| Yekaterinburg (English) Екатеринбург (Russian) |
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The skyline of Yekaterinburg |
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Location of Sverdlovsk Oblast in Russia |
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Yekaterinburg
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| Coordinates: | |
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| City Day | 3rd Saturday of August |
| Administrative status | |
| Country | Russia |
| Federal subject | Sverdlovsk Oblast |
| Administrative center of | Sverdlovsk Oblast |
| Municipal status | |
| Urban okrug | Yekaterinburg Urban Okrug |
| Head[1] | Yevgeny Porunov[1] |
| Representative body | City Duma |
| Statistics | |
| Population (2010 Census, preliminary) |
1,350,136 inhabitants[2] |
| - Rank in 2010 | 4th |
| Population (2002 Census) | 1,293,537 inhabitants[3] |
| - Rank in 2002 | 5th |
| Time zone | YEKST (UTC+06:00)[4] |
| Founded | November 18, 1723 |
| Previous names | Yekaterinburg (until 1924),[5] Sverdlovsk (until 1991)[5] |
| Postal code(s) | 620000 |
| Dialing code(s) | +7 343 |
| Official website | |
Yekaterinburg (Russian: Екатеринбу́рг, also romanized Ekaterinburg) is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 (2010 Census preliminary results)[2] (up from 1,293,537 recorded in the 2002 Census),[3] making it Russia's fourth-largest city.[2] Between 1924 and 1991, the city was known as Sverdlovsk (Свердло́вск); after the Bolshevik party leader Yakov Sverdlov.
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The city was founded in 1723 by Vasily Tatischev and Georg Wilhelm de Gennin and named after Tsar Peter the Great's wife Catherine I (Yekaterina). The official date of the city's foundation is November 18, 1723. It was granted town status in 1796.
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 murdered by the Bolsheviks at the Ipatiev House in this city. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk the day after. 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 Tsar in 1998.[6]
On August 24, 2007, the BBC reported that Russian archaeologists had recently found the remains of two children of Russia's last Tsar. The remains were in ground close to the site in Yekaterinburg where the Tsar, his wife and their three other daughters were found in 1991 along with the remains of four servants. The 2007 discoveries are thought to be those of Prince Alexei and his elder sister 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.[7] The Tsar's remains were given a state funeral in July 1998.[8]
During the 1930s, Yekaterinburg was one of the sites developed by the Soviet government as a centre of heavy industry, during which time the famous Uralmash was built. Then, during World War II, many government technical institutions and whole factories were relocated to Yekaterinburg away from the war-affected areas (mostly Moscow), with many of them staying in Yekaterinburg after victory. The Hermitage Museum collections were also partly evacuated from Leningrad to Sverdlovsk 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 Sverdlovsk) 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 a 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 1992 Boris Yeltsin admitted that the anthrax outbreak was caused by the military. In 1994, a team of independent American researchers led by Matthew Meselson concluded that the illnesses were the result of an anthrax release from the Sverdlovsk-19 military facility.[9]
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.[10] Shortly after the failure of the coup and subsequent dissolution of the USSR, the city regained its historical name (Yekaterinburg).
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 partially-wooded plains, mainly 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 (77 °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.
| Climate data for Yekaterinburg | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 5.6 (42.1) |
9.4 (48.9) |
17.3 (63.1) |
28.8 (83.8) |
36.0 (96.8) |
40.0 (104.0) |
44.4 (111.9) |
43.2 (109.8) |
38.0 (100.4) |
29.0 (84.2) |
13.5 (56.3) |
8.6 (47.5) |
44.4 (111.9) |
| Average high °C (°F) | −10 (14.0) |
−7.3 (18.9) |
0.6 (33.1) |
9.8 (49.6) |
17.3 (63.1) |
22.9 (73.2) |
24.0 (75.2) |
20.5 (68.9) |
14.2 (57.6) |
5.9 (42.6) |
−3.1 (26.4) |
−7.5 (18.5) |
7.4 (45.3) |
| Daily mean °C (°F) | −13.6 (7.5) |
−11.6 (11.1) |
−4.2 (24.4) |
4.4 (39.9) |
11.1 (52.0) |
16.9 (62.4) |
18.5 (65.3) |
15.3 (59.5) |
9.5 (49.1) |
2.4 (36.3) |
−6.3 (20.7) |
−10.7 (12.7) |
2.7 (36.9) |
| Average low °C (°F) | −16.8 (1.8) |
−15.2 (4.6) |
−8.2 (17.2) |
0.0 (32.0) |
5.8 (42.4) |
11.7 (53.1) |
14.0 (57.2) |
11.2 (52.2) |
6.0 (42.8) |
−0.3 (31.5) |
−9 (16) |
−13.6 (7.5) |
−1.1 (30.0) |
| Record low °C (°F) | −51.6 (−60.9) |
−42.4 (−44.3) |
−39.2 (−38.6) |
−21.8 (−7.2) |
−13.5 (7.7) |
−5.3 (22.5) |
1.5 (34.7) |
−1 (30) |
−9 (16) |
−26.6 (−15.9) |
−39.2 (−38.6) |
−51.7 (−61.1) |
−51.7 (−61.1) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) | 22.8 (0.898) |
19.4 (0.764) |
15.9 (0.626) |
27.9 (1.098) |
43.8 (1.724) |
74.2 (2.921) |
80.7 (3.177) |
66.2 (2.606) |
52.8 (2.079) |
39.6 (1.559) |
30.9 (1.217) |
23.1 (0.909) |
497.3 (19.579) |
| % humidity | 79 | 75 | 68 | 61 | 55 | 62 | 69 | 73 | 75 | 76 | 78 | 79 | 70.8 |
| Sunshine hours | 46.5 | 95.2 | 164.3 | 207.0 | 257.3 | 273.0 | 269.7 | 217.0 | 144.0 | 77.5 | 51.0 | 37.2 | 1,839.7 |
| Source no. 1: pogoda.ru.net[11] | |||||||||||||
| Source no. 2: HKO | |||||||||||||
Having decreased from 1990s, the population grew slowly in the 21st century.
| 1724 | 1781 | 1820 | 1861 | 1917 | 1926 | 1939 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4,000 | 7,969 | 13,026 | 19,832 | 71,590 | 134,800 | 423,000 |
| 1959 | 1970 | 1979 | 1989 | 2002 | 2005 | 2010 |
| 778,600 | 1,025,000 | 1,211,200 | 1,364,621[12] | 1,293,537[3] | 1,335,500 | 1,350,136[2] |
The main areas of the region'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. One of the tallest buildings in Yekaterinburg Antey 3 is a skyscraper which is now complete. It is the tallest structure in Russia outside of Moscow.
Ural Airlines has its head office in Yekaterinburg.[13]
The Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (UB RAS) 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 (as of 2005), Yekaterinburg is considered the leading educational and scientific center of the Urals. These institutions include the Ural Federal University (on base Ural A.M. Gorky State University and Ural State Technical University), Ural State Pedagogical University, Ural State University of Forestry, Urals State University of Mines, 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.
Yekaterinburg, which is still called by its Soviet name Sverdlovsk in rail timetables, is an important railway junction on the Trans-Siberian Railway, with lines radiating to all parts of the Urals and the rest of Russia.
As the economy grew stronger after the slump of the 1990s, several European airlines started or resumed flying to the city's Koltsovo International Airport (SVX). These include Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, Malév, Austrian Airlines, Czech Airlines and Finnair.
Two low-cost airlines are SkyExpress and Avianova.
Yekaterinburg is also served by the smaller Yekaterinburg Aramil Airport.
Yekaterinburg's public transit network includes many tram, bus, trolleybus, Marshrutka routes and Yekaterinburg Metro which opened in 1991.Today, the Yekaterinburg Metro contains one line, with a total of eight stations.
The city has several dozen libraries, including the V. G. Belinsky Scientific Library, which is the largest public library in Sverdlovsk Oblast.
Yekaterinburg is famous for its theaters, among which are some very popular theatre companies: the Yekaterinburg Academic Ballet and Opera Company, the Sverdlovsk Academic Theater of Musical Comedy (a notable company known in Russia and in ex-Soviet republics as Свердловская музкомедия – Sverdlovskaya muzkomedia), 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 centre of New Drama, a movement of the 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 considered to be the main centers of rock music 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 more than 30 museums in Yekaterinburg, including several museums of Ural minerals and jewellery, 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 in Yekaterinburg can you see a collection of Nevyansk icons- in the Nevyansk Icon Museum, with more than 300 icons representing 18–20 centuries on display.
Vladimir Yelizarov's Recording Studio SVE Records is based in Yekaterinburg. The studio is in a private residence built in 1837 under a title "The House of the Misters", in one of 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.[14]
Being the largest city in the Urals, Yekaterinburg has a number of consulates of major countries. This is convenient for people wishing to make a visa application and needing to attend an interview. It can easily take a half-week off the traveling time to get to the interview (in the event that there are internal flights to Yekaterinburg, they may only be once per week).
The BRIC countries met for their first official summit on 16 June 2009, in Yekaterinburg,[16] 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.
Yekaterinburg is a sister city of:
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