Places KingSmithy Wants to Go

You'll find rocket launchers, not rollercoasters, at Russia's “military Disneyland.”

Social outcasts and cannibalism in Stalin's Soviet Union.

The laboratory where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.

A replica of the straw hut where Vladimir Lenin lived in hiding, disguised as a hay farmer, in 1917.

Site of the world's largest nuclear explosion.

This massive monument honors the first human in space.

What was once the base for Russia's first nature reserve is now a ghost town, right on the shore of Lake Baikal.

Monastery complex at the location where bodies of the executed Romanov royal family were discovered.

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

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

Former estate of Lenin, now home to his death mask.

Stalin's secret bunker.

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

An abandoned town of skeletal wooden homes.

A scale model of Russia so big visitors are offered binoculars to rent so they can see the whole thing.

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

Former prison camp dedicated to the victims of political repression.

Hidden in a metro shop under a shopping mall, this small museum tells the story of one of the world's largest urban transit systems.

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

The USSR’s Conquest of Nature lead to the domestication of many moose—no squirrel.

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

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

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

Siberian ghost town built by gulag prisoners.