Jackie - I was so surprised by your post that I went onto the Russian Embassy's website to get a download of their visa application. It is quite remarkable to see how much more info they require now than they did when we got our personal visas in 2003 for the Voyager Baltics cruise. In 2003, the whole application form was only one page and had no questions about previous places of employment, 10-year travel history, military service, schools, or affiliations with charitable organizations.

My guess is that this is all in direct reciprocity for the info the U.S. now requires of Russians applying for visas to visit the U.S. It appears that Russian Motherland Security is having a good time pulling the beard of U.S. Homeland Security. I also noted that the Russians have raised the price of their tourist visa to match the price imposed by the U.S.

Yikes, since we're planning to take a Russian river cruise someday, we'll have to be sure we keep all sorts of "prior life" data readily available for the stupid visa application, no??