This book contains selections of texts for the students studying history in English and for those interested in Russia and its past. The first: part: of the book is a collection of texts for general survey of Russia. They are covering a wide range of knowledge of Russia and featuring many different aspects of the contemporary Russia as a country and a state: the historic background of Russia, the basic facts about the Russian language (its geographic distribution, official status, languages in the USSR, Russian alphabet), the state structure and the state power of the Russian Federation, geography, resources of the country, the economy of Russian Federation after 1991, a detailed description of national origins, linguistic groups, and ethnic composition of Russia"s population, religions in Russia and changes in the religious structure of the country. The title of the second part is "Russia before the Russians: prehistory and protohistory of the Non-Slavic peoples of Russia". The term "prehistory" usually used to refer to the time since human-like beings appealed. The book gives the accounts of the prehistoric peoples on the territory of Russia: prehistoric Indo-European peoples, prehistoric Uralic peoples, prehistoric peoples of Siberia. Protohistory usually refers to a period during which a culture has not jet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted its existence in their own writings. The collections of texts of special section are devoted to the remote past of almost all those peoples: Cimmerians, Scythians, Creeks, Sarmatians, Alans, Roxolani, Goths, 1 funs, Turks, Khazars, Bulgars, Hungerians, Pecheneg, Cumans (Russian: Polovtsi), Mongols. In order to make it easy for the reader to find what he may be looking for, the list of topics has been gjven in full at the beginning, with the page numbers on which they appear. (It is hoped chat the origin of Slavs and Russians [eastern Slavs] will be given in separate book "Reader on the history of Russia"). The selections of texts are illustrated with maps, graphs and charts. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Россия: страна и ранняя история ее народов (В. Н. Славко)