1991 Edition
CIA World Factbook 1991 (Project Gutenberg)
Geography
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
Coastline
42,777 km
Comparative area
slightly less than 2.5 times the size of US
Disputes
bilateral negotiations are under way to resolve disputed sections of the boundary with China; US Government has not recognized the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the Soviet Union; Etorofu, Kunashiri, and Shikotan Islands and the Habomai island group occupied by Soviet Union since 1945, claimed by Japan; maritime dispute with Norway over portion of Barents Sea; has made no territorial claim in Antarctica (but has reserved the right to do so) and does not recognize the claims of any other nation; Kurdish question among Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the USSR
Environment
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
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
Land use
arable land 10%; permanent crops NEGL%; meadows and pastures 17%; forest and woodland 41%; other 32%; includes irrigated 1%
Maritime claims
Continental shelf: 200 m (depth) or to depth of exploitation; Exclusive economic zone: 200 nm; Territorial sea: 12 nm
Natural resources
self-sufficient in oil, natural gas, coal, and strategic minerals (except bauxite, alumina, tantalum, tin, tungsten, fluorspar, and molybdenum), timber, gold, manganese, lead, zinc, nickel, mercury, potash, phosphates; note--the USSR is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas, third in coal
Note
largest country in world, but unfavorably located in relation to major sea lanes of world
Terrain
broad plain with low hills west of Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia, deserts in Central Asia, mountains in south
Total area
22,402,200 km2; land area: 22,272,000 km2
People and Society
Birth rate
17 births/1,000 population (1991)
Death rate
10 deaths/1,000 population (1991)
Ethnic divisions
Russian 50.78%, Ukrainian 15.45%, Uzbek 5.84%, Belorussian (Byelorussian) 3.51%, Kazakh 2.85%, Azeri 2.38%, Armenian 1.62%, Tajik 1.48%, Georgian 1.39%, Moldovan 1.17%, Lithuanian 1.07%, Turkmen 0.95%, Kirghiz 0.89%, Latvian 0.51%, Estonian 0.36%, other 9.75%
Infant mortality rate
23 deaths/1,000 live births (1991)
Labor force
152,300,000 civilians; industry and other nonagricultural fields 80%, agriculture 20%; shortage of skilled labor (1989)
Language
Russian (official); more than 200 languages and dialects (at least 18 with more than 1 million speakers); Slavic group 75%, other Indo-European 8%, Altaic 12%, Uralian 3%, Caucasian 2%
Life expectancy at birth
65 years male, 74 years female (1991)
Literacy
98% (male 99%, female 97%) age 15 and over can read and write (1989)
Nationality
noun--Soviet(s); adjective--Soviet
Net migration rate
0 migrants/1,000 population (1991)
Organized labor
the vast majority of workers are union members; official unions are organized within the General Confederation of Trade Unions (GCTU) and still operate within general guidelines set up by the CPSU and Soviet Government; a large number of independent trade unions have been formed since President Gorbachev came to power; most are locally or regionally based and represent workers from one enterprise or a group of enterprises; there are a few independent unions that claim a nationwide following, the most prominent of which is Independent Miners Trade Union set up by the country's coal miners
Population
293,047,571 (July 1991), growth rate 0.7% (1991)
Religion
Russian Orthodox 20%, Muslim 10%, Protestant, Georgian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic 7%, Jewish less than 1%, atheist 60% (est.)
Total fertility rate
2.4 children born/woman (1991)
Government
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, Belorussian (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, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic*, Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova, Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic; note--Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic is often abbreviated RSFSR and Soviet Socialist Republic is often abbreviated SSR; the parliaments in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, and Lithuania have removed the words Soviet Socialist from the names of their republics, but the central government has not recognized those changes; the parliament in Kirghiziya changed the name Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic to Republic of Kyrgyzstan, but the central government has not recognized that change
Capital
Moscow
Communists
prior to August 1991 about 15 million party members, with membership declining
Constitution
7 October 1977
Diplomatic representation
Ambassador Viktor KOMPLEKTOV; Chancery at 1125 16th Street NW, Washington DC 20036; telephone (202) 628-7551 or 8548; there is a Soviet Consulate General in San Francisco; US--Ambassador Robert S. STRAUSS; Embassy at Ulitsa Chaykovskogo 19/21/23, Moscow (mailing address is APO New York 09862); telephone [7] (095) 252-2450 through 59; there is a US Consulate General in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad)
Elections
President--last held 14 March 1990 (next to be held NA 1995); results--Mikhail Sergeyevich GORBACHEV was elected by the Congress of People's Deputies; Congress of People's Deputies--last held 17 December 1990 (next to be held NA); results--NA; seats--(2,250 total) CPSU NA, non-CPSU NA; note--dissolved September 1991 USSR Supreme Soviet--consists of the Council of the Union and the Council of Republics; Council of the Union--last held Spring 1991 (next to be held Fall 1991); results--NA; seats--(271 total) CPSU NA, non-CPSU NA; Council of Republics--last held Spring 1991 (next to be held Fall 1991); results--NA; seats--(271 total) CPSU NA, non-CPSU NA; note--to be reconstituted as a new legislature--date not set
Executive branch
president
Flag
red with the yellow silhouette of a crossed hammer and sickle below a yellow-edged five-pointed red star in the upper hoist-side corner
Independence
30 December 1922 (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics established)
Judicial branch
Supreme Court of the USSR
Leaders
Chief of State--President Mikhail Sergeyevich GORBACHEV (since 14 March 1990; former General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party since 11 March 1985--resigned August 1991); Head of Government--Prime Minister (vacant); Chairman of the Committee for the Operational Management of the USSR National Economy Ivan SILAYEV (since 24 August 1991)
Legal system
civil law system as modified by Communist legal theory; no judicial review of legislative acts; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction
Legislative branch
the Congress of People's Deputies (S'ezd Narodnykh Deputatov) is the supreme organ of USSR state power and selects the bicameral Supreme Soviet (Verkhovnyi Sovyet) which consists of two coequal houses--Soviet of the Union (Soviet Soiuza) and Soviet of Nationalities (Soviet Natsional'nostei)
Long-form name
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; abbreviated USSR
Member of
CSCE, ECE, ESCAP, IAEA, IBEC, ICAO, ICFTU, IIB, ILO, IMO, INMARSAT, INTERPOL, IOC, ISO, ITU, LORCS, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UN Security Council, UN Trusteeship Council, UNTSO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO
National holiday
Great October Socialist Revolution, 7-8 November (1917)
Other political or pressure groups
formal parties, regional popular fronts, trade unions, and informal organizations
Political parties and leaders
nascent multiparty system
Suffrage
universal at age 18
Type
in transition to multiparty federal system
Economy
Agriculture
accounts for roughly 20% of GNP and labor force; production based on large collective and state farms; inefficiently managed; wide range of temperate crops and livestock produced; world's third-largest grain producer after the US and China; shortages of grain, oilseeds, and meat; world's leading producer of sawnwood and roundwood; annual fish catch among the world's largest
Budget
revenues 422 billion rubles; expenditures 510 billion rubles, including capital expenditures of 53 billion rubles (1990 est.)
Currency
ruble (plural--rubles); 1 ruble (R) = 100 kopeks
Economic aid
donor--extended to non-Communist less developed countries (1954-89), $49.6 billion; extended to other Communist countries (1954-89), $154 billion
Electricity
350,000,000 kW capacity; 1,740,000 million kWh produced, 5,920 kWh per capita (1990)
Exchange rates
rubles (R) per US$1--0.580 (1990), 0.629 (1989), 0.629 (1988), 0.633 (1987), 0.704 (1986), 0.838 (1985); note--as of 1 April 1991 the official exchange rate remained administratively set; it should not be used indiscriminately to convert domestic rubles to dollars; in November 1990 the USSR introduced a commercial exchange rate of 1.8 rubles to the dollar used for accounting purposes within the USSR and which was still in force on 1 April 1991; on 1 April 1991 the USSR introduced a new foreign-currency market for foreign companies and individuals; the rate will be fixed twice a week based on supply and demand; as of 4 April 1991 the rate was 27.6 rubles to the dollar; Soviet citizens traveling abroad are restricted to buying $200 a year at prevailing rates
Exports
$109.3 billion (f.o.b., 1989); 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 46%, EC 16%, Cuba 6%, US, Afghanistan (1989)
External debt
$55 billion (1990)
Fiscal year
calendar year
GNP
approximately $2,660 billion, per capita $9,130; real growth rate - 2.4% to - 5.0% (1990 est. based on a reconstruction of official Soviet statistics); note--because of the continued unraveling of Soviet economic and statistical controls, the estimate is subject to even greater uncertainties than in earlier years; the dollar estimates most likely overstate Soviet GNP to some extent because of an incomplete allowance for the poor quality, narrow assortment, and low performance characteristics of Soviet goods and services; the - 2.4% growth figure is based on the application of CIA's usual estimating methods whereas the - 5.0% figure is corrected for measurement problems that worsened sharply in 1990
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 for illicit drugs to Western Europe
Imports
$114.7 billion (c.i.f., 1989); commodities--grain and other agricultural products, machinery and equipment, steel products (including large-diameter pipe), consumer manufactures; partners--Eastern Europe 50%, EC 13%, Cuba, China, US (1989)
Industrial production
growth rate - 2.4% (1990 est.)
Industries
diversified, highly developed capital goods and defense industries; comparatively less developed consumer goods industries
Inflation rate (consumer prices)
14% (1990 est.)
Overview
The first six years of perestroyka (economic and political restructuring) have undermined the institutions and processes of the Soviet command economy without replacing them with efficiently functioning markets. The initial reforms have 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 has been 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 six years: the unpopular and short-lived antialcohol campaign; the initial cutback in imports of consumer goods; the failure to act decisively at the beginning for the privatization of agriculture; and the buildup of a massive overhang of unspent rubles in the hands of households and enterprises. The regime has vacillated among a series of ambitious economic policy prescriptions put forth by leading economists and political leaders. The plans vary from proposals for (a) quick marketization of the economy; (b) gradual marketization; (c) a period of retrenchment to ensure a stable base for future marketization; and (d) a return to disciplined central planning and allocation. The economy, caught between two systems, is suffering from even greater mismatches between what is being 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. Official Soviet statistics report GNP fell by 2% in 1990, but the actual decline was substantially greater. Whatever the numerical decline, it does not capture the increasing disjointures in the economy evidenced by emptier shelves, longer lines, increased barter, and widespread strikes.
Unemployment rate
official Soviet statistics imply an unemployment rate of 1 to 2 percent in 1990; USSR's first official unemployment estimate, however, is acknowledged to be rough
Communications
Airports
7,192 total, 4,607 usable; 1,163 with permanent-surface runways; 33 with runways over 3,659 m; 491 with runways 2,440-3,659 m; 661 with runways 1,220-2,439 m
Civil air
4,000 major transport aircraft
Highways
1,757,000 km total; 1,310,600 km hard-surfaced (asphalt, concrete, stone block, asphalt treated, gravel, crushed stone); 446,400 km earth (1989)
Inland waterways
123,700 km navigable, exclusive of Caspian Sea (1989)
Merchant marine
1,565 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 15,243,228 GRT/20,874,488 DWT; includes 52 passenger, 898 cargo, 52 container, 11 barge carrier, 4 roll-on/float off cargo, 5 railcar carrier, 114 roll-on/roll-off cargo, 230 petroleum, oils, and lubricants (POL) tanker, 5 liquefied gas, 17 combination ore/oil, 4 specialized liquid carrier, 13 chemical tanker, 160 bulk; note--594 merchant ships are based in Black Sea, 366 in Baltic Sea, 398 in Soviet Far East, and 207 in Barents Sea and White Sea; the Soviet Union has been transferring merchant ships to a variety of flags of convenience; at the beginning of 1991 the USSR had 64 ships under foreign flags (Cyprus 52, Malta 7, Panama 2, Vanuatu 2, and Honduras 1)
Pipelines
82,000 km crude oil and refined products; 206,500 km natural gas (1987)
Ports
St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Riga, Tallinn, Kaliningrad, Liepaja, Ventspils, Murmansk, Arkhangel'sk, Odessa, Novorossiysk, Il'ichevsk, Nikolayev, Sevastopol', Vladivostok, Nakhodka; inland ports are Astrakhan', Baku, Nizhniy Novgorod (Gor'kiy), Kazan', Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kuybyshev, Moscow, Rostov, Volgograd, Kiev
Railroads
147,400 km total; 53,900 km electrified; does not include industrial lines (1989)
Telecommunications
37 million telephone subscribers; phone density of 37 per 100 households; urban phone density is 9.2 phones per 100 residents; rural phone density is 2.9 per 100 residents (June 1990); automatic telephone dialing with 70 countries and between 25 Soviet cities (April 1989); stations--457 AM, 131 FM, over 900 TV; 90 million TVs (December 1990)
Military and Security
Branches
Ground Forces, Navy, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, Command and General Support, Security Forces
Defense expenditures
63.9 billion rubles, NA% of GDP _%_
Manpower availability
males 15-49, 70,058,651; 55,931,817 fit for military service; 2,265,935 reach military age (18) annually (down somewhat from 2,500,000 a decade ago); approximately 35-40% receive deferments for health, education, or other reasons