Notes from "A Gentleman in Moscow"

Minus six - The minus six was a form of exile imposed in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, which banned the subject from living in or visiting any of the union's six largest cities as well as border territories. Cities banned:

• Moscow (now in Russia)
• Petrograd (known as Leningrad from 1924, now Saint Petersburg in Russia)
• Kiev (now Kyiv in Ukraine)
• Kharkov (now Kharkiv in Ukraine)
• Yekaterinburg (known as Sverdlovsk from 1924, now Yekaterinburg in Russia)
• Tiflis (now Tbilisi in Georgia)

Drosselmeyer is a one-eyed hotel cat named for the mysterious magician-like figure in Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker.

Admiral Stepan Makarov

Stepan Osipovich Makarov (1849 – 1904) was a Russian vice-admiral, commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, oceanographer, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. He was a pioneer of insubmersibility theory (the concept of counter-flooding to stabilise a damaged ship), and developer of a Cyrillic-based semaphore alphabet. A proponent of icebreaker use, he supervised the first polar icebreaker construction. Makarov also designed several ships.

Makarov saw service in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) as a captain, and ordered the first successful attack with a self propelled torpedo. He served again in the Russo-Japanese War as vice-admiral and was assigned to the defense of Port Arthur, where he was hailed as a competent and aggressive commander. On 13 April 1904 Makarov led his flotilla to the aid of a destroyer that had been ambushed by the Japanese. Makarov was killed in the subsequent battle when his flagship Petropavlovsk struck a naval mine and the ship's magazine detonated. Japanese divers found Makarov's body after the war and gave him a burial at sea, and as a mark of good will Japanese officers led Makarov's funeral in Port Arthur. 

In 1946, after the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin, the village of Shiritoru on that island was forcibly depopulated of its Japanese inhabitants and renamed Makarov in his honor.

Neman River

Page 147 - "Ah, Napoleon, perhaps you would never have prevailed in your quest for mother Russia; but 10° warmer and at least you might have reached home with half your forces intact, instead of losing another 300,000 men between the gates of Moscow and the banks of the Neman river."

His Serene Highness Prince Mikhail Kutuzov Smolensky - Roman Volkov

Another hotel cat is named after 

Field Marshal Kutuzov (1745 – 1813). He served as a military officer and a diplomat under the reign of three Romanov monarchs: Empress Catherine II, and Emperors Paul I and Alexander I. Kutuzov was shot in the head twice while fighting the Turks (1774 and 1788) and survived the serious injuries seemingly against all odds. He defeated Napoleon as commander-in-chief using attrition warfare in the Patriotic War of 1812.

Kazan Cathedral, Saint Petersburg

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