Arkhangelsk Dutch that sailed to the White Sea area. In 1584 Ivan ordered the founding of New Kholmogory (which would later be renamed after the nearby Archangel Michael Monastery). At the time access to the Baltic Sea was still mostly controlled by Sweden, so while Arkhangelsk was icebound in winter, it remained Moscow's almost sole link to the sea-trade. Local inhabitants, called Pomors, were the first to explore trade routes to Northern Siberia as far as the trans-Urals city of Mangazeya and beyond. In December 1613, during the Time of Troubles, Arkhangelsk was besieged by Polish-Lithuanian marauders commanded by Stanislaw Jasinski
Archangel (2005 film) Archangel (2005 film) Archangel is a television adaptation of the 1998 novel of the same name by Robert Harris. Made by the BBC in 2005, it was filmed in the city of Arkhangelsk. An English expert on Soviet history, Dr. Christopher 'Fluke' Kelso (Daniel Craig), is in Moscow for a conference on Joseph Stalin. After the conference, Papu Rapava, an old man, says that he has important information for Dr. Kelso. In Hotel Ukraine, where Kelso is staying, Rapava recounts in detail how he, as a young security guard in 1953, witnessed the death of Stalin. He saw Lavrentiy Beria