Russia A Country Study Guide

Russia - the largest country on earth in terms of surface area - emerged from a decade of post-Soviet economic and political turmoil to seek to reassert itself as a world power. Income from vast natural resources, above all oil and gas, helped Russia overcome the economic collapse of 1998, but the oil price slump of 2014 ended the long run of prosperity.The state-run gas monopoly Gazprom still supplies a large share of Europe's needs. Vladimir Putin - Russia's dominant political figure since 2000 - has enhanced his control over state institutions and the media - a process supplemented more recently by an emphasis on fierce nationalism and hostility to the West. A period of rapid privatisation under the rule of President Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s created a powerful group of magnates - known as "oligarchs" - with vast energy, media and other business interests, in a sharp contrast to widespread economic hardship among ordinary Russians. Yeltsin's handpicked successor, former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, quickly moved to break the oligarchs' influence, and a close-knit circle of his associates has since - directly or indirectly - to a large extent replaced them in their control of key economic assets.