| Murmansk |
Article Index for Murmansk |
Limousines in Murmansk |
Articles about Murmansk |
Website Links For Murmansk |
Information AboutMurmansk |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MURMANSK | |
| coastal cities | |
| hero cities of the soviet union | |
| settlements established in 1916 | |
| port cities and towns in russia | |
| barents sea | |
| russian and soviet navy bases | |
Murmansk (; (archaic); ; ) is a ); 468,039 ( 1989 Census ). The city is an important Navy Base for the Russian Navy . Murmansk is the administrative centre of . Murmansk's evening newspaper is Vecherniy Murmansk , published since 1991 . HISTORY The city, known initially as Romanov-on-Murman (), was founded on October 4 , 1916 and named after the Russian royal dynasty of the Romanov s. The city, the only ice-free port in the Russian Arctic, was built as a terminus of the Railroad line to Kola designed to open the North Atlantic supply route to Russia in support of Eastern Front during the First World War . The city was renamed to Murmansk after the October Revolution in 1917. From 1918 to 1920, the city was Occupied By The Western Powers who had been Allied in the First World War and "White" forces during the Civil War in Russia.http://www.naval-history.net/WW1z05NorthRussia.htm During . A joint German and Finnish force launched an offensive against the city in 1941 as part of , depicting a Russian soldier of World War II, was erected overlooking the city harbour. 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. During the Cold War it was a centre of Soviet Submarine activity, and since the breakup of the USSR, it remains the headquarters of the Russian Northern Fleet . To commemorate the 85th anniversary of the city's foundation, the snow-white church of the Saviour-on-Waters was modeled after the White Monuments Of Vladimir And Suzdal and built on the shore for sailors of Murmansk ( photograph ). MURMANSK IN FICTION The city is one of the main settings in the novel '''' by Eoin Colfer . It is the place where Artemis's shipwrecked father is believed to have died after capture by the Russian Mafiya . The climatic scene of Skeleton Key , the third novel of the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz , takes places in and around Murmansk. In the novels '' HMS Ulysses '' (1955) by the Scottish writer Alistair MacLean and '' The Captain '' (1967) by Dutch author Jan De Hartog , the protagonists are sailors in the Second World War Murmansk-bound convoys who ran the gauntlet of German U-Boats and war planes. In their minds, Murmansk assumes the status of almost a "Promised Land" which lucky survivors will reach. The physical city itself does not appear in either book. In de Hartog's book the protagonists, with their ship sunk, get in a lifeboat which is picked up at sea and get to Iceland instead; in the MacLean book, the survivors of the decimated convoy who arrive at the port of Murmansk are not allowed to set foot ashore, and remain cooped on board until the material is unloaded and the moment comes to set out back to Britain. SISTER CITIES The Sister Cities of Murmansk are: |