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Russia Culture and Life

The Population and the People

With a population of more than 148.5 million in the early 1990s, Russia ranks sixth in the world after China, India, the United States, Brazil, and Indonesia. Of all the 15 former Soviet Union republics, Russia has the greatest ethnic diversity, with about 75 distinct nationalities. Russians make up about 82 percent of the total, and only three others (Tatars, Ukrainians, and Chuvash ) constitute more than 1 percent each. Language groups include Indo-European, comprising Eastern Slavic and Iranian tongues; Altaic, including Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus; Uralic, including Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic; and Caucasian, comprising Abkhazo-Adyghian and Nakho-Dagestani. In addition, there are several Paleo-Asiatic groups in far eastern Siberia.

As a whole, Russia 's rate of population growth is well below that of previous decades, resulting primarily from a decline in the birthrate of the Russian majority. Rates among minority peoples continue to grow, particularly those with Muslim backgrounds. Migration from European Russia to Siberia and the Far East has resulted in regional variations.

By 1990 more than 74 percent of Russia 's population was classified as urban. The largest numbers lived in the European section, where from 1960 to 1990 the rural population fell by nearly 30 percent. This resulted in about 160 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and 13 with more than 1 million each. Moscow and St. Petersburg are by far the largest, with more than 8 million and 5 million, respectively. Other concentrated urban areas include the banks of the Volga River, the Donets Coal Basin industrial zone, the mining and industrial centers of the Ural Mountains, the Kuznetsk Coal Basin east of the Urals, and a number of widely separated towns along the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. There are isolated ports and mining centers in the far north, resort towns on the Black Sea, and the capitals of oblasts and other administrative centers.

Most rural dwellers live in large villages associated with collective and state farms established during the Soviet era. These carry on the long-established Russian tradition of communal farming.

Russian Literature

Literature plays a great role in Russia culture. The Russian language reflects a rich oral literary tradition, consisting of proverbs, folk tales, legends, and heroic ballads that may be traced to the earliest Eastern Slavic tribes. The Chronicles date from the time when Kiev was the cultural center of Russia, from 988 to 1240. From that time until the reign of Peter the Great in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, written literature was mainly the handmaiden of the Russian Orthodox church.

The 1800s are recognized as the Golden Age of Russian literature, a time when it began to show a conscience, especially regarding serfdom and the downtrodden. The so-called "Russian Shakespeare," Aleksandr Pushkin, blended European and native Russian influences to perfection.

"Russia 's Byron," Mikhail Lermontov, is considered Russia 's greatest Romanticist, and he was the first Russian poet to describe not only the beauty of the Caucasus Mountains but also Caucasian culture and folk art. Other great writers of the Golden Age include Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Fedor Dostoevski, Leo Tolstoi, Anton Chekhov, Maksim Gorki, and Aleksandr Blok. Anton Chekhov, Maksim Gorki, and the poet Aleksandr Blok wrote works that overlapped the 19th and 20th centuries. With them came another literary and artistic revival, designated sometimes as Russia 's Silver Age.

Soviet literature served the political regime. In 1932 Soviet writers were organized into the Union of Soviet Writers, which was guided by the Stalinist doctrine of socialist realism. Outstanding Russian writers of the Soviet period were Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Mayakovski, Mikhail Sholokhov, and the poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky.

Russian Visual Arts

Like literature, Russian art was the servant of the Orthodox church until the reign of Peter the Great. Until then borrowings from the Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, and Turko-Mongols were the basis for the rich background of folk art that entered the liturgical tradition by way of embroidery, metalwork, leatherwork, wood carving, and some bas-relief sculpture, enriching Russia culture and making it one-of-a-kind.

Russian Painting and Sculpture

Sculpture did not play a role in Russia culture art until relatively recent times because the church forbade the display of the human body in three-dimensional form. This also explains why the figures in icons are so two-dimensional in appearance. A serious art, icon painting was brought to its zenith as a Russian art form in the 14th and 15th centuries by Theophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev. Until the late 1600s the icon and the mosaic were the Russian artist's sole outlet.

Modern Westernized painting and sculpture date from Peter's reforms after 1700. Perhaps the most famous Russian artist in the last 200 years was Ilya Repin, who flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The stress on socialist realism in art as well as literature hampered artistic creativity from 1917. Modern art typically was banned and forced underground. In the 1980s, however, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev permitted public exhibits of Soviet modern art.

Russian Architecture

Byzantium also influenced Russian architecture as all Russia culture, but Russian buildings from the outset had a higher, narrower silhouette than their Byzantine models. Russians experimented with the dome, which was derived from the nomadic yurt (felt tent). This led to the onion-shaped outer shell that is seen on most Russian domed churches.

Early Russian architecture cannot be divided into periods like Gothic or baroque. Rather it sprang from different city centers: Kiev, Novgorod, Moscow, and later St. Petersburg. Soviet buildings were pragmatic products of standardized architecture, largely the result of the need to build quickly after the decimation of World War II. Some Stalinist "wedding-cake" architecture dots the streets of Moscow. Since the 1960s more innovative architectural styles have appeared around the country.

Russia Culture institutions

There are more than 1,100 museums in Russia, some of them world famous: the Central Lenin Museum, the Central Museum of the Revolution, the State Historical Museum, and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg; the museum-estate of Leo Tolstoi at Yasnaya Polyana, near Tula; and the A.S. Pushkin Museum in Mikhaylovka. In addition to the Moscow Art Theatre, world-renowned Russian theaters include the Bolshoi Theater of Opera and Ballet, the Maly Theater, the Vakhtangov Theater, and the State Central Puppet Theater in Moscow; the Kirov State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet and the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Dramatic Theater in St. Petersburg; and the Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet in Novosibirsk.

Publishing and Reading in Russia

Russia is the leader among the former Soviet republics in book, newspaper, and journal publications. More than 50,000 books are published annually, the majority in Russian but many others in two dozen other languages. There are nearly 5,000 newspapers published in Russia, including several hundred in minority languages, and about 4,000 journals. Russians love to read both foreign and Russian literature. Especially after the fall of the Soviet regime and the ban on many foreign books, reading has become even more popular than before for Russia culture.