russian government and Duma gradually reduced the term of service to 18 months for those who will be conscripted in 2007 and to one year from 2008 and dropped some legal excuses for non-conscription from the law (such as non-conscription of rural doctors and teachers, of men who have a child younger than 3 years, etc.) from 1 January 2008. Also full-time students who graduated from civil university and had military education were free from conscription from 1 January 2008.

The Russian military is divided into the Ground Forces, Navy, and Air Force. There are also three independent arms of service: Strategic Missile Troops, Aerospace Defence Forces, and the Airborne Troops., the military comprised over 1 million active duty personnel, the fifth largest in the world. Additionally, there are over 2.5 million reservists, with the total number of reserve troops possibly being as high as 20 million. It is mandatory for all male citizens aged 18–27 to be drafted for a year of service in Armed Forces.

Russia

Russia (), officially the Russian Federation (), is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. At, Russia is the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with about 146.77 million people, excluding Crimea. About 77% of the population live in the western, European part of the country. Russia's capital, Moscow, is the largest metropolitan area in Europe proper and one of the largest cities in the world; other major cities include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. However, Russia recognises two more countries that border it, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are internationally recognized as parts of Georgia.

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, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. 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 smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east.

Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first constitutionally socialist state. The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality and a successor of the Soviet Union. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic.

Russia's economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. 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. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and an active global partner of ASEAN, as well as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The name "Russia" is derived from Rus', a medieval state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля" (russkaja zemlja), which can be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as "Kievan Rus'" by modern historiography. The name "Rus" itself comes from the early medieval Rus' people, Swedish merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea and founded a state centered on Novgorod that later became Kievan Rus.

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 (Rossija), comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Rus', Ρωσσία "Rossía"—spelled Ρωσία ("Rosía" ) in Modern Greek.

The standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is "Russians" in English and "rossiyane" () in Russian. There are two Russian words which are commonly translated into English as "Russians". One is "русские" ("russkiye"), which most often means "ethnic Russians". Another is "россияне" ("rossiyane"), which means "citizens of Russia, regardless of ethnicity". Translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups.

Nomadic pastoralism developed in the Pontic-Caspian steppe beginning in the Chalcolithic.

In classical antiquity, the Pontic Steppe was known as Scythia. Beginning in the 8th century BC, Ancient Greek traders brought their civilization to the trade emporiums in Tanais and Phanagoria. Ancient Greek explorers, most notably Pytheas, even went as far as modern day Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea. Romans settled on the western part of the Caspian Sea, where their empire stretched towards the east. In the 3rd to 4th centuries AD a semi-legendary Gothic kingdom of Oium existed in Southern Russia until it was overrun by Huns. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom, a Hellenistic polity which succeeded the Greek colonies, was also overwhelmed by nomadic invasions led by warlike tribes, such as the Huns and Eurasian Avars. A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas until the 10th century.

The ancestors of modern Russians are the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pinsk Marshes. The East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia in two waves: one moving from Kiev toward present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk toward Novgorod and Rostov. From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia and assimilated the native Finno-Ugric peoples, including the Merya, the Muromians, and the Meshchera.

The establishment of the first East Slavic states in the 9th century coincided with the arrival of Varangians, the traders, warriors and settlers from the Baltic Sea region. Primarily they were Vikings of Scandinavian origin, who ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the "Primary Chronicle", a Varangian from Rus' people, named Rurik, was elected ruler of Novgorod in 862. In 882, his successor Oleg ventured south and conquered Kiev, which had been previously paying tribute to the Khazars, founding Kievan Rus'. Oleg, Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Sviatoslav subsequently subdued all local East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar khaganate and launched several military expeditions to Byzantium and Persia.

In the 10th to 11th centuries Kievan Rus' became one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980–1015) and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the "Russkaya Pravda".

In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchaks and the Pechenegs, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye.
The age of feudalism and decentralization was marked by constant in-fighting between members of the Rurik Dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus' collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod Republic in the north-west and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west.

Ultimately Kievan Rus' disintegrated, with the final blow being the Mongol invasion of 1237–40 that resulted in the destruction of Kiev and the death of about half the population of Rus'. The invading Mongol elite, together with their conquered Turkic subjects (Cumans, Kipchaks, Bulgars), became known as Tatars, forming the state of the Golden Horde, which pillaged the Russian principalities; the Mongols ruled the Cuman-Kipchak confederation and Volga Bulgaria (modern-day southern and central expanses of Russia) for over two centuries.

Galicia-Volhynia was eventually assimilated by the Kingdom of Poland, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, established the basis for the modern Russian nation. The Novgorod together with Pskov retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and were largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Led by Prince Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle of the Ice in 1242, breaking their attempts to colonize the Northern Rus'.

The most powerful state to eventually arise after the destruction of Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow ("Muscovy" in the Western chronicles), initially a part of Vladimir-Suzdal. While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, Moscow began to assert its influence in the Central Rus' in the early 14th century, gradually becoming the leading force in the process of the Rus' lands' reunification and expansion of Russia. Moscow's last rival, the Novgorod Republic, prospered as the chief fur trade center and the easternmost port of the Hanseatic League.

Times remained difficult, with frequent Mongol-Tatar raids. Agriculture suffered from the beginning of the Little Ice Age. As in the rest of Europe, plague was a frequent occurrence between 1350 and 1490. However, because of the lower population density and better hygiene—widespread practicing of banya, a wet steam bath—the death rate from plague was not as severe as in Western Europe, and population numbers recovered by 1500.

Led by Prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow and helped by the Russian Orthodox Church, the united army of Russian principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Moscow gradually absorbed the surrounding principalities, including formerly strong rivals such as Tver and Novgorod.

Ivan III ("the Great") finally threw off the control of the Golden Horde and consolidated the whole of Central and Northern Rus' under Moscow's dominion. He was also the first to take the title "Grand Duke of all the Russias". After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own, and eventually Russia's, coat-of-arms.

In development of the Third Rome ideas, the Grand Duke Ivan IV (the "Terrible") was officially crowned first "Tsar" ("Caesar") of Russia in 1547. The "Tsar" promulgated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Russian feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor) and introduced local self-management into the rural regions.

During his long reign, Ivan the Terrible nearly doubled the already large Russian territory by annexing the three Tatar khanates (parts of the disintegrated Golden Horde): Kazan and Astrakhan along the Volga River, and the Siberian Khanate in southwestern Siberia. Thus, by the end of the 16th century Russia was transformed into a multiethnic, multidenominational and transcontinental state.

However, the Tsardom was weakened by the long and unsuccessful Livonian War against the coalition of Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden for access to the Baltic coast and sea trade. At the same time, the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, the only remaining successor to the Golden Horde, continued to raid Southern Russia. In an effort to restore the Volga khanates, Crimeans and their Ottoman allies invaded central Russia and were even able to burn down parts of Moscow in 1571. But in the next year the large invading army was thoroughly defeated by Russians in the Battle of Molodi, forever eliminating the threat of an Ottoman–Crimean expansion into Russia. The slave raids of Crimeans, however, did not cease until the late 17th century though the construction of new fortification lines across Southern Russia, such as the Great Abatis Line, constantly narrowed the area accessible to incursions.

The death of Ivan's sons marked the end of the ancient Rurik Dynasty in 1598, and in combination with the famine of 1601–03 led to civil war, the rule of pretenders, and foreign intervention during the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth occupied parts of Russia, including Moscow. In 1612, the Poles were forced to retreat by the Russian volunteer corps, led by two national heroes, merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The Romanov Dynasty acceded to the throne in 1613 by the decision of Zemsky Sobor, and the country started its gradual recovery from the crisis.

Russia continued its territorial growth through the 17th century, which was the age of Cossacks. Cossacks were warriors organized into military communities, resembling pirates and pioneers of the New World. In 1648, the peasants of Ukraine joined the Zaporozhian Cossacks in rebellion against Poland-Lithuania during the Khmelnytsky Uprising in reaction to the social and religious oppression they had been suffering under Polish rule. In 1654, the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered to place Ukraine under the protection of the Russian Tsar, Aleksey I. Aleksey's acceptance of this offer led to another Russo-Polish War. Finally, Ukraine was split along the Dnieper River, leaving the western part, right-bank Ukraine, under Polish rule and the eastern part (Left-bank Ukraine and Kiev) under Russian rule. Later, in 1670–71, the Don Cossacks led by Stenka Razin initiated a major uprising in the Volga Region, but the Tsar's troops were successful in defeating the rebels.

In the east, the rapid Russian exploration and colonisation of the huge territories of Siberia was led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. Russian explorers pushed eastward primarily along the Siberian River Routes, and by the mid-17th century there were Russian settlements in Eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along the Amur River, and on the Pacific coast. In 1648, the Bering Strait between Asia and North America was passed for the first time by Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov.

Under Peter the Great, Russia was proclaimed an Empire in 1721 and became recognized as a world power. Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede West Karelia and Ingria (two regions lost by Russia in the Time of Troubles), as well as Estland and Livland, securing Russia's access to the sea and sea trade. On the Baltic Sea, Peter founded a new capital called Saint Petersburg, later known as Russia's "window to Europe". Peter the Great's reforms brought considerable Western European cultural influences to Russia.

The reign of Peter I's daughter Elizabeth in 1741–62 saw Russia's participation in the Seven Years' War (1756–63). During this conflict Russia annexed East Prussia for a while and even took Berlin. However, upon Elisabeth's death, all these conquests were returned to the Kingdom of Prussia by pro-Prussian Peter III of Russia.

Catherine II ("the Great"), who ruled in 1762–96, presided over the Age of Russian Enlightenment. She extended Russian political control over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and incorporated most of its territories into Russia during the Partitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier westward into Central Europe. In the south, after successful Russo-Turkish Wars against Ottoman Turkey, Catherine advanced Russia's boundary to the Black Sea, defeating the Crimean Khanate. As a result of victories over Qajar Iran through the Russo-Persian Wars, by the first half of the 19th century Russia also made significant territorial gains in Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus, forcing the former to irrevocably cede what is nowadays Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan and Armenia to Russia. This continued with Alexander I's (1801–25) wresting of Finland from the weakened kingdom of Sweden in 1809 and of Bessarabia from the Ottomans in 1812. At the same time, Russians colonized Alaska and even founded settlements in California, such as Fort Ross.
In 1803–1806, the first Russian circumnavigation was made, later followed by other notable Russian sea exploration voyages. In 1820, a Russian expedition discovered the continent of Antarctica.

In alliances with various European countries, Russia fought against Napoleon's France. The French invasion of Russia at the height of Napoleon's power in 1812 reached Moscow, but eventually failed miserably as the obstinate resistance in combination with the bitterly cold Russian winter led to a disastrous defeat of invaders, in which more than 95% of the pan-European Grande Armée perished. Led by Mikhail Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly, the Russian army ousted Napoleon from the country and drove through Europe in the war of the Sixth Coalition, finally entering Paris. Alexander I headed Russia's delegation at the Congress of Vienna that defined the map of post-Napoleonic Europe.

The officers of the Napoleonic Wars brought ideas of liberalism back to Russia with them and attempted to curtail the tsar's powers during the abortive Decembrist revolt of 1825. At the end of the conservative reign of Nicolas I (1825–55), a zenith period of Russia's power and influence in Europe was disrupted by defeat in the Crimean War. Between 1847 and 1851, about one million people died of Asiatic cholera.

Nicholas's successor Alexander II (1855–81) enacted significant changes in the country, including the emancipation reform of 1861. These "Great Reforms" spurred industrialization and modernized the Russian army, which had successfully liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War.

The late 19th century saw the rise of various socialist movements in Russia. Alexander II was killed in 1881 by revolutionary terrorists, and the reign of his son
Alexander III (1881–94) was less liberal but more peaceful. The last Russian Emperor, Nicholas II (1894–1917), was unable to prevent the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905, triggered by the unsuccessful Russo-Japanese War and the demonstration incident known as Bloody Sunday. The uprising was put down, but the government was forced to concede major reforms (Russian Constitution of 1906), including granting the freedoms of speech and assembly, the legalization of political parties, and the creation of an elected legislative body, the State Duma of the Russian Empire. The Stolypin agrarian reform led to a massive peasant migration and settlement into Siberia. More than four million settlers arrived in that region between 1906 and 1914.

In 1914, Russia entered World War I in response to Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Russia's ally Serbia, and fought across multiple fronts while isolated from its Triple Entente allies. In 1916, the Brusilov Offensive of the Russian Army almost completely destroyed the military of Austria-Hungary. However, the already-existing public distrust of the regime was deepened by the rising costs of war, high casualties, and rumors of corruption and treason. All this formed the climate for the Russian Revolution of 1917, carried out in two major acts.

The February Revolution forced Nicholas II to abdicate; he and his family were imprisoned and later executed in Yekaterinburg during the Russian Civil War. The monarchy was replaced by a shaky coalition of political parties that declared itself the Provisional Government. On September 1 (14), 1917, upon a decree of the Provisional Government, the Russian Republic was proclaimed. On January 6 (19), 1918, the Russian Constituent Assembly declared Russia a democratic federal republic (thus ratifying the Provisional Government's decision). The next day the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
An alternative socialist establishment co-existed, the Petrograd Soviet, wielding power through the democratically elected councils of workers and peasants, called "Soviets". The rule of the new authorities only aggravated the crisis in the country, instead of resolving it. Eventually, the October Revolution, led by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government and gave full governing power to the Soviets, leading to the creation of the world's first socialist state.

Following the October Revolution, a civil war broke out between the anti-Communist White movement and the new Soviet regime with its Red Army. Bolshevist Russia lost its Ukrainian, Polish, Baltic, and Finnish territories by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that concluded hostilities with the Central Powers of World War I. The Allied powers launched an unsuccessful military intervention in support of anti-Communist forces. In the meantime both the Bolsheviks and White movement carried out campaigns of deportations and executions against each other, known respectively as the Red Terror and White Terror. By the end of the civil war, Russia's economy and infrastructure were heavily damaged. Millions became White émigrés, and the Povolzhye famine of 1921 claimed up to 5 million victims.

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (called "Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic" at the time), together with the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republics, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, on December 30, 1922. Out of the 15 republics that would make up the USSR, the largest in size and over half of the total USSR population was the Russian SFSR, which came to dominate the union for its entire 69-year history.

Following Lenin's death in 1924, a troika was designated to govern the Soviet Union. However, Joseph Stalin, an elected General Secretary of the Communist Party, managed to suppress all opposition groups within the party and consolidate power in his hands. Leon Trotsky, the main proponent of world revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin's idea of Socialism in One Country became the primary line. The continued internal struggle in the Bolshevik party culminated in the Great Purge, a period of mass repressions in 1937–38, during which hundreds of thousands of people were executed, including original party members and military leaders accused of coup d'état plots.

Under Stalin's leadership, the government launched a planned economy, industrialisation of the largely rural country, and collectivization of its agriculture. During this period of rapid economic and social change, millions of people were sent to penal labor camps, including many political convicts for their opposition to Stalin's rule; millions were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. The transitional disorganisation of the country's agriculture, combined with the harsh state policies and a drought, led to the Soviet famine of 1932–1933. The Soviet Union made the costly transformation from a largely agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse in a short span of time.

Under the doctrine of state atheism in the Soviet Union, there was a "government-sponsored program of forced conversion to atheism" conducted by Communists. The communist regime targeted religions based on State interests, and while most organized religions were never outlawed, religious property was confiscated, believers were harassed, and religion was ridiculed while atheism was propagated in schools. In 1925 the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the persecution. Accordingly, although personal expressions of religious faith were not explicitly banned, a strong sense of social stigma was imposed on them by the official structures and mass media and it was generally considered unacceptable for members of certain professions (teachers, state bureaucrats, soldiers) to be openly religious. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit it for the regime's own purposes; but their ultimate goal was to eliminate it. During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled. Believers were harassed and persecuted. Most seminaries were closed, and the publication of most religious material was prohibited. By 1941 only 500 churches remained open out of about 54,000 in existence prior to World War I.

The Appeasement policy of Great Britain and France towards Adolf Hitler's annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia did not stem an increase in the power of Nazi Germany. Around the same time, the Third Reich allied with the Empire of Japan, a rival of the USSR in the Far East and an open enemy of the USSR in the Soviet–Japanese Border Wars in 1938–39.

In August 1939, the Soviet government decided to improve relations with Germany by concluding the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, pledging non-aggression between the two countries and dividing Eastern Europe into their respective spheres of influence. While Hitler conquered Poland and France and other countries acted on a single front at the start of World War II, the USSR was able to build up its military and occupy the Western Ukraine, Hertza region and Northern Bukovina as a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland, the Winter War, the occupation of the Baltic states and Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany broke the non-aggression treaty and invaded the Soviet Union with the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history, opening the largest theater of World War II. Although the German army had considerable early success, their attack was halted in the Battle of Moscow. Subsequently, the Germans were dealt major defeats first at the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–43, and then in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. Another German failure was the Siege of Leningrad, in which the city was fully blockaded on land between 1941 and 1944 by German and Finnish forces, and suffered starvation and more than a million deaths, but never surrendered. Under Stalin's administration and the leadership of such commanders as Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky, Soviet forces took Eastern Europe in 1944–45 and captured Berlin in May 1945. In August 1945 the Soviet Army ousted the Japanese from China's Manchukuo and North Korea, contributing to the allied victory over Japan.

The 1941–45 period of World War II is known in Russia as the "Great Patriotic War". The Soviet Union together with the United States, the United Kingdom and China were considered as the Big Four of Allied powers in World War II and later became the Four Policemen which was the foundation of the United Nations Security Council. During this war, which included many of the most lethal battle operations in human history, Soviet military and civilian deaths were 10.6 million and 15.9 million respectively, accounting for about a third of all World War II casualties. The full demographic loss to the Soviet peoples was even greater. The Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation which caused the Soviet famine of 1946–47, but the Soviet Union emerged as an acknowledged military superpower on the continent.

The Soviet rear was also badly damaged by the German invasion. Luftwaffe bombed the cities of the Soviet Union from the air. Gorky suffered the most from the bombing. This city was the main industrial center of the USSR and was located near the Moscow Defence Zone. The bombing of the Volga capital destroyed the largest automobile plant GAZ. This plant supplied tanks for the front. Whole residential areas and other large factories of the city were destroyed. From 1941 to 1943, German pilots bombed different areas of the city. This bombardment is comparable to the London Blitz. Some damage remained until this time.

After the war, Eastern and Central Europe including East Germany and part of Austria was occupied by Red Army according to the Potsdam Conference. Dependent socialist governments were installed in the Eastern Bloc satellite states. Becoming the world's second nuclear weapons power, the USSR established the Warsaw Pact alliance and entered into a struggle for global dominance, known as the Cold War, with the United States and NATO. The Soviet Union supported revolutionary movements across the world, including the newly formed People's Republic of China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and, later on, the Republic of Cuba. Significant amounts of Soviet resources were allocated in aid to the other socialist states.

After Stalin's death and a short period of collective rule, the new leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the cult of personality of Stalin and launched the policy of de-Stalinization. The penal labor system was reformed and many prisoners were released and rehabilitated (many of them posthumously). The general easement of repressive policies became known later as the Khrushchev Thaw. At the same time, tensions with the United States heightened when the two rivals clashed over the deployment of the United States Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, "Sputnik 1", thus starting the Space Age. Russia's cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth, aboard the "Vostok 1" manned spacecraft on April 12, 1961.

Following the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, another period of collective rule ensued, until Leonid Brezhnev became the leader. The era of the 1970s and the early 1980s was later designated as the Era of Stagnation, a period when economic growth slowed and social policies became static. The 1965 Kosygin reform aimed for partial decentralization of the Soviet economy and shifted the emphasis from heavy industry and weapons to light industry and consumer goods but was stifled by the conservative Communist leadership.

In 1979, after a Communist-led revolution in Afghanistan, Soviet forces entered that country. The occupation drained economic resources and dragged on without achieving meaningful political results. Ultimately, the Soviet Army was withdrawn from Afghanistan in 1989 due to international opposition, persistent anti-Soviet guerrilla warfare, and a lack of support by Soviet citizens.
From 1985 onwards, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who sought to enact liberal reforms in the Soviet system, introduced the policies of "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring) in an attempt to end the period of economic stagnation and to democratise the government. This, however, led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements. Prior to 1991, the Soviet economy was the second largest in the world, but during its last years it was afflicted by shortages of goods in grocery stores, huge budget deficits, and explosive growth in the money supply leading to inflation.

By 1991, economic and political turmoil began to boil over, as the Baltic republics chose to secede from the Soviet Union. On March 17, a referendum was held, in which the vast majority of participating citizens voted in favour of changing the Soviet Union into a renewed federation. In August 1991, a coup d'état attempt by members of Gorbachev's government, directed against Gorbachev and aimed at preserving the Soviet Union, instead led to the end of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On December 25, 1991, the USSR was dissolved into 15 post-Soviet states.

In June 1991, Boris Yeltsin became the first directly elected President in Russian history when he was elected President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which became the independent Russian Federation in December of that year. During and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, wide-ranging reforms including privatization and market and trade liberalization were undertaken, including radical changes along the lines of "shock therapy" as recommended by the United States and the International Monetary Fund. All this resulted in a major economic crisis, characterized by a 50% decline in both GDP and industrial output between 1990 and 1995.

The privatization largely shifted control of enterprises from state agencies to individuals with inside connections in the government. Many of the newly rich moved billions in cash and assets outside of the country in an enormous capital flight. The depression of the economy led to the collapse of social services; the birth rate plummeted while the death rate skyrocketed. Millions plunged into poverty, from a level of 1.5% in the late Soviet era to 39–49% by mid-1993. The 1990s saw extreme corruption and lawlessness, the rise of criminal gangs and violent crime.

The 1990s were plagued by armed conflicts in the North Caucasus, both local ethnic skirmishes and separatist Islamist insurrections. From the time Chechen separatists declared independence in the early 1990s, an intermittent guerrilla war has been fought between the rebel groups and the Russian military. Terrorist attacks against civilians carried out by separatists, most notably the Moscow theater hostage crisis and Beslan school siege, caused hundreds of deaths and drew worldwide attention.

Russia took up the responsibility for settling the USSR's external debts, even though its population made up just half of the population of the USSR at the time of its dissolution. High budget deficits caused the 1998 Russian financial crisis and resulted in a further GDP decline.
On December 31, 1999, President Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, handing the post to the recently appointed Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, who then won the 2000 presidential election. Putin suppressed the Chechen insurgency although sporadic violence still occurs throughout the Northern Caucasus. High oil prices and the initially weak currency followed by increasing domestic demand, consumption, and investments has helped the economy grow for nine straight years, improving the standard of living and increasing Russia's influence on the world stage. However, since the World economic crisis of 2008 and a subsequent drop in oil prices, Russia's economy has stagnated and poverty has again started to rise. While many reforms made during the Putin presidency have been generally criticized by Western nations as undemocratic, Putin's leadership over the return of order, stability, and progress has won him widespread admiration in Russia.

On March 2, 2008, Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of Russia while Putin became Prime Minister. Putin returned to the presidency following the 2012 presidential elections, and Medvedev was appointed Prime Minister.

In 2014, after President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine fled as a result of a revolution, Putin requested and received authorization from the Russian Parliament to deploy Russian troops to Ukraine. Following a Crimean referendum in which separation was favored by a large majority of voters, the Russian leadership announced the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation, though this and the referendum that preceded it were not accepted internationally. On March 27 the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of a non-binding resolution opposing the Russian annexation of Crimea by a vote of 100 member states in favour, 11 against and 58 abstentions.

In September 2015, Russia started military intervention in the Syrian Civil War, consisting of air strikes against militant groups of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in the Levant), and the Army of Conquest.

According to the Constitution of Russia, the country is a federation and semi-presidential republic, wherein the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Russian Federation is fundamentally structured as a multi-party representative democracy, with the federal government composed of three branches:

The president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term (eligible for a second term, but not for a third consecutive term). Ministries of the government are composed of the Premier and his deputies, ministers, and selected other individuals; all are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister (whereas the appointment of the latter requires the consent of the State Duma). Leading political parties in Russia include United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and A Just Russia. In 2017, Russia was ranked as 135th of 167 countries in the Democracy Index, compiled by The Economist Intelligence Unit, while the World Justice Project,, ranked Russia 80th of 99 countries surveyed in terms of rule of law.

The Russian Federation is recognized in international law as a successor state of the former Soviet Union. Russia continues to implement the international commitments of the USSR, and has assumed the USSR's permanent seat in the UN Security Council, membership in other international organisations, the rights and obligations under international treaties, and property and debts. Russia has a multifaceted foreign policy., it maintains diplomatic relations with 191 countries and has 144 embassies. The foreign policy is determined by the President and implemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

As the successor to a former superpower, Russia's geopolitical status has often been debated, particularly in relation to unipolar and multipolar views on the global political system. While Russia is commonly accepted to be a great power, in recent years it has been characterized by a number of world leaders, scholars, commentators and politicians as a currently reinstating or potential superpower.

Russia is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The country participates in the Quartet on the Middle East and the Six-party talks with North Korea. Russia is a member of the Council of Europe, OSCE, and APEC. Russia usually takes a leading role in regional organisations such as the CIS, EurAsEC, CSTO, and the SCO. Russia became the 39th member state of the Council of Europe in 1996. In 1998, Russia ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. The legal basis for EU relations with Russia is the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which came into force in 1997. The Agreement recalls the parties' shared respect for democracy and human rights, political and economic freedom and commitment to international peace and security. In May 2003, the EU and Russia agreed to reinforce their cooperation on the basis of common values and shared interests. Former President Vladimir Putin had advocated a strategic partnership with close integration in various dimensions including establishment of EU-Russia Common Spaces. From the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has initially developed a friendlier relationship with the United States and NATO, however today, the trilateral relationship has significantly deteriorated due to several issues and conflicts between Russia and the Western countries. The NATO-Russia Council was established in 2002 to allow the United States, Russia and the 27 allies in NATO to work together as equal partners to pursue opportunities for joint collaboration.
Russia maintains strong and positive relations with other SCO and BRICS countries. In recent years, the country has significantly strengthened bilateral ties with the People's Republic of China by signing the Treaty of Friendship as well as building the Trans-Siberian oil pipeline and gas pipeline from Siberia to China, and has since formed a special relationship with China. India is the largest customer of Russian military equipment and the two countries share extensive defense and strategic relations.

An important aspect of Russia's relations with the West is the criticism of Russia's political system and human rights management (including LGBT rights, media freedom, and reports about killed journalists) by Western governments, the mass media and the leading democracy and human rights watchdogs. In particular, such organisations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch consider Russia to have not enough democratic attributes and to allow few political rights and civil liberties to its citizens. Freedom House, an international organisation funded by the United States, ranks Russia as "not free", citing "carefully engineered elections" and "absence" of debate. Russian authorities dismiss these claims and especially criticise Freedom House. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called the 2006 "Freedom in the World" report "prefabricated", stating that the human rights issues have been turned into a political weapon in particular by the United States. The ministry also claims that such organisations as Freedom House and Human Rights Watch use the same scheme of voluntary extrapolation of "isolated facts that of course can be found in any country" into "dominant tendencies".

The Russian military is divided into the Ground Forces, Navy, and Air Force. There are also three independent arms of service: Strategic Missile Troops, Aerospace Defence Forces, and the Airborne Troops., the military comprised over 1 million active duty personnel, the fifth largest in the world. Additionally, there are over 2.5 million reservists, with the total number of reserve troops possibly being as high as 20 million. It is mandatory for all male citizens aged 18–27 to be drafted for a year of service in Armed Forces.

Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, the second largest fleet of ballistic missile submarines, and the only modern strategic bomber force outside the United States. Russia's tank force is the largest in the world, while its surface navy and air force are among the largest.

The country has a large and fully indigenous arms industry, producing most of its own military equipment with only a few types of weapons imported. It has been one of the world's top supplier of arms since 2001, accounting for around 30% of worldwide weapons sales and exporting weapons to about 80 countries. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, found that Russia was the second biggest exporter of arms in 2010–14, increasing their exports by 37 per cent from the period 2005–2009. In 2010–14, Russia delivered weapons to 56 states and to rebel forces in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian government's official 2014 military budget is about 2.49 trillion rubles (approximately US$69.3 billion), the third largest in the world behind the US and China. The official budget is set to rise to 3.03 trillion rubles (approximately US$83.7 billion) in 2015, and 3.36 trillion rubles (approximately US$93.9 billion) in 2016. However, unofficial estimates put the budget significantly higher, for example the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 2013 Military Expenditure Database estimated Russia's military expenditure in 2012 at US$90.749 billion. This estimate is an increase of more than US$18 billion on SIPRI's estimate of the Russian military budget for 2011 (US$71.9 billion)., Russia's military budget is higher than any other European nation.

Federal subjects
According to the Constitution, the country comprises eighty-five federal subjects, including the disputed Republic of Crimea and federal city of Sevastopol. In 1993, when the Constitution was adopted, there were eighty-nine federal subjects listed, but later some of them were merged. These subjects have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council. However, they differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy.

Federal subjects are grouped into eight federal districts, each administered by an envoy appointed by the President of Russia. Unlike the federal subjects, the federal districts are not a subnational level of government, but are a level of administration of the federal government. Federal districts' envoys serve as liaisons between the federal subjects and the federal government and are primarily responsible for overseeing the compliance of the federal subjects with the federal laws.

Russia is the largest country in the world; its total area is. This makes it larger than the continents of Oceania, Europe and Antarctica. It lies between latitudes 41° and 82° N, and longitudes 19° E and 169° W.

Russia's territorial expansion was achieved largely in the late 16th century under the Cossack Yermak Timofeyevich during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, at a time when competing city-states in the western regions of Russia had banded together to form one country. Yermak mustered an army and pushed eastward where he conquered nearly all the lands once belonging to the Mongols, defeating their ruler, Khan Kuchum.

Russia has a wide natural resource base, including major deposits of timber, petroleum, natural gas, coal, ores and other mineral resources.

The two most widely separated points in Russia are about apart along a geodesic line. These points are: a long Vistula Spit the boundary with Poland separating the Gdańsk Bay from the Vistula Lagoon and the most southeastern point of the Kuril Islands. The points which are farthest separated in longitude are apart along a geodesic line. These points are: in the west, the same spit on the boundary with Poland, and in the east, the Big Diomede Island. The Russian Federation spans 11 time zones.

Most of Russia consists of vast stretches of plains that are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Russia possesses 10% of the world's arable land. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, which at is the highest point in both Russia and Europe) and the Altai (containing Mount Belukha, which at the is the highest point of Siberia outside of the Russian Far East); and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes of Kamchatka Peninsula (containing Klyuchevskaya Sopka, which at the is the highest active volcano in Eurasia as well as the highest point of Asian Russia). The Ural Mountains, rich in mineral resources, form a north-south range that divides Europe and Asia.

Russia has an extensive coastline of over along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as along the Baltic Sea, Sea of Azov, Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea, Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, and the Sea of Japan are linked to Russia via the Arctic and Pacific. Russia's major islands and archipelagos include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz Josef Land, the Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. The Diomede Islands (one controlled by Russia, the other by the United States) are just apart, and Kunashir Island is about from Hokkaido, Japan.

Russia has thousands of rivers and inland bodies of water, providing it with one of the world's largest surface water resources. Its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's liquid fresh water. The largest and most prominent of Russia's bodies of fresh water is Lake Baikal, the world's deepest, purest, oldest and most capacious fresh water lake. Baikal alone contains over one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water. Other major lakes include Ladoga and Onega, two of the largest lakes in Europe. Russia is second only to Brazil in volume of the total renewable water resources. Of the country's 100,000 rivers, the Volga is the most famous, not only because it is the longest river in Europe, but also because of its major role in Russian history. The Siberian rivers Ob, Yenisey, Lena and Amur are among the longest rivers in the world.

The enormous size of Russia and the remoteness of many areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental climate, which is prevalent in all parts of the country except for the tundra and the extreme southwest. Mountains in the south obstruct the flow of warm air masses from the Indian Ocean, while the plain of the west and north makes the country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences.

Most of Northern European Russia and Siberia has a subarctic climate, with extremely severe winters in the inner regions of Northeast Siberia (mostly the Sakha Republic, where the Northern Pole of Cold is located with the record low temperature of ), and more moderate winters elsewhere. Both the strip of land along the shore of the Arctic Ocean and the Russian Arctic islands have a polar climate.

The coastal part of Krasnodar Krai on the Black Sea, most notably in Sochi, possesses a humid subtropical climate with mild and wet winters. In many regions of East Siberia and the Far East, winter is dry compared to summer; other parts of the country experience more even precipitation across seasons. Winter precipitation in most parts of the country usually falls as snow. The region along the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea coast, as well as some areas of southernmost Siberia, possesses a semi-arid climate.
Throughout much of the territory there are only two distinct seasons—winter and summer—as spring and autumn are usually brief periods of change between extremely low and extremely high temperatures. The coldest month is January (February on the coastline); the warmest is usually July. Great ranges of temperature are typical. In winter, temperatures get colder both from south to north and from west to east. Summers can be quite hot, even in Siberia. The continental interiors are the driest areas.

From north to south the East European Plain, also known as Russian Plain, is clad sequentially in Arctic tundra, coniferous forest (taiga), mixed and broad-leaf forests, grassland (steppe), and semi-desert (fringing the Caspian Sea), as the changes in vegetation reflect the changes in climate. Siberia supports a similar sequence but is largely taiga. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves, known as "the lungs of Europe", second only to the Amazon Rainforest in the amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs.

There are 266 mammal species and 780 bird species in Russia. A total of 415 animal species have been included in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation as of 1997 and are now protected. There are 28 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Russia, 40 UNESCO biosphere reserves, 41 national parks and 101 nature reserves.

Russia has an upper-middle income mixed economy, "World Bank" with enormous natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas. It has the 12th largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the 6th largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Since the turn of the 21st century, higher domestic consumption and greater political stability have bolstered economic growth in Russia. The country ended 2008 with its ninth straight year of growth, but growth has slowed with the decline in the price of oil and gas. Real GDP per capita, PPP (current international) was 19,840 in 2010. Growth was primarily driven by non-traded services and goods for the domestic market, as opposed to oil or mineral extraction and exports. The average nominal salary in Russia was $967 per month in early 2013, up from $80 in 2000. In May 2016 the average nominal monthly wages fell below $450 per month, and tax on the income of individuals is payable at the rate of 13% on most incomes. Approximately 19.2 million of Russians lived below the national poverty line in 2016, significantly up from 16.1 million in 2015. Unemployment in Russia was 5.4% in 2014, down from about 12.4% in 1999. Officially, about 20–25% of the Russian population is categorized as middle class; however some economists and sociologists think this figure is inflated and the real fraction is about 7%. After the United States, the European Union and other countries imposed economic sanctions after the annexation of Crimea and a collapse in oil prices, the proportion of middle-class could decrease drastically.
Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of Russian exports abroad. Since 2003, the exports of natural resources started decreasing in economic importance as the internal market strengthened considerably. the oil-and-gas sector accounted for 16% of GDP, 52% of federal budget revenues and over 80% of total exports. Oil export earnings allowed Russia to increase its foreign reserves from $12 billion in 1999 to $597.3 billion on August 1, 2008., foreign reserves in Russia fell to US$332 Billion. The macroeconomic policy under Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was prudent and sound, with excess income being stored in the Stabilization Fund of Russia. In 2006, Russia repaid most of its formerly massive debts, leaving it with one of the lowest foreign debts among major economies. The Stabilization Fund helped Russia to come out of the global financial crisis in a much better state than many experts had expected.

A simpler, more streamlined tax code adopted in 2001 reduced the tax burden on people and dramatically increased state revenue. Russia has a flat tax rate of 13%. This ranks it as the country with the second most attractive personal tax system for single managers in the world after the United Arab Emirates. According to Bloomberg, Russia is considered well ahead of most other resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of education, science, and industry. The country has a higher proportion of higher education graduates than any other country in Eurasia.

The economic development of the country has been uneven geographically with the Moscow region contributing a very large share of the country's GDP.

Inequality of household income and wealth has also been noted, with Credit Suisse finding Russian wealth distribution so much more extreme than other countries studied it "deserves to be placed in a separate category."
Another problem is modernisation of infrastructure, ageing and inadequate after years of being neglected in the 1990s; the government has said $1 trillion will be invested in development of infrastructure by 2020. In December 2011, Russia was approved as a member of the World Trade Organisation after 18 years of dialogue, allowing it a greater access to overseas markets. Some analysts estimate that WTO membership could bring the Russian economy a bounce of up to 3% annually. Russia ranks as the second-most corrupt country in Europe (after Ukraine), according to the Corruption Perceptions Index. The Norwegian-Russian Chamber of Commerce also states that "[c]orruption is one of the biggest problems both Russian and international companies have to deal with." Corruption in Russia is perceived as a significant problem impacting all aspects of life, including public administration, law enforcement, healthcare and education. The phenomenon of corruption is strongly established in the historical model of public governance in Russia and attributed to general weakness of rule of law in Russia. According to 2016 results of Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International, Russia ranked 131th place out of 176 countries with score 29.

The Russian central bank announced plans in 2013 to free float the Russian ruble in 2015. According to a stress test conducted by the central bank Russian financial system would be able to handle a currency decline of 25%–30% without major central bank interference. However, the Russian economy began stagnating in late 2013 and in combination with the War in Donbass is in danger of entering stagflation, slow growth and high inflation. The recent decline in the Russian ruble has increased the costs for Russian companies to make interest payments on debt issued in U.S. dollar or other foreign currencies that have strengthened against the ruble; thus it costs Russian companies more of their ruble-denominated revenue to repay their debt holders in dollars or other foreign currencies., the ruble was devalued more than 50 percent since July 2014. Moreover, after bringing inflation down to 3.6% in 2012, the lowest rate since gaining independence from the Soviet Union, inflation in Russia jumped to nearly 7.5% in 2014, causing the central bank to increase its lending rate to 8% from 5.5% in 2013. In an October 2014 article in "Bloomberg Business Week", it was reported that Russia had significantly started shifting its economy towards China in response to increasing financial tensions following its annexation of Crimea and subsequent Western economic sanctions.

In recent years, Russia has frequently been described in the media as an energy superpower. The country has the world's largest natural gas reserves, the 8th largest oil reserves, and the second largest coal reserves. Russia is the world's leading natural gas exporter and second largest natural gas producer, while also the largest oil exporter and the largest oil producer.

Russia is the 3rd largest electricity producer in the world and the 5th largest renewable energy producer, the latter because of the well-developed hydroelectricity production in the country. Large cascades of hydropower plants are built in European Russia along big rivers like the Volga. The Asian part of Russia also features a number of major hydropower stations; however, the gigantic hydroelectric potential of Siberia and the Russian Far East largely remains unexploited.

Russia was the first country to develop civilian nuclear power and to construct the world's first nuclear power plant. Currently the country is the 4th largest nuclear energy producer, with all nuclear power in Russia being managed by Rosatom State Corporation. The sector is rapidly developing, with an aim of increasing the total share of nuclear energy from current 16.9% to 23% by 2020. The Russian government plans to allocate 127 billion rubles ($5.42 billion) to a federal program dedicated to the next generation of nuclear energy technology. About 1 trillion rubles ($42.7 billion) is to be allocated from the federal budget to nuclear power and industry development before 2015.

In May 2014 on a two-day trip to Shanghai, President Putin signed a deal on behalf of Gazprom for the Russian energy giant to supply China with 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Construction of a pipeline to facilitate the deal was agreed whereby Russia would contribute $55bn to the cost, and China $22bn, in what Putin described as "the world's biggest construction project for the next four years." The natural gas would begin to flow sometime between 2018 and 2020 and would continue for 30 years at an ultimate cost to China of $400bn.

Russia recorded a trade surplus of USD$130.1 billion in 2017. Russia's Trade Balance recorded a surplus of USD$19.7 billion in October 2018, compared with a surplus of USD$10.1 billion in October 2017.

Reuters reported that U.S. companies "generated more than $90 billion in revenue from Russia in 2017." According to the AALEP, "there are almost 3,000 American companies in Russia, and the U.S. is also the leader in terms of foreign companies in Special Economic Zones, with 11 projects."

Russia's total area of cultivated land is estimated at, the fourth largest in the world. From 1999 to 2009, Russia's agriculture grew steadily, and the country turned from a grain importer to the third largest grain exporter after the EU and the United States. The production of meat has grown from 6,813,000 tonnes in 1999 to 9,331,000 tonnes in 2008, and continues to grow.

This restoration of agriculture was supported by a credit policy of the government, helping both individual farmers and large privatized corporate farms that once were Soviet kolkhozes and which still own the significant share of agricultural land. While large farms concentrate mainly on grain production and husbandry products, small private household plots produce most of the country's potatoes, vegetables and fruits.

Since Russia borders three oceans (the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific), Russian fishing fleets are a major world fish supplier. Russia captured 3,191,068 tons of fish in 2005. Both exports and imports of fish and sea products grew significantly in recent years, reaching $2,415 and $2,036 million, respectively, in 2008.

Sprawling from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, Russia has more than a fifth of the world's forests, which makes it the largest forest country in the world. However, according to a 2012 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Government of the Russian Federation, the considerable potential of Russian forests is underutilized and Russia's share of the global trade in forest products is less than four percent.

Railway transport in Russia is mostly under the control of the state-run Russian Railways monopoly. The company accounts for over 3.6% of Russia's GDP and handles 39% of the total freight traffic (including pipelines) and more than 42% of passenger traffic. The total length of common-used railway tracks exceeds, second only to the United States. Over of tracks are electrified, which is the largest number in the world, and additionally there are more than of industrial non-common carrier lines. Railways in Russia, unlike in the most of the world, use broad gauge of, with the exception of on Sakhalin island using narrow gauge of. The most renowned railway in Russia is Trans-Siberian ("Transsib"), spanning a record 7 time zones and serving the longest single continuous services in the world, Moscow-Vladivostok (), Moscow–Pyongyang () and Kiev–Vladivostok ().

Much of Russia's inland waterways, which total, are made up of natural rivers or lakes. In the European part of the country the network of channels connects the basins of major rivers. Russia's capital, Moscow, is sometimes called "the port of the five seas", because of its waterway connections to the Baltic, White, Caspian, Azov and Black Seas.
Major sea ports of Russia include Rostov-on-Don on the Azov Sea, Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, Astrakhan and Makhachkala on the Caspian, Kaliningrad and St Petersburg on the Baltic, Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, Murmansk on the Barents Sea, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean. In 2008 the country owned 1,448 merchant marine ships. The world's only fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers advances the economic exploitation of the Arctic continental shelf of Russia and the development of sea trade through the Northern Sea Route between Europe and East Asia.

By total length of pipelines Russia is second only to the United States. Currently many new pipeline projects are being realized, including Nord Stream and South Stream natural gas pipelines to Europe, and the Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean oil pipeline (ESPO) to the Russian Far East and China.

Russia has 1,216 airports, the busiest being Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, and Vnukovo in Moscow, and Pulkovo in St. Petersburg.

Typically, major Russian cities have well-developed systems of public transport, with the most common varieties of exploited vehicles being bus, trolleybus and tram. Seven Russian cities, namely Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Samara, Yekaterinburg, and Kazan, have underground metros, while Volgograd features a metrotram. The total length of metros in Russia is. Moscow Metro and Saint Petersburg Metro are the oldest in Russia, opened in 1935 and 1955 respectively. These two are among the fastest and busiest metro systems in the world, and some of them are famous for rich decorations and unique designs of their stations, which is a common tradition in Russian metros and railways.

Science and technology in Russia blossomed since the Age of Enlightenment, when Peter the Great founded the Russian Academy of Sciences and Saint Petersburg State University, and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov established the Moscow State University, paving the way for a strong native tradition in learning and innovation. In the 19th and 20th centuries the country produced a large number of notable scientists and inventors.

The Russian physics school began with Lomonosov who proposed the law of conservation of matter preceding the energy conservation law. Russian discoveries and inventions in physics include the electric arc, electrodynamical Lenz's law, space groups of crystals, photoelectric cell, superfluidity, Cherenkov radiation, electron paramagnetic resonance, heterotransistors and 3D holography. Lasers and masers were co-invented by Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov, while the idea of tokamak for controlled nuclear fusion was introduced by Igor Tamm, Andrei Sakharov and Lev Artsimovich, leading eventually the modern international ITER project, where Russia is a party.

Since the time of Nikolay Lobachevsky (the "Copernicus of Geometry" who pioneered the non-Euclidean geometry) and a prominent tutor Pafnuty Chebyshev, the Russian mathematical school became one of the most influential in the world. Chebyshev's students included Aleksandr Lyapunov, who founded the modern stability theory, and Andrey Markov who invented the Markov chains. In the 20th century Soviet mathematicians, such as Andrey Kolmogorov, Israel Gelfand, and Sergey Sobolev, made major contributions to various areas of mathematics. Nine Soviet/Russian mathematicians were awarded with the Fields Medal, a most prestigious award in mathematics. Recently Grigori Perelman was offered the first ever Clay Millennium Prize Problems Award for his final proof of the Poincaré conjecture in 2002.

Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev invented the Periodic table, the main framework of modern chemistry. Aleksandr Butlerov was one of the creators of the theory of chemical structure, playing a central role in organic chemistry. Russian biologists include Dmitry Ivanovsky who discovered viruses, Ivan Pavlov who was the first to experiment with the classical conditioning, and Ilya Mechnikov who was a pioneer researcher of the immune system and probiotics.

Many Russian scientists and inventors were émigrés, like Igor Sikorsky, who built the first airliners and modern-type helicopters; Vladimir Zworykin, often called the father of TV; chemist Ilya Prigogine, noted for his work on dissipative structures and complex systems; Nobel Prize-winning economists Simon Kuznets and Wassily Leontief; physicist Georgiy Gamov (an author of the Big Bang theory) and social scientist Pitirim Sorokin. Many foreigners worked in Russia for a long time, like Leonard Euler and Alfred Nobel.

Russian inventions include arc welding by Nikolay Benardos, further developed by Nikolay Slavyanov, Konstantin Khrenov and other Russian engineers. Gleb Kotelnikov invented the knapsack parachute, while Evgeniy Chertovsky introduced the pressure suit. Alexander Lodygin and Pavel Yablochkov were pioneers of electric lighting, and Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky introduced the first three-phase electric power systems, widely used today. Sergei Lebedev invented the first commercially viable and mass-produced type of synthetic rubber. The first ternary computer, "Setun", was developed by Nikolay Brusentsov.

In the 20th century a number of prominent Soviet aerospace engineers, inspired by the fundamental works of Nikolai Zhukovsky, Sergei Chaplygin and others, designed many hundreds of models of military and civilian aircraft and founded a number of "KBs" ("Construction Bureaus") that now constitute the bulk of Russian United Aircraft Corporation. Famous Russian aircraft include the civilian Tu-series, Su and MiG fighter aircraft, Ka and Mi-series helicopters; many Russian aircraft models are on the list of most produced aircraft in history.

Famous Russian battle tanks include T34, the most heavily produced tank design of World War II, and further tanks of T-series, including the most produced tank in history, T54/55. The AK47 and AK74 by Mikhail Kalashnikov constitute the most widely used type of assault rifle throughout the world—so much so that more AK-type rifles have been manufactured than all other assault rifles combined.

With all these achievements, however, since the late Soviet era Russia was lagging behind the West in a number of technologies, mostly those related to energy conservation and consumer goods production. The crisis of the 1990s led to the drastic reduction of the state support for science and a brain drain migration from Russia.

In the 2000s, on the wave of a new economic boom, the situation in the Russian science and technology has improved, and the government launched a campaign aimed into modernisation and innovation. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev formulated top priorities for the country's technological development:

Currently Russia has completed the GLONASS satellite navigation system. The country is developing its own fifth-generation jet fighter and constructing the first serial mobile nuclear plant in the world.

Russian achievements in the field of space technology and space exploration are traced back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of theoretical astronautics. His works had inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers, such as Sergey Korolyov, Valentin Glushko, and many others who contributed to the success of the Soviet space program in the early stages of the Space Race and beyond.

In 1957 the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite, "Sputnik 1", was launched; in 1961 the first human trip into space was successfully made by Yuri Gagarin. Many other Soviet and Russian space exploration records ensued, including the first spacewalk performed by Alexey Leonov, Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to land on the Moon, Venera 7 was the first to land on another planet (Venus), Mars 3 then the first to land on Mars, the first space exploration rover "Lunokhod 1", and the first space station "Salyut 1" and "Mir".

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some government-funded space exploration programs, including the Buran space shuttle program, were cancelled or delayed, while participation of the Russian space industry in commercial activities and international cooperation intensified.
Nowadays Russia is the largest satellite launcher. After the United States Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, Soyuz rockets became the only provider of transport for astronauts at the International Space Station.

Luna-Glob is a Russian Moon exploration programme, with first planned mission launch in 2021. Roscosmos is also developing the "Federation" spacecraft, to replace the aging Soyuz, it could also take potential crewed mission to lunar orbit as early as 2025.

In Russia, approximately 70 per cent of drinking water comes from surface water and 30 per cent from groundwater. In 2004, water supply systems had a total capacity of 90 million cubic metres a day. The average residential water use was 248 litres per capita per day. One fourth of the world's fresh surface and groundwater is located in Russia. The water utilities sector is one of the largest industries in Russia serving the entire Russian population.

There are many different estimates of the actual cost of corruption. According to official government statistics from Rosstat, the "shadow economy" occupied only 15% of Russia's GDP in 2011, and this included unreported salaries (to avoid taxes and social payments) and other types of tax evasion. According to Rosstat's estimates, corruption in 2011 amounted to only 3.5 to 7% of GDP. In comparison, some independent experts maintain that corruption consumes as much of 25% of Russia's GDP. A World Bank report puts this figure at 48%. There is also an interesting shift in the main focus of bribery: whereas previously officials took bribes to shut their eyes to legal infractions, they now take them simply to perform their duties. Many experts admit that in recent years corruption in Russia has become a business. In the 1990s, businessmen had to pay different criminal groups to provide a ""krysha"" (literally, a "roof", i.e., protection). Nowadays, this "protective" function is performed by officials. Corrupt hierarchies characterize different sectors of the economy, including education.

In the end, the Russian population pays for this corruption. For example, some experts believe that the rapid increases in tariffs for housing, water, gas and electricity, which significantly outpace the rate of inflation, are a direct result of high volumes of corruption at the highest levels. In the recent years the reaction to corruption has changed: starting from Putin's second term, very few corruption cases have been the subject of outrage. Putin's system is remarkable for its ubiquitous and open merging of the civil service and business, as well as its use of relatives, friends, and acquaintances to benefit from budgetary expenditures and take over state property. Corporate, property, and land raiding is commonplace.

On March 26, 2017, protests against alleged corruption in the federal Russian government took place simultaneously in many cities across the country. They were triggered by the lack of proper response from the Russian authorities to the published investigative film "He Is Not Dimon To You", which has garnered more than 20 million views on YouTube.

Ethnic Russians comprise 81% of the country's population. The Russian Federation is also home to several sizeable minorities. In all, 160 different other ethnic groups and indigenous peoples live within its borders. Although Russia's population is comparatively large, its density is low because of the country's enormous size. Population is densest in European Russia, near the Ural Mountains, and in southwest Siberia. 73% of the population lives in urban areas while 27% in rural ones. The results of the 2010 Census show a total population of 142,856,536.

Russia's population peaked at 148,689,000 in 1991, just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It began to experience a rapid decline starting in the mid-1990s. The decline has slowed to near stagnation in recent years because of reduced death rates, increased birth rates and increased immigration.

In 2009, Russia recorded annual population growth for the first time in fifteen years, with total growth of 10,500. The number of Russian emigrants steadily declined from 359,000 in 2000 to 32,000 in 2009. According to the UN, Russia's immigrant population is the third largest in the world, numbering 11.6 million. Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Kazakhstan were the leading countries of origin for immigrants to Russia. 196,000 migrants arrived to the Russian Federation in 2016, mostly from the ex-Soviet states. Russia is home to approximately 116 million ethnic Russians and about 20 million ethnic Russians live outside Russia in the former republics of the Soviet Union, mostly in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The 2010 census recorded 81% of the population as ethnically Russian, and 19% as other ethnicities: 3.7% Tatars; 1.4% Ukrainians; 1.1% Bashkirs; 1% Chuvashes; 11.8% others and unspecified. According to the Census, 84.93% of the Russian population belongs to European ethnic groups (Slavic, Germanic, Finnic other than Ugric, Greek, and others). This is a decline from the 2002, when they constituted for more than 86% of the population.

Russia's birth rate is higher than that of most European countries (13.3 births per 1000 people in 2014 compared to the European Union average of 10.1 per 1000), but its death rate is also substantially higher (in 2014, Russia's death rate was 13.1 per 1000 people compared to the EU average of 9.7 per 1000). The Russian Ministry of Health and Social Affairs predicted that by 2011 the death rate would equal the birth rate because of increase in fertility and decline in mortality. The government is implementing a number of programs designed to increase the birth rate and attract more migrants. Monthly government child-assistance payments were doubled to US$55, and a one-time payment of US$9,200 was offered to women who had a second child since 2007.

In 2006, in a bid to compensate for the country's demographic decline, the Russian government started simplifying immigration laws and launched a state program "for providing assistance to voluntary immigration of ethnic Russians from former Soviet republics". In 2009 Russia experienced its highest birth rate since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 2012, the birth rate increased again. Russia recorded 1,896,263 births, the highest number since 1990, and even exceeding annual births during the period 1967–1969, with a TFR of about 1.7, the highest since 1991. (Source: Vital statistics table below)

In August 2012, as the country saw its first demographic growth since the 1990s, President Putin declared that Russia's population could reach 146 million by 2025, mainly as a result of immigration.

Russia is a multi-national state with over 170 ethnic groups designated as nationalities; the populations of these groups vary enormously, from millions (e.g., Russians and Tatars) to under 10,000 (e.g., Samis and Eskimo).

Russia's 160 ethnic groups speak some 100 languages. According to the 2002 Census, 142.6 million people speak Russian, followed by Tatar with 5.3 million and Ukrainian with 1.8 million speakers. Russian is the only official state language, but the Constitution gives the individual republics the right to establish their own state languages in addition to Russian.

Despite its wide distribution, the Russian language is homogeneous throughout the country. Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, as well as the most widely spoken Slavic language. It belongs to the Indo-European language family and is one of the living members of the East Slavic languages, the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn). Written examples of Old East Slavic ("Old Russian") are attested from the 10th century onwards.

Russian is the second-most used language on the Internet after English, one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station and is one of the six official languages of the UN.

35 languages are officially recognized in Russia in various regions by local governments.

Russians have practised Orthodox Christianity since the 10th century. According to the historical traditions of the Orthodox Church, Christianity was first brought to the territory of modern Belarus, Russia and Ukraine by Saint Andrew, the first Apostle of Jesus Christ. Following the "Primary Chronicle", the definitive Christianization of Kievan Rus' dates from the year 988 (the year is disputed), when Vladimir the Great was baptized in Chersonesus and proceeded to baptize his family and people in Kiev. The latter events are traditionally referred to as the "baptism of Rus'" (, ) in Russian and Ukrainian literature. Much of the Russian population, like other Slavic peoples, preserved for centuries a double belief ("dvoeverie") in both indigenous religion and Orthodox Christianity.

At the time of the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church was deeply integrated into the autocratic state, enjoying official status. This was a significant factor that contributed to the Bolshevik attitude to religion and the steps they took to control it. Bolsheviks consisted of many people with non-Russian, Communist Russians and influential Jewish backgrounds such as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Grigori Sokolnikov who were indifferent towards Christianity and based on the writings of German philosopher Karl Marx with Marxism–Leninism as an ideology went on to form the Communist party.

Thus the USSR became one of the first communist states to proclaim, as an ideological objective, the elimination of religion and its replacement with universal atheism. The communist government ridiculed religions and their believers, and propagated atheism in schools. The confiscation of religious assets was often based on accusations of illegal accumulation of wealth.

State atheism in the Soviet Union was known in Russian as "gosateizm", and was based on the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. Marxist–Leninist Atheism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and elimination of religion. Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed. Many more were persecuted. After the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a renewal of religions in Russia, and among Slavs various movements have emerged besides Christianity, including Rodnovery (Slavic Native Faith), Ringing Cedars' Anastasianism, Hinduism, Siberian shamanism and other religions.

Currently, there is no official census of religion in Russia, and estimates are based on surveys only. In 2012 the research organization Sreda published Arena Atlas, a detailed enumeration of religious populations and nationalities in Russia, based on a large-sample country-wide survey. They found that 46.8% of Russians declared themselves Christians (including 41% Russian Orthodox, 1.5% simply Orthodox or members of non-Russian Orthodox churches, 4.1% unaffiliated Christians, and less than 1% for both Catholic and Protestant), while 25% were spiritual but not religious, 13% were atheists, 6.5% were Muslims, 1.2% were followers of "traditional religions honoring gods and ancestors" (including Rodnovery, Tengrism and other ethnic religions), and 0.5% were Tibetan Buddhists. However, later that year, the Levada Center estimated that 76% of Russians were Christians, and in June 2013, the Public Opinion Foundation estimated that 65% of the population was Christian. These findings are in line with Pew Research Center's 2011 estimate that 73.6% of Russians were Christians, with Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM)'s 2010 survey (~77% Christian), and with Ipsos MORI's 2011 survey (69%).

The most recent Pew Research Center finding was that in 2015 71% of the population of Russia declared itself Eastern Orthodox, 15% religiously unaffiliated—a category which includes atheists, agnostics and those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular”, 10% Muslim, and 2% other Christians, while 1% belonged to other faiths. The religiously unaffiliated divided between 4% as atheists, 1% as agnostics and 10% as nothing in particular. The study cited that during the communist era the government repression of religion was widespread, and due to the Soviet anti-religious legislation; in 1991 37% of the population of Russia was Eastern Orthodox. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the affiliation to the Eastern Orthodox church have risen substantially and in 2015 about 71% of the population of Russia declared itself to be Eastern Orthodox, and the share of who identitied as religiously unaffiliated declined from a 61% in 1991 to 18% in 2008.

Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and ethnic religions are recognised as Russia's traditional religions, marking the country's "historical heritage".

Traced back to the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in the 10th century, Russian Orthodoxy is the dominant religion in the country; smaller Christian denominations such as Catholics, Armenian Gregorians and various Protestant churches also exist. The Russian Orthodox Church was the country's state religion prior to the Revolution and remains the largest religious body in the country. An estimated 95% of the registered Orthodox parishes belong to the Russian Orthodox Church while there are a number of smaller Orthodox churches. However, the vast majority of Orthodox believers do not attend church on a regular basis. Easter is the most popular religious holiday in Russia, celebrated by a large segment of the Russian population, including large numbers of those who are non-religious. More than three-quarters of the Russian population celebrate Easter by making traditional Easter cakes, coloured eggs and paskha.

Islam is the second largest religion in Russia after Russian Orthodoxy. It is the traditional or predominant religion amongst some Caucasian ethnicities (notably the Chechens, the Ingush and the Circassians), and amongst some Turkic peoples (notably the Tatars and the Bashkirs).

Buddhism is traditional in three regions of the Russian Federation: Buryatia, Tuva, and Kalmykia. According to various reports, the proportion of not religious people in Russia is between 16% and 48% of the population. According to recent studies, the proportion of atheists has significantly decreased over the decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In cultural and social affairs Vladimir Putin has collaborated closely with the Russian Orthodox Church. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Church, endorsed his election in 2012. Steven Myers reports, "The church, once heavily repressed, had emerged from the Soviet collapse as one of the most respected institutions... Now Kiril led the faithful directly into an alliance with the state." Mark Woods provides specific examples of how the Church under Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has backed the expansion of Russian power into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. More broadly the "New York Times" reports in September 2016 how that Church's policy prescriptions support the Kremlin's appeal to social conservatives:

On April 26, 2017, for the first time, The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom classified Russia as one of the world's worst violators of religious liberty, recommending in its 2017 annual report that the U.S. government deem Russia a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act and negotiate for religious liberty. The report states, "—it is the sole state to have not only continually intensified its repression of religious freedom since USCIRF commenced monitoring it, but also to have expanded its repressive policies...ranging from administrative harassment to arbitrary imprisonment to extrajudicial killing, are implemented in a fashion that is systematic, ongoing, and egregious." On April 4, 2017 UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedoms of Peaceful Assembly and Association Maina Kiai, and UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief Ahmed Shaheed condemned Russia's treatment of Jehovah's Witnesses. Many other countries and international organizations have spoken out on Russia's religious abuses.

The Russian Constitution guarantees free, universal health care for all its citizens. In practice, however, free health care is partially restricted because of mandatory registration. While Russia has more physicians, hospitals, and health care workers than almost any other country in the world on a per capita basis, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union the health of the Russian population has declined considerably as a result of social, economic, and lifestyle changes; the trend has been reversed only in the recent years, with average life expectancy having increased 5.2 years for males and 3.1 years for females between 2006 and 2014.

Due to the ongoing Russian financial crisis since 2014, major cuts in health spending have resulted in a decline in the quality of service of the state healthcare system. About 40% of basic medical facilities have fewer staff than they are supposed to have, with others being closed down. Waiting times for treatment have increased, and patients have been forced to pay for more services that were previously free.

, the average life expectancy in Russia was 65.29 years for males and 76.49 years for females. The biggest factor contributing to the relatively low life expectancy for males is a high mortality rate among working-age males. Deaths mostly occur from preventable causes, including alcohol poisoning, smoking, traffic accidents and violent crime. As a result, Russia has one of the world's most female-biased sex ratios, with 0.859 males to every female.

Russia has the most college-level or higher graduates in terms of percentage of population in the world, at 54%. Russia has a free education system, which is guaranteed for all citizens by the Constitution, however entry to subsidized higher education is highly competitive. As a result of great emphasis on science and technology in education, Russian medical, mathematical, scientific, and aerospace research is generally of a high order.

Since 1990, the 11-year school education has been introduced. Education in state-owned secondary schools is free. University level education is free, with exceptions. A substantial share of students is enrolled for full pay (many state institutions started to open commercial positions in the last years).

The oldest and largest Russian universities are Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University. In the 2000s, in order to create higher education and research institutions of comparable scale in Russian regions, the government launched a program of establishing "federal universities", mostly by merging existing large regional universities and research institutes and providing them with a special funding. These new institutions include the Southern Federal University, Siberian Federal University, Kazan Volga Federal University, North-Eastern Federal University, and Far Eastern Federal University.
According to the 2018 QS World University Rankings, the highest-ranking Russian educational institution is Moscow State University, rated 95th in the world.

There are over 160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples in Russia. The country's vast cultural diversity spans ethnic Russians with their Slavic Orthodox traditions, Tatars and Bashkirs with their Turkic Muslim culture, Buddhist nomadic Buryats and Kalmyks, Shamanistic peoples of the Extreme North and Siberia, highlanders of the Northern Caucasus, and Finno-Ugric peoples of the Russian North West and Volga Region.

Handicraft, like Dymkovo toy, khokhloma, gzhel and palekh miniature represent an important aspect of Russian folk culture. Ethnic Russian clothes include kaftan, kosovorotka and ushanka for men, sarafan and kokoshnik for women, with lapti and valenki as common shoes. The clothes of Cossacks from Southern Russia include burka and papaha, which they share with the peoples of the Northern Caucasus.

Russian cuisine widely uses fish, caviar, poultry, mushrooms, berries, and honey. Crops of rye, wheat, barley, and millet provide the ingredients for various breads, pancakes and cereals, as well as for kvass, beer and vodka drinks. Black bread is rather popular in Russia, compared to the rest of the world. Flavourful soups and stews include shchi, borsch, ukha, solyanka and okroshka. Smetana (a heavy sour cream) is often added to soups and salads. Pirozhki, blini and syrniki are native types of pancakes. Chicken Kiev, pelmeni and shashlyk are popular meat dishes, the last two being of Tatar and Caucasus origin respectively. Other meat dishes include stuffed cabbage rolls "(golubtsy)" usually filled with meat. Salads include Olivier salad, vinegret and dressed herring.

Russia's large number of ethnic groups have distinctive traditions regarding folk music. Typical ethnic Russian musical instruments are gusli, balalaika, zhaleika, and garmoshka. Folk music had a significant influence on Russian classical composers, and in modern times it is a source of inspiration for a number of popular folk bands, like Melnitsa. Russian folk songs, as well as patriotic Soviet songs, constitute the bulk of the repertoire of the world-renowned Red Army choir and other popular ensembles.

Russians have many traditions, including the washing in banya, a hot steam bath somewhat similar to sauna. Old Russian folklore takes its roots in the pagan Slavic religion. Many Russian fairy tales and epic bylinas were adapted for animation films, or for feature movies by the prominent directors like Aleksandr Ptushko ("Ilya Muromets", "Sadko") and Aleksandr Rou ("Morozko", "Vasilisa the Beautiful"). Russian poets, including Pyotr Yershov and Leonid Filatov, made a number of well-known poetical interpretations of the classical fairy tales, and in some cases, like that of Alexander Pushkin, also created fully original fairy tale poems of great popularity.

Since the Christianization of Kievan Rus' for several ages Russian architecture was influenced predominantly by the Byzantine architecture. Apart from fortifications (kremlins), the main stone buildings of ancient Rus' were Orthodox churches with their many domes, often gilded or brightly painted.

Aristotle Fioravanti and other Italian architects brought Renaissance trends into Russia since the late 15th century, while the 16th century saw the development of unique tent-like churches culminating in Saint Basil's Cathedral. By that time the onion dome design was also fully developed. In the 17th century, the "fiery style" of ornamentation flourished in Moscow and Yaroslavl, gradually paving the way for the Naryshkin baroque of the 1690s. After the reforms of Peter the Great the change of architectural styles in Russia generally followed that in the Western Europe.

The 18th-century taste for rococo architecture led to the ornate works of Bartolomeo Rastrelli and his followers. The reigns of Catherine the Great and her grandson Alexander I saw the flourishing of Neoclassical architecture, most notably in the capital city of Saint Petersburg. The second half of the 19th century was dominated by the Neo-Byzantine and Russian Revival styles. Prevalent styles of the 20th century were the Art Nouveau, Constructivism, and the Stalin Empire style.

With the change in values imposed by communist ideology, the tradition of preservation was broken. Independent preservation societies, even those that defended only secular landmarks such as Moscow-based OIRU were disbanded by the end of the 1920s. A new anti-religious campaign, launched in 1929, coincided with collectivization of peasants; destruction of churches in the cities peaked around 1932. A number of churches were demolished, including the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. In Moscow alone losses of 1917–2006 are estimated at over 640 notable buildings (including 150 to 200 listed buildings, out of a total inventory of 3,500) – some disappeared completely, others were replaced with concrete replicas.

In 1955, a new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, condemned the "excesses" of the former academic architecture, and the late Soviet era was dominated by plain functionalism in architecture. This helped somewhat to resolve the housing problem, but created a large quantity of buildings of low architectural quality, much in contrast with the previous bright styles. In 1959 Nikita Khrushchev launched his anti-religious campaign. By 1964 over 10 thousand churches out of 20 thousand were shut down (mostly in rural areas) and many were demolished. Of 58 monasteries and convents operating in 1959, only sixteen remained by 1964; of Moscow's fifty churches operating in 1959, thirty were closed and six demolished.

Early Russian painting is represented in icons and vibrant frescos, the two genres inherited from Byzantium. As Moscow rose to power, Theophanes the Greek, Dionisius and Andrei Rublev became vital names associated with a distinctly Russian art.

The Russian Academy of Arts was created in 1757 and gave Russian artists an international role and status. Ivan Argunov, Dmitry Levitzky, Vladimir Borovikovsky and other 18th-century academicians mostly focused on portrait painting. In the early 19th century, when neoclassicism and romantism flourished, mythological and Biblical themes inspired many prominent paintings, notably by Karl Briullov and Alexander Ivanov.

In the mid-19th century the "Peredvizhniki" ("Wanderers") group of artists broke with the Academy and initiated a school of art liberated from academic restrictions. These were mostly realist painters who captured Russian identity in landscapes of wide rivers, forests, and birch clearings, as well as vigorous genre scenes and robust portraits of their contemporaries. Some artists focused on depicting dramatic moments in Russian history, while others turned to social criticism, showing the conditions of the poor and caricaturing authority; critical realism flourished under the reign of Alexander II. Leading realists include Ivan Shishkin, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Ivan Kramskoi, Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Vasily Surikov, Viktor Vasnetsov, Ilya Repin, and Boris Kustodiev.

The turn of the 20th century saw the rise of symbolist painting, represented by Mikhail Vrubel, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and Nicholas Roerich.

The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of modernist art that flourished in Russia from approximately 1890 to 1930. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related art movements that occurred at the time, namely neo-primitivism, suprematism, constructivism, rayonism, and Russian Futurism. Notable artists from this era include El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall. Since the 1930s the revolutionary ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged conservative direction of socialist realism.

Soviet art produced works that were furiously patriotic and anti-fascist during and after the Great Patriotic War. Multiple war memorials, marked by a great restrained solemnity, were built throughout the country. Soviet artists often combined innovation with socialist realism, notably the sculptors Vera Mukhina, Yevgeny Vuchetich and Ernst Neizvestny.

Music in 19th-century Russia was defined by the tension between classical composer Mikhail Glinka along with other members of The Mighty Handful, who embraced Russian national identity and added religious and folk elements to their compositions, and the Russian Musical Society led by composers Anton and Nikolay Rubinsteins, which was musically conservative. The later tradition of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, was continued into the 20th century by Sergei Rachmaninoff. World-renowned composers of the 20th century include Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke.

Russian conservatories have turned out generations of famous soloists. Among the best known are violinists Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Gidon Kremer, and Maxim Vengerov; cellists Mstislav Rostropovich, Natalia Gutman; pianists Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Vladimir Sofronitsky and Evgeny Kissin; and vocalists Fyodor Shalyapin, Mark Reizen, Elena Obraztsova, Tamara Sinyavskaya, Nina Dorliak, Galina Vishnevskaya, Anna Netrebko and Dmitry Hvorostovsky.

During the early 20th century, Russian ballet dancers Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky rose to fame, and impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes' travels abroad profoundly influenced the development of dance worldwide. Soviet ballet preserved the perfected 19th-century traditions, and the Soviet Union's choreography schools produced many internationally famous stars, including Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and the Mariinsky Ballet in St Petersburg remain famous throughout the world.

Modern Russian rock music takes its roots both in the Western rock and roll and heavy metal, and in traditions of the Russian bards of the Soviet era, such as Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava. Popular Russian rock groups include Mashina Vremeni, DDT, Aquarium, Alisa, Kino, Kipelov, Nautilus Pompilius, Aria, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Splean, and Korol i Shut. Russian pop music developed from what was known in the Soviet times as "estrada" into full-fledged industry, with some performers gaining wide international recognition, such as t.A.T.u., Nu Virgos and Vitas.

In the 18th century, during the era of Russian Enlightenment, the development of Russian literature was boosted by the works of Mikhail Lomonosov and Denis Fonvizin. By the early 19th century a modern national tradition had emerged, producing some of the greatest writers in Russian history. This period, known also as the Golden Age of Russian Poetry, began with Alexander Pushkin, who is considered the founder of the modern Russian literary language and often described as the "Russian Shakespeare". It continued with the poetry of Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolay Nekrasov, dramas of Alexander Ostrovsky and Anton Chekhov, and the prose of Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Turgenev. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky have been described by literary critics as the greatest novelists of all time.

By the 1880s, the age of the great novelists was over, and short fiction and poetry became the dominant genres. The next several decades became known as the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, when the previously dominant literary realism was replaced by symbolism. Leading authors of this era include such poets as Valery Bryusov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok, Nikolay Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, and novelists Leonid Andreyev, Ivan Bunin, and Maxim Gorky.

Russian philosophy blossomed in the 19th century, when it was defined initially by the opposition of Westernizers, who advocated Western political and economical models, and Slavophiles, who insisted on developing Russia as a unique civilization. The latter group includes Nikolai Danilevsky and Konstantin Leontiev, the founders of eurasianism. In its further development Russian philosophy was always marked by a deep connection to literature and interest in creativity, society, politics and nationalism; Russian cosmism and religious philosophy were other major areas. Notable philosophers of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries include Vladimir Solovyev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Vladimir Vernadsky.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 many prominent writers and philosophers left the country, including Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov and Nikolay Berdyayev, while a new generation of talented authors joined together in an effort to create a distinctive working-class culture appropriate for the new Soviet state. In the 1930s censorship over literature was tightened in line with the policy of socialist realism. In the late 1950s restrictions on literature were eased, and by the 1970s and 1980s, writers were increasingly ignoring official guidelines. Leading authors of the Soviet era include novelists Yevgeny Zamyatin (emigrated), Ilf and Petrov, Mikhail Bulgakov (censored) and Mikhail Sholokhov, and poets Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Andrey Voznesensky.

The Soviet Union was also a major producer of science fiction, written by authors like Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Kir Bulychov, Alexander Belayev and Ivan Yefremov. Traditions of Russian science fiction and fantasy are continued today by numerous writers.

Russian and later Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention in the period immediately following 1917, resulting in world-renowned films such as "The Battleship Potemkin" by Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein was a student of filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov, who developed the Soviet montage theory of film editing at the world's first film school, the All-Union Institute of Cinematography. Dziga Vertov, whose "kino-glaz" ("film-eye") theory—that the camera, like the human eye, is best used to explore real life—had a huge impact on the development of documentary film making and cinema realism. The subsequent state policy of socialist realism somewhat limited creativity; however, many Soviet films in this style were artistically successful, including "Chapaev", "The Cranes Are Flying", and "Ballad of a Soldier".

The 1960s and 1970s saw a greater variety of artistic styles in Soviet cinema. Eldar Ryazanov's and Leonid Gaidai's comedies of that time were immensely popular, with many of the catch phrases still in use today. In 1961–68 Sergey Bondarchuk directed an Oscar-winning film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's epic "War and Peace", which was the most expensive film made in the Soviet Union. In 1969, Vladimir Motyl's "White Sun of the Desert" was released, a very popular film in a genre of ostern; the film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts before any trip into space.

Russian animation dates back to late Russian Empire times. During the Soviet era, Soyuzmultfilm studio was the largest animation producer. Soviet animators developed a great variety of pioneering techniques and aesthetic styles, with prominent directors including Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Fyodor Khitruk and Aleksandr Tatarsky. Many Soviet cartoon heroes such as the Russian-style Winnie-the-Pooh, cute little Cheburashka, Wolf and Hare from "Nu, Pogodi!", are iconic images in Russia and many surrounding countries.

The late 1980s and 1990s were a period of crisis in Russian cinema and animation. Although Russian filmmakers became free to express themselves, state subsidies were drastically reduced, resulting in fewer films produced. The early years of the 21st century have brought increased viewership and subsequent prosperity to the industry on the back of the economic revival. Production levels are already higher than in Britain and Germany. Russia's total box-office revenue in 2007 was $565 million, up 37% from the previous year. In 2002 the "Russian Ark" became the first feature film ever to be shot in a single take. The traditions of Soviet animation were developed recently by such directors as Aleksandr Petrov and studios like Melnitsa Animation.

While there were few stations or channels in the Soviet time, in the past two decades many new state and privately owned radio stations and TV channels have appeared. In 2005 a state-run English language Russia Today TV started broadcasting, and its Arabic version Rusiya Al-Yaum was launched in 2007. Censorship and Media freedom in Russia has always been a main theme of Russian media.

Soviet and later Russian athletes have always been in the top four for the number of gold medals collected at the Summer Olympics. Soviet gymnasts, track-and-field athletes, weightlifters, wrestlers, boxers, fencers, shooters, cross country skiers, biathletes, speed skaters and figure skaters were consistently among the best in the world, along with Soviet basketball, handball, volleyball and ice hockey players. The 1980 Summer Olympics were held in Moscow while the 2014 Winter Olympics were hosted in Sochi.

Although ice hockey was only introduced during the Soviet era, the Soviet Union national team managed to win gold at almost all the Olympics and World Championships they contested. Russian players Valery Kharlamov, Sergei Makarov, Vyacheslav Fetisov and Vladislav Tretiak hold four of six positions in the IIHF "Team of the Century". Russia has not won the Olympic ice hockey tournament since the Unified Team won gold in 1992. Russia won the 1993, 2008, 2009, 2012 and the 2014 IIHF World Championships.

The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) was founded in 2008 as a successor to the Russian Superleague. It is ranked the top hockey league in Europe, and the second-best in the world. It is an international professional ice hockey league in Eurasia and consists of 29 teams, of which 21 are based in Russia and 7 more are located in Latvia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia and China. KHL is on the 4th place by attendance in Europe.

Bandy, also known as Russian hockey, is another traditionally popular ice sport. The Soviet Union won all the Bandy World Championships for men between 1957–79 and some thereafter too. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has continuously been one of the most successful teams, winning many world championships.

Association football is one of the most popular sports in modern Russia. The Soviet national team became the first European Champions by winning Euro 1960. Appearing in four FIFA World Cups from 1958 to 1970, Lev Yashin is regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers in the history of football, and was chosen on the FIFA World Cup Dream Team. The Soviet national team reached the finals of Euro 1988. In 1956 and 1988, the Soviet Union won gold at the Olympic football tournament. Russian clubs CSKA Moscow and Zenit St Petersburg won the UEFA Cup in 2005 and 2008. The Russian national football team reached the semi-finals of Euro 2008, losing only to the eventual champions Spain. Russia had hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup, with 11 host cities located in the European part of the country and in the Ural region.

In 2007, the Russian national basketball team won the European Basketball Championship. The Russian basketball club PBC CSKA Moscow is one of the top teams in Europe, winning the Euroleague in 2006 and 2008.

Larisa Latynina, who currently holds the record for the most gold Olympic medals won by a woman, established the USSR as the dominant force in gymnastics for many years. Today, Russia is the leading nation in rhythmic gymnastics with Yevgeniya Kanayeva. Double 50 m and 100 m freestyle Olympic gold medalist Alexander Popov is widely considered the greatest sprint swimmer in history. Russian synchronized swimming is the best in the world, with almost all gold medals at Olympics and World Championships having been swept by Russians in recent decades. Figure skating is another popular sport in Russia, especially pair skating and ice dancing. With the exception of 2010 a Soviet or Russian pair has won gold at every Winter Olympics since 1964.

Since the end of the Soviet era, tennis has grown in popularity and Russia has produced a number of famous players, including Maria Sharapova. In martial arts, Russia produced the sport Sambo and renowned fighters, like Fedor Emelianenko. Chess is a widely popular pastime in Russia; from 1927, Russian grandmasters have held the world chess championship almost continuously.

The 2014 Winter Olympics were held in Sochi in the south of Russia. In 2016 the McLaren Report found evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping and an institutional conspiracy to cover up Russian competitors' positive drug tests. 25 athletes are disqualified, 11 medals are stripped.
Formula One is also becoming increasingly popular in Russia. In 2010 Vitaly Petrov of Vyborg became the first Russian to drive in Formula One, and was soon followed by a second – Daniil Kvyat, from Ufa – in 2014. There had only been two Russian Grands Prix (in 1913 and 1914), but the Russian Grand Prix returned as part of the Formula One season in 2014, as part of a six-year deal.
Russia has the most Olympic medals stripped for doping violations (51), the most of any country, four times the number of the runner-up, and more than a third of the global total, and 129 athletes caught doping at the Olympics, also the most of any country. From 2011 to 2015, more than a thousand Russian competitors in various sports, including summer, winter, and Paralympic sports, benefited from a state-sponsored cover-up, with no indication that the program has ceased since then.

Russia was the host nation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The matches were held from June 14 to July 15, 2018 in the stadiums of 11 various Russian cities, namely, Kaliningrad, Kazan, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Saint Petersburg, Samara, Saransk, Sochi, Volgograd and Yekaterinburg. This was the first football World Cup ever held in Eastern Europe, and the first held in Europe since 2006. Russia will also host games of the Euro 2020.

There are seven public holidays in Russia, except those always celebrated on Sunday. Russian New Year traditions resemble those of the Western Christmas, with New Year Trees and gifts, and Ded Moroz (Father Frost) playing the same role as Santa Claus. Orthodox Christmas falls on January 7, because the Russian Orthodox Church still follows the Julian calendar, and all Orthodox holidays are 13 days after Western ones. Two other major Christian holidays are Easter and Trinity Sunday. Kurban Bayram and Uraza Bayram are celebrated by Russian Muslims.

Further Russian public holidays include Defender of the Fatherland Day (February 23), which honors Russian men, especially those serving in the army; International Women's Day (March 8), which combines the traditions of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day; Spring and Labor Day (May 1); Victory Day (May 9); Russia Day (June 12); and Unity Day (November 4), commemorating the popular uprising which expelled the Polish occupation force from Moscow in 1612.

Victory Day is the second most popular holiday in Russia; it commemorates the victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in the Great Patriotic War. A huge military parade, hosted by the President of Russia, is annually organised in Moscow on Red Square. Similar parades take place in all major Russian cities and cities with the status "Hero city" or "City of Military Glory".

Popular non-public holidays include Old New Year (the New Year according to the Julian Calendar on January 14), Tatiana Day (students holiday on January 25), Maslenitsa (a pre-Christian spring holiday a week before the Great Lent), Cosmonautics Day (in tribute to the first human trip into space), Ivan Kupala Day (another pre-Christian holiday on July 7) and Peter and Fevronia Day (which takes place on July 8 and is the Russian analogue of Valentine's Day, focusing, however, on family love and fidelity).
State symbols of Russia include the Byzantine double-headed eagle, combined with St. George of Moscow in the Russian coat of arms. The Russian flag dates from the late Tsardom of Russia period and has been widely used since the time of the Russian Empire. The Russian anthem shares its music with the Soviet Anthem, though not the lyrics. The imperial motto "God is with us" and the Soviet motto "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" are now obsolete and no new motto has replaced them. The hammer and sickle and the full Soviet coat of arms are still widely seen in Russian cities as a part of old architectural decorations. The Soviet Red Stars are also encountered, often on military equipment and war memorials. The Red Banner continues to be honored, especially the Banner of Victory of 1945.

The Matryoshka doll is a recognizable symbol of Russia, and the towers of Moscow Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow are Russia's main architectural icons. Cheburashka is a mascot of the Russian national Olympic team. St. Mary, St. Nicholas, St. Andrew, St. George, St. Alexander Nevsky, St. Sergius of Radonezh and St. Seraphim of Sarov are Russia's patron saints. Chamomile is the national flower, while birch is the national tree. The Russian bear is an animal symbol and a national personification of Russia, though this image has a Western origin and Russians themselves have accepted it only fairly recently. The native Russian national personification is Mother Russia.

Tourism in Russia has seen rapid growth since the late Soviet period, first domestic tourism and then international tourism, fueled by the rich cultural heritage and great natural variety of the country. Major tourist routes in Russia include a journey around the Golden Ring of ancient cities, cruises on the big rivers like the Volga, and long journeys on the famous Trans-Siberian Railway. In 2013, Russia was visited by 28.4 million tourists; it is the ninth most visited country in the world and the seventh most visited in Europe. The number of Western visitors dropped in 2014.
The most visited destinations in Russia are Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the current and former capitals of the country. Recognized as World Cities, they feature such world-renowned museums as the Tretyakov Gallery and the Hermitage, famous theaters like Bolshoi and Mariinsky, ornate churches like Saint Basil's Cathedral, Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Saint Isaac's Cathedral and Church of the Savior on Blood, impressive fortifications like the Kremlin and Peter and Paul Fortress, beautiful squares and streets like Red Square, Palace Square, Tverskaya Street, Nevsky Prospect, and Arbat Street. Rich palaces and parks are found in the former imperial residences in suburbs of Moscow (Kolomenskoye, Tsaritsyno) and St Petersburg (Peterhof, Strelna, Oranienbaum, Gatchina, Pavlovsk and Tsarskoye Selo). Moscow displays Soviet architecture at its best, along with modern skyscrapers, while St Petersburg, nicknamed "Venice of the North", boasts of its classical architecture, many rivers, canals and bridges.

Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, shows a mix of Christian Russian and Muslim Tatar cultures. The city has registered a brand "The Third Capital of Russia", though a number of other major cities compete for this status, including Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod.

The warm subtropical Black Sea coast of Russia is the site for a number of popular sea resorts, like Sochi, the follow-up host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. The mountains of the Northern Caucasus contain popular ski resorts such as Dombay. The most famous natural destination in Russia is Lake Baikal, "the Blue Eye of Siberia". This unique lake, the oldest and deepest in the world, has crystal-clear waters and is surrounded by taiga-covered mountains. Other popular natural destinations include Kamchatka with its volcanoes and geysers, Karelia with its lakes and granite rocks, the snowy Altai Mountains, and the wild steppes of Tuva.

There is a universal military draft for men, but the Constitution provides for alternative service for those who refuse to bear arms for reasons of conscience. The length of alternative service is longer than the standard military service. The standard length of military service is 18 months, alternative service in a Ministry of Defense agency is 27 months, and alternative service in a nondefense agency is 31.5 months. Some human rights groups have complained that the extended length of service for draftees requesting alternative assignments acts as a punishment for those who exercise their convictions.

Freedom of religion in Russia

In Russia, the prominence and authority of various religious groups is closely tied to the country's political situation. In the 10th century, Prince Vladimir I, who was converted by missionaries from Byzantium, embraced Christianity as the official Russian religion. For approximately 1,000 years thereafter, Russian Orthodoxy became the country’s primary denomination.

Although the constitution of the former Soviet Union nominally guaranteed religious freedom, religious activities were greatly constrained and membership in religious organizations was considered incompatible with membership in the Communist Party. Thus, overt claims of religious beliefs was a hindrance to individual advancement. While open expression of Christian beliefs was permitted during World War II, because the government sought the support of Christians and Jews in the fight against fascism, restrictions were re-imposed when the war ended.

In the 1980s, under the reformist regime of Mikhail Gorbachev, a policy of glasnost () was declared, allowing greater tolerance for the unrestricted practice of religion. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, religious freedom was made a reality and revealed that large segments of the population continued to practice a variety of faiths. Russian nationalists who emerged in the 1990s identified the Russian Orthodox church as a major element of Russian culture.

The Russian government has a number of laws against religious extremism and foreign funding of non-government organizations including the Yarovaya Law, that can be used to restrict the practices of religious minorities, such as evangelism or the importation of foreign religious literature. Critics of these laws argue that the Russian government gives priority to the Russian Orthodox Church, making it into an unofficial state church.

Conditions improved for some minority religious groups while remaining largely the same for most, and government policy continued to contribute to the generally free practice of religion for most of the population. Some federal agencies, such as the Federal Registration Service, and many local authorities, continued to restrict the rights of a few religious minorities. Legal obstacles to registration under a complex 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations (the 1997 Law stating Orthodox Christianity, Jehovah's witnesses, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as traditional religions) continued to seriously disadvantage some religious groups considered nontraditional. There were indications that the security services, including the Federal Security Service (FSB), treated the leadership of some Islamic groups as security threats.

There were reports of societal abuses and discrimination based on religious belief or practice. Religious matters were not a source of social tension or problems for the large majority of citizens, but there were some problems between majority and minority groups.

Resistance against non-Orthodox religions were behind manifestations of anti-Semitism and occasional friction with non-Orthodox Christian denominations. Conservative activists claiming ties to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) occasionally disseminated negative publications and held protest meetings against religions considered nontraditional, including alternative Orthodox congregations. Some ROC clergy stated publicly their opposition to any expansion of the presence of Roman Catholics, Protestants, and other non-Orthodox denominations.

The country has an area of and a population of 142.8 million. In practice, only a minority of citizens actively participated in any religion. Many who identified themselves as members of a faith rarely participated in religious life or not at all. There is no single set of reliable statistics that breaks down the population by denomination, and the statistics below are compiled from government, polling, and religious group sources.

Approximately 100 million citizens consider themselves Russian Orthodox Christians, although the vast majority are not regular churchgoers. The largest religious minority is formed by 14 to 23 million Muslims, most of whom live in the Volga-Urals region and the North Caucasus, although Moscow, St. Petersburg, and parts of Siberia and Yakutia have sizable Muslim populations. The Buddhist Association of Russia estimated that there were between 1.5 and 2 million Buddhists, who live in the traditionally Buddhist regions of Buryatiya, Tuva, and Kalmykiya. According to the Slavic Center for Law and Justice, Protestants make up the second-largest group of Christian believers, with 3,500 registered organizations and more than 2 million followers. There are an estimated 600,000 Jews (0.4% of the population), the vast majority of which live in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Catholic Church estimated that there are 600,000 Catholics, most of whom are not ethnic Russians. In Yakutiya and Chukotka, pantheistic and nature-based religions are practiced independently or alongside other religions.

According to Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin's annual report, the Ministry of Justice had registered 22,956 religious organizations as of January 1, 2007, 443 more than in January 2006. Among the registered religious groups are Russian Orthodox, Orthodox Old Believers, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Evangelical Christians, Catholic, and other denominations.

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respected this right in practice; however, in some cases the authorities imposed restrictions on certain groups, most often through the registration process. The Constitution also provides for the equality of all religions before the law and the separation of church and state; however, the Government did not always respect this provision.

In November 2006, the Government eliminated the value-added tax on religious products sold by religious organizations.

The Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations ( the 1997 Law) declares all religions equal before the law, prohibits government interference in religion, and establishes simple registration procedures for religious groups. The country is by law a secular state without a state religion. The preamble to the 1997 Law, however, acknowledges Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and other religions as constituting an inseparable part of the country's historical heritage and also recognized the "special contribution" of Orthodoxy to the country's history and to the establishment and development of its spirituality and culture.

The 1997 Law creates three categories of religious communities (groups, local organizations, and centralized organizations) with different levels of legal status and privileges.

The most basic unit is the "religious group" which has the right to conduct worship services and rituals and to teach religion to its members. A group is not registered with the Government and consequently does not have the legal status to open a bank account, own property, issue invitations to foreign guests, publish literature, receive tax benefits, or conduct worship services in prisons, state-owned hospitals, and the armed forces. However, individual members of a group may buy property for the group's use, invite personal guests to engage in religious instruction, and import religious material. In principle, members of unregistered groups are thus able to rent public spaces and hold services, but in practice, they sometimes encountered significant difficulty in doing so.

The next level is the "local religious organization", which can be registered if it has at least 10 citizen members and is either a branch of a centralized organization or has existed in the locality as a religious group for at least 15 years. Local religious organizations have legal status and may open bank accounts, own property, issue invitation letters to foreign guests, publish literature, enjoy tax benefits, and conduct worship services in prisons, state-owned hospitals, and the armed forces.

"Centralized religious organizations" can be registered by joining at least three local organizations of the same denomination. In addition to all the legal rights enjoyed by local organizations, centralized organizations also have the right to open new local organizations without any waiting period. Centralized organizations that have existed in the country for more than 50 years have the right to use the words "Russia" or "Russian" in their official names.

The 1997 Law gives officials the authority to ban religious groups and thereby prohibit all of the activities of a religious community. Following the passage of the law, groups that failed to re-register by December 31, 2000, became subject to legal dissolution (often translated as "liquidation"), i.e., deprivation of juridical status.

The 2006 Law on Public Associations (NGO or NPO Law) contains a few provisions that apply to religious organizations.

The NGO law grants the Ministry of Justice the authority to obtain certain documents, to send its representatives (with advance notice) to attend religious organization events, and to conduct an annual review of the organization's compliance with its registered mission statement. Religious organizations are required to inform the Federal Registration Service (FRS) of changes in leadership or address within 3 days of the changes taking effect. The law allows FRS to file suit against organizations that fail to comply with the law's requirements. If a court finds in favor of FRS, then the organization may be closed down. In addition, a contemporaneous amendment to the Civil Code may affect religious organizations, but the effect of this amendment and all other amendments remains to be seen. Some denominations with numerous local organizations feared that compliance with these changes would be highly burdensome.

Jehovah's Witnesses reported that federal officials used the NGO Law to investigate their headquarters, and that government officials told them the investigation was launched on the basis of this law.

Under the NGO law, religious organizations have new reporting requirements. These reporting requirements are extensive, and many NGOs and religious groups complained about the time and effort needed to complete them. The required reporting includes information about "organized events and activities" and accounts of funds received from international and foreign organizations, foreign citizens, and stateless persons. This generates difficulties for reporting anonymous donors. Failure to file reports and complete them adequately can result in warnings that may lead to the organization being closed down.

After lobbying by many religious groups, including the ROC, the Government reduced the reporting requirements for all religious organizations and extended the financial reporting deadline of the NGO Law to June 1. Russian organizations are no longer asked whether they receive income from Russian individuals or the Russian state. Although each organization must still supply full names, addresses, and passport details of members belonging to its governing body, they no longer have to provide details of religious congresses, conferences or governing body meetings, including the number of participants. The accounting procedures have been significantly simplified.

While neither the constitution nor the 1997 Law grants explicit privileges or advantages to the four "traditional" religions, in practice the ROC cooperates more closely with the Government than do other faiths. The ROC has entered into a number of formal and informal agreements with various government ministries that give the ROC far greater access than other religious groups to public institutions such as schools, hospitals, prisons, the police, and the army. ROC activities with the Government include support for the psychological rehabilitation of servicemen returning from conflict zones, the holding of religious services for those serving in conflict zones, and cooperation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs to combat extremism.

The ROC has special arrangements with government agencies to conduct religious education and to provide spiritual counseling. These include agreements with the Ministries of Education, Defense, Health, Internal Affairs, and Emergency Situations, and other bodies, such as the Federal Tax Service, Federal Border Service, and Main Department of Cossack Forces. Not all of the details of these agreements were accessible, but available information indicated that the ROC received preferential treatment.

Officials in law enforcement and the legislative branches spoke of protecting the "spiritual security" of the country by discouraging the growth of "sects" and "cults", usually understood to include some Protestant and newer religious movements. In January 2007, the Moscow City Prosecutor warned of the danger posed by extremist and dangerous new religious movements entering the country, and promised tough measures to stop their activities. To date, no such measures have been proposed or implemented.

The National Security Concept of the Russian Federation, last updated in 2000, states that "ensuring national security includes countering the negative influence of foreign religious organizations and missionaries."

Representative offices of foreign religious organizations are required to register with state authorities, and they may not conduct services or other religious activities unless they have acquired the status of a group or organization. In practice, many foreign religious representative offices opened without registering or were accredited to a registered religious organization.

The Moscow City Duma is proposing a law that would prohibit "religion agitation" in public. Administrative punishment for violations under this article would be approximately $4–20 (100-500 rubles).

The regions of Kabardino-Balkariya and Dagestan have laws banning extremist Islamic "Wahhabism", but there were no reports that authorities invoked these laws to deny registration to Muslim groups. However, the former president of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic ordered the closure of six of seven mosques in Nalchik, the region's capital. The new president of the region has reopened one mosque and announced plans to reopen another.

Officials of the Presidential Administration, regions, and localities maintain consultative mechanisms to facilitate government interaction with religious communities and to monitor application of the 1997 Law. At the national level, groups interact with a special governmental commission on religion, which includes representatives from law enforcement bodies and government ministries. On broader policy questions, religious groups continued to deal with the Presidential Administration through the Presidential Council on Cooperation with Religious Associations. The broad-based Council is composed of members of the Presidential Administration, secular academic specialists on religious affairs, and representatives of traditional and major nontraditional groups. Other governmental bodies for religious affairs include a Governmental Commission for the Affairs of Religious Associations, headed by the Minister of Culture and Mass Communications.

Avenues for interaction with regional and local authorities also exist. The offices of some of the seven Plenipotentiary Presidential Representatives (Polpreds) include suboffices that address social and religious issues. Regional administrations and many municipal administrations also have designated officials for liaison with religious organizations. Religious minorities most often encounter problems at the regional level.

The Russian Academy of State Service works with religious freedom advocates, such as the Slavic Center for Law and Justice, to train regional and municipal officials in properly implementing the 1997 Law. The Academy opens many of its conferences to international audiences.

The Office of Federal Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has a department for religious freedom issues, which receives and responds to complaints. The Ombudsman's Office receives 200–250 religious freedom complaints annually, which represents thousands of alleged individual violations. The Office has determined that approximately 75 percent of these cases represent genuine violations of religious freedoms guaranteed under the law.

Contradictions between federal and local laws, and varying interpretations of the law, were used by some regional officials to restrict the activities of religious minorities. According to many observers, local governments are more susceptible to pressure from the local religious majority and therefore are more likely to discriminate against local minority religious communities. Many localities appeared to implement their own policies with very little federal interference. When the federal Government intervenes in local cases, it works through the Procuracy, Ministry of Justice, Presidential Administration, and the courts. The federal Government only occasionally intervened to prevent or reverse discrimination at the local level.

In July 2006, the country hosted the World Summit of Religious Leaders, where President Putin spoke to the participants about increasing religious tolerance. Officials met regularly during the reporting period with leaders of several faiths, including Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities.

The federal Government does not require religious instruction in schools, but it continues to allow public use of school buildings after hours for the ROC to provide religious instruction on a voluntary basis. Several regions offer a course on Orthodoxy in public schools, and five regions (Kaluga, Tver, Bryansk, Smolensk, and Voronezh) have a mandatory class on the Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture. The Belgorod Oblast voluntary course can be avoided only if the parents themselves provide and pay for an alternative course. The course is offered as an elective in several other regions. In regions where the class is not mandatory, in practice students may be compelled to take it where schools do not provide alternatives. Minister of Education Andrey Fursenko warned against these lessons, and he proposed instead a course on "world religions" or on Orthodoxy. Fursenko's proposal remained controversial among some experts, including some in the ROC. Some regions offer a class on "History of Religion", a proposal that Fursenko suggested but did not introduce nationally. The Ministry of Education rejected continued publication and dissemination of a textbook that detailed Orthodox Christianity's contribution to the country's culture, with descriptions of some minority religions that members of those religions found objectionable; for example, the text's stance on Jews, certain non-traditional denominations, and foreigners is considered problematic by some. Some schools continued to use the text.

There is a universal military draft for men, but the Constitution provides for alternative service for those who refuse to bear arms for reasons of conscience. The length of alternative service is longer than the standard military service. The standard length of military service is 18 months, alternative service in a Ministry of Defense agency is 27 months, and alternative service in a nondefense agency is 31.5 months. Some human rights groups have complained that the extended length of service for draftees requesting alternative assignments acts as a punishment for those who exercise their convictions.

In July 2006, a new law came into effect that repeals deferrals for students of religious training institutions. The law was protested by many religious groups, including the ROC.

The 2002 Law on Extremism, amended in July 2006, can affect religious groups, particularly Muslim groups, by criminalizing a broad spectrum of activities. For example, Mansur Shangareev was convicted of extremism and sentenced to 2 years in prison for "actively adhering to a radical trend of Islam" that claimed superiority over mainstream Islam, and for making "remarks to Muslim girls about their immodest dress", among other things.

The 2006 amendments allow some charges of extremism where people are alleged to have defended or expressed sympathy with other individuals already charged with extremism.

Laws against extremism have been tightened over time. The 2016 Yarovaya Law, named after politician Irina Yarovaya, extends the legal restrictions against extremism to include evangelism by minority faiths.

On May 5, 2015, customs authorities in Russia seized a shipment of religious literature containing Ossetian-language Bibles published by Jehovah's Witnesses. Russian customs officials in the city of Vyborg held up a shipment of 2,013 Russian-language copies of Bibles on July 13, 2015. Customs authorities confiscated three of the Bibles, sent them to an "expert" to study the Bibles to determine whether they contained "extremist" language, and impounded the rest of the shipment.

On July 21, 2015, the Russian Federation Ministry of Justice added Jehovah's Witnesses official website to the Federal List of Extremist Materials thereby making it a criminal offense to promote the website from within the country and requiring Internet providers throughout Russia to block access to the site.

On March 23, 2017, the Russian News Agency TASS reported, "Russia's Justice Ministry has suspended the activities of the religious organization calling itself Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia due to its extremist activities." On April 5, 2017, the Supreme Court of Russia hear a request by the Russian Justice Ministry to declare Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist organization and adopted it. The ruling banned the organization's activity across Russia and resulted in seizure of their property. Later that year, Dennis Christensen, a Danish Jehovah's Witness, was arrested for being a "religious extremist". On January 23, 2019, Christensen was put on trial and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison. This was to first case of a person being put on trial in Russia due to them being a Jehovah's Witness.

Restrictions on religious freedom generally fall into four categories: registration of religious organizations, access to places of worship (including access to land and building permits), visas for foreign religious personnel, and government harassment of religious organizations or individuals. In the first three cases, religious communities rely upon government officials to grant them permission to assemble, own, or build property, or allow people into the country.

Many of the difficulties that religious communities face are rooted in bureaucratic obstacles and corruption, not religious bigotry. While it is nearly impossible to discern if groups are being targeted because of their religious beliefs or because they are vulnerable to demands by corrupt officials, the net effect is a restriction on their ability to worship.

Following the 1997 Law's registration deadline of 31 December, 2001, the Ministry of Justice began to legally dissolve approximately 2,000 organizations that had not re-registered, sometimes over the complaints of groups who claimed that they were still active. Complaints of involuntary dissolution have decreased as this wave of dissolutions has passed, and only a few remain to be contested in court.

Due to legal restrictions, poor administrative procedures on the part of some local authorities or disputes between religious organizations, an unknown number of groups have been unable to register. Some religious groups registered as social organizations because they were unable to do so as religious organizations.

In June 2007, a St. Petersburg Court suspended and ordered The Scientology Centre in St. Petersburg to close. The Centre had refused to allow government officials to sit in on confidential "auditing" sessions and did not hand over confidential documents from these sessions when requested. Government authorities claimed to have a right to these inspections and documents under the new NGO law. The Centre continued to operate at the end of the period covered by this report.

The Unification Church was contesting the refusal of officials to re-register three local organizations. The Unification Church alleged that its registration process had been complicated by the requirements imposed by a broad range of government agencies, including the fire safety office, tax inspectors, and epidemiological inspectors. The Church also reported that federal authorities investigated its compliance with visa rules, and scrutinized missionaries' activities and property holdings.

Local authorities continued an investigation of the Jehovah's Witnesses Administrative Center—their national headquarters in St. Petersburg—in what the Jehovah's Witnesses described as a search for an excuse to shut down their operations. The authorities indicated to the Jehovah's Witnesses that any irregularity they found would be used as grounds to close the center. On 16 February, 2007, the center wrote to the Prosecutor General's Office expressing concern over the investigations, which had continued for more than 2 years. The St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office, the Prosecutor General's Office, and the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Russian Federation sent replies stating that the investigators had not exceeded their authority and had not violated the law.

As of December 2006, the Federal Registration Service had registered 407 Jehovah's Witnesses local organizations in 72 regions, but problems with registration continued in some areas, notably Moscow, where the Moscow Golovinskiy Intermunicipal District Court and the Moscow City Court (of appeal) have banned them since 2004. The Moscow community appealed the ban to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

In June 2006, the FRS branch in Novosibirsk used the NGO law and found that a local Pentecostal church, the Word of Life, violated its charter by organizing a show in a Siberian military unit. The FRS sent a written notification to the church stating that if they violated their charter again, the FRS would file a suit to close the church.

During the reporting period, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) unanimously ruled against the Government on three religious freedom cases involving the registration of the Salvation Army, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Church of Scientology. In all three cases, the court unanimously determined that the Government violated its international obligations under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Other religious freedom cases against the Government were pending at the ECHR.

In "Moscow Branch of the Salvation Army v. Russia", the ECHR ruled in October 2006 that the Government's refusal to re-register the Moscow branch of the organization violated the right of assembly and freedom of religion of the Salvation Army. The Government paid $13,418 (10,000 euros) in damages and legal fees to the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army cannot re-register its Moscow branch, as the deadline for re-registration under the 1997 Religions Law was May 2000. They may only be re-registered by the Moscow Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Justice. It was the Chief Directorate that designated the Salvation Army as a paramilitary organization, and successfully argued in court that this prevented re-registration. The Supreme Court did not address this designation, nor did they remove it.

In the Jehovah's Witnesses case, Kuznetsov and Others v. Russia, the ECHR ruled in January 2007 that Chelyabinsk authorities had violated the rights of the Chelyabinsk Jehovah's Witnesses when they disrupted a worship meeting in 2000. The court ordered the Government to pay $121,486 (90,544 euros) to the Jehovah's Witnesses.

In the Church of Scientology Moscow v. Russia, the ECHR ruled that Moscow authorities violated the religious freedom rights of the Church of Scientology under the European Convention on Human Rights by refusing to re-register their Moscow church. The Scientologists had applied to re-register 11 times with no success. The Government did not appeal, and the decision is final.

Local authorities refused to register Scientology centers as religious organizations in Dmitrovgrad, Izhevsk, and other localities. Since these centers have not been in existence for 15 years, they are by law ineligible to register as religious organizations and cannot perform religious services (although they were allowed to hold meetings and seminars). The Churches of Scientology in Surgut City and Nizhnekamsk (Tatarstan) filed suits with the ECHR contesting the refusal of officials to register the churches based on the 15-year rule. The ECHR found the suits admissible in June 2005 and combined the cases. The case awaited a final decision, which the Church of Scientology expected by the end of 2007.

According to FRS statistics, there are 22,956 registered religious groups operating in the country, approximately half of which are affiliated with the ROC. In 2005, the last year for which statistics are available, authorities investigated the activities of 3,526 religious organizations during the 2005 calendar year. The Ministry of Justice sent notifications of violations to 2,996 religious organizations. The courts made decisions to liquidate 59 local organizations for violations of constitutional norms and federal legislation during that period.

The Jehovah's Witnesses alleged in some cases that authorities had consulted with the ROC in determining whether to approve their requests for registration.

Many religious groups had difficulty acquiring land or permits to build houses of worship. Some local governments prevented religious groups from using venues suitable for large gatherings such as cinemas and government facilities.

Some religious groups, particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, but also the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), Pentecostal congregations, and the Evangelical Christian Missionary Union, reported that local authorities in recent years denied them permission to acquire land on which to construct places of worship. Authorities continued to deny construction permits to several groups.

Many non-traditional denominations frequently complained that they were unable to obtain venues for worship. Because they are small and often newly established, they often lacked the necessary resources to buy or rent facilities on the open market and must rely on government assistance. Because they are nontraditional, they frequently met opposition from the traditional communities and often were unable to find government officials who were willing to assist them in renting state-owned property. There were multiple reports of religious organizations who were not allowed to renew leases on public and private buildings. Increased competition for space in a growing economy and increasing real estate prices led many owners (public and private) to lease property to higher-paying clients, and in some cases, religious groups were refused outright at any price.

Representatives of multiple Protestant groups spoke about increasing difficulty in extending existing leases or signing new leases for worship premises, the majority of which are still state-controlled. For example, administrations in Tikhoretsk and Volgograd refused to extend rental agreements with member churches of the Union of Christian Evangelical Missionaries, which used the spaces for worship.

The Word of Life Christian Church in Kaluga region faced great difficulties trying to build its church. The Church had been frequently visited by tax, fire, and other government inspectors. In December 2006, the mayor issued a decree to confiscate the Church's building and land, which would then be given to a foreign commercial developer. The Church's appeals to the governor, prosecutor, and police were unsuccessful, although the property had not been confiscated.

The NGO Sova Center reported at the end of the reporting period that the Vladimir Muslim community still was not able to obtain public land to build a mosque. In 2004, despite interference from the Vladimir city authorities, the congregation constructed a mosque on private land near a house that community members bought and used as a temporary prayer house. The mosque was called a community house and was used by the local community of Muslims even though it did not have room for all 25,000 members.

The Sochi mayor's office continued to deny the Muslim community authorization to build a new mosque; the current premises insufficiently accommodate the membership. Officials allotted land several times but never transferred it to the Muslim community. According to the regional government, authorities can allocate land for a mosque only after a public opinion survey indicates that the proposed location would not cause conflict. In March 2007 Abdul-Vakhed Niyazov, Chairman of the Sochi Russian Islamic Cultural Center, asked Presidential Representative to the Southern Federal District Dmitriy Kozak to investigate.

On 14 May, 2007, at a public hearing in the city of Murmansk, residents of the central city district voted to refuse the Jehovah's Witnesses permission to build a church in the city's downtown area. Mayor Mikhail Savchenko issued a statement noting that even though it was his preference that new places of worship be built outside of the city center, he regretted the lack of tolerance shown at the public hearing. Jehovah's witnesses in Dezershinsk, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast failed to obtain land for constructing a building of worship.

Religious news sources claimed that authorities acting on behalf of the ROC sometimes prevented Orthodox churches not belonging to the ROC, including the True Orthodox, from obtaining or maintaining buildings for worship. In 2005 a church reconstructed and renovated by the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC) was transferred to the ROC Diocese of Stavropol. The subsequent protest by the ROAC culminated in the beating of Metropolitan Valentin (see the Abuse section) and threats to other ROAC clergy. The Zheleznogorsk City Administration subsequently promised to allot a new building to the ROAC, but had not done so by the end of the reporting period.

There was an ongoing conflict between the Moscow Hare Krishnas and the Government regarding allocating a plot of land for worship. In the first half of 2007, Moscow City authorities rescinded their allotment of land for the construction of a Krishna temple in the Moscow city center and instead allotted the Krishnas of land in the Moscow suburbs.

Since Richen Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist community, lost its Moscow city center premises in 2004 due to a municipal construction project, it continued to rent facilities since it has been unable to secure a permanent house of worship.

The Unification Church reported difficulties in establishing a Eurasian Church Center in Moscow to coordinate church activities in the region. The authorities would not allow the church building to be occupied until an annex illegally built by the former owner was legalized. The church estimated that the building would remain closed for 2 years until all the necessary documentation was done.

Local officials have refused permission to build to a Catholic parish in Barnaul (Altai Region) and to a Muslim community in Sochi for more than 10 years.

The Church of Scientology reported that it sometimes had difficulties getting permits for large events in Moscow.

In October 2006 local authorities in Tyumen destroyed a building that was intended to house a mosque. The Muslim community had spent years working to receive ownership of the building, which had been a mosque before the 1917 revolution. The authorities had decided to give the building to the Muslim community earlier that year.

In June 2006, the city of Krasnodar demanded the demolition of a private home intended to host worship for an Evangelical group. The lower court upheld the city's decision. A court appeal was pending.

In January 2006, the district court in Astrakhan ordered the demolition of a mosque on an access road to the city. The construction of the mosque had been allowed by the mayor in 1998, but officials argued in 2006 that the land was zoned residential, that the mosque was illegally built, and that the community must demolish it. Following the failure of their appeal to the Russian Supreme Court, which upheld the demolition order and held the Muslim community must pay for the demolition itself, the Muslim community appealed to the ECHR, which agreed to hear the case.

The Emmanuel Pentecostal Church continued to face difficulties building its church in Moscow. The old House of Culture, which the Emmanuel church wants to convert into a prayer house and office building, sits on land that the local land committee agreed to rent to the church. Other local authorities opposed to that location for the church have up the registration of the land title, some on grounds that local public opinion is against the religious community involved. They refused to allow the building to be reconstructed as a church. On 26 March, 2007, arsonists set the building on fire.

The 1997 Law appeared to change the visa regime for religious and other foreign workers. Immediately after its implementation, nontraditional groups reported problems receiving long-term visas.

During the reporting period, the number of foreign religious personnel experiencing visa and customs difficulties while entering or leaving the country decreased, although some problems continued. Authorities have deported or denied entry to religious workers with valid visas in the past. The Unification Church in Moscow appealed the January 2006 deportation of its founder and legal/spiritual advisor, Jack Corley, to the ECHR. By law he must remain outside of the country for at least 5 years, at which point he can reapply for residence. The ECHR appeal joined two similar cases involving deportations of Unification Church foreign missionaries. A member of the Japanese Unification Church invited to Ufa to make a presentation was detained by FSB officers and forced to buy tickets to Moscow for himself and an FSB officer for onward deportation to Japan. He appealed the deportation and won the right to re-enter.

In June 2007 the Government threatened to deport three Falun Gong followers to c, where they could face official persecution. The UN High Commission on Refugees arranged to have these practitioners resettled to other countries. On 28 March, 2007, officials deported a Falun Gong follower and her young daughter to China.

In December 2006, a Moscow court rejected the appeal against deportation of Sunday Adelaja, a leader of the Ukrainian "Embassy of God." The court found Adelaja's deportation to be "in the interests of state security." In May 2006, while traveling to Moscow in order to participate in a television program, Adelaja had been denied entry at a Moscow airport, despite having a multiple-entry visa.

Visa problems decreased for some groups. Groups such as the LDS and Roman Catholic churches, among others, reported that the Government issued most of their clergy 1-year visas that may be extended to 5-year visas after they have entered the country. They reported that the administration of the visas had improved since the last reporting period. Foreign clergy are particularly important for the Roman Catholic Church, since there are few ordained Russian priests. Catholic authorities reported a decrease in visa problems for priests during the period covered by this report.

Many religious groups were unable to regain property confiscated in the Soviet era and to acquire new property. The SOVA Center said the property problem was most prevalent among Muslims and Protestants.

Although authorities have returned many properties used for religious services, including churches, synagogues, and mosques, all four traditional religions continued to pursue restitution cases. As of May 2007, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade was preparing legislation on returning most religious property (except for a few cultural and historical treasures) to its pre-1917 owners.

The ROC appeared to have greater success reclaiming prerevolutionary property than other groups, although it still had disputed property claims. At the end of the reporting period, the Moscow Diocese of the ROC owned more than 1,400 buildings, up from 130 in 1998.

Property claims for the ROC are legally complicated, since there was no separation of church and state before the revolution. Most of the Orthodox church buildings that were returned to the ROC were not considered ROC property before 1917. The ROC was only entitled to use these buildings and theoretically could have been evicted, but there was no attempt to do so. The ROC fully owned only churches built, bought, or received after 1991.

The Roman Catholic Community reported 44 disputed properties, including the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Cathedral in Moscow. While most state-owned property was returned, the community had no success with buildings that had been privatized. The community continued to work with authorities in the federal and local levels to resolve these issues.

Muslims in Beslan appealed to the Presidential Council for Cooperation with Religious Associations for the return of its Cathedral Mosque.

The Jewish community was still seeking the return of a number of synagogues and cultural and religious artifacts. The Federation of Jewish Communities reported that federal officials had been cooperative in the community's efforts to seek restitution of former synagogues, as had some regional officials, although some Jews asserted that the Government had returned only a small portion of the total properties confiscated during the Soviet period. The international Chabad Lubavitch organization repeatedly sought return of the Schneerson Collection, a large collection of revered religious books and documents of the Lubavitcher rebbes, which the authorities consider part of the country's cultural heritage.

Some human rights groups and religious minorities accused the Procurator General of encouraging legal action against a number of minority religions and of giving official support to materials that are biased against Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, the LDS, and others. There were credible reports that individuals within the federal security services and other law enforcement agencies harassed certain minority religious groups, investigated them for purported criminal activity and violations of tax laws, and pressured landlords to renege on contracts. In some cases the security services were thought to have influenced the Ministry of Justice to reject registration applications.

Law enforcement officials in Kabardino-Balkariya reportedly kept lists of students who said Muslim prayers, had Muslim middle names, or who sent clips with Islamic themes through their mobile phones. During the reporting period, the Sova Center reported that in general the pressure on Muslims in Kabardino-Balkariya dropped with the appointment of the republic's new leadership.

A school principal in Argayash allegedly forced a member of the Pentecostal church to resign from her kindergarten teaching post or else face criminal charges of maltreating children. Local news reports cited complaints from parents that implied that the teacher had been teaching about religion and alleged that she had physically mistreated them. Church officials maintained that these charges were fabricated and that she was actually removed due to her religious beliefs.

In June 2007 officials in the city of Uzlovaya banned a Christian music festival organized by local Baptist churches. The officials originally gave permission for the festival but revoked it after reportedly receiving phone calls from the local FSB. The mayor reportedly claimed not to have known that the festival was a religious event.

In May 2007 local authorities in the town of Revda, Murmansk Oblast ordered the closure of a Pentecostal drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for the homeless. Two members of the town council and a local Russian Orthodox priest first organized public opposition to the center and held a screening of a negative film about Pentecostals. Pentecostals were not invited to the public hearing that decided the issue; they showed up nonetheless and were booed by the approximately 800 participants. The town council then voted to close the center. The Pentecostals planned to appeal the matter to a court.

On December 25, 2006, a court found Viktor Tanakov, high priest of the ethnic Mari faith, guilty of incitement to religious and ethnic hatred for having written and distributed a brochure entitled "The Priest Speaks", which describes all world religions as "demonic." He lost his appeal to the Supreme Court on 21 March, 2007.

In June 2007 a Moscow district court published a ban on the works of Said Nursi, a Turkish pacifist Islamic theologian. The ban, which was being appealed, was condemned by religious and human rights leaders. Ravil Gainutdin, Chairman of the Russian Council of Muftis, wrote an open letter to President Putin describing the Risale-i Nur ban as "a crude violation of freedom of conscience in our country." Vladimir Lukin, the Human Rights Ombudsman, denounced the ban, saying that Nursi's works contained no trace of religious hatred or intolerance. In an open letter to the court, Lukin wrote that "It is very important that we do not allow interference in the convictions and beliefs of millions of citizens on the poorly grounded, unproven pretext of fighting against extremism, as this really could provoke wide-scale violations of their right to freedom of belief."

There has been a trend of senior government officials showing support for those religious leaders who endorse them; this can lead to indirect discrimination. For example, in St. Petersburg, an Imam at Cathedral Mosque endorsed United Russia, which supported his plans for a second mosque in the city. At the same time, Muslims not part of Cathedral Mosque were unable to obtain permission to construct their own mosque in St. Petersburg. Governor Valentina Matviyenko noted in response to a letter of enquiry that this is in part because they are "in a state of conflict" with and "follow a different trend of Islam" from the Cathedral Mosque community.

Local authorities in St. Petersburg began an investigation of the Jehovah's Witnesses Administrative Center, their national headquarters, even before the 2006 NGO law's implementing regulations were published. The authorities indicated that any irregularity they found would cause them to close the center. Federal and local authorities continued their investigations of the center in 2007. On 16 February, 2007, the center wrote to the Prosecutor General's Office, expressing concern over the investigations, which had continued for more than 2 years. The St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office, the Prosecutor General's Office, and the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman sent replies stating that the investigators had not exceeded their authority and had not violated the law.

The Government in practice gave preference to the ROC. Authorities permitted Orthodox chapels and priests on army bases. Protestant groups had more limited access to military facilities, while authorities largely banned Islamic services in the military and generally did not give Muslim conscripts time for daily prayers or alternatives to pork-based meals. Some recruits serving in the army reported that fellow servicemen insulted and abused them because they were Muslim.

Although there are several laws addressing crimes motivated by ethnic or religious hatred, law enforcement agencies enforced these laws in an inconsistent, generally infrequent, and sometimes arbitrary manner.

Authorities rarely prosecuted or sentenced those arrested for attacks and vandalism against religious minorities, and they often failed to bring hate-crime charges even when religious bigotry was clearly involved. Some government officials denied that there was a problem with hate crimes, or if they did exist, they were manifestations of economic ills. Some government officials and human rights observers noted that, due to heavy caseloads, prosecutors chose to file easily proven charges of vandalism or hooliganism rather than risk an acquittal on the harder-to-prove hate-crime motive. The end result was that hate crime legislation was often not enforced.

The Government also used counter-terrorism to commit serious violations of religious freedom against the Muslim population. There were numerous cases of Muslims being prosecuted for extremism or terrorism even when they have no clear relation to such activities. These included individuals detained for possessing religious literature such as the Qur'an, or on the basis of evidence allegedly planted by the police. Some people suspected by local police of Islamic extremism allegedly were subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

According to human rights groups, a Supreme Court decision to ban 15 Muslim groups for alleged ties to international terrorism made it easier for officials to arbitrarily detain Muslims for alleged connections to these groups.

On 24 May, 2007, during an interethnic brawl in Stavropol between hundreds of Russian and Chechen youths, Gelani Ayatev was badly beaten and soon after died of his injuries. Zaurbek Akhmadov, an eyewitness, said that riot troops and local police cheered on skinheads as they physically assaulted Ayatev, who had been handcuffed. Police then put Ayatev, still in handcuffs, and Akhmadov, who had been shot in the leg by police as he tried to help Ayatev, in the back of a police vehicle. According to Akmadov, the police refused to allow medical attention for Ayatev or Akmadov for more than an hour, and in response to Akhmadov's cries to help Ayatev and bring him to a doctor, the policemen answered "Don't worry. He won't be shouting Allah Akbar anymore."

In the case where a suspect threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in Saratov in May 2007, police were investigating it as a case of "hooliganism" rather than as a hate crime, and had not apprehended any suspects. They declared it may not have been clear to the perpetrator that the building was a synagogue.

In Saratov at the beginning of April 2007, when a Jewish community member's home was targeted in an arson attack and graffiti reading "kikes to Israel" was written on a fence near the synagogue, police investigators classified these incidents as "hooliganism" and had not detained any suspects as of May.

In February 2007 the court gave light prison sentences to five teenagers who beat and fatally stabbed a Jewish man in October 2005, a murder motivated by ethnic hatred.

There were isolated instances in which local officials detained individuals who were publicly discussing their religious views, but usually authorities resolved these instances quickly.

On 13 and 14 of May, 2007 police arrested and detained 15 members of the Voskresenye Baptist community in Ivanovo, who were holding an event in a movie theater, distributing the New Testament and Book of Psalms. The organizers of the event had a written agreement with the theater. The reason given for the inspection appeared erroneous. The police tried to intimidate the detainees and urged them not to attend Baptist meetings, stating it was a "harmful sect."

On 31 March, 2006, residents of Novaya Adygeia village were prevented from going to their mosque for Friday prayers. Police and Adygeia militia blocked all the roads into the village, stopped cars, and searched Muslims. According to the Maykop mosque imam, police officers also allegedly assaulted and apprehended a group of young Muslims, including the imam; masked policemen dragged the group to minibuses and took them to the Interior Ministry's Anti-Organized Crime Department. The policemen beat and questioned them about why they wore beards and observed Islamic norms of hygiene. After the Muslims were detained for a night in prison, officials took them before a judge who ordered their immediate release. The NGOs Memorial and SOVA reported that government officials have harassed Muslims in Adygeia since summer 2005, including seizing religious literature, preventing congregants from attending Friday prayers, and warning them to stop attending the mosque.

A complicated case regarding the disruption of an April 2006 meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow was still pending. In April 2006 the Lyublino Police Department of Moscow disrupted a religious meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses, and officers detained and interrogated 14 male leaders of the congregation, taking their passports. Police refused to provide written reasons for their detention, reportedly physically assaulted their attorney Vitaly Sinyukov when he went to the police station to assist them, and threatened him at knife-point not to file a complaint. In June 2006 a Moscow district court found the detention of the plaintiffs unlawful but dismissed the remainder of the suit because the Jehovah's Witnesses did not have legal permission to hold the meeting. Both the Jehovah's Witnesses and the police appealed the decision, and on March 22, 2007, the court reversed the June 2006 decision and ruled that the detention had in fact been lawful. The Moscow City Court refused to allow the ECHR judgment Kuznetsov v. Russia to be introduced as evidence in the case.

Vitaliy Sinyukov filed a suit against the Lyublino District Police Department. On 20 April, 2006, the Lyublino District Court dismissed the complaint against the police without considering its merits. Sinyukov appealed, and on 13 July, 2006, the Moscow City Court reversed the ruling and returned the case to the Lyublino District Court for consideration. On 16 August, 2006, the Lyublino District Court again ruled to dismiss the case without considering its merits. Sinyukov appealed again, and on 14 December, 2006, the Moscow City Court reversed the ruling in part and again returned the case to the Lyublino District Court for partial consideration of its merits. The case was pending at the end of the reporting period.

On 24 December, 2006, local police and officials from the Chelyabinsk Emergencies and Youth departments raided a Pentecostal service at a private house in Argayash and demanded documents relating to the property and church. Police Colonel Ramil Galilullin told the press that the reason for the raid was a complaint by local citizens that children attended the Pentecostal church without parental permission. Following the raid, the authorities also conducted a fire inspection and fined the church for incorrect use of a stove and defective wiring. The Chelyabinsk region public prosecutor opened an investigation into the actions of the authorities in February 2007.

From 1 July 2005 through 30 June, 2006, the courts convicted 46 Muslims, 29 of whom were in prison, for membership in Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Courts gave Anton (Abdullah) Stepanenko, an imam in Pyatigorsk (Stavropol Region), a suspended sentence, partially for inciting religious hatred. Stepanenko's lawyer maintained that he was not permitted to order a psychiatric assessment of a key witness with a long history of mental illness, or to cross-examine scholars responsible for an expert analysis which alleged that Islamic literature—with no proven link to Stepanenko personally—was extremist. Whereas criminal investigators reportedly claimed that Stepanenko was in possession of "Wahhabi" literature (a term widely and loosely used in the country to denote Islamic extremism), President Putin stated that "Wahhabism in itself does not pose any threat."

In February 2006 local police in Kabardino-Balkariya started compiling a list of "Wahhabis" by going to educational institutions and noting the names of students who prayed regularly. Under the new government in that region, however, pressure against Muslims seemed to diminish.

In October 2005, following a dispute between the ROAC and the ROC over the ownership of St. Olga's Church (see Restrictions section), three armed men beat and attempted to kidnap the ROAC Metropolitan from his home. The FSB reportedly interrogated and threatened several ROAC clergy and members following this incident.

Throughout 2005 tensions increased in Kabardino-Balkariya between Islamists and police. Police closed a large number of mosques, especially in areas declared "liberated" by Islamist militants. In October 2005, local militants joined Islamic militants loyal to the Chechen fighter Shamil Basayev and attacked and occupied government and police buildings in Nalchik. Several hundred militants were killed; many of the bodies have still not been returned to their families. Government officials said they arrested more than 60 persons on suspicion of participating in raids, while human rights groups claimed the number of detainees was higher and that most of them were not involved in the unrest.

Following the 2004 hostage-taking in Beslan, police stepped up activity in the North Caucasus. Authorities allegedly charged increasing numbers of Muslims, both Russian citizens and citizens of the predominantly Muslim states bordering the country, with extremism. The NGO Memorial described 23 cases involving more than 80 individuals charged with extremism as "trumped-up." Of these, 18 resulted in verdicts, only 1 of which was an acquittal.

According to the Sova Center, on 19 April, 2005, police briefly detained and interrogated nine female students in Kabardino-Balkariya for wearing the hijab and studying the Qur'an as a group.

While most detentions for religious practices were of Muslims, there were occasional reports of short-term police detentions of non-Muslims on religious grounds, but such incidents were generally resolved quickly. For example, local police frequently detained missionaries for brief periods throughout the country or asked them to cease their proselytizing activities, regardless of whether they were actually in violation of local statutes. During the reporting period, the Jehovah's Witnesses reported approximately 55 incidents, 21 of which took place in Moscow, in which authorities briefly detained their members or other citizens who were conducting lawful preaching activities.

In Vladimir Oblast, authorities inspected the property owned by the ROAC several times. In January 2006, FSB representatives seized about 20 files with documentation on ROAC ownership without informing ROAC leaders or giving any reasons.

As of now there are several religious prisoners including a Dutch man.

There were no reports of forced religious conversion.

Racially motivated violent attacks against Jews decreased during the reporting period, despite an increase in racist violence targeting other ethnic groups. Anti-Semitism remained a serious problem, and there were several anti-Semitic attacks on persons and synagogues during the reporting period.

In September 2006, a court convicted of attempted murder and of inciting ethnic and religious strife, and sentenced to 16 years in prison, a man who stabbed eight persons during evening prayers in the Chabad synagogue in Moscow in January 2006. The assailant did not deny that anti-Semitism was a motive in his attack. The courts increased the 13-year sentence he received in April 2006 because it had not taken into account the extremist motive of the attack.

A student attempted a copy-cat attack on a synagogue in Rostov-on-Don in January 2006, but security guards stopped him before he could harm anyone. An appeals court overturned his attempted murder conviction on the basis that he was mentally unfit to stand trial, and ordered him to undergo psychiatric treatment.

On 1 October, 2005, 21-year-old Andrey Dzyuba was killed by a gang of drunken teenagers in Yekaterinburg. The group yelled anti-Semitic insults at Dzyuba, dragged him to a cemetery, beat him, and killed him with a metal cross grave marker. Courts convicted five of the attackers of murder for reason of ethnic hatred, and gave them sentences ranging from five to ten years in prison. Ten underage attackers who participated in the beating but not the murder were not charged due to their age.

According to the NGO Moscow Bureau of Human Rights (MBHR), the ultranationalist and anti-Semitic Russian National Unity (RNE) paramilitary organization continued to propagate hostility toward Jews and non-Orthodox Christians. The RNE appeared to have lost political influence in some regions since its peak in 1998, but the organization maintained high levels of activity in other regions, such as Voronezh.

Some branches of the ultranationalist and anti-Semitic National Sovereign Way of Russia (NDPR) participated in events organized by local officials.

The primary targets of skinheads were foreigners and individuals from the North Caucasus, but they expressed anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic sentiments as well.

Vandals desecrated several synagogues and Jewish community centers during the reporting period, including in Saratov, Lipetsk, Borovichy, Murmansk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Taganrog, Samara, Petrozavodsk, Perovo, Baltiisk, Kurgan, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Tomsk, and Kaliningrad. Officials often classified the crimes as "hooliganism." In the cases where local authorities prosecuted cases, courts generally imposed suspended sentences.

In May 2007 Dmitry Levanov firebombed the Jewish center in Ulyanovsk and nailed a threatening note on its door with a knife. The next day he returned with a friend and threw a brick through its window. He was detained by police, tried in court, and given a 2-year suspended sentence for inciting ethnic hatred. His friend was released without being charged.

On 5 May, 2007, an assailant threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in Saratov. No suspects were apprehended. The police were investigating the arson as a case of "hooliganism" rather than as a hate crime. They stated it may not have been clear to the perpetrator that the building was a synagogue.

In the same town at the beginning of April 2007, a Jewish community member's home was targeted in an arson attack. Graffiti reading "kikes to Israel" was written on a fence near the synagogue. Police investigators also classified these incidents as hooliganism and had not detained any suspects as of May 2007.

On the night of 18 March, 2007, vandals painted extremist phrases and swastikas on the walls of a synagogue in Voronezh. Officials initiated a criminal investigation on charges of vandalism and inciting extremist activity. The head of the Voronezh Jewish Community believed that the synagogue was attacked in response to the arrest of two young persons suspected of vandalizing a Jewish cemetery in Voronezh.

On the night of 1 March, 2007, vandals desecrated a synagogue in Vladivostok and painted swastikas and anti-Semitic phrases on the walls of the synagogue. The synagogue was also vandalized on 26 October, 2006.

On 15 December, 2006, the Jewish Charity Center in Pskov reported that pepper spray was sprayed through a keyhole during its Hanukkah celebration. Police found no evidence of an attack but agreed to step up patrols when the Center was having public events.

In September 2006 unidentified persons threw stones at synagogues in Khabarovsk and Astrakhan, breaking several windows. One perpetrator threw a Molotov cocktail at the Astrakhan synagogue during this attack.

Vandals also desecrated several Jewish cemeteries and memorials during the reporting period.

On 30 March, 2007, unknown vandals defaced seven grave markers in a Jewish cemetery in St. Petersburg with swastikas and graffiti. Police were investigating.

On 29 March, 2007, unknown vandals spray painted swastikas and fascist graffiti on a holocaust memorial in Kaliningrad. The local Jewish community chairman asked the prosecutor to investigate.

On 6 March, 2007, vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Voronezh, ruining more than 20 tombstones. Officials initiated a criminal case under article 244 of the Criminal Code—desecrating a cemetery.

Charges of "hooliganism" were quite common for crimes that would normally be considered bias crimes against a particular community, but prosecutors, even by governmental opinion, were reluctant to pursue aggravated charges of racial bias in crimes and were many times content with the lesser charge being applied. At times, there was a fear of not being able to win a court judgment of a bias crime.

There were many reports of anti-Semitic publications during the reporting period.

A number of small, radical-nationalist newspapers that print anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and xenophobic articles, many of which appeared to violate the law against extremism, were readily available throughout the country. There were also reports of anti-Semitic literature on sale in cities across the country. The estimated number of xenophobic publications exceeded 100, many sponsored by the local chapters of the National Power Party. In addition, there were at least 80 websites in the country that disseminated anti-Semitic propaganda.

The Euro-Asian Congress noted that in 2006 prosecutors recorded the highest number of attempts to prosecute purveyors of anti-Semitic propaganda. While the Government has publicly denounced nationalist ideology and supported legal action against anti-Semitic acts, the reluctance of some lower-level officials to call such acts anything other than "hooliganism" remained an impediment.

In June 2007 a court in Novosibirsk sentenced the publisher of a local newspaper to two years in prison for inciting anti-Semitism. He had published articles that openly called for violence against Jews.

In April 2007, at a book fair in Moscow, police arrested a trader in extremist books and charged him with inciting ethnic, racial, and religious enmity. The police stated that they were seeking to identify the publisher of these materials.

Members of the State Duma and other prominent figures expressed anti-Semitic sentiments in a January 2005 letter, urging the prosecutor general to investigate Jewish organizations and initiate proceedings to ban them, charging that a Russian translation of ancient Jewish law, the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, incited hatred against non-Jews. According to the ADL, in 2006 human rights organizations made numerous unsuccessful attempts to prosecute the authors of the "Letter of 500."

The Rodina party merged with the Party of Life and the Party of Pensioners to form the new "For a Just Russia" party in 2006. Rodina members with known anti-Semitic views generally did not approve of the merger and did not join the new party. "For a Just Russia" was led by Federation Council Speaker Sergey Mironov, who frequently spoke out against intolerance and anti-Semitism, including at a September 2006 visit to the Babiy Yar memorial in Ukraine.

In 2006 Nikolay Kurianovich, an LDPR Duma deputy, initiated and publicized a "list of the enemies of the Russian people", which mostly featured Jewish names. On 7 March, 2007, aides to Kurianovich were expelled from the Duma chambers for wearing swastika armbands. Kurianovich declared their expulsion part of a "struggle against all that is Russian."

During the reporting period, President Putin spoke several times on the need to combat interethnic and interreligious intolerance. The ROC hosted the World Summit of Religious Leaders in July 2006, including 200 leaders from 40 countries. The conference focused on political and social issues and included calls for interreligious tolerance. President Putin addressed the leaders and urged them to lead their congregations away from extremism.

On 13 March, 2007, President Putin visited the Vatican and discussed with Pope Benedict XVI ways to improve relations between the ROC and Roman Catholic Church.

The LDS succeeded in registering 51 local religious organizations as of the end of 2006.

On 12 December, 2006, a court affirmed the New Testament Church and the Perm Community of Evangelical Christians' title to the former Lenin Palace of Culture, providing an official certificate documenting the community's ownership of the facility, which they planned to use as a house of worship.

An Old Believer community in Samara regained its prerevolutionary church through a municipal decision during the reporting period.

Despite the prolonged series of investigations, Jehovah's Witness officials in St. Petersburg told consulate staff that the situation in Northwest Russia had improved. The officials said they had been able to engage in constructive dialogue with Government officials with regard to the general situation on religious freedom and the investigation of their Administrative Center.

In November 2006 the Permskiy Kray court ruled in favor of the Pentecostal Church, allowing the church to register its property, overturning several previous lower court decisions against the group. The Pentecostal group reported having received no official harassment since the resolution of the case.

In February 2007 a Sverdlovsk oblast court convicted five teenagers of the 2005 murder of a Jewish man, sentencing them to prison sentences ranging from 5 to 10 years. The teens were skinheads and members of extremist and Nazi-affiliated groups. The court acknowledged the anti-Semitic nature of the crime in its verdict, which came under Article 105, Section 2, "Ethnic or Religious Hate Crime."

Federal and regional officials participated actively in, and in many cases strongly supported, a range of government and NGO-organized programs to promote tolerance. The December 2006 conference "A Multi-Ethnic Russia" was cosponsored by the Federation Council and UNESCO and included sessions on religious diversity and tolerance.

The Commission for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, a government body headed by Vladimir Lukin, released its annual report on human rights and publicized the difficulty that some religious groups faced in property restitution and land acquisition, and the difficulties that religious minorities faced with government officials.

The Public Chamber's Commission on Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience promoted tolerance in troubled areas, by holding a public hearing in March 2006 on how to promote stability and civil accord in the North Caucasus. Among the participants were government and religious leaders from the region.

Federal authorities, and in many cases regional and local authorities, facilitated the establishment of new Jewish institutions. In June 2006 work began on the construction of a $100 million Moscow Jewish community center on land donated by the Moscow city government to house Jewish community institutions including a school, a hospital, and a major new museum devoted to the history of the country's Jews, the Holocaust, and tolerance. The construction was scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008.

Evangelical Christian leaders in St. Petersburg reported important progress in obtaining federal permission to expand work with prisoners, in particular through its broadcasting network. With the cooperation of the ROC, satellite receivers were installed in dozens of prisons to allow broadcasting of programming that was broadly Protestant but tried to reach across denominations. The prison broadcasting program's stated goal was to provide inmates with an alternative to mainstream television.

ROC Patriarch Aleksiy II and spiritual leaders of Russian Muslims held an interfaith appeal for peace and joint efforts to counter ethnic and religious strife, following interethnic violence in the city of Kondopoga.

Despite the problems the Jehovah's Witnesses faced, church leaders said that their community grew by 3 percent (to 140,000) in the last year. Although in the past the Jehovah's Witnesses had difficulty securing large venues, they held an annual congress on 14-16 July, 2006, at the Luzhniki Sports Complex in Moscow, which more than 22,000 attended. The April 2007 Jehovah's Witnesses' observances of the death of Jesus in Moscow proceeded without official or community disruption.

Here were reports of societal abuses and discrimination based on religious belief or practice, including some physical attacks against individuals and communities because of the victims' religious affiliation (see also the section on Anti-Semitism). Groups that monitor hate crimes reported at least 70 incidents of vandalism against religious targets, including 36 aimed at Jews, 12 against Russian Orthodox, and 11 against Muslims.

On 9 April, 2007, the Stavropol court charged a suspect with murder on religious hatred grounds for the September 2006 killing of Imam Kurdzhiyev.

In February 2007 police charged suspects in the June 2004 killing of Nikolay Girenko, an expert on xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. Girenko had served for many years as an expert witness in trials involving alleged skinheads and neo-Nazis.

On 8 December, 2006, a hand grenade was thrown into the yard of the house of Ismail Berdiyev, Chairman of the Coordinating Council of Moslems of the North Caucasus. No one was hurt in the attack.

Russian Orthodox priest Andrey Nikolayev, his wife, and their three children were killed on 2 December, 2006, when their house was set on fire. The motive for the arson and murder was not known, but media reported that a criminal group had threatened the priest in the past and had burned down his house in another village.

According to Jehovah's Witness officials, there were 5 incidents of physical attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses, and 11 incidents of police detention in the first half of 2007. In 2006 there were 24 physical attacks and 40 cases of police detention.

Many citizens believe that at least nominal adherence to the ROC is a part of Russian culture, and three other faiths—Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism—are widely considered "traditional religions." Terrorism and events related to the war in Chechnya have given rise to negative popular attitudes toward traditionally Muslim ethnic groups in many regions. Hostility toward non-Russian-Orthodox religious groups sparked harassment and occasionally physical attacks. Religiously motivated violence continued, although it was often difficult to determine whether xenophobia, religion, or ethnic prejudices were the primary motivation. Conservative activists claiming ties to the ROC disseminated negative publications and staged demonstrations throughout the country against Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other minority religions.

Some religious groups participated in interfaith dialogues. Pentecostal and Baptist organizations, as well as the ROC, were reluctant to support ecumenism at the local level, although the national leaders engaged each other at public forums during the reporting period. At the international level, the ROC has traditionally pursued interfaith dialogue with other Christian groups. In the Muslim-dominated regions of the Tatarstan republic and the surrounding Volga region, tensions between Muslims and Russian Orthodox believers occasionally emerged. Law enforcement organizations closely watched Muslim groups. Officials often described Muslim charitable organizations as providing aid to extremists in addition to their overt charity.

A small splinter group of the ultranationalist Russian National Unity (RNE) organization called "Russian Rebirth" registered successfully in the past in Tver and Nizhniy Novgorod as a social organization, prompting protests from human rights groups; however, in several regions such as Moscow and Karelia, the authorities limited the activities of the RNE by denying registration to its local affiliates. According to Sova Center, there were neither registration denials nor registrations of RNE during the reporting period. Sova Center reported that three other ultranationalist organizations were dissolved in 2006. In one case, the Supreme Court upheld the decision by a Krasnodar court to ban the Krasnodar Orthodox Slavic community, an Orthodox Old Believers group that used neo-Nazi symbols.

On 2 July, 2006, 15 shots were fired over a 15-minute period at the Trinikolsky monastery in the Dmitrovsky District of the Moscow Oblast. While no one was injured, the shots caused $12,000 in damage.

On 27 August, 2006, an unknown attacker sprayed teargas, disrupting a Pentecostal church service in the "New Testament" Evangelical Church in the city of Perm.

Muslims continued to encounter societal discrimination and antagonism in some regions. After terrorists associated with Chechen, Ingush, and Islamic extremists seized a school in 2004 in Beslan, North Ossetia, interethnic and interreligious tensions resulting in discrimination persisted in the region without the authorities' intervention, according to NGOs. Muslims claimed that citizens in certain regions feared Muslims, citing cases such as a dispute in Kolomna, approximately southeast of Moscow, over the proposed construction of a mosque. Government officials, journalists, and the public have liberally labeled Muslim organizations "Wahhabi", a term that has become equivalent with "extremist." Numerous press reports documented anti-Islamic sentiment.

In Muslim-dominated regions, relations between Muslims and Russian Orthodox believers were generally harmonious. Extremely traditional or orthodox versions of Islam were often associated in the public mind with terrorism and radical Muslim fighters in the North Caucasus.

Although the previous reporting period saw the chairman of the Council of Muftis, the head of the Central Spiritual Board of the country's Muslims, and the head of the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus jointly denounce terrorism, the national press carried stories during the reporting period highlighting their public differences in attitudes toward Wahabbism, among other things.

As in the past, there were many attacks against houses of worship, meeting halls, and cemeteries across the country. Attacks ranged from threats and graffiti to arson. Often, even in the face of blatant anti-religious signs, local authorities investigated the cases as "hooliganism", and not under the stronger anti-hate laws, although there were signs that prosecutors were using the hate-crime laws more often. In April 2007 the Government amended the Criminal Code to increase punitive measures for hate crimes and extremism. According to new legislation, an individual convicted of committing an act of vandalism motivated by ideological, political, national, racial and religious hatred or enmity can be sentenced for up to 3 years.

Sova Center reported that 25 acts of vandalism motivated by religious hatred were committed against churches and other religious buildings in 2006, including 11 attacks on Muslim religious buildings. A mosque was bombed in Yahroma village of Moscow region. Mosques in Vladimir and Yaroslavl were attacked with Molotov cocktails.

On 27 September, 2006, arsonists attempted to burn down a mosque in Yaroslavl by throwing six Molotov cocktails at the building. Vandals painted extremist phrases and swastikas on the outer wall of the mosque. Police arrested and charged an 18-year-old student with instigation of nationalist, racial, and religious hatred. There was another attempt of arson on the same mosque 3 days earlier. On 25 December, 2006, the arsonists were convicted of desecration and arson; one was given a suspended sentence of 1 year and 3 months, and the other was sentenced to 10 months in a labor camp. The arsonists apologized publicly.

Emmanuel Moscow Evangelical Church reported an arson attack on their building in Solntsevo district of Moscow on the night of 26 March, 2007. Also in March 2007, attackers threw bottles filled with resin at the front wall of Central Prayer House of the Christians of Evangelical Faith in Voronezh.

Sova Center registered 24 cases of vandalism in Orthodox, Muslim, and Jewish cemeteries in 2006. On 3 October, 2006, a group of skinheads desecrated approximately 150 Jewish and Tatar tombs in a cemetery in Tver. Extremist leaflets were found at the scene. A criminal case was initiated on charges of desecrating a cemetery.

On 4 August, 2006, a Muslim cemetery was vandalized in Yekaterinburg. More than a dozen headstones, many of them of historic value, were destroyed. Police characterized the vandalism as hooliganism, not a hate crime, and Muslim community representatives in Yekaterinburg, including Imam Sibgatulla-Hazrat, agreed with this view.

During the reporting period, the tensions between the Vatican and the ROC notably decreased, although the Patriarchy in Moscow continued to object to the transfer of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic See from Lviv to Kiev, Ukraine, which occurred in August 2005. The press coverage of President Putin's March 2007 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI was positive, and Roman Catholic representatives noted a decrease in tensions during the reporting period. Other issues of concern that remained between the two groups included the continued belief that Roman Catholics were proselytizing in the country and a proposal by a local priest to open a Catholic Carmelite convent whose main mission would be to work with orphans in the city of Nizhniy Novgorod. The ROC alleged that the convent would serve as a base for missionary activities, while the Catholic Church maintained that the convent was not a full-fledged convent but a means for caring for local orphans. In April 2007 the Head of the ROC's Inter-Christian Relations Secretariat publicly criticized the Catholic Church for allegedly proselytizing at orphanages, calling their missionary activity "unacceptable."

Reports of the harassment of evangelicals and Pentecostals dramatically decreased during the reporting period, particularly after September 2005, when Bishop Sergey Ryakhovskiy joined the Public Chamber. Nevertheless, African-Russian and African ministers of non-Orthodox Christian churches were subject to religious and racial bigotry.

According to a 13 July, 2006, report by SOVA, an Orthodox priest and other activists attempted to interrupt a Baptist service in the village of Achit (Sverdlovsk region). They reportedly told persons walking by that the Baptists were a dangerous "sect." Police arrived on the scene and fined the Baptists for holding an "unauthorized meeting." Similar actions were reported against Pentecostals and Hare Krishnas.

The press routinely continued to reference members of Jehovah's Witnesses as a religious "sect", although they have been present in the country for approximately 100 years.

In the past, Jehovah's Witnesses officials reported physical attacks against their members throughout the country. The officials were unable to update these figures for this reporting period, citing the difficulty of collecting the information.

A case at the ECHR continued 4 years after a provocative exhibit on religion was vandalized at the Sakharov Center. Although the authorities never prosecuted the vandals, a court found the Center Director and a staff member guilty of inciting religious hatred, and fined them. The case was being appealed at the ECHR.

During the reporting period, the Slavic Center for Law and Justice and a number of minority "nontraditional" religious leaders asserted that the Government and majority religious groups increasingly used the mass media, conferences, and public demonstrations to foment opposition to minority religions as threats to physical, mental, and spiritual health, asserting that these groups threatened national security. During the reporting period, television channels broadcast several programs about "dangerous cults and sects" and implied that these included Pentecostals and other proselytizing religions.