Ekibastuz
Encyclopedia
Ekibastuz is a town in Pavlodar Province, northeastern Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

. it had a population of 141,000. It is served by Ekibastuz Airport
Ekibastuz Airport
Ekibastuz Airport is an airport in Kazakhstan located 16 km southwest of Ekibastuz. It services small airliners....

.

History

The history of Ekibastuz begins in the 19th century, when Kosym Pshembayev, a native Kazakh
Kazakhs
The Kazakhs are a Turkic people of the northern parts of Central Asia ....

 who was commissioned by Russian merchants to look for mineral resources in that region, alighted on a coal field southeast of Pavlodar
Pavlodar
Pavlodar is a city in northeastern Kazakhstan and the capital of Pavlodar Province. It is located 350 km northeast of the national capital Astana, and 400 km southeast of the Russian city of Omsk along the Irtysh River. , the city has a population of 331710...

. The commercial exploitation of the field started soon after. The field afterwards was sold to a British businessman named Urquart. The railway connection was constructed and the village Ekibastuz was established in 1899, named after the nearby lake of the same name, which means 'two-headed lake' in Kazakh
Kazakh language
Kazakh is a Turkic language which belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak....

 (eki 'two' + bas 'head' + tuz 'salt lake').

The revolution in the Russian Empire
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

, as well as two World Wars, distracted the attention of the state from the exploitation of the field. The village was totally deserted. However, in 1948 the first team (only 50 people) started construction of the future town. The borders of the future open-cast coal fields were also marked at that time.

December 1954 was a significant period for Ekibastuz, because the first train loads of coal were loaded. From that time the industrial development of Ekibastuz started. In 1955 the millionth ton of the coal was produced.

The status of the "town" was given to Ekibastuz on July 12, 1957 by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was a Soviet governmental institution – a permanent body of the Supreme Soviets . This body was of the all-Union level , as well as in all Soviet republics and autonomous republics...

 of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. At that time the population of Ekibastuz was approximately 25,000 people. Nowadays, the population of Ekibastuz is about 141,000 people.

Industry

Near Ekibastuz there are two coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 fired power plants: GRES-1
Ekibastuz GRES-1
Ekibastuz GRES-1 is a 4,000 MW coal-fired thermal power station at Ekibastusz, Kazakhstan. It has two tall chimneys. As of June 2010, the Ekibastuz GRES-1 power station was the largest power station in Kazakhstan, and generated 13% of the nation's electricity.- History :Most of the units...

, with installed capacity of 4,000 MW, and GRES-2
GRES-2 Power Station
The GRES-2 Power Station is a coal-fueled power generating station in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan. GRES-2, built in 1987, has installed capacity of 1,000 MWe and has the world's tallest flue gas stack at high. The chimney is about taller than the Inco Superstack in Sudbury, Canada. Locals refer to it...

, with an installed capacity of 1,000 MW. GRES-2 has the tallest chimney in the world (419.7 m).

The construction of GRES-2 was part of a Program for Ekibastuz coalfield development, foreseeing to be built four Thermal Power Plants each one of 4,000 MW (8 units x 500 MWe). In years 1991-93 only Units No 1 & 2 were commissioned. The construction of Unit No 3 was started 1990 but later stopped.

From Ekibastuz to Kokshetau runs an overhead powerline
Overhead powerline
An overhead power line is an electric power transmission line suspended by towers or utility poles. Since most of the insulation is provided by air, overhead power lines are generally the lowest-cost method of transmission for large quantities of electric energy...

 designed for a transmission voltage of 1,150 kV, the Ekibastuz-Kokshetau powerline
Powerline Ekibastuz-Kokshetau
The Ekibastuz–Kokshetau is a power transmission line in Kazakhstan. It runs at 1,150 kV and holds the record for having the highest operating transmission voltage in the world....

.

Today Ekibastuz is the biggest open-cast coal field and one of the most perspective open-cast coal regions in the world. It contains more than 13 billion tons of coal in the area of 62 square kilometers. In other words, there are 74 million tons of coal per square kilometer.

Gulag

It was the location of a major labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...

 of the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

 system maintained by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 from the 1920s to the 1950s. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...

 served in this camp.

See also

  • Kengir
    Kengir
    Kengir is a village in central Kazakhstan. During the Soviet era, a prison labor camp of Steplag division of Gulag in Kazakhstan was set up adjacent to it...

    , a related camp and site of uprising partly supported by prisoners from Ekibastuz.

External links

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