Novosibirsk is city that prides itself on size: it is the third-largest city in Russia (the biggest city east of the Urals), has the biggest railway station along the trans-Siberian route, the biggest library in Siberia, and the biggest opera/ballet theater in all of Russia -- even bigger than Moscow's Bolshoy. The red-brick Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, while not the biggest, is considered one of the finest existing examples of pure Russian Orthodox architecture.

In 1943, the Academy of Sciences opened up its Siberian branch in Novosibirsk, which signalled the beginning of the city's transformation into the educational hub of Siberian Russia. While many research institutes are located within Novosibirsk itself, still many more are clustered in Academgorodok, a small city founded in the 1950's by the Academy, 30 km south of Novosibirsk.

At its height, Academgorodok was home to 65,000 scientists and their families, and was a priviliged area to live in, with well-stocked stores and dachas for the academic elite. Gorbachev's perestroika was initially conceived here, by economists who where then relocated to Moscow to author the economic revolution. In recent years, Academgorodok has fallen on hard times thanks to slashes in government funding, and many of the younger researchers who once populated the town have left.