Map of Soviet Union | Geography | People | Government | Economy | Energy | Communication
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Background


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Location

Geographic coordinates

Map reference

Area
Total: 22,402,200 km²
Land: 22,272,000 km²

Land boundaries: 19,933 km total; Afghanistan 2,384 km, Czechoslovakia 98 km, China 7,520 km, Finland 1,313 km, Hungary 135 km, Iran 1,690 km, North Korea 17 km, Mongolia 3,441 km, Norway 196 km, Poland 1,215 km, Romania 1,307 km, Turkey 617 km

Coastline: 42,777 km

Maritime claims

Climate: mostly temperate to arctic continental; winters vary from cool along Black Sea to frigid in Siberia; summers vary from hot in southern deserts to cool along Arctic coast

Terrain: broad plain with low hills west of Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia, deserts in Central Asia, mountains in south

Elevation

Natural resources

Land use
Arable land: 10%
Permanent crops: NEGL%
Meadows and pastures: 17%
Forest: 41%
Forest and woodland: 32%
Other: includes 1% irrigated

Irrigated land

Major rivers

Major watersheds area km²

Total water withdrawal

Total renewable water resources

Natural hazards

Geography


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Population: 290,938,469 (July 1990), growth rate 0.7% (1990)

Nationality: noun—Soviet(s); adjective—Soviet

Ethnic groups

Languages: Russian (official); more than 200 languages and dialects (at least 18 with more than 1 million speakers); 75% Slavic group, 8% other Indo-European, 12% Altaic, 3% Uralian, 2% Caucasian

Religions: 20% Russian Orthodox; 10% Muslim; 7% Protestant, Georgian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic; less than 1% Jewish; 60% atheist (est.)

Demographic profile

Age structure

Dependency ratios

Median age

Population growth rate

Birth rate: 18 births/1000 population (1990)

Death rate: 1 deaths/1000 population (1990)

Net migration rate: migrants/1000 population (1990)

Population distribution

Urbanization

Major urban areas

Environment
Current issues: despite size and diversity, small percentage of land is arable and much is too far north; some of most fertile land is water deficient or has insufficient growing season; many better climates have poor soils; hot, dry, desiccating sukhovey wind affects south; desertification; continuous permafrost over much of Siberia is a major impediment to development
Note: largest country in world, but unfavorably located in relation to major sea lanes of world

Air pollutants

Sex ratio

Mothers mean age at first birth

Maternal mortality ratio

Infant mortality rate: 24 deaths/1000 live births (1990)

Life expectancy at birth: 65 years male, 74 years female (1990)

Total fertility rate: 2.4 children born/woman (1990)

Contraceptive prevalence rate

Drinking water source

Current health expenditure

Physicians density

Hospital bed density

Sanitation facility access

Hiv/Aids

Major infectious diseases

Obesity adult prevalence rate

Alcohol consumption

Tobacco use

Children under the age of 5 years underweight

Education expenditures

Literacy: 99%

School life expectancy primary to tertiary education

Youth unemployment


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Country name

Government type: Communist state

Capital: Moscow

Administrative divisions: 1 soviet federative socialist republic* (sovetskaya federativnaya sotsialistcheskaya respublika) and 14 soviet socialist republics (sovetskiye sotsialisticheskiye respubliki, singular—sovetskaya sotsialisticheskaya respublika); Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic*, Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic; note—the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic is often abbreviated RSFSR and Soviet Socialist Republic is often abbreviated SSR

Dependent areas

Independence: 1721 (Russian Empire proclaimed)

National holiday: Great October Socialist Revolution, 7-8 November (1917)

Constitution: 7 October 1977

Legal system: civil law system as modified by Communist legal theory; no judicial review of legislative acts; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction

International law organization participation

Citizenship

Suffrage: universal at age 18

Executive branch: president

Legislative branch: the Congress of People's Deputies is the supreme organ of USSR state power and selects the bicameral USSR Supreme Soviet (Verkhovnyy Sovyet) which consists of two coequal houses—Council of the Union (Sovet Soyuza) and Council of Nationalities (Sovet Natsionalnostey)

Judicial branch: Supreme Court of the USSR

Political parties and leaders: only party—Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU; note the CPSU is the only party, but others are forming

International organization participation

Diplomatic representation: Ambassador-designate Aleksandr BESSMERTNYKH; Chancery at 1125 16th Street NW, Washington DC 20,036; telephone (202) 628-7,551 or 8,548; there is a Soviet Consulate General in San Francisco; US—Ambassador Jack F. MATLOCK, Jr.; Embassy at Ulitsa Chaykovskogo 19/21/23, Moscow (mailing address is APO New York 9,862); telephone [7](096) 252-24-51 through 59; there is a US Consulate General in Leningrad

Flag description

National symbols

National anthem

National heritage


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Economy overview: The first five years of perestroyka (economic restructuring) have undermined the institutions and processes of the Soviet command economy without replacing them with efficiently functioning markets. The initial reforms featured greater authority for enterprise managers over prices, wages, product mix, investment, sources of supply, and customers. But in the absence of effective market discipline, the result was the disappearance of low-price goods, excessive wage increases, an even larger volume of unfinished construction projects, and, in general, continued economic stagnation. The Gorbachev regime has made at least four serious errors in economic policy in these five years: the unpopular and short-lived anti-alcohol campaign; the initial cutback in imports of consumer goods; the failure to act decisively for the privatization of agriculture; and the buildup of a massive overhang of unspent rubles in the hands of households and enterprises. In October 1989, a top economic adviser, Leonid Abalkin presented an ambitious but reasonable timetable for the conversion to a partially privatized market system in the 1990s. In December 1989, however, Premier Ryzhkov's conservative approach prevailed, namely, the contention that a period of retrenchment was necessary to provide a stable financial and legislative base for launching further reforms. Accordingly, the new strategy was to put the reform process on hold in 1990-92 by recentralizing economic authority and to placate the rank-and-file through sharp increases in consumer goods output. In still another policy twist, the leadership in early 1990 was considering a marked speedup in the marketization process. Because the economy is caught in between two systems, there was in 1989 an even greater mismatch between what was produced and what would serve the best interests of enterprises and households. Meanwhile, the seething nationality problems have been dislocating regional patterns of economic specialization and pose a further major threat to growth prospects over the next few years.

Real gdp purchasing power parity

Real gdp growth rate

Real gdp per capita ppp

Gross national saving

Gdp composition by end use

Gdp composition by sector of origin

Agriculture products

Industries: diversified, highly developed capital goods and defense industries; consumer goods industries comparatively less developed

Industrial production growth rate

Labor force:

Unemployment rate: officially, no unemployment

Youth unemployment

Population below poverty line

Gini index

Household income or consumption by percentage share

Distribution of family income gini index

Budget: revenues $622 billion; expenditures $781 billion, including capital expenditures of $119 billion (1989 est.)

Public debt

Taxes and other revenues

Revenue

Fiscal year: calendar year

Current account balance

Inflation rate consumer prices

Central bank discount rate

Commercial bank prime lending rate

Stock of narrow money

Stock of broad money

Stock of domestic credit

Market value of publicly traded shares

Current account balance

Exports: $110.7 billion (f.o.b., 1988); commodities—petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a wide variety of manufactured goods (primarily capital goods and arms); partners—Eastern Europe 49%, EC 14%, Cuba 5%, US, Afghanistan (1988)

Imports: $107.3 billion (c.i.f., 1988); commodities—grain and other agricultural products, machinery and equipment, steel products (including large-diameter pipe), consumer manufactures; partners—Eastern Europe 54%, EC 11%, Cuba, China, US (1988)

Reserves of foreign exchange and gold

Debt external

Stock of direct foreign investment at home

Stock of direct foreign investment abroad

Exchange rates: rubles (R) per US$1—0.600 (February 1990), 0.629 (1989), 0.629 (1988), 0.633 (1987), 0.704 (1986), 0.838 (1985); note—the exchange rate is administratively set and should not be used indiscriminately to convert domestic rubles to dollars; on 1 November 1989 the USSR began using a rate of 6.26 rubles to the dollar for Western tourists buying rubles and for Soviets traveling abroad, but retained the official exchange rate for most trade transactions


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Electricity access

Electricity production

Electricity consumption

Electricity exports

Electricity imports

Electricity installed generating capacity

Electricity transmission distribution losses

Electricity generation sources

Petroleum

Refined petroleum

Natural gas

Carbon dioxide emissions

Energy consumption per capita


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Telephones fixed lines

Telephones mobile cellular

Telephone system

Broadcast media

Internet country code

Internet users

Broadband fixed subscriptions


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Military expenditures

Military and security forces

Military service age and obligation

Space program

Terrorist groups


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National air transport system

Civil aircraft registration country code prefix

Airports: 6,950 total, 4,530 usable; 1,050 with permanent-surface runways; 30 with runways over 3,659 m; 490 with runways 2,440-3,659 m; 660 with runways 1,220-2,439 m

Airports with paved runways

Airports with unpaved runways

Heliports

Pipelines: 81,500 km crude oil and refined products; 195,000 km natural gas (1987)

Railways

Roadways

Waterways

Merchant marine: 1,646 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 16,436,063 GRT/22,732,215 DWT; includes 53 passenger, 937 cargo, 52 container, 11 barge carrier, 5 roll-on/float off cargo, 5 railcar carrier, 108 roll-on/roll-orT cargo, 251 petroleum, oils, and lubricants (POL) tanker, 11 liquefied gas, 21 combination ore/oil, 4 specialized liquid carrier, 17 chemical tanker, 171 bulk; note—639 merchant ships are based in Black Sea, 383 in Baltic Sea, 408 in Soviet Far East, and 216 in Barents Sea and White Sea; the Soviet Ministry of Merchant Marine is beginning to use foreign registries for its merchant ships to increase the economic competitiveness of the fleet in the international market—the first reregistered ships have gone to the Cypriot flag

Ports and terminals


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Disputes international

Refugees and internally displaced persons

Illicit drugs: illegal producer of cannabis and opium poppy, mostly for domestic consumption; government has begun eradication program to control cultivation; used as a transshipment country