Republic of Karelia
// GENERAL INFORMATION
The Republic of Karelia is situated in northwestern Russia and is part of the Northwestern economic region of the Russian Federation.
 |
|
| Emblem |
Karelia has an area of 180 500 km2 or 1.06% of the total area of the Russian Federation. The republic extends up to 660 km from north to south and 424 km from east to west at the latitude of the city of Kem. Karelia borders on Finland in the west, Leningrad and Vologda regions in the south, Murmansk Region in the north, and Arkhangelsk Region in the east. It has a coastline on the White Sea in the northeast. Karelia's western border is 723 km long and coincides with the Russian federal border with Finland.
As of January 1, 2000, the population of Karelia was 766 400 people, of whom 74.1% (567 900 people) lived in urban areas and 25.9% (198 500 people) lived in rural areas. About 40% of the population lives in Karelia's capital, Petrozavodsk. The population density is 4.2 people per km2.
 |
|
| Flag |
The average age of the population is 36.5 years. The working-age population numbers 471 300 people and pensioners, 215 000 people.
National composition of the republic:
Russians, 73.6%; Karelians, 10%; Belarussians, 7%; Ukrainians, 3.6%; Finns, 2.3%; Veps (or Weps), 0.8%.
The republic includes 19 self-governing territories and 808 population centers. The head of a self-governing territory is elected by direct secret ballot in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Karelia.
Karelia has 3 cities at the republican level (Petrozavodsk, pop. 282 900; Kostomuksha, pop. 32 500; and Sortavala, pop. 20 200), 4 cities and districts at the republican level (Kem and Kem District, Kondopoga and Kondopoga District, Pitkyaranta and Pitkyaranta District, and Segezha and Segezha District), 11 districts (including Kalevala National District), 1 volost (a small rural district; Vepsskaya National Volost, which has the status of an administrative and territorial unit), and 11 urban communities.
Most of Karelia is a hilly plain with evident traces of glacial activity. The stony undulating surface also preserves traces of ancient mountains. Karelia is often descriptively called the "stony lake-forest" land, emphasizing the main elements of the landscape created by countless lakes separated by rocky areas covered with taiga forest.
Forests consisting mainly of pine and spruce cover more than 49% of the republic, and water covers another 25%. There are more than 60 000 lakes and 27 000 rivers in Karelia. The largest lakes are Ladoga (surface area 17 700 km2) and Onega (surface area 9900 km2); the largest rivers are the Vodla (400 km long), Vyg, Kovda, Kem, Suna, and Shuya. The total length of the river network is nearly 83 000 km.
More than 50 different mineral resources located in more than 400 deposits and ore shows have been discovered in Karelia. They include iron ore, titanium, vanadium, molybdenum, noble metals, diamonds, mica, building materials (granite, diabase, and marble), ceramic raw materials (pegmatite and spar), carbonate-apatite ores, and alkaline amphibole asbestos.
The Republic of Karelia has a favorable economic and geographical location: it is close to the central industrially developed regions of Russia and Western Europe and has a developed water transport system, as well as significant natural resources.
Karelia's place in Russia's economic system is primarily determined by industries using local natural resources (forestry, woodworking, pulp and paper, ferrous metallurgy, and building materials) and industries using imported raw materials, i.e., engineering and nonferrous metallurgy.
The republic produces 10% of the iron ore in Russia, 23% of the paper, 9% of the pulp, 7.3% of the industrial wood, 4.0% of the lumber, and nearly 60% of the paper bags.
|
