And some people who were updating with news and sources via Twitter during the military conflict of 2008
In May 2007, the OECD Council at Ministerial level adopted a resolution to open discussions with the Russian Federation for its membership in the Organisation. On 30 November 2007, the OECD Council approved the ‘roadmap to accession’ for the Russian Federation. As part of the accession process, the roadmap requires the OECD Working Group on Bribery to consider and adopt a formal opinion on the willingness and ability of the Russian Federation to commit to the obligations of OECD membership in the field of anti-corruption. (Source)
Russia Today article on the topic;
Russia has launched an anti-corruption campaign, creating special units within state agencies and ministries to clean them of corrupt officials and perform background checks on potential employees.
The Berlin-based non-governmental anti-corruption organization Transparency International has persistently rated Russia as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. In the 2009 Corruption Perception Index, Russia was ranked 146th of 180, below countries like Togo, Pakistan and Libya. The United States was ranked 19th.
A total of 4,500 corruption cases were brought to court in the first half of 2009 in Russia, with 532 public officials and 700 law-enforcers being convicted.
Recently Russia’s Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said the Russian armed forces and security troops have seen a sharp rise in corruption-related crimes this year adding that corruption affected worst the sensitive sectors of state military purchases, providing housing and official benefits for servicemen.
For a visualization which tracks changes over time in the arena of economy, and social indicators, be sure to examine “GapMinder”. This ought to link directly to gapminder with Russia Preselected, just press “play” to watch the economic and social indicators as they change through the decades.
Soviet Union – Administrative Divisions, 1981 1982 (384K) and pdf format (396K)
Soviet-Designed Nuclear Power Plants from Handbook of International Economic Statistics 1996 (332K)
The Soviet Union had several kinds of subnational entities:
Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a union of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), although the rule of the highly centralized Communist Party made the union merely nominal.[28] The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR was signed in December 1922 by four founding republics, the RSFSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Belorussian SSR. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs were formed from parts of the RSFSR’s Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan SSR. In 1929, the Tajik SSR was split off from the Uzbek SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the constituents of the Transcaucasian SFSR, namely the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan SSRs, were elevated to union republics, while the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs were split off from the RSFSR.[59]
In August 1940, the Soviet Union formed the Moldavian SSR from parts of the Ukrainian SSR and parts of Bessarabia annexed from Romania. It also annexed the Baltic states as the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSRs. The Karelo-Finnish SSR was split off from the RSFSR in March 1940 and merged back in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below).[60]
On 16 November 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR passed the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration that asserted Estonia’s sovereignty and declared the supremacy of Estonian laws over those of the Soviet Union.[61] In March 1990, the newly-elected Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR declared independence, followed by the Georgian Supreme Soviet in April 1991. Although the symbolic right of the republics to secede was nominally guaranteed by the constitution and the union treaty,[28] Soviet authorities at first refused to recognize it. After the August coup attempt, most of the other republics followed suit. The Soviet Union ultimately recognized the secession of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on 6 September 1991. The remaining republics were recognized as independent with the Soviet Union’s final dissolution in December 1991.[62]
This site will act as a landing pad for news stories that are breaking, analysis that seems relevant, and insights that seem pertinent.
The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR was signed in December 1922 by four founding republics, the RSFSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Belorussian SSR.
