- published: 20 May 2013
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Russia i/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
The Tsardom of Russia (also known as Tsardom of Muscovy; officially Русское царство (Tsardom of Rus') or, in hellenized form, Российское царство) was the name of the centralized Russian state from Ivan IV's assumption of the title of Tsar in 1547 until Peter the Great's foundation of the Russian Empire in 1721.
From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew 35,000 km2 (Holland's size) a year. The period includes the upheavals of the transition from the Rurik to the Romanov dynasties, drawn-out military conflict with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as well as the Russian conquest of Siberia, leading up to the 42-year reign of Peter the Great, who ascended in 1682 and transformed the Tsardom into a major European power, after a military victory over Sweden and Poland implemented substantial reforms and proclaimed the Russian Empire (Российская Империя) in 1721 making it a recognized European power.
While Ivan assumed the title of "Tsar and Grand Duke of the entire Rus'" (Царь и Великий князь всея Руси), officially renaming the Grand Duchy of Moscow to Tsardom of Russia, the state remained partly referred to as Muscovy (Moscovia) throughout Europe, predominantly in its Catholic part. The two names "Russia" and "Muscovy" appear to have co-existed as interchangeable during the later 16th and throughout the 17th century with different maps and sources using different names.