Five of the ten largest cities of Russia, including the nation's capital, Moscow, are located in the Volga's drainage basin.

This is related to the Avestan name for a mythical stream, Raŋhā (𐬭𐬀𐬢𐬵𐬁), which means "wet" or "moisture", and was derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₁res- or *h₁ers-).

[18][19] The Greek author Herodotus recorded two more ancient Iranic names of the Volga: The Turkic peoples living along the river formerly referred to it as Itil or Atil.

In modern Turkic languages, the Volga is known as İdel (Идел) in Tatar, Atăl (Атӑл) in Chuvash, Iźel in Bashkir, Edıl in Kazakh, and İdil in Turkish.

Rising in the Valdai Hills 225 meters (738 ft) above sea level northwest of Moscow and about 320 kilometers (200 mi) southeast of Saint Petersburg, the Volga heads east past Lake Sterzh, Tver, Dubna, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan.

The fertile river valley provides large quantities of wheat and other agricultural produce, and also has many mineral riches.

[26] The area around the Volga was inhabited by the Slavic tribes of Vyatichs and Buzhans, by Finno-Ugric, Scandinavian, Baltic, Hunnic and Turkic peoples (Tatars, Kipchaks) in the first millennium AD, replacing the Scythians.

The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography (Book 5, Chapter 8, 2nd Map of Asia).

Khazars were replaced by Kipchaks, Kimeks and Mongols, who founded the Golden Horde in the lower reaches of the Volga.

The Russian people's deep feeling for the Volga echoes in national culture and literature, starting from the 12th century Lay of Igor's Campaign.

Construction of Soviet Union-era dams often involved enforced resettlement of huge numbers of people, as well as destruction of their historical heritage.

For instance, the town of Mologa was flooded for the purpose of constructing the Rybinsk Reservoir (then the largest artificial lake in the world).

[33] During the Civil War, Joseph Stalin ordered the imprisonment of several military specialists on a barge in the Volga and the sinking of a floating prison in which the officers perished.

The Volga was (and still is) a vital transport route between central Russia and the Caspian Sea, which provides access to the oil fields of the Absheron Peninsula.

[36] By taking the river, Hitler's Germany would have been able to move supplies, guns, and men into the northern part of Russia.

At the same time, Germany could permanently deny this transport route by the Soviet Union, hampering its access to oil and to supplies via the Persian Corridor.

[39][40] Since ancient times, even before Rus' states developed, the Volga river was an important trade route where not only Slavic, Turkic and Finnic peoples lived, but also Arab world of the Middle East met the Varangian people of the Nordic countries through trading.

[43] Apart from the Huns, the earliest Turkic tribes arrived in the 7th century and assimilated some Finno-Ugric and Indo-European population on the middle and lower Volga.

Catherine the Great had issued a manifesto in 1763 inviting all foreigners to come and populate the region, offering them numerous incentives to do so.

The Volga, widened for navigation purposes with construction of huge dams during the years of Joseph Stalin's industrialization, is of great importance to inland shipping and transport in Russia: all the dams in the river have been equipped with large (double) ship locks, so that vessels of considerable dimensions can travel from the Caspian Sea almost to the upstream end of the river.

A number of formerly state-run, now mostly privatized, companies operate passenger and cargo vessels on the river; Volgotanker, with over 200 petroleum tankers, is one of them.

In the later Soviet era, up to the modern times, grain and oil have been among the largest cargo exports transported on the Volga.

The increasing contacts between the European Union and Russia have led to new policies with regard to the access to the Russian inland waterways.