Nizhny Novgorod colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1,250,615, the fifth largest city in Russia. From 1932 to 1990, the city was known as Gorky, after the writer Maxim Gorky who was born there.
The city is an important economic, transport and cultural center of the Russian Federation. It is the economic and cultural center of the vast Volga-Vyatka economic region, and also the administrative center of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and Volga Federal District.
Nizhny Novgorod is divided by the Oka River into two distinct parts. The Upper City is located on the hilly eastern (right) bank of the Oka. It includes three of the eight city districts into which the city is administratively divided.
Much of the city downtown is built in the Russian Revival and Stalin Empire styles. The dominating feature of the city skyline is the grand Kremlin (1500–1511), with its red-brick towers. After Bolshevik devastation, the only ancient edifice left within the kremlin walls is the tent-like Archangel Cathedral (1624–31), first built in stone in the 13th century.
There are more than six hundred unique historic, architectural, and cultural monuments in the city. There are about two hundred municipal and regional art and cultural institutions within Nizhny Novgorod. Among these institutions there are eight theaters, five concert halls, ninety-seven libraries (with branches), seventeen movie theaters (including five movie theaters for children), twenty-five institutions of children optional education, eight museums (sixteen including branches), and seven parks.
Nizhny Novgorod is one of the centers of the IT Industry in Russia. It ranks among the leading Russian cities in terms of the quantity of software R&D providers. Intel has a big software R&D center with more than 500 engineers in the city, as well as a major datacenter. In Nizhny Novgorod there is also a number of offshore outsourcing software developers, including Tecom, Luximax Systems Ltd., MERA Networks, RealEast Networks, Auriga, SoftDrom, and Teleca, and many other smaller ones that specialize in delivering services to telecommunication vendors.
There are 25 scientific R&D institutions focusing on telecommunications, radio technology, theoretical and applied physics, and 33 higher educational institutions, among them are Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, Nizhny Novgorod State University, Nizhny Novgorod Technical University, as well as Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Information Technologies (former MERA Networks training center), that focuses on information technologies, software development, system administration, telecommunications, cellular networks, Internet technologies, and IT management.
Nizhny Novgorod has also been chosen as one of four sites for building an IT-oriented technology park – a special zone that has an established infrastructure and enjoys a favorable tax and customs policy.
[caption id="attachment_229068" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Map of the "Heartland Theory", as published by Halford Mackinder in 1904[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]"The Geographical Pivot of History" is an article submitted by Halford John Mackinder in 1904 to the Royal Geographical Society that advances his heartland theory. In this article, Mackinder extended the scope of geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe. According to Mackinder, the Earth's land surface was divisible into:
The World-Island, comprisin...
