In very basic terms, Russia occupies 17,075,200 square kilometres or, if you prefer, 10,610,037 square miles of land. Of course, this is a very basic measure that doesn’t help to underline or even to begin to describe how vast this country is.
Changing Borderlines
Those that ask how big is Russia, often confuse the present day country with their vision of the vast Soviet Union that existed until fairly recently and the Russian Empire that preceded it. At that stage, the USSR could add so many republics into the equation that the size was increased by a considerable percentage.
Throughout various stages in Russian history, from the days of the ancient empire through to the disbandment of the Soviet Union its size has increased and then subsequently diminished.
The Present Day
Present day Russia, as far as land mass is concerned, is quite simply the biggest country in the world. While it may be impossible to comprehend just by looking at basic numbers, a good idea is to compare it with other countries across the globe.
In this respect, Russia is around twice the size of the USA and twice the size of Canada. Even Australia, which some people see as vast, due to its huge barren areas, is much less than half the land mass of Russia today. So when you ask how big is Russia, it’s very big indeed.
Borders and Coastline
Russia’s size makes it amongst the most heavily bordered countries in the world and naturally some of the states that run along Russia’s borders were previously part of the former Soviet Union.
China, Belarus, Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania are among a large list of countries that share a border here.
It may surprise many people to know that the distance between mainland Russia and the USA is around 55 miles. If you look at a map and chart from the west of Russia around to Alaska, it’s a very short distance indeed at the closest point. Additionally, if you work this system using the island of Big Diomede in Russia to Little Diomede of Alaska, the distance is reduced to approximately 2.5 miles.
Meanwhile, back in Russia itself, the coastline around the country measures around 37,653 Kilometres with 12 nautical miles of territorial sea.
Population
When you apply the question how big is Russia to the country’s population, the vastness is still a little hard to truly comprehend.
Overall, the population of Russia in 2011 has been recorded (by recent census) at just over 142,000,000 and while that still seems an incredible figure, that makes Russia only 9th on the list overall, some way behind the leaders China with a population of around 1,400,000,000.
When you consider that Russia is a mix of densely populated cities such as Moscow (by the way – we’ve written an article with the latest data on the population of Moscow) and sparse rural areas out towards Siberia then these figures start to make sense. As far as population is concerned however, this is still an impressive amount.
While Russia may still be vast in terms of land, this is in fact the smallest it has been in its modern history and when you consider how huge the USSR was, those figures all become truly ‘mind boggling’.
