This is the first of a piece about Russia in general, that I'll be trying to improve and complete over the coming year. Please bear with me and leave me comments! I want to try to put Gymnastics into context with its past, and with everything that has happened in the past ten years. It seems to me that things are changing fast.
Russia has the largest single landmass of any country in the world, spanning Europe to the Far East, from way up north towards the Arctic and the Barents Sea, down to the border with Georgia in the south. The country shares land borders with seventeen other nations from Norway to Japan, China and Korea; it shares maritime borders with countries including the USA and Alaska.
Russia's population is very diverse - see the table below. Over 80% of the population have Russian as their first language, but it's likely that many will have a second language that they speak at home. It's a declining population, and despite the size of the country it is only number 9 in a ranking of world population. The only other top nation in the world with a declining population is Japan.
The figures we receive about population vary by source; Russia has lost many of its citizens in its war with Ukraine, and many people have migrated away from Russia for reasons to do with the economy, or to avoid conscription. It's likely that the number of people who have fled Russia in the last four years is far greater than we know. The Russian state doesn't like to talk about its countries' casualties in the war with Ukraine.
Russia has almost always been a very poor country, with a very rich ruling class, including at one time a royal family. Today, President Vladimir Putin is the country's autocratic leader, and he has a whole big family of oligarchs around him. Russians fear the disorder and violence that took over their country in the 1990s, when the leadership was very weak. Putin is a strong leader, and that's why Russians tolerate and even like him as their President.
From the beginning of the 20th century until the end of 1990, Russia was the largest nation of the Soviet Union, which included 15 other countries. When the Soviet Union broke up, and all 16 countries of the Soviet Union became individual states, citizens' nationality was decided on the basis of where they were at the time of the changeover. So if you were an Armenian executive visiting Moscow at the time of the break up, you would receive a Russian passport. It was the easiest way to do the enormous job of assigning identity controls to the people of the former Soviet Union. In the main, the arrangements around nationality are flexible though, so if you are, for example, an ethnic Azerbaijani you can live in Moscow and in Baku, and visit your families as often as you wish.
So now, onto gymnastics. The break up of the Soviet Union was very sudden, and the individual republics hadn't qualified to compete at the 1992 Olympics. So a decision was taken to allow the countries of the former Soviet Union to compete as the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) - with the exception of Latvia (which unfortunately ruled Laschenova and Sazonenkova out of contention for gymnastics). So 1992 was the Soviet Union's last Olympic participation. The teams had (WAG) Alexander Alexandrov and (MAG) Leonid Arkayev as their head coaches, both from Russia. There were other coaches from around the Soviet Union, including Ukraine's Oleg Ostapenko, and the gymnasts came from Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. The gymnasts would also have with them their individual personal coaches. They were very close, like family, and showed a lot of emotion at the changes.
When people speak of the Soviet Union today, they often refer to the 'Cold War'. This expression implies a lack of friendship between people from their country, and ours. Yet gymnastics has, in my opinion, always been a very friendly forum where everyone comes together in friendship. I attended many international competitions, including World Championships, during the 1980s and 1990s, and I was always pleasantly surprised at how open and friendly people were, from all over the world. Gymnastics in the Soviet Union and Russia may have been founded by its country's leaders as a way of demonstrating the superiority of the state, but in reality, everyone just wanted to get on with each other. Politics is a poor bedfellow for sport, and far better as a diplomatic tool.
The future of sports in Russia was undecided at the time of the break up. For fear of losing their livelihoods, many coaches moved overseas to work; their skills and knowledge were very attractive to countries like the USA, UK and Canada, who wanted to improve their national performance at gymnastics. However, for all those who went abroad, many more remained in Russia and continued with their jobs for the sake of enjoying their work. Their gymnasts continued to train.
Many of the coaches left behind in Russia were women; this enabled the talent of women to emerge and take centre stage in Russia.
Life in Russia was very difficult during the 1990s; there was a great deal of crime and corruption. The famous ice hockey player, Slava Fetisov, once said that the reason he left Russia was that the cost of security was too high. I spoke with Vladimir Zaglada about this; he moved to the UK in the late 1990s, and said that people moved to a new country in order to have a better life and be able to give their children what they needed.
Russia's climate is in general Continental - ie long, cold winters, short hot summers. This is ideal for indoor sports - so provides a good rationale for the construction of gymnasia, and investing in the population to stay healthy via indoor activity.
In 1999 Vladimir Putin took over as President of Russia, and he has continued either as President or as Prime Minister ever since. Putin's appointment was initially considered to be a positive thing by the Western nations; he seemed reasonably professional, and welcomed world leaders to Moscow for talks. He visited overseas nations, and let his face be seen. Everyone felt that we occupied a much safer world, outside the constraints and quiet threats of the Soviet Union.
President Putin has always maintained that Russia was a better country when it was part of the Soviet Union; in fact there are many citizens who feel the same way. Even if now they have the glamourous Western shops to peruse, and can visit overseas countries easily, during the Soviet era at least they had their jobs, their apartments were warm, and society was reasonably safe.
Gymnastics is part of the legacy of the Soviet Union, and the various countries still competing today - for example Armenia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia, are a continuing legacy of the Soviet Union's investment, cultural, social and financial into gymnastics.
Russia still competes its national championships in teams formed by the Federal District areas; see below the maps that show the extent of Russia, and its breakdown into Federal Districts. You will hear these names next week as the country competes in the Russia Cup.
Outline map of Russia showing the main cities and the Federal Districts. Maps generated using Microsoft Copilot, 2026
Russia and its bordering countries (generated with Microsoft Copilot, 2026)
Maps generated using Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft, 2026)
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