ABSTRACT
The diversity of Russian regions is far more than political. Russia is an extremely vast country with eleven time zones and about ten climatic zones: from depopulated permafrost-covered tundra and taiga, embracing almost the whole of Siberia and the north of the European part, to the subtropics of the Black Sea coast and the northern Caucasus, with a huge population density and birth-rate. Industrial and post-industrial enclaves, centered around big megalopolizes, are scattered all over the country, along with other rich regions whose prosperity is based on raw materials. They include such cities as St. Petersburg (Baltic coast), Yekaterinburg (Urals), Krasnoyarsk (mid-Siberia) and Vladivostok (Pacific Coast). These zones of wealth alternate with depressed rural areas, suffering from high unemployment and outflow of manpower that leaves half-idle the remnants of gigantic Soviet farms and heavy industries. Urban Christian (or rather post-Christian) post-modern lifestyle of Russian-populated cities, traditional agricultural Muslim society in the northern Caucasus and nomadic reindeer breeder culture in the tundra – all this coexists within one state.
