A city of west-central Russia in the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains. Nicholas II and his family were executed here (1918) after the Russian Revolution. Population: 1,300,000.
Dictionary:
Ye·ka·te·rin·burg (yĭ-kăt'ər-ən-bûrg') or E·ka·te·rin·burg
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A city of west-central Russia in the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains. Nicholas II and his family were executed here (1918) after the Russian Revolution. Population: 1,300,000.
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Sverdlovsk began as a fort and metallurgical factory built in 1721 on the site of an earlier settlement. In 1723 the city was named Yekaterinburg in honor of Peter I's wife, who became Empress Catherine I. The first ironworks were established in 1726, and the city developed steadily as an administrative center for the mining towns of the Urals and Siberia. Its importance was enhanced by the building of the Great Siberian Highway through the city in 1783, but even more so by the construction of the Trans-Siberian RR in the 19th cent. Czar Nicholas and his family were imprisoned and shot by the Bolsheviks at Yekaterinburg in 1918. The city was renamed in 1924 for the Communist leader Y. M. Sverdlov. The transfer of much Soviet industry from European USSR to the less vulnerable Urals during World War II further stimulated the growth of Sverdlovsk. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the name of Yekaterinburg was restored to the city.
| Weather: Ekaterinoburg, Russian Federation |
| Dialing Code: The telephone dialing code for: Yekaterinburg, Russia |
The country code is: 7
The city code is: 3432
| Wikipedia: Yekaterinburg |
| Yekaterinburg (English) Екатеринбург (Russian) |
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The building of Yekaterinburg-city |
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Yekaterinburg on the map of Russia |
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| Coordinates 56°50′N 60°35′E / 56.833°N 60.583°ECoordinates: 56°50′N 60°35′E / 56.833°N 60.583°E |
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| Coat of Arms | Flag |
| City Day: 3rd Saturday of August | |
| Administrative status | |
| Federal subject In jurisdiction of Administrative center of |
Sverdlovsk Oblast Sverdlovsk Oblast Sverdlovsk Oblast |
| Local self-government | |
| Charter | Charter of Yekaterinburg |
| Municipal status | Urban okrug |
| Head | Arkady Chernetsky |
| Representative Body | City Duma |
| Area | |
| Area | n/a |
| Population | |
| 2002 Census - Rank - Density |
1,293,537 inhabitants 5th n/a |
| Latest estimate (2008[1]) |
1,323,000 inhabitants |
| Events | |
| Founded | November 18, 1723 |
| Town status | 1796 |
| Renamed Sverdlovsk | 1924 |
| Renamed Yekaterinburg | 1991 |
| Other information | |
| Postal code | 620000 |
| Dialing code | +7 343 |
| Official website | |
| http://www.ekburg.ru/ | |
Yekaterinburg (Russian: Екатеринбу́рг, also romanized Ekaterinburg), formerly Sverdlovsk (Свердло́вск) 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. Its population of 1,293,537 (2002 Census);[2] which is down from 1,364,621 recorded in the 1989 Census, makes it Russia's fifth largest city. Between 1924 and 1991, the city was known as Sverdlovsk (Свердло́вск), after the Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov.
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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 (Yekaterina). The official date of the city foundation, however, is November 18, 1723. The city was named 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 1977 the Ipatiev House was destroyed by order of Boris Yeltsin who later became the first President of the Russian Federation.
In the 1920s, Yekaterinburg became a large industrial center of Russia. It was the time when the famous Uralmash was built, becoming the biggest heavy machinery factory in Europe.
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 Ekaterinburg after the victory. The Hermitage Museum collections were also partly evacuated from Leningrad to Sverdlovsk in July 1941 and remained there until October 1945.
In the 1960s, in the days of Khruschev's government, a number of lookalike five-story apartment blocks sprung up all over the city. 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 at 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 (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 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 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.[3]
Yekaterinburg is situated in Asia, 1,667 km (1,036 miles) east of Moscow, on the eastern 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 45 degrees Celsius (minus 49 Fahrenheit), though rarely lower than minus 20 to minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 4 to minus 13 Fahrenheit). The summer in the Urals is short and lasts an average of 65-70 days with an average temperature of 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit). Due to the city's location "behind" the mountain range and to differing winds, the weather is quite changeable from day to day and from year to year.
The main areas of the region's industry are machinery, metal processing, and ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy.
The Ural Branch of 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 Ural A.M. Gorky State University, Ural State Technical University, Ural State Pedagogical University,Ural State University of Forestry, Ural State University of Mines, Ural State University of the Railways, Russian State Vocational Pedagogics University, Ural State University of Economics, Military Institute of Artillery, Ural State Conservatory, Ural State Agricultural Academy, Ural State Academy of Law, Ural State Academy of Medicine, Ural State Academy of Performing Arts, Ural Academy of Public Service, and Ural Academy of Architecture.
Yekaterinburg, 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.
Yekaterinburg is also served by the smaller Yekaterinburg Aramil Airport.
Yekaterinburg's public transit network includes the Yekaterinburg Metro which opened in 1991, and many tram, bus, trolleybus, and Marshrutka routes.
The city has several dozens of 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 theater companies: the Yekaterinburg Academic Ballet and Opera Company, the Sverdlovsk Academic Theater of Musical Comedy (a legendary 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 theater), and the Kolyada Theater (a chamber theater founded by Russian playwright, producer and actor Nikolai Kolyada). Yekaterinburg is the center of New Drama, a movement of the contemporary Russian playwrights Nikolai Kolyada, Vasily Sigarev, Konstantin Kostenko, the Presnyakov brothers, and Oleg Bogayev. Yekaterinburg is also often called the capital of contemporary dance for a number of famous contemporary 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, Chayf, 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 9,000 years ago.
Yekaterinburg also has a circus building, and one of the tallest incomplete architectural structures in the world, the Yekaterinburg TV Tower.
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 (in the event that there are internal flights to Yekaterinburg, they may only be once per week).
Yekaterinburg is a sister city of
This is a short list of the most notable citizens of Yekaterinburg (title conferred every year on the Day of the City):
A ballistic missile submarine of the Project 667BDRM 'Delfin' class (NATO reporting name: Delta IV) has been named "Ekaterinburg" (K-84/'807') in honor of the city.
The asteroid 27736 Ekaterinburg was named in the city's honour on June 1, 2007.
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