Leningrad is one of the biggest industrial, scientific and cultural centres in the USSR, a city with a rich and glorious history. Here Lenin lived and worked, thinker of genius, revolutionary, founder and leader of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Here, in 1917, under the guidance of Lenin's Party, the Great October Socialist Revolution was accomplished. 

Leningrad is a hero city. It was awarded this title for the courage and heroism shown by the city's working people in the struggle with the German invaders. Their feat has been immortalised in the Monument commemorating the heroic defence of Leningrad from 1941 to 1943 and the rout of the fascist troops outside the city in 1944, in the monuments of the "Green Belt of Glory", in the magnificent Piskaryovsky Memorial Cemetery and elsewhere. 

Leningrad's remarkable architectural ensembles, palaces, museums, parks and art galleries are world-famous. 
Leningrad is a city of physical culture and sport, with over three thousand sports grounds, football pitches, specialised gymnasiums, swimming pools, skating rinks, the Palace of Sports Games, the Yubileiny Sports Palace and thirty-seven stadiums, the two biggest being those named after Lenin and Kirov.

Since 1952, when Soviet athletes made their debut at the 15th Olympic Games in Helsinki, Leningrad has been well represented at all summer and winter Olympics, with 175 medals to its credit, including 73 golds.

Sports fans are fully familiar with the names of the city's famous champions: G. Shatkov, Yu. Tyukalov, N. Chizhova, V. Zhdanovich, T. Kazankina, Ye. Kulikov, G. Stepanskaya, A. Karpov and many others. About 750 thousand people are now active in Leningrad's sports societies.
Along with the rest of the nation, the citizens of Leningrad are preparing for the Moscow Olympics. Matches for the Olympic football tournament will be played at the S. M. Kirov Stadium in the summer of 1980. 

But the 1980 Olympics will mean more to Leningrad than just football matches. Rowers, yachtsmen, track-and-field athletes, gymnasts, swimmers, wrestlers and boxers-in other words, representatives of all branches of the Olympic Games-are training for the Olympic starts.