Introduction - Why Russia?

Petrodvorets Palace - near Leningrad, Russia, USSR

I visited the USSR as part of a travel group of high school and college students. We spent about a month in the Soviet Union, with brief stops in other parts of Europe on the way to the USSR and on the way back. Only a few of the people in our group spoke any Russian or the other local languages of the places that we visited. We were accompanied by guides from Intourist, the official Soviet travel agency, from the time we entered the Soviet Union until we left.

(I took all of the photos in this collection, except where noted otherwise. Click the "Notes" link in the sidebar for more on the photography.)