Tag: Russia
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False Dawn in Murmansk
I was in Murmansk for the Winter Solstice. The city is North of the Arctic Circle, so the sun never actually rises in mid-winter. I had been vaguely expecting that I would be encountering a 24 hour night, but no, the sky was actually a bright twilight from about noon to about 4:00pm, as the…
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Grozny
On my way from Vladikavkaz to Astrakhan, I stopped off in Grozny. I’m not sure what I expected from Chechnya, but it wasn’t this. Almost all the buildings in central Grozny are new, built after the devastation of the second Chechen War. But there is now another enormous new wave of construction under way, with…
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Stalin in Vladikavkaz
I’m in Vladikavkaz (“Lord of the Caucasus”), North Ossetia, Russian Federation, where Stalin lurks. I was visiting the fine WWII memorial park “Monument to Glory”. And there he was, posed casually in front of a giant historical mosaic. The most surprising part is that the bust is new, added in 2009 by the local Communist…
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Novorossiysk: Brezhnev
I’ve bagged Lenins by the dozen. And even a couple of Stalins. But a Brezhnev? In the wild? Now there’s a real rarity. But there he was, striding casually down the street in downtown Novorossiysk. So I nabbed him. This isn’t the doddering, geriatric Brezhnev of the 1980s. This is the rising apparatchik, posed with…
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Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet
I’m in Sevastopol, Ukraine. The city was formerly host to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. After 1991, the fleet was partitioned between Ukraine and Russia and both halves are still based at Sevastopol, although most of the warships I spotted had Russian ensigns. Like Vladivostok, Sevastopol was a closed city during the Soviet era, so…
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Baikonur: Soyuz TMA-20 Launch
I was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to watch the Soyuz TMA-20 launch. It was spectacular. I strongly recommend it. (Tour Logistics.) (More Baikonur photos.) I found myself in a tour group of six: our guide told us we were all the tourists visiting the launch. There were also some press, and various Roscosmos/ESA/NASA…