James Baquet

By almost any measure, Russia is one of the world’s most important countries. It is the largest country by area, covering over one-eighth of the earth, and spanning 11 time zones and two continents (Asia and Europe). It is also the ninth-largest in population, over 75 percent of which lives in the western (European) part of the country.

Russia’s capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world. Other major cities include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg.

It is the center of one of the two “worlds” alluded to when we say “Third World.” French demographer Alfred Sauvy is usually credited with coining the phrase in 1952. He called the developed, capitalist industrialized countries aligned around the U.S. — think of North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan — the “First World.”

The “Second World,” then, was the communist or socialist industrialized states, such as eastern Europe and parts of Central Asia, centering around what was once the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic (USSR) and is today Russia.

The “Third World” was those countries that were “left over,” not aligned with either superpower. They were usually still developing, like most African, Asian and Latin American nations. Some were capitalist, some communist, some rich, some poor — but none were directly in either the U.S. or Russian camp.

Russia shares land borders with (from west to east) Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It also borders on such major bodies of water as the Arctic Ocean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Pacific, which gives it maritime borders with Japan, South Korea and the United States. It’s less than 90 kilometers across the Bering Strait from the Russian mainland to the U.S. state of Alaska. However, there are two small islands in the Strait — one belonging to Russia, the other to the United States — that are just four kilometers apart.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. spreading across

2. group with the same ideas, positions. etc.

3. relating to the sea

4. given recognition for

5. detached portion of a country

6. 24 divisions of the globe measuring hours from the observatory at Greenwich, England

7. one who studies human populations

8. in cooperation or agreement

9. made reference to