Smolensk holds the title of Hero City (1985), and has also been awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, First Class, and the Order of Lenin.
Smolensk is situated 378 kilometres west-southwest of Moscow on the upper reaches of the Dnieper River. It has an advantageous geographical position at the intersection of roads from Moscow to Belarus, the Baltic States, Central Europe and Western Europe.
Smolensk is 25 kilometres from east to west, and 15 kilometres from form north to south. The city has an area of 166.35 square kilometres and a population of 316,000.
Smolensk is one of the oldest Russian cities. According to the Primary Chronicle [an ancient account of the history of Kievan Rus, sometimes translated as the Tale of Bygone Years], the city was first mentioned in 862 AD as the centre of the Krivichs tribal alliance. In the ninth and tenth centuries the city was a large commercial and manufacturing settlement on the road from the Varangians to the Greeks.
For many centuries the city was the guardian of the western border of the Russian lands. Smolensk was rightly called the key city and the shield of the Russian State. The Principality of Smolensk became part of the Grand Principality of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita) more than once.
Industry plays a vital role in the city's economy. Smolensk is known as a centre of heavy manufacturing, the production of instruments and electronics. Major industrial facilities include the Smolensk Aircraft Plant, Izmeritel, Analitpribor, the Smolensk Radio Part Factory, OSRAM, the Otrokhova Automotive Factory AMO ZIL in Smolensk, Iceberg and Arcada Engineering. Jewellery production is represented by Kristall diamond-cutting factory, one of the larges high-profile enterprize in Russia.
Smolensk is an important cultural centre. The city has eight music schools for children, an art school for children, twenty libraries in a centralised municipal library system, a regional scientific universal library, a regional library for youth, a regional library for children, a regional library for the blind, fourteen professional libraries and four departmental libraries.
There are also 26 institutions of higher education in the city.
Today Smolensk is a city of museums and libraries, research and educational institutions. The city also has branches of the Russian creative unions of writers, artists, composers, architects, journalists, theatre workers and designers.
Smolensk works with cultural institutions in Belarus, Germany, Poland and Italy. It has signed a number of bilateral agreements for social, economic and cultural cooperation with Zhytomyr, Oryol, Vitebsk and administration of the Ostankino district in Moscow.
An international jazz, pop and rock music festival called Project Smolensk is held each year in the city. There is also an annual festival of Russian bard music.