Physical Patterns

The physical features of Russia and the post-Soviet states vary greatly over the huge territory they encompass. The region bears some resemblance to North America in size, topography, climate, and vegetation. Even if Russia is only about three-quarters the size of the Soviet Union, it is still the largest country in the world, nearly twice the size of the second-largest country, Canada.

Landforms

Because the region is relatively complex physically, a brief summary of its landforms is useful (see the Figure 5.1 map). Moving west to east, there is first the eastern extension of the North European Plain, including the plain of the Volga River (see Figure 5.1A, C), followed by the Ural Mountains (see Figure 5.1D). Russia’s territories east of the Ural Mountains are usually called Siberia, and include the West Siberian Plain (see Figure 5.1E), followed by an upland zone called the Central Siberian Plateau (see Figure 5.1F), and finally, in the Far East, a series of mountain ranges bordering the Pacific (see Figure 5.1G). To the south there are mountains and uplands (the Caucasus, depicted in Figure 5.1B, and Central Asia, not pictured) as well as semiarid grasslands, or steppes (in western Central Asia, not pictured).

The eastern extension of the North European Plain rolls low and flat from the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine and Romania, 1200 miles (about 2000 kilometers) east to the Ural Mountains (see Figure 5.1A, C, D). The part of Russia west of the Urals is often called European Russia because the Ural Mountains are traditionally considered part of the indistinct border between Europe and Asia. European Russia is the most densely settled part of the entire region (see Figure 5.20) and its agricultural and industrial core. Its most important river is the Volga, which flows into the Caspian Sea. The Volga River and its tributaries form a major transportation route that connects many parts of the Russian North European Plain, including Moscow, to St. Petersburg and the Baltic and White seas in the north and to the Black and Caspian seas in the south (see Figure 5.1C).

The Ural Mountains extend in a fairly straight line south from the Arctic Ocean into Kazakhstan (see the Figure 5.1 map). The Urals, a low-lying range similar in elevation to the Appalachians, are not much of a barrier to humans and are only partially a barrier to nature (some European tree species do not extend east of the Urals). There are several easy passes across the mountains, and winds carry moisture all the way from the Atlantic into Siberia. Much of the Urals’ once-dense forest has been felled to build and fuel industrial cities.

The West Siberian Plain, east of the Urals, is the largest wetlands plain in the world (see Figure 5.1E). A vast, mostly marshy lowland, about the size of the eastern United States, drains toward the north into the Arctic Ocean. Long, bitter winters mean that in the northern half of this area, a layer of permanently frozen soil (permafrost) lies just a few feet beneath the surface. Permafrost is formed when the ground warms up during the short summer, but the top layer of material insulates against this warming effect, leaving the subsurface always frozen. In the far north, the permafrost comes to within a few inches of the surface. Because water does not percolate down through this frozen layer, surface water accumulates into wetlands that form above the permafrost layer in the summer months, providing habitats for many migratory birds. In the far north lies a treeless area called the tundra, where only mosses and lichens can grow because of the extreme cold, the shallow soils, and the permafrost. The West Siberian Plain is one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas producers, although its harsh climate and permafrost make extraction difficult.

The Central Siberian Plateau and the Pacific Mountain Zone, farther to the east, together equal the size of the United States (see Figure 5.1F, G). Permafrost prevails except along the Pacific coast. There, the ocean moderates temperatures; the many active volcanoes were and are created as the Pacific Plate sinks under the Eurasian Plate. Lightly populated places like the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin Island, and Sikhote-Alin on Russia’s southeastern Pacific coast are havens for wildlife.

To the south of the West Siberian Plain, steppes and deserts stretch from the Caspian Sea to the Chinese border. To the west of these grasslands are the Caucasus Mountains (see Figure 5.1B) and to the southeast facing China and Mongolia are a series of other mountain chains, including Pamir and Tien Shan. The rugged terrain has not deterred people from crossing these mountains. From the Caucasus to the Pamir and Tien Shan, for tens of thousands of years people have exchanged plants (apples, onions, citrus, rhubarb, wheat), animals (horses, sheep, goats, cattle), technologies (cultivation, animal breeding, portable shelter construction, rug and tapestry weaving), and religious belief systems (principally Islam and Buddhism, but also Christianity, Hinduism, and Judaism).

Climate and Vegetation

The climates and associated vegetation in this large region are varied but are less so than in other regions because so much territory here is taken up by expanses of midlatitude grasslands and by northern forest and tundra that are cold much of the year. No inhabited place on Earth has as harsh a climate as the northern part of the Eurasian landmass occupied by Russia and, particularly, Siberia (shown in the map in Figure 5.5). Winters are long and cold, with only brief hours of daylight. Summers are short and cool to hot, with long days. Precipitation is moderate, coming primarily from the west. In the northernmost areas, the natural vegetation is tundra grasslands. The major economic activities here are the extraction of oil, gas, and some minerals, as well as reindeer herding by the local indigenous population. Just south of the tundra lays a vast, cold-adapted coniferous forest known as taiga that stretches from northern European Russia to the Pacific (and from a global perspective, this coniferous belt also includes much of Alaska, Canada, and Scandinavia). The largest portion of taiga lies east of the Urals, and here forestry—often unrestrained by ecological concerns—is a dominant economic activity. The short growing season and the large areas of permafrost generally limit crop agriculture, except in the southern West Siberian Plain, where people grow grain.

Because massive mountain ranges to the south block access to warm, wet air from the Indian Ocean, most rainfall in the entire region comes from storms that blow in from the Atlantic Ocean far to the west (see the Figure 5.5 map). But by the time these air masses arrive, most of their moisture has been squeezed out over Europe. A fair amount of rain does reach Ukraine, Belarus, European Russia (see Figure 5.5A), and the Caucasian republics; these regions are especially important food production (vegetables, fruits, and grain) areas. The natural vegetation in these western zones is open woodlands and grassland, though in ancient times, forests were common.

East of the Caucasus Mountains, the lands of Central Asia have semiarid to arid climates (see Figure 5.5B) influenced by their location in the middle of a very large continent. The summers are scorching and short, the winters intense. In the desert zones, daytime-to-nighttime temperatures can vary by 50°F (28°C) or more. Northern Kazakhstan produces grain and grazing animals. The more southern areas (southern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan) have grasslands (steppes), which are also used for herding. In modern times, these grasslands have been used for irrigated commercial agriculture that is dependent upon glacially fed rivers, but most land is not useful for farming. The climates in the more mountainous area where Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan meet are varied and support a number of small-scale agricultural activities, some of them commercial.

The construction of land transportation systems has long been held back by the climate of the region. In the north especially, it is difficult to build during the long, harsh winters, which eventually give way to a spring period called the rasputitsa, or the “quagmire season,” when melting permafrost (or, to a lesser extent, autumn rains) turns many roads and construction sites into impassable mud pits. Huge distances between populated places as well as the complex topography, especially in Siberia, add to the problem. As a result, few roads or railroads have ever been built outside western Russia (see Figure 5.15).