Russia cultural definition

A vast nation that stretches from eastern Europe across the Eurasian land mass. It was the most powerful republic of the former Soviet Union; ethnic Russians composed about half of the population. It is the world's largest country. Its capital and largest city is Moscow.

• Russia was ruled by czars of the Romanov family from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
• Peter the Great, a czar who reigned in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, attempted to westernize Russian government and culture.
• During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks, under Lenin, took control of the government; communists governed from 1917 until 1991.
• Russia now occupies the seat on the Security Council of the United Nations formerly held by the Soviet Union.