Hydrography
Russia's major rivers are the first victims of industrial pollution; in the Volga River, sturgeons no longer swim up from the Caspian Sea, causing a drop in caviar production. The problem is of global importance, since the Caspian alone concentrates 90% of the world's sturgeon schools. The Neva River, which waters St. Petersburg, is contaminated by chemical discharges from Lake Ladoga, where the river originates. Several beaches in the Baltic Sea have been closed as a result of this pollution. In the industrial centres, chronic diseases are appearing, especially in children: allergies, respiratory insufficiency, cancer... Large cities, such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg, are seeing their air heavily polluted, with sulphuric anhydride (SO2) levels ten times higher than the alert level in France. The companies are old-fashioned and have no filtering facilities. Toxic substances are discharged into the water and the atmosphere without taking the risks into account. In the North more specifically, the Murmansk region, where the main Soviet nuclear submarine base was located, has traces of this past and many hectares are closed to the public because they contain nuclear waste. The north-eastern part of the European part of Russia is marked by a recurrence of acid rain. The closed city of Norilsk in Western Siberia, in addition to its status as "the coldest big city in the world", is also one of the most polluted, due to the development of the nickel industry during the Soviet period.
Lakes and swamps. Overall, Russia is a country that does not lack water. Beyond the network of rivers, lakes and swamps dot the territory. In European Russia, they are particularly numerous, especially in the north around St. Petersburg and Karelia. Their formation dates back to the end of the last ice age: the melting of the ice, leaving the ground particularly uneven, facilitated the retention of water. In the tundra, further east, it is the presence of another Ice Age legacy, permafrost, that conditions hydrographic evolution. This layer of continuously frozen ground is present as early as a few decimetres below the surface and can reach a depth of up to 1,500 m in some parts of Yakutia. With global warming, the permafrost (which is present over about 60% of Russia's territory) is melting and flooding the tundra from below: mud is invading Siberian villages and swampy lakes are forming more or less permanently.
An exceptional fauna
The richness and diversity of the Russian fauna is on a scale of the extent of the territory. The taiga is home to a large number of elk, brown bears and deer, as well as wolves in some areas. The tundra in the far north is the domain of the reindeer, which feeds on the scarce vegetation even when it is buried under snow. The shores of the Arctic Ocean are inhabited by seals, walruses, and polar bears. The Caucasus is home to mountain wildlife such as sheep, brown bear and chamois. For lovers of rare species, the Saiga, the only European antelope, is still found in the wild in the Kalmykia steppes. But like many animal species in Russia, it is threatened by poaching and pollution of its natural habitat. In all the countries of the former USSR, poaching has taken on catastrophic proportions with the transition to a market economy. The most tragic example remains that of the Caspian sturgeon, whose world-famous caviar is still selling for gold on the black market. Overfishing has almost completely decimated the sturgeon population and has led to an embargo on Caspian caviar. And even though the largest illegal farms have been dismantled by the Russian security services, poaching continues to take place on the scale of small family farms protected by the ramifications of the Volga Delta
Wildlife as an identity resource. The long untamed character of the Russian territory and the animal species that populate it has been largely reinvented in the service of politico-cultural projects extolling the martial skills of this or that people. This is the case, for example, with the bear, a national animal, which is now associated with the Russian nation by lending it qualities similar to the character of the animal: calm, protection of its own, and power. From Micha, the mascot bear cub of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, to the same bare-chested Vladimir Putin riding a brown bear, the bear has become a kind of totem pole that refers both to the animist beliefs of the early Slavs and to the modern exercise of power. In a similar vein, during the 1990s the wolf became the ultimate symbol of Chechen independence. The wolf is present on the flag of the ephemeral Chechen Republic of Itchkeria and is a symbol of the history of the people: descended from the Caucasian foothills, it shows an exceptional gregarious instinct and will attack violently if it feels threatened. Thus, it was not uncommon to see the symbolic representation of a battle between a bear and a wolf accompanying the accounts of the Russian-Chechen conflict.
A diversified flora
A change in vegetation occurs along a north-south axis and eastwards, forming clearly defined zones: Arctic desert, tundra, taiga in the north, forests and then steppes interspersed with forests in central Russia. The Caucasus, Altai and Tuva have alpine type vegetation
The tundra. Mosses, lichens, low bushes and perennial grasses predominate in the tundra, as the soil is swampy. This soil is very fragile because frost puts the ecosystem to sleep for much of the year, and so even the smallest human industry can destroy entire regions. This is often the case near mining or oil operations. This area covers most of the north, from the mouth of the Ob River to the Bering Sea. The tundra is not arable land, but it has provided a livelihood for semi-nomadic indigenous reindeer herding peoples whose traditional way of life is now threatened by industrialization. The effects of extractive activities are felt both at the land level (indigenous people are expropriated from their grazing lands by powerful companies) and at the ecosystem level (the exploitation permanently changes the landscape and causes the disappearance of the plants on which the reindeer feed)
Taiga. The taiga zone, where conifers and swampy terrain predominate, is characterized by a relatively cool and humid climate. In European Russia, it is found in Karelia and in the north (Arkhangelsk). The taiga covers almost all of Siberia. An interminable forest of birch and pine trees, the taiga is also characterised by its particularly acid and infertile soil, known as podzosol, which does not allow the development of agricultural activities. In winter, however, it sees the transhumance of reindeer herders who spend the summer on the tundra
The steppe. The Kalmykia region, southwest of the Volga Delta, is characterized by the presence of a huge steppe, bordered by the Black Earth to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east. The soil is arid and the vegetation is sparse, typically small clumps of grass or small shrubs. The Kalmouks, a Buddhist people of Mongolian origin who settled here in the 17th century, perpetuated their nomadic way of life, living in yurts and managing herds of horses, camels and sheep. The steppe, arid and inhospitable, does not indeed allow the development of a varied agriculture and meat is thus the basis of the Kalmouke cuisine
The black lands (tchernoziom). This type of soil is characteristic of southern Russia. It is very fertile, as it comes from the decomposition of old forests and technically ensures one of the best agricultural yields in the world. Black soils cover only about 10% of Russia's territory and are particularly fragile, so their proportion is tending to decrease.
The basement
While nature and wildlife have occasionally influenced the formation of the political and cultural identities of the peoples of Russia, the subsoil has had a major impact on the economic development of the country.
Mining resources. Although its surface landscape may at times appear monotonous, the Russian subsoil is rich in geological resources. Among the most important mining regions are the Kola Peninsula in the north (iron, nickel), the south-west with the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly (huge iron deposit) and near the Don Basin (from which the highly industrial Ukrainian Donbass takes its name), and the Urals, very rich in minerals, which was a huge industrial centre during the Soviet period and is now disinherited
Energy wealth. Russia's natural gas and oil resources are no longer presented. Most of them are found around the Urals, the Volga and the Caspian Sea in the south, and in the Ob basin and the Arctic in the north. They have enabled Russia to redress its economic situation in the 2000s and to establish itself as a critically important trading partner for Europeans
Permafrost. Permafrost, the layer of frozen earth of variable thickness whose characteristics we presented above, covers a substantial part of the Russian subsoil (around 60%). In addition to the rise in Siberian waters, its recent thaw caused by global warming has other dramatic consequences. As it thaws, the permafrost releases large quantities of methane and mercury, which are particularly toxic, as well as CO2, which is twice as present there as in the atmosphere, thus accelerating the warming process. But it also has other surprises in store, as permafrost has also preserved viruses in the ice, some of which are still unknown. In 2016, following a particularly hot summer, the body of a 75-year-old reindeer contaminated with anthrax thawed and raised fears of an epidemic. A child who had been exposed to the bacillus died and some 2,300 reindeer at risk had to be slaughtered to preserve the animal and human population.
The green movement
In Russia, scientists, artists and the people remain very close to nature by tradition and culture. 34 million people in the CIS are members of nature conservation associations. Since the 1960s, when the writer Mikhail Cholokhov denounced the pollution of Lake Baikal (in eastern Russia), the initially informal movement of protest against the pollution of the Volga, the mother of Russia's rivers, and Lake Baikal, against the planned diversion of the rivers of northern Russia and Siberia, has continued to grow in strength and effectiveness. The cellulose factory that poisons Baikal (1/5 of the world's fresh water reserves) is about to be closed. The lake and coastline will be classified as a national park. The terrible alarm caused by the nuclear accident at the Chernobyl power plant (Ukraine) has also raised awareness of the environmental problem. Nevertheless, nature protection is far from being widespread in the former USSR. The drama of the Aral Sea (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) proves it: this inland sea loses 1,990 cm each year to the desert. Its surface area has already been reduced by half. Clearly, the fight against pollution is far from being won. According to recent revelations about Chelyabinsk-40, in this secret city south of the Urals, which was banned for almost 40 years, plutonium was being manufactured for the needs of the A-bomb. In 1957, a nuclear disaster occurred there, severely contaminating the entire region, which was kept secret until 1990. In April 1993, at Tomsk-7, another explosion took place at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, throwing radioactive waste into the atmosphere . Although the Greens are still marginal on the political scene today, a few ecological shivers, such as the introduction of selective sorting in certain districts of Moscow, give reason to hope for a change in the near future. However, the green consciousness of Russians is still largely dependent on the idea that Russia is vast, full of pure space... and available. While change is slow, cities do not have a monopoly on environmental protection. A strong ecological consciousness is developing in several regions of Russia where, in a vaguely eco-nationalist vein, the landscape is part of the construction of identity. This is, for example, the case in the north-western regions (Karelia, Murmansk oblast) where the commitment to the environment is more sustained than elsewhere and is part of a local discourse on cultural proximity with Scandinavia. Elsewhere, it is the revival of native faiths (Slavs, Ossetians or shamans in Siberia) and thus of animism that reintroduces a spiritual link between man and the nature that surrounds him
National parks and zapovedniki. Given the vastness of Russia's territory, you will not be surprised to learn that national parks are numerous and vast. Forty of these gigantic parks make up the Federation. Most of them can be found in the western part of the country as well as along Russia's southern border. If you stay in Moscow, you will have the opportunity to visit the first Russian national park, Lossiny Ostrov Park (Elk Island), which straddles the territory of the city and the Moscow Oblast (region). Muscovites like to enjoy its forests, which cover 90% of the total area of this park of some 116 km² founded in 1983. The national parks are under the authority of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and most of them are divided into several parts, administered according to different regimes. Most often, one part is devoted to tourism and recreational activities while another remains strictly closed to visitors, according to the zapovednost' theory. Zapovednost' is a kind of Russian version of the reserve, but more extreme. A place under zapovednost' is called zapovednik and is of scientific and ecosystemic interest, which justifies its protection from any external influence: only researchers and forest rangers are allowed to enter it. The idea behind the creation of zapovedniki is to keep places free from human presence in order to study, by comparison, the impact of the anthropocene on similar spaces which are invested by man and put at the service of human beings. The system was set up at the end of the 19th century, and today Russia has about a hundred zapovedniki.
