Encyclopedia
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of the
Russian Federation, the administrative center of
Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the
Ural mountain range, at , it is the main
industrial and
cultural center of the
Urals Federal District. Its population of 1,293,537 makes it Russia's fifth largest city. Between 1924 and 1991, the city was known as
Sverdlovsk , after the
Bolshevik leader
Yakov Sverdlov.
History
The city was founded in 1723 by
Vasily Tatischev and named after
Saint Catherine, the namesake of
tsar Peter the Great's wife
Empress Catherine I . It was renamed Sverdlovsk after the
Bolshevik party leader and
Soviet official
Yakov Sverdlov from 1924 to 1991.
Soon after the
Russian Revolution, on July 17, 1918, Tsar
Nicholas II, his wife,
Alexandra, and their children Grand Duchesses Olga,
Tatiana,
Maria,
Anastasia, and Tsarevich
Alexei were executed by
Bolsheviks at the
Ipatiev House in this city.
In the
1920s Yekaterinburg became a large industrial center of Russia. The heavy machinery factory
Uralmash, the biggest in
Europe, was built.
During
World War II, many government technical institutions and whole factories were evacuated to Yekaterinburg from the
war-affected areas and many remained in Yekaterinburg after the war was over.
In the
1960s, during the
Khruschev government, many similar five-storey
apartment blocks were built around Yekaterinburg. Most of them still remain today in Kirovsky, Chkalovsky, and other
residential areas of Yekaterinburg.
On May 1, 1960, an
American U-2 spy plane, piloted by
Francis Gary Powers while under the employ of the
CIA, was shot down over Sverdlovsk Oblast. The pilot was captured, put on trial, and found guilty of espionage. He was sentenced to seven years of
hard labour, though he served only about a year before being exchanged for
Rudolph Abel, a high-ranking
KGB spy, who had been apprehended in the
United States in 1957. The two spies were exchanged via the
Glienicke Bridge in
Potsdam, Germany, on February 10, 1962. Since the end of World War II, the Glienicke Bridge was the most popular captive-trading place when
the west and
the east felt it necessary to negotiate.
There was an
anthrax outbreak in Yekaterinburg in April and May 1979, which was attributed by Soviet officials to the locals eating contaminated
meat. However, American agencies believe that the locals inhaled
spores accidentally released from an
aerosol of pathogen at a military
microbiology facility. Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov's account of the Sverdlovsk anthrax leak in his book Biohazard agrees with the American agencies' view. In 1994, a team of independent American researchers lead by Matthew Meselson concluded based on a number of sources of evidence that it was conclusive that the illnesses were a result of an anthrax release from the Sverdlovsk-19 military facility.
Geography and climate
Yekaterinburg is situated 1,667 km east of
Moscow, on the east side of the
Ural mountains on the
Iset river. It is surrounded by forests, mainly
taiga, and small lakes. The winter lasts for about 5 months - from November until the middle of April and the temperature may fall to minus 35-40 degress Celsius . The summer on the Urals is short and lasts an average of 65-70 days with an average temperature of 20 degrees Celsius . Due to the city's location and different winds the weather is very unstable from day to day and from year to year.
Economy
The city produces heavy machinery,
steel,
chemicals,
tires, and
petroleum. Gem cutting is a well-developed light industry.
Education
Urals Branch of
Russian Academy of Sciences and numerous scientific research institutes and establishments are situated in Yekaterinburg. With its 16 state-owned universities and educational academies, as well as a number of private higher education institutions , Yekaterinburg is considered the leading educational and scientific center of the Urals.
Urals A.M. Gorky State University,
Ural State Technical University, Urals State Pedagogical University,Urals State University of Forestry, Urals State University of Mines, Urals State University of the Railways, Russian State Vocational Pedagogics University, Urals State University of Economics, Military Institute of Artillery, Urals State Conservatory, Urals State Agricultural Academy, Urals State Academy of Law, Urals State Academy of Medicine, Urals State Academy of Performing Arts, Urals Academy of Public Service, and Urals Academy of Architecture are among them.
Transportation and accommodation
Yekaterinburg, still called by its Soviet name Sverdlovsk in rail timetables, is an important railway junction on
Trans-Siberian Railway, with lines radiating to all parts of the Urals and the rest of Russia. As the economic slump subsided, several
European airlines started or resumed flying to the city's Koltsovo International Airport . These include
Lufthansa,
British Airways,
Austrian Airlines,
Turkish Airlines and
Czech Airlines.
Yekaterinburg's public transit network includes the
Yekaterinburg Metro which was opened in 1991, and many
streetcar,
bus,
tram and
trolleybus routes.
Culture
The city has several dozens of libraries including the V. G. Belinsky Scientific Library, the largest public library in the Urals. Yekaterinburg is famous for its theaters among which tere are some very popular theater companies: Yekaterinburg Academic Ballet and Opera Company, Sverdlovsk Academic Theater of Musical Comedy , Yekaterinburg Academic Dramatic Theater, Yekaterinburg Theater for Young Spectators, Volkhonka , Kolyada Theater .
The music scene in Yekaterinburg is not exceptionally large or prolific, though a number of popular Russian rock bands, such as Urfin Dzhyus, , Chicherina, Nautilus Pompilius, Nastya, Trek, Agata Kristi and Smyslovye Gallucinacii, were originally formed there . Besides some famouse opera singers - Boris Shtokolov, Yury Gulyayev, Vera Bayeva - graduated from the Urals State Conservatory. The Ural Philharmonic Orchestra founded by Mark Paverman and located in Yekaterinburg is also very popular in Russia and in Europe as well as the Ural Academic Popular Chorus - famous folklor singigng and dance ensemble.
In Yekaterinburg there are more than 30 museums, among which: several museums of ural minerlas and jewelleries, some art galleries, one of the largest collections of Kasli mouldings , the famous
Shigirskaya Kladovaya - Shigir Collection including the oldest wood sculpture in the world - the Shigir Idol which is estimated to be made about 9,000 years ago and found near
Nevyansk).
International relations
The largest city in the Urals and one of the top five in Russia, Yekaterinburg has a number of consulates of major countries. For people wishing to make a visa application and needing to attend interview, this can easily take a half-week off the travelling time to get to the interview .
Consulates
- United States Consulate—15 Gogolya Street; the first consulate with a visa section in the Urals, established in 1994.
- United Kingdom Consulate—established 1997 as a full consulate with a visa section, on 15a Gogolya Street.
- German Consulate—a full consulate with a visa section, on 44 Kuybysheva St.
- Czech Republic Consulate— general consulate with a visa section, on 15 Gogolya Street;
- Kirghizia Consulate— general consulate on 105 Bolshakova Street;
- Bulgaria Consulate— general consulate on 74 Lunacharskogo Street;
- China Consulate— general consulate.
Twin cities
Yekaterinburg is a
sister city of
name_local=Plzen|
...
,
Czech RepublicNotable citizens
The following people were either born in Yekaterinburg or made names for themselves while residing there. Note that many of the ice hockey players listed play in North America's
National Hockey League.
- Grigory Aleksandrov, film director
- Grigory Bakhchivandzhy, test pilot
- Aleksei Balabanov, film director
- Pavel Bazhov, author
- Sergei Chepikov, biathlon competitor, olympic champion
- Oksana Cherkasova, cartoonist
- Chiang Ching-kuo, president of the Republic of China from 1978 to 1988. From 1932 to 1937, Chiang Ching-kuo worked in Ekaterinburg at Ural Heavy Machinery Plant . In Ekaterinburg he met his wife Faina Ipatyevna Vakhreva.
- Pavel Datsyuk, ice hockey player
- Aleksandr Demyanenko, actor
- Irina Denezhkina, author
- Bella Dizhur, children's poet, mother of Ernst Neizvestny
- Alexander Dolsky, poet
- Aleksei Fedorchenko, film director, winner of the 62 Mostra for First on the Moon
- Valentin Filatov, soviet circus artist
- Albert Filozov, actor
- Stanislav Govorukhin, film director
- Aleksei Haritidi, cartoonist, Palm d'Or Court Métrage winner at the Cannes International Film Festival for Gagarin
- Nikolai Khabibulin, ice hockey goaltender
- Vladimir Khotenenko, film director
- Evgeniy Kolobov, conductor
- Nikolai Kolyada, playwright
- Olga Kotlyarova, runner
- Vladimir Krasnopolsky, film director
- Vladislav Krapivin, children's author
- Nikolai Krasovsky, prominent mathematician
- Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, partisan and hero of World War II
- Yaropolk Lapshin, film director
- Yury Levitan, radio speaker during World War II
- Dmitry Liss, conductor of the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra
- Lyudmila Lyadova, composer
- Vladimir Malakhov, ice hockey player
- Dmitry Mamin-Siberyak, author
- Georgi Misharin, ice hockey player
- Vladimir Motyl, film director and scenarist
- Ernst Neizvestny, sculptor
- Nikolai Nikonov, author
- Yury Osipov, mathematician and president of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Gleb Panfilov, film director
- Mark Paverman, conductor, founder of the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra
- Ivan Polzunov, inventor
- Alexander Stepanovich Popov, physicist who was the first to demonstrate the practical application of electromagnetic waves
- Alexander Vladimirovich Popov, swimmer, full member of the International Olympic Committee
- Oleg and Vladimir Presnyakov, playwrights
- Ivan Pyriev, film director
- Evgeniy Rodygin, composer
- Fedor Reshetnikov, author
- Eduard Rossel, politician, governor of Sverdlovsk Oblast
- Boris Ryzhy, poet
- Nikolai Semikhatov, mechanic, constructor of ballistic missiles control systems
- Vera Sessina, gymnast
- Ivan Shadr, sculptor
- Boris Shtokolov, opera singer
- Stanislav Shvarts, prominent zoologist
- Vasily Sigarev, playwright
- Anatoly Solonitsyn, actor, winner of the Berlin International Film Festival prize for best actor
- Boris Stenin, speed scater
- Pyotr Tayozhny, sculptor
- Vladimir Uskov, film director
- Sergei Vonsovsky, prominent physicist
- Alexei Yashin, ice hockey player
- Boris Yeltsin, first Russian president
- Rimma Zhukova, speed skater
- Irina Lashko, silver winner at the 1996 Summer Olympics
- Tatiana Uskashova, delegate to the J8 Summit in 2006, met with Putin and other world leaders
Honorary citizens
This is a short list of the most notable honorary citizens of Yekaterinburg :
- Arkadiy Tchernetskiy, mayor of Yekaterinburg
- Gennady Mesyats, vice-president of the Ural Academy of Sciences, one of the founders of the contemporary Demidov Prize
- Vladimir Tretyakov, rector of the Ural State University
- Eduard Rossel, governor of the Sverdlovsk Oblast
- Sergei Chepikov, biathlon competitor, olympic champion
- Vera Bayeva, famous opera singer
- Vladislav Krapivin, children's author
- Nikolai Krasovsky, prominent mathematician
- Nikolai Karpol, coach of the national women volleyball team and the legendary Yekaterinburg women volleyball club Uralochka
- Sergei Vonsovsky, prominent physicist
- Vladimir Kurochkin, musical comedy and opera producer
See also
- Names of Asian cities in different languages
Notes
External links and sources
- All information about Ekaterinburg.
- - Website dedicated to Yekaterinburg. Numerous photogalleries.
