Human+Geography

=Human Geography = =Architecture=

Russian architecture varies hugely. Russian architecture varies from the modern sky scrapers that crowd cities to traditional buildings from over a thousand years ago.
//[]// ====The church above is an example of a traditional building from roughly 900 years ago. Traditional buildings also vary from this to a more ornately decorated building such as the one below from the 1600s.==== //[]//

Today, buildings that we see every day in Seoul like bank buildings, restaurants, and etc... are common in Russia. Below is a picture of Moscow, Russia's capital.
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=**Language**= ====Russia's official language is Russian. The Russian language is Slavic and a part of Indo-European languages. This means that Russian shares common roots with English, which is Germanic and also a part of Indo-European languages. It is also an official language in neighboring countries such as Kazakhstan where Russian is the 2nd official language. In Russia however, it is the first and only official language of the nation.==== //[]// ====If you look at the map above, Russia is a part of the group of nations with Russian as its official language. Russian's popularity is apparent from the map above where even Asian countries like Mongolia have large numbers of people who speak the language.====

=Religions= ====Russian Orthodox has its hold on Russia with 71.8% of the population being a part of this religion. The Muslim faith trails far away with 5.5% of the population being Muslim. People with no affiliation to any religion make up 18.9% of the entire Russian population. A Russian church is pictured below.==== //[]//

Other religions like Catholicism and Buddhism are present in Russia as well but make up a very small minority of the population.
=Ethnic Groups= ====A large variety of ethnic groups reside in Russia in relatively large numbers. According to the CIA World Factbook, Russians make up 79.8% of the entire Russian population, Tatars 3.8%, Ukranians 2%, Baskirs 1.2%, Chuvashes 1.1%, and other ethnicities 12.1%. Russia boasts a population of nearly 150 million people. This means that of those 150 million people, 3 million are Ukrainian. Below is a map of ethnic populations that outlines the region.==== //[]//

=Major Cities= ====According to World Atlas, Russia has over 1000 major cities. 16 of these cities having a metro population that is over one million people. Moscow, also mentioned above, has the largest population and is most definitely a major city. Another major city is St. Petersburg, which is one of the few Russian cities known by anyone living in the West. St. Petersburg was named after Peter the Great and was once the capital of Russia. Currently, its population is nearly five million people and is made up of more Russians and less people of other ethnicities compared to the ethnic groups of the entire nation.==== //[]// ====Other notable major cities are Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg. All of the major cities that have been mentioned have, at one point in time, been an important part of the nation, historically speaking. Nizhny Novgorod for example, was once a fortress that was able to withstand repeated attacks from invaders.====

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 * Works cited **