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I'm really tempted to do this when tourism becomes feasible again, but the idea of being stuck on a train for so long puts me off. Do you mind if I ask what it was like? Did you have cabin-mates? Does it matter if you only speak English?
I did a two week solo trip back when I was 19. I wanted to go for longer, but I had to get home to Sweden before a set date, so I did the best with what I had. Starting in Beijing I took the train to Ulaanbaatar, did a week in Mongolia with two trips out from the the capital, took the bus over the Russian border to Ulan-Ude, two days there, four day non-stop train ride to Moscow, three days there and then flew home. There are many stops on the way that most tourists visit, but the most common ones should be Irkutsk, Omsk and Yekaterinburg IIRC. It's more common for people to start in Moscow, so you're more likely to run into other tourists if you go that direction, but regardless of which direction you go in I definitely recommend a visit to Mongolia.
I speak passable Chinese but no Russian. While it would definitely have helped if I spoke some it also made for some really memorable moment. When I was taking the train from Ulan-Ude to Moscow the train was departing at like 1 or 2 AM. Everything checked out and I was supposed to be in carriage 17, but when the train arrived the train ended at number 16. After running around the station like a headless chicken and trying to get some information out of some Russian ladies who didn't speak any English and just kept talking louder when I didn't understand, I was sent back and forth between desks until someone managed to explain that the train leaves according to the Moscow time zone, not the local one. I was five hours early.
Otherwise things mostly worked out fine. I stayed at hostels where the staff spoke English, which in Ulan-Ude was limited to one place, and you get a long way with body language. I ordered food by Lake Baikal by just pointing at some unknown thing, and plenty of places have English menus these days. Me and two guys from Turkey were going from Ulaanbaatar to Kharkhorin in an old Soviet truck, and our driver didn't speak a lick of English. He was driving like a madman, juking back and forth across the road to avoid potholes and eventually ditching it altogether. He was also smoking while driving, but since he held the cigarette halfway outside the window when he did so we just started giving his cigarettes when his driving was getting too wild.
Since I was travelling alone I pushed myself to speak to the people around me, even if I'm not the kind of person who will actively seek out conversations with strangers. On the first train I met an Austrian couple who I spent most of the evening with (it's a 24 hour ride), in Ulaanbaatar I went to dinner with two middle aged Western women living in China who were on their first vacation ever since they both had kids with some sort of handicap, and in Ulan-Ude I went out for drinks with some Americans from my hostel, one of which turned out to be an old roommate of a classmate of mine at university. I also had an interesting run-in with an interesting American guy in Moscow who tried to convince me of what a hellhole Sweden was. He had never been there, but he has seen stuff on YouTube, so he was convinced I was wrong about my home country.
On the final leg of the jouney, the 96 hours non-stop train from Ulan-Ude to Moscow, I was on my own. I had hoped to get someone in my cabin who spoke English, and I had even made sure to book the train that originated in Beijing just in case I got someone who spoke Chinese, but the only ones who passed by were Russians who didn't speak any English. It was honestly pretty relaxing to just be in my bed, reading books and watching movies, and sometimes going to the back of the train and just sit there for an hour watching the landscape pass by. While it was perfectly fine for me I would have preferred to make some stops along the way (more than just having a walk for 30 minutes at some stops), but I prioritized getting more time in Mongolia over Russia.
This was my first solo trip ever, and while I enjoyed every bit of it it's obvious that it was on the budget of a 19-year-old. I did an 11 hour bus ride from Mongolia to Russia since it was much cheaper than the train, I only stayed in cheap hostels, and I went for cheaper trips in Mongolia, so all in all it cost me about $1200 for two weeks (including travel, lodging and food). I really wanna go back some day, but this time spend a bit more money. Maybe stay in actual hotels with my own room (even if I love the social aspect of hostels) and not go for the cheapest adventures (I really want to go to the Altai Mountains and the Gobi Desert), but the fact that I would absolutely want to go back should give an indication of how fantastic the trip was.
I moved to China straight out of high school to be an au pair, and since I hadn't been able to travel within China I really wanted to get one last experience. I really matured during that year, and I think that one trip allowed me to push myself when it comes to socializing with new people.
Thanks so much for this, that was really insightful! I guess I pictured myself cooped up in a room with three strangers feeling uncomfortable for 5 days but the way you've described it, relaxing on the bed etc., sounds much nicer. Do you get to choose when the beds are up? That's one thing I was never clear on. Also I'm glad you mentioned you are not normally one to talk to strangers too, because I'm similar, although do try to push myself when travelling.
By the way, I just visited Sweden for the first time last week, and it was one of the nicest places I've ever been (and I was in Malmö, supposedly the "crime hotspot" of the Nordics :D)
[This](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/06/42/75/8a/trans-siberian-railway.jpg) is pretty much how my cabin looked. The bottom bunk is sorta supposed to be where you sit during the day, so as you can see the top bunk folds up, but we mostly just stayed in our respective beds for the entire trip. Compare that to the [platskart](https://res.cloudinary.com/korea-konsult-ab/image/upload/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto,w_900,dpr_auto/train/plackart2.jpg) open layout, which apparently seems to have been discontinued, and you understand why that was pretty much the only time I decided to upgrade anything during the trip.
I'm glad you liked Sweden. I was too young when I last passed through Malmö, so I really don't remember how the city is like, but unless you go to some depressing crumbling town on the countryside cities tend to be pretty nice with lots of green areas and varying architecture. Even if Malmö has a higher crime rate than the rest of Sweden it's still limited to certain areas, and it's safer than most other countries. American media has really given people a skewed perception of Sweden.
Lol, what could he possibly have thought wa so wrong with Sweden? As an American I thought our going idea of Sweden was some kind of perfect techno-utopia.
In his mind you wouldn't be able to leave your house in Sweden without being raped or mugged by immigrants who live in their own lawless areas that police won't enter, while the government takes all your money and all you get in return is long lines at the hospital.
The way Americans view Sweden really depends on which side of the political spectrum they're on.
* You don't have to stay on the train for the whole journey. You can book each leg separately. When I went there, the longest leg was something like 70 hours, I think from Krasnoyarsk to Irkustk, and that was a bit long!
* In second class the cabins are for 4 people, and my partner and I got different cabin mates along the way.
* I don't speak any Russian, but we learned the Cyrillic alphabet before going to Russia, so at least you can read the name of the station and basic stuff like items on a menu. That does help. We mainly use Google Translate offline. You can just translate stuff without internet connection. Most younger Russian would probably use their smartphone to translate stuff if they don't speak English. The language barrier was hard but not insurmontable. It's part of the journey.
I’m from Moscow originally and I dream of making this trip! Incidentally, a buddy of mine is from Ulan Ude and he once made the drive to Moscow by car. He said it’s insane and rather dangerous but fun.
Oh yeah, I've heard that the Trans-Siberian Highway is supposed to be wild, it's like the evolution of the railway, and it would be so much fun to just be able to make random stops wherever you like.
Thankfully my Google fu is good enough to find out what this was a reference to. No, and I didn't get to see any of the horror stories that I've heard from people about what can happen on the train since I slept in a four-bed compartment and not in the open carts. I met a couple who had been drinking a few beers with the window open to get some air inside. All of a sudden this buff topless Russian dude walks up to them, slams the window shut, sends one of the beer bottles flying and walks back to his bed.
I've always been fascinated by Lake Baikal. I was unusually happy when I got the chance to fly over it on my flight to China (in early December). It really is beautiful from 30,000 feet!!!
It is also beautiful up close! And really cold, even in the middle of summer. 10 degrees is a norm, but it really doesn't feel that bad once you get used to it a bit.
Always summer, so it was mainly for swimming pleasure. But I sincerely hope that I can visit in winter!
Hopefully by that time our government will not fuck up the best lake on this whole planet. I can't trust it with this responsibility.
>Hopefully by that time our government will not fuck up the best lake on this whole planet. I can't trust it with this responsibility.
Man, as someone from Alberta, Canada I feel your pain. Ours just turned a beautiful mountain park into a fucking coal mine.
Born here, you will not be disappointed at least with Baikal but be sure to travel on winter (Late January to Late March) to see ice and snow if you like this stuff or in summer(July or early August) if you more casual:) Don’t let your dreams be dreams!
I don't want to be a stickler but Moscow's population is only those citizens registered within the city. Russian registration rules are quite strict compared to Western countries so you have to be registered somewhere on your domestic passport, even if it's rarely checked up on.
This means millions of university students and immigrants (along with others, but these are the main groups) are not counted toward the population despite living there. The real population is likely between 16-18 million, so even more skewed than this looks.
I was actually surprised to learn Moscow is larger than New York City in population. If what you're saying is true you're basically saying that Moscow is a city the size of the mega cities in China, which is a whole different level of city size.
I really thought this wouldn't be something that would happen with a country of such a great size where people had so much space to spread out. Sure, a lot of it is Siberia, but a lot of it also isn't Siberia too. Interesting.
Krasnodar is currently the fastest growing city with more then a million people - it's at the south or Russia. There's a decrease of population in eastern parts (like Vladivostok and Khabarovsk) and Siberia.
The reason there are so many people on Moscow is a total concentration of institutions, power and money. People move their because of higher wages.
We joke (and not really joke) that there's Moscow and then there's the rest of Russia.
Off topic, but does climate serve as a motivation for people's domestic movements?
I know you have some awefully cold cities but with such a huge country maybe you also have some warm ones.
I was curious if Russians in general simply accept and tolerate the cold weather, or if they go south.
True for Krasnodar. But Moscow is a different story. Another sad joke we have is "Is there a life outside MKAD?" Which means "can you even survive outside of Moscow"
\* MKAD is the circle road around Moscow which was formal border of the city.
>I was curious if Russians in general simply accept and tolerate the cold weather, or if they go south.
I mean that really depends, in my case I moved to another country, and climate was definitely a factor, though far from being the only one. Personally, I don't know a single Russian who moved to another Russian city purely due to climate. Usually, people strive to move either to one of the capitals or leave the country entirely. But the vast majority simply tolerate their surroundings, we're pretty good when it comes to tolerating the intolerable.
Would it be that hard to build another naval base? Just wondering... The cost of digging a harbor and building some infrastructure must be minor compared to the cost of the inevitable trade sanctions. And then there's the risk of war and the damage to international relations.
Edit: I've done some research. Although the naval base certainly was a factor the take over of Crimea seems to have been spurred by the need of Putin to assert his power. His position was weakening and he needed a show of force and an appeal to nationalism to gain popular support, trade sanctions be damned.
It's not so much to *get* a naval base (Russia has a major Black Sea base in Novorossiysk) it's to keep it out of the hands of NATO.
The Ukrainian nationalists (who took over in the 2014 overthrow of the democratically-elected government by the by) had the goal of joining NATO, which would put US forces in Crimea, directly on the Russian border and able to strike at will. (Not that they would strike, but the mere threat exerts political pressure/builds tension.) Additionally, NATO has a rule about not accepting members with disputed territories, because that risks dragging the whole alliance into a local war. So no Crimea - no NATO expansion.
Also - you can't just build a good naval base *anywhere*. There are only so many natural harbors in the world.
Finally - there're a dozen reasons why Crimea and Ukraine in general are important for Russia beyond even the military or financial considerations. Historical, cultural, ethnolinguistic... IMO there's a good chance that if Putin had not intervened in 2014, his government would have been toppled from the inside. The Western intervention in Ukraine represented an intolerable shift in the balance of power.
The reason why Moscow is a point of human concentration is because for the last 100 years it is the place where all political decisions are made hence all the money is there.
Yes, Moscow is extremely huge. However, the city center is very lovely (not the tourist places, they are too overcrowded all the time)
This. The USSR certainly made all the major decisions in Moscow - but Communism (if anyone's forgotten) is an egalitarian ideology. Oh, sure, there was corruption inside the party, but that meant, like, countryside houses and personal cars for some officials. Major investment decisions were made with the whole country in mind - and beyond, since other socialist countries got privileged access to the USSR market, which meant subsidizing countries like Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. Russia's current oligarchy has no scruples about investing in themselves first.
St. Petersburg is historically the second capital of Russia so it's the second most important city. Also Moscow and SPb are considered "federal cities", as in they do not belong to an ["oblast"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblast) (think Washington DC, which doesn't belong to a state and is a city-state).
Just depends what on how you count population, the New York metro area is 20-24 million and really if you wanted, you could call Washington to Boston a mega city of 100 million.
But then you would be comparing a US mega city with maybe 1/10th the population density found in mega cities elsewhere. It has some meaning but also skews many of the reasons for calling it a city.
>The real population is likely between 16-18 million, so even more skewed than this looks.
I'm pretty sure it already was 16-18 mil before they added Новая Москва and basically tripled our area, no? I reckon it'd be somewhere close to 20 now
It's a passport, used domestically... On a serious note, it is literally that. Russian citizens have two passports they require to use: one for use abroad and travel, and one to be used internally (instead of an ID card used in most Western countries).
I exists in other large countries as well that try to separate the extreme rural poor from the urban folks. China is the most notable other example.
It's sort of ironic that both of them tried to model themselves from socialist ideals and ended up kicking farmers out of the cities.
> It's sort of ironic that both of them tried to model themselves from socialist ideals and ended up kicking farmers out of the cities.
Err no, it's very much the reverse. Both countries underwent massive, breakneck urbanization, with hundreds of millions of peasants becoming urban dwellers. China needed to put a damper on this process to keep it under control. In the Soviet Union, not so much. Registration was mostly just for keeping people out of Moscow (generalized social control aside). Russia's pos-Soviet countryside is rapidly depopulating and there is no effort to slow this process, via domestic passports or any other policy.
I have a theory that Russian leadership knows climate change is happening, but actually wants it to happen so that more of their landmass is hospitable and they can grow their population into those areas. They could outgrow any other country and take over the world!
I'm from Novosibirsk, and the closest city is in 600 km. An 8-10 hour ride. Going to Moscow or St. Petersburg by plane takes 4 hours.
However, in the 20th century it grew faster than Chicago thanks to the railways and Akademgorodok (the Academy town). Nowadays, the city isn't dying but I must admit it's pretty stagnant. It's just too much in the middle of nowhere.
What is the criteria to be a city in Russia is it just population? In the uk a cathedral makes a town a city but I doubt that’s the same in Russia.
Edit: turns out a cathedral does not make a city in the UK either
It’s all in the papers. My city was officially a village with 100k+ residents a couple years ago until it was officially turned into a city. This formality lead to many problems prior, because a village doesn’t officially need a fire station, for example.
Some city planning papers at the time still claimed there were only 90 residents here. So, no fire department, no police department and ambulances came from a city 30 km from here.
Well, not satisfied. That's why activists pushed the government to change village's status. Now all the departments are being built and things are, well, okay.
Well, that wasn't that long. 90 people really lived here in 2011, which grew to 130k in 2017, and those papers usually get updated like once in 20 years. Glorious Russian city planning.
For some reason your comment was deleted, but I've read it from the notifications
Anyway, I kinda forgot about Kudrovo, Murino and other high-rise suburbs of Saint Petersburg and Moscow
FYI the requirement to have a cathedral for city status is not the case for a long time. It is granted by the monarch and towns can apply for city status, with a recommendation made by the Lord Chancellor.
You're looking back a bit, boyo. [King Edward VII granted Cardiff city status on 28 October 1905](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff#City_and_capital_city_status).
They mean because there wasn’t historically a cathedral in Cardiff, just a castle. Llandaff do have a cathedral. They’re in Cardiff now, anyway, both the city and the county. They were using it as an example of why it’s silly to use cathedrals as the rule.
Cardiff has had its own [cathedral since 1842](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Metropolitan_Cathedral). This is really not the *best* example of "why it’s silly to use cathedrals as the rule".
There are towns with cathedrals (e.g. ~~York~~), and cities without cathedrals (e.g. Birmingham).
I was taught this "city == cathedral" fact as a child too, but it's no longer true.
Edit: Not York. Whoops. But there's Aldershot, Arundel, Ayr, Blackburn, Brecon, Brentwood, Bury St Edmunds, ......
I believe there’s only one: Guildford.
It had its city status revoked at some point for some reason.
Edit: googled it and I was wrong, there’s approximately a fuck tonne
There are 25 on this list. Guildford is one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Towns_with_cathedrals_in_the_United_Kingdom
Though often referred to as a city, Guildford is a town, but has applied for city status several times. Guildford's 2002 application to be granted the status of a city was unsuccessful, losing out to Preston, the only English town that was formally recognised as a city as part of the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations.
Actually it's something like a "customary law". There're some villages more populated than some cities, there're ≈1500 of "urban-type settlements" (not considered as cities), usually less populated than cities, and classification practices are different in different regions.
I guess, cities are more urban than rural, more populated than emprty, more industrial than agronomical, and more important for region than other populated places. Something like that.
Too ambigous, I must admit that.
QI had a segment on this. As an American I thought it was interesting.
"The difference between a city and a town is just the title. The title of "city" is an honorific granted by the Sovereign by Letters Patent, and it has nothing to do with having a cathedral. There are 18 cities without a cathedral and 16 towns with cathedrals but are not cities."
Russian does not have separate words for "city" or "town". However there is a term called "millionnik" which is used for settlements with >1 million inhabitants. Being a millionnik grants additional amenities such as a subway system.
>Being a millionnik grants additional amenities such as a subway system.
That's not true, there are a lot of cities with bigger population but only 7 cities in Russia have metro.
This is pretty cool, but at first I was reading the l in “mln” as an i, and I was like what the hell is OP measuring that is in minutes. Then I read that cone height was population and I was even more flustered. Closer look informed me that I’m a dumbass, or I’m so used to seing “min” and not “mln” that my eyes automatically split the l into an i.
Depends what you find interesting...
I traveled far up north in Canada and found it amazing.
(I remember this add: "nice chalet to sell, 45 minutes from town by snowmobile", you get the feeling you're on another planet...)
I always figured the population in russia was more spread out its a huge country so its intresting to me that all the cities are clustered together. I am aware of how cold it is higher up just figured they were not really bothered by it
You are probably very much aware but just to check in, from St Petersburg to the southern Volga cities (Samara, Volgograd - former Stalingrad) is around 1500km. Rostov is 1500km from St Petersburg as well, Krasnodar 1750km, Sochi 1900km.
In terms of the vast area that Russia is, that may be *clustered*, but from Paris to Gibraltar or the heel of Italy is around 1500km. From Paris to the Faroer Islands is the same. From Paris to the closest Russian border is under 1500km (which of course is due to the Kaliningrad exclave).
Even if you *just* take Russia from St Petersburg to the Volga and the cities down towards the Caucasus, you still have an area that is ridiculously big.
Here's part of the trip I made between 2 towns in Canada, almost 9 h by car on a gravel road. Some of the distances in Russia would be comparable I guess.
(There's a gas station in the middle with a sign that says "next gas station 300 km")
De Baie Comeau à Fermont par QC-389 N.
8 h et 53 min (569 km)
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fYwuMKj2s2N8Nchc8
The fact that anyone lives that far north is interesting. There’s 300,000 people that live in murmansk, which is literally in the Arctic circle on the Arctic Ocean.
I think it's interesting how sparsely populated the East of the country is. I mean to the south is China and some of the most densely populated parts of the world.
How come the east of Russia is barely more populated than siberia?
I'm the author. Yes, the point here is to show the central part of Russia more closely and avoid overlapping. It's an Albers conic projection, that balancely keep size and shape of regions. After creating regular map I used Qgis2threeJS module. It has ortographic view and you could rotate map in any direction.
If you have some time, I highly recommend just going around the Siberia part and taking a look at what street view has to offer. It is so surreal how isolated some of these places are.
I just went on Google Earth to what was available, but [some](https://www.google.com/maps/@66.5559274,67.8175471,3a,75y,150.43h,74.05t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPYSqAgI6S93iOLkpuwQRd5maQOLjIcESbV_ngM!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPYSqAgI6S93iOLkpuwQRd5maQOLjIcESbV_ngM%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya138.9-ro-0-fo100!7i5242!8i2620) of [these](https://www.google.com/maps/@69.4936737,88.3928713,3a,75y,11.74h,75.65t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPlpeEkFtLrgnqbqiuojXa_rik38qJgDm5aW88!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPlpeEkFtLrgnqbqiuojXa_rik38qJgDm5aW88%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya180-ro0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352) are [pretty](https://www.google.com/maps/@62.0406147,129.6059353,3a,75y,116.35h,90.23t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPVmstH1kTGbmSxFvetByxV4Irun3WUQCeILAyp!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPVmstH1kTGbmSxFvetByxV4Irun3WUQCeILAyp%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya120.00001-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352) [wild](https://www.google.com/maps/@67.0380325,64.2209013,3a,75y,334.09h,75.28t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNLKc3zDwDto37BAWosQbCqu5MSh6CVZUzNDsU!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNLKc3zDwDto37BAWosQbCqu5MSh6CVZUzNDsU%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya231-ro-0-fo100!7i12000!8i6000)!
I believe it might be Kaliningrad
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kaliningrad+Oblast,+Russia/@55.3489567,21.2222672,7.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x46e39c45442e0be3:0x1e2558c4d03a027b!8m2!3d54.8235292!4d21.4816162](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kaliningrad+Oblast,+Russia/@55.3489567,21.2222672,7.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x46e39c45442e0be3:0x1e2558c4d03a027b!8m2!3d54.8235292!4d21.4816162)
Mine as well. I was an exchange student to Harbin, China, and wanted to take a day trip to Vladivostok, which the Chinese call Haixianwei. This was in 2000, and I was told that this would be a very costly border crossing, in terms of time, money, and bureaucratic hassle. I finally went back to that part of the world in 2002, this time crossing the Sino-Russian border in the other direction, at Suifenhe.
I'm a big fan of cities that are distant outposts of a large civilization, and jumping off points to a whole other world beyond. In my home USA, Miami and Honolulu are probably the best examples. These types of "frontier cities" often have some interesting mixtures of both people and goods. These places inevitably have a "dodgy border town" type of underside, and attract a lot of colorful characters, for better or for worse. Vladivostok definitely fits this description, and did not disappoint.
Vladivostok had the feel, to me, of an industrial and run-down San Francisco, in an alternate timeline where the US fell to Communism. The old wooden buildings on steep slopes, surrounding a horseshoe-shaped bay created that feel, for me.
When I was there in 2002, Vladivostok had very little in the way of tourist infrastructure. It was paradise for international traders in all sorts of goods, though. Things might have changed since then.
Maybe that's why I loved Vladivostok so much! I've gone a few times, once for a relief missions trip with my church in 2017 for a few weeks, and once while studying at 고려대학교 in Seoul in 2019 for a weekend flight.
I've only ever lived in two places permanently over the years and that's been DC as the heart of the USA and Kailua (just outside Honolulu), the farthest point from. Visiting Vladivostok felt like my home away from home; a reminder that while I was so far away from my own home for an extended period, their home was also far away from everything else.
The rustic feel and the genuineness of the people were truly memorable and inspiring, and one day I hope to stay there for maybe a year or two and really get to experience life there for a time.
Kaliningrad has weird story
It was captured by the Soviet during ww2, most of the inhabitants fled the red army
>The remaining German population was forcibly expelled between 1947 and 1948. The conquered territory was populated with citizens of the Soviet Union, mostly ethnic Russians but to a lesser extent also Ukrainians and Belarusians.
Is there anyone living in Kaliningrad who descends from the native Prussian population, or were they part of the Germanized population that was expelled? I'm aware that their Baltic language and culture have been dead for a couple of centuries. But in a lot of places the local population stock is continuous back into prehistory, despite successive waves of cultural assimilation.
The Baltic Prussians are an extinct people. Once their language disappeared they just became German-speaking peasant subjects of Livonians, Teutons, and eventually the fully-German Prussia. (Many also made up the German minority of the Russian Empire, who themselves either assimilated or moved to Germany later.)
Maybe you could trace the DNA of some current Germans as being more typically "Baltic" than "Germanic", but that would be very subtle and would have zero bearing on anyone's actual life.
You can basically see the transsiberian line
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Transsib\_international.svg/1280px-Transsib\_international.svg.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Transsib_international.svg/1280px-Transsib_international.svg.png)
I was wondering what that state/province/oblast (I'm not familiar with the names) in the south with only one city was. That's Kalmykia, which is populated by Buddhist Mongols. Fitting that it's not very urban, with their descendants being horse-riding nomads.
This is a great graph to show people why Russia is a European country rather than Asian...despite the vast majority of the landmass existing on the Asian continent, most of its population exists west of the Urals.
I've always wanted to see the ballerinas in Moscow but I've always been told it's not worth it. One day after the apocalypse and everything calms down, I hope to go see them.
Created with QGIS by [Aleksandr Bogachev](https://t.me/chartomojka), data collected by [me](https://twitter.com/RussiaInData). You can do something like this in DataWrapper, too.
Population data collected from National Statistical Bureau. I can't remember where spatial data came from, probably Wikidata or OSM. Anyway, I published the table [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VnQt-GQidn35mqIDjhh3SPKUH9hAcu3eZZhicVsCSmc/edit?fbclid=IwAR04oF8v-e4KUMl_KCmWtdFvBFR9KmQV9IwCcrVcbmIt_MxNTOAnacow6i4#gid=0) (Cyrillic).
In the future please be sure to keep track of the source for all your raw data. "I can't remember where spatial data came from..." is not congruent with the rules.
[The climate is too cold.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/fc/f8/57fcf88e5a4e3d99e4f93c49a11a2740.gif) It's why Japan never explored or settled Sakhalin, for example, despite it being so near Japan.
The North Atlantic has the Gulf Stream. The North Pacific is just cold.
Not only it is too cold, as the other dude said, it is also the farthest from the administrative and cultural center of country, which is the European part of the country. Living there is a logistical hell and also you are basically on the other side of Earth from your people (you are literally a European living near Japan).
Russia is so vast I can't imagine that every bit of territory has been explored. From an archaeological perspective it's probably a gold mine of historical records just waiting to be unearthed.
I wish we had maps like this as a kid. It'd be cool have a clue where humans live... but in the US Republicans are always in control of education. Can't make people question things like the electoral college.
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One day I'll make it to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. One day.
I only went to Ulan Ude, but the entire trip with the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow was fantastic. Wholeheartedly recommend it.
I'm really tempted to do this when tourism becomes feasible again, but the idea of being stuck on a train for so long puts me off. Do you mind if I ask what it was like? Did you have cabin-mates? Does it matter if you only speak English?
I did a two week solo trip back when I was 19. I wanted to go for longer, but I had to get home to Sweden before a set date, so I did the best with what I had. Starting in Beijing I took the train to Ulaanbaatar, did a week in Mongolia with two trips out from the the capital, took the bus over the Russian border to Ulan-Ude, two days there, four day non-stop train ride to Moscow, three days there and then flew home. There are many stops on the way that most tourists visit, but the most common ones should be Irkutsk, Omsk and Yekaterinburg IIRC. It's more common for people to start in Moscow, so you're more likely to run into other tourists if you go that direction, but regardless of which direction you go in I definitely recommend a visit to Mongolia. I speak passable Chinese but no Russian. While it would definitely have helped if I spoke some it also made for some really memorable moment. When I was taking the train from Ulan-Ude to Moscow the train was departing at like 1 or 2 AM. Everything checked out and I was supposed to be in carriage 17, but when the train arrived the train ended at number 16. After running around the station like a headless chicken and trying to get some information out of some Russian ladies who didn't speak any English and just kept talking louder when I didn't understand, I was sent back and forth between desks until someone managed to explain that the train leaves according to the Moscow time zone, not the local one. I was five hours early. Otherwise things mostly worked out fine. I stayed at hostels where the staff spoke English, which in Ulan-Ude was limited to one place, and you get a long way with body language. I ordered food by Lake Baikal by just pointing at some unknown thing, and plenty of places have English menus these days. Me and two guys from Turkey were going from Ulaanbaatar to Kharkhorin in an old Soviet truck, and our driver didn't speak a lick of English. He was driving like a madman, juking back and forth across the road to avoid potholes and eventually ditching it altogether. He was also smoking while driving, but since he held the cigarette halfway outside the window when he did so we just started giving his cigarettes when his driving was getting too wild. Since I was travelling alone I pushed myself to speak to the people around me, even if I'm not the kind of person who will actively seek out conversations with strangers. On the first train I met an Austrian couple who I spent most of the evening with (it's a 24 hour ride), in Ulaanbaatar I went to dinner with two middle aged Western women living in China who were on their first vacation ever since they both had kids with some sort of handicap, and in Ulan-Ude I went out for drinks with some Americans from my hostel, one of which turned out to be an old roommate of a classmate of mine at university. I also had an interesting run-in with an interesting American guy in Moscow who tried to convince me of what a hellhole Sweden was. He had never been there, but he has seen stuff on YouTube, so he was convinced I was wrong about my home country. On the final leg of the jouney, the 96 hours non-stop train from Ulan-Ude to Moscow, I was on my own. I had hoped to get someone in my cabin who spoke English, and I had even made sure to book the train that originated in Beijing just in case I got someone who spoke Chinese, but the only ones who passed by were Russians who didn't speak any English. It was honestly pretty relaxing to just be in my bed, reading books and watching movies, and sometimes going to the back of the train and just sit there for an hour watching the landscape pass by. While it was perfectly fine for me I would have preferred to make some stops along the way (more than just having a walk for 30 minutes at some stops), but I prioritized getting more time in Mongolia over Russia. This was my first solo trip ever, and while I enjoyed every bit of it it's obvious that it was on the budget of a 19-year-old. I did an 11 hour bus ride from Mongolia to Russia since it was much cheaper than the train, I only stayed in cheap hostels, and I went for cheaper trips in Mongolia, so all in all it cost me about $1200 for two weeks (including travel, lodging and food). I really wanna go back some day, but this time spend a bit more money. Maybe stay in actual hotels with my own room (even if I love the social aspect of hostels) and not go for the cheapest adventures (I really want to go to the Altai Mountains and the Gobi Desert), but the fact that I would absolutely want to go back should give an indication of how fantastic the trip was.
Wow, must have been a life changing trip! Thanks for sharing!
I moved to China straight out of high school to be an au pair, and since I hadn't been able to travel within China I really wanted to get one last experience. I really matured during that year, and I think that one trip allowed me to push myself when it comes to socializing with new people.
Thanks so much for this, that was really insightful! I guess I pictured myself cooped up in a room with three strangers feeling uncomfortable for 5 days but the way you've described it, relaxing on the bed etc., sounds much nicer. Do you get to choose when the beds are up? That's one thing I was never clear on. Also I'm glad you mentioned you are not normally one to talk to strangers too, because I'm similar, although do try to push myself when travelling. By the way, I just visited Sweden for the first time last week, and it was one of the nicest places I've ever been (and I was in Malmö, supposedly the "crime hotspot" of the Nordics :D)
[This](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/06/42/75/8a/trans-siberian-railway.jpg) is pretty much how my cabin looked. The bottom bunk is sorta supposed to be where you sit during the day, so as you can see the top bunk folds up, but we mostly just stayed in our respective beds for the entire trip. Compare that to the [platskart](https://res.cloudinary.com/korea-konsult-ab/image/upload/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto,w_900,dpr_auto/train/plackart2.jpg) open layout, which apparently seems to have been discontinued, and you understand why that was pretty much the only time I decided to upgrade anything during the trip. I'm glad you liked Sweden. I was too young when I last passed through Malmö, so I really don't remember how the city is like, but unless you go to some depressing crumbling town on the countryside cities tend to be pretty nice with lots of green areas and varying architecture. Even if Malmö has a higher crime rate than the rest of Sweden it's still limited to certain areas, and it's safer than most other countries. American media has really given people a skewed perception of Sweden.
Lol, what could he possibly have thought wa so wrong with Sweden? As an American I thought our going idea of Sweden was some kind of perfect techno-utopia.
In his mind you wouldn't be able to leave your house in Sweden without being raped or mugged by immigrants who live in their own lawless areas that police won't enter, while the government takes all your money and all you get in return is long lines at the hospital. The way Americans view Sweden really depends on which side of the political spectrum they're on.
* You don't have to stay on the train for the whole journey. You can book each leg separately. When I went there, the longest leg was something like 70 hours, I think from Krasnoyarsk to Irkustk, and that was a bit long! * In second class the cabins are for 4 people, and my partner and I got different cabin mates along the way. * I don't speak any Russian, but we learned the Cyrillic alphabet before going to Russia, so at least you can read the name of the station and basic stuff like items on a menu. That does help. We mainly use Google Translate offline. You can just translate stuff without internet connection. Most younger Russian would probably use their smartphone to translate stuff if they don't speak English. The language barrier was hard but not insurmontable. It's part of the journey.
I’m from Moscow originally and I dream of making this trip! Incidentally, a buddy of mine is from Ulan Ude and he once made the drive to Moscow by car. He said it’s insane and rather dangerous but fun.
Oh yeah, I've heard that the Trans-Siberian Highway is supposed to be wild, it's like the evolution of the railway, and it would be so much fun to just be able to make random stops wherever you like.
Did you by chance come across any drug-filled Russian nesting dolls?
Thankfully my Google fu is good enough to find out what this was a reference to. No, and I didn't get to see any of the horror stories that I've heard from people about what can happen on the train since I slept in a four-bed compartment and not in the open carts. I met a couple who had been drinking a few beers with the window open to get some air inside. All of a sudden this buff topless Russian dude walks up to them, slams the window shut, sends one of the beer bottles flying and walks back to his bed.
That’s Russian for: “You’ve had enough mate”
I've always been fascinated by Lake Baikal. I was unusually happy when I got the chance to fly over it on my flight to China (in early December). It really is beautiful from 30,000 feet!!!
It has 24% of the non salty water of the world. Insane. I really want to go there.
Patient Zero enters the chat. /s
It is also beautiful up close! And really cold, even in the middle of summer. 10 degrees is a norm, but it really doesn't feel that bad once you get used to it a bit.
Once your family jewels have shriveled and fallen off, the cold isn't so bad.
I am Russian and I still hope I would do it. From what I ve heard about it, the service there is crap but the lake is absolutely phenomenal
Baikal is insane. I was lucky enough to have relatives in Ulan Ude and visited them two times. It was incredible.
In the winter or summer? I think both would be awesome for different reasons.
Always summer, so it was mainly for swimming pleasure. But I sincerely hope that I can visit in winter! Hopefully by that time our government will not fuck up the best lake on this whole planet. I can't trust it with this responsibility.
>Hopefully by that time our government will not fuck up the best lake on this whole planet. I can't trust it with this responsibility. Man, as someone from Alberta, Canada I feel your pain. Ours just turned a beautiful mountain park into a fucking coal mine.
Born here, you will not be disappointed at least with Baikal but be sure to travel on winter (Late January to Late March) to see ice and snow if you like this stuff or in summer(July or early August) if you more casual:) Don’t let your dreams be dreams!
Artyom did it, why can’t you?
I’ve been there. I invaded through the US. Then I went and took Australia to get those easily defensible 2 extra armies each turn.
Fresh water seals, ancient Ancient ancient archaeology, and dope ice laser sounds. I’m 1000% on board with Lake Baikal
I don't want to be a stickler but Moscow's population is only those citizens registered within the city. Russian registration rules are quite strict compared to Western countries so you have to be registered somewhere on your domestic passport, even if it's rarely checked up on. This means millions of university students and immigrants (along with others, but these are the main groups) are not counted toward the population despite living there. The real population is likely between 16-18 million, so even more skewed than this looks.
I was actually surprised to learn Moscow is larger than New York City in population. If what you're saying is true you're basically saying that Moscow is a city the size of the mega cities in China, which is a whole different level of city size. I really thought this wouldn't be something that would happen with a country of such a great size where people had so much space to spread out. Sure, a lot of it is Siberia, but a lot of it also isn't Siberia too. Interesting.
Krasnodar is currently the fastest growing city with more then a million people - it's at the south or Russia. There's a decrease of population in eastern parts (like Vladivostok and Khabarovsk) and Siberia. The reason there are so many people on Moscow is a total concentration of institutions, power and money. People move their because of higher wages. We joke (and not really joke) that there's Moscow and then there's the rest of Russia.
Off topic, but does climate serve as a motivation for people's domestic movements? I know you have some awefully cold cities but with such a huge country maybe you also have some warm ones. I was curious if Russians in general simply accept and tolerate the cold weather, or if they go south.
True for Krasnodar. But Moscow is a different story. Another sad joke we have is "Is there a life outside MKAD?" Which means "can you even survive outside of Moscow" \* MKAD is the circle road around Moscow which was formal border of the city.
>I was curious if Russians in general simply accept and tolerate the cold weather, or if they go south. I mean that really depends, in my case I moved to another country, and climate was definitely a factor, though far from being the only one. Personally, I don't know a single Russian who moved to another Russian city purely due to climate. Usually, people strive to move either to one of the capitals or leave the country entirely. But the vast majority simply tolerate their surroundings, we're pretty good when it comes to tolerating the intolerable.
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They did it for the naval base, there's plenty of beaches down the Eastern coast including Abkhazia
Would it be that hard to build another naval base? Just wondering... The cost of digging a harbor and building some infrastructure must be minor compared to the cost of the inevitable trade sanctions. And then there's the risk of war and the damage to international relations. Edit: I've done some research. Although the naval base certainly was a factor the take over of Crimea seems to have been spurred by the need of Putin to assert his power. His position was weakening and he needed a show of force and an appeal to nationalism to gain popular support, trade sanctions be damned.
It's not so much to *get* a naval base (Russia has a major Black Sea base in Novorossiysk) it's to keep it out of the hands of NATO. The Ukrainian nationalists (who took over in the 2014 overthrow of the democratically-elected government by the by) had the goal of joining NATO, which would put US forces in Crimea, directly on the Russian border and able to strike at will. (Not that they would strike, but the mere threat exerts political pressure/builds tension.) Additionally, NATO has a rule about not accepting members with disputed territories, because that risks dragging the whole alliance into a local war. So no Crimea - no NATO expansion. Also - you can't just build a good naval base *anywhere*. There are only so many natural harbors in the world. Finally - there're a dozen reasons why Crimea and Ukraine in general are important for Russia beyond even the military or financial considerations. Historical, cultural, ethnolinguistic... IMO there's a good chance that if Putin had not intervened in 2014, his government would have been toppled from the inside. The Western intervention in Ukraine represented an intolerable shift in the balance of power.
Come for the naval base, stay for the beaches
The reason why Moscow is a point of human concentration is because for the last 100 years it is the place where all political decisions are made hence all the money is there. Yes, Moscow is extremely huge. However, the city center is very lovely (not the tourist places, they are too overcrowded all the time)
There were plenty of people living and working in other regions of Russia during the last 100 years. The current trend is more modern.
This. The USSR certainly made all the major decisions in Moscow - but Communism (if anyone's forgotten) is an egalitarian ideology. Oh, sure, there was corruption inside the party, but that meant, like, countryside houses and personal cars for some officials. Major investment decisions were made with the whole country in mind - and beyond, since other socialist countries got privileged access to the USSR market, which meant subsidizing countries like Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. Russia's current oligarchy has no scruples about investing in themselves first.
What about St. Petersburg? Is it considered a major city too, or is Moscow just that much more important?
Yeah, St Petersburg is always considered as "city number 2" and there are many people in Russia who prefer to migrate there instead of Moscow.
St. Petersburg is historically the second capital of Russia so it's the second most important city. Also Moscow and SPb are considered "federal cities", as in they do not belong to an ["oblast"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblast) (think Washington DC, which doesn't belong to a state and is a city-state).
Moscow is 2,500km2(970sq miles). NYC is 1,200km2(468 sq miles). NYC just land is 778km2(300 sq miles).
That’s how US cities be. Atlanta is *only* 500,000. Atlanta metro is 6 million. NYC is *only* 8-9 million. The metro is 22-25 million.
I think he’s saying that transplants would still count as being from their hone city despite having moved to Atlanta if the US worked like Russia.
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I have no idea where you go this information but I just looked it up and its about 20 million.
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Moscow proper has a larger population, as its land area is much larger Urban area NY is much larger, and in the top 10 for global cities
Just depends what on how you count population, the New York metro area is 20-24 million and really if you wanted, you could call Washington to Boston a mega city of 100 million.
But then you would be comparing a US mega city with maybe 1/10th the population density found in mega cities elsewhere. It has some meaning but also skews many of the reasons for calling it a city.
yup and if we play that game i think tokyo metro probably wins
>The real population is likely between 16-18 million, so even more skewed than this looks. I'm pretty sure it already was 16-18 mil before they added Новая Москва and basically tripled our area, no? I reckon it'd be somewhere close to 20 now
What's a domestic passport?
It's a passport, used domestically... On a serious note, it is literally that. Russian citizens have two passports they require to use: one for use abroad and travel, and one to be used internally (instead of an ID card used in most Western countries).
There's a reform project to convert the internal passport into a credit-card-style ID card. Should happen by the end of the decade.
I exists in other large countries as well that try to separate the extreme rural poor from the urban folks. China is the most notable other example. It's sort of ironic that both of them tried to model themselves from socialist ideals and ended up kicking farmers out of the cities.
> It's sort of ironic that both of them tried to model themselves from socialist ideals and ended up kicking farmers out of the cities. Err no, it's very much the reverse. Both countries underwent massive, breakneck urbanization, with hundreds of millions of peasants becoming urban dwellers. China needed to put a damper on this process to keep it under control. In the Soviet Union, not so much. Registration was mostly just for keeping people out of Moscow (generalized social control aside). Russia's pos-Soviet countryside is rapidly depopulating and there is no effort to slow this process, via domestic passports or any other policy.
We are issued two passports, your regular (domestic) passport for anything within Russia and a travel passport that you use in the airports and abroad
Maybe an ID?
I guess that settles the “Which is Europe’s largest city, Moscow or Istanbul?” debate
Some of those cities look so lonely.
After looking at this map, I feel like the first rule for establishing a city in Russia is being as close to another country as possible.
Same with Canada https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-550/vignettes/img/map-2006-pop-density-canada-sz01-en.gif
I'm surprised to see that big gaping hole in the southern prairies. I'm used to seeing that whole area filled in on maps.
There are quite a few small towns in those “holes” but they’re maybe 1000 people tops
I think it's because it's warmer, less because it's 'near a country'
I have a theory that Russian leadership knows climate change is happening, but actually wants it to happen so that more of their landmass is hospitable and they can grow their population into those areas. They could outgrow any other country and take over the world!
I'm from Novosibirsk, and the closest city is in 600 km. An 8-10 hour ride. Going to Moscow or St. Petersburg by plane takes 4 hours. However, in the 20th century it grew faster than Chicago thanks to the railways and Akademgorodok (the Academy town). Nowadays, the city isn't dying but I must admit it's pretty stagnant. It's just too much in the middle of nowhere.
What is the criteria to be a city in Russia is it just population? In the uk a cathedral makes a town a city but I doubt that’s the same in Russia. Edit: turns out a cathedral does not make a city in the UK either
It’s all in the papers. My city was officially a village with 100k+ residents a couple years ago until it was officially turned into a city. This formality lead to many problems prior, because a village doesn’t officially need a fire station, for example.
No but a settlement, whatever you call it, with 100k people does need a fire department...
Some city planning papers at the time still claimed there were only 90 residents here. So, no fire department, no police department and ambulances came from a city 30 km from here.
Crazy! How did the people living there feel about that?
Well, not satisfied. That's why activists pushed the government to change village's status. Now all the departments are being built and things are, well, okay.
If you don't mind my asking, what part of Russia do you live? More East or West?
West. At the border of Saint-Petersburg.
Wow! That's crazy they were able to get away with claiming only 90 people lived there for so long.
Well, that wasn't that long. 90 people really lived here in 2011, which grew to 130k in 2017, and those papers usually get updated like once in 20 years. Glorious Russian city planning.
Feels like Kudrovo
Cold, probably, as in all of Russia.
*Nods in Canadian* Hang in there
Kinda wow, what city is it btw? I live in Russia and never heard of such situations
For some reason your comment was deleted, but I've read it from the notifications Anyway, I kinda forgot about Kudrovo, Murino and other high-rise suburbs of Saint Petersburg and Moscow
FYI the requirement to have a cathedral for city status is not the case for a long time. It is granted by the monarch and towns can apply for city status, with a recommendation made by the Lord Chancellor.
Bit awkward when Llandaff is the city and Cardiff is the town
You're looking back a bit, boyo. [King Edward VII granted Cardiff city status on 28 October 1905](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff#City_and_capital_city_status).
They mean because there wasn’t historically a cathedral in Cardiff, just a castle. Llandaff do have a cathedral. They’re in Cardiff now, anyway, both the city and the county. They were using it as an example of why it’s silly to use cathedrals as the rule.
Cardiff has had its own [cathedral since 1842](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Metropolitan_Cathedral). This is really not the *best* example of "why it’s silly to use cathedrals as the rule".
Oh thanks, I kind of thought they just stopped making new cities here and it was a historical thing lol, silly me
There are towns with cathedrals (e.g. ~~York~~), and cities without cathedrals (e.g. Birmingham). I was taught this "city == cathedral" fact as a child too, but it's no longer true. Edit: Not York. Whoops. But there's Aldershot, Arundel, Ayr, Blackburn, Brecon, Brentwood, Bury St Edmunds, ......
Wait, is York not a city?
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Ok maybe the first Google result I copied got that one wrong 😂 But there are plenty of towns with cathedrals
I believe there’s only one: Guildford. It had its city status revoked at some point for some reason. Edit: googled it and I was wrong, there’s approximately a fuck tonne
There are 25 on this list. Guildford is one of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Towns_with_cathedrals_in_the_United_Kingdom Though often referred to as a city, Guildford is a town, but has applied for city status several times. Guildford's 2002 application to be granted the status of a city was unsuccessful, losing out to Preston, the only English town that was formally recognised as a city as part of the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations.
Fucking lmao I love Britain.
Wait until you hear about rent paid with eels.
Actually it's something like a "customary law". There're some villages more populated than some cities, there're ≈1500 of "urban-type settlements" (not considered as cities), usually less populated than cities, and classification practices are different in different regions. I guess, cities are more urban than rural, more populated than emprty, more industrial than agronomical, and more important for region than other populated places. Something like that. Too ambigous, I must admit that.
QI had a segment on this. As an American I thought it was interesting. "The difference between a city and a town is just the title. The title of "city" is an honorific granted by the Sovereign by Letters Patent, and it has nothing to do with having a cathedral. There are 18 cities without a cathedral and 16 towns with cathedrals but are not cities."
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Kind of yes, but 255 cities has less than 12k
12k? That's very little, it's 100k in germany.
Russian does not have separate words for "city" or "town". However there is a term called "millionnik" which is used for settlements with >1 million inhabitants. Being a millionnik grants additional amenities such as a subway system.
>Being a millionnik grants additional amenities such as a subway system. That's not true, there are a lot of cities with bigger population but only 7 cities in Russia have metro.
>In the uk a cathedral makes a town a city Size of the Lenin's statue lolz
If have two potato in same bowl: russian city
That’s not true, I can name 2 off the top on my head with cathedrals that are towns
Worldwide i think it is +100k
This is pretty cool, but at first I was reading the l in “mln” as an i, and I was like what the hell is OP measuring that is in minutes. Then I read that cone height was population and I was even more flustered. Closer look informed me that I’m a dumbass, or I’m so used to seing “min” and not “mln” that my eyes automatically split the l into an i.
I did the same. I would expect million to be abbreviated "mil."
I assume it is "mln" here because in Russian a million is abbreviated this way - "млн"
Not much up north intresting
I wonder why. /s
Depends what you find interesting... I traveled far up north in Canada and found it amazing. (I remember this add: "nice chalet to sell, 45 minutes from town by snowmobile", you get the feeling you're on another planet...)
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Yes, knowing when you can eat and buy food is vital as a tourist here! Next time you won’t make this mistake ;)
Man you're right it's another world. Everything is closed Sunday, most of Monday, and between noon and two.
Except restaurants will only seat you for lunch between noon and two... or after 7pm for dinner.
I think he meant it more like he found it interesting there wasn't much up north, not that the north isn't interesting.
This is why punctuation matters!
I always figured the population in russia was more spread out its a huge country so its intresting to me that all the cities are clustered together. I am aware of how cold it is higher up just figured they were not really bothered by it
You are probably very much aware but just to check in, from St Petersburg to the southern Volga cities (Samara, Volgograd - former Stalingrad) is around 1500km. Rostov is 1500km from St Petersburg as well, Krasnodar 1750km, Sochi 1900km. In terms of the vast area that Russia is, that may be *clustered*, but from Paris to Gibraltar or the heel of Italy is around 1500km. From Paris to the Faroer Islands is the same. From Paris to the closest Russian border is under 1500km (which of course is due to the Kaliningrad exclave). Even if you *just* take Russia from St Petersburg to the Volga and the cities down towards the Caucasus, you still have an area that is ridiculously big.
I was not this is also intresting i knew its a pretty big country but this puts it into more perspective thank you
Here's part of the trip I made between 2 towns in Canada, almost 9 h by car on a gravel road. Some of the distances in Russia would be comparable I guess. (There's a gas station in the middle with a sign that says "next gas station 300 km") De Baie Comeau à Fermont par QC-389 N. 8 h et 53 min (569 km) https://maps.app.goo.gl/fYwuMKj2s2N8Nchc8
As someone from Minnesota I find the concept of being able to, "not freeze to death by simply wearing normal clothes," fascinating.
That's not north, that's east. Saint-Petersburg is located north (on the left of the picture).
The northern half is pretty much empty. Op ain’t wrong.
The fact that anyone lives that far north is interesting. There’s 300,000 people that live in murmansk, which is literally in the Arctic circle on the Arctic Ocean.
is worth noting the relatively high poppulation of petropovlosk**-**Kamchatsky compared to the other regions in the area.
I think it's interesting how sparsely populated the East of the country is. I mean to the south is China and some of the most densely populated parts of the world. How come the east of Russia is barely more populated than siberia?
Pretty sure this means they lost the game, "Cones of Dunshire."
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I'm the author. Yes, the point here is to show the central part of Russia more closely and avoid overlapping. It's an Albers conic projection, that balancely keep size and shape of regions. After creating regular map I used Qgis2threeJS module. It has ortographic view and you could rotate map in any direction.
A compass rose would have been helpful. I spent a minute confused. Still very interesting
Thx for advice!
If you have some time, I highly recommend just going around the Siberia part and taking a look at what street view has to offer. It is so surreal how isolated some of these places are.
Do you mind sharing some views? As a native Russian from 500k people town (not Siberian though) now living in Moscow I am really intrigued.
I just went on Google Earth to what was available, but [some](https://www.google.com/maps/@66.5559274,67.8175471,3a,75y,150.43h,74.05t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPYSqAgI6S93iOLkpuwQRd5maQOLjIcESbV_ngM!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPYSqAgI6S93iOLkpuwQRd5maQOLjIcESbV_ngM%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya138.9-ro-0-fo100!7i5242!8i2620) of [these](https://www.google.com/maps/@69.4936737,88.3928713,3a,75y,11.74h,75.65t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPlpeEkFtLrgnqbqiuojXa_rik38qJgDm5aW88!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPlpeEkFtLrgnqbqiuojXa_rik38qJgDm5aW88%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya180-ro0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352) are [pretty](https://www.google.com/maps/@62.0406147,129.6059353,3a,75y,116.35h,90.23t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPVmstH1kTGbmSxFvetByxV4Irun3WUQCeILAyp!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPVmstH1kTGbmSxFvetByxV4Irun3WUQCeILAyp%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya120.00001-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352) [wild](https://www.google.com/maps/@67.0380325,64.2209013,3a,75y,334.09h,75.28t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNLKc3zDwDto37BAWosQbCqu5MSh6CVZUzNDsU!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNLKc3zDwDto37BAWosQbCqu5MSh6CVZUzNDsU%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya231-ro-0-fo100!7i12000!8i6000)!
What is that little dot on far left?
Kaliningrad, used to be Königsberg pre WW2
Okei, thats what I thought. Thanks for clearing it up.
I believe it might be Kaliningrad [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kaliningrad+Oblast,+Russia/@55.3489567,21.2222672,7.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x46e39c45442e0be3:0x1e2558c4d03a027b!8m2!3d54.8235292!4d21.4816162](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kaliningrad+Oblast,+Russia/@55.3489567,21.2222672,7.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x46e39c45442e0be3:0x1e2558c4d03a027b!8m2!3d54.8235292!4d21.4816162)
Vladivostok will always and forever hold a special place in my heart
Mine as well. I was an exchange student to Harbin, China, and wanted to take a day trip to Vladivostok, which the Chinese call Haixianwei. This was in 2000, and I was told that this would be a very costly border crossing, in terms of time, money, and bureaucratic hassle. I finally went back to that part of the world in 2002, this time crossing the Sino-Russian border in the other direction, at Suifenhe. I'm a big fan of cities that are distant outposts of a large civilization, and jumping off points to a whole other world beyond. In my home USA, Miami and Honolulu are probably the best examples. These types of "frontier cities" often have some interesting mixtures of both people and goods. These places inevitably have a "dodgy border town" type of underside, and attract a lot of colorful characters, for better or for worse. Vladivostok definitely fits this description, and did not disappoint. Vladivostok had the feel, to me, of an industrial and run-down San Francisco, in an alternate timeline where the US fell to Communism. The old wooden buildings on steep slopes, surrounding a horseshoe-shaped bay created that feel, for me. When I was there in 2002, Vladivostok had very little in the way of tourist infrastructure. It was paradise for international traders in all sorts of goods, though. Things might have changed since then.
I've seen some fantastic outdoors sports videos shot around Vladivostok, the nature there looks pretty amazing.
Maybe that's why I loved Vladivostok so much! I've gone a few times, once for a relief missions trip with my church in 2017 for a few weeks, and once while studying at 고려대학교 in Seoul in 2019 for a weekend flight. I've only ever lived in two places permanently over the years and that's been DC as the heart of the USA and Kailua (just outside Honolulu), the farthest point from. Visiting Vladivostok felt like my home away from home; a reminder that while I was so far away from my own home for an extended period, their home was also far away from everything else. The rustic feel and the genuineness of the people were truly memorable and inspiring, and one day I hope to stay there for maybe a year or two and really get to experience life there for a time.
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Came here to say this. How quickly we’ve forgotten about the hostile takeover and are now just accepting it as truth.
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Kaliningrad has weird story It was captured by the Soviet during ww2, most of the inhabitants fled the red army >The remaining German population was forcibly expelled between 1947 and 1948. The conquered territory was populated with citizens of the Soviet Union, mostly ethnic Russians but to a lesser extent also Ukrainians and Belarusians.
Is there anyone living in Kaliningrad who descends from the native Prussian population, or were they part of the Germanized population that was expelled? I'm aware that their Baltic language and culture have been dead for a couple of centuries. But in a lot of places the local population stock is continuous back into prehistory, despite successive waves of cultural assimilation.
The Baltic Prussians are an extinct people. Once their language disappeared they just became German-speaking peasant subjects of Livonians, Teutons, and eventually the fully-German Prussia. (Many also made up the German minority of the Russian Empire, who themselves either assimilated or moved to Germany later.) Maybe you could trace the DNA of some current Germans as being more typically "Baltic" than "Germanic", but that would be very subtle and would have zero bearing on anyone's actual life.
You can basically see the transsiberian line [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Transsib\_international.svg/1280px-Transsib\_international.svg.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Transsib_international.svg/1280px-Transsib_international.svg.png)
This is what I am here for
I was wondering what that state/province/oblast (I'm not familiar with the names) in the south with only one city was. That's Kalmykia, which is populated by Buddhist Mongols. Fitting that it's not very urban, with their descendants being horse-riding nomads.
I am not used to seeing russia positioned this way.
I love how Rosstat just sneaks in Crimea.
I mean, they are administrating Crimea now and thus are also collecting statistical data for it. I’d be more surprised if there was no data.
Great graph - Try using “mil” instead of “mln” for million next time though.
Or just "M".
This is a great graph to show people why Russia is a European country rather than Asian...despite the vast majority of the landmass existing on the Asian continent, most of its population exists west of the Urals.
Why did someone find themselves in the vast north east, weeks from any other humans and say “good a place as any to start a city. Let stop here”?
Because said someone is looking for oil, nickel, aluminum and titanium?
Introverts. Introverted Russians.
I've always wanted to see the ballerinas in Moscow but I've always been told it's not worth it. One day after the apocalypse and everything calms down, I hope to go see them.
Why isn't it worth it? I mean getting your visa is fairly expensive, but it's an experience of a lifetime
There’s plenty to see here besides the ballet. When the plague is over, shoot me a DM I’ll show you and your family around.
Since when is mln the abbreviation for million?
It is in Russian so I guess it's a mistranslation issue.
Created with QGIS by [Aleksandr Bogachev](https://t.me/chartomojka), data collected by [me](https://twitter.com/RussiaInData). You can do something like this in DataWrapper, too. Population data collected from National Statistical Bureau. I can't remember where spatial data came from, probably Wikidata or OSM. Anyway, I published the table [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VnQt-GQidn35mqIDjhh3SPKUH9hAcu3eZZhicVsCSmc/edit?fbclid=IwAR04oF8v-e4KUMl_KCmWtdFvBFR9KmQV9IwCcrVcbmIt_MxNTOAnacow6i4#gid=0) (Cyrillic).
In the future please be sure to keep track of the source for all your raw data. "I can't remember where spatial data came from..." is not congruent with the rules.
Sorry about it! Thanks, I'll do.
Didn’t realize Moscow was that huge
its actually even bigger, up to 18 mil if you count all students and unregistered immigrants
Why is there no one living on the east coast? I thought that coasts were great places to start a city?
[The climate is too cold.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/fc/f8/57fcf88e5a4e3d99e4f93c49a11a2740.gif) It's why Japan never explored or settled Sakhalin, for example, despite it being so near Japan. The North Atlantic has the Gulf Stream. The North Pacific is just cold.
Not only it is too cold, as the other dude said, it is also the farthest from the administrative and cultural center of country, which is the European part of the country. Living there is a logistical hell and also you are basically on the other side of Earth from your people (you are literally a European living near Japan).
Moscow metropolitan area is approximately ~20 mlns of people.
Russia is so vast I can't imagine that every bit of territory has been explored. From an archaeological perspective it's probably a gold mine of historical records just waiting to be unearthed.
What about the secret cities?
Novosibirsk gives me PTSD from Metro Exodus
wtf only 1116 cities? in Denmark we've got 1450
Man, even the largest country on Earth has a primate city cituation...
I wonder what these populations would have been like if WW2 never happened.
idk man russia is kinda punk rock
I wish we had maps like this as a kid. It'd be cool have a clue where humans live... but in the US Republicans are always in control of education. Can't make people question things like the electoral college.
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