Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
is known as Russia's Bloody Sunday. Under pressure from the population, the czar
allowed the creation of a limited parliament, Russia's first ever, elected in 1906.
Fighting the Germans in World War I further weakened Nicholas's shaky hold on
the country, and with revolution in the air, he abdicated in February 1917. An aristo-
crat-led provisional government jockeyed for power with revolutionary parties. Lenin's
extremist Bolshevik Party emerged the victor. Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their
five children were exiled to Siberia and then executed in 1918, as civil war engulfed
the nation. Years of chaos, famine, and bloodshed followed, before the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics was born.
After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin worked his way to the top of the Communist Party
leadership. Stalin crafted a dictatorship by gradually purging his rivals, real and imag-
ined. His repression reached a peak in the late 1930s, with millions executed or exiled
to prison camps across Siberia and the Arctic, referred to by their Russian initials
GULAG, or State Agency for Labor Camps.
Stalin tried to head off war with Germany, but Hitler invaded anyway, plunging the
Soviet Union into a war that cost the country 27 million lives, more losses than any
nation suffered in World War II.
Genuine grief mixed with nervous relief gripped the country when Stalin died in
1953, as many feared that life without this frightening father figure would be even
worse than with him. Nikita Khrushchev's eventual rise to power brought a thaw;
political prisoners were released and there was a slight relaxation of censorship amid
continued postwar economic growth. Soviet space successes during this time—includ-
ing sending the first satellite, first man, and first woman to space—awed the world
and fueled the Cold War arms race.
From the mid-1980s, Gorbachev's name became synonymous with the policies of
glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) that he tried to apply to the
Soviet system. But he underestimated how deeply the country's economy and politi-
cal legitimacy had decayed. The reforms he introduced took on a momentum that
doomed him and the Soviet Union.
Russia under Putin, who was overwhelmingly elected president in 2000 and just as
enthusiastically reelected in 2004, is undoubtedly a calmer and richer place than it was
in the chaotic 1990s. Putin cut taxes, allowed the sale of land for the first time since
Lenin's days, and has presided over the greatest growth in Russia's economy in decades.
However, his achievements have been due largely to the fact that he's disabled the
political opposition.
PEOPLE & CULTURE
Russians are among the most festive and giving people on the planet, always ready to
put their last morsel of food and last drop of drink on the table to honor an unex-
pected late-night guest with toasts, more toasts, and laughter. Although the changes
of the past decade have been rough on Russians, they've adapted quickly—today's
Russian university graduates know more languages, and more about financial markets
and text messaging than many of their Western counterparts.
Despite Russia's bloody history, the country is succeeding in producing some of the
world's best science, music, and literature. In the 19th century, Pushkin became Rus-
sians' best-loved poet, with his direct, melodic use of the Russian language. Dostoevski's
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