RussianFun.net

We already had shown you pictures of one abandoned mansion in Russia. What you see on the pictures below is another abandoned mansion called “Otrada” which is located on the property of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) vocation resort 80km from Moscow. The first owner of the mansion was the youngest of the Orlov Brothers, count Vladimir Grigorievich (1743-1831). After retiring in the mid 1770s Orlov decided to first build and then settle in this mansion. Mansion’s design was heavily influenced by the English architecture. Around the mansion there were gardens with hills, statues, and benches. In the front there was a magnificent fountain, and in the mansion’s ponds there was plenty of fish. After the death of Vladimir Orlov, the mansion was given to his grandson count Davidov who was also known as Orlov-Davidov. Even after the death of Orlov, the cultural life of the mansion did not stop. Vladimir Orlov had organized an in house theater with orchestra which was performing even after his death. The indoor library, as well as a telescope of Russian scientist Michael Lomonosov were all kept in the mansion for 150 years. Later the mansion became a hot spot for famous Russian writers such as Bolotov, Tutchev, Bunin, and Chehov. In the mid 1980s the restoration of the mansion had began and stopped abruptly, leaving this mansion standing abandoned…

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This is a very interesting video about experimental tanks that the former USSR was building. Swimming tanks, tanks with turbojets in the back, hovercraft tanks, certainly not many people ever knew about these projects, and even less had a chance to see those tanks in action. Even if you don’t understand Russian this video is still worth watching…

Obviously it took a while before Russian president began to be driven around in his secure Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman. Take a look at this gallery to see the somewhat chronological transition between the Russian and Soviet government cars…

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Here are pictures of old Russian locomotives from the Soviet Union era, as well as people who operate them today. These rare trains are usually used during May 9th Victory celebrations and give rides to the veterans. The pictures are taken between 2004-2007, enjoy…

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Soviet Union had never mastered aircraft carriers as well as Americans did, but in their defense they had a lot of plans of what aircraft carriers could look like. Here are those unaccomplished plans, displayed in the official Navy museum in Russia…

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Here are the pictures, as well as a (Russian) video of World’s largest military hovercraft, called Zubr (bison). The Zubr air-cushion landing craft is intended to carry out over-the-beach landings of amphibious landing troops and combat vehicles, as well as provide fire support of their actions on shore.

The ship provides sea lift of materiel consisting of:

• 3 tanks of total mass up to 150 tons;
• or 10 armored vehicles of total mass up to 131 tons;
• or 8 armored personnel carriers of total mass up to 115 tons;
• or 8 amphibious tanks.

To accommodate troops, carried in vehicles there are 4 compartments with 140 seats.

As an option, the combat material compartment can be fitted with removable benches for additional accommodation of 360 troops (altogether 500 persons).

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Here is a collection of Foreign and Soviet Cars that shared a common design…

Fiat 124

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We already had shown you pictures of Moscow from 1950s, Moscow from 1955, Westerners look at Moscow From in 1990s, and Moscow Through the Years, now take a look at Moscow from the 1980s…

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Here is a gallery of the Soviet Union Ads. Who would have thought that there were that many…

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Professor of Counterintelligence and former head of KGB operations in America, Oleg Kalugin discusses the nature of Cold War espionage for the USSR and the rise of corruption within the USSR…

Soviet’s Tsar Bomb was the largest nuclear weapon ever constructed or detonated. It was detonated at 4000 m altitude the 30th of October 1961 at Mityushikha Bay test range, Novaya Zemlya Island. It had a yield of 50 Megatons. It contained equivalent of 58 million tons of TNT or 10 times the number of all explosives used in WWII…

We already have a lot of material on the beloved classic soviet car Volga-21. You can look at the Volga Cabrio, and Volga Renaissance, as well as Volga Cayenne. The story behind history Volga-21 itself is pretty fascinating. The GAZ car factory which needed a replacement for their aged GAZ-20M Pobeda car, had used American cars as the prototypes for the Pobeda’s future successor. GAZ had ordered Ford Crestline, Chevy Bel-Air and Plymouth Savoy from America. They quickly singled out Ford Crestline out of the three. Since they couldn’t boldly copy Ford’s design, the team of Soviet designers set of to work to produce their version of the car. What you see below is the final product, a car design which is now included in most of the world’s educational car designer literature for it’s outstanding design.
Volga-21

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History Section of RussianFun.net is already full of Soviet Union picture galleries, now here is a gallery which shows Moscow in the 1950s…

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Here are the Pictures and a video of different Soviet Union Parades. For the number of years now, the most you could see during the anual May 9th Victory parade were the fighter jets flying over the Red Square. Interestingly enough for this year’s Victory parade, sources in the Russian Ministry of defense say they plan to do a full military display with artillery pieces as well as intercontinental missiles (Lenta.ru), i guess we’ll have to wait and see…

© Marc Garanger/Scanpix 1967.

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Sevastopol which now serves as a Ukrainian naval base, used to be a strategic naval base for the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. In the early 1950’s Joseph Stalin himself had ordered to build this underground submarine base inside a mountain. In 1961 the building of this secret base (which was designed to withstand direct nuclear bombardment) was finally completed so it could enter the service. Inside, this base had a command post, dry docks, repair facilities and a channel which let submarines go from the bay into the Black sea in both the surface as well as the underwater mode…

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