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Saratov / Russia

Saratov ) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River located upstream of Volgograd. As of the 2010 Census, Saratov had a population of 837,900, making it the 17th largest city in Russia by population. Saratov is 389 km from Volgograd, 442 km from Samara, and 858 km to the south-east of Moscow. The city stands near the site of Uvek, a city of the Golden Horde. The Tsar Feodor I of Russia likely developed Saratov as a fortress to secure Russia's southeastern border. Saratov developed as a shipping port along the Volga, and it was historically important to the Volga Germans, who settled in large numbers in the city, before they were expelled after World War II. Saratov is home to a number of cultural and educational institutions, including the Saratov Drama Theater, Saratov Conservatory, Radishchev Art Museum, Saratov State Technical University, and Saratov State University.

Radishchev Art Museum

Saratov / Russia

The Radishchev Museum in Saratov opened to the public on June 29, 1885. It is supposed to have been Russia's first major public art museum outside Moscow or St. Petersburg. It was founded by Alexey Bogolyubov and named after his grandfather, the 18th-century revolutionary writer Alexander Radishchev. The naming of the museum after the "first Russian revolutionary", Alexander Radishchev, was a direct challenge to the authorities: Bogolyubov had to endure a legal battle to get permission. It was the first art museum in Russia open to everybody. It was opened to the general public seven years earlier than the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and fifteen years earlier than the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg. It includes work by Camille Corot, Ivan Kramskoy, Vasily Polenov, Ilya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Fyodor Vasilyev, Aleksandra Ekster, Pavel Kuznetsov, Aristarkh Lentulov, Robert Falk, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Martiros Saryan, Fyodor Rokotov and others. Early donors included Pavel Tretyakov and Pauline Viardot.