The Russian Federation occupies the eastern part of Europe and Northern Asia, it borders on Norway and Finland in the northwest, Poland in the west, China, Mongolia and the Korean People's Democratic Republic in the southeast. The north of the Federation meets the seas of the Arctic Ocean, the east the Pacific, the west and south-west the Atlantic Ocean and the Caspian Sea, Russia measures about 17,075,400 square kilometers in area. The national composition is extremely varied, with Russians, Tartars, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Bashkirs, Jews, Mordvinians, Marl, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and several other nationalities. Russians predominate.

 
Moscow is the capital of Russia. Within the Republic are some 1,000 towns, seven of which, apart from Moscow, have a population of over a million (St.Petersburg, Gorky, Novosibirsk, Kulbyshev, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk and Omsk).

The territory enjoys a wide variety of natural conditions. The western part has largely vast plains (East European and West Siberian) interrupted by the Ural Mountains to the east are plateaux and the mountainous areas of southern and northeastern Siberia and the Soviet Far East. In the south of the European part are the mountain ranges of the Greater Caucasus.

Russia's climate is highly varied from Arctic in the northern parts to subtropical in the south. Over most of the territory, however, the mean January temperature is below Zero. The Republic is also well endowed with rivers. The Caspian Sea basin receives the Volga, Ural and the rivers of Daghestan. There are also some 2 million fresh and salt-water lakes, the biggest of which are the Baikal, Ladoga and Onega. In Russia all the modern industries exist, as do dozens of thermal and hydroelectric power stations. It is the major producer of engineering products.
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Moscow, the capital of Russia is the biggest political, industrial scientific and cultural centre in the erstwhile Soviet Union. It is located- in the centre of the European part of the country on the banks of the Moskva River. It lies in a moderate continental climate zone and has a mean January temperature of 11°C below zero and a July temperature of +19°C.
 

The land occupied by modern Moscow has long been inhabited, and first mention of it in the chronicles was made in 1147. In the early 13th century Moscow became the major town of a small principality, and in the following century it united various scattered principality, thereby enabling it to cast off yoke of the Golden Horde which had lasted in Russia for almost 250 years.

The Republic also has a comprehensively developed agriculture whose principal branches are crop farming and livestock breeding. The Republic has more than 300 professional theatres, in excess of 60,000 public libraries and over 650 various types of museums The growth in its might and grandeurin the late 15th and 16th centuries found expression in the scale of stone building. It grew, developed and built a whole number of new buildings. The outstanding architects of the 18th century, Vasily Bdzhenov and Matvei Kazakov created superb architectural ensembles many of which remain to this day.
 

After the abolition of serfdom in 1861, Moscow began to develop rapidly into a capitalist town with numerous factories and mills. It became the capital of the first socialist state in March 1908.

  Nazi armies were halted and defeated just outside Moscow during the last war. In recognition of its war and labour feats Moscow was awarded the title of Hero-city.

Nowadays Moscow is a big industrial centre. Its major industries are machine building, engineering, instrument making, metalworking, electrical engineering and electronics.

Moscow is also a centre of science and education. It is the seat of the former USSR Academy of Sciences, several academies of specific sciences and hundreds of research establishments. It has some 80 higher educational institutions attended by almost 700,000 students.

Moscow is also the country's cultural and sporting centre. It has more than 100 museums, exhibitions and show rooms, more than 30 professional theatres and concert halls (including the world renownedBolshoi Opera and Ballet Theatre), hundreds of cinemas, clubs and civic centres. Muscovites have at their disposal dozens of
  big stadiums and swimming pools, including the Trade Union Sports Centre Krylatskoye which has a 13.5 km cycle track, and indoor cycle track with seats for 6,000 spectators, open fields for archery and an Olympic training centre for rowing.
 
The capital is rich in parks, gardens and shady boulevards. The biggest park is Gorky Park on the banks of the Moskva River, others include Sokolniki, Izmailovo and the Academy of Sciences Botanical Gardens within the grounds of the Exhibition of National Economic Achievement. More than 30 per cent of Moscow's area is taken-up with greenery.

The unique and inimitable appearance of Moscow has taken shape over eight centuries. Its historical and architectural monuments are under state protection, whole districts of the city are being restored, especially the rich monuments of antiquity are being turned into national preserve areas. Moscow is graced with modern architectural structures-blocks of offices, shops and apartments of Kalinin Avenue (Prospekt Kalinina), the Palace of Congresses built within the Kremlin, the Kosmos Hotel on Peace Avenue (Prospekt Mira), the Moscow University building on Lenin Hills, as well as its six "brothers" - administrative and residential high-rise buildings built in the highest points in Moscow in exactly the same style and adorned with soaring spires, The city has expanded considerably over the last few decades, and new residential areas have grown up.
 



Most of Moscow's new districts are linked with the centre by underground train service (the Metropolitan) which may -certainly be included in the capital's places of interest.

  Moscow's major tourist attractions
 
  • RED SQUARE , the capital's main square,

  • THE INTERCESSION CATHEDRAL , the jewel of the Red Square, being a monument of Russian ancient architecture

  • THE STATE HISTORY MUSEUM

  • THE MOSCOW KREMLIN , located on the left high bank of the Moskva River in the very centre of the capital

  • THE LEV TOLSTOY YASNAYA POLYANA ESTATE-MUSEUM, roughly 200 km to the South of Moscow


  Communications and Transport
 

Moscow has air, rail and road links with all the major tourist centres of the country and many cities of the world. Air routes lead from Moscow to all five continents. Direct rail links connect Moscow with Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Paris, Vienna, Istanbul, Ulan Bator, Pyongyang and dozens of other foreign cities. Visitors can also come to Moscow by bus or car from many states of Europe. Moscow has four airports and nine railway stations.

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Leningrad (St. Petersburg, Petrograd) is second only to Moscow in size and Importance. It is situated on the banks of the Neva River where it flows into the Gulf of Finland, in the Baltic Sea, and on 42 islands of the river delta. Its climate is fairly mild thanks to the warm air masses brought in by winds from the Atlantic. The mean January temperature is 9.3°C below zero, the July temperature + 17.7°C. Leningrad is renowned for its "white nights", which start just after 20th May and end in the last decade of June. At this period dusk lasts no longer than 40 minutes and for the rest of the time it is virtually as clear as day. The White Nights Festival is held between 21st and 29th June every year.

 
St. Petersburg was- founded in 1703 on the orders of Peter the Great as a Russian maritime outpost on the Baltic. Between 1712 and 1918 it was Russia's capital having been built to the designs of some of the best Russian and foreign architects. It did not take St. Petersburg long to become a thriving commercial and industrial city, and the centre of Russian science. By the middle of the last century it was the third biggest city in Russia in number of industrial plants, and the leading one in metalworking and textiles. The city was graced with monuments and grand architectural ensembles, including the Smolny Palace, The Peter, Paul Fortress and The Strelka (Spit). In a brief span of time St. Petersburg had become a magnificent city, on par with the great capitals of Europe.

After the October Revolution, Leningrad (as it was called after 1924) became one of the country's biggest centres of scientific and technological progress. Its Industry was the basis of the country's socialist industrialisation. The workshops of Leningrad factories produced the first Soviet-made tractors, blooming mills and machine tools. In the 1920s and 1930s dozens of new enterprises, scientific Institutions and higher educational establishments came into being. Considerable changes took place in the city's appearance as well. House building developed rapidly.

Today it is the country's largest industrial centre after Moscow. Hundreds of the city's plants manufacture electrical machinery, giant turbines and turbo generators, various shipping, including atomic icebreakers, precision optical equipment and much. St.Petersburg has over 300 research institutes,
 

design offices and technical organisations. It has 41 higher educational institutions with an enrollment of some 280,000 students.
 
The city also has over 50 museums, including the world-famous Hermitage. More than 200 spots in the city are bound up with the life and work of Lenin, and many of them are presently memorial museums. Leningrad's cultural life is both rich and varied, with 26 theatres, including two opera and ballet theatres, five philharmonic concert halls and the Grand October Concert Hall with 4,000 places, hundreds of cinemas, clubs and community centres, over 2,500 libraries, dozens of big and small sports centres, indoor swimming pools and yacht clubs, hundreds of gymnasiums, tennis courts and other sports facilities.

New architectural ensembles have been built, including Lenin Square in front of the Finland Railway Station, and Komsomol Square at Avtovo. And many thoroughfares, like Moscow Avenue and Strike Avenue (Prospekt Stachek), have acquired an integral architectural appearance. Bridges are a decorative feature of the city. There are more than 300 bridges, 21 open up to river traffic. The city is criss-crossed by 86 rivers, streams and canals, forming over 40 islands connected by these big and small bridges.

When creating the new St.Petersburg, architects and builders preserve the priceless heritage of the past-the architectural and cultural monuments of the 18th-19th centuries located mainly in the city's older quarters, The best architects of the period had a hand in creating the grand buildings and architectural ensembles of the city-Trezzini, Quarenghi, Rastrelli, Rossi, Vasily Stasov, Andreyan Sakharov, Vastly Demut-Malinovsky and many others.
  Major Places of Interest
 
  • THE ADMIRALTY PALACE AND DECEMBRISTS SQUARES is the compositional focal point of the city, its visiting card, so as to speak.

  • GENERAL HEADQUARTERS partly girdling the Square in an arc of the south, it was constructed in the classical style (1829)

  • THE ALEXANDER COLUMN dominates the centre of the Square, crowned by the figure of an angel stamping upon a serpent a monument to the victory of Russian people in the 1812 Patriotic War.

  • THE HERMITAGE is a treasure house of art and culture of all ages and nations.

  • PAVLOVSK is 35 km to the south of Leningrad. .

  • PAVLOVSK PALACE is a remarkable monument to Russian classical architecture, it is now a museum where visitors can see the state and personal rooms of the royal family, as well. as unique objects of applied art and, on the second floor, an exhibition entitled "Russian 19th Century Interiors"

  • REPINO is a. first-class resort set in a pine forest on the shores of the Gulf of Finland some 45 km to the north west of Leningrad.

  • THE MEMORIAL ESTATE - MUSEUM of the Great Russian painter llya Repin (1844-1930) is sited here in the Repino village at Penaty.
 

Communications and Transport

 

St.Petersburg is connected by air, rail and highway with dozens of former Soviet and other European cities. Visitors can fly to St.Petersburg from Moscow in 1 hour 20 minutes, a distance of 670 km. It takes 8 hours 30 minutes to do the journey by train. St.Petersburg also has rail links with Helsinki, Warsaw, Berlin and other cities in Western Europe, and is on one of Intourist's most popular road routes commencing at Vyborg and extending to Moscow via St.Petersburg. It is also a port, so visitors can reach the city on a cruise line across the North and Baltic seas, or by the regular service between Helsinki and St.Petersburg, London and St.Petersburg and other overseas ports.

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Rostov-on-Don is in the south of the European part of the country on the right bank of the River Don, some 48 km from the Sea of Azov and is the administrative centre of Rostov Region. The climate is continental, with moderately cold winters (the mean January temperature is -7°C) and fairly hot summers (the mean July temperature is +23°C).

Rostov regards its founding date as 1749 when the Temernitskaya Customs Post was set up to supervise the trade routes leading to the south of Russia. A fortress and port were also built, named in honour of Metropolitan Dmitry Rostovsky. The settlement that grew up, around it became a town in 1796 and began to be called Rostov-on-Don. Its economic progress started in the middle of the last century and it became a major centre of southern commerce and export point for Russian grain.

Modern Rostov-on-Don is one of the country's biggest industrial centres, a principal junction of rail, road and airlines as well as a sizeable river port. When the Volga-Don Canal was built, linking Rostov-on-Don with Volgograd, the town became a port of five seas. Today the city has in excess of 150 industrial enterprises, chief among which is Rostselmash, producing a variety of farm machinery well known at home and in many countries round the world. The city is also famous for its table sparkling wines, including Soviet Champagne and Tsimlyanskoye. It has nine higher educational establishments, including a university, four theatres and museums, hundreds of libraries, research and design institutes, many parks, and gardens. The city is a hive of construction, with multi-store blocks of flats rising and administrative buildings of modern architectural designs gracing the landscape.

The main thoroughfare is Engels Street (Ulitsa Engelsa), some 3 km long. The avenue is lined with multi-storey modern buildings, which harmoniously blend with the surviving structures of the last century. At one end of the avenue is Theatre Square, at one time the town boundary: now it is the city's largest square holding sports parades and folk festivals. During the 1930s the Maxim Gorky Drama Theatre was built on the square. The buildings situated at the crossroads of Engels Street and Budyonny Avenue (Prospekt Budyonnogo) make up an ensemble- flat has the architectural appearance of an entrance to the city.

A green belt, trees and shrubs taking the place of the old dusty outskirts surround the city.
  Major Places of Interest
 
  • THE FINE ARTS MUSEUM boasts a fine collection of works by Russian and Soviet artists, of special interest is the work of famous Russian 19th-century artists Repin, Surikov, Vereshchagin and Perov.

  • THE MUSEUM OF LOCAL LORE contains 18 halls whose displays deal with the history of the area, including sections devoted to the Civil and the Great Patriatric wars, both of which raged through the city. Among its unique exhibits are some idols of the llth-12th centuries, which were worshipped by nomads.

  • THE-MEMORIAL ENSEMBLE IN THE ZMIEVSKAYA RAVINE was unveiled in 1975 in honour of the 30th anniversary of victory over fascism. It has been erected on the place where- the Naxi occupying forces carried out the mass shooting of prisoners-of-war and civilians.
 

Communications and Transport

  All forms of transport can be used to reach Rostov-on-Don: air, rail, river and road. The distance from Moscow by air is 1,000 km, travel time 1 hour and 30 minutes. Airlines link the city with other big tourist centres like St.Petersburg, Kiev, Minsk and Tbilisi, to name just a few. The rail distance from Moscow is 1,346 km, travel time being about 20 hours. Rostov-on-Don may be reached by rail from other cities as well, while those who like river travel may cruise down the Volga and the Don (Kazan-Ulyanovsk-Togliatti-Volgograd-Rostov-on-Don). The city is also on a number of motor routes. A journey by intourist transport, private car or travel agency coach, may be made to Rostov-on-Don from Moscow, Kiev, Lvov, St.Petersburg and other tourist centres.

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Volgograd (Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad) is a regional centre, a port on the Volga River and an important railway junction, it stretches 70 km along the right bank of the Volga at its lower reaches. The climate is sharply continental with a mean January temperature of 9°C below zero and a July temperature of +24°C.
 
Volgograd was founded in 1589 as the Tsaritsyn forte outpost set to guard the Volga trade route from nomad attacks. In the 17th and 18th centuries it frequently became the centre of popular uprisings against the tsarist autocracy. By the mid-10th century Tsaritsyn had become a fairly important economic centre of the Lower Volga region with a developed iron and steel industry.

The first Soviet tractor works was built here in 1930, and the city rapidly became a major industrial centre.

Today Volgograd is a city of large-scale industries (it has over 130 factories, mills, plants and works) producing building materials, tractors, boring machinery, tankers, oil products, steel, rolled metal, river vessels, medical equipment and other goods that are widely used in the domestic economy and exported to dozens of foreign states. Nowadays Volgograd has six higher educational establishments, more than 140 general schools and four
 

theatres, The city is adorned with a monumental granite embankment, wide thoroughfares, parks and gardens, and it has over 200 memorials to the war-time defense of the city.

A 26-metre high granite obelisk marks the communal grave. The Square has yet another communal grave where the soldiers who defended Stalingrad between 1942 and 1943 are interred. An eternal flame burns beside the grave. Parades and popular rallies take place on the Square of Fallen Soldiers, on national holidays, it also holds popular festivals and other celebrations. Parallel with the Volga is the city's main street, Ulitsa Lenina.
 
Major Places of Interest
  • THE MEMORIAL ENSEMBLE ON MAMAI HILL situated almost in the centre of the city, the Mamdi Hill was the dominant height during the city's defence in 1942.

  • HEROES' SQUARE is located on the next terrace. Along one side of an enormous pool of water, are six sculptured compositions in which are depicted the exploits of the defenders of Stalingrad.

  • THE STATE DEFENCE MUSEUM contains exhibits reflecting the heroic 1918-20 defence of the city of Tsaritsyn.

  • THE FINE ARTS MUSEUM displays works of Russian artists of past centuries.

  • THE PLANETARIUM the hemispherical dome of the building is topped by a bronze figure of a woman holding a globe and dove of peace.

  • SERGEANT PAVLOV'S HOUSE AND FORMER MILL RUINS the four-store yellow building-Sergeant Pavlov's House - is well known from wartime in many countries of the world.

  • THE TOWN OF VOLZHSKY (30 km from the centre of Volgograd) is the young town of chemical workers and hydro-engineers is situated on the left bank of the Volga. Excellently planned, it "faces" the river and is caressed by its fresh river air.
  Communications and Transport
 

Volgograd is part of many routes for foreign tourists. Visitors can fly from Moscow in 1 hour 30 minutes flying time, distance of 930 km. It is connected by air with St.Petersburg, Kiev, Tbilisi, Sochi, Odessa and many other tourist centres. There is also a rail link with Moscow, distance 1,073 km, journey time some 20 hours.

The city is also part of the cruise routes starting in Kazan and culminating at Rostov-on-Don.

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