Originally Posted by scotcher
They've recently made it easier for people use tourist visas (easy to obtain) instead of visitor visas (difficult to obtain) though.
To register my tourist visa without actually paying for a hotel room I used to have to queue for hours at OVIR to get issued with an invoice, then go across town to a bank to fill in several forms, queue for a bit, pay the fee (3 roubles!) to pay the invoice, then take proof of payment back across town to OVIR (queuing a bit more) to submit my passport, returning a few days later (queuing for hours, obviously) to collect it.
Now I can do it all by post.
Result.