Good question! Of course there’s more to Russia than the Red Kremlin of Moscow and the bridges of Saint Petersburg, though you sometimes tend to forget about the rest, especially if you haven’t been there (which I suppose most tourist haven’t, only in those cities located along the railroad going east from the capitol). Russians call “the rest” «провинция» and there’s a standard joke going around that foreigners call it “Siberia”. I think it is very unfair that most of Russia gets almost none of the attention, not only because these unknown parts of this country are more beautiful (though often they are) but because they ARE this country. How about the white Kremlin in Tobolsk? Or the San Francisco-esque hills of Krasnoyarsk? Or the wide and long prospects of Novosibirsk? Or the religious mixture of Muslim and Orthodox traditions in Kazan? Not to talk about the amazing view of the Don in Rostov-na-Donu! The list of big cities in Russia – with over or almost a million inhabitants – can be made much longer. And though Russia is still overly centralized, with Moscow as the old faithful bellybutton keeping the whole country together, things look like they are changing, at least if the article «Где в России можно жить» in №11 (March 27 2008) of «Русский репортёр» is anything to judge by.
