This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0000066524 Reproduction Date:
Yekaterinburg (Russian: Екатеринбург; IPA: ), alternatively romanized as Ekaterinburg, is the fourth-largest city in Russia and the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast, located in the middle of the Eurasian continent, on the border of Europe and Asia.[14][15] At the 2010 Census, it had a population of 1,349,772.[7]
Yekaterinburg is the main industrial and cultural center of the Ural Federal District. Between 1924 and 1991, the city was named Sverdlovsk (Свердло́вск) after the Communist party leader Yakov Sverdlov.
Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Tsar Peter the Great's wife, Catherine I (Yekaterina).[11] The official date of the city's foundation is November 18, 1723.[11] It was granted town status in 1796.
The city was one of Russia's first industrial cities, prompted at the start of the eighteenth century by decrees from the Tsar requiring the development in Yekaterinburg of metal-working businesses. The city was built, with extensive use of iron, to a regular square plan with iron works and residential buildings at the centre. These were surrounded by fortified walls, so that Yekaterinburg was at the same time both a manufacturing centre and a fortress at the frontier between Europe and Asia. It therefore found itself at the heart of Russia's strategy for further development of the entire Ural region. The so-called Siberian highway became operational in 1763 and placed the city on an increasingly important transit route, which led to its development as a focus of trade and commerce between east and west, and gave rise to the description of the city as the "window on Asia". With the growth in trade and the city's administrative importance, the ironworks became less critical, and the more important buildings were increasingly built using expensive stone. There was a proliferation of small manufacturing and trading businesses. In 1781 Russia's empress, Catherine the Great, nominated the city as the administrative centre for the wider region, which led to a further increase in the numbers of military and administrative personnel in the city.
Following the October Revolution, the family of deposed Tsar Nicholas II were sent to internal exile in Yekaterinburg where they were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House in the city. In the early hours of the morning of July 17, 1918, the deposed Tsar, his wife Alexandra, and their children Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Tsarevich Alexei were executed by the Bolsheviks at the Ipatiev House. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk later the same day. On July 16, 1918, the Czechoslovak legions were closing on Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks executed the deposed imperial family, believing that the Czechoslovaks were on a mission to rescue them. Legions came less than a week later and captured the city.
In 1977, the Ipatiev House was demolished by order of Boris Yeltsin, to prevent it from being used as a rallying location for monarchists. He later became the first President of Russia and represented the people at the funeral of the former Tsar in 1998.[16]
On August 24, 2007, the BBC reported that Russian archaeologists had found the remains of two children of Russia's last Tsar. The remains were discovered in the ground close to the site in Yekaterinburg where the former Tsar, his wife, and their three other daughters were found in 1991 along with the remains of four servants. The discoveries in 2007 are thought to be those of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. Archaeologist Sergei Pogorelov said bullets found at the burial site indicate the children had been shot. He told Russian television the newly unearthed bones belonged to two young people: a young male aged roughly 10–13 and a young woman about 18–23. Ceramic vessels found nearby appear to have contained sulfuric acid, consistent with an account by one of the Bolshevik firing squad, who said that after shooting the family they doused the bodies in acid to destroy the flesh and prevent them becoming objects of veneration.[17] The Tsar's remains were given a state funeral in July 1998.[18]
During the 1930s, Yekaterinburg was one of several places developed by the Soviet government as a center of heavy industry, during which time the famous Uralmash was built. Then, during World War II, many state technical institutions and whole factories were relocated to Yekaterinburg away from areas affected by war (mostly Moscow), with many of them staying in Yekaterinburg after the victory. The Hermitage Museum collections were also partly evacuated from Leningrad to Yekaterinburg (known as Sverdlovsk during Soviet times) in July 1941 and remained there until October 1945.
The lookalike five-story apartment blocks that remain today in Kirovsky, Chkalovsky, and other residential areas of Yekaterinburg sprang up in the 1960s, under the direction of Khrushchev's government.
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. He was captured, put on trial, found guilty of espionage and sentenced to seven years of hard labour. 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.
There was an anthrax outbreak in Yekaterinburg (then called Sverdlovsk) in April and May 1979, which was attributed to a release from the Sverdlovsk-19 military facility.[19]
During the 1991 coup d'état attempt, Sverdlovsk, the home city of President Boris Yeltsin, was selected by him as a reserve capital for the Russian Federation, in the event that Moscow became too dangerous for the Russian government. A reserve cabinet headed by Oleg Lobov was sent to the city, where Yeltsin enjoyed strong popular support at that time.[20] Shortly after the failure of the coup and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, the city regained its historical name Yekaterinburg on 4 September 1991. However, Sverdlovsk Oblast, of which Yekaterinburg is the administrative center, kept its name.
Yekaterinburg is the administrative center of the oblast.[1] Within the framework of the administrative divisions, it is, together with twenty-nine rural localities, incorporated as the City of Yekaterinburg[2]—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts.[1] As a municipal division, the City of Yekaterinburg is incorporated as Yekaterinburg Urban Okrug.[3]
Yekaterinburg is situated on the border of Europe and Asia, 1,667 kilometers (1,036 mi) east of Moscow, on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains on the Iset River. It is surrounded by wooded hills, partially cultivated for agricultural purposes, and small lakes. The city features a humid continental climate (Dfb) under the Köppen climate classification. The winter lasts for about six months—from October until the middle of April—and the temperature may fall to −45 °C (−49 °F), though rarely lower than −20 °C (−4 °F) to −25 °C (−13 °F). Summer in the Urals is short, with warm weather for only 65–70 days and an average temperature of +18 °C (64 °F). The city's location "behind" the mountain range and highly variable winds mean that the weather is quite changeable from one day to the next and from year to year.
Having decreased during the 1990s, the population started to grow slowly in the 21st century.
The main areas of the city's industry are machinery, metal processing, and ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy.
Recently the commercial economy has improved, and business centers like Yekaterinburg-City have been planned. The "Vysotsky" is the tallest skyscraper in Russia outside of Moscow.
Ural Airlines has its head office in Yekaterinburg.[25]
Yekaterinburg is an important railway junction on the Trans-Siberian Railway, with lines reaching all parts of the Ural Mountains and the rest of Russia.
As the economy grew stronger after the recession of the 1990s, several European airlines started or resumed flying to the city's Koltsovo International Airport (SVX). These include Czech Airlines, Turkish Airlines, and Finnair.
Yekaterinburg is also served by the smaller Yekaterinburg Aramil Airport.
The city's public transit network includes many tram, bus, trolleybus, Marshrutka routes and Yekaterinburg Metro which opened in 1991. Today, the Yekaterinburg Metro consists of one line, with a total of nine stations.
Tram Tatra T3
Tram SPEKTR 71-405
Trolleybus Trolza-682
Bus NefAZ-5299
Marshrutka Bogdan A092
Marshrutka Dongfeng
The Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and numerous other scientific research institutes and establishments are 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. These institutions include the Ural Federal University (comprising Ural State University and Ural State Technical University), Ural State Pedagogical University, Ural State University of Forestry, Ural State Mining University, Ural State University of Railway Transport, Russian State Vocational Pedagogics University, Ural State University of Economics, Military Institute of Artillery, Ural State Conservatory, Ural State Agricultural Academy, Ural State Law Academy, Ural State Academy of Medicine, Ural State Academy of Performing Arts, Ural Academy of Public Service, Institute of International Relations, and the Urals Academy of Architecture.
The city has several dozen libraries, including the V. G. Belinsky Scientific Library, which is the largest public library in Sverdlovsk Oblast.
Famous for its theaters, Yekaterinburg is also home to some very popular theatre companies: the Yekaterinburg Academic Ballet and Opera Company, the Sverdlovsk Academic Theater of Musical Comedy, the Yekaterinburg Academic Dramatic Theater, the Yekaterinburg Theater for Young Spectators, the Volkhonka (a popular chamber theatre), and the Kolyada Theater (a chamber theatre founded by Russian playwright, producer and actor Nikolai Kolyada). Yekaterinburg is the center of New Drama, a movement of contemporary Russian playwrights Nikolai Kolyada, Vasily Sigarev, Konstantin Kostenko, the Presnyakov brothers, and Oleg Bogayev. Yekaterinburg is often called the capital of contemporary dance for a number of famous dance companies residing in the city: the Kipling, the Provincial Dances, the Tantstrest, and a special department of contemporary dance at the Yekaterinburg University of Humanities.
A number of popular Russian rock bands, such as Urfin Dzhyus, Chaif, Chicherina, Nautilus Pompilius, Nastya, Trek, Agata Kristi and Smyslovye Gallyutsinatsii, were originally formed in Yekaterinburg (Ural Rock is often considered as a particular variety of rock music. Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg are actually considered to be the main centers of the genre in Russia). Also, some famous opera singers—Boris Shtokolov, Yuri Gulyayev, Vera Bayeva—graduated from the Urals State Conservatory. The Ural Philharmonic Orchestra (currently conducted by Dmitry Liss), 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, a famous folk-singing and dance ensemble.
There are over thirty museums in Yekaterinburg, including several museums of Ural minerals and jewelry, art galleries, one of the largest collections anywhere of Kasli mouldings (a traditional kind of cast-iron sculpture in the Urals), and the famous Shigirskaya Kladovaya (Шигирская кладовая), or Shigir Collection, which includes the oldest wood sculpture in the world: the Shigir Idol, found near Nevyansk and estimated to have been made about 9,500 years ago. Only here can you see a collection of Nevyansk icons, in the Nevyansk Icon Museum, with more than 300 icons representing the 18th through the 20th centuries on display.
In 2014, the city showcased its education, literary, art and theater culture through the Russian Year of Culture Program.[26]
Vladimir Yelizarov's Recording Studio SVE Records is based in Yekaterinburg. The studio is in a private residence built in 1837 under the title "The House of the Misters", in one of the historical centers of Yekaterinburg city, two hundred meters from Verkh-Isetsky Lake. In 1987, American singer Tina Turner recorded two tracks, which later appeared on her 1989 album Foreign Affair, whilst in the city as part of her highly acclaimed Break Every Rule World Tour.
Yekaterinburg also has a circus building, and one of the tallest incomplete architectural structures in the world, the Yekaterinburg TV Tower. There are also a number of unusual monuments: e. g. a popular landmark Keyboard monument and a monument to Michael Jackson.[27]
According to Yekaterinburg News, the city has signed a cooperative agreement with the Russian mobile operator Vimpelcom, working under the Beeline brand. The partnership will involve cooperation on investment projects and social programs focused on increasing access to mobile services in the city. Beeline has launched an initiative to provide Wi-Fi services in 500 public trams and trolley buses in Yekaterinburg.[28]
The city is also one of the 11 host-cities that will receive matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The matches will be played on the upgraded Central Stadium.
The United States,[29] United Kingdom,[30] Germany,[31] France,[32] China[33] and several other countries have consulates in Yekaterinburg.
The BRIC countries met for their first official summit on June 16, 2009, in Yekaterinburg,[34] with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dmitry Medvedev, Manmohan Singh, and Hu Jintao, the respective leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, all attending.
The foreign ministers of the BRIC countries had also met in Yekaterinburg previously on May 16, 2008.
In June 2013, at the 153rd General Assembly of the Bureau of International Expositions held in Paris, representatives from Yekaterinburg presented the city’s bid to host the 2020 World Expo. Yekaterinburg’s concept for the upcoming exhibition is entitled relates to the impact of globalization on the modern world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed during a televised statement in English to earmark the required funds to build an exhibition complex large enough to receive the estimated 30 million visitors from more than 150 countries.[35]
Yekaterinburg is a sister city of:
Yekaterinburg, Hinduism, Perm Krai, Tyumen Oblast, Kurgan Oblast
Yekaterinburg, Russian Air Force, Tajikistan, Soviet Union, Asia
Tyumen Oblast, Moscow, Krasnodar Krai, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Moscow Oblast
Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, Yekaterinburg, Types of inhabited localities in Russia, Russian language