Sovkomflot (Russian: ОАО «Совкомфлот», ОАО «Современный коммерческий флот», Modern Commercial Fleet) is a Russian maritime shipping company specializing in petroleum and LNG shipping, a 100% state-owned corporation founded in 1995. Since December 5, 2006, its headquarters are located in Saint Petersburg. It is headed by Director General Sergei Frank. In 2007-2008 Sovcomflot absorbed the assets of state-owned, Novorossiysk-based Novoship and thus became the largest shipping company in Russia.

In 1973 the Government of the USSR decreed formation of a special shipping corporation, separated from the regular state-owned marine fleet, that could use long-term bare boat charter scheme for purchasing new and used foreign-built vessels. In 1976 the Ministry of Merchant Marine institited a special fund and the newly formed corporation used it to acquire two 40,000 ton (deadweight, DWT) dry cargo transports - Sovfracht and Sovinflot.

In 1988 these operations were reorganized as Sovcomflot Joint-Stock Company (SCF), a one-of-a-kind state-owned corporation with special authorization by the USSR Council of Ministers. By 1990 its assets reached 1,800,000 DWT tons. A further reorganization in June 1995 confirmed the special status of Sovcomflot as a state-owned business, effective to date (July 2008).

Vitus Jonassen Bering (baptised 5 August 1681 in Horsens, Denmark – 8 December 1741 on Bering Island, Russia) was a Danish-born navigator in the service of the Russian Navy as (eventually Captain-Komandor) Витус Ионассен Беринг, known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich Bering. He is known for his two explorations of the north-eastern coast of the Asian continent and from there the western coast on the North American continent. The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge have since all been (posthumously) named in honour of the explorer.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин,Russian pronunciation: [ˈjurʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ɡɐˈɡarʲɪn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.

Gagarin became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and honours, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honour. Vostok 1 marked his only spaceflight, but he served as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission (which ended in a fatal crash). Gagarin later became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later named after him. Gagarin died in 1968 when a MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed.

Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (now in Smolensk Oblast, Russia), on 9 March 1934. The adjacent town of Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin in 1968 in his honour. His parents, Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina, worked on a collective farm. While manual labourers are described in official reports as "peasants", his mother was reportedly a voracious reader, and his father a skilled carpenter. Yuri was the third of four children, and his elder sister helped raise him while his parents worked. Like millions of people in the Soviet Union, the Gagarin family suffered during Nazi occupation in World War II. After a German officer took over their house, the family constructed a small mud hut where they spent a year and nine months until the end of the occupation. His two older siblings were deported to Nazi Germany for slave labour in 1943, and did not return until after the war. In 1946, the family moved to Gzhatsk.