Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad (Russian: Калининград; IPA: [kəlʲɪnʲɪnˈgrat]), formerly called Königsberg (German: Königsberg; Russian: Кёнигсберг, tr. Kyonigsberg; Old Prussian: Twangste, Kunnegsgarbs, Knigsberg; Polish: Królewiec; Lithuanian: Karaliaučius), is a seaport city and the administrative center of Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.

The locality was a site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement/fort Twangste. In 1255, a new fortress was built on this site by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was named "Königsberg" in honor of King Ottokar II of Bohemia. The town was part of the State of the Teutonic Order, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Prussia and Germany (until 1945). Until the end of World War II, the area formed the northern part of the former East Prussia. The city was largely destroyed during World War II; its ruins were captured by the Red Army on 9 April 1945 and its German population fled or was removed by force. It was renamed Kaliningrad on July 4, 1946 in honor of Bolshevik Mikhail Kalinin. In 2005 Kaliningrad celebrated its 750 years of existence.

Russia

Coordinates: 60°N 90°E / 60°N 90°E / 60; 90

Russia (ⁱ/ˈrʌʃə/; Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə]), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Росси́йская Федера́ция, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə]), is a sovereign state in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is the world's ninth most populous country with over 144 million people at the end of 2015.

Extending across the entirety of northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.

Russian Life

Russian Life, previously known as The USSR and Soviet Life, is a 64-page color bimonthly magazine of Russian culture. It celebrated its 50th birthday in October 2006. The magazine is written and edited by American and Russian staffers and freelancers. While its distant heritage is as a "polite propaganda" tool of the Soviet and Russian government, since 1995 it has been privately owned and published by a US company, Russian Information Services.

History

In October 1956, a new English language magazine, The USSR, appeared on newsstands in major US cities. Given the level of anti-communist sentiment at the time, it would hardly have seemed an auspicious name under which to launch such a magazine title. The publication was edited by Enver Mamedov (born 1923), a polyglot native of Baku, who had the distinction of being one of the youngest Soviet diplomats when he was appointed the press secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Italy in 1943, and who had been the handler of the Soviet prosecutors' star witness, Friedrich Paulus, at the Nuremberg trials.