Ben Fredricks, age 17, of Monroe, La., for his question:

WHAT WAS THE SOVIET FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLIC?

The Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (SFSR) is the largest of the constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. It includes most of the territory that once constituted the Russian Empire.

The Soviet Federated Socialist Republic now accounts for 76 percent of the area and about 52 percent of the U.S.S.R.'s population.

The SFSR is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean; on the east by the Pacific Ocean; on the south by China, Mongolia and the Kazakh SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Georgian SSR and Ukrainian SSR; on the west by Byelorussian SSR, Latvian SSR, Estonian SSR and Finland.

The capital and largest city of the republic, and of the U.S.S.R., is Moscow. The second largest city is Leningrad.

Occupying much of Eastern Europe and all of North Asia, the SFSR represents an immense diversity of geographic features.

The republic covers approximately 6,593,000 square miles. The population is estimated at about 150 million.

The USSR no longer exists as a republic, in 1991  it broke up into individual countries