The Nazis lost more men trying to take this Russian-held Stalingrad apartment block than they did when taking Paris.

This Russian locomotive museum was once devoted just to Lenin's funeral before expanding to encompass Moscow's entire train history.

Gargantuan home of Russian science.

The California secessionist movement has its own foreign embassy, in Russia of all places.

An abandoned town of skeletal wooden homes.

Stalinist skyscraper built with help of cryotechnology.

This iconic Russian space museum sits on a landmark space production facility and houses the Vostok 1, the first manned spacecraft, that was also built here.

Stalin's secret bunker.

Monastery, army base, and infamous Soviet Gulag in the far Russian north.

Former prison camp dedicated to the victims of political repression.

This nostalgic Russian museum is full of USSR cultural artifacts from the 1970s and 80s.

Church built on the site where the last tsar of Russia and his family were killed.

Stalin's prisoner-built rail line sits in ruin, never having a single car ride its tracks.

Replica of mosque destroyed by Russia in the 16th century.

A man-made island fort that has housed soldiers, scientists, and ravers.

Stalin's march toward a more modern USSR flooded a monastery, leaving a unique and extravagant nautical marker, "The Flooded Belfry."

The deepest hole drilled in the name of science, where evidence of Precambrian life was found.

The coldest city in the world.

A small part of Russia that does not touch any other part of Russia.

This frozen-in-time summer home outside Moscow provides a look at Russian life in the 1950s.

Museum design and public transportation meet in this unique Russian train car.

The tallest hotel in Europe.

Siberian ghost town built by gulag prisoners.

A dormant lightning machine equal to all the power in Russia.