Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Volga river begins in the Valdai Hills at an elevation of 228 meters above sea level in the village of Volgoverkhovye and ends by emptying into the Caspian Sea. This waterway stretches 3,530 kilometers to create the world's largest endorheic basin without flowing into an ocean.
The Volga river has been a witness to human history for at least 9,000 years and serves as the primary artery connecting the civilizations of Eurasia. It links Scandinavia, Finnic areas, and Slavic tribes with the Turkic, Germanic, and Persian worlds while supporting bone and antler industries that produced arrowheads and spears in the Volga-Oka interfluve.
Soviet dams flooded 2,600 villages and 165 cities covering an area of 78,000 square kilometers on the Volga river. The Rybinsk Reservoir submerged the town of Mologa while the Uglich Reservoir drowned monasteries with buildings dating from the 15th and 16th centuries.
On the 28th of August 1941, Stalin had the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet pass a decree on the resettlement of Germans residing in the Volga region. The approximately 400,000 remaining Volga Germans were accused of collective collaboration and deported to Siberia and Central Asia where thousands died in labor camps.
The Volga river appears in the 12th-century Lay of Igor's Campaign and the 1870-1873 painting Barge Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Repin. It also serves as the setting for films such as Volga-Volga from 1938 and A Cruel Romance from 1984.