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Moscow
1) Start with the basics - see Lenin and Red Square.
2) The White House (yes, there is one). This is where the 1991 collapse of Communism occurred.
3) VDNKH (pronounced vdenkah). Designed as market to parade the best of Soviet goods, it’s now a totally random park / market parading foreign brands. The irony of it.
4) Novodevichy Cemetary. A bit morbid perhaps but see where Gorky, Krushchev, Eizenstein and Stalin’s wife are buried.
5) Lubyanka Ploshad. HQ of the KGB - how many people were executed out the back? It’s now occupied by the FSB, the new Russian secret police.

Outside Moscow
1) Borodino Battlefield - Napoleon made it this close to Moscow in 1812 and once again it became a battlefield in both world wars. The old bunkers are still there.
Click here >> for more military related info
2) Vladimir - A former capital of Russia back in the day.
Click here >> for the official Vladimir site
3) Suzdahl - the unwanted wives of the tsars were sent to a convent here.
4) Sergei Posad - Sergei’s place is one of the most important Orthodox Churches in Russia.
5) Peredelkino - A writers’ commune where Pasternak once lived.

St Petersburg
1) The Winter Palace - this is where it all started in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
2) Avrora Cruiser - Here the opening shot of October 1917 was fired; it’s free to go onboard.
3) Peter and Paul Fortress - Oldest building in the city and up to 1917 was a political prison, holding such prestigious inmates as Doestoevsky, Gorky and Lenin himself
4) The Doestoevsky and Anna Axmatova house museums.
Click here >> for all of St Petersburgs’ attractions

Across Russia
1) Volgograd - See the 52 metre high statue of the Motherland leading the charge in battle.
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2) Saratov - The town where Yuri Gagarin studied and close to his landing spot from space.
If you ever wondered what towns had Gagarin statues now you can find out: just click here >>
3) Marx and Engels - Yes, no other reason to these two tiny towns except to see statues of the men themselves.
4) Irkutsk - A place of exile for Decembrist Revolutionaries
Click here >> for more