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For many commuters around the world, a subway journey means speeding from one drab station to the next, surrounded by too many uncomfortable, impatient bodies. Completely different story was in USSR and now in Russia. In Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev, Minsk and other big cities metro stations were designed as architectural wonders. Taking the subway is akin to walking through a national heritage sit.
Depending on where you get off, you'll receive a crash course in such diverse architectural movements as Baroque, Art Deco, Futurism, Modern or Hi-tech, and face from stained glass windows, marble columns, crystal chandeliers, gilded mosaics and painted scenes from Russian history to modern iron and glass.
Russia's first metro system was part of Joseph Stalin's first Five-Year Plan to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s. The main idea was to show its citizens and the world the power and possibilities of socially oriented state. All this magnificent underground palaces were build as a transport system for the ordinary people.
Now Moscow Metro is the busiest metro system outside of Asia, the world’s busiest by daily ridership and the 6th longest in the world (200 stations, route length is more than 350 km).
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Just in case you mistakenly heard that it was all ice and snow in Russia, take a peek at the Big Bikini Exposition. This is right on the river Moskva in Moscow!Moscow has been the capital of Russia for almost its entire history. The exception is during the period of the Russian Empire, which lasted from 1721 until the Russian Revolution 1917. For these two centuries the capital was St. Petersburg. The Russian Empire was the second largest contiguous Empire in world memory; only the Mongol Empire had been greater.Check out what's happening north of Mongolia these days, in ChitaAlthough you may not have heard of Sochi, on the Black Sea, they're building up quickly and hope to host the 2014 Olympics.Other periods of Russian history include the Tsardom of Russia, from Ivan IV to Peter the Great, and the Grand Duchy (14th-16th centuries).The earliest period of Russian history was ruled by the Novgorod Republic and Kievan Rus, which was the first Russian state dating back to 800AD in Kiev.Modern Russia remains one of the world's superpowers. They launched the earth's second satellite, called Sputnik 1, and were the first country to put a human being into orbit around earth. (The first one is called the Moon.)After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia became a federal republic of 83 states.Text by Steve Smith.
