Eight Russian Cities from the Volga to the Pacific

On the western bank of the Volga, Volgograd was known as Tsaritsyn from 1589 to 1925 and as Stalingrad from 1925 to 1961. Its population was 1,028,036 at the 2021 census, the fourth largest along the Volga.

Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka rivers and is the capital of Tatarstan. Its Kremlin, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, holds an Orthodox cathedral and a major mosque within the same fortress walls.

Samara sits where the Volga meets the Samara River and was called Kuybyshev from 1935 to 1991. It served as a backup capital for the Soviet government during the Second World War and grew into a center of aerospace and defense industry.

Chelyabinsk began as an eighteenth century Russian fortress and became a center of heavy industry and metallurgy. It is the second largest city in the Ural Federal District after Yekaterinburg, and a meteor exploded above it in 2013.

Omsk was founded as a fortress where the Irtysh and Om rivers meet, and it is the third largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. The writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was imprisoned here in the mid-nineteenth century.

Krasnoyarsk lies on the Yenisei River and is an important junction on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Anton Chekhov judged it the most beautiful city in Siberia, and the Stolby Nature Sanctuary lies about 10 kilometers south of it.

Irkutsk stands on the Angara River about 850 kilometers southeast of Krasnoyarsk. Decembrist exiles were sent here after 1825, and when the railway arrived it earned the nickname the Paris of Siberia; some historic wooden houses survive.

Vladivostok was founded as a military outpost on 2 July 1860 on the Golden Horn Bay of the Sea of Japan. It is the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Pacific Fleet headquarters and Russia's largest Pacific port.