Short answers, pulled from the story.
Smolensk was first recorded in 863 AD, two years before the founding of Kievan Rus'. The Varangian chieftains Askold and Dir noted the city while traveling to Kiev and decided against attacking it because of its large size and population.
The name Smolensk derives from the Smolnya River. Two explanations exist: one traces it to the old Slavic word smol', meaning black soil, while the other connects it to smola, the Russian word for resin or tar. Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII recorded the city's name as Miliniska in the 10th century.
In 1940, approximately 22,000 Polish prisoners of war were murdered by the Soviet NKVD in the Katyn forest, about 18 kilometers from Smolensk. The city's mayor Boris Menshagin and his deputy Boris Bazilevsky later testified as key witnesses at the Nuremberg Trials about the killings.
Over 93 percent of Smolensk was destroyed during World War II fighting. German forces captured the city on the 16th of July 1941, and it was liberated on the 25th of September 1943. After the war Smolensk received the designation of Hero City.
The Smolensk Archive is the intact records of the Smolensk Oblast Committee of the Communist Party, discovered by German forces when they occupied the city in July 1941. The archive was transported to Nazi Germany, and a significant portion eventually reached the United States, where it gave Cold War scholars rare insight into Soviet local governance. The United States returned the archives to Russia in 2002.
The Smolensk Kremlin is the largest kremlin in Russia. It was built between 1597 and 1602 under the supervision of architect Fyodor Kon during the reigns of Tsars Fyodor I Ioannovich and Boris Godunov.