query: country soyuz-u
supports: Russia (from the  Rus'), also officially known as the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. At , Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 140 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern, about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia's capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. NATO reporting names are code names for military equipment of Russia, China, and, historically, the former Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact). They provide unambiguous and easily understood English words in a uniform manner in place of the original designations, which either may have been unknown to the Western world at the time or easily confused codes. Tolyatti, also known in English as Togliatti, is a city in Samara Oblast, Russia. Population: It is the largest city in Russia which does not serve as the administrative center of a federal subject.
  Internationally, the city is best known as the home of Russia's largest car manufacturer AvtoVAZ (Lada), which was founded in the late 1960s. Samara Oblast is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Samara. As of the 2010 Census, the population of the oblast was 3,215,532. Syzran is the third largest city in Samara Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of Saratov Reservoir of the Volga River. Population:  The R-7 was a Soviet missile developed during the Cold War, and the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 made 28 launches between 1957 and 1961, but was never deployed operationally. A derivative, the R-7A, was deployed from 1959 to 1968. To the West it was known by the NATO reporting name SS-6 Sapwood and within the Soviet Union by the GRAU index 8K71. In modified form, it launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit, and became the basis for the R7 family which includes Sputnik, Luna, Molniya, Vostok, and Voskhod space launchers, as well as later Soyuz variants. Russia is not proportionately populated between the smaller western portion (almost 25%) of the country that is considered part of Europe, and the larger eastern portion (more than 75%) that is part of Asia. European Russia contains about 77% of the country's population (110,000,000 people out of about 144,000,000) in an area comprising almost 4 million km (1.54 million mi); an average of 27.5 persons per km (70 per mi). This territory makes up 38% of Europe. Its eastern border is defined by the Ural Mountains and in the south, it is defined by the border with Kazakhstan. This area includes Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the two largest cities in Russia. The Zhiguli Mountains (["Zhigulyovskiye gory"]) or simply Zhiguli, sometimes called The Zhiguli Heights - ë  ["Zhigulyovskaya vozvyshennost"], are a range of wooded mountains located in Russia on the right bank of the Volga River, in the Samara bend. The mountains are an important source of limestone and oil (extracted since the Great Patriotic War (World War II)) and are also popular as a scenic area for local and regional tourism. Their altitude reaches a maximum of c. 1,240 ft (380 m). The range is named for a nearby town Zhigulyovka (no longer extant), itself probably named for an early inhabitant, Zhegul. Formerly, the range was known as the Lada, after the river pirates who used to hide out in its wooded valleys, a name which is still in popular local usage today. The Samara is a river in Russia that runs into the Volga at the city of Samara. The Soyuz - U launch vehicle ( LV ) is an improved version of the original Soyuz LV . Soyuz - U is part of the R - 7 family of rockets based on the R - 7 Semyorka missile . Members of this rocket family were designed by the TsSKB design bureau and constructed at the Progress Factory in Samara , Russia . ( These two are now a united company , TsSKB - Progress ) . The first Soyuz - U flight took place on 18 May 1973 , carrying as its payload Kosmos 559 , a Zenit military surveillance satellite . The earlier Soyuz 11A511 was the first attempt at creating a standardized R - 7 core in place of the numerous variations that had been used up to 1966 and starting that year , the 11A511 Blok I and strap - on boosters were added to the Voskhod ( 11A57 ) , Vostok - 2 ( 8A92 ) , and Molniya - M ( 8K78M ) vehicles as well as minor R - 7 variants flown once or twice for specialized payloads . Beginning in 1973 , the uprated 11A511U core was introduced for the R - 7 family although adoption across the board was not complete until 1977 when the existing stock of 11A511 - derived boosters was used up . Soyuz - U is still in use today , making several launches a year . Production of R - 7 derived launch vehicles peaked in the late 1970s - early 1980 at 55 - 60 a year . Soyuz - U holds the world record of highest launch rate in a year in 1979 with 47 flights . Sputnik 1 ("Satellite-1", or -1 ["PS-1", i.e., , "Prosteyshiy Sputnik-1", "Elementary Satellite 1"]) was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. It was visible all around the Earth and its radio pulses were detectable. This surprise success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race, a part of the larger Cold War. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. Samara, known from 1935 to 1991 as Kuybyshev, is the sixth largest city in Russia and the administrative center of Samara Oblast. It is situated in the southeastern part of European Russia at the confluence of the Volga and Samara Rivers on the east bank of the Volga. The Volga acts as the city's western boundary; across the river are the Zhiguli Mountains, after which the local beer ("Zhigulyovskoye") is named. The northern boundary is formed by the Sokolyi Hills and by the steppes in the south and east. The land within the city boundaries covers . Population: The metropolitan area of Samara-Tolyatti-Syzran within Samara Oblast contains a population of over three million. The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its satellite states) and powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others). Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period (the second half of the 20th century) between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine (a U.S. policy pledging to aid nations threatened by Soviet expansionism) was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed.
candidates: kazakhstan russia soviet union world
answer: soviet union