RUSSIA RUSSIA The Russian empire stretches over a vast territory in E. Europe and N. Asia, with an area exceeding 8,660,000 sq. m., or one-sixth of the land surface of the globe (one twenty-third of its whole superficics). It is, however, but thinly peopled on the average, including only one-twelfth of the inhabitants of the earth. It is almost entirely confined to the cold and temperate zones. In Novaya Zemlya and the Taimyr peninsula, it projects within the Arctic Circle as far as 77 6 and 77 40 N. respectively; while its S. extremities reach 38 50 in Armenia, 35 on the Afghan frontier, and 42 30 on the coasts of the Pacific. To the W. it advances as far as 20 40 E. in Lapland, 17 in Poland, and 29 42 on the Black Sea; and its E. limitEast Cape on the Bering Straitis in 191 E. The White, Barents and Kara Seas of the Arctic bound it on the N., and the northern Pacificthat is, the Seas of Bering, Okhotsk and Japanbounds it on the E. Bound- . . . Russia has no oceanic possessions; her islands are all appendages of the mainland to which they belong. Such are Karlo, East Kvarken, the Aland archipelago, Islands. -. Dago, and sel or Oesel in the Baltic Sea; Novaya Zemlya, with Kolguyev and Vaigach, in the Barents Sea; the Solovetski Islands in the White Sea; the. New Siberian archipelago, Wrangel Land and Bear Islands, off the Siberian coast; the Commander Islands off Kamchatka; the Shantar Islands and the N. of Sakhalin in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Aleutian archipelago was sold to the United States in 1867, together with Alaska, and in 1875 the Kurile Islands were ceded to Japan. | |
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