Kursky Rail Terminal : Actually two directions at one terminus. Southeastern branch serves Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod, but most trains go south, through Tula, Orel, Kursk and eastern Ukraine to the Black Sea and beyond, including Adler/Sochi, the Crimea and the Caucasus. It was built in 1896 and has twice been rebuilt in 1998 and in 1972. There are currently plans in the pipeline to completely rebuild or refurbish the Kursky Rail Terminal.

Metro: Kurskaya/Chkalovskaya.

Paveletsky Rail Terminal : Serves Voronezh, Astrakhan, Alma-Ata, and other destinations to the South.Originally called Saratov Railway Station, it was named after a village of Pavelets, when the railroad leading south-east of Moscow reached that point in 1899. The ornate building of the station, completed in 1900 and extensively reconstructed in the 1980s, remains one of the biggest Moscow railway terminals. In 1924, it was the place where Muscovites came to meet the body of deceased Lenin. The Lenin Funeral Train is still a permanent exhibit there. The Aeroexpress train links Paveletsky station with Domodedovo Airport.

Metro: Paveletskaya.

Kievsky Rail Terminal : It is the only railway station in Moscow to have a frontage on the Moskva River. As the name suggests there are regular services to Kiev as well as Belgrade, Zagreb, Istanbul, Bucharest, Sofia, Athens, Budapest, Prague, Vienna, and Rome. The station was built between 1914 and 1918 in the Byzantine. Originally named the Bryansk Rail Terminal, it was designed by Ivan Rerberg and Vladimir Shukhov, it is considered an important landmark of architecture and engineering of the time.

Metro: Kievskaya.

If you do use a car to arrive to Moscow, don’t even think about driving around. The street system was never designed to accommodate even a fraction of the exploding population of vehicles; the traffic jams on the Sadovoye Ring often do not clear between the morning and the evening rush hours. Most roadways are in a constant state of disastrous disrepair. You will have to compete for every inch of space on the road (quite literally; the proper distance between the vehicles for a Muscovite is close to zero) with seasoned drivers in dented «Lada»s who know the tangle of the streets inside out and will not think twice before cutting you off at the first opportunity. The drivers of the ubiquitous yellow «marshrutka» route taxis can seem to be nearly suicidal, and account for a significant percentage of all accidents, while buses stop, go and barge in and out of traffic at will, blissfully unaware of the surroundings. One bright spot is the relative dearth of the large 18-wheeler trucks on Moscow roads; they do ply the Ring Road, however. From time to time all traffic on major thoroughfares may be blocked by police to allow government officials to blow through unimpeded, sirens blaring. If you manage to get to your destination, you’ll find that there is nowhere to park, or worse, that a space which looked OK to you is either illegal or «belongs» to someone (or both); this would mean finding upon return a smashed-in windshield or slashed tires, to teach you a lesson, or your car being towed («evacuated»). In fact, you might get towed for any reason or without one. Any serious altercation on the Moscow roads means dealing with GIBDD, the road police, the most notoriously corrupt institution in the city. Park as soon as you can at a safe place (your hotel, for example) and use public transit.

People, arriving to Moscow from the remote places, are always amazed with the capital.

By shipp
Moscow used to be served by regular passenger ships. A system of navigable channels and locks connects the Moskva River with Volga River, which in turn, through the Volga-Baltic channel, provides a way to the Baltic Sea (using the Onega, Ladoga and Neva rivers) and further from Ladoga Lake through the White Sea channel to the White Sea; to the south through the Volga-Don channel to the Don river and the Azov and Black Sea; while Volga itself flows into the Caspian Sea. In the Soviet times this allowed the official propaganda to refer to Moscow as «a port on the five seas». There is no scheduled passenger traffic anymore on any of these routes.
There are 2 river terminals in Moscow, on each end of the series of major bridges over the river; these are not capable of being drawn up, and not all of them are of sufficient height to allow large ships to pass. The North Station, in Khimki neighborhood, provides berths for cruise ships to Saint Petersburg, as well as Astrakhan, Rostov-on-Don and other cities along the Volga. The South Station (closest Metro: Kolomenskaya) ceased to be used commercially, since the Oka River, of which the Moskva is a tributary, has silted to the point of being impassable.

Metro (Subway, Underground)

Local transport includes the Moscow Metro, a metro system famous for its art, murals, mosaics, and ornate chandeliers. When it first opened in 1935, the system had just one line. Today, the Moscow Metro contains twelve lines, mostly underground with a total of 177 stations. The Metro is one of the deepest subway systems in the world; for instance the Park Pobedy station, completed in 2003, at 84 metres (280 ft) underground, has the longest escalators in Europe. The Moscow Metro is one of world’s busiest metro systems, serving more than nine million passengers daily. Facing serious transportation problems, Moscow has wide plans of expansion of Moscow Metro.

Tickets are sold only at manned booths within the stations («kassa»). In several stations there are tickets vending machines.

How OLD is Russia?

Hulton Fine Art, Corbis Historical/Getty Images; Kirill Braga/Sputnik

Just like a Phoenix, Russia has risen from the ashes multiple times. Hence the confusion many have when asked how old Russia actually is. The key to this question lies in a different one: Exactly which Russia are we talking about?

Modern Russia

The Red Square in Moscow in August 1991.

A brief period of chaotic power struggle in the political corridors of Moscow in the late 1980s and early 1990s resulted in the official dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Russia Day, a public holiday celebrated annually on June 12, commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic is oftentimes confused with the birthday of the modern, post-Soviet, Russian state. However, it’s misleading to track the existence of the modern Russian state to the declaration adopted on June 12, 1990.

Although the document paved the way for the dissolution of the Soviet Union by establishing the priority of Russian laws over the laws of the USSR, the actual emergence of the modern Russian state happened only a year later, when the Russian Parliament announced the country would be called ‘Russia’ or the ‘Russian Federation’ and the USSR officially disintegrated on December 25, 1991.

Hence, the modern Russian state turned 30 in 2021.

The USSR

Despite a relatively recent reset of its life clock, the Russian statehood is actually much older than 30. For 69 years before the emergence of Russia as a modern and independent state, the country — albeit with a different name — was a part of the Soviet Union, along with other states, members of the communist alliance.

In that capacity, Russia existed from December 30, 1922, and up until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. And before the Soviet Union was fully and officially formed, Russia existed in the form of The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was not yet a part of the USSR. In that capacity, Russian statehood has existed since 1917.

Adding the number of years Russia existed as the RSFSR within and outside of the USSR with the number of years Russia existed as a modern independent state makes Russia 104 years old in 2021.

The Russian Empire and the Russian Tsardom

Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III.

The often romanticized time of the Russian Empire ended with the revolution in 1917, but it had been around for quite some time. It’s known that Peter the Great proclaimed the emergence of the Russian Empire — and himself as its Emperor — in 1721.

But even before that, the Russian state existed in a different form, as the Tsardom of Russia was formed under the rule of Ivan the Terrible in 1547.

This is not to mention the formation of the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1263. Ivan III, who ruled this political entity from 1462, assumed the title of the Grand Prince of all Rus’.

Add this into the equation and Russia turned 758 in 2021.

The summoning

Reproduction of the painting «Grandchildren of Gostomysl: Rurik, Truvor, Sineus» by artist Ilya Glazunov.

Officially, however, it is agreed to trace the emergence of Russian statehood as far back as to the 9th century. Back then — according to the Primary Chronicle — Varangian prince Rurik was called upon by the Finnic and Eastern Slavic peoples of the Northwestern lands to rule over them. He settled in Novgorod in 862 and, thus, launched the first official Russian statehood.

Obviously, for Rurik to be summoned, there must have been people who would have sent for him and his entourage to show up. People had lived on these lands before the Rurikids dynasty was established, however, it is universally accepted to trace back the emergence of the Russian statehood to 862, nonetheless.

So, the next time someone asks you how old Russia is, you now know it turns 1159 in 2021. or does it?

Click here to find out more about the people who founded Russia and ruled it before the Romanovs.

If using any of Russia Beyond’s content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

Появилась новая карта возраста домов Москвы

Создатели проекта How old is this.house выпустили карту возраста домов в Москве. На нее попали 259 тысяч построек, у 129 тысяч из которых картографы смогли определить возраст.

Карта возраста построек Москвы Фото: How old is this.house

Авторы проекта — картографы Милана Глебова и Никита Славин. На сайте можно найти не только дату возведения здания, но и имя его архитектора, фотографию, ссылку на страницу в Википедии и информацию о архитектурном стиле. Авторы ввели цветовое разделение для обозначения разных исторических периодов. «Дореволюционные окрашены в красный кирпичный цвет, сталинские высотки и их современники — в ярко-желтый, как стены Главного Здания МГУ на ярком солнце, бетонные семидесятые делаем тускловато-зелеными, а современным зданиям к лицу электрически-холодный синий», — объяснила Милана Глебова.

При работе над проектом картографы свели данные о возрасте домов в график, который показал, что большинство зданий в столице было построено в 1917 году. Авторы объясняют, что этой цифре верить нельзя. Дело в том, что «все дома с неизвестным годом строительства после революции отнесли к 1917 году».

По словам картографов, дореволюционные декадные пики тоже не точны: «вероятно, это эффект округления дат при записи возраста дома».

«С началом советского периода все становится логично: провал в строительстве в годы Великой Отечественной войны, бум строительства хрущевок в 1960-х и дальнейший спад вплоть до 1990-х, — объясняет Глебова. — А вот крошечным значениям последних лет верить нельзя, на самом деле, в 2019 году реновация взяла темп строительства, близкий к советскому».

Авторы проекта обещают регулярно обновлять сайт и отмечают, что его пользователи могут самостоятельно оставлять правки.

Карта стала четвертой для проекта how-old-is-this.house : ранее команда представила карты возраста домов в Санкт-Петербурге, Казани и Владимире. Как и в предыдущих, команда выпустила постер с картой, который можно купить на сайте. Все проекты представлены под единым брендом «Карты Никиты Славина».

В 2019 году Strelka Mag и Яндекс.Недвижимость создали карту истории московского жилья. На нее попали 29 830 жилых домов.

Одна из самых первых онлайн-карт возрастов зданий в Москве появилась ещё в 2013 году. Она была разработана компанией «Меркатор». Сейчас сайт с этой картой недоступен.