This is a page of links to various Russian sites, and may be divided into multiple pages as it grows. You will need to understand Russian or at least know the Cyrillic characters for most of them. If your computer does not display the Cyrillic letters properly, you need to 'Russify' it. Information on this can be found at SovInformBureau.

Search Engines: Obviously, any can be used, but Russian based ones will give more results from Russian sites. However, note that the excellent Google can be set for Russian searches by going to 'preferences'. Some good Russian search engines are:

www.rambler.ru. One of the best. Can be refined to search for many categories including ftp search. MP3 search is good. Also provides free e-mail.
www.aport.ru. Another very good one.
www.chat.ru. Very good site. Also gives free web based e-mail and personal pages.

Music: These are some sites which have collections of MP3s and other general music information. I have to note here that the free availability of music on the net in Russia is slowing down. There are still collections to be found, but many of the biggest and best have either closed or become pay sites. This is apparently due to the activities of the copyright police being felt even in Russia. I shall try to add some new sites here soon, but most of those that were listed here are now defunct.

Rin.ru: This was one of the best sites for MP3s with a big collection of both Russian and English bands and it remains so, but is now a subscription site. It's not expensive, though, and you may consider it worth the small outlay to gain access to the music. It is not very easy to navigate, and has one of those awful interfaces where you have to click again on a pop-up window to download. But worth the effort for the rare stuff you will find.
Musical Thunder: A lot of MP3s here, and a huge collection of videos. This is the only big, well organised collection of videos that I have found. Wide range of styles represented. Still operational, but hasn't been updated for a year.
Russian MP3: Long gone...
Misha Kholodov: Misha's site has two nice sets of full albums. One set is Dance/Techno, the other is Punk/Rock. Linda, Sektor Gaza, Alsu and others. Go visit!
Omen: No longer has MP3's, but still a lot of information on music. (In Russian).
Octava: Seems to have died.
Padla: Gone, gone, gone...

General: Here are some sites where you can find Russian resources:

School of Slavonic and East European Studies (University College London): I studied here for a while. Lots of useful information.
Sher's Russian Index: Very extensive pages of links by category - music, language, images, you name it. Extremely useful, though some dead links.
Moshkow: This is the site of Maksim Moscov and has a large amount of information on it. There are literary texts of all kinds in both Russian and English. There are a lot of discographies too, but unfortunately some pages have not been updated for a while. Still worth looking though, because there are a lot of lyrics here. The site has dozens of mirrors, so there may be more up to date information on other sites. This link is to a music directory - there is a button to the main site near the top of this page. A number of texts have been removed and there is a rumour that the site may be under threat of closure...

Kazan - some sites based in Kazan:

Roses.ru: Lyonya (see Kazan page) built this site. Send flowers to Russia here.
KSABA: The Kazan Architectural Institute. Our friend Nadir works here (second from the right)
Kazan: The official Kazan website.