Rußland

This stone is placed in Saratov. The city is in Volga region of Russia.

The name Saratov may be conjectured to derive from the Turkish words Saryk Atov which means ‘hawks' island’. Another version of the name origin is "Sary Tau" meaning Yellow Mountain in Tatar language the city is surrounded by a few sandy hills.

Saratov was built in 1590 midway between Samara and Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad). Saratov became an important shipping port in the 1800s, and developed industrially after a railroad linking it to Moscow was finished in 1870.

From Soviet times until 1991, Saratov was a "closed city", strictly off limits to all foreigners. Situated on the Volga River, this was a major military aircraft manufacturing site, the home of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, and a vital part of the Soviet space program.

The stone looks over the bridge. Saratov bridge across the Volga use to be the longest in Soviet Union. It connects Saratov with Engels, until 1931 Pokrovsk. Its German name was Kosakenstadt. Until 1941 it became the capital of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, now a part of Saratov Oblast, in 1924, and it was renamed Engels after Friedrich Engels in 1931. The Volga Germans numbered 800,000 in the early 20th century.

The Volga Germans included industrialists, scientists, musicians and architects, including those who built Saratov's universities and conservatories. At the outbreak of World War II, half of the Volga Germans were exiled to Siberia and Kazakhstan, and few ever returned to the region. Beginning in the 1980s, many emigrated to Germany, but the Roman Catholic St. Klementy Cathedral on Nemetskaya Street (seat of the Diocese of Tiraspol, founded in 1848) is a reminder of Saratov's German past, though it was converted in the 1960s into a movie theatre.

Yuri Gagarin and his spacecraft landed via parachute 26 km (16 mi) south west of Engels. A farmer and her daughter observed the strange scene of a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet landing near them by parachute. Gagarin later recalled, "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!".

Tanya Slavgorodskaya, Moskau
2007