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Russia,[b]or the Russian Federation,[c]is a country spanning Eastern Europeand North Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, extending across eleven time zonesand sharing land borders with fourteen countries. [d]It is the world's ninth-most populous countryand Europe's most populous country. Russia is a highly urbanised country ...
European Russia[ a] is the western and most populated part of the Russian Federation. It is geographically situated in Europe, as opposed to the country's sparsely populated and vastly larger eastern part, Siberia, which is situated in Asia, encompassing the entire northern region of the continent. The two parts of Russia are divided by the ...
Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa.
Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, English, French, Italian, and German. Russian is the most-spoken native language in Europe, [ 4] and English has the largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language. (See English language in Europe .)
Russian is a minority language. Russian [e] is an East Slavic language, spoken primarily in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, [f] and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages.
History of Russia. Medieval Russian states around 1470, including Novgorod, Tver, Pskov, Ryazan, Rostov and Moscow. The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs. [1] [2] The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' state in the north in 862, ruled by Varangians.
Despite its wide dispersal, the Russian language is homogeneous throughout Russia. Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken Slavic language. [20] Russian belongs to the Indo-European language family and is one of the living members of the East Slavic languages; the others being Belarusian and ...
The most common theory about the origins of Russians is the Germanic version. The name Rus ', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*Ruotsi), supposed to be descended from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen or Roden, as it was known in ...