RUSSIA

Russia is a big country situated in Asia.The Russian Federation is the largest of the 21 republics that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States. It occupies most of eastern Europe and north Asia, stretching from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea and the Caucasus in the south.


Russian cuisine is diverse, as Russia is by area the largest country in the world.  Russian cuisine derives its varied character from the vast and multi-cultural expanse of Russia.
Shchi had been the predominant first course in Russian cuisine for over a thousand years. Although tastes have changed, it steadily made its way through several epochs. Shchi knew no social class boundaries, and even if the rich had richer ingredients and the poor made it solely of cabbage and onions, all these "poor" and "rich" variations were cooked in the same tradition. The unique taste of this cabbage soup was from the fact that after cooking it was left to draw in a Russian stove.

Famous people of Russia:
-Nicholas II

For some people - Shy, reserved, well-read, polite, family-oriented, for others - A weak, indecisive, easily-led man, Nicholas succeeded to the Russian imperial throne in 1894 on the death of his father, Alexander III. He inherited a vast, unruly empire, riven by political and social discontents, which required a ruthless autocratic ruler to control it. Nicholas could not provide the strength or political acumen to hold his realm together. Resentment boiled over into revolution of 1905, during the disastrous Russian-Japanese war, and although Nicholas was quite prepared to order his troops to suppress the uprising, he also accepted the creation of an elected Duma (parliament). Unfortunately he refused to allow it any power to introduce reforms, further alienating his people. At the same time, he lost the support of the aristocracy when his wife Alexandra came under the influence of the “mad monk” Rasputin, reportedly the only man who could cure the hemophilia of Nicholas’ son and heir. By 1917, in the midst of another disastrous war, revolution broke out again, this time with more success. In March, faced with implacable and almost universal opposition, Nicholas abdicated; in July 1918 he and his entire family were executed by the Bolsheviks, at Ekaterinburg.

-Stalin

The failed priest and bank robber who made the Soviet Union a superpower, from 1903, Stalin was successful as a propagandist for Bolshevism in his native Caucasus, and in raising funds at gunpoint. Lenin dubbed him “the wonderful Georgian”, and coopted him on to the party’s Central Committee. As a political Commissar he helped his future chief of the armed forces, Voroshilov, defend Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd) against the Whites. In 1922 Lenin appointed him Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, the key post he held for the next 30 years. Lenin soon regretted the promotion and in his pre-deathbed “Testament” specifically warned the other old Bolsheviks against him. Stalin brought trumped-up charges against them at the Moscow Show Trials of 1936 and had them shot. He had already caused over a million deaths by collectivizing the farms, against the Old Comrades’ advice. He went on to purge the Army, leaving it almost fatally weakened to resist Hitler’s 1941 invasion. A combination of the strong industrial infrastructure produced by successful five-year plans and the talent of generals like Zhukov threw the Nazis back to Berlin and annexed their eastern empire. The Yalta peace conference (April 1945) confirmed his conquests, which were held by extending his secret police terror and slave-labor system. Paranoia affected his judgement; he miscalculated over the Korean war and the Berlin Airlift and died in 1953 as he was about to arrest more “plotters” against him. His memory still has an uncomfortable resonance in his demolished empire.