Curated playlist
Rus' towns
- LvivIn 1648, Lviv escaped capture by paying a ransom of 250,000 ducats. Cossacks and Crimean Tatars had besieged the city.
- Nizhny NovgorodNizhny Novgorod means Lower Newtown, yet it sits higher than Veliky Novgorod. Lower refers to being downstream.
- YaroslavlFor a few months in 1612, the Russian city of Yaroslavl was the nation's capital. Moscow was under foreign control.
- MuromIn 1961, a factory foreman died in police custody in Murom, and workers poured into the streets.
- KurskThe fortress of Kursk was attacked again and again but never taken.
- PolotskWhen the Pope disbanded the Jesuits in 1773, Polotsk became their refuge.
- BarysawNapoleon's engineers fooled pursuing armies by faking a river crossing at Barysaw.
- SuzdalIn 1943, Suzdal's monastery held high-ranking Nazi officers captured at Stalingrad.
- MoscowIn 1712, Peter the Great moved Russia's government out of Moscow. Lenin brought the capital back in 1918.
- SmolenskSmolensk's name may come from the tar merchants used to patch leaking boats. The Russian city sits on the Dnieper River.
- Vladimir, RussiaThe Russian city of Vladimir cannot agree on when it was founded. Chronicles say 1108, but the city says 990.
- KyivKyiv changed hands sixteen times between the end of 1918 and August 1920.