2504 RUSSIA (Murmansk Oblast) - The city of Murmansk

2504 A view of the Murmansk

Murmansk is a port city located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, an inlet of the  Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, close to the Russia's borders with Norway and Finland. Despite its extreme northern location above the Arctic Circle, Murmansk is in many ways similar to other Russian cities of its size, with highway and railway access to the rest of Europe, and the northernmost trolleybus system on Earth.

2504 A view of the Murmansk (1)

Murmansk was the last city founded in the Russian Empire. In 1915, WWI needs led to the construction of the railroad from Petrozavodsk to an ice-free location on the Murman Coast in the Russian Arctic, to which Russia's allies shipped military supplies. The terminus became known as the Murman station and soon boasted a port, a naval base, and an adjacent settlement with a population which quickly grew in size and soon surpassed the nearby towns of Alexandrovsk and Kola.

2504 A view of the Murmansk (2)

In 1916, the railway settlement received the urban status, being named Romanov-na-Murmane (Romanov-on-Murman), after the royal Russian dynasty of Romanovs. On September 21 (O.S. October 4) 1916, the official ceremony was performed, and the date is now considered the official date of the city's foundation. After the February Revolution of 1917, the town was given its present name. From 1918 to 1920, during the Russian Civil War, the town was occupied by the Western powers, who had been allied in WWI, and by the  White Army forces.

2504 A view of the Murmansk (3)

During WWII, Murmansk was a link to the Western world for the Soviet Union with large quantities of goods important to the respective military efforts traded with the Allies: primarily manufactured goods and raw materials into the Soviet Union. German forces in Finnish territory launched an offensive against the city in 1941 as part of Operation Silver Fox, and Murmansk suffered extensive destruction, but it wasn't conquered. For the rest of the war, it served as a transit point for weapons and other supplies entering the Soviet Union from other Allied nations.

2140 RUSSIA (Murmansk Oblast) - Barents Sea coast at Teriberka

The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia with vast majority of it lying in Russian territorial waters. It is a rather shallow shelf sea, with an average depth of 230m, and is an important site for both fishing and hydrocarbon exploration. It contains the world largest remaining cod population, as well as an important stocks of haddock and capelin. Fishing is managed jointly by Russia and Norway.

1307 RUSSIA (Murmansk Oblast) - Kirovsk, in the Arctic Circle

Founded in 1929 as Khibinogorsk, the name that it wore until 1934, Kirovsk is a town located at the spurs of the Khibiny Mountains on the shores of the Lake Bolshoy Vudyavr, 175km south of Murmansk, on the Arctic Circle. Its occurrence was due to the expedition led by Alexander Fersman in 1920s, which discovered large deposits of apatite and nepheline. By the end of 1930, its population grew to ten thousand people, and a mining and chemical plant was under construction. It was renamed after Sergei Kirov, a prominent early Bolshevik leader killed in 1934 by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute. Now, the population of Kirovsk it's about 29,000.