‘From Russia with Love’

The weekly quiz is provided by the Globalist, a daily online feature service that covers issues and trends in globalization. The nonpartisan organization provides commercial services and nonprofit educational features.

Question

Russia’s population is the world’s ninth-largest. At 143 million, Russia has about 13 percent more people than 10th-ranked Japan. We wonder: On which of the following categories does Russia rank first worldwide?

Answer

A. Cigarette consumption B. Defense spending C. Immigrants

D. Tourism

E. Natural gas reserves F. Land area G. Anti-corruption

A Cigarette consumption is

not correct: On average, every Russian smoker consumes 2,690 cigarettes each year. On a per capita basis, Russia trails only neighboring Belarus in cigarette consumption, according to the American Cancer Society.

In absolute terms, Russia’s cigarette consumption ranks behind only the much more populous China. Russia’s 33 million smokers, as of 2015, consume 321.4 billion cigarettes annually. That is 14 percent more than that of the United States’s 38 million smokers, who consume 281.3 billion. First-ranked China’s 270 million smokers consume 2.6 trillion cigarettes. On a per capita basis, each smoker in China consumes 2,250 cigarettes on average, while each smoker in the United States consumes less than half that number — just 1,083 annually (or three per day).

Russia also has the fourth-highest rate of alcohol consumption per person, according to the World Health Organization, behind only Belarus, Moldova and Lithuania, all former Soviet Republics.

B Defense spending is not correct: Russia had the world’s third-largest defense spending in dollar terms in 2016 (at $69.2 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The first-ranked United States still spends nearly nine times more than Russia, however. China spends more than three times as much as Russia. However, as a share of GDP, Russia does spend more on defense (5.3%) than any NATO member country (including the United States), according to 2016 data from SIPRI.

In terms of personnel, Russia has the fifth-largest number of active-duty troops (831,000), according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Russia ranks second worldwide for global arms sales by value, $6.4 billion

accounting for 21 percent of all sales in 2016, according to SIPRI. Only the United States sells more.

C Immigrant population is not

correct: Russia has the world’s third-largest population of immigrants. As of 2015, Russia has a foreign-born population numbering 11.6 million, according to Pew Research data. This figure means about 8 percent of Russia’s population is foreign-born. Many of these migrants hail originally from former Soviet Republics, particularly impoverished Central Asian countries.

Russia also suffers from a significant brain drain of talented workers. The world’s third-largest emigrant population globally is Russian. 10.6 million Russians live in other countries, a figure almost as large as the country’s immigrant population. Only India and Mexico have more citizens living abroad than Russia.

D Tourism is not correct: Russians are the 11th-largest spender in absolute terms on international tourism, according to the 2017 UN World Tourism Organization report. This is down significantly from fifth place in 2014.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the European Union and United States imposed sanctions on Russia. Then, in 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in Syria, and Russia cut trade and travel to Turkey, a common Russian tourist destination. Meanwhile, falling energy prices hurt the economy.

In addition, shortly after the Crimea crisis began, the Russian government self-imposed foreign travel bans on its own defense and civil service employees that affected 4 million Russians, supposedly for national security reasons. E Natural gas reserves ... is correct: Russia has the world’s largest gas reserves (and the world’s eighth-largest oil reserves), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In 2014, when prices were high, the country received $325 billion in oil and gas export revenues, according to the World Bank. In 2015, when prices were low, these export revenues were just $198.9 billion, close to 40 percent less. This puts pressure on the Russian government with regard to public spending for the poor and elderly, which is a politically sensitive matter in the country.

F Land area ... is also correct:

Russia has the world’s largest land area of any country, at 16.4 million square kilometers (6.3 million square miles). This is 76 percent larger than the land area of China, 79 percent larger than the land area of the United States and 80 percent larger than the land area of Canada. Other than France, Russia also has the most time zones of any country in the world (11).

Thanks to this ample space, spanning nearly an entire hemisphere, Russia ranks third for both land area for wheat cultivation and volume of wheat produced, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Only India and China use more land for wheat production.

G Anti-corruption ... is not

correct: Russia ranks near the bottom on freedom from corruption, according to Transparency International’s (TI) worldwide survey of the public’s perceptions of corruption. Russians had a negative enough view of their country on this issue that it currently ranks 131st out of 176 countries surveyed. They rated corruption as the third-most important issue facing them, behind only the economy and public health. Many respondents in the TI survey also made clear they were unlikely to report corruption, for a range of reasons, including personal danger.