August 27, 2013

Useful Resources for Tourists Visiting Russia


Useful Resources for Tourists Visiting Russia

Real Russia

This is a list of frequently asked questions for tourists. Generally it is about how to obtain your visa, what you do with it and what you can do in Russia. This guide is the technical side of obtaining your visa, and doesn’t include many lifestyle tips!

Just Go Russia

This one is a little short and is only lifestyle tips. They’re great if you’re worried about how to behave in Russia, but it’s not too technical about the actual process of getting there.

A Complete Guide to Applying for a Russian Visa

This is a comprehensive and fairly definitive guide on how to apply for a Russian visa. Whether it’s tourism, business or charity work, this tells you everything you need to know to make sure your visa is sorted, so that your trip may come off with at least one less hitch.

Russian Invitation

This short guide is only about the letter of recommendation process when obtaining your visa. It can be the most confusing and difficult part of the process to understand, so this guide really helps. It covers the possibilities, the reason to have one and how to get yours.

North European Cruises

This nifty travel guide will help those who have just arrived in Russia, especially those in St Petersburg. It’s a lifestyle guide about how to behave and function and includes some links at the bottom which will take you to further guides for Russian tourists. It doesn’t cover the technicalities of visas, but does help you if you are confused about practical life in Russia.

Way to Russia

This site is great. It is an inclusive guide that covers mostly everything. It has lifestyle tips, advice and guides to get your visa, what you should do in Russia, how you should behave. It also has a link to a Facebook group that is a kind of forum where tourists can contact each other.

Go to Russia

This guide is a brief look at the technicalities of getting to Russia. It covers questions about visas but doesn’t help too much when you get there. Though it is helpful and even covers questions for people taking a cruise.

Russian Tour Guide

This independent tour guide site is great for tours. But their blog is the best; it features guides, shows you what to do and is a great way to learn about your trip before you even get there

Russian Dos and Don’ts

A good guide of do’s and don’ts while traveling. Partly it is about how to combat American stereotypes and partly is it a great resource detailing what it is like to be Russian and to live in Russia. An authentic guide for those who wish to take the road less travelled.

Frommers – How to Behave

This is a dense guide about how to behave in Russia. It includes money and travel advice, food and medical attention and of course how to get your visa and what it does.

Ask Me I’m Local

A scheme in which volunteers will find English speakers and help them around Moscow. It can help people feel more accustomed to the city and not nervous or afraid of what it has to offer. It combats a lack of information available for English-speaking tourists.

Ten Things to Never Say or Do in Russia

This is just a quick guide of how to behave in Russia. It offers interesting insights on differences in manners and expectations. Definitely one for a young person staying with a host family!

Women in Russia

This one is unique. It is written by a Russian bride who moved to the West ten years ago.  It is a strict guide about how to behave, and also includes some tips of where to travel.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955