Russia

Russia enters the atlas mainly through two inheritances. The first is monastic and princely: white-stone cathedrals that set the pattern for Russian church building, a town where a Soviet decision banned industry in 1967 and left two hundred churches among wooden houses, and a kremlin built as an image of the heavenly city rather than as a fortress. The second is imperial and deliberate — a capital raised on marsh by decree to argue that Russia was European. The border cities are the third strand, and each faces a different direction.