In the fraternal family of republics of the great Soviet Union, the Armenian SSR is the smallest in territory — only about 30 thousand km², and its population is 2.5 million people. This is only 0.13% of the territory and 1% of the population of the Soviet Union. However, owing to the exceptional richness of Armenia's subsoil in mineral raw materials, the share of the Armenian SSR in reserves and production of a number of important metallic and non-metallic minerals is much higher than these figures.