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Russia in Europe and Asia with current administrative divisions (de facto boundaries^{[note 1]}).

European Russia is the western part of the Russian Federation, which is part of Eastern Europe. With a population of 110 million people, European Russia has about 77% of Russia's population, but covers less than 25% of Russia's territory. European Russia includes Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the two largest cities in Russia.

The boundaries between continents are almost exclusively determined by geography, with the one exception being that the eastern boundary of Europe is generally considered, by convention, to run along the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caucasus Mountains, the Turkish Straits.^{[citation needed]} The southern part of Russia has some small areas that lie geographically south of the Caucasus Mountain range, and therefore are geographically in Asia; this territory includes the city of Sochi.

The other, eastern, part of the Russian Federation forms part of northern Asia, and is known as North Asia, also called Asian Russia or Siberia. Europe also forms a subcontinent within Eurasia,^[1]
making all of Russia a part of the Eurasian continent.

Demographics

Ethnic map of the European Russian Empire prior to the outbreak of World War I

Russia is not proportionately populated between its larger Asian portion, which contains about 23% of the country's population, and its smaller European portion, which contains about 77%. The European portion contains about 110 million people out of Russia's total population of about 144 million in an area covering nearly 4,000,000 km² (1,500,000 sq mi); (making it by far the largest European country) an average of 27.5 people per kilometre² (70 per sq mi).^[2]:6[2]:10

The eastern portion of Russia, mostly encompassing Siberia, is part of Asia and makes up more than 75% of the territory with 22% of the country's population at 2.5 people per kilometre² (6.5 per sq mi).^[2]:6

History

Some theories say that some early Eastern Slavs arrived in modern-day western Russia (also in Ukraine and Belarus) sometime during the middle of the first millennium AD.^[3] The Eastern Slavic tribe of the Vyatichis was native to the land around the Oka river. Finno-Ugric, Baltic and Turkic tribes were also present in the area (although large parts of the Turkic and Finno-Ugric people were absorbed by the Slavs, there are great minorities in the European Russia today). The western region of Central Russia was inhabited by the Eastern Slavic tribe of the Severians.The population of European Russia was composed of Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Caucasian, Scandinavian, Baltic, Finnic, Khazarian, Hungarian and Norse peoples.^[4][5][6][7] One of the first Rus' regions according to the Sofia First Chronicle was Veliky Novgorod in 859. In late 8th and early-to-mid-9th centuries AD the Rus' Khaganate was formed in modern western Russia. The region was a place of operations for Varangians, eastern Scandinavian adventurers, merchants, and pirates. From the late 9th to the mid-13th century a large section of today's European Russia was part of Kievan Rus'. The lands of Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus' were important trade routes and connected Scandinavia, Byzantine Empire, Rus' people and Volga Bulgaria with Khazaria and Persia. According to old Scandinavian sources among the 12 biggest cities of Kievan Rus' or Ancient Rus' were Novgorod, Kiev, Polotsk, Smolensk, Murom and Rostov.^[8] Through trade and cultural contact with Byzantine Empire, the Slavic culture of the Rus' adopted gradually the Eastern Orthodox religion. Many sources say that Ryazan, Kolomna, Moscow, Vladimir and Kiev were destroyed by the Mongol Empire. After the Mongol invasion the Muscovite Rus' arose, over all this time, western Russia and the various Rus' regions had strong cultural contacts with the Byzantine Empire, while the Slavic culture was cultivated all the time.^[9] The elements of East Slavic paganism and Christianity overlapped each other and sometimes produced even double faith in Muscovite Rus'.^[10] In fourteenth century Muscovite Russia served as the intermediary in the trade between Europe and Persia as well as Turkey.^[11] During all this time, Russian culture had not only strong cultural links and exchanges with Central Europe and Asia, but also with its many ethnic minorities which exist until today in Russia, like Tatars, Ukrainians, Finno-Ugrics, Bashkirs and Chuvashs.^[12] While Russia evolved over periods of time with a balanced European influence, it was tsar Peter the Great who wanted to reform Russia and bring it up to a true Western standards and way of life. Peter the Great was able to change Russian society partly, resistance existed among peasants, the traditionalists and Old Believers within the Orthodox Church. With the Soviet Union, Russia was cut off from Western culture. In the nineties, the Russian political elites hoped to integrate Russia into the West.^[13][14] The Russian culture was shaped for centuries by the Orthodox faith, Slavic traditions, the Cyrillic script, the geographical location between Europe and Asia. Western Russia has French, Polish, Lithuanian and German influences, from 1500-1945.

Alignment with administrative divisions

The administrative districts (on a large scale called federal districts) of the Russian Federation do not exactly line up with European Russia, but they are decent approximations, depending on exactly how Europe is defined. There are two major trends, one to use administrative divisions north of the mouth of the Ural River and one to draw a line of falseness from the Ural River, through the town of Yekaterinburg.^{[citation needed]}

The following administrative districts are overwhelmingly European:

Federal districts of Russia

See also

• North Asia


• Caucasus


• Russian Far East


• Siberia

References

Coordinates: 55°N 40°E / 55°N 40°E / 55; 40