Barentsburg is a Russian town on the Norwegian island of Svalbard. It has Russian stores, a Russian school, and even uses the Russian Ruble! It is a town entirely populated by Russians, and owned by the Russian government.
So why exactly is there a Russian town on a Norwegian island?
When Svalbard was discovered in the late 16th century, lots of different countries wanted to claim it as their own, but an agreement was never reached as to who actually owned it.
This meant that the island fell under the old maritime principle of Mare Liberum, which is Latin for free seas, and this means that anyone can come and live on the island. For the next few hundred years, several countries would whale around and later mine on Svalbard.
After WWI at the Paris peace conference the question of who owned Svalbard was finally settled when the Svalbard treaty was signed. The treaty gave Norway sovereignty over the island, but this deal came with a lot of conditions. Norway was allowed to own Svalbard and enforce Norwegian law there, but every citizen of every country that was part of the treaty was allowed to come to Svalbard whenever they wanted, use its resources, and stay as long as they desired. Norway eventually expanded this privilege to every country in the world!
Russians had been one of the first people to travel to Svalbard, they had inhabited the island from about 1425 to 1675, and during that time a group of travelers called the Pomory had traveled back and forth from northern Russia to Svalbard to hunt.
In the 1930's the Soviet Union expressed an interest in establishing a coal mine on Svalbard, and bought an old mining town called Barentsburg from the Dutch. Because the Soviet Union/Russia was a part of the Svalbard treaty it's citizens were allowed to live on Svalbard, and the Soviet government was allowed to own the town.
The Soviets thought that, because Svalbard was visa free for everyone in the world, that a lot of curious people might come to see their town, so they redeveloped Barentsburg to look like the perfect example of socialist living. They built a large cultural center, an indoor pool, a museum, and a massive bust of Vladimir Lenin. At its peak over 1500 people lived in Barentsburg.
But even though on the outside the town looked like a success, the fact was that mining in Svalbard had never been profitable for the Soviets. Most of the funding for the town came from the Soviet government, but after the union fell apart in 1991, the now Russian government didn't see a need for the town anymore, and funding sharply decreased.
Since then the Russian government has been giving Barentsburg just enough funds to survive, not because they desperately want the coal, but because the town is in a very strategic location, with many shipping routes from Russia to the rest of the world passing close to Svalbard.
Today only about 400 people remain in Barentsburg, and the town has attempted to shift away from coal mining to tourism, but it is not yet enough to make the settlement profitable. The coal mines are still active and operated by Arktikugol, a state owned Russian company.
I certainly hope I get to visit this amazing place sometime in the future!