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A series of events from 1989 to 1991 led to the final collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), paving the way for the establishment of new, independent republics in the Baltics and Central Asia and the creation of the Russian Federation.

Formally established in 1922, at its height the USSR was composed of fifteen republics, the largest of which was Russia. In 1987, seventy years after the 1917 revolution that established a communist state in Russia, the Soviet Union was in decline. Severe economic problems combined with an international arms race and evidence of imperial overstretch made reforms necessary if the unified nation was to survive. Taking office as chief of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the leader of the USSR in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to implement the necessary reforms through his dual policies of "perestroika," or economic restructuring, and "glasnost," or political openness. At the same time, he applied his " new thinking" to Soviet foreign policy, hoping to end the Cold War with the United States and the strains the conflict had placed on the economy.

Although Gorbachev implemented extensive economic reforms and introduced limited democratic elections, none of his measures were successful in arresting economic decline, and he was too committed to the idea of socialism to introduce a true free market system. As Gorbachev struggled to find solutions to fight stagnation, in the spring of 1990, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in a popular election. Yeltsin was a threat to Gorbachev's centralized power for several reasons. As leader of the largest republic in the USSR, his opinions would have a great deal of sway. Because he, unlike Gorbachev, moved to make his post democratically elected and then won the open elections, his leadership held more legitimacy in the minds of the people. Yeltsin also began to make proposals to detach his republic from the larger Soviet system, such as suggesting that Russia be granted economic autonomy, and he made the personal decision to leave the Communist Party. Over the course of the summer of 1990, all fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union followed Russia's lead, and one by one they declared themselves to be sovereign states. Although the U.S. Government hoped for continued political stability under Gorbachev, it also sought the emergence of a free market economy in Eastern Europe. The latter was not acceptable to Gorbachev, and he faced increasing challenges from the free market-oriented Boris Yeltsin.

In an effort to hold the USSR together, Gorbachev first attempted military crackdowns on republics declaring independence, but he quickly changed strategies and announced incentives, such as added autonomy and a new All-Union Treaty, in an effort to keep the breakaway republics in the union. Finally, in the summer of 1991, Gorabchev reached an agreement with a number of the republics in which they would become sovereign, but remain loosely federated. Before the final agreement was signed, however, a group of Soviet loyalists attempted a coup to preserve the splintering Soviet Union. After the military failed to fall into line, however, the coup fell apart. In the wake of the coup attempt, Gorbachev faced blame for allowing the hardliners behind it to reach their relatively high positions of power. He stepped aside, and Yeltsin led Russia into the new, post-Soviet era.

In the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the now independent states of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus came together to create the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). With the exception of Georgia and the Baltic States, the former Soviet Republics joined the CIS by the end of the year. Georgia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all also established their independence in 1991.

The total collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took many in the West by surprise. The fundamental factors that contributed to collapse, including economic stagnation and the overextension of the military, were rooted in Soviet policies, but the Cold War and the U.S. policy of containment played a role as well. Cold War competition with the United States that had fed Soviet expansionism and the arms race helped to create the economic conditions that preceded the collapse. At the same time, both Reagan and his successor, President George H. W. Bush, had maintained good relationships with Gorbachev and provided assistance in support of his policies and reforms. As President, Bush tried to support Gorbachev in his efforts to maintain stability and unity in the Russian empire and pushed for drastic nuclear disarmament agreements. When Yeltsin took power in the wake of the failed coup attempt, the Bush Administration was forced to rethink its policy, and shift toward cooperation with the new Russian leader. The two leaders signed the START II treaty limiting nuclear arms soon after Yeltsin came to power, and Bush hosted Yeltsin on his first state visit to the United States in the summer of 1992. Perhaps the most important policy decision Bush made in the wake of the Soviet collapse was the one not to declare a U.S. victory in the Cold War but instead to allow the situation to play itself out in Eastern Europe and to work with the results.

Although the Bush policy appeared cautious and detached during the progressive dismemberment of the former superpower, there were points of particular interest. Of great concern was the potential for proliferation of Soviet nuclear weapons, which were divided between bases in several republics and no longer under central control following the dissolution of the USSR. Other questions involved Soviet international debt as well as Soviet representation in international organizations. In the end, the Russian Federation became the successor state for the Soviet Union, which meant that it took responsibility for weapons control and disposal, for outstanding debt, but also for the Soviet seat on the UN Security Council.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had vital implications for U.S. foreign policy. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States had created a sort of bipolar stability, as the two hegemonic powers balanced one another. The expectation was that the end of the East-West conflict would mean international stability, but this hope was not borne out, as civil wars and other conflicts in the developing world presented new challenges. In the spring of 1991, as the U.S.S.R. was splintering, the United States faced its first post-Cold War challenge in the form of the Gulf War; for the first time since World War II, the United States went to war with the full support of the Soviet leadership - a sign of a potential future of partnership in creating a more secure world order. Moreover, the disintegration of Yugoslavia took place when Cold War rivalries were replaced by ethnic disputes, and the conflict that followed eventually involved U.S. troops in a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the democratization of its Eastern European satellites, the end of the Cold War conflict between the communist East and capitalist West resulted in an increased uncertainty in many parts of the world.

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dissolution of the ussr and the establishment of independent republics

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Dissolution of the USSR and the Establishment of Independent Republics, 1991

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Dissolution of the USSR and the Establishment of Independent Republics, 1991

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Founded in 1922 as a confederation of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Transcaucasia (comprised of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) eventually grew to 15 republics-and a world-wide superpower. Nearly 130 ethnic groups populated the vast country, which spanned 11 time zones.

According to Brigid O'Keeffe, professor of history at Brooklyn College, fears of nationalist revolts by non-Russians led the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Soviet Union to guarantee the right to national territories, native-language schools and cultural organizations while using those institutions to saturate the population with socialist values and practices. "In many ways, the Bolsheviks' nationality policy worked as intended-in the sense that it helped to integrate non-Russian peoples into the evolving Soviet state, society, economy and culture," she says. "But it also relentlessly demanded that Soviet people think about themselves in national terms, and it placed ethnicity at the center of Soviet politics."

O'Keeffe says that when the Soviet Union broke apart along national lines in 1991, "politicians and ordinary people alike across Eurasia had been well prepared by their shared Soviet past to chart new, distinctively national trajectories for themselves as independent nation-states." Some of those former republics transformed into pro-European democracies with market-based economics, while others remained aligned with Russia.

Here's what happened to the 15 republics in the decades after the USSR's disintegration.

Russia

After the Soviet Union dissolved, its preeminent republic endured political dysfunction and struggled to privatize its central command economy. While oligarchs accumulated great wealth, most Russians faced high inflation and supply shortages. A year after Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin ended a 1993 constitutional crisis by ordering the army to shell the country's legislative building, he launched a disastrous war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

Following a cease-fire in 1997, Yeltsin's government ordered a second invasion of Chechnya in 1999 after Russian authorities asserted that bombings in Moscow and other cities were linked to Chechen militants. Then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led the military response against Chechnya.

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin announced his resignation and named Putin acting president. Since taking office and serving as president, prime minister and again as president, Putin has consolidated authority by controlling the media and removing presidential term limits while political opponents have been jailed, poisoned and killed. In seeking to re-establish Russia as a global power and limit Western influence in the former Soviet republics, Putin continued the war in Chechnya, annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Ukraine

Once known as Europe's breadbasket for its plentiful wheat fields, Ukraine accounted for a quarter of the USSR's agricultural production. Since independence, the country's politics have lurched between pro-Russian and pro-European governments. In 1994 Ukraine became the first former Soviet republic to peaceably transfer power through an election, and it transitioned toward capitalism over the next decade.

After pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych declared victory in a presidential election beset by fraud in 2004, the peaceful Orange Revolution forced a new vote that was won by pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who sought membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). When Yanukovych, who subsequently won the presidency in 2010, backed away from signing an association agreement with the European Union (EU) in 2014, the Maidan street protests forced him to flee to Russia as a pro-Western coalition took power. Weeks later, Russia annexed Crimea while pro-Russian rebels launched an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. In 2019, a former actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected the nation's new president.

In a televised address on February 21, 2022, Russian President Putin falsely claimed that Ukraine never had stable statehood and said the country was instead part of Russia's "own history, culture, spiritual space." Days later, Russia attacked Ukraine in the largest European military operation since World War II.

"From the Orange Revolution to the Maidan to the Ukrainian people's extraordinary resolve to defend their nation against Russia's military invasion, what we have seen is a sovereign people charting its own path against the backdrop of a complex Soviet legacy," O'Keeffe says. "This is one of the reasons why Putin has been so obsessed, alarmed and repulsed by modern Ukraine as an independent nation-state on the other side of Russia's border."

Belarus

Soviet vestiges such as the KGB and a highly centralized economy have endured in post-independence Belarus. The country's only post-Soviet president, Alexander Lukashenko, consolidated near-absolute power through a repressive regime that has allegedly rigged elections, jailed political opponents and silenced the press. A founding republic of the USSR, Belarus has resisted privatization and maintains close ties with Russia.

Moldova

The Moldavian SSR joined the Soviet Union in 1940 after the USSR annexed it following its secret 1939 non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. After independence, pro-Russian and pro-EU politicians have vied for control of Moldova. While political turmoil and endemic corruption have kept Moldova among Europe's poorest countries, it has moved cautiously toward market capitalism and full EU membership.

Kazakhstan

Under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, the Kazakh SSR, which became a republic in 1936, was colonized with Slavic settlers who farmed wheat on its grasslands and became the epicenter of the country's space program. Following independence, Kazakhstan privatized its economy, which grew tenfold in two decades due to oil reserves larger than those of any former Soviet republic except Russia.

Proclaimed the "father of the nation," Nursultan Nazarbayev held the presidency for nearly 30 years. In addition to suppressing political opposition, the autocrat revived Kazakh culture and engineered construction of a new national capital, now named in his honor. Kazakhstan maintains strong relations with both the West and Russia, which it called upon to help quell mass protests in 2022 over liquefied gas prices and widening inequality.

The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

As part of its secret 1939 non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union seized the independent Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and absorbed them as new republics in 1940. Following a three-year occupation by the Nazis that left hundreds of thousands of citizens, most of them Jewish, dead, Baltic suffering continued after the USSR regained control in 1944. The Soviets banished hundreds of thousands of people from the Baltics to prison camps and agricultural collectives in Siberia and central Asia while encouraging large-scale Russian immigration.

After the fall of Eastern European communist governments, Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare independence in March 1990. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev instituted an economic blockade and deployed the Red Army in January 1991 but could not quash the independence movement. Weeks after a failed coup by communist hard-liners in Moscow in August 1991, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of the Baltics.

The Baltic states turned toward Western Europe as they transformed into stable democracies and embraced market capitalism. All three received full membership in the EU and NATO in 2004; Estonia adopted the euro as its currency in 2011, followed by Latvia in 2014 and Lithuania in 2015.

Central Asian Countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

The Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs joined the Soviet Union in 1925, followed by the Tajik SSR in 1929 and the Kirghiz SSR in 1936. Soviet leaders transformed the majority-Muslim region through forced collectivization of agriculture, which produced devastating famines in 1930s, and the encouragement of Russian immigration.

Following independence, strongmen have ruled these mountainous, energy-rich countries. Although economically dependent on Russia, the former republics permitted American and NATO forces to use their airspace and military facilities during the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Kyrgyzstan initially stood out as one of central Asia's most democratically oriented countries after the 1991 presidential election of Asakar Akayev, who espoused liberal policies. As the country experienced a sharp economic decline, however, Akayev grew increasingly authoritarian until anti-corruption, pro-democracy protests forced him from power in the 2005 Tulip Revolution. Similar protests led Akayev's successor to resign in 2010.

Following independence, a five-year civil war erupted in Tajikistan in 1992 between communists and an alliance of pro-Western democratic reformers and Islamists. Backed by Russian troops, current president Emomali Rahmon took power in November 1992 and has tightened control by suppressing political opponents and the press. Beset by widespread corruption, the authoritarian regime is heavily dependent on Russia for economic aid.

Fueled by large natural gas reserves that have attracted foreign investment, Turkmenistan has been among the most repressive of the former Soviet republics. Communist Party boss Saparmurat Niyazov maintained power after the Soviet Union's collapse and perpetuated a cult of personality in which statues were erected in his likeness and days of the week and months of the year were renamed after himself and family members. After Niyazov's 2006 death, successor Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov maintained authoritarian rule.

In Uzbekistan, Communist Party leader Islam Karimov easily won the country's first presidential election and ruled Central Asia's most populous country for a quarter-century until his 2016 death. Karimov's successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has continued to consolidate power and limit political opposition -while deepening ties with Russia.

Transcaucasian Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

After joining the Soviet Union as part of the Transcaucasian SSR, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia became separate union republics in 1936. Soviet rule brought urbanization and industrialization to the formerly agricultural region.

As the Soviet state weakened in the late 1980s, tensions flared between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, an overwhelmingly Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan. War between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out when Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence in 1991. An uneasy peace took effect after a 1994 cease-fire, although periodic outbreaks of violence have still occurred, including a six-week war in the autumn of 2020.

Since independence, soaring oil revenue and contracts with Western petrochemical companies have brought prosperity-and corruption-to Azerbaijan. While former Communist Party leader Heydar Aliyev and his son, Ilham, have been Azerbaijan's sole leaders since 1993, Armenia has experienced more political turbulence, including the assassination of its prime minister inside the parliament in 1999.

Georgia became the first Soviet republic to hold a democratic election in 1991 when Soviet dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia won the presidency. His tenure was brief, however, and a military coup brought former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze to power in 1992. Widespread corruption and economic instability led to the peaceable Rose Revolution in 2003 that drove Shevardnadze from power.

Secessionist movements in the ethnic Russian enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have led to tense relations with Russia. After Russian forces crossed the border to join separatist fighters in South Ossetia in a brief war in August 2008, Georgia turned increasingly to the West and signed an association agreement with the EU in 2014.

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What Countries Were Part of the Soviet Union? | HISTORY

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The USSR comprised of 15 republics stretching across Europe and Asia.

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The Yeltsin presidency (1991-99)

The U.S.S.R. legally ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. The new state, called the Russian Federation, set off on the road to democracy and a market economy without any clear conception of how to complete such a transformation in the world's largest country. Like most of the other former Soviet republics, it entered independence in a state of serious disorder and economic chaos.

Economic reforms

Upon independence, Russia faced economic collapse. The new Russian government not only had to deal with the consequences of the mistakes in economic policy of the Gorbachev period, but it also had to find a way to transform the entire Russian economy. In 1991 alone, gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by about one-sixth, and the budget deficit was approximately one-fourth of GDP. The Gorbachev government had resorted to printing huge amounts of money to finance both the budget and the large subsidies to factories and on food at a time when the tax system was collapsing. Moreover, the price controls on most goods led to their scarcity. By 1991 few items essential for everyday life were available in traditional retail outlets. The entire system of goods distribution was on the verge of disintegration. The transformation of the command economy to a market-based one was fraught with difficulties and had no historical precedent. Since the central command economy had existed in Russia for more than 70 years, the transition to a market economy proved more difficult for Russia than for the other countries of eastern Europe. Russian reformists had no clear plan, and circumstances did not give them the luxury of time to put together a reform package. In addition, economic reform threatened various entrenched interests, and the reformists had to balance the necessities of economic reform with powerful vested interests.

Although Soviet industry was one of the largest in the world, it was also very inefficient and expensive to support, complicating any changeover to a market-based economy. Industry was heavily geared toward defense and heavy industrial products whose conversion to light- and consumer-based industries would require much time. The industrial workforce, though highly educated, did not have the necessary skills to work in a market environment and would therefore need to be retrained, as would factory and plant managers.

In an effort to bring goods into stores, the Yeltsin government removed price controls on most items in January 1992-the first essential step toward creating a market-based economy. Its immediate goal was achieved. However, it also spurred inflation, which became a daily concern for Russians, whose salaries and purchasing power declined as prices for even some of the most basic goods continued to rise. The government frequently found itself printing money to fill holes in the budget and to prevent failing factories from going bankrupt. By 1993 the budget deficit financed by the printing of money was one-fifth of GDP. Consequently, the economy became increasingly dollarized as people lost faith in the value of the ruble. Inflationary pressures were exacerbated by the establishment of a "ruble zone" when the Soviet Union collapsed: many of the former republics continued to issue and use rubles and receive credits from the Russian Central Bank, thereby further devaluing the ruble. This ruble zone became an onerous burden for the Russian economy as an additional source of inflation. In the summer of 1993 the government pulled out of the ruble zone, effectively reducing Russian influence over many of the former Soviet republics.

During the Soviet era the factory had been not only a place of work but was also often the base of social services, providing benefits such as child care, vacations, and housing. Therefore, if the government allowed many industries to collapse, it would have had to make provisions not only for unemployed workers but for a whole array of social services. The government's infrastructure could not cope with such a large additional responsibility. Yet the inflation caused by keeping these factories afloat led to waning support for both Yeltsin and economic reform, as many average Russians struggled to survive. Starved for cash, factories reverted to paying workers and paying off debts to other factories in kind. Therefore, in many areas of Russia a barter economy emerged as both factories and workers tried to accommodate themselves to the economic crisis. Moreover, debts between factories were enormous; though they were diligently recorded, there was little hope of eventual collection. Thus, it was not uncommon for workers to go months without being paid and for workers to get paid in, for example, rubber gloves or crockery, either because they made such things themselves or because their factory had received payment for debt in kind.

In 1995 the government, through loans secured from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and through income from the sale of oil and natural gas, succeeded in stabilizing the national currency by establishing a ruble corridor. This corridor fixed the exchange rate of the ruble that the Russian Central Bank would defend. Consequently, the rate of inflation dropped, and some macroeconomic stabilization ensued. However, the government continued to borrow large sums of money on domestic and foreign markets while avoiding real structural reforms of the economy. By failing to establish an effective tax code and collection mechanisms, clear property rights, and a coherent bankruptcy law and by continued support of failing industries, the government found it increasingly expensive to maintain an artificially set ruble exchange rate. The problem was that the government-set exchange rate did not reflect the country's economic reality and thereby made the ruble the target of speculators. As a result, the ruble collapsed in 1998, and the government was forced to withhold payments on its debt amid a growing number of bankruptcies. The ruble eventually stabilized and inflation diminished, but the living standards of most Russians improved little, though a small proportion of the population became very wealthy. Moreover, most economic gains occurred in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a handful of other major urban areas, while vast tracts of Russia faced economic depression.

Another element of economic reform was the privatization of Russian industries. Reformists in the Yeltsin government sought to speed privatization, hoping that the threat of a return to communism would be more remote once a Russian capitalist class had developed. The reformists, like many Western economists, believed that only by privatizing factories and enterprises and letting them fight for survival would the economy have any hope of recovering. Initially, the government implemented a voucher system according to which every citizen could in theory become a stakeholder in Russian industry and its privatization. Russians could invest their voucher (the sum of 10,000 rubles), sell it, or use it to bid for additional shares in specific enterprises. However, the average Russian did not benefit from this rather complicated scheme. By the end of 1992, some one-third of enterprises in the services and trade fields had been privatized.

The second wave of privatization occurred in 1994-95. However, to the average Russian, the process seemed to benefit solely the friends of those in power, who received large chunks of Russian industry for little. In particular, Russia's companies in the natural resource sector were sold at prices well below those recommended by the IMF to figures who were close to "the Family," meaning Yeltsin and his daughter and their allies in the government. From this process emerged the " oligarchs," individuals who, because of their political connections, came to control huge segments of the Russian economy. Many of these oligarchs bought factories for almost nothing, stripped them, sold what they could, and then closed them, creating huge job losses. By the time Yeltsin left office in 1999, most of the Russian economy had been privatized.

The stripping of factories played a major role in the public's disenchantment with the development of capitalism in Russia. To many Russians, it seemed that bandit capitalism had emerged. The majority of the population had seen their living standards drop, their social services collapse, and a great rise in crime and corruption. As a result, Yeltsin's popularity began to plummet.

Political and social changes

Having played a key role in defeating the attempted coup against Gorbachev in 1991, Yeltsin saw his popularity surge. A skillful politician, he was first elected president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in 1991 before the collapse of the U.S.S.R, and he was reelected in 1996. Although he had come to represent for many the face of political and economic reform, his first priority was the preservation of his own power and authority. In dealing with those around him in both the government and the bureaucracy, Yeltsin effectively utilized a divide-and-rule strategy that led to the emergence of various factions that battled each other. Indeed, in some cases bureaucrats spent more time in conflict with each other than they did governing the country. Yeltsin also had the tendency to frequently remove ministers and prime ministers, which led to abrupt changes in policy. Throughout his presidency Yeltsin refused to establish his own political party or to align himself openly with any party or group of parties. Instead, he believed that the president should remain above party politics, though he was at the heart of the political process, playing the role of power broker-a position he coveted-until his resignation in 1999.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian Federation continued to be governed according to its Soviet-era constitution. The office of president had been added to the political structure of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in 1991. However, the constitution did not specify which branch, legislative or executive, held supreme power. Political differences over various issues (e.g., the course of economic reform and the power of both the Communist Party and industrial interests) manifested themselves as constitutional conflicts, with Yeltsin's supporters arguing that ultimate power rested with the president and his opponents charging that the legislature was sovereign. Personality clashes between Yeltsin and the parliamentary leadership led to a break between the legislative and executive branches.

High inflation and continued economic crisis placed great pressure on Yeltsin. The government's focus on financial stabilization and economic reform to the apparent neglect of the public's social needs contributed to the growing political battle between the legislative and executive branches. Complicating Yeltsin's difficulties was the fact that many deputies in the parliament had vested interests in the old economic and political structure. The leader of the parliament, Ruslan Khasbulatov, and Yeltsin both sought support from regional elites in their political battles with each other by promising subsidies and greater local control. The political battle between Yeltsin and Khasbulatov climaxed in March 1993 when Yeltsin was stripped of the decree-making powers that he had been granted after the August 1991 attempted coup. Yeltsin was not prepared to accept total defeat. On March 20 Yeltsin announced that he was instituting an extraordinary presidential regime until April 25, when a referendum would be held over who "really ruled" Russia. He stated that during this period any acts of parliament that contradicted presidential decrees would be null and void. Many of Yeltsin's ministers, including Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, only half-heartedly supported the president's move, and Yeltsin, after intense political haggling, was forced to back down. Nonetheless, it was agreed that a referendum would be held on April 25. Four questions were posed to the Russian people, written by the Congress of People's Deputies to embarrass Yeltsin: (1) Do you trust the President of the Russian Federation, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin? (2) Do you approve of the socioeconomic policies implemented by the President of the Russian Federation and the government of the Russian Federation since 1992? (3) Do you consider it essential to hold pre-term elections for the presidency of the Russian Federation? and (4) Do you consider it essential to hold pre-term elections for the People's Deputies of the Russian Federation? In addition, the Congress passed a provision that, for a question to be approved, it needed the backing of at least half of all eligible voters (and not just half of the actual ballots cast); however, the Constitutional Court ruled that only the latter two questions needed at least 50 percent and that the first two questions were nonbinding. With Yeltsin's camp using the slogan "Da, da, nyet, da" ("Yes, yes, no, yes"), the results were a victory for Yeltsin. Nearly three-fifths of voters expressed confidence in him personally, and more than half supported his economic and social policies. Half of voters favoured early presidential elections, but two-thirds supported early parliamentary elections; however, with only 43 percent of eligible voters backing early parliamentary elections, Yeltsin was forced to continue his uneasy relationship with the Congress.

In the summer of 1993 Yeltsin established a Constitutional Convention to draw up a new post-Soviet constitution. The parliament also set up its own Constitutional Committee. Inevitably, presidential and parliamentary constitutional drafts were contradictory, and the increasing number of regional leaders who supported the parliamentary version worried Yeltsin. Thus, the referendum results did not end the political conflict between Yeltsin and the parliament, and that conflict grew more intense on September 21, 1993, when Yeltsin issued a series of presidential decrees that dissolved the parliament and imposed presidential rule that would exist until after elections to a new parliament and a referendum on a new draft constitution were held in December. The parliament declared Yeltsin's decree illegal, impeached him, and swore in his vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoy, as president. Weapons were then handed out to civilians to defend the parliamentary building, known as the "Russian White House." On September 25, troops and militia loyal to Yeltsin surrounded the building. On October 2, there were armed clashes between troops and supporters of the Congress. The most serious battle took place around the television station at Ostankino. By this time, crowds of parliamentary supporters had begun to fill the streets of Moscow, and it seemed a civil war was going to erupt in the middle of the capital, prompting Yeltsin to declare a state of emergency in Moscow on October 4. Shortly thereafter, tanks begin firing on the parliamentary building and on the deputies inside, leading to the surrender and arrest of everyone inside the building, including the speaker of the parliament and Rutskoi. With the defeat of parliamentary forces, the way was clear for elections to a new parliament and a referendum on a new constitution in December 1993.

Yeltsin's new constitution gave the president vast powers. The president appointed the prime minister, who had to be approved by the Duma, the lower house of the legislature, and the president could issue decrees that had the force of law as long as they did not contradict federal or constitutional law. The president also was given the power to dismiss the Duma and call for new parliamentary elections. Under the new constitution the prime minister was the vital link connecting the executive with the legislative branch. Although the prime minister was accountable to the parliament, he first had to maintain the president's confidence to remain in office. The premiership of Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin's longest-serving prime minister (1992-98), reflected the extent to which a Russian prime minister was dependent on the president-and not the parliament-for his mandate to rule. Yeltsin dismissed Chernomyrdin in 1998, ostensibly for failing to implement reforms energetically enough, though there was the suspicion that the prime minister had offended the president's ego by acting a bit too independently and grooming himself to succeed Yeltsin as president.

In the first two Dumas (elected in 1993 and 1995), the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was the single largest party, though it was never close to becoming a majority party. The Communist Party, which inherited the infrastructure of the dissolved Communist Party of the Soviet Union, had the most effective nationwide organization. Other parties found it difficult to project their message outside the major urban areas. Party loyalties were weak; deputies jumped from one party to another in the hope of improving their electoral chances. Worrying to many was the success of the ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which captured 22.8 percent of the vote in 1993 (though its share of the vote declined thereafter). Nevertheless, despite hostile and even at times inflammatory rhetoric directed toward both Yeltsin and Russian foreign policy, Zhirinovsky's party generally backed the executive branch. Throughout the 1990s, hundreds of parties were founded, but most were short-lived, as the appeal of many was based solely on the personality of the founder. For example, the liberal party of acting prime minister Yegor Gaidar (1992), Russia's Choice, floundered once Gaidar was forced out of government at the end of 1992. Chernomyrdin's party, Our Home Is Russia, suffered a similar fate soon after Yeltsin dismissed him as prime minister.

The relationship between the Duma and President Yeltsin was characterized by public shows of anger and opposition; behind the scenes, however, compromises were more often than not hammered out by political foes. Moreover, Yeltsin had no qualms about threatening the Duma with dissolution if and when it seemed to be proving recalcitrant to presidential bills. Deputies, fearful of losing their extensive perks of office, such as a flat in Moscow, and of an electorate angry with all politicians, regularly backed down when faced with the implicit threat of dissolution. During Yeltsin's second term, some deputies tried to initiate impeachment proceedings against him, but, because of the many legal obstacles to such a move, Yeltsin easily avoided impeachment.

During Yeltsin's presidential terms, the weakened Russian state failed to fulfill its basic responsibilities. The legal system, suffering from a lack of resources and trained personnel and a legal code geared to the new market economy, was near collapse. Low salaries led to a drain of experienced jurists to the private sector; there was also widespread corruption within law enforcement and the legal system, as judges and police officials resorted to taking bribes to supplement their meagre incomes. The country's health, education, and social services were also under incredible strain. Due to a lack of resources, law-enforcement agencies proved unable to combat the rising crime. The collapse of medical services also led to a decline in life expectancy and to concerns over the negative rate of population growth; doctors and nurses were underpaid, and many hospitals did not have enough resources to provide even basic care.

One consequence of the political and economic changes of the 1990s was the emergence of Russian organized crime. For most of the Yeltsin administration, shoot-outs between rival groups and the assassinations of organized-crime or business figures filled the headlines of Russian newspapers and created greater disgust among Russians over the course of economic reform and democracy. The explosive rise in crime came as a shock to most Russians, who under the Soviet period had very rarely come into contact with such incidents. The assassinations of well-known and well-liked figures, such as human rights advocate Galina Starovoitova, served to underscore the Yeltsin regime's inability to combat crime. By the end of the Yeltsin era, the open warfare between organized-crime groups had diminished not because of effective state action but because of the consolidation of the remaining criminal groups that had emerged victorious from the bloody struggles.

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Russia - Post-Soviet Russia: The U.S.S.R. legally ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. The new state, called the Russian Federation, set off on the road to democracy and a market economy without any clear conception of how to complete such a transformation in the world's largest country.

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Belarus

Ruled by Alexander Lukashenko for the past 20 years, Belarus is widely regarded as Europe's last dictatorship. Lukashenko won a free and fair presidential election in 1994 after campaigning as a political outsider with an anti-corruption agenda, but once in charge he steadily consolidated his authority, changing the constitution to extend his term in power.

Lukashenko is widely considered to have rigged subsequent elections and is known for jailing and harassing opponents and muzzling the press. His authoritarian policies have caused friction with the EU and US, resulting in economic sanctions and travel bans for top officials. He has close ties with Russia, and the countries have signed a series of agreements to allow greater cooperation, although there have been periodic hiccups, including several Moscow-imposed cuts in natural gas supplies because of unpaid debts.

Belarus is a charter member of a Russia-led customs union, which the Kremlin hopes to develop into an alternative EU for former Soviet states. The watchdog group Freedom House rates Belarus as "not free", and gives the country the worst grade possible when it comes to political rights.

Ukraine

For some, the protests that erupted in November 2013 may have come as a surprise. For many others, it was only ever a matter of time before tensions boiled over in a country that spent the post-Soviet era zigzagging between east and west.

In 1994, Ukraine became the first formerly Soviet republic to experience a peaceful transfer of power via the ballot box, when Leonid Kuchma won a presidential election, replacing Leonid Kravchuk. A new constitution was adopted in 1996, but the government struggled to implement reforms and the economy stagnated. Despite rising dissatisfaction with his leadership, Kuchma was re-elected in 1999, but a protest movement calling for his resignation gained momentum in the early 2000s. A presidential election in 2004 initially showed the pro-Russia candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, a former governor of Donetsk region, to be the winner. However, evidence of widespread fraud prompted mass protests in Kiev which came to be known as the Orange revolution and brought about a new election.Victory for Viktor Yushchenko, a political opponent of Kuchma and former prime minister, raised many people's hopes that Ukraine would move towards the west, liberalising its political and economic systems, but his reformist coalition lacked cohesion and failed to implement significant reforms. A party led by Yanukovych won parliamentary elections in 2006, and after prolonged manoeuvring he was named prime minister.

Political and economic uncertainty persisted. In 2009, Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine amid a dispute over Kiev's debt payments, with the dispute interrupting gas deliveries to many EU states. In 2010, Yanukovych was elected president and steered Ukraine back towards closer relations with Russia. He quickly pushed through constitutional changes that enhanced presidential authority, and took action to curb dissent. In 2011, Yulia Tymoshenko, a Yanukovych foe and a former prime minister, was jailed.

In late 2013, Yanukovych backed away from signing an association agreement with the EU, prompting large-scale protests, which came together in the Euromaidan movement. In February 2014, Yanukovych fled the capital, Kiev, and was subsequently impeached by parliament. A pro-western coalition took power. In late February, Russian troops, in unmarked uniforms, moved into the Crimean peninsula to support local separatists and in March, Russia annexed Crimea. Widespread instability hit eastern regions of Ukraine, as separatist elements, with suspected backing from Russia, took control of several cities and towns. In late May, the pro-western billionaire Petro Poroshenko won a decisive victory in the presidential election, vowing to restore law and order to the east.

Georgia

Georgia has had a turbulent post-Soviet experience, to put it mildly, beset by separatist conflicts in two territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and riven by a civil war that left the centre of the capital, Tbilisi, in ruins. Pervasive corruption and mismanagement fostered political and economic instability until 2003, when a former justice minister, Mikheil Saakashvili, led an uprising known as the Rose revolution. Elected president in 2004, he pushed Georgia towards the west, setting membership in the EU and Nato as top foreign policy goals. On the domestic front, the new leadership curbed corruption but economic growth continued to lag. Meanwhile, Georgia's relations with Russia took a nosedive. In 2006, Russia jolted Georgia's economy by banning imports of Georgian wine and mineral water. Bilateral tension remained high until summer 2008, when the two countries fought a five-day war over the territory of South Ossetia, which ended with Russian troops occupying parts of Georgia proper.

In domestic politics, the use of force by police to break up a mass protest in late 2007 prompted suggestions that Saakashvili was not respecting basic democratic rights and criticism of his governing style grew. In parliamentary elections in 2012 his supporters lost their majority to a reformist coalition backed by billionaire entrepreneur Bidzina Ivanishvili. In 2013, term limits sent Saakashvili into retirement, and Giorgi Margvelashvili became president. Constitutional amendments introduced in 2013 weakened presidential authority in favour of enhanced powers for parliament. Unlike Ukraine, Georgia completed negotiations on its initial EU association agreement in 2013, placing the country on a firmer path towards full membership.

Azerbaijan

Oil and natural gas exports have helped make Azerbaijan the most prosperous state in the Caucasus region but it is also the most corrupt, according to Transparency International.

The post-Soviet era started disastrously with defeat in a war against neighbouring Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. A 1994 ceasefire agreement left Armenian forces in control of not only Karabakh but also about an eighth of Azerbaijan proper. Political chaos in Baku in 1993 enabled the political comeback of Heydar Aliyev, who led Azerbaijan's Communist party during the Soviet era. Once back in power Aliyev quickly sidelined political foes and consolidated his authority.

Azerbaijan's fortunes improved with the signing of an energy development deal in 1994 with a consortium of major oil companies, led by BP. A pipeline to transport Azerbaijani energy from the Caspian basin to the west via Turkey began operating in 2006, generating billions in revenue annually for the government. In August 2003, a seriously ill Aliyev engineered a dynastic succession, appointing his son, Ilham, as prime minister. Three months later, Ilham Aliyev won a presidential election and has since developed strong strategic relations with the US and EU, while keeping Russia at arm's length. Azerbaijan's top diplomatic priority is the recovery of Karabakh and other territories, but political talks with Armenia are at stalemate.

Azerbaijan used its hosting of the Eurovision in 2012 as an opportunity to show off its oil wealth, splashing out an estimated $76m (£45m) on the event. But the contest also shone a spotlight on Aliyev's crackdown on basic freedoms, the muzzling of the press and limits on political dissent.

Lithuania

A drive for independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s played a pivotal role in the demise of the Soviet Union. A botched Red Army crackdown on protesters in Vilnius in January 1991 precipitated the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August that year. The unsuccessful coup, in turn, triggered the collapse of the Soviet empire. After gaining independence, Lithuania looked westward, joining the EU and Nato in 2004.

Lithuania enjoys free and fair elections. Renowned for her Thatcheresque resolve, the country's "Iron Lady", Dalia Grybauskaitė, became the country's first female president in 2009. Under her watch, Lithuania rebounded from a severe depression brought on by the 2008 financial crisis and is now striving to meet eurozone entry criteria by 2015.

While diplomatic relations with Russia are still marked by rancour ( Grybauskaitė recently vowed to "take a gun myself to defend the country" against Russian aggression "if that's what's needed"), Lithuania has by far the highest trade volume with Moscow of the three Baltic states.

Latvia

After the collapse of the USSR, Latvia underwent a dramatic transformation by rapidly turning west, joining the EU and Nato in 2004 and the eurozone in 2014.

As with its Baltic neighbours, Latvia has had a contentious relationship with Russia, and the rights of Latvia's ethnic Russian inhabitants (who make up about a quarter of its 2.1m population) remain a thorny issue. Many Latvians believe the influx of migrants from the USSR during decades of Soviet control was part of a concerted effort to destroy Latvian nationalism and Baltic culture, and recent government policies promoting the use of Latvian over Russian have been a source of tension.

Latvia was the EU member hardest hit by the 2008 financial crisis, with unemployment topping 20% at one point. Years of austerity saw the country achieve one of the EU's most successful financial bounce-backs, yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, spurring many young Latvians to move abroad. A 2011 survey found the population had shrunk by more than 13% in little over a decade, leading to fears of a brain drain.

In recent years, Latvia has reinvented itself as a financial services hub, facilitating capital flight from Russia and other former Soviet republics. Some Latvian banks have faced international criticism for allegedly engaging in money laundering.

After fighting hard for farmers' rights in EU negotiations, mathematician and former agriculture minister Laimdota Straujuma became the first female prime minister in January 2014. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for October 2014.

Estonia

Estonia is the smallest, least corrupt and most prosperous of all the former Soviet republics. The Baltic state rushed to embrace a market system after the 1991 Soviet collapse, and its economy is now powered by vibrant telecoms and electronics industries. The 2008 global financial crisis hit the country hard, sending unemployment spiralling. But stringent austerity measures quickly got the economy back on track. Estonia joined the EU and Nato in 2004, and, thanks to the quick recovery, entered the eurozone in 2011.

A country with a strong cultural connection to Finland, Estonia's relations with Russia are fraught with tension. The bulk of ethnic Russians, who comprise roughly 25% of the population, are concentrated in eastern regions near the border with Russia. Tensions boiled over in 2007 when local Russians rioted over a government decision to relocate a second world war memorial in central Tallinn, the capital. The clash left one dead and dozens injured. But a shrinking populace is perhaps a greater challenge than any problems with Russia. The current population of 1.2m is declining at an alarming rate. Young Estonians are also taking advantage of EU membership to emigrate in droves.

Moldova

Moldova became a Soviet republic in 1940 after Moscow annexed the Black Sea territory of Bessarabia. In 1992, shortly after the Soviet Union's collapse, Slavic separatists waged a brief and successful fight against Moldovan government forces, resulting in the creation of the Transnistrian Republic - a narrow strip of land lying between the Dniestr river and the Ukrainian border. Russian intervention was a crucial factor in securing the separatists' victory.

For 22 years, the sides have been unable to agree on a political settlement to the conflict. In late 2013, Moldovan authorities entered an agreement with the EU, placing the country on a path towards full membership. Russia is opposed to Moldova's EU aspirations, and may try to use the Transnistrian conflict to disrupt integration plans.

The country is wedged between Romania and Ukraine, not far from the Black Sea. Moldovans comprise about 85% of the overall population today, and have close linguistic and cultural ties with their Romanian neighbours.

According to IMF data, Moldova is among Europe's poorest countries. There were repeated bouts of internal political and economic turmoil during the late 1990s and early 2000s, though the situation has stabilised in recent years.

Moldovan authorities have also had to contend with separatist rumblings from a Turkic minority, the Gagauz, and granted them special autonomous status in a 1994 agreement.

Russia

The post-Soviet period has had a Dickensian flavour for Russia - it has been the worst of times, followed by better times. President Boris Yeltsin presided over the Kremlin during the bleakest period, from 1991 to 1999. It was an era marked by economic dysfunction, lawlessness, rampant corruption and a ruinous war in the southern territory of Chechnya.

A turning point took place on the last day of the millennium when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, elevating his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to the presidency. Putin immediately set out to put Russia back together again by unleashing a second war in Chechnya, which ultimately succeeded in halting a secessionist trend - while pushing Islamist militants to turn to terrorism. Terror continues to claim dozens of lives every year.

As president, Putin moved quickly to consolidate his authority over the economy and politics. Rapidly rising energy prices in the mid-2000s enabled him to implement policies that sought to restore Russia's status as a global power. Although corruption remained prevalent, a mood of prosperity returned - at least to Moscow and St Petersburg. Politicians and entrepreneurs who have opposed Putin have been treated harshly, underscored by the long imprisonment of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In recent years, Putin has tightened his personal grip on power to such a degree that critics say there is little to distinguish him from the tsars and general-secretaries who led Russia in bygone epochs. Analysts suspect that one of his chief goals is the expansion of Russian influence in other formerly Soviet republics under the guise of an economic union. Putin hoped the Moscow-dominated Eurasian Union would function as an alternative EU. Russia's revival has been punctuated by two triumphs, the defeat of Georgia in a five-day war in 2008, and the annexation of Crimea in March 2014.

Kazakhstan

Thanks to energy exports, Kazakhstan is central Asia's most prosperous state, with annual economic growth averaging about 10% for much of the first decade of the new millennium. Nursultan Nazarbayev has led Kazakhstan as president, since independence in 1991, extending his tenure through a series of constitutional revisions and elections in which he has faced only token opposition.

Nazarbayev permitted a relatively high degree of political activity until the emergence of a reform movement called Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, backed by several wealthy business people, in late 2001. He launched a crackdown and the movement was formally dissolved in 2005.

Over the next two years, several prominent opposition figures were murdered in mysterious circumstances. In 2007 Nazarbayev's son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev fled the country after apparently losing a power struggle.

In 2010, parliament granted Nazerbayev special status as "father of the nation", giving him immunity from prosecution.

All presidential and parliamentary elections held during the independence era have been deemed flawed by independent western monitoring groups.

Over the past decade, Kazakhs have experienced a steady reduction in individual rights. Amendments adopted in 2014, for example, give authorities the right to cut internet and mobile phone access without judicial review.

Kazakhstan, a country with a large Russian minority, has strong relations with Russia, China and the United States. It has the second largest oil reserves among the former Soviet republics after Russia, and its oil exports are expected to soar as its huge Kashagan oil field, in the Caspian Sea, develops.

In recent years, the gap between rich and poor in Kazakhstan has widened, heightening social tensions. These reached boiling point in the western city of Zhanaozen in late 2011 when authorities opened fire on striking workers, leaving at least 14 dead.

Kyrgyzstan

This mountainous central Asian state enjoyed relative stability during the early years of independence. The country's first post-Soviet president, Askar Akayev, a physicist by training, initially pursued liberal policies and earned it a reputation as the most democratically oriented state in central Asia. But after securing re-election in 1995 Akayev shifted his political course, steadily expanding his presidential powers.

In 2002, in the southern town of Aksy, police fired on people protesting at the arrest of a local politician. Six demonstrators were killed, sparking an opposition movement against Akayev. In 2005 his administration collapsed amid rioting and looting in Bishkek and he was replaced by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a former prime minister.

Just over five years later, amid mass protests, Bakiyev was also chased from power, accused of abusing his powers to enrich himself and his family. The provisional leadership that replaced him engineered constitutional changes to enhance parliamentary powers at the expense of the executive.

In June 2010, inter-ethnic rioting involving Kyrgyz and Uzbeks erupted in southern provinces, leaving hundreds dead.

Kyrgyzstan has sought to balance western and Russian interests. In the aftermath of 9/11, Kyrgyzstan agreed to host a US air base at Manas, outside Bishkek. The facility, scheduled to close in July 2014, served as a logistics hub for US and Nato military operations in Afghanistan. Russia has an air base at nearby Kant. Economically, Kyrgyzstan is heavily dependent on Russia, although China has made inroads over the past two decades. High unemployment and widespread poverty mean Kyrgyzstan is a major source of migrant labourers, many of whom find work in Russia.

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is central Asia's most populous state and strives to assert itself as a regional power. These ambitions often generate friction with its neighbours, especially Tajikistan.

Islam Karimov, a Communist party boss during the Soviet era, has led Uzbekistan since independence in 1991.

At first Uzbekistan had a competitive political system but by 1995 Karimov had eliminated all opposition. Western observers have never deemed any Uzbek presidential or parliamentary election in the post-Soviet era to be free and fair.

Radical Islam gained a following amid the economic upheaval of the 1990s, especially in the densely populated Ferghana Valley region. Islamist militants carried out bombings in 1999 in Tashkent. In response, Karimov launched a far-reaching crackdown on all forms of religious expression not expressly sanctioned by the state.

The crackdown, in turn, fuelled the growth of an insurgency by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). After the September 11 terror attacks, IMU militants fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan but were wiped out by US forces by 2002. Subsequently, Karimov tightened controls over political and economic life.

After 9/11 Uzbekistan became a close strategic partner of the US, providing military facilities and transit routes to support US and Nato operations in Afghanistan. The relationship made it uncomfortable for the US and EU to speak out about human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. I n May 2005 the government massacred protesters in the Ferghana Valley city of Andijan, prompting a break in ties with the west.

Relations remain strained, even as Uzbekistan serves as a transit hub for the Afghanistan military withdrawal. Meanwhile, Karimov has sought to keep Russia at arm's length. Economically, tight state controls have fostered stagnation and popular resentment while hindering foreign investment. The country's primary exports are natural gas and cotton.

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is among the most corrupt and repressive countries on earth, according to watchdogs. It also possesses the fourth-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world. After independence in 1991, President Saparmurat Niyazov built a cult of personality, adopting the title Turkmenbashi - the father of all Turkmen. He renamed months of the year in honour of himself and his mother, and wrote a lifestyle guide, the Ruhnama, which became required reading for high school and university students. In 1999 the compliant parliament voted for Niyazov to become president for life, and in 2002, he used an alleged assassination attempt to legitimise a far-reaching crackdown on political opponents.

Throughout the early 2000s Niyazov changed policies on education, public health and other sectors to cut off Turkmen people from outside influences. He died suddenly in 2006 in unclear circumstances.

Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, a former health minister and a trained dentist, emerged as Niyazov's successor, running unopposed in a presidential election in early 2007. While he has dismantled Niyazov's personality cult, he has maintained an authoritarian leadership style and has adopted the honorific title of arkadag - protector. No form of political dissent is tolerated.

Economically, gas exports enable the government to maintain its tight grip on power. Until 2009, Turkmenistan's chief gas export partner was Russia. A pricing dispute prompted the country to reorient its exports towards China, aided by the opening of a pipeline connecting the two countries in 2009.

By 2013, Turkmenistan was China's largest foreign supplier of natural gas. Turkmenistan has expressed interest in exporting to the EU via a trans-Caspian pipeline and to India and Pakistan across Afghanistan, but the plans are yet to get off the drawing board.

Armenia

Armenia is the poorest country in the Caucasus, with roughly a third of the population living at or below the poverty line. The country's post-Soviet history has been defined by two diplomatic disputes with its neighbours: a quest to get Turkey to agree that the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the late Ottoman era constituted genocide; and the search for a political settlement to a conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory. A Karabakh ceasefire agreement was reached in 1994 but the two countries have continued to haggle over peace terms.

Domestically, Armenia has experienced bouts of political turbulence. In 1999, assassins killed the prime minister and other top officials in the parliamentary chamber. Protests following a contentious presidential election in 2008 culminated in clashes that left at least 10 dead.

The 2013 presidential vote, which resulted in the re-election of Serzh Sargsyan, also sparked mass protests.

Armenia is a close ally of Russia and hosts a Russian military base near the provincial city of Gyumri. In 2009, Armenia explored a rapprochement with Turkey, but the initiative failed to end decades of mutual rancour. With the domestic economy in the doldrums, hundreds of thousands of Armenians are abroad as migrant labourers, and their remittances are vital to the Armenian economy.

Tajikistan

Tajikistan is the poorest of all formerly Soviet republics, according to the UNDP's human development index. Shortly after the Soviet collapse in 1991, it descended into a civil war that pitted government forces dominated by the former Communist party elite against a broad coalition that included Islamists and pro-western elements.

Amid the upheaval in late 1992, the first elected president, Rahmon Nabiyev, was forced to resign. He was replaced by Emomali Rahmon, who has held the presidency since then. A peace deal in 1997 assured Islamists a 30% quota of government posts, but over time Rahmon succeeded in pushing them out and establishing firm control over the government. European monitors have not deemed any Tajik presidential or parliamentary election to be free and fair.

On Afghanistan's northern border, Tajikistan has served as an important staging area and supply route for US and Nato operations against the Taliban. At the same time, Tajikistan is heavily dependent on Russia for economic and strategic aid and Moscow maintains an army division on Tajik soil.

The domestic economy is characterised by widespread corruption, mismanagement and unemployment, and many areas of the country endure blackouts on a regular basis. More than a million Tajiks, or about an eighth of the population, are believed to be in Russia as guest workers. Remittances from these migrant labourers are estimated to account for 52% of GDP, according to World Bank data.

The tenuous nature of the economy means that Rahmon's hold on power is far from secure, even though he currently faces no significant political opposition.

The regional map featured above was amended on 12 June 2014

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Post-Soviet world: what you need to know about the 15 states

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From Armenia to Uzbekistan, your guide to the countries that rose from the ashes of the Soviet Union

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Xi calls for speeding Central Asian pipeline construction

Pricing and technical hurdles had stalled pipeline project

Moscow pushes new Siberian link, but Beijing prioritising Turkmen project

New Turkmen gas to flow around 2028, new Russian gas in early 30s' - consultants

SINGAPORE/ASHGABAT, May 24 (Reuters) - China is accelerating the building of a long-delayed Central Asian pipeline to source gas from Turkmenistan even as Russia pushes its own new Siberian connection, as Beijing juggles its energy security needs with diplomatic priorities.

Beijing is keen to bolster Central Asia ties under its Belt & Road Initiative, but nearly a decade after construction began, the "Line D" project has been hobbled by complex price talks and the technical hurdles of laying a pipeline crossing another three central Asian nations, Chinese state oil officials said.

But Moscow's recent push to land its second Siberia pipeline connection with China, the Power of Siberia 2, to make up for shrunken sales in Europe due to the Ukraine crisis, provides Beijing a lever to advance the central Asian project, according to Chinese oil officials and industry consultants.

"Central Asian pipelines are considered a cornerstone investment in China's energy and geopolitical space. It's a supply channel with strategic value that supersedes commercial concerns," a state-oil official familiar with China National Petroleum Corp's (CNPC) global strategy told Reuters.

China may eventually seal both deals to feed its massive long-term gas needs, but is prioritising Turkmenistan, industry officials said, as Beijing has long seen Central Asia as a frontier to expand trade, secure energy and maintain stability in its once-restive western Xinjiang region.

Combined, multi-year contracts worth tens of billions of dollars to bring gas via both pipelines would meet 20% of China's current demand. The pipelines are key to Beijing's goal of using gas as a bridge fuel towards its carbon neutrality targets and also helping to shield it from the volatile tanker-carried liquefied natural gas (LNG) market.

Estimated in 2014 to cost $6.7 billion, Line D would carry 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year.

Speaking last week at the first in-person summit of central Asian leaders in the ancient Silk Road city of Xian, President Xi Jinping urged parties to accelerate laying Line D, which would be China's fourth gas pipeline to the region, almost a decade after the start of construction in Tajikistan.

In 2022, China imported 35 bcm gas or worth $10.3 billion via three pipelines from Turkmenistan, compared with 16 bcm via a single pipeline from Russia at about $4 billion.

'LINE D GETTING READY'

Reflecting renewed urgency, CNPC last week launched the feasibility study for a 200-kilometer connection from Xinjiang's border with Kyrgyzstan to the Chinese town of Wuqia as the first receiving point, said a senior source involved in appraising the project.

"This means D Line is getting ready," the person told Reuters, adding that construction on the domestic trunkline in Xinjiang could begin next year.

Separately, a CNPC official told Reuters last week that the company's commercial teams are "standing by" awaiting a mandate to advance the project, without elaborating.

Without a final gas supply contract, CNPC has only built part of the first tunnel in the mountainous Tajikistan capital Dushanbe where Line D begins, the official said.

China's state planner the National Development and Reform Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A CNPC spokesperson declined to comment.

Consultancy SIA Energy and Rystad Energy predicted new Turkmenistan gas via Line D could start flowing around 2028 while a new Russian line, designed at 50 bcm a year that sources gas from West Siberia, could start operating in the early 2030s.

IMPORT LOSSES

China is paying some 30% more for Turkmen gas, delivered via three existing pipelines since 2009, than from Russia, which began pumping the fuel from East Siberia in late 2019, Chinese customs data showed.

Facing years of import losses as it is unable to pass on the cost to a regulated domestic market, CNPC has failed to negotiate a lower price for Turkmen fuel in rounds of price reviews, a second industry source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Ashgabat wanted to be paid "in line with global pricing practices", a Turkmenistan official familiar with the talks said.

Sources and officials declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak with media.

RUSSIA OVERTURES

Still, the price negotiations are likely to be complex as China has multiple supply options that also include domestic production and new long-term LNG contracts with Qatar and the United States, said Jason Feer, Houston-based head of business intelligence at consultancy Poten & Partners.

"The prices need to be high enough to justify the expense of building an expensive pipeline but low enough to be competitive," said Feer.

Moscow's recent overtures to fast-track the shorter Power of Siberia 2 connection, via Mongolia, and a more recent proposal by Almaty to supply China via Khazakhstan offered CNPC leverage in finalising the Turkmen link, said the CNPC official and the second industry source.

"CNPC could use the Russian proposals to bargain for a better price for Line D while taking its time to discuss new Russian supplies," said the second source.

Reporting by Chen Aizhu and Emily Chow in Singapore, Marat Gurt in Ashgabat, Nazarali Pirnazarov in Dushanbe, Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty and Reuters buraux; Editing by Shri Navaratnam

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China prioritising Turkmenistan over Russia in next big pipeline project

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China is accelerating the building of a long-delayed Central Asian pipeline to source gas from Turkmenistan even as Russia pushes its own new Siberian connection, as Beijing juggles its energy security needs with diplomatic priorities.

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GEOPOLITICAL COMPETITION AND ENERGY SECU... | United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

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United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

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pollution, the addition of any substance ( solid, liquid, or gas) or any form of energy (such as heat, sound, or radioactivity) to the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed, diluted, decomposed, recycled, or stored in some harmless form. The major kinds of pollution, usually classified by environment, are air pollution, water pollution, and land pollution. Modern society is also concerned about specific types of pollutants, such as noise pollution, light pollution, and plastic pollution. Pollution of all kinds can have negative effects on the environment and wildlife and often impacts human health and well-being.

History of pollution

Although environmental pollution can be caused by natural events such as forest fires and active volcanoes, use of the word pollution generally implies that the contaminants have an anthropogenic source-that is, a source created by human activities. Pollution has accompanied humankind ever since groups of people first congregated and remained for a long time in any one place. Indeed, ancient human settlements are frequently recognized by their wastes- shell mounds and rubble heaps, for instance. Pollution was not a serious problem as long as there was enough space available for each individual or group. However, with the establishment of permanent settlements by great numbers of people, pollution became a problem, and it has remained one ever since.

Cities of ancient times were often noxious places, fouled by human wastes and debris. Beginning about 1000 ce, the use of coal for fuel caused considerable air pollution, and the conversion of coal to coke for iron smelting beginning in the 17th century exacerbated the problem. In Europe, from the Middle Ages well into the early modern era, unsanitary urban conditions favoured the outbreak of population-decimating epidemics of disease, from plague to cholera and typhoid fever. Through the 19th century, water and air pollution and the accumulation of solid wastes were largely problems of congested urban areas. But, with the rapid spread of industrialization and the growth of the human population to unprecedented levels, pollution became a universal problem.

By the middle of the 20th century, an awareness of the need to protect air, water, and land environments from pollution had developed among the general public. In particular, the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring focused attention on environmental damage caused by improper use of pesticides such as DDT and other persistent chemicals that accumulate in the food chain and disrupt the natural balance of ecosystems on a wide scale. In response, major pieces of environmental legislation, such as the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (1972; United States), were passed in many countries to control and mitigate environmental pollution.

Giving voice to the growing conviction of most of the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to help address greenhouse gas emissions. An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and human activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.

Pollution control

The presence of environmental pollution raises the issue of pollution control. Great efforts are made to limit the release of harmful substances into the environment through air pollution control, wastewater treatment, solid-waste management, hazardous-waste management, and recycling. Unfortunately, attempts at pollution control are often surpassed by the scale of the problem, especially in less-developed countries. Noxious levels of air pollution are common in many large cities, where particulates and gases from transportation, heating, and manufacturing accumulate and linger. The problem of plastic pollution on land and in the oceans has only grown as the use of single-use plastics has burgeoned worldwide. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane and carbon dioxide, continue to drive global warming and pose a great threat to biodiversity and public health.
Jerry A. Nathanson

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Pollution | Definition, History, Types, & Facts

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Pollution, addition of any substance or form of energy to the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed or stored in a harmless form. The major kinds of pollution are usually classified by environment and include air, water, and land pollution. Learn more about the history of pollution.

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Highlights:

China has been a central player in global markets for cotton and textiles since the early 2000s, but trade patterns established decades ago are being disrupted by the changing economics of cotton production and textile manufacturing in that country. One of the factors shaking up the industry is that Chinese officials have been shifting the country's cotton production to the remote Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Known simply as "Xinjiang," this provincial region in northwest China borders several Central and South Asian countries and contains a large population of Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups.

Traditionally, China's textile manufacturing and cotton production were both concentrated in provinces along its coast and in river valleys that had easy access to local cotton supplies, urban markets, and ports. However, with 90 percent of China's cotton now grown in Xinjiang, the longer physical distance between where cotton is produced and where it is used has created supply difficulties for China's textile industry. Additional challenges have come from import bans imposed by the United States and other countries on cotton products produced with forced labor in Xinjiang. Cumulatively, these changes are reshaping the global market for cotton.

China first set up military-run farms to grow cotton in Xinjiang in the 1950s. Expansion accelerated during the 1990s, in part because the region was free of the pests that damaged the crop in the traditional growing regions in eastern and central China. In the early 2000s with the introduction of pest-resistant varieties, China's overall cotton production boomed throughout the country. Production in the traditional regions peaked at nearly 5 million metric tons in 2006. At that point Xinjiang's production was under 3 million metric tons. More recently, production in the traditional cotton regions has plummeted, falling to 602,000 metric tons in 2021. At the same time, Xinjiang's output has grown to around 5 million metric tons.

Rising labor costs, small and fragmented plots that present a barrier to mechanization, and inducements by Chinese authorities to plant other crops such as grains and oilseeds have contributed to the production declines in the traditional cotton regions. In contrast, growth in Xinjiang has been bolstered by reduced competition for land from alternative crops, lower pest pressure, and fewer off-farm opportunities than in the traditional regions. The region's large-scale, military-run farms also are more amenable to mechanization, and Chinese officials have increasingly promoted Xinjiang's cotton and textile industries.

During 2020-2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency barred U.S. imports of cotton and cotton products from entities in Xinjiang that used forced labor. In June 2022, a broader U.S. embargo on cotton produced in Xinjiang and products manufactured from such cotton took effect under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. About 90 percent of China's cotton is now produced in Xinjiang, and only about 20 percent of the cotton used by Chinese textile manufacturers is imported. That means most Chinese cotton products contain cotton that was produced in Xinjiang and are thus subject to the ban.

Even though most of China's cotton is now produced in Xinjiang, the country's textile manufacturers are still mainly based more than 2,000 miles away in the traditional cotton-producing regions. Although a Chinese Government subsidy for transporting cotton from Xinjiang to the central and eastern regions reduces the cost of using Xinjiang-produced cotton, some textile manufacturers have opened branches in Xinjiang. However, textile manufacturers remain concentrated in the traditional regions, in part, because of their preference for imported cotton, which largely arrives through ports along China's eastern coast. From 2015 to 2020, the United States supplied more than one third of China's cotton imports. China also imported cotton from Brazil, India, Australia, about 25 African countries, and 4 Central Asian countries.

China's Government limits imports of cotton through a tariff-rate quota system, which drives textile manufacturers to primarily use Xinjiang cotton. China adopted the quota system when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. This system allows China to import 894,000 metric tons of its total cotton requirements at a 1-percent tariff each year. When the import quota was established in 2001, this volume represented nearly 20 percent of the total cotton used by Chinese manufacturers. After two decades of industry growth, the same volume accounts for about 10 percent of the industry's needs. Chinese manufacturers that are allocated a share of the quota can import a specified volume of cotton under the 1-percent tariff rate. Cotton imported outside the quota faces up to a 40-percent tariff, which is not economical for textile manufacturers, so being able to import under the quota is valuable.

To accommodate the growing textile industry and its increased demand for imported cotton, Chinese authorities in recent years have supplemented the tariff-rate quota with an additional "sliding-scale" quota. This system has helped increase the total share of imported cotton to about 20 percent. The exact rate for the sliding-scale tariff is set by authorities each year at a level between 5 percent and 40 percent, based on market conditions. Hundreds of companies apply for a share of both quotas each year.

In 2016, Chinese authorities began a campaign to sell excess reserves of cotton, and so no sliding-scale quota was issued. China's cotton imports were at or above the 894,000 metric tons set in the tariff-rate quota. From 2017 onward, though, the volume of imports began to grow again as the sliding-scale quota was again issued. By 2020, Chinese officials announced they had completed their years-long disposal of excess reserves and imports increased further. In 2021 though, imports dipped again during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Even with increased demand for imported cotton among China's textile manufacturers, the Chinese market for U.S. cotton diminished. In 2012, the share of U.S. cotton exports going to China peaked at more than 54 percent and has fallen since then. In 2019, after China imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods because of trade actions the United States had taken, the share of U.S. cotton exported to China fell to less than 11 percent. The share of U.S. cotton exports going to China rebounded to 30 percent in 2020, after the United States and China signed the "Phase One" trade agreement in which China agreed to boost its imports of U.S. agricultural products. Currently, China remains the largest single cotton-importing country by volume, but the combined imports of its competitors now exceed the amount of cotton China brings in.

Part of this shift can be tied to the fact that a growing volume of U.S. cotton is exported to countries like Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, and South Korea, manufactured into yarn, and then re-exported as yarn to Chinese textile manufacturers. In 2020, U.S. exports to these countries accounted for 69 percent of total U.S. cotton exports. Because China has no quota on cotton yarn imports, this cotton yarn trade route gives textile manufacturers a way to avoid import quotas on raw cotton. In recent years, China's imports of cotton yarn were as large as its imports of raw cotton. An increase in the use of imported yarn made from cotton that originates in the United States, India, and other countries dilutes the share of Xinjiang cotton in textiles manufactured in China. Increasing the share of imported cotton and cotton yarn in textiles and apparel makes it easier for manufacturers in China to comply with international bans on the use of cotton produced in the Xinjiang region.

Overall, exports of U.S. cotton remain strong, as sales to other destinations, primarily in Asia, have surged to record levels-more than 16 million bales during 2018-19. In 2021, Vietnam, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Turkey imported 25.4 million bales of U.S. cotton while China imported 9.5 million bales. Moreover, exports to these other countries have been far less volatile than exports to China. China is expected to remain a major market for U.S. cotton exports, but the share of U.S. exports to China is forecast to fall while the share to other Asian countries is expected to grow.

This article is drawn from...

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Shift in Geography of China's Cotton Production Reshapes Global Market

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China's cotton production, once focused in coastal and river valley regions, has shifted to the remote western Xinjiang region, disrupting trade patterns established decades ago. China's role as a market for U.S. cotton is diminishing as more U.S. cotton is exported to other countries.

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As conditions become warmer with decreasing latitude, deciduous species appear in greater numbers and eventually become dominant. The triangular mixed and deciduous forest belt is widest along Russia's western border and narrows toward the Urals. Oak and spruce are the main trees, but there also are growths of ash, aspen, birch, elm, hornbeam, maple, and pine. East of the Urals as far as the Altai Mountains, a narrow belt of birch and aspen woodland separates the taiga from the wooded steppe. Much of the mixed and deciduous forest zone has been cleared for agriculture, particularly in the European section. As a result, the wildlife is less plentiful, but roe deer, wolves, foxes, and squirrels are common. Soils also show a north-south gradation. As the moisture surplus diminishes, leaching becomes less intense, and true podzols give way to gray and brown forest soils, which are less acidic and have a much greater organic content and a higher natural fertility. A second zone of mixed forest occurs in the Amur-Ussuri-Zeya lowlands of southeastern Siberia and includes Asiatic species of oak, hornbeam, elm, and hazel.

Wooded steppe and steppe

The southward succession is continued by the wooded steppe, which, as its name suggests, is transitional between the forest zone and the steppe proper. Forests of oak and other species (now largely cleared for agriculture) in the European section and birch and aspen across the West Siberian Plain alternate with areas of open grassland that become increasingly extensive toward the south. The wooded steppe eventually gives way to the true steppe, which occupies a belt some 200 miles (320 km) across and extends from southern Ukraine through northern Kazakhstan to the Altai. Russia has a relatively small share of the Eurasian Steppe, mainly in the North Caucasus and lower Volga regions, though pockets of wooded steppe and steppe also occur in basins among the mountains of southern Siberia.

The natural steppe vegetation is composed mainly of turf grasses such as bunchgrass, fescue, bluegrass, and agropyron. Perennial grasses, mosses, and lichens also grow on the steppe, and drought-resistant species are common in the south, where the sequence continues in Kazakhstan through dry steppe and semidesert to the great deserts of Central Asia. Woodland is by no means wholly absent, occurring in damper areas in river valleys and depressions. Much of the steppe vegetation, particularly in the west, has been replaced by grain cultivation.

The absence of natural shelter on the open steppe has conditioned the kind of animals that inhabit it. Typical rodents of the zone include the marmot and other such burrowing animals and various mouse species. Skunks, foxes, and wolves are common, and antelope inhabit the south. The most common birds are bustards, eagles, kestrels, larks, and gray partridge.

Chernozem (black earth) is the distinctive soil of the steppe, taking its name from the very dark upper horizon-often more than three feet (one metre) thick-which is rich in humus derived from the thick grass cover. Winter frost and summer drought inhibit the decomposition of organic matter, and high evaporation rates prevent leaching; as a result, humus accumulates. Calcium compounds are leached downward by the spring snowmelt but are drawn upward in summer and become concentrated in a lime-rich horizon beneath the humus layer. Low acidity and a high humus content combine to give the chernozems a high natural fertility, which has helped make the steppe the country's main source of grain.

People

Ethnic groups and languages

Although ethnic Russians comprise more than four-fifths of the country's total population, Russia is a diverse, multiethnic society. More than 120 ethnic groups, many with their own national territories, speaking some 100 languages live within Russia's borders. Many of these groups are small-in some cases consisting of fewer than a thousand individuals-and, in addition to Russians, only a handful of groups have more than a million members each: the Tatars, Ukrainians, Chuvash, Bashkir, Chechens, and Armenians. The diversity of peoples is reflected in the 21 minority republics, 10 autonomous districts, and autonomous region contained within the Russian Federation. In most of these divisions, the eponymous nationality (which gives its name to the division) is outnumbered by Russians. Since the early 1990s, ethnicity has underlain numerous conflicts (e.g., in Chechnya and Dagestan) within and between these units; many national minorities have demanded more autonomy and, in a few cases, even complete independence. Those parts of Russia that do not form autonomous ethnic units are divided into various territories ( kraya) and regions ( oblasti), and there are two federal cities (St. Petersburg and Moscow). For more detail on Russian regions, see below Regional and local government.

Linguistically, the population of Russia can be divided into the Indo-European group, comprising East Slavic speakers and smaller numbers speaking several other languages; the Altaic group, including Turkic, Manchu-Tungus, and Mongolian; the Uralic group, including Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic; and the Caucasian group, comprising Abkhazo-Adyghian and Nakho-Dagestanian. Because few of the languages of the smaller indigenous minorities are taught in the schools, it is likely that some will disappear.

East Slavs-mainly Russians but including some Ukrainians and Belarusians-constitute more than four-fifths of the total population and are prevalent throughout the country. The Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in eastern Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries ad, and the first Slav state, Kievan Rus, arose in the 9th century. After the Mongol invasions the centre of gravity shifted to Moscow, and the Russian Empire expanded to the Baltic, Arctic, and Pacific, numerically overwhelming the indigenous peoples. Despite its wide dispersal, the Russian language is homogeneous throughout Russia. Indo-Iranian speakers include the Ossetes of the Caucasus. In addition, there are sizable contingents of German speakers, who mainly populate southwestern Siberia, and Jews (recognized as an ethnolinguistic group rather than a religious one), who live mainly in European Russia; the numbers of both groups have declined through emigration.

Turkic speakers dominate the Altaic group. They live mainly in the Central Asian republics, but there is an important cluster of Turkic speakers between the middle Volga and southern Urals, comprising the Bashkir, Chuvash, and Tatars. A second cluster, in the North Caucasus region, includes the Balkar, Karachay, Kumyk, and Nogay. There also are numerous Turkic-speaking groups in southern Siberia between the Urals and Lake Baikal: the Altai, Khakass, Shor, Tofalar, and Tyvans (Tuvans; they inhabit the area once known as Tannu Tuva, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1944). The Sakha (Yakut) live mainly in the middle Lena basin, and the Dolgan are concentrated in the Arctic.

Manchu-Tungus languages are spoken by the Evenk, Even, and other small groups that are widely dispersed throughout eastern Siberia. The Buryat, who live in the Lake Baikal region, and the Kalmyk, who live primarily to the west of the lower Volga, speak Mongolian tongues.

The Uralic group, which is widely disseminated in the Eurasian forest and tundra zones, has complex origins. Finnic peoples inhabit the European section: the Mordvin, Mari (formerly Cheremis), Udmurt (Votyak) and Komi (Zyryan), and the closely related Komi-Permyaks live around the upper Volga and in the Urals, while Karelians, Finns, and Veps inhabit the northwest. The Mansi (Vogul) and Khanty (Ostyak) are spread thinly over the lower Ob basin ( see Khanty and Mansi).

The Samoyedic group also has few members dispersed over a vast area: the Nenets in the tundra and forest tundra from the Kola Peninsula to the Yenisey, the Selkup around the middle Ob, and the Nganasan mainly in the Taymyr Peninsula.

There are numerous small groups of Caucasian speakers in the North Caucasus region of Russia. Abaza, Adyghian, and Kabardian (Circassian) are similar languages but differ sharply from the languages of the Nakh group (Chechen and Ingush) and of the Dagestanian group (Avar, Lezgian, Dargin, Lak, Tabasaran, and a dozen more).

Other groups

Several Paleo-Siberian groups that share a common mode of life but differ linguistically are located in far eastern Siberia. The Chukchi, Koryak, and Itelmen (Kamchadal) belong to a group known as Luorawetlan, which is distinct from the Eskimo-Aleut group. The languages of the Nivkh (Gilyak) along the lower Amur and on Sakhalin Island, of the Yukaghir of the Kolyma Lowland, and of the Ket of the middle Yenisey are completely isolated, though it is likely that Yukaghir is a relative of the Uralic languages.

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Russia - Forests, Biodiversity, Taiga: As conditions become warmer with decreasing latitude, deciduous species appear in greater numbers and eventually become dominant. The triangular mixed and deciduous forest belt is widest along Russia's western border and narrows toward the Urals.

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Over the past twenty years, environmental challenges have increasingly impacted populations across Central Asia, particularly affecting the most vulnerable, the poor, and the geographically isolated. Sources of pollution include industrial and agricultural production, untreated waste, radioactive tailings, soil salination, etc. In addition, Central Asia is already being impacted by climate change, which is expected to significantly worsen over the next decade. Floods, drought and landslides caused by temperature increases and the melting of Himalayan glaciers will constitute major threats to human security in the region.

Based on an overview of the main environmental and climate change issues facing Central Asia, this report highlights the growing impact of environment issues on populations in Central Asia, with a focus on the most vulnerable; the impact of Central Asian authoritarianism in terms of the addressing of environmental issues; the local environment, and difficulties faced by CSOs and activists in addressing these questions. It concludes with a series of recommendations on how the international community, including governments, international organisations, and international NGOs, can contribute to addressing environmental issues, including through increased support to local stakeholders and CSOs.

The report is prepared by Sebastien Peyrouse, Central Asia Program, IERES, George Washington University, and Member of International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), in the framework of the CSP WG on Climate Justice.

Background

While the vast majority of regions in the world face climate change, pollution and challenges related to natural resources, the specific issues and their intensity vary significantly from country to country. Central Asia faces not only the environmental problems of pollution and climate change, but also five factors specific to its history and current situation, which, if not addressed, will continue to impact the wellbeing and security of populations in the region.

Firstly, 30 years after the collapse of the USSR, Central Asian countries still struggle with the legacy of Soviet policy on the environment. Two of the most well-known of such issues are the drying up of the Aral Sea and the impact of nuclear weapons testing in northern Kazakhstan.

Secondly, since their independence, the countries of the region have continued to struggle to reform and develop their economies and their social welfare systems. Some, like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, continue to be considered among the poorest countries in Asia. These difficult economic situations and limited state budgets have prevented governments of the region from making the necessary, substantial investments aimed at tackling environmental issues.

Thirdly, difficult socioeconomic situations have hindered awareness of environmental issues among the population. Many Central Asians face significant social challenges, including unemployment, poverty, food and energy insecurity, and fragile healthcare and education systems. Environmental issues are thus not viewed as immediate concerns or threats.

Fourthly, the authoritarian style of governance in Central Asian countries has had a detrimental effect in terms of how governments deal with environmental issues. Political authorities have sought to maintain control of environmental issues and those of climate change. However, political authoritarianism in the region has resulted in a significant disconnect between official narratives in support of environmentally-friendly policies, including joining international treaties, on the one hand, and minimizing, denying, or even censoring information on topics of concern, on the other.

Environmental projects are frequently subject to a top-down style of management, and some projects are undertaken so as to showcase the government's stated commitment, but in fact end up harming the environment. This top-down approach, combined with a lack of funding, has greatly weakened research and contributed to Central Asian governments' lack of preparedness to address increasingly problematic environmental issues.

Finally, the many obstacles faced by civil society in the region have further hindered action to address environmental issues. Throughout Central Asia political authorities restrict the activities of local and foreign civil society organisations (CSOs) to varying degrees, through restrictive laws, harassment, censorship, and even repression of environmental activists. Civil society has struggled to promote dialogue with the government or propose initiatives to address specific problems as CSOs in more democratic countries can.

Overall, the gap between governmental declarations of intent and the concrete implementation of proposals, combined with authoritarian obstruction of CSOs' independent environmental research, as well as the serious lack of dialogue between civil society and political authorities, constitutes a serious threat to the environmental future of the region and, consequently, the economic and social futures of its population.

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The nexus of environmental issues, poverty, and political authoritarianism in Central Asia: What role for civil society organisations and the international community? - IPHR

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Over the past twenty years, environmental challenges have increasingly impacted populations across Central Asia, particularly affecting the most vulnerable, the poor, and the geographically isolated. Sources of pollution include industrial and agricultural production, untreated waste, radioactive tailings, soil salination, etc. In addition, Central Asia is already being impacted by climate change, which is expected to [...]

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Threats to the Mountains of Central Asia

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Threats to the Mountains of Central Asia

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Humans have influenced terrestrial biodiversity over much of the Mountains of Central Asia Biodiversity Hotspot for a thousand years, particularly in terms of farmland, grazing land and predator control. However, as in the rest of the world, industrialization, political change, population grown, population movement and economic development have escalated threats to an extreme level.

Habitat change

Changes in land use, the modification of natural river flows and the withdrawal of water from rivers are the most common examples of habitat change. In this region, most lowland semi-deserts and foothills have long been converted to agricultural use, mainly for cultivation of cotton and cereals. Conversion of land for grazing is also historical in the lowlands and foothills in the winter and uplands in the summer.

This conversion has resulted in the loss of grasslands and semi-dessert grass-wormwood communities, with increased loss in soil fertility. Poor water management and irrigation practices have led to salinization of soils, and the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides has caused downstream pollution.

Threats from infrastructure, urbanization and the changes resulting from economic development are all serious. Construction of roadways-either for human transport, movement of freight or for connections to resource extraction sites-are all national priorities, particularly with China's One Belt - One Road initiative. Much of this work is slated directly within or around Key Biodiversity Areas or important landscapes, promising destruction of breeding grounds or disruption of migratory movement.

Poaching, excessive hunting and collection of plants

Illegal hunting and poaching have reached an epidemic level in the hotspot, despite strict legislation on species protection. This applies particularly to high-value mountain ungulates ("trophy" species), falcons that are exported to the Middle East, and the Central Asian tortoise. This type of hunting is done for profit, with relatively large amounts of money to be made by people leading these illegal enterprises.

During the Soviet era, with greater state control, poaching was less of an issue. Today, with decentralization of government and limited national revenues, enforcement is rare.

Similar to excessive hunting, the unregulated collection of endemic plants for sale (e.g., various tulip species) and for household use (e.g., medicinal plants) is a threat for endemics.

Overgrazing

In Xinjiang, serious overgrazing and pasture degradation began as early as the 1970s. In the former Soviet republics, with the fall of the Soviet Union, domestic livestock production initially declined, but as economies stabilized, the herding of sheep and goats increased sharply, especially in the foothills and lower slopes.

Degradation from overgrazing is apparent around settlements, but its impact is much wider. Overgrazing leads to soil erosion and reduces fresh grass yields and species compositions, leading to growth of less palatable or inedible grasses, and consequent extensification by herders.

Human-wildlife conflict

Human-wildlife conflict is primarily a threat in Afganistan's Wakhan Valley, where there is retaliatory killing, trapping, and poisoning of snow leopards by herders trying to protect livestock. In the other countries, the fines and criminal penalties for killing a snow leopard seem to serve as sufficient deterrent. However, for other predators, such as wolves, authorities encourage an even reward trapping and hunting.

Invasive and alien species

Invasive and alien species (IAS) are a serious threat to freshwater ecosystems and fragile mountain landscapes. In the past, commercial fish species were introduced to Lake Issyk Kul in Kazakhstan and the broader Talas River Basin with immediate impacts on endemics. More typical than purposeful introduction, however, has been the spread of invasives due to habitat change. IAS plants have moved into overgrazed areas, parasitic plants have grown off of excessive fertilizers in freshwater systems, and various birds, like the Common myna, have displaced natives.

Pollution

Pollution is of greatest threat in the most industrialized parts of the hotspot, or downstream from these. Xinjiang, with rapid economic growth, stands out for being at risk from industrial discharge, tailings, hazardous waste and uncontrolled dumping, although it is not alone. The main freshwater basins of Lake Issyk-Kul, the Ferghana Valley, and the Ili Basin also are at risk from persistent organic pollutants and toxic waste.

Read more about these and other threats in our ecosystem profile (PDF - 6.2 MB), also available in (PDF - 7.6).

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Habitat change, poaching, overgrazing and human-wildlife conflict are among the threats facing the hotspot's fauna and flora.

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Asia has enormous reserves of coal, amounting to nearly three-fifths of the world's total, but they are unevenly distributed. The largest reserves are found in Siberia, the Central Asian republics, India, and especially China; Indonesia, Japan, and North Korea have smaller but nevertheless economically important reserves. China has chiefly high-grade coal reserves. Every province has at least one coalfield, but the largest reserves are in Shanxi and Shaanxi in the Ordos River basin in the north. Sichuan, Shandong, and the Northeast (Fushun, in Liaoning province) are old coal-producing regions with good reserves, and a coal-mining area with large deposits has been developed in central Anhui, north of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang). Mines in Ningxia and Gansu supply northern industrial plants, but their reserves are not clearly known. The long-known reserves in western Hebei are being exploited.

Enormous coal reserves are found in North and Central Asia, and some 200 fields have been worked throughout the region. Most of the known coal supplies of North Asia lie in Siberia, but the total extent and quality of Siberian deposits have not been fully explored. The Ural Mountains are not rich in coal, but there are some small fields of lower-grade coals. The Kuznetsk Basin in south-central Siberia has become a giant producer. The Minusinsk Basin in the central region of western Siberia, the Kansk region to the north along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Cheremkhovo area west of Lake Baikal in south-central Siberia, and the Bureya River basin in the southeast also are the major areas of Siberian production. Many smaller deposits have been worked to supply local regions, such as the small and scattered fields north of Vladivostok and on Sakhalin Island in the Far East. The Qaraghandy fields in east-central Kazakhstan contain the largest deposits in Central Asia; during the Soviet period, however, mining was not expanded there after sources of better coals began to be worked in western Siberia. The Ekibastuz field, north of the main Qaraghandy fields, also is a producer of high-quality coal. Smaller deposits also are worked in Uzbekistan, as well as in the valleys of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Chinese and Indian economies in particular have depended heavily on coal, and their coal consumption has grown along with their industrial economies since the late 20th century. Concern has been raised by environmentalists about the possibility that increasing coal consumption in these two countries would raise global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

At least two-thirds of the world's known crude oil and natural gas reserves are found in Asia; the proportion may prove higher as Siberia, the Caspian basin, and the seas of southeastern Asia are further explored. Many of the island chains bordering eastern Asia have geologic formations favouring petroleum accumulation, and oil fields-both on land and offshore-are in production in the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo and in China, Brunei, and Malaysia. Western Asia has the largest known oil reserves, located in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Other regions in Southwest Asia have limited amounts of oil, and known petroleum reserves on the Indian subcontinent are small as well. However, significant deposits of natural gas were discovered in Bangladesh during the 1990s.

Malaysia is the only important oil-producing area on the mainland of Southeast Asia, although offshore waters may yield production after further exploration; Vietnam also has some offshore potential. The area of the South China Sea has been actively tested, but disputes among the surrounding countries about sovereignty over the Spratly Islands has inhibited development. The Philippines is negligible as a producing region, and the petroleum production of Japan is also small. North and South Korea appear to have virtually no prospects of production, but China has a number of oil-producing fields in the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Xinjiang and in the Northeast. The Qaidam Basin in northwestern Qinghai province also is a producing region. Some oil has been derived regularly from oil shales found in the Northeast, and natural gas is exploited in Sichuan and in the Northeast.

Siberia produces more natural gas than Southwest Asia and is a significant oil producer as well. The flanks of the Ural Mountains have a number of large oil fields and small gas fields. The rich gas field in the northern Ob River basin at Berezovo indicates that the entire Ob basin may yield natural gas. In the east the Lena River basin, north of Yakutsk, also contains large gas reserves.

Azerbaijan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia also possess large deposits of oil and natural gas. Much of this is centred in the Caspian basin, particularly in areas claimed by Azerbaijan. The capital, Baku, has become a new world centre for oil exploration. The reserves, which the former Soviet Union hardly noticed, may prove to be substantial. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan share in Caspian output. Uzbekistan has a major gas field at Gazli in the Kyzylkum Desert southeast of the Aral Sea and oil fields in the southeastern part of the country. Although the landlocked region is not as remote as Siberia, its oil and gas producers have debated whether to export production to the world market through Russia or to build pipelines across Iran to the Persian Gulf, across the politically unstable Caucasus region to the Black Sea, or to the Mediterranean ports of Turkey.

Reserves of uranium ore are found in Asia's ancient crystalline rocks. The richest ore fields are found in Kyrgyzstan, between Osh and Tuya Muyun. China and India have their own deposits. Chinese uranium resources are thought to be in northern Xinjiang and southern Hunan provinces.

Many regions of Asia have deposits of iron ore, although not every country has its own domestic supply. South Korea, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and several smaller countries in Southwest Asia appear to have only small iron ore supplies. Japan has far less than is needed by its large iron and steel industry and depends largely on imported supplies. The Philippines exports ore. Malaysia produces a considerable volume. Thailand, Myanmar, and Pakistan have fair amounts of relatively low-grade ores, and Vietnam and Turkey have good ores in substantial volume. Indonesia and India both have large deposits of good iron ores that are reasonably distributed.

Although China formerly was regarded as deficient in iron ores, huge quantities of varying grades of ores have been discovered that are widely distributed and often located close to coal supplies. Regional centres of ore mining, smelting, and fabrication are located at Anshan in Liaoning province; near Beijing; in southern Anhui, west of Shanghai; in central China, east of Wuhan; in southern Inner Mongolia, north of Baotou; in central western Gansu; and on Hainan Island, off the southern coast. Large iron ore deposits also occur near Chongqing. Iron ore in small local volumes is widely located in Guizhou and Yunnan in the southwest. China now ranks among the world's major producers of iron ore.

Iron ore long has been extracted from the Ural Mountains, and there appears to be a virtually unlimited supply of low-grade ore in the Qostanay Basin east of the Southern Urals in northwestern Kazakhstan and southwestern Siberia. Large deposits of medium-grade ore have been found northwest of Lake Baikal, close to the Cheremkhovo coal deposits. Smaller deposits have been located in several locations in eastern Siberia. In Central Asia the main deposits are found in eastern Kazakhstan.

Asian resources of nickel are not extensive. There is a notable ore field at Norilsk, in north-central Siberia; Indonesia, China, and the Philippines also possess reserves and produce substantial quantities of nickel. Asian countries with reserves of chromium include Turkey, the Philippines, India, Iran, and Pakistan; reserves are also found in northwestern Kazakhstan. Manganese is found in abundance, with large reserves in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Siberia, and India; Chinese reserves also are considerable. Southern China has exceptionally large deposits of tungsten. Tungsten reserves in Central Asia also are important, as are those of molybdenum.

Nonferrous base metals

Asia is not richly endowed with copper. In Central Asia the main sites are Olmaliq, southeast of Tashkent (Uzbekistan); Zhezkazgan, west of Qaraghandy; and Qongyrat, on Lake Balkhash (Kazakhstan). In Siberia, production is mainly from the Kuznetsk Basin. Japan's once widespread copper ore reserves are no longer worked, and the Philippines has limited reserves. China has deposits in Gansu, Hebei, Anhui, and Hubei, but production is insignificant. Turkey, Myanmar, Malaysia, Mongolia, India, and North Korea have small reserves.

Significant reserves of tin exist along a north-south axis running from southwestern China through the Malay Peninsula to Indonesia. Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, and Yunnan province in China also have deposits of tin. Siberia has substantial reserves in Transbaikal and also in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains of the Far East.

The largest reserves of lead and zinc in Asia are located in the Kuznetsk Basin of Siberia and in central and eastern Kazakhstan. China also has abundant deposits of zinc and lead ores, and North Korea has important lead resources.

Asia has enormous reserves of bauxite. The largest fields are located in Kazakhstan and in south-central Siberia in the Sayan Mountains. There also are large deposits in India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Malaysia, as well as significant reserves in China.

Important quantities of mercury occur in south-central China and in Siberia. Magnesite is common in Asia. There are large deposits of antimony in central China; Turkey and Thailand also have substantial reserves.

Many Asian countries have produced gold from alluvial stream deposits in past centuries, and some have continued to do so. Small volumes of alluvial gold are produced in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia, and the headwaters of the Yangtze River in the Tibetan border region yield some gold. India formerly was a large producer of gold from lode mines, but the best ores appear to have been exhausted. North and South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines have significant gold ore reserves and periodically produce gold from small lode mines.

Gold has been produced from Siberian lode mines in the Central Ural Mountains for centuries, and in the 19th century there were several gold rushes to work alluvial stream deposits farther east on the Lena and Yenisey rivers. Siberian gold production is now considerable, and lodes are worked in several locations, centring on the upper reaches of the Kolyma River in the northeast. In addition, platinum is mined near Norilsk in the Central Siberian Plateau in northern Siberia. Another major lode is in eastern Kazakhstan at Auezov, south of Semey.

Nonmetallic minerals

Reserves of asbestos are localized; it is abundant in China, in South Korea, and on the eastern slope of the Central Urals in Siberia. Mica is abundant in eastern Siberia and is also found in large quantities in India. Asia has vast reserves of rock salt, but the hills and "glaciers" of salt in southern Iran have not been exploitable. Deposits of sulfur and gypsum are abundant in Central and West Asia. Japan has large reserves of sulfur. Kazakhstan has large deposits of phosphates in the Tupqaraghan Peninsula on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea and other scattered deposits of lesser value. Diamonds are produced in east-central Siberia and in India. India and Sri Lanka are significant producers of rubies, sapphires, and many semiprecious stones, such as moonstones and agates. Myanmar and Cambodia also have important supplies of rubies, sapphires, and other gems.

Asia's water resources constitute a vast potential, both for generating hydroelectricity and for irrigating crops. Water is important for irrigation in many Asian regions that are either arid (as in much of Central and Southwest Asia), subject to long dry seasons because of pronounced monsoonal (seasonal) variation in rainfall (as in much of South and Southeast Asia), or subject to seasonal high water and floods (for example, from the spring snowmelt in Siberia, the Himalayas, and the mountains of Central Asia). Other regions, such as Indonesia, are particularly susceptible to longer-term climate variation, such as that caused by the El Niño phenomenon.

The management of water has been a prime focus of Asian peoples since the earliest civilizations were established on the continent; perhaps the most graphic expression of this is the Islamic tradition of building a garden in the desert, complete with splashing fountains. As ever-larger dams have been built, however, resistance has increased from opponents concerned with the environmental and social harm that such dams can cause.

Siberian rivers have an excellent hydroelectric potential, for when dammed they provide low falls with an enormous flow volume. However, the extreme cold temperatures of winter freeze lakes and streams and keep water levels low for much of the year, which hinders exploitation. The Far East, with its abundant precipitation and great differences in water level, has an immense generating potential, although the remoteness of eastern Siberia has discouraged industrialization.

East Asia's waterpower potential varies by region. Japan, a mountainous country whose short rivers have steep drops but relatively small volumes of water flow, has already harnessed much of its hydroelectric potential; generating capacity, however, is increased by heavy rains, particularly in summer. The waterpower potential of northern China is extremely limited because the flow of the Huang He and other northern rivers is erratic and because these rivers carry heavy volumes of silt. The hydroelectric potential of China south of the Qin (Tsinling) Mountains, however, is great.

The Yangtze River has considerable waterpower potential. The Three Gorges Dam project on the central Yangtze near Yichang, construction of which officially began in 1994 and was largely completed in 2006, has been the largest and most ambitious attempt to harness this potential. The dam created a vast reservoir and locks that facilitate ship transport upstream and is intended to control the river's periodic flooding. The dam also has the capacity to generate 22,500 megawatts of hydroelectricity. However, the project attracted considerable controversy. Flooding the river basin submerged numerous cities, towns, and villages and several sites of archaeological and cultural interest, and it necessitated resettling more than a million people in a region with a shortage of available land.

The hydroelectric and irrigation potential in South Asia also varies by region. In Pakistan nearly all agriculture depends on the Indus River and its tributaries in the Punjab, and the waters of the Indus basin are highly regulated, with numerous barrages and canals providing water for irrigation. The Western Ghats, which slope down abruptly to the western maritime plains, would theoretically allow dams to harness water flowing down the steep slope; however, the rivulets that rise on the summit have an insignificant volume of flow in winter. Rivers on the eastern slope of the Deccan plateau, such as the Mahanadi and the Godavari, lend themselves to the construction of low dams with great volumes of flow, as also do the Himalayan rivers entering the Gangetic Plain. Nearly all of the highly seasonal rivers of peninsular India have been dammed. One exception was the Narmada River, where work began in the 1990s on the first in a series of 30 large dams. Construction of these dams has been vigorously opposed by environmentalists both within India and internationally.

The Himalayan ranges represent one of the world's greatest "water towers," with rich possibilities for utilizing steep drops for generating hydroelectricity. During the summer monsoon the heaviest precipitation on Earth falls there on the highest mountains. Nepal has a vast theoretical hydroelectric potential. Environmentalists worry that earthquakes in this seismically active region could cause the dams to fail. Some also argue that large dams might themselves instigate earthquakes, because the weight of the water in reservoirs could press on faults in the mountains and because water under pressure lubricates faults. Engineers, however, believe that they can address these problems. An obstacle to such development is the fact that the Ganges (Ganga)-Brahmaputra basin spans five countries-China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. Power, irrigation water, and flood control would benefit India and Bangladesh most, but the sites of the projects would be mostly in Nepal and Bhutan.

In Southeast Asia the Mekong passes through six countries; again development has been stalled by regional political difficulties. In arid West Asia water politics are highly serious, as shown by the tensions among Syria, Israel, and Jordan over the use of the Jordan River. Another dispute, between Iraq and Syria on the one hand and upstream Turkey on the other, concerns the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, whose headwaters lie in Turkey. Turkey had already built several dams, including the Atatürk Dam, on the two rivers, and construction has been underway on two more dams on the Euphrates, at Birecik and Kargamış, since the 1990s. Iraq and Syria have objected strongly to both projects, because they feared that the water supply would be reduced, that they would not be able to control water-flow timing, and that the quality of water would be diminished. Concern was also raised that water issues might give rise to future armed conflicts within the region.

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Asia - Mineral Resources, Oil, Gas: Asia has enormous reserves of coal, amounting to nearly three-fifths of the world's total, but they are unevenly distributed. The largest reserves are found in Siberia, the Central Asian republics, India, and especially China; Indonesia, Japan, and North Korea have smaller but nevertheless economically important reserves.

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Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA | CGEP

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Central Asia's Overlooked Energy Crisis: What It Means for the Global Gas Market - Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA | CGEP %

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Over the past decade, Central Asia has emerged as a vital region in the global energy market as the world's demographic and economic center has shifted decisively eastward. Western reliance on Middle Eastern oil has long dominated the global energy industry, yet the rapid development of Central Asia's energy infrastructure has made it a region that finally looks ready to fulfill its potential in delivering the burgeoning energy needs of Eurasia.

Central Asia has long possessed large volumes of oil and natural gas, predominantly located in the five former Soviet republics situated to the east of the Caspian Sea: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Historically, the persistence of Soviet influence over Central Asia's energy sector led to the majority of Caspian oil and gas to flow north to Russia, and from there onward to the industrialized consumer countries of Western Europe. However, the picture has altered significantly since the turn of the century: access has been opened to new markets in the east, and Central Asia now plays a vital role in meeting the growing energy needs of China.

For decades, Central Asia's energy infrastructure remained underdeveloped, with producers in the region struggling to transform their raw natural resources into output, while also having difficulty finding reliable methods of delivery. In general, the five states relied on more experienced international companies to provide export routes - often through aging pipelines to Russia - enabling secondary access to markets in the west. The Central Asian states sought to diversify their export destinations after the collapse of the Soviet Union, yet were often viewed as unreliable partners and risky investment opportunities by many Western corporations. Additionally, with the Caspian Sea being landlocked, the absence of a complex pipeline system to transport resources to Europe proved to be another sticking point. The result was a stagnation of the region's energy industry as the West's reliance on Middle Eastern oil continued, leaving vast resource-rich areas of Central Asia underexplored and large quantities of oil and gas untapped.

Recently however, the region has looked more likely to fulfill its resource potential, with an increasing number of oil and gas fields being exploited. This turnaround in fortunes has been driven largely by a shift in outlook, with a new focus on the new energy-hungry markets which surround Central Asia: China and its 1.4 billion people to the east; India and its 1.3 billion people to the south. The close geographical proximity of the world's two fastest growing economies, along with the presence of a shared land border between three of the Central Asian producers and China, has led to the rapid development of the region's energy market, while a surge in investment from the east has facilitated its reorientation, diversification, and revitalization.

In particular, this has been enabled by China's drive for energy security, through which it has attempted to diversify its imports by developing closer relations with producing countries in the Middle East, Africa, and most recently in Central Asia. China has begun investing heavily in the downstream sector, building oil refineries and pipelines across the region to satisfy its domestic demand, whilst maintaining its commitment to a win-win approach based on mutual benefits.

Kazakhstan is the region's leading oil producer and ninth-largest country in the world, and has become China's major energy partner in Central Asia as the two countries share a 1,700 km land border. China controls approximately 20 percent of Kazakhstan's oil production and has constructed one of the world's longest oil pipelines, running 2,300 km from the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang province. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) owns a significant stake in the Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea, while Chinese companies own several key oil fields around the western city of Aktobe. In addition, Kazakhstan serves as key transit route for oil and gas from the smaller nations of Central Asia, assuring it a key role in the region's future energy landscape.

Turkmenistan is the region's main gas exporter, and exports its reserves directly to China through the Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline. Uzbekistan also supplies gas through the upgraded pipeline network and has attracted Chinese investment in recent years, typified by a $15 billion bilateral energy deal concluded in 2013. China has also financed two refineries in Kyrgyzstan, in the towns of Kara-Balta and Tomok. The refineries are supplied by CNPC-run oil fields in neighboring Kazakhstan, and produce 1.35 million tonnes of refined product annually.

This progress has evolved gradually over several years through a concerted attempt by China to develop the region's resources, typified by the 2013 landmark visit of President Xi Jinping to Central Asia, which resulted in a raft of new bilateral energy deals worth tens of billions of dollars. If the current trend continues, the International Energy Agency has estimated that China may be importing up to 50 percent of the region's oil and gas by 2020, signalling a decisive shift in Central Asia's energy flow from the west to the east.

In addition to constituting a strategic attempt to achieve greater energy security, China's resource sector investments in the region also have a political edge. The reduction in Russian influence in Central Asia following the collapse of the Soviet Union has created a void, which has been occupied by China as it has itself become more powerful. This has tipped the regional balance of power in an eastward direction, and has arguably played a key role in ensuring stability in the former Soviet republics. China has long professed the importance of development to security at the domestic level, and this policy can also be seen at an international level through China's energy policy in the Caspian region. China has consistently supported the independence of Central Asia's states through facilitating economic integration: it has provided considerable investment opportunities and served as a stabilizing force, through its creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the signing of numerous bilateral economic agreements. China has also provided political support through the maintenance of friendly relations and frequent high-level state visits, providing legitimacy to regimes which many in the West have been reluctant to work with.

Overall, Central Asia's energy market has decisively reoriented itself to the east. The former Soviet states have in recent years adopted a new, more individualistic approach free from tight Russian control, facilitated largely through Chinese investment. Energy policies have focused on the development of new transit routes in the form of large-scale pipeline projects, aiming to diversify the supply chain and open up the region to the rapidly growing markets of eastern Eurasia. The pattern of enhanced energy cooperation between Central Asia and China can be expected to be followed by closer resource sector links with India in the coming years, further signalling the altered flow of the region's oil and gas.

Through its market-oriented but state-led search for energy security, Beijing has reinvigorated Central Asia's energy market. This may be interpreted by some as part of an authoritarian attempt to assert regional hegemony through economic power, while gaining greater influence over the five former Soviet states through a strategy of assertive energy diplomacy; however, this is not necessarily the case. As the world's major hubs of population and finance have shifted to the east, the global energy landscape must follow suit. Therefore, while China's extensive investment in the region's energy infrastructure will undoubtedly grant it greater influence, it has also been vital and necessary in allowing Central Asia to fulfill its long-held resource potential, placing it in a firm position to advance global energy security over the coming decades.

Michael Hart is a freelance writer in international politics, focusing primarily on civil conflict in Africa and the geopolitics of South-East Asia. He has written for online publications including Geopolitical Monitor and Eurasia Review, and runs a blog providing news and analysis of conflicts which are under-reported in the mainstream media.

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Central Asia's Oil and Gas Now Flows to the East

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Central Asia's energy resources are increasingly flowing not to Russia, but to China and emerging Asian economies.

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Regional spotlight: Oil & Gas in Central Asia - ADI Analytics

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Export demand and E&P investments have slowed down in Central Asia due to low oil prices and oversupplied oil & gas markets. Learn more here.

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Photos documenting the construction of the Great Fergana Canal depict Soviet dreams of building a new environment for a new socialist people.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Karakum Canal, Turkmen Garagum Kanaly, waterway in Turkmenistan, one of the most extensive water-supply canals in the world. The main section, begun in 1954 and completed in 1967, runs some 840 km (520 miles) from the Amu Darya (river) to Gökdepe, west of Ashgabat, skirting the Karakum Desert. In the 1970s and '80s the canal was extended to the Caspian Sea coast, making the total length 1,400 km (870 miles). Water from the canal, which is navigable for 450 km (280 miles), is used principally for irrigation, and fishing has been developed on the canal.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Melissa Petruzzello.

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Karakum Canal | Description, Length, Importance, & Facts

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Karakum Canal, waterway in Turkmenistan, one of the most extensive water-supply canals in the world. Water from the canal, which is navigable for 450 km (280 miles), is used principally for irrigation, and fishing has been developed on the canal. Learn more about the Karakum Canal with this article.

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Hydroelectric power | Definition, Renewable, Advantages, Disadvantages, & Facts

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Hydroelectric power, electricity produced from generators driven by turbines that convert the potential energy of moving water into mechanical energy. Hydroelectric power plants usually are located in dams that impound rivers, though tidal action is used in some coastal areas.

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Syr Darya, river in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. The Syr Darya is formed by the confluence of the Naryn and Qoradaryo rivers in the eastern Fergana Valley and generally flows northwest until it empties into the Aral Sea. With a length of 1,374 miles (2,212 km)-1,876 miles (3,019 km) including the Naryn-the Syr Darya is the longest river in Central Asia, but it carries less water than the Amu Darya. Its watershed is not clearly defined except in its upper course, where it drains a basin of 178,000 square miles (462,000 square km). Most of the Syr Darya's tributaries in the Fergana Valley fail to reach it because they are used fully for irrigation.

After leaving the Fergana Valley the river flows northwest, receiving the Ohangaron, Chirchiq, Keles, and Arys rivers on the right. In its middle and lower reaches it follows a meandering course through the eastern outskirts of the Kyzylkum Desert, frequently changing its bed, forming channels that often lose themselves in the sands, and overflowing its low banks at flood. It is fed in its upper mountainous basin mainly by snow and to a lesser extent by glaciers, and high water lasts from March or April to September. The Syr Darya carries a considerable amount of silt, much of which it deposits in the vicinity of Qazaly, Kazakhstan. The river freezes in its lower reaches from December to March.

There are a number of hydroelectric power stations on the Syr Darya and its tributaries, of which the largest are the Farhod (in Uzbekistan), Qayroqqum (Tajikistan), and Shardara (Kazakhstan) stations on the main stream and, in Uzbekistan, the Chorwoq station on the Chirchiq River and the Uchqŭrghon station on the Naryn River. There are also dams in Kazakhstan at Qyzylorda and Qazaly. The Toktogul hydroelectric power station, which was constructed on the Naryn River in the 1970s and expanded in the '80s, regulates the river's flow. As much as 5,000,000 acres (2,000,000 hectares) of land are irrigated by the Syr Darya and its tributaries, with cotton the chief crop in the Fergana Valley and the Syr Darya's middle course and rice in the river's lower reaches.

The diversion of water from the Syr Darya for irrigation contributed to the shrinkage of the Aral Sea in the latter part of the 20th century. By the 1990s the flow of the Syr Darya along its lower reaches was much reduced during the whole year. The gradual retreat of the Aral Sea shoreline and the drying up of the Syr Darya's deltaic region exposed toxic fertilizer and salt residues to the winds, devastating local plant and animal life and causing serious health problems among the human population.

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Syr Darya, river in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. The Syr Darya is formed by the confluence of the Naryn and Qoradaryo rivers in the eastern Fergana Valley and generally flows northwest until it empties into the Aral Sea. With a length of 1,374 miles (2,212

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Syr Darya, river in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. The Syr Darya is formed by the confluence of the Naryn and Qoradaryo rivers in the eastern Fergana Valley and generally flows northwest until it empties into the Aral Sea. With a length of 1,374 miles (2,212 km)-1,876 miles (3,019 km) including the Naryn-the Syr Darya is the longest river in Central Asia, but it carries less water than the Amu Darya. Its watershed is not clearly defined except in its upper course, where it drains a basin of 178,000 square miles (462,000 square km). Most of the Syr Darya's tributaries in the Fergana Valley fail to reach it because they are used fully for irrigation.

After leaving the Fergana Valley the river flows northwest, receiving the Ohangaron, Chirchiq, Keles, and Arys rivers on the right. In its middle and lower reaches it follows a meandering course through the eastern outskirts of the Kyzylkum Desert, frequently changing its bed, forming channels that often lose themselves in the sands, and overflowing its low banks at flood. It is fed in its upper mountainous basin mainly by snow and to a lesser extent by glaciers, and high water lasts from March or April to September. The Syr Darya carries a considerable amount of silt, much of which it deposits in the vicinity of Qazaly, Kazakhstan. The river freezes in its lower reaches from December to March.

There are a number of hydroelectric power stations on the Syr Darya and its tributaries, of which the largest are the Farhod (in Uzbekistan), Qayroqqum (Tajikistan), and Shardara (Kazakhstan) stations on the main stream and, in Uzbekistan, the Chorwoq station on the Chirchiq River and the Uchqŭrghon station on the Naryn River. There are also dams in Kazakhstan at Qyzylorda and Qazaly. The Toktogul hydroelectric power station, which was constructed on the Naryn River in the 1970s and expanded in the '80s, regulates the river's flow. As much as 5,000,000 acres (2,000,000 hectares) of land are irrigated by the Syr Darya and its tributaries, with cotton the chief crop in the Fergana Valley and the Syr Darya's middle course and rice in the river's lower reaches.

The diversion of water from the Syr Darya for irrigation contributed to the shrinkage of the Aral Sea in the latter part of the 20th century. By the 1990s the flow of the Syr Darya along its lower reaches was much reduced during the whole year. The gradual retreat of the Aral Sea shoreline and the drying up of the Syr Darya's deltaic region exposed toxic fertilizer and salt residues to the winds, devastating local plant and animal life and causing serious health problems among the human population.

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Syr Darya, river in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. The Syr Darya is formed by the confluence of the Naryn and Qoradaryo rivers in the eastern Fergana Valley and generally flows northwest until it empties into the Aral Sea. With a length of 1,374 miles (2,212

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In the Great East Asian Fertile Triangle, rice-cultivating piscatory ­cultures flourished. Women were active members of the society. Their lifestyles, typical of people inhabiting evergreen broad-leaved forests,…

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The Russian republic, by virtue of its great size and abundant natural resources, played a leading role in the economy of the Soviet Union. In the first decades of the Soviet regime, these resources made possible great economic advances, including the rapid development of mining, metallurgy, and heavy engineering, the expansion of the railway network, and a massive increase in the energy supply. In the 1960s a second phase of Soviet industrial development began to exert a particularly strong effect on the Russian republic. In addition to further growth in established industries-especially in the production of oil, gas, and electricity and in the chemical industries-there was a marked diversification in industrial output, including a limited expansion in consumer goods. In the years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, the economy of Russia and of the entire country was in a state of decline, and official statistics masked industrial inefficiencies.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian government implemented a series of radical reforms designed to transform the economy from one that was centrally planned and controlled to one based on capitalist principles. Major components of the reforms included establishing privately owned industrial and commercial ventures (using both foreign and Russian investment) and privatizing state-owned enterprises. To encourage privatization, the government issued vouchers to Russian citizens that enabled them to purchase of shares in privatized firms, though in practice these vouchers frequently were sold for cash and were accumulated by entrepreneurs. A commodity- and stock-exchange system also was established.

The privatization process was slow, however, and many firms-particularly in the heavy industries-remained under state ownership. In addition, there was significant debate regarding the buying and selling of land. In 2001 the government legalized the sale of land, though it did so only for urban housing and industrial real estate-which together accounted for only a small fraction of Russia's total area. At the beginning of the 21st century, similar legislation was also under discussion for rural and agricultural areas. Though full private ownership of land is provided for in the 1993 constitution, the practice has not yet been implemented. As a result of delays in implementing structural reforms, the conversion to market-based agriculture was slow, as many clung to the old, familiar collective system.

The reforms beginning in the 1990s caused considerable hardships for the average Russian citizen; in the decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy contracted by more than two-fifths. The monetary system was in disarray: the removal of price controls caused a huge escalation in inflation and prices; the value of the ruble, the country's currency, plummeted; and real incomes fell dramatically. Conditions began to improve by the mid-1990s, but the recovery was interrupted in 1998 by a severe financial crisis, which caused the government to sharply devalue the ruble. Numerous banks became insolvent, and millions of citizens lost their life savings. Gradually, corrective measures were implemented. For example, the licensing of private banks became more rigorous, and the government cracked down on tax evasion, which had been rampant since the implementation of economic reforms. To accommodate business growth, taxes on medium and small enterprises were moderated, and the government began to offer incentives for reinvesting profits into the domestic economy. By the early 21st century, the measures had begun to have a positive effect on the Russian economy, which showed signs of recovery and stable growth. Steady earnings from oil exports permitted investments in factories, and the devalued currency made Russian goods more competitive on the international market.

In the post-Soviet years, foreign direct investment was encouraged, but it was constrained by unfavourable conditions, including state intervention in industry, corruption, and weakness in the rule of law. An upsurge in violence by organized crime syndicates contributed to hampering Western investment, and though the activity of such groups was curtailed in the early 21st century, it still presented severe obstacles to both Western and Russian businesses. Investment by non-Russian companies was also discouraged by moves taken by the Russian government to increase state ownership in various industries, including oil and gas, aviation, and automobile manufacturing.

In addition to the difficulties the country encountered in its effort to restructure the economy, Russia had been subjected to serious long-term environmental degradation during the Soviet period, the full extent of which became apparent only in the 1990s. The most visible aspects of this situation-such as the Chernobyl accident at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986, widespread industrial pollution, and the drastic reduction in the volume of the Aral Sea as a result of inflow diversions-were only symptomatic of decades of wasteful resource exploitation. These environmental concerns placed another burden on Russia's already overwhelmed economic structure.

The economic foundation of the country itself remained similar to that which had been developed during the Soviet period. For purposes of description it is convenient to refer to the official set of 11 traditional economic regions into which Russia is divided (though the federal districts created in 2000 have begun to replace the traditional economic regions for statistical purposes). In Europe the regions are the North, Northwest, Central, Volga-Vyatka, Central Black Earth, North Caucasus, Volga, and Ural, and in Asia they are West Siberia, East Siberia, and the Far East.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

Agriculture

The harshness of the Russian environment is reflected in the small proportion of land that is used for farming. Agricultural land constitutes less than one-sixth of the country's territory, and less than one-tenth of the total land area is arable. About three-fifths of Russian farmland is used to grow crops; the remainder is devoted to pasture and meadow. Overall, agriculture contributes little more than 5 percent to Russia's gross domestic product (GDP), though the sector employs about one-eighth of the total labour force.

The main product of Russian farming has always been grain, which occupies considerably more than half of the cropland. Wheat is the chief cereal, followed by barley, rye, and oats. More than one-third of the sown area is devoted to fodder crops-sown grasses, clovers, root crops, and, in the southern districts, corn (maize). The remaining farmland is devoted to industrial crops, such as sunflowers, sugar beets, and flax, and to potatoes and other vegetables.

Variations in relief, soil, and climate produce pronounced regional variations in agriculture. In European Russia the proportion of land devoted to crops increases southward, from virtually none in the North region to about two-thirds in the Central Black Earth region. In West and East Siberia and the Far East, crops are largely confined to the southern fringe. Even in West Siberia, where the cultivated zone is at its widest, crops occupy less than one-tenth of the region's territory, and the proportion falls to negligible levels in East Siberia and the Far East. Cereals occupy more than two-thirds of the cropland in most regions but less than half in the damper Northwest and Central regions, where fodder crops and livestock are more important. The intensity of farming and the yields achieved are generally much higher in the European section than in Siberia. The same is also the case for livestock farming.

In general, the old collective farms and state farms have continued to function in post-Soviet Russia, though they have often been renamed as cooperatives or labour-management firms. Privatized farms have experienced significant obstacles, because many in the agricultural sector treated them as pariahs, and the land that many were allocated was unproductive or inaccessible. Thus, the bulk of the grain continues to be produced by very large agricultural enterprises, particularly those in the Northern Caucasus and in the Volga economic regions.

Forestry

Russia contains the world's largest forest reserves, and its lumbering, pulp, paper, and woodworking industries are particularly important. More than two-fifths of Russia is forested, and the country has more than one-fifth of the world's total forests-an area nearly as large as the continental United States. However, Russian forests have very slow rates of growth because of the cold, continental climate, and the country has lost about one-third of its estimated original forest area. Legislation was implemented in the late 1990s to moderate further deforestation. Nevertheless, logging continued to endanger the last intact forest landscapes of northern European Russia. Similar risks have also spread to areas east of the Urals.

The forestry industry employs some one million people. Coniferous species are predominant; Russia produces about one-fifth of the world's softwood. The country is among the world leaders in the production of many other wood-related products, and timber, saw lumber, pulp, paper, cardboard, and roundwood contribute to Russia's export income.

The fishing industry plays a significant role in the Russian economy. With access to the substantial resources of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, marine fishing is particularly well developed, and Russia's fleet of factory ships can process huge catches at remote locations. The chief European ocean-fishing ports are Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea and Murmansk and Arkhangelsk in the far north. Russia's chief Pacific port is Vladivostok, but there are several others, particularly in Sakhalin and Kamchatka provinces. Smaller-scale fishing takes place in the Sea of Azov and the Black and Caspian seas (the Caspian sturgeon is the source of the world's finest caviar), but reduced river flows and pollution from agricultural runoff, industrial waste, and sewage dumping have thinned fish populations. There are important inland fisheries on lakes and rivers, including a good deal of fish farming.

The Russian fishing industry rivals the size of the world's other leading producers (Japan, the United States, and China). Russia produces about one-third of all canned fish and some one-fourth of the world's total fresh and frozen fish. The privatization of fishing in the 1990s shifted the industry's focus from production for domestic consumption to exports. Especially important catches are pollack, herring, cod, and salmon. Russia's earnings from the export of fish are steadily larger than from grain export. Salmon, crabmeat, caviar, beluga, sterlet, and herring were among the important seafoods generating export income.

Resources and power

Russia has enormous energy resources and significant deposits of many different minerals. Most, if not all, of the raw materials required by modern industry are found within its borders. Its coal reserves are particularly extensive. The biggest fields lie in the remote Tunguska and Lena basins of East Siberia and the Far East, but these are largely untapped, and the bulk of output comes from more southerly fields along the Trans- Siberian Railroad. About three-fourths of Russia's coal is produced in Siberia-some two-fifths from the Kuznetsk Basin alone and the remainder from the Kansk-Achinsk, Cheremkhovo, and South Yakut basins and numerous smaller sources. The production of hard (anthracite) coal in European Russia takes place mainly in the eastern Donets Basin and, in the Arctic, in the Pechora Basin around Vorkuta.

Privatization of the coal industry began in the 1990s, and by the early 21st century some three-fifths of overall coal production was coming from privatized mines. However, the removal of state subsidies also forced the closure of many unprofitable mines. The most severe cuts in coal output occurred in the Central and Ural economic regions and in Rostov province of the North Caucasus region. Coal mines in regions with access to large reserves of oil and natural gas fared better.

Russia is among the world's leading producers of oil, extracting about one-fifth of the global total. It also is responsible for more than one-fourth of the world's total natural gas output. The great bulk of oil and natural gas comes from the huge fields that underlie the northern part of the West Siberia region. Another significant source of reserves is the Volga-Ural zone, and the remainder is derived mainly from the Komi-Ukhta field (North region); the North Caucasus region, once the Soviet Union's leading producer, is now of little importance. Extensive pipeline systems link production sites to all regions of the country, the neighbouring former Soviet republics, and, across the western frontier, numerous European countries.

There are some 600 large thermal power plants, more than 100 hydroelectric stations, and several nuclear power plants that generate electricity. About three-fourths of electricity is generated in thermal stations; some two-thirds of thermal generation is from oil and gas. The remaining power output is produced by hydroelectric and nuclear plants. Most of the hydroelectricity comes from huge stations on the Volga, Kama, Ob, Yenisey, Angara, and Zeya rivers. Nuclear power production expanded rapidly before development was checked by the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986. Much of Siberia's electricity output is transmitted to the European region along high-voltage lines.

Russia also produces large quantities of iron ore, mainly from the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly (Central Black Earth region), Kola Peninsula, Urals, and Siberia. Although there is steel production in every economic region, the largest steel-producing plants are located mainly in the Urals, Central Black Earth region, and Kuznetsk Basin. Russia produces about one-sixth of the world's iron ore and between one-tenth and one-fifth of all nonferrous, rare, and precious metals.

Nonferrous metals are available in great variety from many districts, but by far the most important are those of the Ural region, which is Russia's main centre of nonferrous metallurgy. Russia is a major producer of cobalt, chrome, copper, gold, lead, manganese, nickel, platinum, tungsten, vanadium, and zinc. The country produces much of its aluminum from plants powered by the Siberian hydroelectric stations, but bauxite deposits are relatively meagre.

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Russia - Energy, Manufacturing, Agriculture

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Russia - Energy, Manufacturing, Agriculture: The Russian republic, by virtue of its great size and abundant natural resources, played a leading role in the economy of the Soviet Union. In the first decades of the Soviet regime, these resources made possible great economic advances, including the rapid development of mining, metallurgy, and heavy engineering, the expansion of the railway network, and a massive increase in the energy supply.

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Ethnic groups

Fewer than one-fifth of the more than eight million ethnic Kazakhs live outside Kazakhstan, mainly in Uzbekistan and Russia. During the 19th century about 400,000 Russians flooded into Kazakhstan, and these were supplemented by about 1,000,000 Slavs, Germans, Jews, and others who immigrated to the region during the first third of the 20th century. The immigrants crowded Kazakhs off the best pastures and watered lands, rendering many tribes destitute. Another large influx of Slavs occurred from 1954 to 1956 as a result of the Virgin and Idle Lands project, initiated by the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, himself a Slav. This project drew thousands of Russians and Ukrainians into the rich agricultural lands of northern Kazakhstan. By 1989, however, Kazakhs slightly outnumbered Russians.

In the early years of independence, significant numbers of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan emigrated to Russia. This emigration, along with a return to the country of ethnic Kazakhs, changed the demographic makeup of Kazakhstan: by the mid-1990s the Kazakh proportion was approaching half the total population, while that for the Russians was closer to one-third.

The trend persisted into the 21st century, as the Kazakh population neared two-thirds of the country's total population while the Russian community represented just over one-fifth. Other ethnic groups in Kazakhstan include Uzbeks, Uighurs, and Tajiks, along with Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, and Koreans.

The urban areas of Kazakhstan are still home to more Slavs than Kazakhs. Kazakhs constitute about half the inhabitants of Almaty, the country's largest city and, until 1997, its capital. About three-fifths of Kazakh families live in rural areas. Urbanization in Kazakhstan involves much more immigration of foreigners than movement of Kazakhs from the countryside into the cities.

Languages

Kazakhs speak a Turkic language of the Northwest or Kipchak (Qipchaq) group. Russian, an official language, functions widely alongside Kazakh, which is the state language. Russian is the most widely understood language in the country.

Religion

The Kazakhs are a nominally Muslim people. During much of their long nomadic period, the Kazakhs' adherence to Islam remained informal and permissive. When they moved into settlements or sent their children to towns such as Sterlitamak or Bukhara for an education, that situation changed. There, young Kazakhs entered Muslim s and madrasahs, where religion supplied the main subjects and ideology. Thus, the younger generation of intellectuals turned into urban-style Muslims before the Soviet communists took over in the early 1920s. Thereafter, the authorities actively suppressed or discouraged religious life in Kazakhstan until the U.S.S.R. disintegrated. Since independence, Kazakhs generally have enjoyed freedom of religion. About one-fourth of the population is Eastern Orthodox.

Settlement patterns

Just over half the population is considered urban, while just under half the population remains rural. The extremely wide dispersion of population in Kazakhstan is reflected in the large number of small settlements. In the late 1980s fewer than 100 settlements fell into the category of city or town and fewer than 300 were worker settlements, while well over 2,000 were auïl s (small farm villages).

Kazakhstan's distinct regional patterns of settlement depend in part on its varied ethnic makeup. Slavs- Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians-largely populate the northern plains, where they congregate in large villages that originally served as the centres of collective and state farms. These populated oases are separated by wheat fields or, in the more arid plains to the south, by semideserts and deserts where sheep breeders live in temporary quarters, usually yurts (round tents with sturdy pole frames covered by heavy felt).

Kazakh nomads formerly obtained their schooling and manufactured goods from Russian towns such as Troitsk, Orenburg, and Omsk, or, in the south, from the ancient cities of Transoxania, the Fergana Valley, and eastern Turkistan. After the Russian conquest established military governors and administrators in Alma-Ata (now Almaty), Uralsk ( Oral), Yaik, and elsewhere, Kazakhstan began in the 19th century to develop its own cities. Qaraghandy ( Karaganda), Öskemen ( Ust-Kamenogorsk), and Rūdnyy ( Rudny), which are typical Soviet planned towns, have straight, wide streets and multistoried buildings and accommodate industry around their fringes.

Demographic trends

The population of Kazakhstan is young. About half the population is under age 30, and more than one-fourth is under the age of 15. The birth rate is marginally below the global average, while the death rate is slightly higher than average. Life expectancy for men is 67 years, though life expectancy for women is much higher at 77.

Economy

Kazakhstan possesses abundant natural resources. Its major exports include agricultural products, raw materials, chemical products, and manufactured goods. Privatization of state-owned industries was undertaken during the 1990s. In 1994 Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan formed an economic union, later joined in 1998 by Tajikistan, that enabled free movement of labour and capital among the countries and established coordinated economic policies. The union gradually gave way to what became the Eurasian Economic Union, consisting of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan.

Resources

Among the most important minerals are copper in the central areas and in Aqtöbe (Aktyubinsk) province; lead, zinc, and silver in the Rūdnyy Altai area and the Dzungarian Alatau and Qarataū (Karatau) spurs; tungsten and tin in the Kolbin Ridge and southern Altai; chromite, nickel, and cobalt in the Mugozhar Hills; titanium, manganese, and antimony in the central regions; vanadium in the south; and gold in the north and east. Processing facilities at Aqtaū produce large quantities of uranium mined in the Mangghyshlaq area. Much iron ore comes from Qaraghandy and Qostanay (Kustanay), and coal from the Qaraghandy, Torghay (Turgay), Ekibastuz, and Maykuben basins. In 1993 Kazakhstan finalized a contract with the Chevron Corporation to exploit the reserves of the Tengiz oil field, one of the world's largest. In the mid-1990s agreements also were sought with foreign investors for the development of oil and natural gas from the Tengiz, Zhusan, Temir, and Kasashyganak wells. The profitability of such ventures rested principally on the establishment of new pipelines.

Agriculture

Farming occupies some one-fifth of the labour force, largely the Kazakh portion plus the Slavic wheat farmers of northern Kazakhstan. Kazakhs raise sheep, goats, cattle, and swine. The country produces cereal crops, potatoes, vegetables, melons and other fruits, sugar beets, and rice, as well as fodder and industrial crops. Nuclear contamination of soils near Semey-the result of Soviet weapons testing -has hindered agricultural development in the northeast.

Industry

Industry constitutes a prominent sector of the Kazakh economy, but it employs fewer than one-tenth of the indigenous Kazakhs. Manufacturing industries employing primarily Russian and Ukrainian workers produce cast iron, rolled steel, cement, chemical fertilizer, and consumer goods. Plants in Temirtaū and Qaraghandy produce steel. The country, with its nonferrous metallurgy concentrated in the east, is a major lead and copper producer. Kazakhstan's fuel production has increased with the extraction of coal from the Qaraghandy and Ekibastuz basins.

Meatpacking plants operate in many areas, but creameries exist chiefly in areas settled by Slavs in the north and east. Sugar refineries are located in the south in the Taldyqorghan (Taldy-Kurgan) and Almaty areas. Fruit and vegetable canning, grain milling, brewing, and wine making are among the light industries. Synthetic fibres come from a factory at Qaraghandy and pharmaceuticals from a plant in Shymkent (Chimkent).

Trade

Kazakhstan's main export commodities include oil and natural gas, various metals, and chemicals. Its primary export destinations are Italy, China, the Netherlands, and Russia. Imports include machinery, metal and chemical products, and foodstuffs. Russia and China are its main sources of imports.

Transportation

Railways carry most of the freight going long distances. The Trans-Siberian, South Siberian, and Kazakh (formerly Turkistan-Siberian) trunk lines cross Kazakhstan east to west, and the Orenburg line extends as far as Tashkent in the south. Air transport carries the bulk of passenger traffic, both domestic and regional. The international airport at Almaty offers service to Frankfurt (Germany), Istanbul, and other cities. The republic has an extensive network of oil pipelines between Atyraū and Orsk and Shymkent and Tashkent, as well as the Uzen-Zhetibay-Aqtaū pipeline from the west.
Edward Allworth

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Kazakhstan - Nomadic, Turkic, Diverse: Fewer than one-fifth of the more than eight million ethnic Kazakhs live outside Kazakhstan, mainly in Uzbekistan and Russia. During the 19th century about 400,000 Russians flooded into Kazakhstan, and these were supplemented by about 1,000,000 Slavs, Germans, Jews, and others who immigrated to the region during the first third of the 20th century.

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Ethnic groups

For centuries the Turkmens were divided into numerous tribes and clans, the largest being the Tekke, Ersari, and Yomut. Prior to the Russian Revolution most of the Turkmens were pastoral nomads, though during the 18th and 19th centuries many had settled in the oases and become agriculturalists. Their tribal organizations and loyalties were strong, and they often hired themselves out as mercenaries to various rulers in Central Asia and Iran. Turkmenistan's incorporation into the Soviet Union had the effect of bringing greater unity to the Turkmen tribes and of giving them the beginning of a sense of nationhood.

Turkmens make up more than four-fifths of the republic's population, up from three-fourths at the end of the 20th century and about two-thirds in 1970, largely because of a relatively high birth rate. There are smaller numbers of Russians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Tatars.

Language

The Turkmens speak a language belonging to the southwestern, or Oğuz, branch of the Turkic linguistic group. As such, Turkmen is more closely related to Turkish than it is to either Uzbek or Kazakh. Since 1993 it has been written in the Latin script. Russian is the primary language of nearly one-eighth of the population and is widely spoken as a second language, but its use has declined significantly since independence.

Religion

The vast majority of people in Turkmenistan are Muslim, mostly Sunni of the Ḥanafī school. Islam among the Turkmens has a notable tradition of being tempered and infused with folk practices and traditions. The government promotes secularism and keeps tight control over senior Muslim clergy in the country, and more fundamentalist interpretations of Islam are suppressed. The second largest religion is Russian Orthodox.

Settlement patterns

The population is distributed unevenly, with few people in the Karakum Desert and mountain regions but large numbers in the oases. With the development of the Turkmenistan economy during the Soviet period, many non-Turkmen skilled workers and scientific and technical intelligentsia immigrated to urban areas of the republic, though many have left since independence. Roughly half of the population of Turkmenistan lives in rural settlements and villages.

Demographic trends

The population of Turkmenistan is young. More than half of the population is under 30 years of age. A high birth rate in the decades after independence led to a population boom. The birth rate has since decreased significantly but remains higher than the global average. Life expectancy is about 74 for women and 68 for men.

Economy

Turkmenistan specializes in cotton growing and in the extraction of oil and natural gas. Turkmenistan's resources underground in the western plain and underwater along the Caspian Sea include extensive reserves of oil and natural gas as well as deposits of mirabilite, iodine, bromine, sulfur, potassium, and salt. The mountains and foothills contain dolomites and marl, which are used for fertilizing calcium-deficient soil.

Agriculture

The cultivation of fine-staple cotton and the raising of Karakul sheep, horses, and camels contribute most to the agricultural economy. The Karakul breed accounts for seventh-tenths of all sheep in the republic. There are several prized varieties of Karakul pelts: the glistening black arabi, the golden sur, and the silver-gray shirazi. The Akhal Teke and Yomut breeds of horses deserve their fame as handsome, fleet animals with great endurance. Arabian dromedary (one-humped) camels are indispensable in desert areas for transporting sheepherders, for drawing water from deep desert wells, and as a source of wool, milk, and meat.

Turkmenistan leads Central Asia as a producer of silkworm cocoons, primarily from the middle Amu Darya oasis. The lower Amu Darya oasis, lying in the Amu Darya delta, long supported one of the most important agricultural zones in Turkmenistan. Grown in the warm climate there are medium-staple cotton, alfalfa (lucerne), sweet sorghum, beans, kenaf, sesame, grapes, vegetables, and melons, and cattle and silkworms are raised. Serious problems, however, threaten the prosperity of this region. The disastrous decline in the Amu Darya's outflow, the effects of extreme pollution from pesticide and chemical runoff, and soil and water salinization resulting from the desiccation and shrinkage of the Aral Sea threaten to ruin the Amu Darya delta as an agricultural producer for Turkmenistan.

In less-populated western Turkmenistan, people raise sheep, goats, and camels and cultivate some grain and melons. In the south, near Tejen, lies the Badkhyz Nature Reserve with its pistachio woodlands. Pistachios also grow in the Serhetabat district, watered by a tributary of the Morghāb River, at Turkmenistan's southernmost point.

Resources and power

Petroleum deposits and the associated oil industry are centred in the Caspian plain in western Turkmenistan and in the offshore oil fields to the west of the Cheleken Peninsula in the Caspian Sea. Turkmenistan oil is of a very high grade, both as a fuel and as a raw material for chemical production. A network of pipelines links natural gas deposits in western Turkmenistan with Ashgabat, Türkmenbashy (Krasnovodsk), Cheleken, and the central regions of the republic. In December 2009 a 1,100-mile (1,800-km) natural gas pipeline linking Turkmenistan with China was opened; it was largely funded by the China Development Bank. Passing through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it was Turkmenistan's first high-volume export pipeline to completely circumvent Russia. Early the following year a new 19-mile (30-km) pipeline between Turkmenistan and Iran was opened, augmenting an older, smaller pipeline that continued deliveries to that country. Construction of a pipeline delivering natural gas from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (known by the acronym TAPI) began in 2018.

Thermal power stations using liquid fuel operate at Balkanabat, Ashgabat, Abadan (Bezmein), and Türkmenbashy, while a station at Mary burns natural gas. Hydroelectric plants include the Hindu Kush plant, as well as plants at Kaushtubent and at the Dashköpri Reservoir on the Morghāb River.

Manufacturing

The radical reconstruction of the republic's economy was completed by 1930. Old branches (cotton ginning, oil pressing, and carpet making) were retained, and new ones (heavy and light industry, such as food processing) emerged.

Significant in the chemical industry are the Türkmenabat superphosphate plant, mirabilite from the vicinity of the Garabogazköl (Kara-Bogaz-Gol), sulfur from Gaurdak, iodine and bromine factories on the Cheleken Peninsula, and the production of detergents at the Türkmenbashy oil refinery.

The republic's engineering and metal-processing enterprises include shops for repairing diesel locomotives, railcars, and agricultural machinery. Plants in Ashgabat and Mary produce oil-field and refinery equipment.

Silk-winding and silk-weaving mills, as well as cotton, cotton-wool, and worsted mills are important. Artificial furs, leather footwear, and sewn goods also are produced. Domestic industries, especially carpet and rug making, occupy an important place in the republic's economy. Turkmen carpets and rugs, long renowned for their durability and unique designs, are exported to more than 50 countries. Among Turkmen carpets well-known in the West are those made by the Tekke, Yomut, Salor, and Ersari Turkmens and called by those names. The food industry's most important branches include those producing vegetable oil, processing fish and meat, grinding flour, and making wine. Turkmenistan exports oil, butter, wine, fish, and salt to nearby countries.

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Turkmenistan - Nomadic, Desert, Ethnic Groups

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Turkmenistan - Nomadic, Desert, Ethnic Groups: For centuries the Turkmens were divided into numerous tribes and clans, the largest being the Tekke, Ersari, and Yomut. Prior to the Russian Revolution most of the Turkmens were pastoral nomads, though during the 18th and 19th centuries many had settled in the oases and become agriculturalists.

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Uzbekistan is among the world's leading cotton producers. It is known for its orchards and vineyards and is also important for raising Karakul sheep and silkworms. Uzbekistan's mineral and oil and gas reserves are substantial. The country produces and exports a large volume of natural gas. The central bank issues the national currency, the sum.

Resources

The country's resources include metallic ores; in the Olmaliq (Almalyk) mining belt in the Kurama Range, copper, zinc, lead, tungsten, and molybdenum are extracted. Uzbekistan possesses substantial reserves of natural gas, oil, and coal. The country consumes large amounts of its natural gas, and gas pipelines link its cities and stretch from Bukhara to the Ural region in Russia as well. Surveys show petroleum resources in the Fergana Valley (including major reserves in the Namangan area), in the vicinity of Bukhara, and in Karakalpakstan. The modern extraction of coal began to gain importance, especially in the Angren fields, only during World War II. Hydroelectric dams on the Syr Darya, the Naryn, and the Chirchiq rivers help augment the country's nuclear-, coal-, and petroleum-powered generation of electricity.

Centuries-old rumours of extensive gold deposits in Uzbekistan evidently arose from a basis in fact. Rich polymetallic ores have been found in the Ohangaron (Akhangaran) field southeast of Tashkent. Miners there extract copper, some gold, lead, molybdenum, tungsten, and zinc. A plant for heat-leaching gold from low-grade ore was built in the mid-1990s by a subsidiary of the Newmont Mining Corporation in the Muruntau field in the Kyzylkum Desert of north-central Uzbekistan. It was intended to be a joint venture with the government, but Newmont Mining Corporation's share was forfeited in a legal battle in 2007.

Uzbekistan requires greater water resources. By the early 1980s the government considered the shortage of water desperate. Officials in Moscow and Tashkent developed a plan to divert substantial amounts of water out of the Irtysh River far to the north into a pumped system that would aid in watering parts of lower Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The project was killed, however, before it began, leaving Uzbekistan with chronic water shortages.

Agriculture

Ample sunlight, mild winters of short duration, fertile irrigated soil, and good pastures make Uzbekistan suitable for cattle raising and the cultivation of cotton. Irrigation has fallen into disfavour owing to the depletion of the great rivers, and the construction of new irrigation systems has been prohibited or curtailed. Already existing grand canals include the Great Fergana, Northern Fergana, Southern Fergana, and Tashkent. Several large artificial lakes and reservoirs have been created on the Zeravshan and other rivers.

In addition to the high and stable cotton yield in this most northerly of the great cotton regions of the world, growers have raised silkworms systematically since the 4th century. The silkworms are fed mulberry leaves from the many trees planted along streets and ditches. The Fergana Valley is especially noted for silk production.

Varieties of melons, apricots, pomegranates, berries, apples, pears, cherries, and figs grow abundantly, as do vegetables such as carrots, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, and greens. Uzbekistan's grapes are made into wine or raisins or are eaten fresh. Fruits and vegetables are sold both in the bazaars of Tashkent, Samarkand, Fergana, and other localities and in trade with neighbouring states. Korean agriculturalists cultivate rice along the middle Syr Darya. Sheep are the principal livestock.

Industry

Uzbekistan is the main producer of machinery and heavy equipment in Central Asia. The republic manufactures machines and equipment for cotton cultivation, harvesting, and processing and for use in the textile industry, irrigation, and road construction. This emphasis on making machinery also makes ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy important. The first metallurgical plant began operation at Bekobod in 1946.

Light industry includes tea-packing plants and factories for garment making.

Trade

The leading exports from Uzbekistan consist largely of extracted natural resources or raw materials-cotton, natural gas, oil, coal, silk, fruit, and Karakul pelts. Some fresh produce reaches Moscow and other northern markets. Manufactured goods such as machines, cement, textiles, and fertilizer are also exported. Uzbekistan's largest sources of imports are China, Russia, South Korea, and Kazakhstan. Its main export destinations are Switzerland, China, Turkey, and Kazakhstan.

Transportation

The great obstacle to further development of markets for Uzbekistan's copious truck gardening and fruit growing remains the antiquated means of distribution. Neither the surface nor air transport now available can efficiently or with adequate refrigeration handle the volume produced in Uzbekistan and needed by the Baltic states, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Old railways connect the republic's major urban centres with other Central Asian republics and extend to Moscow and Siberia. Uzbekistan never had a domestic airline of its own until after independence in 1991, when former Soviet Aeroflot airplanes and their pilots were chartered to fly rather infrequently from such cities as Samarkand and Tashkent to nearby cities. Air service now connects Tashkent with London, New York, and other international cities.

Trucks transport most of the freight carried, and the roadways, like other facilities, require much repair-virtual reconstruction-and widening before they can support the modernizing economies that their builders once hoped to link with each other. The Great Uzbek Tashkent-Termiz Highway runs south almost to the border with Afghanistan. Termiz remains virtually a dead end in terms of trade, however, especially since the Soviet intervention (1979-89) in the Afghan War. A second road, the Zeravshan Highway, connects Samarkand with Chärjew, Turkmenistan, in the west. The Fergana Ring links the main settlements within the populous Fergana Valley.

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Uzbekistan - Agriculture, Industry, Trade

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Uzbekistan - Agriculture, Industry, Trade: Uzbekistan is among the world's leading cotton producers. It is known for its orchards and vineyards and is also important for raising Karakul sheep and silkworms. Uzbekistan's mineral and oil and gas reserves are substantial. The country produces and exports a large volume of natural gas.

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Trans-Siberian Railroad | Development | Articles and Essays | Meeting of Frontiers | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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In the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia underwent a period of extensive rail development that culminated in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Akin to the great railways to the Pacific in both the United States and Canada, Russia’s transcontinental line was intended to…

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Trans-Siberian Railroad, the longest single rail system in the world, stretching 5,771 miles (9,288 km) across Russia between Moscow and Vladivostok. If its connection to the port station of Nakhodka is also included, the system reaches a total of 5,867 miles (9,441 km). The Trans-Siberian Railroad has had a profound effect on the region of Siberia as well as great importance in the economic and military history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

The main track length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad between Moscow and Vladivostok spans eight time zones and involves a journey time of seven days. Its western terminus is the Yaroslavsky station in Moscow, although a connecting service can be used to go farther west to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Moving eastward from Moscow, the railroad's main route passes through Yekaterinburg and crosses the Ural Mountains before reaching Novosibirsk on the Ob River and then Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisey River. The route extends through Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude, following the southern shore of Lake Baikal between those cities, and then moves roughly in parallel to Russia's border with Mongolia and then China before arriving at Khabarovsk on the Amur River and, finally, at Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan (East Sea).

A secondary route of the Trans-Siberian Railroad branches out at Ulan-Ude. For trains traveling eastward, it heads south to Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, and onward to Beijing, China. This route is known as the Trans-Mongolian Railroad. A third route, the Trans-Manchurian Railroad, turns southeast after Lake Baikal and goes to the Chinese cities of Harbin and Mudanjiang before rejoining the main track just before Vladivostok. The Trans-Manchurian Railroad also provides service to P'yŏngyang, North Korea.

Throughout its history, Siberia has been subject to particularly harsh winter weather, and efforts to develop the region, beginning with Russian occupation of it during the 16th century, made little progress until well into the 19th century because of the absence of good roads. Horse-drawn sledges were the common mode of transport in winter, and in the summer months river navigation was used. Early attempts to set up a railway in the region were a response to the Russian Empire's colonization of Siberia. Colonizing forces had to either transport essentials from Russian lands in the west or import them from China and Korea. However, progress on building a railway was slow because of the Russian bureaucracy and because Siberia was not, at the time, considered commercially important enough to invest in new infrastructure.

Russia's focus during the later 19th century was on Central Asia, which was seen as a buffer zone between the Russian Empire and the British-ruled Indian subcontinent. Both powers engaged in the " Great Game " to consolidate their presence in Central Asia and to influence the many khanates of the region. The British advanced to Afghanistan, while the Russians eventually annexed the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara. Russia built the Trans-Caspian Railroad, which in 1888 reached Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan, putting Afghanistan at risk of Russian invasion.

Russia's focus shifted east under the vision of Sergei Witte, who, while working within the Russian ministry of finance, convinced Alexander III in 1891 to begin construction of what would become the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The intent was to extend Russian influence into East Asia and to capture global trade from British hands. The railway would allow merchandise and raw materials to be transported from Europe to the Pacific in half the time it took by sea. It would thus be attractive to traffic by other countries as well, threatening British domination on their traditional sea routes. So, too, the railway would allow the extraction of hitherto untapped resources in Siberia.

Work on the Trans-Siberian Railroad proceeded simultaneously in several sections. It was built concurrently in three stretches. The first stretch was the West Siberian Railroad from Chelyabinsk to the Ob River, completed in 1896. The second stretch, the Central Siberian Railroad, was from the Ob River to Irkutsk on the western shore of Lake Baikal; it was completed in 1899. The third stretch was the East Siberian Railroad from Ulan-Ude on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal to Vladivostok.

By early 1901 only about 1,240 miles (2,000 km) of the line remained to be built before a direct connection between Europe and the Pacific Ocean could be completed. But, due to Siberia's harsh climate and geological conditions, the line was continued via a southerly section through Manchuria in China. In 1903 this Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway was put into operation. Lake Baikal, however, was still a barrier: cargo and passengers had to cross the lake by ferry until a rail line around Lake Baikal was put into operation in 1905.

But the segment of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in Manchuria was to have consequences for Russia. In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion took place in China, targeting "foreign devils" and seeking to drive them out. Rebels in Manchuria had a specific grievance against the railroad, which they believed was responsible for upsetting the harmony of the region and causing droughts and flooding. The Russians moved 170,000 troops into Manchuria to protect their investment there, raising alarm in Japan over Russian intentions. Tensions were not eased by a new group of ministers in Moscow who had edged Witte out; they favoured a more aggressive foreign policy and refused to withdraw troops from Manchuria.

The Japanese attacked the Russian naval base at Port Arthur on the night of February 8-9, 1904, which was the start of the Russo-Japanese War. The war showcased the limitations of the railway, with its single-line route causing bottlenecks in the movement of troops and supplies. If one train with wounded troops was moving west, for instance, another train headed east with critical supplies had to wait at a station until the first had passed. After heavy losses in the 18-month war, Russia built a longer route, the Amur Railroad, to Vladivostok through its own territory so as to guard against the risk of Manchuria being taken over by the Japanese. In 1916 there was finally a Trans-Siberian Railroad wholly within Russian territory. Its completion marked a turning point in the history of Siberia, opening up vast areas to exploitation, settlement, and industrialization.

During the Russian Civil War that took place after the revolution in 1917, the Trans-Siberian Railroad was used by anticommunist forces to move troops, including Canadian reinforcements, westward from Vladivostok. Communist forces had to resort to blowing up bridges and sections of track to defeat them.

During World War II the nonaggression pact between the Germans and the Soviets enabled Nazi Germany to use the Trans-Siberian Railroad for the movement of goods to and from Japan. The railway also provided thousands of Jews a means of escaping Europe, using an eastward route to Vladivostok before sailing to the United States. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union and drove the Soviet Union to join the Allies, the railway allowed the U.S. to move much-needed supplies to the European front via the Pacific. The trans-Manchurian line came under full Chinese control only after World War II; it was renamed the Chinese Changchun Railway. During the Soviet era, a number of spur lines were built that radiated from the main trans-Siberian line. From 1974 to 1989 construction was completed on a large alternative route, the Baikal-Amur line; its route across the challenging environment of taiga, permafrost, and swamps made upkeep difficult. The Trans-Siberian Railroad was underused in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union but then saw a resurgence, due to improving economic conditions in Russia and tourism, at the turn of the millennium. Thawing permafrost due to climate change is, however, putting parts of the line at risk and leading to an increase in maintenance costs.

More than 85,000 people are estimated to have been involved in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. It remains the backbone of the Russian railway network, and today it is a double-track electrified line that has enabled millions of people to travel across Russia.

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Trans-Siberian Railroad | History, Map, Geography, & Facts

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The Trans-Siberian Railroad is the longest single rail system in the world, stretching across Russia between Moscow and Vladivostok. It had great importance in the economic, military, and imperial history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

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Crop Explorer for Major Crop Regions - United States Department of Agriculture

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By far the greater part of Asia remains uncultivated, primarily because climatic and soil conditions are unfavourable. Conversely, in the best growing areas an extraordinarily intensive agriculture is practiced, made possible by irrigating the alluvial soils of the great river deltas and valleys. Of the principal crops cultivated, rice, sugarcane, and, in Central Asia, sugar beets require the most water. Legumes, root crops, and cereals other than rice can be grown even on land watered only by natural precipitation.

The traditional method of irrigation in Asia is by gravity water flow. The water from upstream storage reservoirs or diversion dams is carried through canals to field distributaries. In some systems the fields adjoin one another, and the water is able to flow from one field to the next; it may, however, take some time for the water to move across the fields back to the canal system. The disadvantages of this system include water loss by evaporation and seepage and the possibility that the continuously flowing water will carry with it soil nutrients, fertilizers, and pesticides. In Japan and Taiwan water is moved by small electric pumps, which operate continuously during the growing seasons.

Increasing attention has been given to pumping underground water. The use of ordinary pumps as well as of deep-bore well turbine pumps has become common, especially in India, Pakistan, and Iran. Such irrigation avoids some of the disadvantages of flow irrigation and allows for easier drainage.

The most important modern development in Asian agriculture has been the introduction of new high-yielding strains of cereals. Several Asian countries have utilized this technology, and the yield per acre for cereals has increased substantially since the late 1960s. These improved yields can be attributed to partnership between international organizations, such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, and national agricultural research stations. Thus, in the case of rice, countries have adapted the IRRI strains to local conditions and have implemented their own seed improvement programs and extension (advisory) services to farmers. Access to a reliable water supply has been crucial to the new agricultural technology, which has also required using fertilizer in conjunction with the improved cereal seeds that have been developed. Huge irrigation projects in southern Siberia, Central Asia, and Pakistan have been rapidly altering traditional agricultural patterns.

Principal crops

Cereals and grains

Rice is the staple food crop for most Asians. Asia produces some 90 percent of the world's total supply of rice. Except in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Siberia, Central Asia, and Malaysia, rice occupies more land area than any other single crop. The total proportion of land under rice cultivation, as compared with total arable land, is highest in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka; it varies between one-fourth and half in most Asian countries outside the Middle East, Central Asia, and Siberia. In spite of this, many countries (among them Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) are not self-sufficient in rice. Thailand, Pakistan, and Vietnam are notable rice exporters.

The black-earth (chernozem) belt across southern Siberia is cultivated with several grains, of which wheat is the most important. Wheat is also the dominant crop in Central Asia (notably Kazakhstan), the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Grain crops, chiefly wheat, are cultivated in North China-where soybeans are also grown-and in Japan. Barley is grown in China and India, among other countries. Corn (maize) is raised in China, Siberia, Central Asia, India, the Philippines, Thailand, North Korea, and other countries. India, China, Pakistan, and Central Asia also grow sorghum and millet. Intensive use of water resources from wells and from river-fed irrigation systems has enabled grain crops to be raised in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and northern India.

Fruits and vegetables

The continent produces a variety of tropical and subtropical fruit, mainly for domestic consumption. Transport facilities, where available, can be used only for limited distances. In view of the climatic conditions and the general lack of refrigerated transport, consumption tends to be seasonal and confined to areas close to centres of production. Among the main varieties of fruit produced are bananas, mangoes, apples, oranges and other citrus fruits, pineapples, papayas, and some specialities such as mangosteen (a dark reddish brown fruit), litchi (a grape-shaped fruit in a brittle red rind), and durian (a large oval fruit with a prickly rind, a soft pulp, and a distinctive odour). Citrus fruit is produced in the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea, in Transcaucasia, and in China and Japan. Taiwan, the Philippines, and Malaysia export bananas to Japan.

Except in a few countries-such as the Philippines, Taiwan, and Malaysia, which grow and can pineapples for export- canning surplus fruit has been developed only to a limited extent. In view of the tremendous potential for greater fruit production, it is possible to increase canning of both fruits and fruit juices for export.

The same factors affect the production of vegetables. Vegetables are grown mainly for local consumption, and only tubers can be transported over distances and stored for any period of time. Taiwan has had success canning mushrooms and asparagus, and both products have become leading exports.

Cash crops

Asia is noted for several plantation cash crops, of which the most important are tea, rubber, palm oil, coconuts, and sugarcane. Jute, a commercial fibre, though it has decreased in significance, remains a major export crop of Bangladesh. Cotton is important to the states of Central Asia and is also a major crop in India and Pakistan. Rubber was brought to Asia from Brazil in the 19th century; the major producers are Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, with lesser amounts from India, China, and the Philippines. Palm oil has become important in Indonesia and Malaysia. Tea is grown on commercial plantations in the uplands of India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia; and China, Taiwan, and Japan produce several types of tea on smallholdings. Coconuts are an important crop in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka. India, the world's leader in sugarcane production, grows primarily for domestic use, whereas the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan produce for both domestic consumption and export. Tobacco is grown widely, notably in China, India, Turkey, Central Asia, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Date palms are cultivated, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula. Licorice is grown in Turkey. A large variety of spices are grown in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia.

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Asia - Farming, Crops, Irrigation: By far the greater part of Asia remains uncultivated, primarily because climatic and soil conditions are unfavourable. Conversely, in the best growing areas an extraordinarily intensive agriculture is practiced, made possible by irrigating the alluvial soils of the great river deltas and valleys.

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Learning Objectives

1. Understand that Central Asia is a landlocked region that receives little rainfall and has to rely on water from major rivers flowing from the mountains in the east.

2. Summarize how Central Asia has been transitioning from a Soviet-dominated region to independent states and what has been occurring in the various states to adapt to the new economic environment.

3. Describe how the Aral Sea has been affected by the practices of water use in the region and the environmental consequences that have resulted from water use policies.

4. Explain the geopolitical history of Afghanistan and why this area has been so difficult to govern under a central government.

5. Learn why there is continual conflict in Afghanistan between Western military forces and local Taliban insurgents.

6. Understand the principle that globalization of the economy forces political units to compete over natural resources.

Central Asia (a.k.a. Turkestan)

Central Asia is a region in the Asian continent that extends from the mountains of western China to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Pakistan and Iran create the southern border of the region, and the vast expanse of Russia is to the north. Afghanistan is considered a part of the region even though it was never a formal part of the Soviet Union. Central Asia was located on what was known as the Silk Road between Europe and the Far East and has long been a crossroads for people, ideas, and trade.

Central Asia has an extremely varied geography, including high mountain passes through vast mountain ranges, such as the Tian Shan, Hindu Kush, and the Pamirs. The region is also home to the vast Kara Kum and Kyzyl Kum Deserts, which dominate the interior with extensive spans of sand and desolation. The expansive treeless, grassy steppes that surround the desert regions are considered an extension of the steppes of Eastern Europe. Some geographers think of the Eurasian Steppes as one single, homogenous geographical zone.

Under the sand and prairie grasses lay the some of the most extensive untapped reserves of gas and oil on the planet. Natural resources are the main attraction of the region driving the economic forces that determine the development patterns of individual countries. Multinational corporations have vigorously stepped up their activity in the region.

The political systems are adjusting from the old Soviet Union's socialist policies to new democratic systems that are subject to high levels of authoritarian rule and corruption in business and politics.

The five countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan were part of the former Soviet Union until its breakup in 1991. Today, with Afghanistan, they are independent countries that make up the region called Central Asia. The term stan means "land of," so, for example, Uzbekistan is the land of the Uzbeks. Central Asia is also referred to as because of the Turkish influence in the region. The people of Turkey did not originate from the Middle East; they originated from northern Asia. They swept through Central Asia and dominated the region on their way to the Middle East. The Turkish language and heritage have had the most significant impact on the people of Central Asia. Turkmenistan's name is another reminder of the Turkish connection; it means "the land of the Turkmen."

Most of the groups of Central Asia were nomadic peoples who rode horses and herded livestock on the region's vast steppes. This way of life continued until the 1920s, when the Soviet Union forced many of the groups to abandon their lifestyle and settle on collective farms and in cities. Most of the people of Central Asia continue to identify culturally with their nomadic past. Central Asians who live in cities often demonstrate a mix of local and Russian culture in terms of dress and food because of the large influx of Russian populations in the region. More than six million Russians and Ukrainians were resettled into Central Asia during Soviet rule. Russian is often used as a lingua franca.

One of the primary ways in which people distinguish themselves culturally is through religious practices. Despite the area being part of the Soviet Union, where religious activities were discouraged, Islam was and still is the dominant religion. Most Central Asian Muslims are Sunnis.

Kazakhstan

The traditional people of Kazakhstan, who share a Mongol and Turkic heritage, moved into the Central Asia region sometime after 1200 CE. The expansion of the Russian Empire under the tsars integrated Kazakhstan and its neighbors, which eased their transition when the tsarist system of Russian government gave way to the Soviet Union. The influx of Russian people and culture had a major influence on Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, thereby creating the world's largest landlocked nation. It is the ninth-largest state on the planet in terms of square miles and is larger in physical area than of all of Western Europe. This vast land is host to a wide variety of physical landscapes, including the high, snow-capped peaks of the ranges on the Chinese border. The western portions are lowlands bordering the Caspian Sea. The seemingly endless grasslands of the interior are one of the largest steppe regions in the world. The steppe region has a semiarid type B climate. A large portion of southern Kazakhstan is desert, including the northern regions of the Kyzyl Kum Desert. Colder type D climates are found in the northern regions of the country.

The steppe produces grain in large quantities and other agricultural products, while the productive mining of minerals adds to the national wealth. Kazakhstan ranks high in the mining of many metals and uranium. Even diamonds are found here. Oil and natural gas extraction accounts for the largest sector of the country's economy and generates the largest export income. The Tengiz basin around the northeast shores of the Caspian Sea is home to extensive petroleum reserves. Oil pipelines are expanding to transport the oil to port locations and other countries, including China. The economy of Kazakhstan has been larger than the economies of all the other Central Asian states combined.

Kazakhstan also has a forward capital. During the Soviet era, the capital was located in the southeast at Almaty, but after gaining independence in 1991, the capital was moved north to Astana to ensure that the Russian-dominated northeast would be monitored against devolutionary forces that desiring to secede and become part of the Russian Republic.

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan physically borders all the Central Asian countries. It is the most populous Central Asian country, with a population that exceeds twenty-seven million. Uzbekistan's eastern boundary extends deep into Kyrgyzstan territory. The boundary lines were created during the Soviet era to provide the central government with more control over its republics by politicizing enclaves to their benefit. Geographers call Uzbekistan a doubly landlocked nation because all the countries that surround it are also landlocked. The main source of fresh water comes from the Eastern Highland regions. The main rivers have been heavily diverted for irrigation and are often depleted before reaching their destination at the Aral Sea.

Cotton is the main agricultural crop. Uzbekistan is one of the top producers of cotton in the world and is a major exporter to world markets. The central and western regions have mainly arid desert climates and rely heavily on the fresh water flowing in from the mountains. Agriculture employs a full one-fourth of the population and accounts for one-fourth of the gross domestic product (GDP). The extraction of gold, minerals, and fossil fuels are also prime economic activities. The country has been transitioning from the old Soviet Union's command economy, which was controlled by the central government, to a market economy competing in a global marketplace.

Uzbekistan is a country of young people: about one-third of the population is under the age of fifteen. Education was heavily emphasized during the Soviet era; as a result, about 99 percent of the population is literate-though about one-third of the people still live in poverty. Islam emerged in this country after Uzbekistan won its independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. In a culture of openness, Islam has risen in prominence to the point that approximately 88 percent of Uzbeks profess Islamic beliefs. The most commonly spoken language is Persian/Farsi.

Samarkand and the country's capital city, Tashkent, are located in the eastern core region, which is home to most of the population. Tashkent has an unofficial population of more than three million people. The city, which sits on the confluence of a local river and its tributaries, started as a caravanserai, or oasis for trade, along the Silk Road. Samarkand is Uzbekistan's second-largest city and is most noted as the central city of the Silk Road as well as an important historical city for Islamic scholars. In 2001, UNESCO declared this 2,750-year-old city a World Heritage Site. It is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and has been one of the more important cities in Central Asia. The historical architecture is heavily influence by Islamic styles from Iran. The region around Bukhara, Uzbekistan's fifth-largest city, has been occupied for at least the last five thousand years. Bukhara was another important city on the Silk Road and is known for its Asian carpet and textile industry. This region has been an important cultural, economic, and scholarly center for most of its known existence.

Aral Sea Environmental Disaster

Central Asia's shrinking Aral Sea is shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The sea was once the fourth-largest body of water in the world, but it has been reduced to a fraction of its original area. In 1960, the Aral Sea covered about 26,254 square miles, an area larger than the size of the US state of West Virginia. By 2009, the sea covered less than 10 percent of the same area. The entire eastern portion of the sea has become a sand desert, complete with the deteriorating hulls of abandoned fishing vessels. The loss of water is approximately equivalent to the complete draining of both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in North America.

The water loss escalated when the Syr Darya River, which flowed into the northern part of the sea, and the Amu Darya River, which flowed into the southern side of the sea, were diverted for the irrigation of cotton and other crops. At about 1,500 miles long, the Amu Darya is the region's longest river. Its source is the high mountain streams and lakes of the Pamir Mountains. Environmental problems were further exacerbated by the extensive use of pesticides and fertilizers in agricultural processes. The chemicals contaminated the water flowing into the Aral Sea. Once the water dried up in the sea, the winds carried the buildup of chemicals and salt from the dry seabed over the land, causing serious health-related problems in the nearby human population. Cancer and respiratory illness rates continue to be higher than normal. Water and land pollution is a serious problem. Even the climate around the Aral Sea has changed gradually because of the loss of water from evaporation for precipitation. The climate is getting warmer in the summer and colder in the winter. The moderating affect that this large body of water had on its surrounding area is no longer as prominent as it once was.

The decline of the Aral Sea has destroyed habitats and the local economy. The fishing industry, which employed more than sixty thousand people, has been devastated. The remaining western portion of the sea has a rising salt content that is contributing to the decline of the fish population. Adding to the environmental devastation, the Soviets conducted biological weapons experiments on an island that was once in the middle of the Aral Sea. Hazardous wastes such as anthrax and toxic chemicals contaminated the land and found their way into the sea. Efforts have been made to marginalize the environmental damage of the contamination, but the damage has not been completely ameliorated. The sea has historically been an important environmental location for wildlife. It is located in a major flyway for migratory waterfowl in Central Asia and served as an important habitat. The deterioration of the Aral Sea and the destruction of habitat for waterfowl and other organisms is one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes. The fact that the Aral Sea is located in a region that is not part of the core economic area of the global community has rendered it "out of sight and out of mind" by entities that could potentially provide economic support.

In the northern portion of the Aral Sea, called the Little Aral Sea, there has been some success in abating the deterioration of this once-thriving environmental habitat. A major dam has been constructed that partitions off the Little Aral Sea, causing water from the Syr Darya River to increase the water level of the Little Aral Sea and reduce the salt content. Canals, dikes, and irrigation processes have been updated to reduce the loss of water and increase the amount that flows into the northern section. The development efforts have caused the water level to rise and therefore have reinvigorated the once-struggling fishing industry. The efforts have been undertaken by Kazakhstan's government, which controls the Little Aral Sea.

A major part of the southern portion of the once thriving sea is located in Uzbekistan, which has not contributed the economic attention necessary to halt the sea's continued deterioration. The remaining western portion of the Uzbekistan side of the Aral Sea will continue to shrink if measures are not taken to address the loss of water from the Amu Darya River. The eastern side was completely dry by 2009. Uzbekistan has responded to the situation by contracting out to various multinational oil companies from Korea, China, and Russia to explore for oil beneath the dry seabed.

The demise of the Aral Sea was caused in part by the diversion of water from its northern inlet, the Syr Darya River. At the other end of the Syr Darya River an additional factor augmented the lack of water flow: the Soviet Union placed a dam on the river and allowed the overflow from the dam to flow into low-lying dry pans, creating artificial lakes. As a result, Aydar Lake was created and became the second-largest lake in Uzbekistan. Various species of fish were introduced and the lake became a major source for commercial fishing. Hundreds of tons of fish are harvested annually. Just as fishing was declining in the Aral Sea, the fishing industry was growing at Aydar Lake.

Turkmenistan

To the south of the Amu Darya River is the desert country of Turkmenistan, which extends from the Caspian Sea to Afghanistan in the east. Turkmenistan is slightly larger in physical area than the US state of California. Roughly 80 percent of the country is covered by the Kara Kum Desert, which is among the driest in the world. The southern mountains along the Iranian and Afghan border reach as high as 10,290 feet in elevation. Water from the Amu Darya River has been diverted by the seven-hundred-mile-long Kara Kum Canal through Turkmenistan to help grow cotton and other agricultural products.

The transition from a Soviet republic to an independent state in 1991 brought many changes. The former leader of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Saparmurat Niyazov, who went by the name Turkmenbashi (leader of the Turkmen people), dominated the presidency for fifteen years. Through his authoritarian rule, he promoted a traditional culture-with Islam as the predominant religion-and was notorious for developing a cult of personality. For example, he changed all the names of the days of the week and the months of the year to his name, the names of his family members, and the names of Turkmen heroes or famous people. Turkmenbashi's image was printed on the currency, and large posters of him could be seen throughout the country. His book on important concepts, the Ruhnama ( The Book of the Soul), was to be read by all schoolchildren and the public. After his death in 2006, many of his actions were reversed. The country continues to transition to a stable democratic state, though many of the same dynamics of corruption and authoritarian rule remain.

Turkmenistan is blessed with the fourth-largest natural gas reserves in the world; the top three are Russia, Iran, and the United States. The income from natural gas exports has become the country's greatest means of gaining wealth. Because Turkmenistan is landlocked, its government has been forced to partner with Russia to use of Russia's pipelines to export the natural gas. Not wishing to rely on Russia's monopoly on the pipelines, Turkmenistan developed an additional pipeline to China to help boost income and profits. Many international corporations are seeking to do business in Turkmenistan and Central Asia to corner a piece of the vast natural resources. Corporate colonialism is extremely active and has contributed to a high level of corruption in the government and the business sector. It is unclear how much of the country's wealth filters down to most of the population. Over the past decade, unemployment rates have exceeded 50 percent, and more than half the population lives below the poverty line.

The administrative center and largest city of Turkmenistan is its capital, Ashgabat, which has a population of about one million. Ashgabat lies between the Kara Kum Desert and the mountains near the former Silk Road. In the historic region of Central Asia, it is comparatively a very young town, having grown out of a small village founded in 1818. Ashgabat is primarily a government and administrative center, although it has thriving cotton, textile, and metalworking industries. Ashgabat is also a popular stop along the Trans-Caspian Railway.

Kyrgyzstan

Local groups in the mountains of Central Asia make up the population of Kyrgyzstan. The forty rays of sun on the country's flag symbolize of the legendary forty tribes of Manas that represent the nation. The rugged landscape of this mountainous land includes the high ranges of the Tian Shan Mountains, which can reach elevations as high as 24,400 feet and cover about 80 percent of the country. Snowfall from the mountains provides fresh water for agriculture as well as hydroelectric energy. Food crops can be grown in the valleys and the few lowland areas. Half the population works in agriculture, and self-sufficiency in food production is a major objective for survival. The mountains hold deposits of metals and minerals that have a strong potential for adding to the national wealth. Oil and natural gas reserves are also available for exploitation. The government is seeking foreign aid and investments to help develop these resources.

In 2009, Kyrgyzstan had a population of about 5.4 million in a land area about the size of the US state of South Dakota. About 30 percent of the population is under the age of fifteen, and about 36 percent of the population is urban. The western boundary with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan is winding and creates various small and of people from one country surrounded by people of another country and separated from their home nations.

Kyrgyzstan's transition from a Soviet republic to independence was not smooth. The loss of the state social safety net pushed the economy further to the informal sector, where trading and small transactions for personal survival are common. Shortages of consumer goods occur in rural areas and small towns. Kyrgyzstan is an isolated country that has been working to integrate itself into the global economy through technology and modernization. In 2010, clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz brought about riots in the streets of major cities, resulting in more than two hundred casualties and three hundred thousand displaced citizens. After the situation cooled down, the government worked to stabilize itself with new leadership.

A form of improvisational oral poetry, which allegedly dates back to more than one thousand years ago, is an aspect of traditional culture that has been preserved. While common throughout the region, it is mainly found in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Practitioners will often engage in "lyrical battles" of folklore. These poets, often accompanied by two- or three-stringed instruments, will recite the Manas, an epic poem of Kyrgyzstan that details the life of the Kyrgyzstan hero Manas. This epic tale is a renowned part of the culture and festivals of Kyrgyzstan.

Tajikistan

The eastern region of Central Asia has some of the highest mountain ranges in the world; about 90 percent of Tajikistan is mountainous, and more than half the country is 10,000 feet in elevation or higher. Ranges of the Himalayas extend from the south all the way to the western border with China. The Pamirs is a mountain range located where the Tian Shan, Karakorum, and Hindu Kush mountain ranges meet in Tajikistan, an area referred to as the Pamir Knot, or the roof of the world. Elevations in the Pamirs often exceed 24,500 feet. The Pamirs is the source of the Amu Darya River and is home to the longest glacier outside the polar regions (forty-eight miles long in 2009). There is great potential for hydroelectric power generation, and Tajikistan is developing the world's highest dam.

Tajikistan has the smallest physical area of any country in Central Asia but has a population of about 7.3 million. Only about one-fourth of the population is urban, and one-third of the population is younger than fifteen years of age. There is less ethnic or religious diversity; 80 percent of the people are ethnically Tajik and are Sunni Muslims. Though it has natural resources similar in quantity to those in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan's economy is not advanced enough to fully take advantage of its economic potential. Half the labor base works abroad and sends remittances back to their families for economic support. Unemployment is high, and job opportunities have not been able to keep up with demand.

Dushanbe, the capital and largest city of Tajikistan, is situated on the confluence of two local rivers and is famous for its Monday markets ( Dushanbe means "Monday" in Tajik). Dushanbe, like Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, was originally a small village; it became an administrative center for the region when the Soviet army conquered the area in 1929. Similar to many of the other cities and regions in Central Asia, the Soviets transformed the political and economic landscape and made Dushanbe a center for cotton and silk production. The Soviets also transformed the cultural and ethnic makeup of the city by relocating tens of thousands of people from Russia and other regions of Central Asia to Dushanbe.

The transition from a Soviet Republic to an independent country in 1991 was difficult for Tajikistan. From 1992 to 1997, a bitter civil war between regional factions killed more than fifty thousand people. Political instability and corruption has hampered the growth of a market economy, and political power remains in the hands of the economic elite. Debt restructuring with Russia and an infusion of development loans from China have aided the ailing economy. Aid from the US helped fund a thirty-six-million-dollar bridge linking Tajikistan and Afghanistan, which opened in August 2007. US aid has also contributed to infrastructure development designed to help US military operations in Afghanistan and in the region as a whole. Countries such as Russia, China, and the United States are all looking to gain an advantage with their ties to Tajikistan to exploit the region's natural resources.

Afghanistan

Present-day Afghanistan has been conquered by the likes of Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and the Mogul Empire and was a buffer zone for colonial feuds between Russia and British India. The high central mountain range of the Hindu Kush dominates the country and leaves a zone of well-watered fertile plains to the north and a dry desert region to the south. Afghanistan is a remote region without access to the sea and acts as a strategic link between the Middle East and the Far East.

The Soviet Invasion and the Taliban

In 1979, the Soviet Union took advantage of ongoing ethnic warfare in Afghanistan to inject itself into the country. The Soviets pushed in from the north and occupied much of Afghanistan until they completely withdrew in 1989. During the Soviet occupation, the United States supported anti-Communist resistance groups such as the Mujahideen with money, arms, and surface-to-air missiles. The missiles were instrumental in taking out Soviet aircraft and MiG fighters, which caused a critical shift in the balance of power in the war. One of the major connections between the for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Mujahideen was a Saudi national named Osama bin Laden. Support from the CIA through bin Laden to the Mujahideen was instrumental in defeating the Soviets.

The power vacuum left by the retreating Soviets allowed conflicts to reemerge between the many ethnic factions in Afghanistan. Dozens of languages are spoken in Afghanistan; the top two are Pashtu and Afghan Persian-Dari. There are also a dozen major ethnic groups; the top two are Pashtun and Tajik. The groups regularly fight among themselves, but they have also been known to form alliances. Rural areas are usually led by clan leaders who are not part of any official arm of a national government. Afghanistan is a place where forming any national unity or identity is not easy. The national government in the capital city of Kabul has little influence in the country's rural regions.

The Soviet invasion brought the internally warring factions together for a short period to focus on the Soviet threat. Chaos and anarchy thrived after the Soviet forces withdrew, but the Islamic fundamentalist group known as the came forward to fill the power vacuum. One objective of the Taliban was to use Islam as a unifying force to bring the country together. The problem with that concept was that there was much diversity in how Islam was practiced by the numerous local groups. Many of the factions in Afghanistan opposed the Taliban; one such group being the Northern Alliance, which was an association of groups located in the northern portion of the country. The civil war between the Taliban and those that opposed them resulted in the deaths of more than fifty thousand people by 1996 when the Taliban emerged to take power in Kabul. The Taliban is a Sunni Muslim group that adheres to strict Islamic laws under the Wahhabi branch of the faith similar to that of Saudi Arabia. Under Taliban rule, women were removed from positions in hospitals, schools, and work environments and had to wear burkas (also spelled burqas) and be covered from head to toe, including a veil over their faces. Violators were either beaten or shot. The Taliban brought a sense of militant order to Kabul and the regions under their control. Various factions such as the Northern Alliance did not share the Taliban's strict Islamic views and continued to oppose their position in power.

Al-Qaeda and the US Invasion

After the war against the Soviet Union was over, the US role in Afghanistan diminished. The groups that the United States had supported continued to vie for power in local conflicts. Osama bin Laden remained in Afghanistan and established training camps for his version of an anti-Western resistance group called . Just as he had opposed the Soviet Union, he now opposed the United States, even though the United States had supported him against the Soviets. The Saudi government allowed the United States to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf War, and this was one reason for bin Laden's opposition; he believed that non-Muslims should not be on the same ground as the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

The 9-11 attack in New York City was traced back to al-Qaeda and bin Laden, who was residing in Afghanistan at the time. In a military action dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom , the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, removed the Taliban from power, and dismantled the al-Qaeda training camps. Although bin Laden escaped, the terror of the Taliban was temporarily reduced. Women were allowed to return to the workplace, and the rebuilding of the country became a priority. The country was devastated by war and is divided by the human geography because of the various ethnic and traditional groups. Afghanistan is one of the most impoverished places on Earth. The armed conflicts in Afghanistan did not end with the US invasion. After regrouping, the Taliban rallied its supporters on the Pakistani side of the border and returned to the fighting front in Afghanistan against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and US forces.

Fighting between Western forces and the Taliban in Afghanistan continued to provide the exiled bin Laden a platform to promote his al-Qaeda terrorist activities from his hiding place. Efforts to locate and marginalize bin Laden continued through to the US presidency of Barack Obama. In May of 2011, on orders from President Obama, a team of US Navy Seals were sent into the city of Abottabad, Pakistan, to a private compound where intelligence indicated that bin Laden was hiding. In the confrontation, the US Navy Seal team killed bin Laden. The entire operation was conducted without the awareness of the Pakistani government. This event may have impacted al-Qaeda but has not likely diminished the fighting in Afghanistan.

The country is the world's largest producer of opium, a product extracted from a poppy plant seedpod that can also be refined into heroin. The expanding poppy cultivation as well as a growing drug trade may account for one-third of the country's income. More than 80 percent of the heroin consumed in Europe is grown in Afghanistan. The drug trade has only multiplied the problems in this devastated country. Prudent and effective methods for the government to address the drug trade are matters for debate and negotiation. Most of the country is ruled by warlords and clan leaders who have few resources other than tradition and custom. Afghanistan's infrastructure has been destroyed through warfare, and its government is dependent on foreign aid; without it, this country cannot recover to integrate itself with the global economy. Central Asia has enormous oil and natural gas reserves, and the core economic regions of the world will continue their work to extract these resources for economic gain.

Operation Enduring Freedom

The US Department of Defense issued an official statement on Afghanistan in 2008 (Source DoD 2008):

Democratic elections were held for the office of president in Afghanistan beginning in October of 2004. Hamid Karzai was the country's first elected president in the twentieth century. He was reelected as president in 2009 under the cloud of claims of election fraud. The right to vote was restored to women in the 2004 election. To combat voter fraud, people would dip their fingers in ink to indicate they had voted and to ensure they did not vote more than once. Voting has not been a smooth process because democratic rule is new to Afghanistan. Afghanistan's future is insecure. Most of Afghanistan is still ruled by warlords and clan leaders. The Taliban has sustained its support in Afghanistan from bases on the Pakistani side of the border, and United Nations (UN) and NATO troops continue to confront the Taliban and work toward stability. Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, is located in the south, an area where support for the Taliban is stronger than it is in Kabul in the north.

Resources and Globalization

In 2010, a US government report indicated that vast amounts of mineral wealth were discovered in Afghanistan by American geologists and Pentagon officials. Enormous deposits of iron, copper, gold, cobalt, and rare industrial minerals such as lithium are reported to be present in Afghanistan. Total reserves are unknown or have not been released but if extracted would result in trillions of dollars of economic gain for the country. Lithium is highly sought after and is used in the manufacturing of batteries, computers, and electronic devices. The report indicated that Afghanistan could become the world's premier mining country.

Discovery of vast resources helps place the war in Afghanistan in perspective with respect to global competition over the control of resources. It has been reported that China has already offered millions of dollars in incentive money to Afghan government officials to allow its country to mine copper. Bribery and corruption in the Afghan government is a serious impediment to a stable political environment, but criminal activities are projected to persist and swell with the potential for additional mining wealth. Afghanistan does not have a long-standing tradition of mining. Agriculture has been the main focus of economic activity for the rural communities. A newfound potential for mineral wealth will change the future of Afghanistan. It will be interesting to watch how Afghanistan adapts to and benefits from the discovery of previously unknown resources.

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Understand that Central Asia is a landlocked region that receives little rainfall and has to rely on water from major rivers flowing from the mountains in the east. Summarize how Central Asia has been transitioning from a Soviet-dominated region to independent states and what has been occurring in the various states to adapt to the new economic environment.

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A market economy is an economy where private and public ownership of businesses are commonplace. Most countries in the world have some form of market economy.

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A market for a particular security in which buying and selling is difficult, usually because a large part of the issue is held by very few people or institutions.

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Key Takeaways

How Command Economies Work

In a modern, centrally planned command economy, the government creates a central economic plan. The government may establish a five-year plan, for example, that sets economic and societal goals for every sector and region of the country. Shorter-term plans convert the goals into actionable objectives.

The government allocates all resources according to the central plan. It tries to use the nation's capital, labor, and natural resources in the most efficient way possible.

Note

The central plan sets the priorities for the production of all goods and services. That includes quotas and price controls. The goal is to supply enough food, housing, and other basics to meet the needs of everyone in the country. The central plan also sets national priorities on issues like mobilizing for war.

The government owns monopoly businesses in industries deemed essential to the goals of the economy, including finance, utilities, and automotive sectors. That means a key feature of a command economy is a lack of domestic competition in any sectors that are under government control.

The government creates laws, regulations, and directives to enforce the central plan. Businesses follow the plan's production and hiring targets. They can't respond on their own to free-market forces.

Examples of Command Economies

Consider these examples of command economies:

Belarus: This former Soviet satellite is still a command economy. The government owns 80% of the country's businesses and 75% of its banks as of 2022.

China: After World War II, Mao Tse Tung created a society ruled by Communism. He enforced a strictly planned economy. The current leaders are moving toward a market-based system. They continue to create five-year plans to outline economic goals and objectives.

Cuba: Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution installed Communism and a planned economy. The Soviet Union subsidized Cuba's economy until 1990. The government is slowly incorporating market reforms to spur growth.

Iran: The government controls wide swathes of the economy through a mix of direct and indirect state control. This control has created inefficiencies and recessions, and sanctions from the international community worsened these hardships. These sanctions ended in 2015 under a nuclear trade deal, before being reimposed by the U.S. in 2018 after President Trump pulled out of the deal.

Libya: The Libyan economy is almost entirely dependent upon the oil and gas sector, and most Libyans work for the government.

North Korea: For decades, North Korea has had one of the world's most centrally planned economies. The U.S. government considers North Korea's industrial capital stock to be nearly beyond repair due to mismanagement, underinvestment, and material shortages. Citizens of North Korea face ongoing famine and starvation issues.

Russia: In 1917, Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution created the first Communist command economy. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was also the longest-running command economy, lasting from the 1930s until the late 1980s. Since the fall of the USSR, the Russian state has transferred ownership of the largest companies to oligarchs.

Note

Development of the Theory

Viennese economist Otto Neurath developed the concept of a command economy after World War I. Neurath proposed it as a way to control hyperinflation. The phrase "command economy" comes from the German word "Befehlswirtschaft." It described the fascist Nazi economy.

While the word stems from Nazi Germany, centrally planned economies existed long before that. Any time a government imposes control over industries rather than letting market forces dictate economics, then that's an example of a command economy. Even the U.S., which traditionally values free-market economics, has used some features of command economies, such as directing materials to war efforts during World War II.

Economic Freedoms Around the World

Below you can see national rankings by the level of economic freedom, from the freest to the most controlled.

Pros and Cons of a Command Economy

Pros Explained

Speed: One key advantage of planned economies is that the government can quickly mobilize economic resources on a large scale. They can execute massive projects, create industrial power, and meet social goals. They aren't slowed down by lawsuits from individuals or environmental impact statements.

Unity: Command economies can wholly transform societies to conform to the government's vision. The new administration can nationalize private companies and impose laws on citizens as needed to ensure that the entire country works in unity toward a specific goal. Workers may receive new jobs based on the government's assessment of their skills and how they can best work in unity with other aspects of the economy.

Cons Explained

Ignores consumer preferences: This rapid mobilization often means command economies mow down other societal needs. For example, the government tells workers what jobs they must fulfill, and this discourages them from moving. The goods produced aren't always based on consumer demand. However, citizens find a way to fulfill their needs and desires, and this often results in a shadow economy or black market that buys and sells things the command economy isn't producing. Leaders' attempts to control this market weaken support for them.

Inefficiencies: One characteristic of command economies is that they often produce too much of one thing and not enough of another. It's difficult for central planners to get up-to-date information about consumers' needs. Meeting the needs of international markets is even more complex, so command economies struggle to produce the right exports at globally competitive market prices.

Innovation is discouraged: Command economies reward business leaders for following directives. This system doesn't allow for taking risks required to create new solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the primary characteristic of a command economy?

How does a command economy differ from a mixed market economy?

Who makes the decisions in a command economy?

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A command economy is a system in which a government plans its economics to attain societal goals. Learn characteristics, pros, cons, and examples.

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command economy | Definition, Characteristics, Examples, & Facts Definition | Britannica Money

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command economy, economic system in which the means of production are publicly owned and economic activity is controlled by a central authority that a…

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Highlights

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PM 2.5 levels in Central Asia cities exceeded the WHO annual limit by 4.3-12.6 times.

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Stagnant weather conditions exacerbate PM 2.5 pollution.

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Slow-moving air masses are typical for high PM 2.5 episodes in Central Asian cities.

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The COVID-19 lockdown had no significant effect on PM 2.5 levels in studied cities.

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An outdated approach is used for emissions inventory in the studied cities.

Abstract

Central Asian cities are one of the hotspots for air pollution worldwide. There are limited studies and knowledge regarding air quality variation in this region. This study investigated PM 2.5 temporal variations and the influence of meteorological parameters on PM 2.5 concentrations for six major cities in Central Asia: Almaty and Astana (Kazakhstan), Ashgabat (Turkmenistan), Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Dushanbe (Tajikistan), and Tashkent (Uzbekistan). The results show severe air quality deterioration in the cities with annual PM 2.5 concentrations up to ten-fold higher than the limits. A clear seasonal pattern with winter peaks was observed in Almaty, Bishkek, and Astana, whereas winter and summer were highly polluted in Tashkent and Dushanbe. Based on the pollution profiles, cities were classified into several clusters. Episodes with high PM 2.5 concentrations were evaluated for regional pollutant transportation using the HYSPLIT model. The results of this investigation highlight a significant discrepancy in official emissions inventory studies. While previous studies have suggested that transportation is the primary source of air pollution, the approach to estimate the share of emission sources was based on an outdated methodology that obscures information on the most hazardous pollutants, including PM 2.5. This study shows that coal combustion is the primary source of PM 2.5 pollution in most cities, offering policymakers critical insights into the sources of air pollution in the region. These findings demonstrate the need for policymakers to take swift action to address coal use and adopt effective measures to mitigate PM 2.5 pollution, thereby improving the health and well-being of the population.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

View Abstract

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Cities of Central Asia: New hotspots of air pollution in the world

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Central Asian cities are one of the hotspots for air pollution worldwide. There are limited studies and knowledge regarding air quality variation in t...

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Learning Objectives

1. Define the main tenets of a socialist economy.

2. Describe some of the conditions of life in the Soviet Union.

3. Briefly explain why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed.

4. Describe the post-Soviet economic and political situation.

As we learned in Section 3.1 "Introducing the Realm", the Russian Empire was built by the czars over the course of a few hundred years. However, the economic and political systems of the Russian Empire were not sustainable in the modern era. The vast majority of the population were poor, and most were landless peasant farmers-and in a place with short growing seasons, farming was not an easy path to riches. Political decisions were made by a very small elite group. At the dawn of the twentieth century, one hundred years after the Industrial Revolution swept through Great Britain and Western Europe, Russia remained an agricultural country and had not yet begun large-scale industrialization. Outside of the aristocracy, few supported the status quo in Russia, and there was widespread desire for a new political system and government.

However, no one could agree on what a new government would look like. In the aftermath of the First World War, a civil war erupted in Russia. During these chaotic times, the last czar, Nicholas II, was forced from office, and he and his family were executed. The most powerful group battling for control of Russia was a Communist group called the Bolsheviks , which literally meant the "larger group." Other groups, including the "smaller group," the Mensheviks, lost the civil war. The Bolshevik leader was Vladimir Lenin, and in 1917 he and his supporters embarked on a quest to turn Russia into a Communist state.

The capital city was moved back to Moscow from St. Petersburg, where it had been since the time of Czar Peter the Great in the eighteenth century. St. Petersburg's name was changed to Petrograd and then Leningrad in honor of Vladimir Lenin, as the atheist Soviets did not want any references to Christian saints. The entire territory of the Russian Empire was turned into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Russian people traded a monarchy for a Marxist totalitarian state (see the explanation of Marxism in Section 3.2.1 "Marxist-Leninist Central Planning").

The Soviet Union lasted from 1922 to 1991. Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator who took over after Lenin, was incapacitated in 1922 (and died in 1924). He was a ruthless leader who murdered his way to power and killed or exiled anyone who got in his way. Stalin is famous for initiating economic plans that helped move Russia from a poor, agrarian state to a large, industrial superpower. He pushed for rapid industrialization, the eradication of family farms in lieu of large communal farms, the end of personal ownership of land or businesses, and the dramatic weakening of organized religion. All these changes came at a great price. During his reign of terror, an estimated thirty million people lost their lives. The forced collectivization of agriculture brought about a devastating famine in 1932-33, in which between six and eight million people starved to death or were killed outright, many of them in Ukraine. Stalin led periodic purges of his perceived political enemies. The largest of these is known as the Great Purge . At that time (1936-38), about one million so-called enemies of the state were executed. More people lost their lives under Stalin than in all the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. The full extent of Stalin's purges of his people may never be fully known. Stalin's rule ended in 1953, when he reportedly died of natural causes. However, some historians believe he was poisoned by his close associates.

Marxist-Leninist Central Planning

The Soviet Union espoused the philosophies of Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century German theorist. Marx wrote that all political and economic life can be understood as a struggle between the various classes in society. People who adhere to Marx's philosophy are called Marxists, and the Soviet version of Marxism is called Marxism-Leninism. In Marxist thought, capitalism is an oppressive economic system in which the working class (the proletariat ) is oppressed by the bourgeoisie (the wealthy middle class). Marxists believe that the proletariat should revolt, rise up against the bourgeoisie, take the property away from the rich, and give it to the government to control it for the benefit of the common people. Ultimately, a pure system would result, with no social or economic classes, no private property, no rich people, and no poor people. In real life, governments that adopt these ideas practice and are said to be socialist.

As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy , in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation. Some collective farms were run by the state, while others were run by private cooperatives. During the transition period to collective farming, individual farmers were forced to give up their land, animals, farm equipment, and farm buildings and donate them to the collective farm in their area. The state also demanded a high percentage of the crops produced. At times, the government collected the entire harvest, not even allowing seed crops to be held for the following season. This brought about widespread famine in 1932-33. Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991 and even afterward in some areas.

The Cold War

From the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Soviet Union and the United States competed in the global community for the control of labor, resources, and world power. Each side attracted allies, and most countries were on the side of either the United States or the Soviet Union; very few remained neutral. This era, known as the , did not involve direct military armed conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, but it transformed the world into a political chessboard, with each side wanting to block the other side from gaining ground. Whenever the Soviets would enter into an alliance with a certain country, the United States was right there to try to counter the move. Wars, armed conflicts, sabotage, spying, and covert activities were the methods of the Cold War. Both sides stockpiled as much deadly weaponry as possible, including nuclear warheads and missiles. They also competed in the race to put people in outer space.

The Cold War led to wars fought in Vietnam, Korea, Grenada, Afghanistan, Angola, and the Middle East, with the Soviet Union funding one side and the United States supplying the other. Covert wars or guerilla wars with secret agents and political assassinations were fought in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Mozambique, Laos, Cambodia, and a host of other third-world countries. The Cold War divided the world into two main camps, each with a high number of nuclear weapons. Eastern Europe was sectioned off by the Iron Curtain, and the Berlin Wall divided the city of Berlin, Germany. These physical barriers divided the communist countries of Eastern Europe with the capitalist democracies of Western Europe. Germany itself was divided into two separate countries, as explained in Chapter 2 "Europe".

Various Soviet dictators came to power and died in office before the end of the Cold War. The last Soviet leader was Mikhail Gorbachev, who assumed power in 1985. The US president at the time was Ronald Reagan. During the 1980s the United States was outspending the Soviets militarily, and its economy was growing at a much faster rate than that of the USSR. At the same time, the Soviets were engaged in a costly war in Afghanistan, and their economy was faltering and in danger of collapse. Gorbachev realized that reforms had to be implemented to modernize the Soviet system: political life needed to be more open so that people would feel ownership of the country, and the economy needed to be restructured. Gorbachev implemented perestroika (restructuring of the economy with market-like reforms) and (openness and transparency of all government activities). The restructuring exposed fundamental problems in the economy, and by 1990 the Soviet economy was in worse shape than ever before.

The end came in 1991: the Soviet Union collapsed when fourteen of the Soviet republics broke away and declared their independence. At this point, the Soviet state was too weak to prevent it. All the republics, including Russia itself (now called the Russian Federation), became independent countries. The only territories that did not achieve independence were the smaller republics and autonomous regions that existed within the Russian Federation's boundaries. The Iron Curtain melted away seemingly overnight, and people were free to travel to and from the former Communist countries. The old Russian flag flew over the -the seat of the Russian government-for the first time since Czar Nicholas II had been in power seventy-three years earlier. The Communist era of the Soviet Union and the Cold War were over.

The post-Soviet transition was filled with political, economic, and social turmoil. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russian Federation, ushered in a series of economic reforms that privatized state-owned enterprises. Russian leaders tried to reverse socialism rapidly through what they called "shock therapy ," which they knew would be painful but hoped would be brief. These reforms created a new class of capitalist entrepreneurs.

Wealth, once controlled by the political elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries. Many ordinary workers faced unemployment for the first time as the new owners of various companies trimmed unnecessary staff. Private ownership forced housing costs to skyrocket, and while families were generally allowed to keep the homes they already lived in, purchasing houses or condominiums became out of reach for many people. The value of the ruble, Russia's currency, declined rapidly, and older people watched as their life savings evaporated overnight. Western goods were more easily accessible, and all kinds of consumer products became much more widely available than they were during the Soviet era. Bread lines and empty store shelves became distant memories as the former Communist state shifted over to a type of capitalist democracy. Yeltsin became increasingly less popular as citizens became dissatisfied with corruption and the high social costs of the post-Soviet transition. He resigned in 1999 and was replaced by Vladimir Putin.

Outline of Russia's Historical Geography

1. The Region's Early Heritage

Vikings created fortified trading towns called gorods

Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire invaded (1240 CE)

Feudal states arose around dominant trading centers

2. Czarist Russia, 1547-1917

Czars unified empire by internal colonialism

Forward capital of St. Petersburg created

Pioneers pushed eastward to Siberia and North America

3. Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-22

Czar Nicholas II and his family executed

Russian Civil War fought

Vladimir Lenin created Communist imperial state

Capital moved to Moscow; republics broke away

4. The Soviet Union (USSR), 1922-91

Czarist Empire became the Soviet Union

Central planning, collectivization, and the Cold War began

Republics kept together by military force

External interaction of glasnost initiated (1980s)

Economic restructuring and reforms of perestroika introduced (1980s)

5. The Russian Republic, 1991-Present

Independent republics lost with internal unrest

Economics privatized

Democracy introduced (1990s)

Central state strengthened (twenty-first century)

Twenty-First-Century Russia

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues. However, Russia still needs to modernize its dilapidated manufacturing base if it is to economically compete against the European Union, North America, or eastern Asia. During Vladimir Putin's presidency (2000-2008), Russia witnessed substantial economic growth that inspired foreign investors to pump money into the Russian economy and catapulted Moscow into an investment haven and one of the richest cities in the world. In 2008, Moscow claimed to have more billionaires than any other city in the world. Russia has reestablished itself as a major player in the global economy, although much of its population still suffers from poverty and social problems.

Russia's population grew steadily during the Soviet era, except during periods of famine or warfare, and the country underwent a rural-to-urban shift as farm workers moved to cities to labor in factories. However, when the USSR collapsed, Russia's population began a steep decline, falling from a peak of 149 million in 1991 to about 143 million in 2005. The trend of low birth rates actually began during the Soviet period. The population decline occurred because birth rates always decline during periods of economic and social crisis as people delay or decide against having children, and the country experienced particularly high death rates because of alcoholism, heart disease, and the collapse of the social safety net. Any time death rates surpass birth rates, a country's population will decline unless the difference is offset by immigration. Russia's birth rate was also impacted by very high rates of abortion: in 1992, for example, there were 221 abortions in Russia for every 100 live births (Johnston's Archive). Although Russia's population has seemingly bottomed out, the only reason it is not continuing to decline is immigration from the former Soviet republics. Russia still has a negative rate of natural increase .

To put Russia's demographic profile in context, its fertility rate was only about 1.5 in 2010, meaning that the average woman would have 1.5 children in her lifetime. This is below the 2.1 children each woman would need to have for the population to remain stable. The fertility rate in Russia is similar to that of countries in Europe (1.5) but lower than that of the United States (2.1) (Central Intelligence Agency). Life expectancy for Russian men is variously reported as sixty years up to sixty-three years, while women can expect to live seventy-three to seventy-five years. In Western Europe, life expectancies are about eighty years.

About 80 percent of Russia's population is ethnically Russian. The next largest group is Tatar (3.8 percent), a group that traditionally has spoken the Tatar language and practiced Islam. More than 150 ethnic groups are represented in Russia, including indigenous people of the Arctic who herd reindeer for a living. Each of the nationalities of the former Soviet republics has a presence in Russia, and because of its relatively strong economy, Russia (especially Moscow) is an immigration magnet for residents of those countries. Most of these groups have their own language and cultural traditions.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant religious denomination in Russia. For generations, it was the country's official religion, and Russian people were automatically considered to be Orthodox, no matter what their personal beliefs. During the Soviet era, the government did much to weaken the church, including killing tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns and closing most churches. The much smaller church that survived was largely controlled by the state. Because of state-sanctioned atheism during the Soviet era, only 15 to 20 percent of Russia's population today actively practices Orthodoxy, although a much greater number claim to be Russian Orthodox Christians. Another 15 percent of the country's population practices Islam, especially in places such as the Caucasus region and the southern Ural Mountains, and about 2 percent practice other forms of Christianity, such as Catholicism and Protestantism (Central Intelligence Agency). Even though Orthodoxy is practiced by a minority of Russia's population, the church has increased its influence since 1991 and often acts as an official church. A small percentage of the population are Buddhists, and various ethnic groups in Siberia and the Far East practice tribal religions and pagan rites.

The Russian Language

Like English, Russian is an Indo-European language. Russian is on the Slavic branch of the language tree, along with languages such as Polish, Ukrainian, and Serbo-Croatian. A relatively new language, it developed from a language called Old East Slavic that was spoken around 1100 CE. Medieval Russian developed in the thirteenth century, and modern literary Russian is usually traced back to the early nineteenth century. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which was developed from Greek. The Russian language is the official language of the Russian republic. With over one hundred languages used in the country, twenty-seven of them are officially recognized in various regions within the republic.

Key Takeaways

The Communist state was created in 1917 as the result of a civil war, which evolved into the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. During this era, the Russian people traded a monarchy for a Marxist totalitarian state.

One of the primary goals of the new USSR was rapid industrialization, and this goal was achieved through central planning and the collectivization of agriculture. Inefficiencies in the system persisted throughout the Soviet era.

The Soviet Union's Communist system was maintained at great cost: millions were killed by purges and in government-produced famines.

A weakened USSR tried to reform in the 1980s through Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost but instead collapsed in 1991.

Early post-Soviet years were ones of democratization, rapid privatization, and the unraveling of the social safety net. The shift to capitalism restructured the Russian economy.

The Russian economy strengthened after 2000, and Russian president Vladimir Putin strengthened the power of the central state.

Russia has a low fertility rate and a negative rate of natural increase. High rates of abortions and alcoholism have been contributing factors.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant religious denomination in Russia.

Discussion and Study Questions

1. By what process did the Russian Empire become the Soviet Union?

2. Who were the first two leaders of the USSR, what were some of their accomplishments, and what were some of the human costs?

3. What were some of the main features of Karl Marx's philosophy?

4. What were two main economic policies of the Soviet Union?

5. Who was fighting the Cold War? Where were major conflicts fought during this war?

6. How did the Cold War end? What leaders were in power in the United States and the Soviet Union when it ended?

7. What two policies did the last Soviet leader implement to assist in reforming the USSR?

8. What happened to the many external republics after 1991?

9. How did the economic system change for Russia after 1991?

10. What are some reasons for Russia's population decline?

Geography Exercise

Identify the following key places on a map:

References

Central Intelligence Agency, "The World Factbook," https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html.

Johnston`s Archive, "Historical Abortion Statistics, Russia," http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-russia.html.

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Define the main tenets of a socialist economy. Describe some of the conditions of life in the Soviet Union. Briefly explain why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed. Describe the post-Soviet economic and political situation. As we learned in Section 3.1 "Introducing the Realm", the Russian Empire was built by the czars over the course of a few hundred years.

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Learning Objectives

1. Understand that Central Asia is a landlocked region that receives little rainfall and has to rely on water from major rivers flowing from the mountains in the east.

2. Summarize how Central Asia has been transitioning from a Soviet-dominated region to independent states and what has been occurring in the various states to adapt to the new economic environment.

3. Describe how the Aral Sea has been affected by the practices of water use in the region and the environmental consequences that have resulted from water use policies.

4. Explain the geopolitical history of Afghanistan and why this area has been so difficult to govern under a central government.

5. Learn why there is continual conflict in Afghanistan between Western military forces and local Taliban insurgents.

6. Understand the principle that globalization of the economy forces political units to compete over natural resources.

Central Asia (a.k.a. Turkestan)

Central Asia is a region in the Asian continent that extends from the mountains of western China to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Pakistan and Iran create the southern border of the region, and the vast expanse of Russia is to the north. Afghanistan is considered a part of the region even though it was never a formal part of the Soviet Union. Central Asia was located on what was known as the Silk Road between Europe and the Far East and has long been a crossroads for people, ideas, and trade.

Central Asia has an extremely varied geography, including high mountain passes through vast mountain ranges, such as the Tian Shan, Hindu Kush, and the Pamirs. The region is also home to the vast Kara Kum and Kyzyl Kum Deserts, which dominate the interior with extensive spans of sand and desolation. The expansive treeless, grassy steppes that surround the desert regions are considered an extension of the steppes of Eastern Europe. Some geographers think of the Eurasian Steppes as one single, homogenous geographical zone.

Under the sand and prairie grasses lay the some of the most extensive untapped reserves of gas and oil on the planet. Natural resources are the main attraction of the region driving the economic forces that determine the development patterns of individual countries. Multinational corporations have vigorously stepped up their activity in the region.

The political systems are adjusting from the old Soviet Union's socialist policies to new democratic systems that are subject to high levels of authoritarian rule and corruption in business and politics.

The five countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan were part of the former Soviet Union until its breakup in 1991. Today, with Afghanistan, they are independent countries that make up the region called Central Asia. The term stan means "land of," so, for example, Uzbekistan is the land of the Uzbeks. Central Asia is also referred to as because of the Turkish influence in the region. The people of Turkey did not originate from the Middle East; they originated from northern Asia. They swept through Central Asia and dominated the region on their way to the Middle East. The Turkish language and heritage have had the most significant impact on the people of Central Asia. Turkmenistan's name is another reminder of the Turkish connection; it means "the land of the Turkmen."

Most of the groups of Central Asia were nomadic peoples who rode horses and herded livestock on the region's vast steppes. This way of life continued until the 1920s, when the Soviet Union forced many of the groups to abandon their lifestyle and settle on collective farms and in cities. Most of the people of Central Asia continue to identify culturally with their nomadic past. Central Asians who live in cities often demonstrate a mix of local and Russian culture in terms of dress and food because of the large influx of Russian populations in the region. More than six million Russians and Ukrainians were resettled into Central Asia during Soviet rule. Russian is often used as a lingua franca.

One of the primary ways in which people distinguish themselves culturally is through religious practices. Despite the area being part of the Soviet Union, where religious activities were discouraged, Islam was and still is the dominant religion. Most Central Asian Muslims are Sunnis.

Kazakhstan

The traditional people of Kazakhstan, who share a Mongol and Turkic heritage, moved into the Central Asia region sometime after 1200 CE. The expansion of the Russian Empire under the tsars integrated Kazakhstan and its neighbors, which eased their transition when the tsarist system of Russian government gave way to the Soviet Union. The influx of Russian people and culture had a major influence on Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, thereby creating the world's largest landlocked nation. It is the ninth-largest state on the planet in terms of square miles and is larger in physical area than of all of Western Europe. This vast land is host to a wide variety of physical landscapes, including the high, snow-capped peaks of the ranges on the Chinese border. The western portions are lowlands bordering the Caspian Sea. The seemingly endless grasslands of the interior are one of the largest steppe regions in the world. The steppe region has a semiarid type B climate. A large portion of southern Kazakhstan is desert, including the northern regions of the Kyzyl Kum Desert. Colder type D climates are found in the northern regions of the country.

The steppe produces grain in large quantities and other agricultural products, while the productive mining of minerals adds to the national wealth. Kazakhstan ranks high in the mining of many metals and uranium. Even diamonds are found here. Oil and natural gas extraction accounts for the largest sector of the country's economy and generates the largest export income. The Tengiz basin around the northeast shores of the Caspian Sea is home to extensive petroleum reserves. Oil pipelines are expanding to transport the oil to port locations and other countries, including China. The economy of Kazakhstan has been larger than the economies of all the other Central Asian states combined.

Kazakhstan also has a forward capital. During the Soviet era, the capital was located in the southeast at Almaty, but after gaining independence in 1991, the capital was moved north to Astana to ensure that the Russian-dominated northeast would be monitored against devolutionary forces that desiring to secede and become part of the Russian Republic.

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan physically borders all the Central Asian countries. It is the most populous Central Asian country, with a population that exceeds twenty-seven million. Uzbekistan's eastern boundary extends deep into Kyrgyzstan territory. The boundary lines were created during the Soviet era to provide the central government with more control over its republics by politicizing enclaves to their benefit. Geographers call Uzbekistan a doubly landlocked nation because all the countries that surround it are also landlocked. The main source of fresh water comes from the Eastern Highland regions. The main rivers have been heavily diverted for irrigation and are often depleted before reaching their destination at the Aral Sea.

Cotton is the main agricultural crop. Uzbekistan is one of the top producers of cotton in the world and is a major exporter to world markets. The central and western regions have mainly arid desert climates and rely heavily on the fresh water flowing in from the mountains. Agriculture employs a full one-fourth of the population and accounts for one-fourth of the gross domestic product (GDP). The extraction of gold, minerals, and fossil fuels are also prime economic activities. The country has been transitioning from the old Soviet Union's command economy, which was controlled by the central government, to a market economy competing in a global marketplace.

Uzbekistan is a country of young people: about one-third of the population is under the age of fifteen. Education was heavily emphasized during the Soviet era; as a result, about 99 percent of the population is literate-though about one-third of the people still live in poverty. Islam emerged in this country after Uzbekistan won its independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. In a culture of openness, Islam has risen in prominence to the point that approximately 88 percent of Uzbeks profess Islamic beliefs. The most commonly spoken language is Persian/Farsi.

Samarkand and the country's capital city, Tashkent, are located in the eastern core region, which is home to most of the population. Tashkent has an unofficial population of more than three million people. The city, which sits on the confluence of a local river and its tributaries, started as a caravanserai, or oasis for trade, along the Silk Road. Samarkand is Uzbekistan's second-largest city and is most noted as the central city of the Silk Road as well as an important historical city for Islamic scholars. In 2001, UNESCO declared this 2,750-year-old city a World Heritage Site. It is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and has been one of the more important cities in Central Asia. The historical architecture is heavily influence by Islamic styles from Iran. The region around Bukhara, Uzbekistan's fifth-largest city, has been occupied for at least the last five thousand years. Bukhara was another important city on the Silk Road and is known for its Asian carpet and textile industry. This region has been an important cultural, economic, and scholarly center for most of its known existence.

Aral Sea Environmental Disaster

Central Asia's shrinking Aral Sea is shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The sea was once the fourth-largest body of water in the world, but it has been reduced to a fraction of its original area. In 1960, the Aral Sea covered about 26,254 square miles, an area larger than the size of the US state of West Virginia. By 2009, the sea covered less than 10 percent of the same area. The entire eastern portion of the sea has become a sand desert, complete with the deteriorating hulls of abandoned fishing vessels. The loss of water is approximately equivalent to the complete draining of both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in North America.

The water loss escalated when the Syr Darya River, which flowed into the northern part of the sea, and the Amu Darya River, which flowed into the southern side of the sea, were diverted for the irrigation of cotton and other crops. At about 1,500 miles long, the Amu Darya is the region's longest river. Its source is the high mountain streams and lakes of the Pamir Mountains. Environmental problems were further exacerbated by the extensive use of pesticides and fertilizers in agricultural processes. The chemicals contaminated the water flowing into the Aral Sea. Once the water dried up in the sea, the winds carried the buildup of chemicals and salt from the dry seabed over the land, causing serious health-related problems in the nearby human population. Cancer and respiratory illness rates continue to be higher than normal. Water and land pollution is a serious problem. Even the climate around the Aral Sea has changed gradually because of the loss of water from evaporation for precipitation. The climate is getting warmer in the summer and colder in the winter. The moderating affect that this large body of water had on its surrounding area is no longer as prominent as it once was.

The decline of the Aral Sea has destroyed habitats and the local economy. The fishing industry, which employed more than sixty thousand people, has been devastated. The remaining western portion of the sea has a rising salt content that is contributing to the decline of the fish population. Adding to the environmental devastation, the Soviets conducted biological weapons experiments on an island that was once in the middle of the Aral Sea. Hazardous wastes such as anthrax and toxic chemicals contaminated the land and found their way into the sea. Efforts have been made to marginalize the environmental damage of the contamination, but the damage has not been completely ameliorated. The sea has historically been an important environmental location for wildlife. It is located in a major flyway for migratory waterfowl in Central Asia and served as an important habitat. The deterioration of the Aral Sea and the destruction of habitat for waterfowl and other organisms is one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes. The fact that the Aral Sea is located in a region that is not part of the core economic area of the global community has rendered it "out of sight and out of mind" by entities that could potentially provide economic support.

In the northern portion of the Aral Sea, called the Little Aral Sea, there has been some success in abating the deterioration of this once-thriving environmental habitat. A major dam has been constructed that partitions off the Little Aral Sea, causing water from the Syr Darya River to increase the water level of the Little Aral Sea and reduce the salt content. Canals, dikes, and irrigation processes have been updated to reduce the loss of water and increase the amount that flows into the northern section. The development efforts have caused the water level to rise and therefore have reinvigorated the once-struggling fishing industry. The efforts have been undertaken by Kazakhstan's government, which controls the Little Aral Sea.

A major part of the southern portion of the once thriving sea is located in Uzbekistan, which has not contributed the economic attention necessary to halt the sea's continued deterioration. The remaining western portion of the Uzbekistan side of the Aral Sea will continue to shrink if measures are not taken to address the loss of water from the Amu Darya River. The eastern side was completely dry by 2009. Uzbekistan has responded to the situation by contracting out to various multinational oil companies from Korea, China, and Russia to explore for oil beneath the dry seabed.

The demise of the Aral Sea was caused in part by the diversion of water from its northern inlet, the Syr Darya River. At the other end of the Syr Darya River an additional factor augmented the lack of water flow: the Soviet Union placed a dam on the river and allowed the overflow from the dam to flow into low-lying dry pans, creating artificial lakes. As a result, Aydar Lake was created and became the second-largest lake in Uzbekistan. Various species of fish were introduced and the lake became a major source for commercial fishing. Hundreds of tons of fish are harvested annually. Just as fishing was declining in the Aral Sea, the fishing industry was growing at Aydar Lake.

Turkmenistan

To the south of the Amu Darya River is the desert country of Turkmenistan, which extends from the Caspian Sea to Afghanistan in the east. Turkmenistan is slightly larger in physical area than the US state of California. Roughly 80 percent of the country is covered by the Kara Kum Desert, which is among the driest in the world. The southern mountains along the Iranian and Afghan border reach as high as 10,290 feet in elevation. Water from the Amu Darya River has been diverted by the seven-hundred-mile-long Kara Kum Canal through Turkmenistan to help grow cotton and other agricultural products.

The transition from a Soviet republic to an independent state in 1991 brought many changes. The former leader of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Saparmurat Niyazov, who went by the name Turkmenbashi (leader of the Turkmen people), dominated the presidency for fifteen years. Through his authoritarian rule, he promoted a traditional culture-with Islam as the predominant religion-and was notorious for developing a cult of personality. For example, he changed all the names of the days of the week and the months of the year to his name, the names of his family members, and the names of Turkmen heroes or famous people. Turkmenbashi's image was printed on the currency, and large posters of him could be seen throughout the country. His book on important concepts, the Ruhnama ( The Book of the Soul), was to be read by all schoolchildren and the public. After his death in 2006, many of his actions were reversed. The country continues to transition to a stable democratic state, though many of the same dynamics of corruption and authoritarian rule remain.

Turkmenistan is blessed with the fourth-largest natural gas reserves in the world; the top three are Russia, Iran, and the United States. The income from natural gas exports has become the country's greatest means of gaining wealth. Because Turkmenistan is landlocked, its government has been forced to partner with Russia to use of Russia's pipelines to export the natural gas. Not wishing to rely on Russia's monopoly on the pipelines, Turkmenistan developed an additional pipeline to China to help boost income and profits. Many international corporations are seeking to do business in Turkmenistan and Central Asia to corner a piece of the vast natural resources. Corporate colonialism is extremely active and has contributed to a high level of corruption in the government and the business sector. It is unclear how much of the country's wealth filters down to most of the population. Over the past decade, unemployment rates have exceeded 50 percent, and more than half the population lives below the poverty line.

The administrative center and largest city of Turkmenistan is its capital, Ashgabat, which has a population of about one million. Ashgabat lies between the Kara Kum Desert and the mountains near the former Silk Road. In the historic region of Central Asia, it is comparatively a very young town, having grown out of a small village founded in 1818. Ashgabat is primarily a government and administrative center, although it has thriving cotton, textile, and metalworking industries. Ashgabat is also a popular stop along the Trans-Caspian Railway.

Kyrgyzstan

Local groups in the mountains of Central Asia make up the population of Kyrgyzstan. The forty rays of sun on the country's flag symbolize of the legendary forty tribes of Manas that represent the nation. The rugged landscape of this mountainous land includes the high ranges of the Tian Shan Mountains, which can reach elevations as high as 24,400 feet and cover about 80 percent of the country. Snowfall from the mountains provides fresh water for agriculture as well as hydroelectric energy. Food crops can be grown in the valleys and the few lowland areas. Half the population works in agriculture, and self-sufficiency in food production is a major objective for survival. The mountains hold deposits of metals and minerals that have a strong potential for adding to the national wealth. Oil and natural gas reserves are also available for exploitation. The government is seeking foreign aid and investments to help develop these resources.

In 2009, Kyrgyzstan had a population of about 5.4 million in a land area about the size of the US state of South Dakota. About 30 percent of the population is under the age of fifteen, and about 36 percent of the population is urban. The western boundary with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan is winding and creates various small and of people from one country surrounded by people of another country and separated from their home nations.

Kyrgyzstan's transition from a Soviet republic to independence was not smooth. The loss of the state social safety net pushed the economy further to the informal sector, where trading and small transactions for personal survival are common. Shortages of consumer goods occur in rural areas and small towns. Kyrgyzstan is an isolated country that has been working to integrate itself into the global economy through technology and modernization. In 2010, clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz brought about riots in the streets of major cities, resulting in more than two hundred casualties and three hundred thousand displaced citizens. After the situation cooled down, the government worked to stabilize itself with new leadership.

A form of improvisational oral poetry, which allegedly dates back to more than one thousand years ago, is an aspect of traditional culture that has been preserved. While common throughout the region, it is mainly found in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Practitioners will often engage in "lyrical battles" of folklore. These poets, often accompanied by two- or three-stringed instruments, will recite the Manas, an epic poem of Kyrgyzstan that details the life of the Kyrgyzstan hero Manas. This epic tale is a renowned part of the culture and festivals of Kyrgyzstan.

Tajikistan

The eastern region of Central Asia has some of the highest mountain ranges in the world; about 90 percent of Tajikistan is mountainous, and more than half the country is 10,000 feet in elevation or higher. Ranges of the Himalayas extend from the south all the way to the western border with China. The Pamirs is a mountain range located where the Tian Shan, Karakorum, and Hindu Kush mountain ranges meet in Tajikistan, an area referred to as the Pamir Knot, or the roof of the world. Elevations in the Pamirs often exceed 24,500 feet. The Pamirs is the source of the Amu Darya River and is home to the longest glacier outside the polar regions (forty-eight miles long in 2009). There is great potential for hydroelectric power generation, and Tajikistan is developing the world's highest dam.

Tajikistan has the smallest physical area of any country in Central Asia but has a population of about 7.3 million. Only about one-fourth of the population is urban, and one-third of the population is younger than fifteen years of age. There is less ethnic or religious diversity; 80 percent of the people are ethnically Tajik and are Sunni Muslims. Though it has natural resources similar in quantity to those in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan's economy is not advanced enough to fully take advantage of its economic potential. Half the labor base works abroad and sends remittances back to their families for economic support. Unemployment is high, and job opportunities have not been able to keep up with demand.

Dushanbe, the capital and largest city of Tajikistan, is situated on the confluence of two local rivers and is famous for its Monday markets ( Dushanbe means "Monday" in Tajik). Dushanbe, like Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, was originally a small village; it became an administrative center for the region when the Soviet army conquered the area in 1929. Similar to many of the other cities and regions in Central Asia, the Soviets transformed the political and economic landscape and made Dushanbe a center for cotton and silk production. The Soviets also transformed the cultural and ethnic makeup of the city by relocating tens of thousands of people from Russia and other regions of Central Asia to Dushanbe.

The transition from a Soviet Republic to an independent country in 1991 was difficult for Tajikistan. From 1992 to 1997, a bitter civil war between regional factions killed more than fifty thousand people. Political instability and corruption has hampered the growth of a market economy, and political power remains in the hands of the economic elite. Debt restructuring with Russia and an infusion of development loans from China have aided the ailing economy. Aid from the US helped fund a thirty-six-million-dollar bridge linking Tajikistan and Afghanistan, which opened in August 2007. US aid has also contributed to infrastructure development designed to help US military operations in Afghanistan and in the region as a whole. Countries such as Russia, China, and the United States are all looking to gain an advantage with their ties to Tajikistan to exploit the region's natural resources.

Afghanistan

Present-day Afghanistan has been conquered by the likes of Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and the Mogul Empire and was a buffer zone for colonial feuds between Russia and British India. The high central mountain range of the Hindu Kush dominates the country and leaves a zone of well-watered fertile plains to the north and a dry desert region to the south. Afghanistan is a remote region without access to the sea and acts as a strategic link between the Middle East and the Far East.

The Soviet Invasion and the Taliban

In 1979, the Soviet Union took advantage of ongoing ethnic warfare in Afghanistan to inject itself into the country. The Soviets pushed in from the north and occupied much of Afghanistan until they completely withdrew in 1989. During the Soviet occupation, the United States supported anti-Communist resistance groups such as the Mujahideen with money, arms, and surface-to-air missiles. The missiles were instrumental in taking out Soviet aircraft and MiG fighters, which caused a critical shift in the balance of power in the war. One of the major connections between the for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Mujahideen was a Saudi national named Osama bin Laden. Support from the CIA through bin Laden to the Mujahideen was instrumental in defeating the Soviets.

The power vacuum left by the retreating Soviets allowed conflicts to reemerge between the many ethnic factions in Afghanistan. Dozens of languages are spoken in Afghanistan; the top two are Pashtu and Afghan Persian-Dari. There are also a dozen major ethnic groups; the top two are Pashtun and Tajik. The groups regularly fight among themselves, but they have also been known to form alliances. Rural areas are usually led by clan leaders who are not part of any official arm of a national government. Afghanistan is a place where forming any national unity or identity is not easy. The national government in the capital city of Kabul has little influence in the country's rural regions.

The Soviet invasion brought the internally warring factions together for a short period to focus on the Soviet threat. Chaos and anarchy thrived after the Soviet forces withdrew, but the Islamic fundamentalist group known as the came forward to fill the power vacuum. One objective of the Taliban was to use Islam as a unifying force to bring the country together. The problem with that concept was that there was much diversity in how Islam was practiced by the numerous local groups. Many of the factions in Afghanistan opposed the Taliban; one such group being the Northern Alliance, which was an association of groups located in the northern portion of the country. The civil war between the Taliban and those that opposed them resulted in the deaths of more than fifty thousand people by 1996 when the Taliban emerged to take power in Kabul. The Taliban is a Sunni Muslim group that adheres to strict Islamic laws under the Wahhabi branch of the faith similar to that of Saudi Arabia. Under Taliban rule, women were removed from positions in hospitals, schools, and work environments and had to wear burkas (also spelled burqas) and be covered from head to toe, including a veil over their faces. Violators were either beaten or shot. The Taliban brought a sense of militant order to Kabul and the regions under their control. Various factions such as the Northern Alliance did not share the Taliban's strict Islamic views and continued to oppose their position in power.

Al-Qaeda and the US Invasion

After the war against the Soviet Union was over, the US role in Afghanistan diminished. The groups that the United States had supported continued to vie for power in local conflicts. Osama bin Laden remained in Afghanistan and established training camps for his version of an anti-Western resistance group called . Just as he had opposed the Soviet Union, he now opposed the United States, even though the United States had supported him against the Soviets. The Saudi government allowed the United States to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf War, and this was one reason for bin Laden's opposition; he believed that non-Muslims should not be on the same ground as the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

The 9-11 attack in New York City was traced back to al-Qaeda and bin Laden, who was residing in Afghanistan at the time. In a military action dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom , the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, removed the Taliban from power, and dismantled the al-Qaeda training camps. Although bin Laden escaped, the terror of the Taliban was temporarily reduced. Women were allowed to return to the workplace, and the rebuilding of the country became a priority. The country was devastated by war and is divided by the human geography because of the various ethnic and traditional groups. Afghanistan is one of the most impoverished places on Earth. The armed conflicts in Afghanistan did not end with the US invasion. After regrouping, the Taliban rallied its supporters on the Pakistani side of the border and returned to the fighting front in Afghanistan against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and US forces.

Fighting between Western forces and the Taliban in Afghanistan continued to provide the exiled bin Laden a platform to promote his al-Qaeda terrorist activities from his hiding place. Efforts to locate and marginalize bin Laden continued through to the US presidency of Barack Obama. In May of 2011, on orders from President Obama, a team of US Navy Seals were sent into the city of Abottabad, Pakistan, to a private compound where intelligence indicated that bin Laden was hiding. In the confrontation, the US Navy Seal team killed bin Laden. The entire operation was conducted without the awareness of the Pakistani government. This event may have impacted al-Qaeda but has not likely diminished the fighting in Afghanistan.

The country is the world's largest producer of opium, a product extracted from a poppy plant seedpod that can also be refined into heroin. The expanding poppy cultivation as well as a growing drug trade may account for one-third of the country's income. More than 80 percent of the heroin consumed in Europe is grown in Afghanistan. The drug trade has only multiplied the problems in this devastated country. Prudent and effective methods for the government to address the drug trade are matters for debate and negotiation. Most of the country is ruled by warlords and clan leaders who have few resources other than tradition and custom. Afghanistan's infrastructure has been destroyed through warfare, and its government is dependent on foreign aid; without it, this country cannot recover to integrate itself with the global economy. Central Asia has enormous oil and natural gas reserves, and the core economic regions of the world will continue their work to extract these resources for economic gain.

Operation Enduring Freedom

The US Department of Defense issued an official statement on Afghanistan in 2008 (Source DoD 2008):

Democratic elections were held for the office of president in Afghanistan beginning in October of 2004. Hamid Karzai was the country's first elected president in the twentieth century. He was reelected as president in 2009 under the cloud of claims of election fraud. The right to vote was restored to women in the 2004 election. To combat voter fraud, people would dip their fingers in ink to indicate they had voted and to ensure they did not vote more than once. Voting has not been a smooth process because democratic rule is new to Afghanistan. Afghanistan's future is insecure. Most of Afghanistan is still ruled by warlords and clan leaders. The Taliban has sustained its support in Afghanistan from bases on the Pakistani side of the border, and United Nations (UN) and NATO troops continue to confront the Taliban and work toward stability. Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, is located in the south, an area where support for the Taliban is stronger than it is in Kabul in the north.

Resources and Globalization

In 2010, a US government report indicated that vast amounts of mineral wealth were discovered in Afghanistan by American geologists and Pentagon officials. Enormous deposits of iron, copper, gold, cobalt, and rare industrial minerals such as lithium are reported to be present in Afghanistan. Total reserves are unknown or have not been released but if extracted would result in trillions of dollars of economic gain for the country. Lithium is highly sought after and is used in the manufacturing of batteries, computers, and electronic devices. The report indicated that Afghanistan could become the world's premier mining country.

Discovery of vast resources helps place the war in Afghanistan in perspective with respect to global competition over the control of resources. It has been reported that China has already offered millions of dollars in incentive money to Afghan government officials to allow its country to mine copper. Bribery and corruption in the Afghan government is a serious impediment to a stable political environment, but criminal activities are projected to persist and swell with the potential for additional mining wealth. Afghanistan does not have a long-standing tradition of mining. Agriculture has been the main focus of economic activity for the rural communities. A newfound potential for mineral wealth will change the future of Afghanistan. It will be interesting to watch how Afghanistan adapts to and benefits from the discovery of previously unknown resources.

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Understand that Central Asia is a landlocked region that receives little rainfall and has to rely on water from major rivers flowing from the mountains in the east. Summarize how Central Asia has been transitioning from a Soviet-dominated region to independent states and what has been occurring in the various states to adapt to the new economic environment.

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Two new railway lines could transform Central Asia

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Learning Objectives

1. Define the main tenets of a socialist economy.

2. Describe some of the conditions of life in the Soviet Union.

3. Briefly explain why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed.

4. Describe the post-Soviet economic and political situation.

As we learned in Section 3.1 "Introducing the Realm", the Russian Empire was built by the czars over the course of a few hundred years. However, the economic and political systems of the Russian Empire were not sustainable in the modern era. The vast majority of the population were poor, and most were landless peasant farmers-and in a place with short growing seasons, farming was not an easy path to riches. Political decisions were made by a very small elite group. At the dawn of the twentieth century, one hundred years after the Industrial Revolution swept through Great Britain and Western Europe, Russia remained an agricultural country and had not yet begun large-scale industrialization. Outside of the aristocracy, few supported the status quo in Russia, and there was widespread desire for a new political system and government.

However, no one could agree on what a new government would look like. In the aftermath of the First World War, a civil war erupted in Russia. During these chaotic times, the last czar, Nicholas II, was forced from office, and he and his family were executed. The most powerful group battling for control of Russia was a Communist group called the Bolsheviks , which literally meant the "larger group." Other groups, including the "smaller group," the Mensheviks, lost the civil war. The Bolshevik leader was Vladimir Lenin, and in 1917 he and his supporters embarked on a quest to turn Russia into a Communist state.

The capital city was moved back to Moscow from St. Petersburg, where it had been since the time of Czar Peter the Great in the eighteenth century. St. Petersburg's name was changed to Petrograd and then Leningrad in honor of Vladimir Lenin, as the atheist Soviets did not want any references to Christian saints. The entire territory of the Russian Empire was turned into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Russian people traded a monarchy for a Marxist totalitarian state (see the explanation of Marxism in Section 3.2.1 "Marxist-Leninist Central Planning").

The Soviet Union lasted from 1922 to 1991. Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator who took over after Lenin, was incapacitated in 1922 (and died in 1924). He was a ruthless leader who murdered his way to power and killed or exiled anyone who got in his way. Stalin is famous for initiating economic plans that helped move Russia from a poor, agrarian state to a large, industrial superpower. He pushed for rapid industrialization, the eradication of family farms in lieu of large communal farms, the end of personal ownership of land or businesses, and the dramatic weakening of organized religion. All these changes came at a great price. During his reign of terror, an estimated thirty million people lost their lives. The forced collectivization of agriculture brought about a devastating famine in 1932-33, in which between six and eight million people starved to death or were killed outright, many of them in Ukraine. Stalin led periodic purges of his perceived political enemies. The largest of these is known as the Great Purge . At that time (1936-38), about one million so-called enemies of the state were executed. More people lost their lives under Stalin than in all the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. The full extent of Stalin's purges of his people may never be fully known. Stalin's rule ended in 1953, when he reportedly died of natural causes. However, some historians believe he was poisoned by his close associates.

Marxist-Leninist Central Planning

The Soviet Union espoused the philosophies of Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century German theorist. Marx wrote that all political and economic life can be understood as a struggle between the various classes in society. People who adhere to Marx's philosophy are called Marxists, and the Soviet version of Marxism is called Marxism-Leninism. In Marxist thought, capitalism is an oppressive economic system in which the working class (the proletariat ) is oppressed by the bourgeoisie (the wealthy middle class). Marxists believe that the proletariat should revolt, rise up against the bourgeoisie, take the property away from the rich, and give it to the government to control it for the benefit of the common people. Ultimately, a pure system would result, with no social or economic classes, no private property, no rich people, and no poor people. In real life, governments that adopt these ideas practice and are said to be socialist.

As a socialist state, the Soviet Union did not include open markets. The Soviet Union was a command economy , in which economic decisions were made by the state and not left to the market to decide. During the Soviet era, for example, industrial production was planned by the central government. The government would decide what would be produced, where it would be produced, the quantity produced, the number of workers who would produce it, where the raw materials would come from, and how the final product would be distributed. By mobilizing the entire country to work toward common goals, the USSR was able to achieve the rapid industrialization that it so desired. However, the Soviets underestimated the power and efficiency of free-enterprise capitalism, and their socialist system was undermined by waste, fraud, and corruption.

Another main economic feature of the Soviet Union was collectivized agriculture. The Soviet leaders did not want individual, capitalist farmers to become rich and threaten their economic system. Nor did they want thousands of small, inefficient farms when the country was perpetually unable to feed itself. Instead, they decided to streamline agricultural production into large farm factories. All the farmland in each area was consolidated into a government-owned collective operation. Some collective farms were run by the state, while others were run by private cooperatives. During the transition period to collective farming, individual farmers were forced to give up their land, animals, farm equipment, and farm buildings and donate them to the collective farm in their area. The state also demanded a high percentage of the crops produced. At times, the government collected the entire harvest, not even allowing seed crops to be held for the following season. This brought about widespread famine in 1932-33. Collectivized agriculture remained the norm in the Soviet Union until the country's dissolution in 1991 and even afterward in some areas.

The Cold War

From the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Soviet Union and the United States competed in the global community for the control of labor, resources, and world power. Each side attracted allies, and most countries were on the side of either the United States or the Soviet Union; very few remained neutral. This era, known as the , did not involve direct military armed conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, but it transformed the world into a political chessboard, with each side wanting to block the other side from gaining ground. Whenever the Soviets would enter into an alliance with a certain country, the United States was right there to try to counter the move. Wars, armed conflicts, sabotage, spying, and covert activities were the methods of the Cold War. Both sides stockpiled as much deadly weaponry as possible, including nuclear warheads and missiles. They also competed in the race to put people in outer space.

The Cold War led to wars fought in Vietnam, Korea, Grenada, Afghanistan, Angola, and the Middle East, with the Soviet Union funding one side and the United States supplying the other. Covert wars or guerilla wars with secret agents and political assassinations were fought in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Mozambique, Laos, Cambodia, and a host of other third-world countries. The Cold War divided the world into two main camps, each with a high number of nuclear weapons. Eastern Europe was sectioned off by the Iron Curtain, and the Berlin Wall divided the city of Berlin, Germany. These physical barriers divided the communist countries of Eastern Europe with the capitalist democracies of Western Europe. Germany itself was divided into two separate countries, as explained in Chapter 2 "Europe".

Various Soviet dictators came to power and died in office before the end of the Cold War. The last Soviet leader was Mikhail Gorbachev, who assumed power in 1985. The US president at the time was Ronald Reagan. During the 1980s the United States was outspending the Soviets militarily, and its economy was growing at a much faster rate than that of the USSR. At the same time, the Soviets were engaged in a costly war in Afghanistan, and their economy was faltering and in danger of collapse. Gorbachev realized that reforms had to be implemented to modernize the Soviet system: political life needed to be more open so that people would feel ownership of the country, and the economy needed to be restructured. Gorbachev implemented perestroika (restructuring of the economy with market-like reforms) and (openness and transparency of all government activities). The restructuring exposed fundamental problems in the economy, and by 1990 the Soviet economy was in worse shape than ever before.

The end came in 1991: the Soviet Union collapsed when fourteen of the Soviet republics broke away and declared their independence. At this point, the Soviet state was too weak to prevent it. All the republics, including Russia itself (now called the Russian Federation), became independent countries. The only territories that did not achieve independence were the smaller republics and autonomous regions that existed within the Russian Federation's boundaries. The Iron Curtain melted away seemingly overnight, and people were free to travel to and from the former Communist countries. The old Russian flag flew over the -the seat of the Russian government-for the first time since Czar Nicholas II had been in power seventy-three years earlier. The Communist era of the Soviet Union and the Cold War were over.

The post-Soviet transition was filled with political, economic, and social turmoil. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russian Federation, ushered in a series of economic reforms that privatized state-owned enterprises. Russian leaders tried to reverse socialism rapidly through what they called "shock therapy ," which they knew would be painful but hoped would be brief. These reforms created a new class of capitalist entrepreneurs.

Wealth, once controlled by the political elite, was now being shifted to the business elite, a pattern found in most capitalist countries. Many ordinary workers faced unemployment for the first time as the new owners of various companies trimmed unnecessary staff. Private ownership forced housing costs to skyrocket, and while families were generally allowed to keep the homes they already lived in, purchasing houses or condominiums became out of reach for many people. The value of the ruble, Russia's currency, declined rapidly, and older people watched as their life savings evaporated overnight. Western goods were more easily accessible, and all kinds of consumer products became much more widely available than they were during the Soviet era. Bread lines and empty store shelves became distant memories as the former Communist state shifted over to a type of capitalist democracy. Yeltsin became increasingly less popular as citizens became dissatisfied with corruption and the high social costs of the post-Soviet transition. He resigned in 1999 and was replaced by Vladimir Putin.

Outline of Russia's Historical Geography

1. The Region's Early Heritage

Vikings created fortified trading towns called gorods

Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire invaded (1240 CE)

Feudal states arose around dominant trading centers

2. Czarist Russia, 1547-1917

Czars unified empire by internal colonialism

Forward capital of St. Petersburg created

Pioneers pushed eastward to Siberia and North America

3. Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-22

Czar Nicholas II and his family executed

Russian Civil War fought

Vladimir Lenin created Communist imperial state

Capital moved to Moscow; republics broke away

4. The Soviet Union (USSR), 1922-91

Czarist Empire became the Soviet Union

Central planning, collectivization, and the Cold War began

Republics kept together by military force

External interaction of glasnost initiated (1980s)

Economic restructuring and reforms of perestroika introduced (1980s)

5. The Russian Republic, 1991-Present

Independent republics lost with internal unrest

Economics privatized

Democracy introduced (1990s)

Central state strengthened (twenty-first century)

Twenty-First-Century Russia

A Russian style of capitalism replaced the social, political, and economic system of the Communist era with a growing market economy. The export of Russia's vast quantities of natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and timber, to Europe and the rest of the world helped the country rebound from the economic collapse of the 1990s. Russia has benefited from the recent increase in energy prices, and oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80 percent of exports and 30 percent of government revenues. However, Russia still needs to modernize its dilapidated manufacturing base if it is to economically compete against the European Union, North America, or eastern Asia. During Vladimir Putin's presidency (2000-2008), Russia witnessed substantial economic growth that inspired foreign investors to pump money into the Russian economy and catapulted Moscow into an investment haven and one of the richest cities in the world. In 2008, Moscow claimed to have more billionaires than any other city in the world. Russia has reestablished itself as a major player in the global economy, although much of its population still suffers from poverty and social problems.

Russia's population grew steadily during the Soviet era, except during periods of famine or warfare, and the country underwent a rural-to-urban shift as farm workers moved to cities to labor in factories. However, when the USSR collapsed, Russia's population began a steep decline, falling from a peak of 149 million in 1991 to about 143 million in 2005. The trend of low birth rates actually began during the Soviet period. The population decline occurred because birth rates always decline during periods of economic and social crisis as people delay or decide against having children, and the country experienced particularly high death rates because of alcoholism, heart disease, and the collapse of the social safety net. Any time death rates surpass birth rates, a country's population will decline unless the difference is offset by immigration. Russia's birth rate was also impacted by very high rates of abortion: in 1992, for example, there were 221 abortions in Russia for every 100 live births (Johnston's Archive). Although Russia's population has seemingly bottomed out, the only reason it is not continuing to decline is immigration from the former Soviet republics. Russia still has a negative rate of natural increase .

To put Russia's demographic profile in context, its fertility rate was only about 1.5 in 2010, meaning that the average woman would have 1.5 children in her lifetime. This is below the 2.1 children each woman would need to have for the population to remain stable. The fertility rate in Russia is similar to that of countries in Europe (1.5) but lower than that of the United States (2.1) (Central Intelligence Agency). Life expectancy for Russian men is variously reported as sixty years up to sixty-three years, while women can expect to live seventy-three to seventy-five years. In Western Europe, life expectancies are about eighty years.

About 80 percent of Russia's population is ethnically Russian. The next largest group is Tatar (3.8 percent), a group that traditionally has spoken the Tatar language and practiced Islam. More than 150 ethnic groups are represented in Russia, including indigenous people of the Arctic who herd reindeer for a living. Each of the nationalities of the former Soviet republics has a presence in Russia, and because of its relatively strong economy, Russia (especially Moscow) is an immigration magnet for residents of those countries. Most of these groups have their own language and cultural traditions.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant religious denomination in Russia. For generations, it was the country's official religion, and Russian people were automatically considered to be Orthodox, no matter what their personal beliefs. During the Soviet era, the government did much to weaken the church, including killing tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns and closing most churches. The much smaller church that survived was largely controlled by the state. Because of state-sanctioned atheism during the Soviet era, only 15 to 20 percent of Russia's population today actively practices Orthodoxy, although a much greater number claim to be Russian Orthodox Christians. Another 15 percent of the country's population practices Islam, especially in places such as the Caucasus region and the southern Ural Mountains, and about 2 percent practice other forms of Christianity, such as Catholicism and Protestantism (Central Intelligence Agency). Even though Orthodoxy is practiced by a minority of Russia's population, the church has increased its influence since 1991 and often acts as an official church. A small percentage of the population are Buddhists, and various ethnic groups in Siberia and the Far East practice tribal religions and pagan rites.

The Russian Language

Like English, Russian is an Indo-European language. Russian is on the Slavic branch of the language tree, along with languages such as Polish, Ukrainian, and Serbo-Croatian. A relatively new language, it developed from a language called Old East Slavic that was spoken around 1100 CE. Medieval Russian developed in the thirteenth century, and modern literary Russian is usually traced back to the early nineteenth century. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which was developed from Greek. The Russian language is the official language of the Russian republic. With over one hundred languages used in the country, twenty-seven of them are officially recognized in various regions within the republic.

Key Takeaways

The Communist state was created in 1917 as the result of a civil war, which evolved into the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. During this era, the Russian people traded a monarchy for a Marxist totalitarian state.

One of the primary goals of the new USSR was rapid industrialization, and this goal was achieved through central planning and the collectivization of agriculture. Inefficiencies in the system persisted throughout the Soviet era.

The Soviet Union's Communist system was maintained at great cost: millions were killed by purges and in government-produced famines.

A weakened USSR tried to reform in the 1980s through Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost but instead collapsed in 1991.

Early post-Soviet years were ones of democratization, rapid privatization, and the unraveling of the social safety net. The shift to capitalism restructured the Russian economy.

The Russian economy strengthened after 2000, and Russian president Vladimir Putin strengthened the power of the central state.

Russia has a low fertility rate and a negative rate of natural increase. High rates of abortions and alcoholism have been contributing factors.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant religious denomination in Russia.

Discussion and Study Questions

1. By what process did the Russian Empire become the Soviet Union?

2. Who were the first two leaders of the USSR, what were some of their accomplishments, and what were some of the human costs?

3. What were some of the main features of Karl Marx's philosophy?

4. What were two main economic policies of the Soviet Union?

5. Who was fighting the Cold War? Where were major conflicts fought during this war?

6. How did the Cold War end? What leaders were in power in the United States and the Soviet Union when it ended?

7. What two policies did the last Soviet leader implement to assist in reforming the USSR?

8. What happened to the many external republics after 1991?

9. How did the economic system change for Russia after 1991?

10. What are some reasons for Russia's population decline?

Geography Exercise

Identify the following key places on a map:

References

Central Intelligence Agency, "The World Factbook," https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html.

Johnston`s Archive, "Historical Abortion Statistics, Russia," http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-russia.html.

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Define the main tenets of a socialist economy. Describe some of the conditions of life in the Soviet Union. Briefly explain why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed. Describe the post-Soviet economic and political situation. As we learned in Section 3.1 "Introducing the Realm", the Russian Empire was built by the czars over the course of a few hundred years.

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Air Pollution in Europe and Central Asia

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Air Pollution in Europe and Central Asia

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Tackling air pollution in Europe and Central Asia

Tackling air pollution in Europe and Central Asia

June 23, 2021

The UNDP Europe and Central Asia region is one of the most carbon intensive areas of the world, with 88 percent of its primary energy supply coming from fossil fuels, which substantively contributes to air pollution.

The main sources of air pollution come from the burning of fossil fuels in energy production and from household, transport, industrial and agricultural activities. The direct impact of air pollution on human health is of growing concern today, although important steps have been made in the last three decades with natural gas displacing coal in the region. Furthermore, exposure to air pollution is a risk factor for many chronic diseases, such as chronic respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses.

The report assesses the links between air pollution, climate and health, and explores holistic solutions with a set of policy interventions for major economic activities like industry, transport, health (health-care) waste, as well as domestic household activities such as heating and cooking.

Sustainable Development Goals

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Tackling air pollution in Europe and Central Asia

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The report assesses links between air pollution, climate and health, and explores solutions with a set of policy interventions for major economic activities like industry, transport, health (health-care) waste, as well as domestic household activities such as heating and cooking.

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NREL's investigations into South and Central Asian air quality reveal some interesting and challenging linkages between air pollution and power generation in the region.

The U.S. Department of State commissioned NREL to examine connections between electricity production and air quality in South and Central Asia. There were two aspects to this work: one was focused on identifying electricity-sector policies that can modulate the impact of fossil-fuel power generation on air quality and health; the other was focused on the impact of air pollution on solar power generation.

Policy Investigations

The electricity sector is a substantial source of air pollution and associated health problems in Asia and elsewhere. Fossil-fueled power plants emit a wide variety of harmful pollutants. Once released into the atmosphere, there is no practical way to remove air pollutants, which means that policies designed to improve air quality have to limit the pollutants before release. However, tackling such pollution is challenging because developing economies also need to provide electricity as a basic necessity for their citizens and as an engine of economic growth.

NREL studied the interactions between development and management of the electric sector and air quality in the South and Central regions within Asia, which provide examples of:

1. Policies that directly regulate air quality by limiting emissions from specific point sources (by restricting operating hours, for instance)

2. Indirect policies that incentivize or disincentivize polluting activities, such as policies to encourage fuel switching, for example.

Interactions of Air Pollution and Solar Power Output

Solar output in polluted areas can be reduced as a result of particulate matter (PM) air pollution. This is because particles in the air can block the sun's rays before they reach the ground or roofs where solar panels are placed. Studies indicate that areas with high ambient PM concentrations could experience a decrease of up to 25% in photovoltaic power output compared to pollution-free conditions. Yet project financial pro formas and solar resource assessments typically do not fully consider the impact of PM pollution on solar performance because prior-generation satellite imagery is too coarse to provide data at the required resolutions.

Taking advantage of advances in imagery from the latest generation of satellites, NREL developed spatially and temporally resolved data on the solar radiation attenuation properties of PM (called aerosol optical depth, or AOD) derived from current satellite coverage, which can be incorporated into a solar resource database for improved performance assessment of solar power projects. These methods, first developed for South Asia, are applicable to any global region.

Publications

An Overview of Policies Influencing Air Pollution from the Electricity Sector in South Asia, NREL Technical Report (2021)

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Air Quality and Energy Interactions in South and Central Asia

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NREL's investigations into South and Central Asian air quality reveal some interesting and challenging linkages between air pollution and power generation in the region. The U.S. Department of State commissioned NREL to examine connections between electricity production and air quality in South and Central Asia.