Location: Volgograd Oblast Map
Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad and Tsaritsyn, is a city in the
lower Volga region, the fifteenth largest in modern Russia. At the
same time, the modern administrative structure of Russia refers the
Volgograd region, of which it is the center, to the South of Russia.
The territory of the city became the scene of one of the largest and
bloodiest battles of World War II, after which the question of the
defeat of the Third Reich became a matter of time.
Volgograd
is located on the Volga in its lower reaches and stretches for more
than 60 km along its right bank. Historically, the territory of the
city was cut by beams going to the Volga. By now, most of them have
been filled in, but on some routes the elevation changes can be
quite significant, especially since the right bank is steeper.
The southern part of the city represents the beginning of the
Caspian lowland, and therefore it is a plain. The only exceptions
are the Ergeninsky Mountains, which begin right there. The
construction of the railway between the Yergeny and the Volga caused
the area to become swampy - the Ergenin springs no longer flowed
into the river. As a result, a significant part of the southern
regions is occupied by reeds.
Volgograd, like the whole region, is in the Moscow time zone (UTC + 3).
Tourist Information Center of the Volgograd Region,
Gagarina st., 12. ✉ ☎ +7 (8442) 52-98-93. Mon–Fri 8:30–17:00, break
12:30–13:00. There is basic information about attractions, places to
stop and eat places, ongoing events. The information on the site is
not always up-to-date, but you can get a general idea. The quality
of the work of the center itself is unknown to the authors of the
article.
Author's excursions of Roman Skoda. ☎ +7 (927)
510-07-92; +7 (904) 401-23-46. from 150 rubles. Hiking around the
city, traveling out of town, individual excursions and excursions
for city guests.
Volgograd consists of 8 districts (from north to south):
Traktorozavodsky and Krasnooktyabrsky districts. The most
northern, industrial areas of the city. On their territory there
are factories: "Volgograd Tractor Plant" (whose workshops
continued to work during the Battle of Stalingrad, despite the
fact that the hordes of Germans were very close), "Red October"
and "Barricades"
Dzerzhinsky district - Gumrak airport is
located here
Central district - the historical center of the
city
Voroshilovsky district is the historical center of the
city. There is a children's railway here.
Sovetsky, Kirovsky
and Krasnoarmeysky districts. The beginning and the first locks
of the Volga-Don Canal are located in Krasnoarmeyskoye.
The city received its modern layout after the war, and therefore
there are no small winding streets of the old city. If you wish,
of course, you can find the reserved corners of the past, but in
order to orient yourself a little in the city, it is enough to
remember the following principles:
There are four
longitudinal ones in the city:
"zero" - goes almost along the
Volga from the Tsaritsa to the north a little further than the
new stadium;
The first longitudinal - from the Volga
hydroelectric power station itself in the north; through the
center, where it is called the same Lenin Avenue and is, in
fact, the main street of the city; through the legendary tunnel
to Tulak, which took 20 years to build; to the junction with the
Second Longitudinal in the area of the State University.
The
second longitudinal - from the junction with the First
longitudinal in the area of the tractor plant and to the
south. Thus, the Second Longitudinal passes through all
districts of the city.
The third longitudinal line - in the
north passes into the highway to Saratov, bypasses the city from
the west, connects with the highway to Rostov-on-Don. An
extension to the southern part of the city is planned.
By plane
Volgograd International Airport (VOG, Gumrak) , Aviator
highway, 161a. ✉ ☎ +7 (8442) 26-10-87. The airport is located within the
city in the village of Gumrak. You can get from the city by bus. 6E
(Geroev Alley - Airport), as well as m / t6 (Tulaka St. - Airport), m /
t6K (Kosmonavtov St. - Airport) and m / t80A (Yubileiny - Airport). The
airport has a new terminus for city trains, but the trains are not at
all coordinated with the planes. Volgograd can be reached by direct
flights from Moscow (Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo), St. Petersburg,
Perm, Samara, Simferopol, Surgut, Usinsk, Dubai, Dushanbe and Tashkent.
By train
Volgograd is a major railway junction through which the
line to Dagestan and Azerbaijan passes, as well as trains in the
direction of Siberia - South of Russia. The station "Volgograd-1" is
located in the Central District.
Volgograd-1 Railway Station,
Privokzalnaya Square, 1 , 15a). ☎ +7 (8442) 90-21-75.
By car
Volgograd stands at the intersection of highways M21 (part of the
European route E40) and P22 "Caspian". If you are hitchhiking, please
note that the local car numbers are 34 and 134.
By bus
Volgograd is connected by bus routes with Moscow and most of the cities
of the Volga region and the South of Russia.
From Moscow, buses to
Volgograd depart from Paveletsky railway station, metro station Moskwa
Metro Line 2 Krasnogvardeiskaya and from the bus station at metro
station Moskwa Metro Line 3 Shchelkovskaya, travel time is about 15
hours.
Regular flights are carried out to Rostov-on-Don, Kyiv,
Odessa, Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Taganrog, Astrakhan,
Sochi, etc.
Central Bus Station, Mikhail Balonin Street, 11. ☎ +7
(8442) 37-72-28, fax: +7 (8442) 37-85-74. 05:00 – 23:00.
On the
ship
Volgograd river port, Embankment of the 62nd Army, 6. ✉ ☎ +7
(8442) 26-26-55. 06:00 - 20:00. The river port of Volgograd is the
largest river port in Europe. During the navigation period, cruise ships
stop in Volgograd; there are also passenger river trams to holiday
villages on the left bank of the Volga.
First of all, the urban transport of Volgograd is interesting for its
high-speed rail system - metro tram, part of the route of which passes
through underground sections. The metrotram was originally designed in
such a way as to leave the possibility of transforming it into a
full-fledged metro in the future and running metro trains on it, but
from the moment it was opened in 1984 to the present, Tatra T3 trams
have been used as trains. An interesting feature of the metrotram is
that on the underground sections the movement is left-handed, and on the
aboveground sections it is right-handed (and there were no trams with
doors in both directions), therefore, on the very first underground
stretch, the tunnels pass over each other, forming an intersection.
On the maps of Volgograd, the metro tram is designated as ST -
high-speed tram. The only line runs along Lenin Avenue and connects the
Voroshilovsky and Central districts of the city with the northern
industrial districts - Traktorozavodsky and Krasnooktyabrsky. Currently,
the tram system with elements of the subway has 22 stations, 6 of which
are located underground.
In addition to the metrotram, the city
also has a network of buses (travel - 25 rubles), trolleybuses and
conventional trams (travel - 25 rubles), as well as fixed-route taxis.
Most of the city transport is badly worn out. Be careful on the roads,
even if the green light is on at the crossing.
Suburban electric
trains also greatly facilitate transport interchanges. Routes connect
all areas of the city. The fare is 26 rubles, for schoolchildren and
students a 50% discount. Especially this type of transport is reliable
and indispensable for residents of the southern districts of the city.
However, they only run a few times a day and the location of the stops
is inconvenient. It makes sense to use them only when planning a move,
say, from the southern part of Volgograd to Volzhsky and knowing the
work schedule in advance.
It is worth considering that in order
to get from the northern outskirts to the southern (or vice versa), you
will most likely have to make at least one transfer and spend more than
2 hours on the move.
Mamayev Kurgan and the Motherland
(monument-ensemble "To the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad"). For
free. Business card of Volgograd. The complex of monuments and
bas-reliefs is located at height 102 - one of the highest points in the
city and the site of the fiercest battles of the Battle of Stalingrad in
1942-1943. The ensemble was built from 1959 to 1967 under the guidance
of the Soviet sculptor E.V. Vuchetich. The height is crowned by the
monument “The Motherland Calls!”, which has become a symbol of the city
and the entire Victory.
Pavlov's House,
Sovetskaya street, 39.. During the 58 days of the Battle of
Stalingrad, a group of Soviet soldiers heroically held the defense in
the house. Pavlov's house became a symbol of courage, steadfastness and
heroism of the Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad. Marshal
Chuikov said in his memoirs: "This small group, defending one house,
destroyed more enemy soldiers than the Nazis lost during the capture of
Paris." The house is considered the first restored building in
Stalingrad. Not to be confused with the Gerhardt mill.
Gerhart's Mill, Marshal
Chuikov street, 47A. $0. The building of a 5-storey steam mill of the
beginning of the 20th century, destroyed during the Battle of
Stalingrad. One of the three buildings not restored as a memory of the
war. Part of the Museum-Reserve "Battle of Stalingrad". Not to be
confused with Pavlov's house.
Embankment named after the 62nd Army.
Central embankment of Volgograd. The embankment begins its history since
the Tsaritsyn times, being one of the main ports on the Volga. Before
the start of the Great Patriotic War, the embankment of Stalingrad was
transformed and became one of the best in the Volga region. After the
war, it was named after the army that defended the city. The embankment
was restored in 1952 and is conditionally divided into two levels: upper
and lower terraces.
Avenue of Heroes. Pedestrian boulevard in the
city center, connecting the embankment with the Square of the Fallen
Fighters. The architectural ensemble of the Alley perpetuates the memory
of the soldiers-defenders of Stalingrad, the Heroes of the Soviet Union
and the full cavaliers of the Order of Glory, whose names are inscribed
on commemorative steles-candles. The Alley is especially beautiful in
the evening, when it is illuminated by garlands of small lamps.
Square of the Fallen Fighters. The central square of Volgograd arose in
the 19th century. as the market square of Tsaritsyn. Until 1920, the
square was named Aleksandrovskaya, and after the revolution and the
civil war, it received a modern, somewhat pretentious name. During the
Battle of Stalingrad, the square became the site of fierce battles,
changing hands several times. On January 31, 1943, in the basements of
the Central Department Store, located on the corner of the square, the
commander of the 6th German Army, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, was
captured with his headquarters. Later, next to the mass grave of the
defenders of Tsaritsyn, Soviet soldiers who died in the battles for
Stalingrad were buried. A poplar that survived the Battle of Stalingrad
has been preserved in the public garden of the square.
Monument
to rivermen - fireboat "Extinguisher".
Church of St. Nicholas.
Kazan Cathedral.
Temple of Nikita the Confessor.
The first lock of the Volga-Don Canal. Gateway No. 1 is crowned with a
solemn Empire arch, through which ships pass along the canal. You can
see the process of ship locking
The world's largest monument to
Lenin. 57-meter monument at the beginning of the Volga-Don Canal.
Old
Sarepta. The unique historical and architectural complex "Sarepta" on
the southern outskirts of Volgograd is a miraculously preserved building
of the settlement of Lutheran colonists, founded in 1765 as a
brotherhood of herrnguters. The only colony in Russia (only a few dozen
in the world) of followers of the teachings of Jan Hus existed until the
end of the nineteenth century. Part of the territory of 7.1 hectares,
which once belonged to the old Sarepta, remained in its original form,
despite the floods and fires that periodically destroyed the entire
settlement. 28 buildings, including 24 monuments of architecture of the
18-19th century, which have survived to our time, were the center of
industry and culture of the Lower Volga region. The Sareptians also
contributed to the development of the Russian economy by growing and
processing crops previously unknown in the Volga region. Sarepta
gingerbread, balsam, oil and mustard powder were in demand far beyond
the borders of the state. The missionaries were the pioneers of tiling,
soap making, tobacco and the famous sarpin (weaving) production. For the
first time in the Volga region in Sarepta, a European elevator, water
supply and other benefits of civilization were used. Today, the
historical and architectural complex "Sarepta" includes: the 18th
century building of the museum-reserve "Old Sarepta" with an exposition
of the cultural heritage of the Lower Volga region and the history of
the development of the settlement, a church square with a bell tower, a
pharmacist's house, Sarepta vineyards, healing springs, a manor peasant,
a wine cellar with vaulted ceilings, industrial premises (18-19 century)
and the tallest building in the settlement - the Church, where concerts
of organ, instrumental and classical music are held (built in 1772). On
the old square, theatrical performances of historical battles take
place, festivals of national culture are held. The historical and
architectural complex "Sarepta" is considered the largest tourist,
cultural and research center of the Volga region.
Museums
1 Panorama Museum
"Battle of Stalingrad" , st. Marshal Chuikov, 47 (next to the Gerhardt
mill). ✉ ☎ +7 (8442) 23-67-23; +7 (8442) 55-00-83. in winter (from 01.11
to 31.03): Tue, Wed, Fri, Sun 10:00-18:00; Thu 13:00-21:00; Sat
10:00-20:00; in summer (from 01.04 to 31.10): Tue, Wed, Fri, Sun
10:00-18:00; Thu 10:00-21:00; Sat 10:00-20:00 except Monday. A large
historical and museum complex located at the landing site in September
1942 of the soldiers of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, Major General A.
I. Rodimtsev, who managed to stop and push back the German troops
advancing towards the Volga. 8 halls of the museum are dedicated to the
Battle of Stalingrad, there are 4 dioramas, and in the central part of
the building there is a panorama "The defeat of the Nazi troops near
Stalingrad" - the largest painting in Russia and the only panorama
dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. Many samples of weapons and
military equipment of the war years.
2 Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts
named after I.I. Mashkova, Lenin Ave., 21. ☎ +7 (8442) 38–24–44. Wed
11:00–18:00; Thu–Mon 10:00–18:00. 100-300 rubles. It was founded in 1960
and is the only art museum in the city. The basis of its permanent
exhibition is the works of the Russian school of the XVIII-beginning. XX
centuries The museum contains works of pre- and post-revolutionary times
by I.I. Mashkov, a representative of the "Jack of Diamonds" association
and a native of the region. The museum exhibits works by foreign
artists: "small Dutch", artists of Italy, Germany, France of the
XVII-XVIII centuries. There is an exhibition hall of the museum on
Chuikov street.
3 Volgograd Memorial and Historical Museum, st.
Gogol, 10 (on Railway Station Square). ☎ (ext. 1104) +7 (8442) 55-01-51
(ext. 1104). Tue–Fri 10:00–18:00 except Tuesday. The museum is located
in a mansion built in 1903, which belonged to the famous Tsaritsyno
merchants and patrons Repnikovs. The museum building is an example of
"Russian style" and "brick craftsmanship", an architectural monument of
regional significance, a monument of history of federal significance.
During the Civil War, the most important military institutions of the
city of Tsaritsyn worked here: the defense headquarters of the Tsaritsyn
Council of Workers, Soldiers, Peasants and Cossacks and the provincial
military enlistment office. The museum was opened on January 3, 1937 as
the Tsaritsyn Museum of Defense named after comrade. Stalin. 5 halls. In
front of the museum there are 2 monuments: to the inhabitants of
Tsaritsyn - participants in the First World War and the full Knight of
St. George, Hero of the Soviet Union K. I. Nedorubov (sculptor Sergey
Shcherbakov).
4 Museum of Musical Instruments of E. N. Pushkin, st.
Bystrov, 257. ☎ +7 (8442) 42-66-02, +7 (919) 548-20-85, +7 (917)
724-00-19. The museum is based on a collection of musical instruments
donated to the city in 1985 by the collector and restorer of musical
instruments E. N. Pushkin (1904-1989). Musical instruments of different
times and peoples are presented: pneumatic - button accordions,
accordions, harmonicas, harmoniums, strings - psaltery, zithers,
cymbals, etc. There are also very rare musical instruments: gavioli and
harmony flute. There are more than 300 exhibits in total. You can hear
how they sound and play it yourself.
5 Museum "Place of captivity of
the headquarters of the 6th German army F. Paulus" (Museum "Memory") ,
pl. Fallen Fighters, 2, entrance from the yard (ST station
"Komsomolskaya"). ☎ +7 (8442) 38-60-67. 10:00-16:00 except Saturday and
Sunday. - the basement in the Central Department Store, where on January
31, 1943, Soviet troops captured Field Marshal Paulus. Reconstruction of
the office of Paulus, the German first-aid post. An exposition dedicated
to the history of the Central Department Store built in 1938.
Historical-ethnographic and architectural museum-reserve "Old Sarepta",
Izobilnaya street, 10. ✉ ☎ +7 (8442) 67 02 80, +7 (8442) 67 33 02.
9:00-17:30 except Monday.
6 Museum "World of Inventions",
Krasnoznamenskaya st. 10. ☎ +7 (961) 681-46-46. 10:00–20:00. 300 rub.
The exposition is dedicated to Russian inventors and their inventions of
world importance.
Volgograd Regional Museum of Local Lore, ave.
Lenina, 5a and 7 (ST station Komsomolskaya). ☎ +7 (8442) 38-84-37, +7
(8442) 38-84-39. Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00. Founded in 1914, the Volgograd
Regional Museum of Local Lore (one of the oldest in the Volga region) is
housed in two adjacent buildings - monuments of history and architecture
of the late XIX - AD. XX century, the former zemstvo council and the
Volga-Kama commercial bank. Of interest are the expositions of
paleontology and paleobotany, archeology, ceramics and glass,
ethnography of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. It is worth taking
a look at the cap and cane of Peter I, who visited the city three times.
Noteworthy are the recreated interiors of the merchant's living room,
children's room, music store, Golden Horde dwelling, Cossack farmstead,
and the basement of the Volga-Kama Bank. The exposition of ancient
mirrors, suitcases, New Year's toys is interesting.
For children
Toy railway. The main station is located next to the high-speed tram
station "Chekist Square". The children's railway in the city of
Volgograd was solemnly opened in May 1948 with the official name -
Malaya Stalingradskaya. The length of the tracks was over 3 km. It was
laid along the embankment of the Volga River from the mouth of the
Tsaritsa River to the very Mamaev Kurgan. The final points were
Rodimtsevo and Pionerka with intricate wooden stations. In the early
years, trains were driven by captured locomotives HF 11005 and HF 11025
along the Children's Railway, this was due to the fact that after the
war a huge amount of captured equipment, rolling stock and equipment of
the German railway military field troops remained in the city. In 1952,
the reconstruction of the river embankment began, because of which part
of the railway track was dismantled and opened only by the next season.
In 1960, having received a new rolling stock, which included a diesel
locomotive TU2-099 and several PAFAWAG cars, the track gauge was changed
from 600 mm to 750 mm. The old equipment was destroyed. For several
years, the locomotive fleet of the Children's Railway had three diesel
locomotives, at which time the cars were formed into three trains:
Volgograd, Komsomolets and Pioneer. The children's railway was
originally built as a makeshift hut, so there are no signaling
facilities on the hauls. The turnouts of the stations are manually
driven. In 1961, the railway was renamed "Malaya Privolzhskaya". During
the second restoration of the embankment in 1978, the railway was again
dismantled. In 1979, she was officially placed in a new place, where she
is to this day. Due to the change in location, the length of the railway
track was reduced to 1.2 km, while the number of stations, on the
contrary, increased. Today, the Volgograd Children's Railway cooperates
with the Young Railwayman circle, which operates from October to April.
After the theoretical classes, children have the opportunity to try
themselves as a driver or a railwayman, a conductor or a traffic
organizer.
Volgograd State Circus, st.
Krasnoznamenskaya, 15. ☎ +7(8442) 33-45-74; +7(8442) 33-45-78; +7(8442)
33-45-82. Daily 10:00–19:00.
Anticafe "Take care of time", st. Mira, 19. ☎ 8-961-086-58-92.
weekdays 12:00-23:00, Saturday, Sunday 11:00-23:00.
Anticafe
"Posidelki", shopping center. ☎ +7 937 556 96 00, 8 (8442) 51 53 10.
Rock bars
Club White Horse, st. Ostrovsky, 5. ☎ (8442) 33 17 39.
Mon-Sun 12.00–2.00.
Theaters
Volgograd Laboratory of
Contemporary Theatre. ✉ ☎ +7-917-644-46-87.
Theater of the Young
Spectator, st. Workers' and Peasants' 38 a. ☎ 95-97-99 and 95-88-15. The
Volgograd Theater for Young Spectators is one of the most famous
theaters of this category in Russia. Many now famous directors and
actors of theater and cinema began their creative career in the Youth
Theater. This includes director Dmitry Astrakhan, actors Maxim Averin,
Dmitry Dyuzhev, Konstantin Lavronenko and others. People's Artist of
Russia Aristarkh Livanov also began his acting career at the Youth
Theater - the Volgograd Theater for Young Spectators. In 2014, this
wonderful theater turns 44 years old. The Volgograd Youth Theater, now
located on Worker-Krestyanskaya Street, is the heir to the legendary
Stalingrad Youth Theater, which opened on October 18, 1933 in the
premises of the former Tsaritsyn cinema "Coliseum". The audience loved
and willingly visited the Stalingrad Youth Theater. Since 1938, a ballet
studio and a puppet theater have been opened at the theater. Before the
war, the theater was located on Oktyabrskaya Street (house number 16)
next to the Pioneer store. In August 1942, the theater building was
destroyed by a direct bomb hit. The theater troupe at that time was in
evacuation in Kazan and eventually formed the backbone of the future
Kazan Youth Theater. The new Youth Theater in Volgograd was built for a
long time and opened 28 years after the destruction of the old one - on
March 22, 1970. The project was developed by the architect G. Krivkin.
The facade of the theater is decorated with the sculpture "The Firebird"
by N. Pavlovskaya. The interiors are enlivened by mosaics and paintings
by A. Borovko. Forged clock in the foyer of the theater created by E.
Obukhov. All artists are natives of Volgograd. Performances are held on
two stages: large (600 seats) and small (100 seats). Since 2004, the
Youth Theater has been headed by the director and chief director,
Honored Artist of the Russian Federation A.A. Avkhodeev. The main part
of the troupe are graduates of the Volgograd VGIK. The theater regularly
tours the region, the country, travels abroad, participates in festivals
and competitions.
Volgograd Youth Theatre, Alley of Heroes st., 4. ☎ (8442)
38-17-52, 8 960 8732732.
Theater-studio "Hobbiton". ☎
+7-905-338-4230, +7-906-451-3489.
Volgograd Music and Drama Cossack
Theatre, Akademicheskaya St., 3. ☎ (8442) 94-86-29.
Other
Volgograd planetarium, st. Gagarin, 14. ✉ ☎ 24-18-72. for adults - 220
rubles, for children - 150 rubles. The planetarium was built in 1954 in
the Stalinist Empire style and was a gift from the workers of the German
Democratic Republic to I. V. Stalin on the eve of his 70th birthday. It
is considered one of the best in Russia and one of the eight best
planetariums in the world.
Dolphinarium, St. Zemlyachki, d. 110 B,
shopping mall KomsoMALL. ☎ (8442) 515-527; 515-528. Wed, Thu, Fri - from
18-00; Sat, Sun - 12-00, 15-00, 18-00. 400-800 rubles
Oceanarium, St.
Zemlyachki, d. 110 B, shopping mall KomsoMALL. ☎ +7 (961) 070-80-10.
Volgograd Regional Universal Scientific Library named after Maxim Gorky,
st. Mira, 15. ✉ Mon-Thu 10-19, Sat-Sun 10-18. In the city center, close
to bus and railway stations. Free Wi-Fi is available on the 3rd and 4th
floors of the library.
Naturally, the most exploited theme for souvenirs is the Motherland
and other symbols of the military past. This trade is concentrated on
Mamayev Kurgan itself. In addition to street vendors, pay attention to
branded kiosks.
The Mashkov Museum sells themed branded souvenirs.
Ergeninskaya mineral water. The healing spring of water has been known
for more than 200 years, and for the first time in the country,
Ergeninskaya water began to be bottled.
Food. In Volgograd, ice cream
and chocolate are produced by OJSC VOLGOMYASOMOLTORG and CJSC NP Confil,
respectively. The taste and composition of the above is for an amateur.
You can buy interesting sets of sweets. Kiosks and departments are
located throughout the city. A local manufacturer of good juices is the
Sady Pridonya company .
Beer. In the city there is a brewery
"Pivovar" (Raboche-Krestyanskaya, 65), which offers a fairly large
selection of beer and soft drinks. The plant's products can be found in
almost all stores in the city. However, the best beer is at the bottling
plant itself.
Souvenirs. A good hand-made souvenir shop is located to
the left of the entrance to the EUROPE CITY MALL.
Bird market,
Krasnooktyabrsky district, st. Vershinina, d. 1. If you want to find a
Soviet vintage edit
Mustard oil
watermelons
Uryupinskiy downy
shawl
Cheap
If it’s really cheap, then you can eat a chicken Kiev, since
there are plenty of corresponding stalls in the city. Many retail chains
(the same Lenta, Okay, Man) have their own cookery. There are also
cooking facilities at the Yuzhny and Volgograd hotels.
Cafe
"Povariya", st. Communist, house 40. ✉ ☎ +7(8442)96-53-78. 07:00 - 24:00
(Mon-Fri), Sat-Sun - unknown. The average check for lunch is 150-200
rubles (2016). Dining room on the second floor in the building of the
central Sberbank at the Sberbank hotel. Look for the entrance from the
side of the railway. Favorably differs from most dining rooms in the
city with a decent interior, dishes at an affordable price. At the same
time, you can also find such food: buckwheat can be dry, meatballs from
semi-finished products, fish cakes with remnants of bones, rubber beef,
overcooked broccoli, most dishes are very fatty. In the self-service
dining room, you should remove the tray with dirty dishes. Payment by
bank cards is possible. On the ground floor there is a buffet with rolls
and other trifles from this dining room. At lunchtime, there are very
long queues in the dining room.
Average cost
You can sit, eat
and drink beer in Franteli, of which there are also many in the city.
However, all cafes in the city offer approximately the same prices.
Cafe Mario
McDonald's
Cafe "Steak House" Facebook icon.svg ,
st. Sovetskaya, 11. ☎ +7 (8442) 50-39-50, (delivery) +7 (8442) 25-50-60
(delivery). 09:00-23:00. Excellent European cuisine, pleasant
atmosphere, not cheap, but tasty and refined. Convenient location close
to most attractions.
Expensive
As such, there are no
establishments of this level in the city. Pay attention to restaurants
at hotels (Yuzhny, Volgograd), Yakitoria in the building of the river
station, some establishments along Sovetskaya Street (Golden Prague,
Chesky Dvor, Bar-grill) and Mira Street.
Nightlife is concentrated in the central area on the Alley of Heroes
and the Central Embankment.
Bar Alaska (ALYASKA BAR) , st.
Lenina, house 13. ☎ +7 (961) 0830007. –1800:01–00:00. from 180 rubles
for a bottle of 0.33 liters. the first and most worthy craft beer bar in
Volgograd.
Hotel "Tourist", st. Marshal Chuikov, 73. from 550 to 3000 rubles.
Cheap
Hotel Start *** (Gramshy street) on Spartanovka.
http://hotel-start.ru/ Studio 3500, Suite 2600 Premium 2200, Standard
850
Hostel Skotch
http://scotchhostel.com/ 14, Donetska St. +7 (8442) 25-13-13
hostel@scotchhostel.com
Oktyabrskaya Hotel.
Average cost
Many decent hotels were built for the 2018 championship, for any budget.
Expensive
Hotel "Volgograd", Mira street, 12. ✉ ☎ +7 (8442)
55-12-55, +7 (8442) 55-19-55 (booking), fax: +7 (8442) 26-26-12. from
2600 to 8800 rubles.
Intourist
Hilton Garden Inn Volgograd, V.I.
Lenina, 56a (next to the TRC Europe). ☎ +7 (8442) 532-200. International
4-star hotel.
Telephone
Stationary telephones of the city have six-digit numbers
of the form +7 (8442) XX-XX-XX. In addition to the big three mobile
operators (Beeline, Megafon and MTS), Tele2 and Pronto operate in the
city.
Mail
Postal codes: 400001—400138
Access to the
Internet
There are some post offices, the Library. Gorky, the
remaining gaming clubs (for example, Invasion at the Trader, Sturmovik
at the stop of Bukhantsev).
Free WiFi
There are in some cafes,
libraries (for example, the library of M. Gorky) and on the Alley of
Heroes.
Ethnic conflicts are possible in the city. The probability of aggressive attention from a geographical point of view increases towards the outskirts, and from a temporary point of view towards the evening, holidays and football matches. You should also be careful in the private sector.
It originated around 1555 on an island near the left bank of the
Volga, but was soon transferred to the cape of the right bank at the
confluence of the Tsaritsa River into the Volga, from which it received
the name Tsaritsyn. The hydronym "Queen", in turn, came from the Turkic
"Sary-su" (sary - "yellow", su - "water"). There is also a hypothesis
that the name Tsaritsyn is derived from the name of the island, which
was inscribed on maps of the 14th-16th centuries as "Tsitsara". It is
believed to be an Iranian name with an unknown meaning. According to E.
M. Pospelov, it is plausible to assume that the image of the island goes
back to an unknown medieval Arabic source, and the inscription was only
explanatory (Arabic jezira means “island”) and, thus, the inscription
“Citsera” has nothing to do with the name of the city .
In 1925,
the city was renamed Stalingrad in honor of I. V. Stalin. Subsequently,
during the debunking of Stalin's personality cult, the city was renamed
again. Although its historical name Tsaritsyn had nothing to do with the
titles of Russian monarchs, it was nevertheless considered excessively
"monarchical", and on November 10, 1961, by Decree of the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, the city was given the name Volgograd
[9]. The new name is artificial - the combination of the formant -grad
with the name of the river has no analogues in Russian toponymy.
On the site of modern Volgograd, between the
Sukhaya and Mokraya Mechetka rivers, there was a Mongolian settlement
with an unknown name. Russian settlers named its ruins the Mosque
Settlement; coins of the Jochi ulus from 1274 to 1377 were found
there. Modern archaeologists did not have time to explore the
settlement, as its buildings were taken apart on building bricks
from the very moment of the founding of Tsaritsyn. The professional
expedition of 1920 by the archaeologist Ballad was interrupted by
the Civil War, and the traces of the Mechet settlement were finally
destroyed by the development of the Volgograd microdistrict
Spartanovka, which has been going on since the 1930s to the present
day (the site of the ancient man, Sukhaya Mechetka, was also
destroyed here). The hydronym "Mechetka" is probably given for this
settlement, it is found in central Russia and comes from Old
Russian. "Mechk" is a bear, but they do not live in the steppe, and,
most likely, the river is named after the ruins of a mosque.
Volgograd is not the successor of this settlement, it is located 18
km north of the historical core of Tsaritsyn and ceased to exist
200-250 years before its foundation. The Golden Horde settlement
also existed at the mouth of the Tsaritsa River.
Since the
15th century, as a result of the events called by the Russian
chroniclers "The Great Zamyatney", the Golden Horde began to
disintegrate into independent khanates: Kazan, Siberian, Astrakhan,
Crimean and others, smaller. The collapse was accompanied by bloody
wars and the deportation of the population into slavery. Sarai-Berke
was gradually destroyed and emptied during the internecine wars of
the Horde khans, and as a result, they were finally abandoned by the
population. The Russian kingdom in the 16th century, on the
contrary, went through a period of centralization, became more and
more powerful and conquered the khanates one after another: Kazan in
1552, Astrakhan in 1556, Siberian in 1598.
At the time of the
founding of Tsaritsyn, the Crimean Khanate remained unconquered -
protected by the Wild Field, Perekop and the military support of the
Ottoman Empire, it was the main danger for the entire south of
Russia.
The territory of the Volgodonsk interfluve was easily
accessible during the Crimean Nogai raids and was unsuitable for
peaceful settlements, however, with the organization of military
protection, a river trade route from Nizhny Novgorod to the new
Russian city of Astrakhan through Kazan became possible.
The
Volga trade route was revived again, the Russian kingdom sold
timber, grain, cloth, leather, wax, honey in Astrakhan, and bought
salt, fabrics, metals (there was not enough iron for the country's
needs, and there was no extraction of non-ferrous metals at all),
incense ...
The Volga became a transit route for
international trade. England was looking for ways of trade with
Persia to buy silk and spices bypassing competitors - Spain and
Portugal. The first mention of Tsaritsyn came to us in a letter from
the merchant of the Moscow Company Christopher Burrow (Russian
sources for this period were not preserved due to the fires in
Moscow in 1626 and 1701, when the entire archive of the Kazan Order
was burned down).
This is the first
mention in 1579 of a seasonal border guard on Tsaritsyno Island, one
of the chain of Volga guards. In the period 1585-1590, voivode
Grigory Zasekin founded a number of permanent fortresses with
garrisons of 100-150 people, which by now have become regional
centers of the Volga region: Tsaritsyn, Samara and Saratov. The
Tsaritsyn fortress also controlled the eastern side of the
Volgodonskaya pass - the shortest (about 70 km) distance between the
Don and Volga rivers. The instructions of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich
Zasekin on its arrangement were found in the category book with the
date - July 2 (12), 1589. It is this date that is considered the
founding day of Tsaritsyn. The first mention of Tsaritsyn as a city
is contained in the Book of the Big Drawing of 1600.
The city
first appears in topography in 1614 on the map of Tsar Fyodor II
Godunov - written as Tsarina. The name "Tsarina", most likely,
rethought by its sound similarity to the Turkic "sary-su" - yellow
or beautiful (in the Turkic language the word yellow and beautiful
synonyms) is a river, and "Tsaritsyn" - from the Turkic word
"sary-chin" " yellow - beautiful - island. " For the first 10-15
years, the city was located on an island that was not mapped on the
maps of its time, the most likely options are Sarpinsky or Golodny,
in the following years it was moved to the corner formed by the
banks of the Volga and Tsaritsa.
Tsaritsyn was founded as a
Russian military outpost on the territory of a vassal of the Russian
kingdom since 1586 - the Great Nogai Horde. The nearest Russian
settlement (not counting the Saratov fortress, also on the territory
of the Nogai) was the Voronezh fortress, 530 km from Tsaritsyn along
the Nogai highway (the future Astrakhan post road, and now the
Caspian federal highway).
The founding of Tsaritsyn in 1589
took place without a fight, because after a series of defeats from
the Russian troops in 1582-1586, the ruler of the Nogai Horde,
Urus-biy, in 1586 finally recognized himself as a vassal of the
Russian kingdom.
But during the "Time of Troubles" (1598-1613), when, after the
suppression of the Rurik dynasty, the Russian kingdom was weakening
and crumbling, torn apart by political leapfrog, peasant wars and
foreign interventions, the Nogais again began to fight Russia.
However, after the end of the Troubles, Russia regained its
former strength, and biy Ishteryak recognized himself as a vassal of
Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. Under his successor, biye Kanai, the Great
Nogai Horde finally disintegrated and the last blow to the Volga
Nogai was struck in 1632 by the Kalmyks under the leadership of
Taishi Kho-Urluk. They drove the Nogai from the Volgodonsk nomads to
the Caucasus.
Unlike the Turks and Sunni Muslims of the
Nogai, the Kalmyks were Western Mongols by origin and Gelugpa
Buddhists by faith, therefore they did not focus on the Crimean
Khanate and accepted Russian citizenship (while not missing the
opportunity to commit robber raids, repeatedly violating the oath -
wool).
Since the 1630s, the lands around Tsaritsyn were no
longer disputed from Russia by any of the neighboring rulers.
Another major regional force of that era was the Cossacks, who,
before the suppression of the Bulavin uprising (1709), were a free
military-robber community.
There were also frequent
plundering raids of Kazakhs, Cheremis, Circassians. The inhabitants
of the fortress could not lead an ordinary peasant life and could
even graze cattle only on Sarpinsky Island. But the most dangerous
enemy continued to be the Crimean Khanate, which carried out
constant raids with the aim of plundering and driving the population
into slavery. During these years, the right bank of the Volga was
called "Crimean" by the name of the main danger.
With all
possible dangers from other peoples, the city experienced its first
defeat during the Civil War of the Time of Troubles. Tsaritsyn was
among the cities that recognized the power of False Peter, who was
gathering an army for a campaign against Moscow, to help his
"nephew" - False Dmitry II. On October 24, 1607, the voivode Fyodor
Sheremetev, sent by Tsar Vasily Shuisky, took the city by storm.
In the 1660s, circumstances brought Stepan Razin to Tsaritsyn
three times, and this still ended in tragedy for the city. The
Council Code of 1649, which finally enslaved the peasants, and the
Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667 filled the Lower Volga region and
the Don with fugitive peasants and deserters. The gathering of those
wishing for robbery under the ataman of Razin along the Azov and
Black Seas took place in the Panshin town on the Don (now the
village of Panshino of the Gorodishchensky district) in the winter
of 1667, but the then Turkish fortress of Azov blocked his way to
the mouth of the Don. Changing the direction of the raid and
dragging the plows along the haul to the Volga, Razin in March 1667
plundered a caravan of ships near the present village of
Karavayinka, Dubovsky district, thereby openly entering into
conflict with the tsarist government. Despite this, the Tsaritsyn
voivode Andrei Unknovsky in May 1667 gave Razin the bellows and
other equipment and let the thieves' flotilla through without
shelling down the Volga, probably not daring to fight in case of
refusal with such a formidable force. This is how the “campaign for
the zipuns” of 1668-1669, which was extremely successful for the
Cossacks, began when they captured the Yaitsky town, defeated the
Persian fleet in the battle at the Pig Island, and sacked Derbent,
Baku, Rasht; The song "From Beyond the Island to the Rod" was
composed according to the events of this trip. In exchange for the
surrender of heavy artillery, promises to stop the robbery of
Russian cities and to disband the Cossack army, Razin was allowed to
sail through Astrakhan and Tsaritsyn, where in May 1669 he made a
stop. And this time there was no blood: Razin released the prisoners
from prison and beat Unknowsky for the high cost in the tsar's
tavern (there was a state monopoly on the sale of alcohol). Having
dragged the ships back to the Don, the ataman broke his promise and
did not disband the Cossacks, and after spending the winter of 1670
in a set of new troops, he raised an uprising against the tsarist
power, the first target of which was Tsaritsyn. On April 13, 1670,
the city was taken into a short siege, which ended in an internal
revolt among the serf archers, who themselves opened the gates. The
new Tsaritsyn governor Timofey Turgeniev and the archers who did not
betray their oath were executed, and a detachment of archers sent to
help Tsaritsyn under the command of Ivan Lopatin was defeated near
the Money Island. In the summer of 1670, Razin captured all the
Volga fortified cities and approached the land border of Russia on
the Volga - the Simbirsk line, where he was defeated by Prince Yuri
Baryatinsky. Luck did not return to the chieftain; leaving his
Cossacks for reprisal, he fled to the Don, where he was captured by
the ataman Kornila Yakovlev and the “homely” Don Cossacks loyal to
the tsar. Razin was extradited to Moscow, where he was executed on
June 6, 1671. Tsaritsyn was left without a fight by Razin's ally
Fyodor Sheludyak in August 1671, when the defeated rebels gathered
at their last fortress of Astrakhan, where they were defeated in the
fall of 1671.
In the next peasant war of 1707-1708, Tsaritsyn also found
himself at the epicenter of events. From the reign of Peter I,
titanic tasks began to be realized in the country: access to the
Black Sea (Azov campaigns) and the Baltic (Northern War), the
transfer of the capital to St. Petersburg and many other reforms.
The cost of these efforts was the increasing tax and recruitment
oppression on the peasants, forcing them to flee to the Don and the
Lower Volga, which did not know serfdom. Here, the administrative
administration was not finally formed and was a tsarist fortress
surrounded by Cossack villages with local self-government, which
were associated with some interests with Moscow, but were not
directly subordinate to it. Therefore, the ultimatums put forward by
Peter I to the Cossack atamans about the extradition of fugitive
peasants and the ban on salt mining, which violated the state
monopoly, were perceived as a violation of ancient customs. The tsar
sent Prince Yuri Dolgorukov to gather the fugitive peasants, but the
Cossacks on October 9, 1707, destroyed the prince's detachment near
the village of Shulginka. At the head of the rebels becomes a strong
leader - Kondraty Bulavin, he defeats the ataman Maksimov, loyal to
the tsarist power, in May 1708 near Cherkassk and himself becomes
the ataman of the Don army. The new ataman sets the task of raising
the entire Cossack south to revolt and sends atamans Drany, Gologo,
Bespaly to the Sloboda Ukraine, atamans Nekrasov, Khokhlach, Pavlov
to the Volga, and he himself, with the main group of rebellious
Cossacks, is trying to take Azov. But after the unsuccessful assault
on Azov, the Cossacks betray and kill their ataman on June 7, 1708,
and the 30-thousandth army of Vasily Dolgorukov defeats the main
part of the Cossacks on June 30 at Thor. The Volga rebellion group
is the most successful of all: on May 13, 1708, they took Dmitrievsk
by storm, and on June 7 Tsaritsyn, executing the commander of the
defense, Voivode Turchenin.
After Bulavin's death, the rebels
are disunited, Nekrasov leaves for the Don, Pavlov's group remains
in Tsaritsyn, but on August 2 it is knocked out by the royal
detachment that came from Astrakhan. Ignat Nekrasov appointed the
collection of the defeated units of the rebels near his small
homeland - the village of Golubinskaya, but the approaching tsarist
troops defeated it in the last battle on August 8. The Nekrasovites
leave for the then Turkish Kuban, the remaining rebels are executed
without mercy, placing gallows along the roads.
The
Volgodonsk region was weakened by the Bulavin uprising, followed by
repressions and the transfer of Russian troops to Sweden to wage the
Northern War. This was used by the seraskir of the Crimean Khanate
Bakhti Gerai, who organized the Kuban pogrom in August 1717. In
addition to the Crimean Tatars, the Nogais, Circassians and the
Cossacks who left under the leadership of Nekrasov joined the raid,
the main goal was to capture slaves and sell them in the slave
markets of the Ottoman Empire. The robbery tactics consisted of a
swift blockade of Russian fortresses, while another part of the
robbers burst into the villages and captures young people capable of
withstanding a hiking trip to the Crimea, leaving the elderly and
children behind. In August 1717, fortresses and villages along the
Penza-Saratov-Tsaritsyn arc were attacked by this raid; according to
various sources, from 15 to 30 thousand people were taken into
slavery. Tsaritsyn is also blockaded, and the inhabitants who were
outside the city walls were killed or taken into slavery. They
managed to repulse several thousand prisoners by attacking the Tatar
detachments slowed down by the prey. The success of the raid was
facilitated by the Nekrasov Cossacks, who were natives of the
Volgodonsk interfluve, who were the guides of the Tatars. Having
left for the Kuban, they formed their own religious community based
on the Old Believers and their own moral code - the "Testaments of
Ignat". They considered Peter I the Antichrist, the rest of the
Orthodox-Nikonians were traitors to "ancient piety" and treated them
without pity.
To prevent predatory raids in 1718, the
construction of the Tsaritsyn guard line began, and the Don Cossacks
were reinforced with dragoon regiments. In the next decade, after
the suppression of the Bulavinsky uprising, the tsarist government
finally subjugated the Cossacks, the election of the ataman at the
Cossack Circle was canceled and now the ataman was appointed by the
government. Since 1721, Cossack regiments were included in the
Military Collegium (analogous to the modern Ministry of Defense).
This year began the transformation of the Cossacks from opponents of
the autocracy into its faithful stronghold, most of the Cossacks
will now faithfully serve the royal family until the suppression of
the dynasty during the execution of the royal family in 1918. In
1734, the Volga Cossack army was founded under the full control of
the central government (and not spontaneously, as before).
The last event of the era of wars and rebellions in the Volga
region was the Peasant War of 1773-1775. The revolt arose among the
Yaik Cossacks due to the strengthening of the tsarist power among
the formerly free Cossacks, and in two years captured the Urals and
the Volga region. The reason for the war was the intensification of
serfdom, even the last legal right of serfs to complain about their
master was abolished by the manifesto of Catherine II of August 22,
1767. A peasant could suffer from any lordly tyranny, ranging from
whims and ending with the bullying of people with mental illness
(for example, Saltychikha). Therefore, they easily believed in a
kind, "real" king, and this belief was often used by impostors
posing as royal persons. The most successful was Emelyan Pugachev,
in the spring of 1773 posing as Peter III and announcing his
"decree" on the release of the peasants. Numerous detachments of
Cossacks, fugitive peasants, Volga Tatars and Bashkirs began to
adhere to it. This army, quickly formed from October 1773, began the
siege of Orenburg, it lasted until March 1774 and was removed by the
approaching army of General Golitsyn. The long and unsuccessful
siege is considered Pugachev's mistake; instead of expanding the
zone of rebellion, he pulled the main forces to one point and lost
strategic initiative. Since the spring of 1774, he was forced to
withdraw his troops down the Volga from the tsarist army pursuing
him under the leadership of Suvorov, but for the Volga cities he
looked like an advancing winner. The cities surrendered after a
quick assault, and often without a fight, meeting Pugachev with a
bell ringing (as it should have been for the royal person). The only
city that did not surrender to the impostor was Tsaritsyn, who
defended commandant Tsylyatev with his courage and organizational
skills. Gathering in the city all the soldiers and Cossacks who had
not changed their oath and retreated from the cities taken by
Pugachev, he managed to collect about 6 thousand fighters with 73
guns. The artillery was divided into the land unit on the fortress
walls and the floating Volga batteries. On August 21, 1774, the
assault on Tsaritsyn by the Pugachevites began, the parties entered
into combat contact in the area of modern Spartanovka, the
Tsaritsyn detachment retreated to the fortress. Inspired by the
first success, Pugachev led the troops along the Volga bank close to
the walls of the fortress, and placed the artillery on Sibir-Gora (a
hill near the Volgograd-1 station, the beginning of Nevskaya Street
from the overpass through the railway tracks) in dangerous proximity
to the Tsaritsyn guns. The artillery duel that ensued ended in the
complete defeat of the Pugachev positions, then floating batteries
hit the main part of the rebels from the Volga and also forced them
to retreat. It was not possible to take Tsaritsyn on the move, and
there was no time left for a long siege (he was pursued by Suvorov),
Pugachev retreated to the Black Yar, where he was defeated in a
battle at the Solenikova gang on 25 August. With a small detachment
of his closest circle, he fled to the Akhtuba steppes, where he
turned out to be extradited by them in exchange for the forgiveness
of the tsarist power on September 15, executed on January 10, 1775
in Moscow. The brave commandant Tsypletev received the rank of
general and an estate near Tsaritsyn, which he named Alekseevka (in
honor of his deceased son Alexei) - now the village of Gorkovsky.
Until the 1750s, the Volgodonsk region was a buffer zone between
the peaceful provinces of the Russian Empire north of Voronezh and
the nomads and khanates of the Caucasian and Central Asian regions.
During this period, Tsaritsyn remained a border settlement with
military-administrative functions: supply depots for the waterway,
quarantine of sick people from passing ships, and small trade. The
main population was the military - up to 400 people, and a small
number of civilians. In 1645, the voivode Unknowsky writes about his
subordinates: “there are two hundred foot soldiers in total, out of
the same two hundred people in the sovereign’s affairs at the lace
yard and customs are in the heads and in the kisses, and in the
command hut, and in the bailiffs, and in the living yard , and the
regimental all sorts of sovereign grain and other supplies in the
kissers and watchmen have fifty people. " In 1664, the first stone
building appeared in the city - the Church of John the Baptist, and
only after decades the following: the Assumption Church in 1718 and
the Holy Trinity Church in 1720. The reforms on the European model
that began with Peter I significantly strengthened the country; in
the organization of the army, industry, and state structure, the
Russian Empire significantly surpassed its eastern neighbors, and
from the 1750s, Russian expansion into the Crimea, the Caucasus and
Central Asia began. Tsaritsyn remained in the rear of these
conflicts, the former opponents were expelled (nogai) or forced to a
peaceful life on Russian political conditions (Kalmyks, Volga
Tatars, Bashkirs), or restrained on the borders much south of
Tsaritsyn (Crimean Khanate, Caucasian peoples), therefore, from the
fortress became turn into a small peaceful town.
The development of the border territories of the Russian Empire
consisted in the tactics of squeezing out nomadic peoples to the
south and east, fencing off the territory with a chain of fortresses
connected in a defensive line and settling the border zone with
Cossacks. The protected space was recognized as safe and was
mastered by peaceful settlers, a new line was created to the south,
and military garrisons and Cossacks were transferred to it. A
conditionally new stage in the development of Tsaritsyn can be
considered 1775, when the Tsaritsyn guard line and the Volga Cossack
army were eliminated and the Azov-Mozdok fortified line took over
the function of the southern border of Russia. The territory of the
Volgodonsk interfluve ceased to be the target of predatory raids,
and in 1780 the Tsaritsyn district was organized, which already
lived a peaceful peasant way of life. The city began to grow into
suburbs, and in 1820 a new urban development plan was approved,
which no longer needed a fortress wall and ramparts.
From
this period, the active settlement of the adjacent territory by
peasants-settlers from the central provinces began, who founded the
oldest villages that have now become part of the city: Otrada,
Elshanka, Beketovka, Mechetnaya (on the site of modern Spartanovka).
In addition to Russian subjects, at the invitation of Catherine the
Great, German colonists-Hernguthers settled, bringing with them new
technologies and a new social way of life. The first school,
pharmacy, coffee shop, the first planting of potatoes, mustard and
tobacco in the Tsaritsyn region took place in the colony of
Sarepta-on-Volga. The first plant of the future Volgograd was the
mustard processing plant, opened in 1812, and the Sarepta mustard
and oil mill that is still operating today. Until the middle of the
18th century, the food industry developed primarily in Tsaritsyn,
which was facilitated by the proximity of the Elton salt mines, the
fish resources of the Volga and the Caspian Sea, and melon growing.
For all of Russia, merchants supplied salt, mustard, nardek, salted
and dried fish. The land of the Volgodonsk interfluve remained a
zone of risky agriculture with frequent droughts, frosts and locust
infestations, therefore, among the inhabitants of Tsaritsyn and the
surrounding area, “latrine trades” were developed (in modern
terminology - a rotational method of work), they were hired by barge
haulers, chumaks, bastards (from the word drag) to drag ships from
the Volga to the Don.
The launch of the Volga-Don railway in
1862 with access to the Don at Kalach gave Tsaritsyn a huge
advantage in competition for the transshipment of the increasing
cargo traffic along the Volgodonsk crossing. The road entered the
city from the south along the Elshanka River with a turn at the
Volga bank to the Volzhskaya station - the current quay walls of the
Volgograd cargo port in the Voroshilovsky district, where the first
railway station of the city was created.
The success as a
regional transport hub in 1868 was consolidated by the
Gryaz-Tsaritsyn railway, which connected the city through the Gryaz
station with the Baltic (Rigo-Orlovskaya railway) and Moscow
(Ryazan-Uralskaya railway) directions. She entered Tsaritsyn from
the north and, having rounded the Mamaev Kurgan along the beginning
of the Saratov post tract (now Lenin Avenue), approached the current
territory of the Volgograd-1 station. To connect the Volga-Don and
Gryaze-Tsaritsyn lines, a bridge was built from the Volzhskaya
station to Mamayev Kurgan along the Volga along the territory of the
modern Central Embankment. For the increased passenger traffic, the
monumental building of the Tsaritsyn station was erected, which
became the landmark of Tsaritsyn and pre-war Stalingrad (the death
of this building is captured in a photograph that has become a
symbol of the tragedy of Stalingrad). In 1899, to reach the Black
Sea and the Caspian Sea, the construction of a branch from the
Tikhoretskaya station of the Vladikavkaz railway to the Tikhoretsky
railway station (now the Volgograd-2 station) in Tsaritsyn was
completed. Both stations were connected by a jumper across a viaduct
in the floodplain of the Tsaritsa River (filled up in 1960). The
first city tram route was laid from the city center and the
Tsaritsyn station to Tikhoretsky in 1913. In 1900, the line of the
Volgodonskaya railway was extended to the Likhaya station of the
Southern Railway, which opened the Rostov-Donetsk direction.
Tsaritsyn won the competition in the Volgodonsk region, where
Caspian oil, Donetsk coal and Ural metal can be delivered over the
shortest distance. During this period, river traffic along the Volga
was also undergoing an industrial revolution: the archaic gangs of
barge haulers, belyans and embroidery were replaced by paddle
steamers of large shipping companies: Caucasus and Mercury,
Airplane, "On the Volga", and in 1878 the first in the world oil
tanker "Zoroaster".
After the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the city's industry began
to grow rapidly, which was facilitated by the factors of convenient
transport - the Volga and the developed railway network, and the
territory - a flat steppe without extraneous buildings. This made it
possible to immediately build huge industrial complexes with their
own infrastructure and workers' settlements. In 1880, on the site of
the modern park of the Central Park of Culture and Leisure, the
construction of the Nobel town began, thanks to which Tsaritsyn
became an oil hub - here Caspian oil was poured from river tankers
into railway tanks for transportation to the European part of the
country. The proximity of crude oil gave impetus to the development
of oil refining - kerosene and oil production began to work.
The French joint-stock "Ural-Volga Metallurgical Company" in 1897
built the Tsaritsyn metallurgical plant, later leased by the Joint
Stock Company DYUMO.
With the assistance of the British
company "Vickers", the Tsaritsyn gun factory was built, the
specialization of which has been preserved even after 100 years -
sea and field artillery of large calibers.
By 1913, the
county Tsaritsyn in terms of the number of inhabitants - more than
130,000 - overtook many provincial towns. It was a period of
explosive growth in the construction of residential, industrial,
public and entertainment buildings, hospitals, schools, hotels.
Infrastructure also developed rapidly: the electric network (1880,
Nobel town), telephone (1885, Nobel town), water supply (1890),
cinema (1907), city tram (1913), bridges and ramps across the
Tsaritsa were built.
In the 1910s, through the efforts of the
priest Iliodor, Tsaritsyn became the unofficial Russian capital of
Orthodox monarchist extremism - the Black Hundred. He won tremendous
influence among the townspeople thanks to his talent as an orator,
preacher and abbot of the Holy Spirit monastery built by him with
donations. The topic of Iliodor's speeches was easy and
understandable for the common people - "Bad officials, journalists,
Jews and intellectuals betray a good tsar", his sermons attracted
thousands of audiences, and besides the royal family he did not
spare any authorities. Gradually he came into conflict with all
local and central authorities (the last straw was the public beating
of a policeman and other citizens on August 10, 1909 by a crowd of
Iliodorovites): with the governor Tatishchev, the Synod and
Stolypin. He was able to obtain an audience with Nicholas II,
presumably through his friend (until 1912, after - the worst enemy)
Grigory Rasputin, at which the tsar forgave him and forbade his
detention by the police. In the next decade, his influence declined
and in 1922 he fled to Norway.
The growth of population and
housing development was interrupted with the outbreak of the First
World War and subsequent shocks. In 1917, after the October
Revolution, the unity of the country was gradually broken, local
power was taken by the most organized and inclined to an armed
struggle groupings with strong leaders. In Tsaritsyn, these were the
Bolsheviks Yerman and Minin, who proclaimed Soviet power on October
27, 1917. Due to the presence of large-scale industry in the city,
there were significant masses of the proletariat who sympathized
with the Bolsheviks, which contributed to the rapid establishment of
the new government. Soon Tsaritsyn became a "red" outpost in
southern Russia.
From the territory of the region of the Don
troops, the commander of the Don army, General Krasnov, made 3
unsuccessful attempts to take Tsaritsyn: July-September 1918,
September 1918 - January 1919, February 1919. An important role in
the defense of the red Tsaritsyn was played by the commander of the
North Caucasus Military District, Joseph Stalin, it is the events of
this period in Soviet historiography that are described as "the
defense of the red Tsaritsyn". The 4th attempt of the Whites to take
the city was successful, this time the blow to the city came from
the southern Caucasian direction - the city was taken by the
Caucasian Army of General Wrangel in May 1919, but he had to retreat
in December 1919 under the simultaneous attack of the Red Army from
the west (37 division of Dybenko) and the east (50th division of
Kovtyukh), on January 3, 1920, the city was finally taken by units
of the Red Army. The battles in the vicinity and city limits of
Tsaritsyn caused enormous damage to the city economy and residents,
from terror on both sides, a large number of mobilized and civilians
died. But the perpetuation of the memory of the dead belonged to the
victors in the Civil War - on February 8, 1920, the dead Red Army
soldiers were buried in a mass grave on the city's Alexander Square,
the square itself was renamed the Square of the Fallen Fighters.
In 1921 and 1922, the grain harvest suffered from drought and famine struck the city. It happened before, but this time the consequences were aggravated by the forcible withdrawal of grain for the needs of the belligerent Red Army and the introduction of the policy of war communism. These measures were introduced without any mercy and common sense; under the threat of execution, the last, including seed grain, was taken from large peasant families. The result was a famine in the Volga region of 1921-1922, with the number of deaths from malnutrition and associated diseases in several million people. When the Soviet government realized the consequences, it could not fully help the starving people, since the gold reserve of the Russian Empire was lost, transport arteries were torn apart by the ongoing civil war, because of the USSR's refusal to recognize tsarist debts, it became impossible to obtain international loans, food reserves were absent. In Tsaritsyn province, the majority of the population starved, desperate people began to storm trains and steamers, to flee to areas where there is food: the Caspian fisheries, central Russia, the Caucasus. Foreign charitable organizations provided enormous help in saving Tsaritsyn from hunger: the American Relief Administration, the International Working Committee, the Italian and Swiss Red Cross missions. In April 1922, at the peak of the famine, they opened 853 canteens in Tsaritsyn and the province, where 668,900 people received hot meals or dry rations - about half of the total population. Foreign aid was curtailed in 1923 when the civil war ended, a good harvest of grain was harvested and regular transport links began to be restored.
Even during the battles of 1919,
the Soviet government took into account that in terms of population
and industry, the city had long outgrown the scale of the district,
and this year the Tsaritsyn province was formed. After the end of
the Civil War, a peaceful life began to improve, surplus
appropriation and elements of war communism were canceled, economic
relations began to be determined by the NEP. Agriculture and
industry were actively reviving, the city restored the rate of
population growth. In the first years of peace, the Tsaritsyn
enterprises were restored: Barricades (formerly Tsaritsyno gun
factory), Krasny Oktyabr (former DYUMO), Lazur chemical factory
(former Nobel town) and others. During a mass campaign to rename
settlements, to get rid of everything connected with the monarchy
and religion in place names, in honor of the recognition of Stalin's
merits in the defense of the city, on April 10, 1925, Tsaritsyn was
renamed Stalingrad, the Tsaritsa river into Pionerka.
In key
industrial centers, since 1928, according to five-year plans for the
development of industry, great construction projects of communism
have been deployed, which have eliminated the lag behind the leading
countries of the world in strategic sectors: metallurgy, heavy
engineering, energy. In Stalingrad, the state district power station
(1929), the Stalingrad Tractor Plant (1930), the Sudoverf (1931),
and the Hardware Plant (1932) were built in a surprisingly short
time. The existing factories were included in the Stalingrad
tractor-tank cluster: Red October brewed structural, armored and
weapon grades of steel, Barricades made guns, the Hardware Plant -
large parts, the Tractor Plant assembled tractors and tanks,
electricity was supplied by the Stalingrad State District Power
Plant. The Stalingrad Tractor Institute (1930) and numerous FZUs
were created to train engineers and workers. Another 2 similar
clusters were deployed on the basis of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant
and the Kharkov Tractor Plant. From the Tractor Plant in the north
to the Shipyard in the south of Stalingrad, railroad tracks have
been expanded, social cities for workers have been built. The
tractor plant was designed according to the project of the American
architect Albert Kahn, American specialists helped to launch the
plant, the STZ-1 became the first tractor of the plant (a licensed
copy of the American Mc Cormic Deering 10/20 tractor), the first
tank was the T-26 (licensed British tank Vickers Mk E ). In the
first half of the 1930s, Stalingrad engineers launched production of
"completely" domestic models: the STZ-5-NATI tractor (1935) and the
legendary Soviet tank building T-34 tank (1940).
In the
pre-war period, the city and the entire Lower Volga region were
affected by the famine of 1932-1933. In addition, during the Great
Terror of 1937, the leadership of the city suffered significantly:
Ptukha (1934-1935, shot in 1938), Semyonov (1936-1937, shot in
1937), Vareikis (1935-1936, shot in 1938) , Smorodin (acting
1937-1938, shot in 1938).
At the same time, during this period, there were huge improvements in key areas of the city's life. For a decade, universal school education has been introduced, illiteracy has been eliminated among children and significantly reduced among adults. During the pre-war period, more than 200 educational institutions from schools to universities were opened, which are still basic for the city: the Tractor (Mechanical) Institute (1930), the Industrial Pedagogical Institute (1931), the Medical Institute (1935). The private practices of individual doctors of the tsarist period were replaced by mass coverage of the population in factory and district polyclinics and hospitals. Electricity, water supply, sewerage, public transport, radio, telephone communications entered the life of the townspeople en masse.
As the front line approached, there was a threat to the Volga
railway lines, in connection with which the Headquarters of the
Supreme High Command decided to create the Volga rokada. For its
construction, the railway tracks were removed from the first section
of the BAM built before the war, the local population was mobilized,
prisoners and prisoners of war were attracted and the road was built
in record time. The southern section of the rokada (Stalingrad -
Verkhniy Baskunchak for communication with the Astrakhan - Urbakh
line) with a length of about 250 km was built in September -
December 1941, the northern section of Ilovlya - Saratov - Sviyazhsk
with a length of 992 km in March - October 1942.
During the
winter of 1941, the Soviet troops managed to stabilize the front
line, in the battle for Moscow, pushing the Wehrmacht away from the
capital, for the first time interrupting the series of its military
victories since 1938 (Anschluss of Austria). The spring campaign was
designed to develop this success, but the successful offensive of
the Red Army in May 1942 to Kharkov turned into a Kharkov
catastrophe for the Soviet troops, as a result of which a
significant part of the Soviet Southern Front was surrounded and
practically destroyed, and Rostov-on-Don was lost. From the gap
formed after the death of the Southern Front in the Soviet defense
from Voronezh to Rostov in May, the Wehrmacht struck in diverging
directions: Army Group A in the North Caucasus, 6th Army in the
direction of Stalingrad. In the summer of 1942, the People's
Commissar for Defense of the USSR JV Stalin adopted order No. 227 -
"Not a step back."
By the end of July, the Soviet 62nd and
64th armies, after heavy fighting, retreated beyond the Don, along
which the front line passed, 70 kilometers remained in a straight
line to Stalingrad. The first attempt to take Stalingrad was made by
the 4th Panzer Army of Gotha. On August 1, crossing the Don at the
village of Tsimlyanskaya and moving along a 300-kilometer curve
south of the city, thus bypassing the main forces of the defenders,
on August 4, he found himself 30 kilometers from the southern
outskirts of Stalingrad at the Abganerovo station. Here a
head-to-head battle took place with the tankers of the 13th Tank
Corps of Tanaschishin, who had been transferred from the reserve and
barely had time to disembark at a nearby station. In the next 2
weeks, the Germans will try to break through to Stalingrad, the
sides will mutually destroy the equipment and bleed each other, but
still this defense sector will withstand. Changing the direction of
the main attack, the Wehrmacht made a new attempt to break through
to the city, now in a straight line - the 14th Panzer Corps of the
Wehrmacht, crossing the Don at Vertyachy on August 22, broke through
a 70-kilometer corridor through the defending Soviet units in a day,
and on August 24 reached the Volga, capturing outskirts of
Spartanovka. Covering Stalingrad from this direction, the 87th
Infantry Division was bombed by German aircraft on the march to the
Don, when it tried to eliminate the German bridgehead at Vertyachiy,
did not manage to dig in and was finally defeated by German tanks.
The stubborn defense of the 10th NKVD division, which consisted of
women from the 1077th anti-aircraft regiment, an armored group of
tanks repaired at STZ with crews of test workers, and battalions of
the Stalingrad people's militia, was able to prevent the seizure of
the northern part of the city on the move.
The Wehrmacht was
supported from the air by the 4th Air Fleet, in which at the time of
the battle up to a third of all Luftwaffe aircraft on the Eastern
Front were concentrated and on August 23 they made the first massive
air raid (about 2,000 sorties) on Stalingrad, which turned the
central part of the city and the Volga crossings into ruin. The
evacuation of the civilian population was not fully carried out: as
of August 23, 1942, at least 300,000 inhabitants remained in the
city. Possible reasons for the slowdown are the work of townspeople
at the city's defense enterprises and the massive involvement of all
residents, including women and children, in digging trenches and
anti-tank ditches that surrounded the city. They were trapped when a
breakthrough to the city was made, and the configuration of the
existing front began to represent a Soviet strip of urban
development along the banks of the Volga several kilometers wide and
the German adjacent steppe. The Luftwaffe began bombarding the
wharves and sinking any ships without dividing them into military
and civilian, one of the examples of this tragic fate was the
sinking of the steamers Joseph Stalin and Composer Borodin.
On August 24, the 35th Guards Rifle Division
managed to cut the German corridor to the Volga near Rossoshka (the
Germans began to supply the surrounded by air, a week later the
corridor was restored with them), and on August 29, Colonel
Gorokhov's group managed to push the Germans away from Spartanovka.
In the last week of August, the sides regrouped for new battles, the
Soviet 62 and 64 armies in an organized manner withdrew from the
outer contours (30-50 kilometers from the city) directly to the
outskirts of Stalingrad, the Germans brought units to strike the
city center. On September 5-7, the 1st Guards Army tried to strike
from Stepnoye through Gorodishche to join the 62nd Army and encircle
the northern grouping of the Germans, but the German defense held
out. On September 13, the Wehrmacht struck along the Pionerka River
and at its mouth again reached the Volga, cutting parts of the 62nd
and 64th armies between themselves, and also captured the Lysaya
Gora dominating the area south of the city center. Numerous local
centers of resistance remained inside the German breakthrough,
scattered groups of Soviet soldiers held their defenses inside
buildings capable of withstanding direct hits from shells, one such
example is the defense of the Stalingrad elevator. At the same time,
an offensive on the Krasny Oktyabr plant began, for the Germans it
was half successful: Mamayev Kurgan was taken, but numerous attacks
on the plant crashed against the Soviet defenses. On the night of
September 14-15, to correct the catastrophic situation across the
Volga, the 13th Guards Rifle Division of General Rodimtsev crossed
the Volga to the Ermanovsky District, occupied durable buildings
suitable for defense, recaptured Mamayev Kurgan on September 16 and
brought down the German offensive, forcing them street fighting. On
September 18, the 12th Tank Brigade launched a blow from Kotlubani
to Stalingrad in order to encircle the northern group of the
Germans, but they figured out the plan, concentrated significant
forces of anti-tank artillery at the forefront of the attack and
shot almost all the tanks.
From the second half of September,
the Wehrmacht introduced new units from the adjacent steppe and
attacked the area along the entire length of the city along the
Volga, except for the southernmost Krasnoarmeisky region. By
mid-October, the Germans succeeded in encircling and defeating the
Andrusenko group that defended the northern bypass of Stalingrad
from Gorodishche to Spartanovka and seized the Traktorozavodsky
district at the end of the month. Throughout the entire length of
the front, battles were fiercely and densely, often on the scale of
a house or a workshop, for an entrance, a staircase, an apartment.
In Stalingrad, both sides, instead of the usual division into
infantry platoons and companies, began to use reinforced assault
groups with mortars and flamethrowers.
The actions of the
infantrymen in street battles were supported by numerous artillery
batteries located by the Germans in the adjacent steppe, by the
Soviet army beyond the Volga. By mid-November 1942, the Wehrmacht
with incessant attacks captured almost the entire center and north
of Stalingrad, except for the last scattered areas: Spartanovka,
Lyudnikov Island, Krasny Oktyabr and TDN factories, Penza Defense
Center (Melnitsa, Pavlov's House and adjacent houses).
As the
advancing side, the Wehrmacht had to spend much more resources than
the defending Soviet one, the supply routes to Stalingrad were
stretched, the iron route was not ready, the stronger German units
were withdrawn from the flanks and sent to Stalingrad, they were
replaced by weaker German allies - the Romanians and Italians. The
Soviet side, having completed the construction of the Volga Rocada
in October 1942, received the opportunity to maneuver on the
Stalingrad front, accumulated offensive reserves and was able to
secretly transfer them to Serafimovich in the north and Tsatsa Lake
in the south of Stalingrad. On November 19, the Soviet command
launched Operation Uranus, striking from two directions and passing
through the German rear for about 250 km. The South-Eastern and Don
fronts met at Kalach, completing the encirclement of German troops.
The task of the operation was to strike from the north, 300 km from
Stalingrad, against the weak Romanian divisions and cut off the
strong Germans from the supply, the rapid seizure of the entire
space between the Chir and Don rivers, which formed additional water
barriers for the Germans. Until the last moment, the Wehrmacht did
not suspect about the upcoming offensive. Logistics worked
harmoniously to supply the tank breakthrough, 3 cavalry corps
arrived (8th kk, 3rd kk and 4th kk), which in a snowy winter turned
out to be more mobile than infantry.
After a seemingly almost won battle, the
encirclement came as a surprise to the invaders. Not believing in
the increased power and military skill of the Soviet troops, Hitler
and OKW presented the current situation as an accident, Paulus was
denied leaving Stalingrad and trying to break through. Army Group
Don, under the command of Erich von Manstein, was supposed to help
him, to support the encircled before the release - the air bridge
organized by Goering. To do this, it was necessary to break through
the Soviet defenses and hold their positions in Stalingrad and in
the Caucasus. The Soviet command thought on a bigger scale: the
Supreme Headquarters conceived Operation Saturn, according to which
a strike from the Don took place in the direction of the Sea of
Azov and the encirclement of the Wehrmacht group in the Caucasus.
If the operation was successful, the consequences for the Germans
would be comparable to the defeat at Stalingrad. To do this, it was
necessary to quickly break the encircled in Stalingrad and reach
Rostov-on-Don with a swift 400 kilometer strike.
In December
1942, the parties began to implement their plans - the Soviet units
began to push the Germans to Stalingrad and by the middle of the
month Paulus had the territory of Stalingrad and the surrounding
area 70 kilometers long and 30 kilometers wide, where the Wehrmacht
offered desperate and staunch resistance. Goering failed to
effectively establish an air bridge, the German transport aircraft
suffered serious losses from air defense and fighters of the Soviet
army. Manstein launched an offensive on December 12, according to
Operation Winter Thunderstorm, with a tactical trick - the blow was
struck not at the place of closest approach (40 km) of the Germans
near the Chir River, but in the farthest (120 km) direction from
Kotelnikovo. The 51st Army took the first blow from the many times
superior forces; it was tasked with holding back the offensive at
any cost until the reserve arrived. By December 16, Manstein had
passed half the way to Stalingrad, the surrounded Germans heard the
cannonade of the battle, the fate of the battle "hung in the
balance." Desperate defense (these events are shown in the film "Hot
Snow") 51st Army won 7 days (12-19 December) necessary to deploy a
new line of defense of the 2nd Guards. armies along the Myshkova
River, which the Germans, who had spent their offensive reserves,
could no longer overcome, and on December 23 stopped their fruitless
attempts (40 km remained to Paulus).
The Soviet side could
not fully strike at Rostov, having unbroken Manstein and Paulus in
the rear, so Operation Saturn was reduced to Operation Little
Saturn. On December 16, the 1st Guards and 6th Armies struck the
Italian 8th Army, and the 3rd Guards Army attacked the German group
"Hollidt" on a front about 300 km wide from Novaya Kalitva to
Surovikino. The Italians were surrounded in 3 days and almost
completely defeated, the stronger Hollidt group was able to retreat
with battles. And again, the Soviet offensive came as a complete
surprise to the Germans, an example of this surprise is the raid of
General Badanov's 24th Panzer Corps to the airfield near the village
of Tatsinskaya, when Soviet tanks shot down German transport planes
taking off in panic. The Wehrmacht began to select units from the
southern group of Gotha and transfer them to the central direction,
while the Soviet command, suddenly changing the direction of the
strike from central to southern, struck the Goth grouping on
December 24 and forced it to retreat 200 km from Stalingrad. Thus,
the Wehrmacht - a recognized master of mobile warfare, was itself
defeated as a result of the maneuvers of the Soviet troops. The
result of the second half of December 1942 was the fact that the
Soviet army was superior in winter conditions, and the plans to save
the encircled 6th Army became unrealizable. Hitler ordered Kleist to
retreat the Caucasian group of the Wehrmacht from Ordzhonikidze to
Maikop in order to avoid possible encirclement, Paulus was ordered
to hold out as long as possible in order to detain the Soviet troops
at Stalingrad.
The encircled 6th Field Army controlled a 170 km
long contour around Stalingrad, inside which airfields were located
- the last hope of the Wehrmacht. Their capture became the primary
task of Operation Ring - on January 10, the Don Front launched an
offensive, attacking the same positions from the Don to Stalingrad
that it itself defended in August 1942. By January 17, the Germans
lost the entire steppe zone around Stalingrad, including the last
airfield, Nursery, through a blizzard, scattered groups of broken
German units retreated to the city ruins. Having regrouped, the Don
Front on January 25 launched an offensive against urban development
with a blow from Gumrak to Red October, from where the 62nd Army
made a counter strike. The connection of the fronts took place on
January 26 on the western slope of Mamayev Kurgan. The Wehrmacht is
split into the main southern and northern group, the commander of
which is Strecker. Hitler sent a congratulatory telegram with the
assignment of the rank of field marshal to Paulus, with a note that
in the history of Germany there was no case of the capture of a
German soldier of such a high rank, hinting at suicide. But Paulus
chose captivity and signed a surrender on January 31, the northern
group of Stacker surrendered on February 2. The Red Army won the
Battle of Stalingrad.
This victory became a turning point in
the war. By the number of total irrecoverable losses (killed, died
from wounds in hospitals, missing) of the warring parties - the
Battle of Stalingrad became one of the bloodiest in the history of
mankind. Soviet soldiers - 478,741 (323,885 in the defensive phase
of the battle and 154,885 in the offensive), German - about 300,000,
German allies (Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Croats) - about
200,000 people, the number of city dwellers killed is impossible to
establish even approximately, but the account goes to no less than
tens of thousands. The military significance of the victory was the
removal of the threat of seizure by the Wehrmacht of the Lower Volga
region and the Caucasus, especially oil from the Baku fields. The
political significance was the sobering up of Germany's allies and
their understanding of the fact that the war cannot be won. Turkey
abandoned the invasion of the USSR in the spring of 1943, Japan did
not start the planned Siberian campaign, Romania (Mihai I), Italy
(Badoglio), Hungary (Kallai) began to look for opportunities to exit
the war and conclude a separate peace with Great Britain and the
United States.
The damage caused by the war turned out to be
enormous: 41,685 houses were destroyed (90.5% of the pre-war housing
stock), 32,181 residents of the pre-war 450,000 remained in the city
(of which 30,666 were in the least affected Kirovsky district, in
the rest of all areas taken together, 1,515 residents) ... Up to 200
thousand corpses of people and more than 10 thousand corpses of
horses remained uncleared, all the bodies could be buried only by
July 1943. The city was filled with unexploded shells and bombs,
minefields were not removed along the former battle lines, sapper
units were left for demining the city - they neutralized 328,612
mines, 1,169,443 shells and bombs, only by July 1945 it became safe
to move around the city. In order to prevent epidemics from
decomposing unburied bodies, vaccination centers and polyclinics
have been deployed, doctors of the appropriate profile have been
sent to the city. Although there were isolated cases of typhoid
infection, mass epidemics were suppressed. Another disaster was the
post-war famine of 1947, when about 700 patients with grade II
dystrophy, an extreme degree of exhaustion, were recorded in the
city.
The destruction inflicted on Stalingrad was
heterogeneous in the regions: Yermansky, Dzerzhinsky and
Traktorozavodsky, along which the front line of street battles
walked for six months, were almost completely destroyed. The
Kirovsky district, which escaped the German occupation, received
serious damage from shelling and aerial bombardments. Among the
least affected is the village of Beketovka, which was lucky enough
not to be in the direction of the main attacks of both sides. It
became the center of Stalingrad in 1943-1945; all the city services
coordinating the restoration of the city are located here.
The defense industry was restored by heroic labor in the shortest
possible time: the Tractor Plant began repairing equipment in 1943,
and in 1944 gave the front the first assembled tanks and tractors,
in the summer of 1943 the Krasny Oktyabr and Barricades plant began
work. By 1949, the volume of industrial production exceeded the
pre-war level. On December 26, 1943, the first restored tram route
Center - Krasny Oktyabr was opened, and by the end of 1944 the
entire Yelshanka - Center - Krasny Oktyabr - Traktorny axis was
operational.
The first stage of the restoration of the housing
stock of Stalingrad lasted from February 1943 to 1945, when most of
the country's resources went to the war. But still, even in these
conditions, the restoration of housing was going on, the most
maintainable ones were selected from the destroyed buildings, and
hundreds of buildings were restored, dismantling the more damaged
ones into repair bricks and reinforced concrete structures. In the
conditions of a shortage of male builders, female construction
brigades were organized - the Cherkasov movement, the Pavlov House
was the first restored object. Loans were issued to the Stalingrad
residents for individual construction, and by 1945 the population
was credited for 48.5 million rubles. By May 1945, 290,000 square
meters of municipal and departmental housing, 240,000 meters (12,663
houses) of individual housing were restored, which amounted to 37.4%
of the pre-war level. Still, housing was not enough for 280,000
citizens: on average, at the end of the war, there were 2.8 squares
of housing per inhabitant, about 40,000 people lived in dugouts and
ruins.
The second stage began on August 22, 1945, when
Stalingrad was transferred from the regional subordination to the
republican level, and in the RSFSR budget since 1946, the
restoration of Stalingrad was included in a separate line. A decree
was adopted on the priority allocation of German captured
construction equipment and property to the city; one of the examples
of the use of this technique was the children's railway, organized
on the basis of the HF110C steam locomotives of the Wehrmacht
railway troops. The construction trust Glavstalingradstroy was
established under the restoration program; the total number of
builders in 1946 was more than 30 thousand, a significant number of
German prisoners of war were employed in the work. Large-scale
construction projects gave impetus to the development of the
construction industry, local building materials began to be produced
on the resources of adjacent deposits of limestone, gypsum, and
rubble, and in 1953 they exceeded the level of 1940 by seven times.
By this year, Stalingrad had 2,042,000 square meters of housing,
which is 11% more than in 1940. The only area that has not been
restored is the floodplain of the Tsaritsa River, which since the
city's foundation was densely populated and built up with small
industrial enterprises - mills, tanneries and mustard factories; the
ruins of these structures were demolished or covered with soil in
the 1960s.
A significant part of the restoration work was
carried out by prisoners of the Wehrmacht and the rest of the Axis,
who were taken by about 90,000 people only in the city limits. For
their maintenance, a camp number 108 was urgently created with a
center in Beketovka. Almost all the prisoners were in an extremely
emaciated state; they had been receiving rations on the verge of
starvation for three months, since the November encirclement.
Therefore, the mortality rate among them was high - by June 1943,
27,078 of them had died, 35,099 people were undergoing treatment in
camp hospitals, 28,098 people were sent to other camps. Only about
20 thousand people for health reasons were able to work in
construction, later they were added to those taken prisoner after
1943. After the peak of the first three months, the mortality rate
returned to normal, the prisoners worked a normal working day and
received a salary for their work (until 1949, 8,976,304 man-days
were worked, a salary of 10,797,011 rubles was issued), for which
they bought food and household goods in the camp stores essentials.
The last prisoners of war were released to Germany in 1949, except
for those who received criminal sentences for personally committed
war crimes.
The 1950s were the dawn of Stalingrad
architecture. In the first post-war years, the most necessary
objects were restored, and from the beginning of the new decade,
large-scale development of Stalingrad began with monumental
buildings in the Stalinist Empire style, which determine the
appearance of the city today. In this decade, architects Simbirtsev,
Levitan, Maslyaev created the image of an exemplary socialist city,
the entire historical center of the city, the Stalin district, was
rebuilt in the same style. To create a new grid of streets, the
historical layout was changed, repeating the contours of the
fortress walls. The first rebuilt was Mira Street, opened in 1950,
which set the style of construction of post-war Stalingrad for a
decade. Sacrificing the houses of the merchant Tsaritsyn that
survived the battles, Soviet architects created post-war
masterpieces: Alley of Heroes, Square of Fallen Fighters, Central
Embankment, Volgograd I railway station, Lenin Avenue, which have
been the main architectural ensembles of Volgograd for more than 60
years. The townspeople massively moved from dugouts and barracks to
the Stalinkas, which up to our time constitute a significant housing
stock. Another symbol of the victorious city was the Stalin
Volga-Don Canal, put into operation in 1952. Like many architectural
objects of the time of Stalin's personality cult, together with its
transport functionality, he glorified the "father of nations" who
stood at the head of the USSR: a 24-meter statue of Stalin was built
along with the canal, at the time of construction the largest statue
of a real person. A landing stage has started to work on the central
embankment. As a result of modernization, the existing enterprises
of the city significantly increased the pre-war volume of
production, new plants began to operate: wire-rope (1954),
Tyazhpromelektroproekt, CHP-2 (1956), oil refinery (now
Lukoil-Volgogradneftepererabotka, 1957), aluminum (1959) year). The
building and architecture institute was founded (1951), and the
existing educational institutions received new spacious buildings:
medical (1950), pedagogical (1952), music school (1957).
After Stalin's death in 1953, during de-Stalinization, all the
monuments to Stalin were demolished, all objects named in his honor
were renamed, including on November 10, 1961, Stalingrad was renamed
Volgograd. The decree "On the elimination of excesses in design and
construction" recognized the style of construction of the
1930s-1950s as erroneous and wasteful. By the end of the 1950s,
there was a gradual rejection of the Stalinist Empire style in
architecture, the last objects in this style were the complex of
buildings of the Polytechnic Institute, designed in 1960. New
buildings began to be built in a more functional style, without
large-scale decorative decorations: Academy of Physical Culture,
1960, Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1967. For an
accelerated and economical solution of the housing problem
throughout the country, serial production of standard series of
houses in the form of prefabricated panels, which received the
unofficial name of Khrushchev, was used. They were built in large
numbers in all districts and micro-districts of Volgograd without
exception, and now they constitute a huge part of the housing stock.
In memory of the Battle of Stalingrad, the memorial complex Mamaev
Kurgan - 1967 was built. New industrial objects were put into
operation: Volzhskaya HPP, 1961, Motor-building plant, 1963.
Volgograd's specialization was supplemented by the chemical
industry: Kaustik 1967, carbon black plant 1964. In 1965, the
Volgograd-Donbass power transmission line was launched, the world's
largest HVDC line at the time of its creation. A modern transport
infrastructure began to take shape, where the main role belongs to
motor transport, in 1964 the Astrakhan Bridge was put into
operation, the connection of streets into the Second Longitudinal
Highway began.
The displacement of Khrushchev and the
beginning of Brezhnev's rule in 1964 did not cause any visible
changes in the architecture of the city, except for the replacement
of "Khrushchev" with more comfortable brezhnevka. The economy of the
USSR lost the accelerated rates of development characteristic of the
1930s-1960s, and with the beginning of the 1970s entered a period of
stagnation. In Volgograd in the 1970s were built: Theater for Young
Spectators 1970, Palace of Sports 1974, TPP-3 1977.
In the
last Soviet decade, the following were built: VolSU (1980), Drilling
Equipment Plant (1981), House of Pioneers (1981), the first stage of
the metro tram from the stations Ploshchad Lenin, Komsomolskaya and
Pionerskaya (1984), Museum-panorama "Battle of Stalingrad" (1985).
During the period 1950-1980, motorways stretched from
neighboring regional centers. In 1989, the millionth inhabitant of
the city was born.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, a
catastrophic decline began in all functions of industry and urban
economy. All public construction was frozen, and for a decade some
objects were in a state of protracted construction: the second stage
of a high-speed tram, a 22-storey hotel on Predmostnaya Square (in
2005 it was rebuilt into a residential building, Krasnoznamenskaya,
7), a 16-storey chemical building of the Polytechnic University
(completed in 2010), Moryatnik (unfinished for 2019). In the 1990s,
Volgograd became the birthplace of financial pyramids that entered
the federal level: the Selenga Russian House, Khoper-Invest, Russian
Real Estate (until 1993 - Volga Real Estate). Construction has
intensified since the mid-2000s. In 2009, the Volgograd bridge was
put into operation, in 2011 - the second stage of the high-speed
tram (stations Profsoyuznaya, TyuZ, Yelshanka), in 2014 an overpass
in the village of Gumrak, in 2015 - a traffic junction at Nizhnyaya
Yelshanka (Tulaka) - the first significant objects transport
infrastructure in the post-Soviet period. Many residents of the city
- servicemen of the Volgograd military garrison, took part in the
post-Soviet wars in the North Caucasus and in the 5-day war in 2008
in South Ossetia. The city has been subjected to a series of
terrorist attacks.
In 2018, Volgograd hosted the matches of
the FIFA World Cup, a fan zone for football fans was also built in
the city, such well-known musical groups as Arash and Kadebostany
came to Volgograd.
Volgograd, like the entire Volgograd region, is located in the MSC
time zone (Moscow time). The offset of the applicable time from UTC is
+3:00. In accordance with the applied time and geographic longitude, the
average solar noon in Volgograd occurs at 12:02.
Volgograd is
located in the lower reaches of the Volga on its western bank with
various forms of relief: the Volga Upland with its southernmost tip, the
eastern part of the city is occupied by the Sarpinsky lowland, it is
represented by the Sarpinsky-Davan hollow starting in the Vinovka region
and stretching between the first and second terraces of the Volga almost
through the entire city from north to south, along which, for example,
the First Longitudinal Highway of the city passes, in the eastern part
of the "Transkanal" Krasnoarmeisky district Sarpinskaya lowland. It is
represented not only by the Sarpino-Davanskaya hollow several kilometers
wide, but also by the Sarpinskaya lowland itself, and also in this area
there are sections of Ergeni that go into the city district of
Volgograd.
The city also includes the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain,
it includes the first terrace of the Volga and the coastal strip on the
western coast and the mouth parts of the steppe rivers and ravines
flowing into the Volga in the Volgograd region, the urban district of
which also includes the lands of the Denegny and Sarpinsky islands and
the peninsula Sareptsky in the Krasnoarmeisky district of the city. The
soils of the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain within the city district of
Volgograd are diverse: on the slopes of the terrace, starting from 55
meters above sea level and lower in elevation, light chestnut facies
alternate with areas of meadow-brown and brown desert-steppe soils, the
Volga coastal strip is lower than the first its terraces and the Sarepta
peninsula on the right bank and the rest of the Trans-Volga region on
the left bank are represented by meadow-and forest-meadow-Brown
desert-steppe soils, in combination with all kinds of intrazonal soils -
smolnitsa-chernozem-like, fused dark and red-colored soils, floodplain
and depleted alluvial red-colored, brownish, dark-colored soils in the
reservoirs of the coastal strip there are red-colored dark-colored silts
with noticeable fertility.
Also on the territory of the
floodplain and other parts of the urban district there are solonetzes
and solonchaks and various soils of floodplains and beams from
dark-colored to red-, yellow-, brown-colored soils. The northernmost
edge of the city - the settlement of the hydroelectric power station
begins at the shore of the Volgograd reservoir, formed by the dam of the
Volga hydroelectric power station, and has a water line 15 meters above
sea level. Located below the dam, the rest of the city has a cutoff of
13 meters below sea level and is located in the Volga-Akhtuba
floodplain.
The highest point is located in the Zhilgorodok
microdistrict in the north-west of the city on one of the dome-shaped
elevations (many elevations in the Volgograd region have a dome-shaped
or plateau-like shape, sometimes due to long-term exposure to weathering
forces associated with solar radiation, air temperatures of 25 degrees
and above, eolian weathering, due to the impact of temperature changes,
frequent transitions through 0 in the cold season and under the
influence of various types of precipitation and sandstorms; biological
and chemical weathering is less relevant due to the arid climate) on the
inter-beam watershed in the area of the "People's Fair" on the
reinforced concrete products and in the area tram stop "51 Guards
Division" and is more than 160 meters above sea level, and in the Gumrak
area there are heights of the same form of about 150 meters above sea
level.
The part of the city adjacent to the Volga is low-lying,
with a height of 0-40 meters above sea level, at a distance of 1-3
kilometers from the Volga there is a chain of gently sloping hills with
a height of 50-140 meters: Mamaev Kurgan (102 meters), Bald Mountain and
others. Within the city limits, the small steppe rivers Dry Mechetka,
Wet Mechetka, Tsaritsa, Elshanka flow into the Volga.
The climate is temperate continental, arid. The average rainfall is 267 mm per year. Winters are mild, with frequent thaws, summers are hot and long, and sharp temperature changes are possible at all times of the year. In 1940, a temperature minimum was also recorded (-33 ° C), the temperature maximum was recorded in July 2011 (+43.0 ° C).
The vegetation zone of Volgograd is a dry soddy-cereal steppe, common
for the Eurasian steppe, occupies only a separate northwestern part of
the city with northern slopes of the terrain north of the airport, the
rest of the city is located in the wormwood-turf-cereal desert steppe,
in areas that belonged to Sarpino- The Davan hollows were widespread and
remained, and now there are small areas of solonetsous, solonchakous
thickets in combination with grass-wormwood desert steppes. The soils
are heterogeneous, light chestnut and brown solonetzic soils
predominate, there are areas of dark-colored and colored soils. Woody
vegetation within the city is poor, with the exception of the
floodplains of small steppe rivers and the Volga coast. There are oak
groves, wild gardens of abandoned cottages. On the slopes of the beams
there is steppe grassy vegetation. Ergeninsky source of mineral waters,
as well as a number of other rare natural areas, are included in the
list of regional natural monuments.
The fauna of Volgograd is
mainly represented by invertebrates, birds, and rodents. In the "green
zones" of the city limits, you can meet snakes, lake frogs, hare,
hedgehogs, bats. The influence of the city favorably affects the number
of species such as the house sparrow, rock dove, rook, gray rat, house
mouse, providing them with abundant food from human activity, but
negatively on other animals, destroying their habitat.
Territorial organization
Volgograd is a linear city located along the
Volga, 5 km wide and up to 65-70 km long. However, in order to maintain
the status of a million-plus city, 28 settlements and Sarpinsky Island
were attached to the city. This changed the city's natural configuration
on paper to include uninhabited areas, but the city remained "linear" at
its core. From the very creation in 1589 of the guard fortress and the
formation of a district town from the end of the 17th county town, the
Volga was the main and only artery for the city. The significant width
of the river, the difficulty of overcoming it, the difficulty of
building bridges, the flooding of the left bank, the absence of
watercourses on the right bank predetermined the linear layout of the
city, “pressed” to the river. Further growth of the city was carried out
in the north and south along the Volga River. In Soviet times,
architects continued the linear construction of the city. After the
Battle of Stalingrad, the city is restored within its pre-war borders,
border settlements are included in the city, factories are built along
the river. In Soviet times, residential areas were mistakenly built with
factories separated from the river, the railway, electric train lines,
tram tracks and the highway. By the mid-70s, the growth of the city's
territory in the northern and southern directions was exhausting itself,
and the Dzerzhinsky district, remote to the west of the river, was being
built. By 1975, the city takes on a modern look, with the exception of
the annexation of rural areas in 2010.
In the 1990s, urban areas
were growing together due to the elimination of green areas. Residential
development near industrial enterprises, which ended up in the centers
of the city districts during the expansion of the city, exacerbates the
environmental problems of the city. The city found itself in
interrelated economic, transport, socio-cultural and urban planning
problems, which caused the depopulation of the population. After the
collapse of the USSR, some of the main enterprises and social
institutions of the city districts were closed. The Soviet principle of
settling city residents according to the areas where factories were
located led to transport problems, when the population of areas of
closed factories began to move to new jobs in other areas of the city.
Other modes of transport do not participate in the life of the city or
are poorly developed. The city requires a solution to the problems of
transport infrastructure, it needs: a bypass road, additional
longitudinal alternate routes, an increase in the number of transverse
roads connecting longitudinal highways, dedicated lanes for public
transport, modernization of public transport traffic patterns,
development of electric transport, development of an underground
high-speed tram, restriction of personal transport, a return to an even
distribution of economic activity in each district of the city.
Volgograd is characterized by an average ecological condition. The main air pollutant is road transport - 70% of emissions. Among industrial facilities, metallurgy, chemical and fuel industries are characterized by the largest emissions. More than half of the emissions come from the Krasnoarmeisky district, the highest pollution index in the Krasnooktyabrsky district. In general, the city has an increased content of nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, phenol. The water pollution index in the Volga ranges from 1.36 to 2.04. City biological treatment facilities, through which the bulk of wastewater passes, are located on Golodny Island. Wastewater treated at these facilities does not exceed the maximum allowable content of nitrogen compounds, suspended solids, copper, zinc, fluorides, phosphates.
The status of a city of regional significance near Volgograd is fixed
within the framework of the administrative-territorial structure of the
Volgograd region in accordance with the Charter of the region and the
Law of the region "On the administrative-territorial structure of the
Volgograd region" dated October 07, 1997 No. 139-OD.
As part of
the municipal structure of the Volgograd region, since 2006 it has been
forming the city district of the hero city of Volgograd as the only
settlement (since 2010) in its composition.
Tsaritsyn was founded as an outpost on the Volga trade route, and
from 1589 to 1708 was administratively subordinate to the Kazan order
responsible for river trade (in modern terms, combining the powers of
the province and the ministries of internal affairs, foreign affairs,
trade for its region), which appointed the governor to everyone "
low-lying towns" (cities of the Lower Volga region). In 1708, Peter I
carried out a territorial reform, abolishing the voivodeships that had
become an anachronism, and divided the Empire into provinces, counties
and volosts (since 1797). Tsaritsyn belonged to the following provinces:
Kazan (1708-1719), Astrakhan (1719-1773), Saratov governorship
(1773-1796), Penza (1796-1797), Saratov (1797-1919). The Tsaritsyno
uyezd could only be formed in 1780, previously it was not possible,
because due to the raids of nomads, peaceful life could only be inside
the fortress walls. In 1919, Tsaritsyn itself became the center of the
Tsaritsyn province, which in 1925, together with the provincial center
(Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad), was renamed Stalingrad. In May 1928, the
province became part of the Lower Volga Region, which in June 1921 was
transformed into the Lower Volga Territory. In 1932, Stalingrad became
the regional center of the Lower Volga region, during this period
Saratov, Astrakhan, and Elista were administratively subordinate to it.
In 1934, Nizhnevolzhsky was divided into Stalingrad and Saratov krais;
in 1936, Stalingrad krai was divided into Stalingrad oblast, Astrakhan
okrug, and the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1961, the
city was renamed Volgograd, the region, respectively, into Volgograd.
After the transfer of the Tsaritsyn fortress from the island to the
banks of the Tsaritsa and the Volga (approximately 1605-1615), the
entire territory of the city for about 200 years was located inside the
fortress wall approximately on a rectangle of the modern territory: 1 -
the Church of John the Baptist, 2 - the intersection of
Krasnoznamenskaya Street and Lenin Avenue, 3 - the intersection of Lenin
Avenue and the Alley of Heroes, 4 - Central Embankment. From the
beginning of the 19th century, the development of buildings outside the
fortress began, Tsaritsynsky and Zatsaritsynsky suburbs were added to
the city, by the beginning of the 20th century the city occupies a
territory in a rectangle: from the south it is bounded by the Elshanka
River, from the west by the streets of Cherepovetskaya-Marshal
Rokossovsky (now the Second Longitudinal Highway), from north by the
streets of Hiroshima - the 7th Guards Brigade, (thus it is the territory
of the modern Central and Voroshilovsky districts). On the site of the
rest of the modern territory of the city there were (according to the
Strelbitsky map of 1871): Erzovskaya volost - the villages of Rynok
(approximately at the fork in the road to Volzhsky and the village of
the hydroelectric power station) at Dry Mechetka, Mechetnaya and
Portyanovka (at the place where footcloths are dried by barge haulers)
between Dry and Wet Mechetka , Zhuravka on the site of the lower Tractor
village. From Gorodishche along Wet Mechetka to the Volga, 10 nameless
farms were located on the site of the modern villages of Vishnevaya
Balka and Verkhnezarechensky. To the south of Tsaritsyn, the
Otradinskaya volost included: Elshanka, Mechnikov farm (now Nikitin
Street in the Kirovsky district), Beketovka, Otrada, Salty farm (now
Salt street in the Kirovsky district). Sarepta and several adjacent
nameless farms near Sarepta constituted the Sarepta volost. During the
period of 1900-1930s, workers' settlements arose at factories for a
length of up to 30 kilometers from the center along the Volga, from
which the rest of the city grew, absorbing the settlements of the former
Tsaritsynsky district. During the post-war period, urban development
began to fill the wastelands between the villages, and on the northern
side of the city formed a continuous strip of housing and industrial
zones, while in the south there are still significant areas of empty
steppe between the residential and industrial sectors.
In 1890,
the overgrown Tsaritsyn was for the first time administratively divided
into parts numbered 1 and 2 - a prototype of future urban areas. The
Tsaritsa River became the border of these parts: the current Central
District became part No. 1 (the name "Old Town" was unofficially used),
and the current Voroshilovsky District became part No. 2 (unofficially
"Zatsaritsynsky suburb"). In 1920, there was an additional division
along another border - the tracks of the Gryaz-Tsaritsyno railway
running parallel to the Volga (now the Privolzhskaya railway goes along
the same preserved embankment through the Volgograd-1 station): part No.
1 remained the "Old Town", but from it Part No. 3 stood out - passing
behind the railroad track from the Volga, unofficially
"Zapolotnovskaya". Part No. 2 also remained "Zatsaritsynsky suburb", but
part No. 4 stood out from it - a site of urban development with the
unofficial name "Dar-mountain" that has existed for more than 150 years.
In the 1920s, the surrounding villages became workers' settlements and
received new "revolutionary" names:
On July 21, 1920, Sarepta became
the city of Krasnoarmeysky (the future center of the Krasnoarmeysky
district);
On September 19, 1921, the settlement of the Ural-Volga
plant became a Soviet settlement, and in 1925, the Sovsettlement named
after Rykov (the future center of the Krasnooktyabrsky district);
On
November 17, 1925, the village of Otrada was renamed the village of
Yerman;
On January 7 (according to other sources, March 30), 1925,
the village of Elshanka was renamed the village of Minin.
Since 1926,
the construction of a working settlement named after Dzerzhinsky began
at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant under construction - the future center
of the Traktorozavodsky district.
Since the second half of the
1920s in the USSR, in connection with large-scale industrialization, the
economic zoning of territorial units began - the adjustment of the
administrative division to industrial enterprises, energy, transport and
human resources. Instead of rural counties and city parts, regional and
city districts are being introduced. According to this reform, the above
workers' settlements were included in the city in 1931 and Stalingrad
was divided into 5 districts (from north to south along the Volga):
Dzerzhinsky (the area of the modern Traktozavodsky district), Rykovsky
district (modern Krasnooktyabrsky), Ermanovsky district (modern
Central), Mininsky (in 1933 renamed Voroshilovsky in honor of Klim
Voroshilov) and Krasnoarmeysk (Sarepta) became the Krasnoarmeysky
district. In 1935, the division was changed into 4 districts:
Dzerzhinsky, Yermansky (from 1948 Stalinsky, from 1961 Central),
Voroshilovsky, Kirovsky.
According to this division, Rykovsky is
included in the Dzerzhinsky district, and the Kirovsky district is
formed from Voroshilovsky and Krasnoarmeysky, in honor of Sergei Kirov.
In 1936, the Dzerzhinsky district was divided into Dzerzhinsky,
Krasnooktyabrsky, Barrikadny and Traktrozavodsky districts. In 1944, the
Kirovsky district was divided into Kirovsky and the newly formed
Krasnoarmeisky. In 1953, the Dzerzhinsky district became part of
Stalinsky, and Barrikadny became Krasnooktyabrsky. In 1970, the
Dzerzhinsky District was again formed; the territory of the Central
District was assigned to it to the west of the new city dominant - the
Second Longitudinal Highway. In 1975, the Sovetsky district was divided
into Sovetsky and the newly formed Voroshilovsky. By the end of the
1930s, the city boundary acquired a modern form, and over the following
years changed slightly, the workers' settlements that later entered the
city did not merge with urban development and were separated by fields
and wastelands: Airport, Gumrak, Vodstroy -1959, Gorkovsky 1963,
Solyansky 1965 , Gornaya Polyana 1966, Maisky, Gorny, Vodny - 2010. In
1975, the change of boundaries between urban areas ends, but the
annexation of territories from adjacent rural areas continued:
Gorodishchensky, Dubovsky, Kalachevsky districts.
The last change
in the boundaries of the city took place in 2010, when all the
settlements that were previously part of the urban district of the city
of Volgograd were administratively merged with the city of Volgograd. On
March 20, 2010, by the Decree of the Volgograd Regional Duma on March
11, 2010 No. 20/652 “On the inclusion of settlements in the city of
Volgograd”, the following settlements were included in the city:
in
the Soviet district: the working settlement of Gorkovsky, the village of
Peschanka, the settlements of Vodny, Gorny, Gornaya Polyana, Guli
Koroleva, Maisky;
to the Traktorozavodsky district: the working
settlement of Vodstroy, the settlement of Zarechny;
in the
Dzerzhinsky district: the working settlement of Gumrak, the farms
Kamenny Buerak, Ovrazhny;
in the Krasnoarmeisky district: the working
settlement of Yuzhny, the settlements named after the XIX Party
Congress, Solyanoy;
to the Kirovsky district: farms Beketovsky
Perekat, Bobyli, Volgostroy, Zaichiki, Kozhzavod, Krestovy, Lesnoy,
Leshchev, Pavlovsky, Sandy 1st, Sandy 2nd, Sandy 3rd, Rybovod.
From the beginning of the foundation of Tsaritsyn in 1589 and until
1710, Tsaritsyn was governed by the voivodship form of government, the
city government was represented by the voivode. As a rule, they were
recruited from service people. The Tsaritsyno governors often had to put
aside economic issues and engage in battle during the raids of the
nomads of the Volga region or during peasant wars, some of them died in
these conflicts (Turgeniev 1670, Turchenin 1708). The voivode was
appointed by the Discharge Order, approved by the Boyar Duma and
subordinate to the Kazan Order, which was in charge of the Volga trade
route, commanded the city garrison of archers, gunners, Cossacks, was
responsible for defensive structures, police, tax, and judicial
functions. Among the exotic functions of the voivode today as the head
of the city were taking care of the timely attendance of the church and
the proper fasting of the townspeople during the period of Orthodox
fasts. The role of the modern mayor's office was played by the
Prikaznaya hut, the clerical work of which was also in charge of the
clerk approved by Moscow with subordinate clerks.
According to
the Petrovsky provincial reforms in 1710, the Russian Empire was divided
into provinces, commandants who were subordinate to the governors began
to manage the cities. The main function of the commandant remained the
same - command of the military garrison and defensive structures, with
secondary urban economic tasks. In 1818, Tsaritsyn was excluded from the
number of fortresses and became an ordinary peaceful city, and the
existing army unit was transferred from a state of high combat readiness
of a fortress battalion to an invalid team (that is, a security unit in
the rear), power in the city was divided into civil and military
branches. The civil branch of power from 1818 to 1917 was headed by the
Mayor.
From 1934 to 1991, the executive committee of the
Volgograd Regional Council of People's Deputies was the supreme
executive body of state power in the Volgograd Region (Stalingrad
Territory and Stalingrad Region). The central party body that existed in
the Volgograd region (Stalingrad region and Stalingrad region) from 1934
to 1991 was the Volgograd Regional Committee of the CPSU. Thanks to his
courage and organizational skills, the first secretary of the Stalingrad
regional committee and city committee of the CPSU (b) in the days of the
Battle of Stalingrad, Alexei Semyonovich Chuyanov, entered the history
of the country.
In 1992, Yuri Chekhov, who had already led
Volgograd for 2 years as chairman of the city executive committee, won
the mayoral election. In the future, the mayors became: Evgeny Ishchenko
2003-2006, Roman Grebennikov 2006-2011. Since 2011, direct elections
have been abolished, city leaders have been appointed: Sergey Sokolov
(acting) 2011-2012, Valery Vasilkov (he and subsequent heads are
deputies of the Volgograd City Duma) 2012-2013, Alexander Chunakov 2013,
Irina Guseva 2013- 2014, Andrey Kosolapov 2015-2018. In the same period,
the city administration was headed by a city manager, whose priority
responsibility was the economic problems of the city, in contrast to the
head of Volgograd, whose priority was representative and political
functions. In the fall of 2017, the city charter was again amended,
abolishing the separate post of head of administration.
The local
self-government body is the Volgograd City Duma, which consists of 48
deputies elected for 5 years. The highest official in the city is the
head of Volgograd, appointed by the Volgograd City Duma.
Chairman
of the Volgograd City Duma
Kolesnikov Vladlen Vladimirovich (since
December 24, 2019)
Heads of Volgograd (head of administration)
Likhachev Vitaly Viktorovich
From 1729 to 1854, Tsaritsyn, who did not have his own coat of arms,
used the emblem of the Tsaritsyn Dragoon Regiment stationed in the city
- 2 crossed silver sturgeons on a red field. In 1854, the city received
an official coat of arms: a French shield divided into two parts, in the
upper part of which is the coat of arms of the provincial Saratov (three
sterlets on a blue field), in the lower part on a red field - two
crossed silver sterlets. The shield is crowned with a tower crown with
five teeth, corresponding to the status of a county town. After 1917
this coat of arms was not used. In 1965, after Volgograd received the
status of a hero city, the current coat of arms was adopted: in the
upper red field, the Star of the Hero and the battlements of the
fortress wall, symbolizing the fortress of Stalingrad, in the lower blue
field, a gear and a sheaf of wheat, as symbols of advanced engineering
and agriculture. The flag of Volgograd is a red cloth with the coat of
arms of the city. As unofficial symbols of the city, the silhouettes of
the sculptures "Motherland", "Stand to Death" and "Grieving Mother" are
very often used.
Official dates
City Day is celebrated on the
first Sunday of September.
February 2 is the day of the surrender of
the German group in the Battle of Stalingrad (in 1943).
September 12
is the day of memory of the spiritual patron of the city, Alexander
Nevsky, according to one version of Sarai-Berke poisoned in the capital
of the Jochi ulus (now the village of Tsarev, Volgograd region)
According to the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, as of October 1,
2021, in terms of population, the city was in 16th place out of 1,119
cities in the Russian Federation.
Until the middle of the 19th
century, the population of Tsaritsyn was measured in several thousand
people. By 1913, the population of the county Tsaritsyn reached 100,000
people. Until the end of the 1980s, the population grew steadily, and in
1989 Volgograd became a millionaire city. In 1995 and 1998, the city
lost this status twice, and then returned it. In 1999, as a result of
population depopulation, the city finally dropped out of this status. In
2002, as a result of the expansion of the city limits (inclusion of the
nearest working settlements into the city), Volgograd again became a
millionaire city, but once again lost this status in 2004 as a result of
the continued decline in population. In 2010, all the workers'
settlements and rural settlements that were part of the Volgograd urban
district were included in the city limits of Volgograd, this for the
third time gave the city the status of a millionaire city, and in 2013,
for the first time in the post-Soviet years, a slight increase in
population was noted (51 people), but in 2014 depopulation was again
recorded and as of January 1, 2015, the number was 1,017,424 people,
which puts Volgograd in 15th place in the list of Russian cities. The
birth and death rates are negative, 11.0 were born per 1000 people in
2014 and 13.0 died. According to demographic indicators for 2014, the
districts of the city differ from each other, the highest birth rate in
the Soviet district is 12.7, the lowest in the Central district is 9.7.
The highest mortality in Krasnooktyabrsky and Krasnoarmeysky districts
is 14.7, and the lowest in Sovetsky is 11.4.
The national
composition of Volgograd according to the 2010 census: Russians -
922,321 (92.3%); Armenians - 15,200 (1.5%); Ukrainians - 12,216 (1.2%);
Tatars - 9760 (1%); Azerbaijanis - 6679 (0.7%); Kazakhs - 3831 (0.4%);
Belarusians — 2639 (0.3%); Koreans - 2,389 (0.2%), other nationalities -
less than 2,000 people, also 21,430 did not indicate their nationality.
Volgograd, Volzhsky, Gorodishche, Krasnoslobodsk, which are within
1-2 hours of transport accessibility, unofficially form the Volgograd
agglomeration, the population of which is at least 1355 thousand people,
which puts it in 10th place in terms of population among the
agglomerations of Russia.
After the collapse of the USSR, the industrial potential of Volgograd
is partially used and has already suffered significant losses.
Enterprises, depending on the industry and the effectiveness of
management, experienced the transition to a new economic order in
different ways. The energy complex (Volzhskaya HPP, SDPP, CHPP-2,
CHPP-3) has not reduced the production of electricity and heat,
enterprises are modernizing and feel confident. In transport, there was
a transition of industrial transportation from river transport to road
transport, the importance of the Volga-Don river route fell, so the
construction of the Volgodon-2 canal was frozen, and the traffic of the
Volgodon canal dropped significantly from 1990-2010, but now it is again
approaching record values. After the crisis of the 1990s, the defense
enterprises Barrikada and Yuzhnoe Proizvodstvo VGTZ (Sudoverf) receive
state orders for the production of weapons and carry out modernization.
The raw materials processing industry (Krasny Oktyabr, the Aluminum
Plant) and the enterprises producing equipment for the extraction of raw
materials (Volgogradneftemash, the Drilling Equipment Plant, the Petrov
Plant) are highly dependent on the world market situation and, with each
all-Russian recession, they reduce or stop production. An example of the
unfortunate fate of heavy engineering is the fate of VGTZ. Previously,
the plant that gave its name to the Traktorozavodsky district was one of
the largest manufacturers of caterpillar tractors, the manufacturer of
DT-75, the most massive one in the USSR (more than 2 million tractors).
However, the civilian industry primarily needs wheeled tractors, and the
plant was unable to provide competitive products and is now in a state
of bankruptcy. An example of a successful fate is the VOLMA corporation,
which during the crisis of 1998 bought the bankrupt Volgograd gypsum
plant, established an efficient production of building mixtures and
drywall on its basis, and became one of the leaders in this market in
Russia. The tourist potential of the city is poorly used, despite the
existing "tourist magnets" - the monuments of the Battle of Stalingrad,
Sarepta, recreation and fishing in the Volga-Akhtuba floodplain, the
path to Elton. There was a chance to attract tourists in connection with
the 2018 FIFA World Cup, for which hotels and the Pobeda stadium are
being built in the city.
The Tractor Parts and Standards Plant,
the Transport Engineering Plant, the Engine Building Plant, the
Khimprom, the Shipbuilding Plant, and the Medical Equipment Plant - VZMO
- ceased to exist.
The city is in a very difficult economic
situation - it is the poorest of the cities in Russia with a million
inhabitants. Volgograd also holds several other anti-records among
cities of its size: the lowest salaries (19 thousand rubles in 2013),
the most worn-out infrastructure, the smallest number of small
businesses per 1,000 population (29.6 in 2012) and at the same time the
highest salaries officials among the regions of the Southern Federal
District - an average of 54,000 rubles.
Volgograd can be imagined in the center of a 6-pointed star of
outgoing federal and regional roads. The city is crossed by the P22
highway (Moscow-Astrakhan), the routes begin: P228 (to Syzran), P221 (to
Elista), A260 (to Donetsk), P226 (via Volzhsky to Samara), P219 (to
Tikhoretsk via Kotelnikovo and Salsk), and also regional road 18Р-1
(through Volzhsky to Astrakhan). There is a bypass road for transit
transport only partially in the northern part of the city (3rd
longitudinal), which forces you to move further to Vtoraya Longitudinal,
which runs along urban development. You can cross the Volga along the
hydroelectric dam to Volzhsky or along the Volgograd bridge to
Krasnoslobodsk. Regular bus routes are organized from the central bus
station in Russia, as well as to the republics of the Transcaucasus and
Central Asia.
The railway passenger gate of the city is the
Volgograd-1 station, for cargo transportation (formerly and suburban)
the Volgograd-2 station is also used. Both stations belong to the
Volgograd branch of the Volga Railway. From these stations there are 4
directions: Moscow (at Ilovlya it branches into the Moscow and Saratov
directions), Astrakhan, Krasnodar, Rostov. The city's air gate is the
Gumrak International Airport, located in the village of Gumrak, 10
kilometers from Volgograd.
In the southern part of the city, the
Volga-Don Canal begins - a link in a single deep-water system through
which the city is connected by water with the Caspian, Black, Baltic and
White Seas, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Volgograd accepts passenger and
tourist flights on the Central Embankment, at the pier of the River
Station, cargo flights - in the Tatyanka river port.
The specificity of the road network of Volgograd comes from its
unusual shape: a building strip with a width of one to five and a length
of about sixty kilometers, in which multi-storey complex buildings
alternate several times, the private sector, industrial zones, and areas
of undeveloped steppe. It happened historically, the city grew along the
Volga with industrial enterprises and settlements with all the necessary
infrastructure. The length of Volgograd is crossed by three main
longitudinal transport highways: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Longitudinal.
"Longitudinal" is a common name reflecting the real situation; legally
it is a chain of different streets:
1st Longitudinal (from north
to south: Nikolai Otrada street + Lenin Avenue + Workers and Peasants +
Leo Tolstoy + Electrolesovskaya) - closest to the Volga (1-3
kilometers); crosses the center, it is along it that almost all the
sights of the city are located;
2nd Longitudinal (from north to
south: Opolchenskaya + Eremenko + Lermontov + Rokossovsky +
Cherepovetskaya + University Avenue + 64th Army + Kolosovaya +
Limonovaya + Roslavlskaya + Sandy + Lazorevaya + Heroes of Stalingrad
Avenue + 40 years of the Komsomol) - the most extended and loaded;
the bypass 3rd Longitudinal allows you to bypass only the northern and
central parts of the city; to get to the south of the city, you need to
go to the 2nd Longitudinal. The situation with bypass roads is
difficult, with an increase in the number of vehicles, it has become
easier to get to the neighboring regional centers of the region than to
the other end of the city. In fact, the city is broken into weakly
interconnected north and south.
During the Soviet period, the
Volgograd bus service developed into a scheme typical of the regional
centers of the USSR. From individual microdistricts and villages, bus
routes came to the core of their district, from where other routes went
along the busiest streets to the city center to the automobile and
railway stations. The fleet of city buses was also typically Soviet:
PAZ-672 and PAZ-32053 at departmental enterprises, LiAZ-677 and LAZ-695
on intracity flights, Ikarus went to regional centers. During the
post-Soviet period, the scheme of intracity communication has partially
changed: departmental buses almost disappeared when the forms of
ownership of enterprises changed from state to private, all city PATPs
(passenger motor transport enterprises) were consolidated into a single
operator of SUE VO Volgogradavtotrans, almost the entire previous fleet
of intracity buses was replaced by new ones models Volzhanin-5270,
LiAZ-5256, LiAZ-5293, PAZ-3204, PAZ-3237, the fleet of intercity buses
was replaced by a more comfortable one. At the end of 2016, a subsidiary
of PiterAvto, the Volgograd Bus Park, came to the city. It uses LiAZ
5292.67 and PAZ-3203 buses on its routes. As in most cities in Russia,
buses compete with minibuses on models of the Gazelle family in most
cases. Intercity bus service is carried out from two bus stations - the
main "Central" in the Central District and the bus station "Southern"
serving the southern regional directions. In connection with the
preparations for the 2018 football championship, measures were taken to
transfer the Central Bus Station to the territory adjacent to Gumrak
Airport in order to build a new modern building and leave the Central
District of Volgograd overloaded with vehicles. The idea of relocating
the bus station is controversial; in 2017, at public hearings, the
transfer of the bus station was approved, but not to the airport, but
much closer.
Tsaritsyn became the first county town in Russia to
build a tram for itself. In 1913, the existing line was laid, which
marked the beginning of the Volgograd tram. Now the tram system consists
of three unconnected lines, one of which is a high-speed tram, which
includes 6 underground stations built according to metro standards, and
15 ground stations. Tatra-T3 trams run along the city's tram routes,
which are the basis of the tram fleet. During the post-Soviet period,
the operator of the city's Volgograd public electric transport, MUP
Metroelektrotrans, slightly updated the tram fleet with models LVS-2009
(10 units), KTM-23.03 (20 units), and modified Tatra T3 MTTA-2 models.
The total length of the tram network is 137.1 kilometers and 13 routes.
The opening of the first line of the Volgograd trolleybus on the
route "Railway station Volgograd-1 - Lower settlement of VGTZ" on
December 31, 1960 was a New Year's gift to the townspeople. Over the
past half century, trolleybus routes have been laid in all districts of
the city without exception. The basis of the fleet are the models ZiU-9,
Trolza-5275.03 "Optima" and BKM-32100D. The total length of the
trolleybus network is 159 kilometers and 14 routes.
In 1959, the
first city train route was launched. For 2015, the Volgograd city
electric train consists of 5 lines and 11 routes (of which 7 are
regional), except for Volgograd serving Volzhsky, Kotelnikovo,
Surovikino. The electric train is the only type of passenger electric
transport, the routes of which are laid along the entire length of the
city - from the Yuzhnaya station to the northern Spartanovka station and
further, to the satellite city of Volzhsky. The center of the network is
the railway station Volgograd-1.
The first mention of the organization of primary education in
Tsaritsyn dates back to 1808, the city magistrate concluded an agreement
with retired sergeant Ivan Vlasov on the education of children “how many
of these recruits can. 1st - to read, 2nd - to write copybooks and a
digital shield, 3rd - arithmetic in four parts"[214]. Also, parochial
schools appeared at the churches of Tsaritsyn. But it was only teaching
to write, count and the basics of Orthodoxy. The beginning of systemic
education began in the 1880s, when more than a dozen educational
institutions were founded. Funds were allocated for this from the city
budget, a significant part was taken by the help of Tsaritsyno
entrepreneurs. In 1911, there were 14 men's, 9 women's and 2 mixed
schools in Tsaritsyn. The school meant all educational institutions, but
at that time they were divided into gymnasiums (a more prestigious
classical education with in-depth study of Latin, ancient Greek and
foreign languages) and proto-gymnasiums (since 1871, real schools have
been a less prestigious applied education). The building of the first
Tsaritsyno gymnasium, Aleksadrovskaya, built in 1875, has survived to
this day in a rebuilt form, now the southern wing of the regional
administration building at Lenin Avenue 9, and the building of the first
real school in 1881 is the northern wing of the same building. All four
buildings of women's gymnasiums have survived to our time: No. 1
ministerial (that is, state-owned, in the 19th century there was such a
division of schools) Mariinsky, founded in 1877 - now the Regional
Statistics Office on Chuikov Street 7, No. 2 ministerial, founded in
1908 - now the 83rd secondary school on Lenina Prospekt 21, No. 3
privately owned by Mrs. Stetsenko - now the music school No. 1 on
Pushkin Street, 13, No. 4 Ministerial Women's Gymnasium - now the
Cossack Theater on Akademicheskaya Street, 3 The building of the
parochial school of Voznesenskaya has been preserved church, opened in
1887 - now a house on Tsiolkovsky street 15A.
After the
revolution and the Civil War, all schools were transferred to Soviet
standards of education, universal free school education was introduced,
and the number of schools increased many times over. In the 1930s, the
foundation of higher education was laid, whose graduates have developed
the most important areas of the city's activity to the present:
Industrial and Pedagogical Institute 1931, Construction Institute 1931
(disbanded by other universities in 1933, re-established in 1963),
Tractor Institute 1930, Medical Institute 1935. The pre-war building of
the Tractor University at ul. Degtyareva, 2, it belongs to the
university and the departments of evening and correspondence education
work in it. For other higher educational institutions, after the Battle
of Stalingrad, monumental buildings were built in the Central District.
Even in the war year of 1944, the Agricultural Institute was opened (in
the city of Uryupinsk, Stalingrad Region, since 1948 in Stalingrad),
1957 - a music school (reopened from the Tsaritsyn Musical School,
leading the history since 1917), 1960 - the Institute of Physical
Culture, in 1967 - The Higher Investigative School of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, Volgograd State University was opened in 1980. In
1929, the Stalingrad Aviation School began training military pilots, and
in 1942, due to the approach of the front line, it was evacuated to
Kustanai. In 1946, the school did not return to the destroyed
Stalingrad, but was relocated to Novosibirsk, where it was disbanded in
1960. On the existing infrastructure of the Stalingrad School, the
Kachin Aviation School, which was transferred to Stalingrad in 1954,
began to be based, and existed until it was disbanded in 1998.
After 1991, an Orthodox University (1993) and a number of other
non-state universities were opened, and branches of universities in
other Russian cities were opened. As of 2014, there are 244
kindergartens, 123 secondary schools, 15 gymnasiums, 10 lyceums, 12
boarding schools, 18 art schools, 27 sports schools, 9 music schools in
Volgograd.
Museum work in Tsaritsyn was initiated by Peter the Great, who in
1722 gave the townspeople his cap and cane. Peter's gift was not unique,
it was an ordinary cherry stick and a felt headdress, but thanks to the
legendary personality, they became the first city relics and have been
shown as museum exhibits for all subsequent years to the present. But
these were the exhibits of the city magistrate (the current analogue is
the mayor's office), and the first museum of Tsaritsyn is the Museum of
Local Lore, founded in 1914 in the building of the House of Science and
Arts (now located in the building of the former Zemstvo Council).
In 1937, the Soviet government founded the 2nd museum of the city -
the Tsaritsyn Museum of Defense named after comrade. Stalin. And the
very next year, 1938, its director and founder, V. M. Alekseev, was
arrested and shot. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the museum was
supplemented with numerous exhibits of 1942-1943, and became the Museum
of the "Defense of Tsaritsyn-Stalingrad named after. comrade Stalin. In
1984, the Battle of Stalingrad Museum was founded, exhibits of the
Second World War were transferred to its monumental Panorama building,
and the museum again began to specialize in the Defense of Tsaritsyn.
Since 1991, unlike Soviet times, it has been dedicated to the memory of
both sides of the civil war, including the White Guard.
The
Panorama Museum "Battle of Stalingrad" has become the largest and most
famous museum in Volgograd. It is located on the site of the "Penza
Defense Knot" - a group of buildings along Penzenskaya (now Sovetskaya)
Street, which was defended by the 13th Guards Division. The museum
complex includes the Gerhardt Mill, the panorama "The Defeat of the Nazi
Troops at Stalingrad" - the largest painting in Russia, an exposition of
military equipment of the 1940s, a stele of cities of heroes, numerous
exhibits of weapons and awards, personal items of the military life of
generals and ordinary soldier. Nearby is the Pavlov's House, which
survived the battles.
In 1960, the Volgograd Mashkov Museum of
Fine Arts opened its doors, specializing in the work of
Stalingrad/Volgograd artists and sculptors. In 1989, the Old Sarepta
Museum was opened - dedicated to the memory of the German colonists of
the 18th century. The museum became the core of the centers of German,
Kalmyk, Tatar and Russian culture, a library in German was opened. In
2009, a museum of measures and weights was opened on the basis of the
weighing equipment plant. In the historical building of the city water
pumping station, in 2010, the city museum dedicated to the city water
supply "Vodokanal" was opened.
On October 5, 2017, in the city
center, in the floodplain of the Tsaritsa River, an interactive
museum-park "Russia - My History" with an area of more than 7,000 m2 was
opened, equipped with a projection dome, holograms, audio guides, sound
and light systems. The museum was implemented as part of the All-Russian
project "Russia - My History".
Until the second half of the 19th century, theatrical art in
Tsaritsyn existed in the form of folk booths. The first mention of the
emergence of the theater is given by the Saratov police chief in 1872:
“There are three theaters in the Saratov province: two in Saratov,
summer and winter, the third in Tsaritsyn in a private stone building
owned by the merchant Kalinin, and is maintained by an honorary citizen
Alexander Astapov, in the theater Yaroslavtsev ". In 1882, on the site
of the current Pionerskaya metrotram station in the Tsaritsa floodplain,
a garden and the Concordia station (as the open stage was then called)
appeared, which became the first musical theater in the city. In 1905,
Concordia was bought by the Tsaritsyno industrialist Vladimir Miller and
built a new theater building for 1,300 seats (this record has not been
reached by the city even now, Volgograd does not have such large theater
premises). Concordia turns into an opera famous throughout Russia, where
Figner, Chaliapin, Sobinov and other outstanding artists performed. In
1913, the Tsaritsyno merchant, philanthropist and amateur tenor Repnikov
built the building of the House of Science and Arts on Aleksandrovskaya
Square, where the Tsaritsyno Drama Theater gives performances.
During the First World War and the Civil War, theater buildings housed
infirmaries for the wounded, since 1922 the Stalingrad Theater of
Musical Comedy, the future Volgograd Musical Theater, has been giving
its first performances in the former Concordia, and the Stalingrad Music
and Drama Theater, the future NET, has been giving its first
performances in the former house of Science and Arts. . In 1933 he gave
the first premiere of the city Youth Theatre. In 1937, the amateur
puppet theater of the sawmill was recognized as a professional group and
through a series of renamings became the regional puppet theater.
Theaters opened in the following years: Volgograd Theater of One Actor
in 1989, Volgograd Music and Drama Cossack Theater in 1992, Tsaritsyn
Opera in 1993, Volgograd Youth Theater in 2006, Volgograd Laboratory of
Modern Theater in 2008, First Drama Theater in 2012. The tradition of
the first performances of the Concordia Orchestra in 100 years is
continued by Volgo city academic symphony orchestra. There are two
organs in the city - in the central concert hall and in the church of
the Sarepta Museum.
In 1915, Vladimir Miller built the first Parnas cinema in Tsaritsyno on the site of the current house at 6, Lenin Street, which was nationalized after 2 years and received a new name - Krasnoarmeyets. Since the 1920s, all city churches, except for the Kazan Cathedral, were closed and converted into clubs, libraries and cinemas. Thus, the churches of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (there is a residential building at 26 Chapaev Street), the Holy Trinity Church of the DUMO plant and some others have been converted into cinemas. In the growing workers' settlements of Stalingrad, new cinema buildings were being built. Some of them were destroyed during the Battle of Stalingrad, some were transferred to new, more monumental buildings. Until 1991, dozens of cinemas operated in Volgograd, at present, from the “Soviet” ones, films are shown only in the “Udarnik” of the Traktorozavodsky district, the rest of the old cinemas could not compete with modern multiplexes at shopping and entertainment centers. As of 2015, there are 15 cinemas in the city (of which 8 are in 3D technology) and CinemaPark in the Europa shopping center is in IMAX technology.
The construction of a planetarium was timed to coincide with the
upcoming 70th anniversary of Stalin in 1949. The deadlines for the
completion of the object were delayed, the planetarium was commissioned
in 1954, but the elements of the dedication to the anniversary - the
number 70 in the ceiling lamps and other decorative elements have
remained to this day. Also preserved is a portrait-panel of Stalin made
of semi-precious stones, laid out in the foyer of the planetarium; it
was carefully walled up after Stalin's death and opened without damage
in 2004. Special equipment for the planetarium was donated by Carl Zeiss
from the GDR. The planetarium became the third in the USSR after Moscow
and Kyiv and one of the most monumental and beautiful among the
planetariums of the USSR.
The Stalingrad circus was built in 1932
in the Traktorozavodsky district, the prosecutor Vyshinsky opened the
circus. The building was destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad and as
the circus was not restored, now it is a vegetable market. The current
building of the Volgograd Circus was opened in the Central District in
1967.
The first library in Tsaritsyn was the paid reading room at
the Apabelova bookstore, opened in 1894, although there were already
libraries closed to the public at the Public Assembly and Zemstvo
Council. The first public library was opened in 1900 with the help of
the Tsaritsyno philanthropist Lapshin in building 1 of the fire
department. In the 20 pre-war years, there was a huge breakthrough in
the development of librarianship; dozens of libraries were opened at
educational institutions, factories, and in workers' settlements. Almost
all of their book stock was lost during the war, but revived and
increased in the post-war years. Dozens of libraries now operate in
Volgograd, including the Gorky Regional Library and the Volgograd
Regional Special Library for the Blind. In 2014-2016, the structure of
municipal libraries was optimized on the territory of Volgograd. In
2014-2016, a total of 11 premises were vacated, including branches No.
5, 14, 16 and 19, as well as children's libraries No. 11, 15 and 16. The
book fund was localized in larger libraries, and readers were
transferred to neighboring libraries . In 2017, it is planned to
optimize 5 more libraries out of 50 remaining ones. Thus, one branch of
the library in the million-plus city of Volgograd satisfies the needs of
more than 20,000 people. In total, there are 44,500 libraries in Russia,
the population is 144.1 million people. One library on average provides
access to literature to 3,238 Russians.
Until the second half of the 19th century, Tsaritsyn remained a small
county town with a population of several thousand people; in the
literature of its time, it remained only in the essays of travelers. The
exceptions are the descriptions of the uprisings of Pugachev, Bulavin,
Razin. Since the second half of the 19th century, Tsaritsyn has been
gaining the status of an industrial and commercial center of the region,
and the mention and description of the new merchant and craft way of
life on the pages of books and newspapers began to appear much more
often.
In the 20th century, the Battle of Stalingrad had a huge
impact on the life of the city, dividing all spheres of life, including
culture, into “before” and “after”. Therefore, today documentary and
fiction works about Tsaritsyn-Stalingrad-Volgograd are divided into
three main periods:
Tsaritsyn and pre-war Stalingrad. Works: the
essay "The Tsaritsyn conflagration" by A. I. Kuprin (1901), the feature
film "The Defense of Tsaritsyn" (1942), the novel "Predators" by I. K.
Rebrov about the construction of the Volga-Don railway (1959).
Stalingrad battle. The most referenced period, which is reflected in the
largest number of works of art about the battles in the city. With the
development of technology, computer games appeared in which, in
three-dimensional space, photographs and topographic maps simulated the
buildings of Stalingrad in 1942-1943, where the most famous street
battles took place.
Reborn from the ruins of Volgograd. Works: a poem
that became the song “A birch grows in Volgograd” by Margarita Agashina
(1962).
All three eras of the city's history are reflected in the
poem "Tsaritsyn - Stalingrad - Volgograd" by the Volgograd poet Pavel
Velikzhanin.
The architecture of the city survived several waves of destruction.
The first began in the 1880s-1910s, when during this period the
population and economy of the city grew more than 10 times. The suddenly
rich city demolished huts and sheds, the remains of fortress walls and
ramparts that had survived to this period, and built chic shops, hotels
and tenement houses. The construction boom of 1870-1910 swept away the
fortress-half-village Tsaritsyn almost completely, with the exception of
temples. The next wave came in the civil and subsequent ideological war.
At this time, temples of all denominations were either destroyed or
buildings for other purposes were rebuilt. In 1932, the oldest building
in the city, the 300-year-old Church of John the Baptist, was destroyed.
Great damage was caused by the Great Patriotic War, when Stalingrad
became a war zone. Soviet cinematographers contributed to the
destruction of the city, filming pseudo-documentary chronicles and
blowing up buildings that survived the battles for spectacular shots. In
the post-war years, the restoration of Stalingrad was carried out
according to the plan of the city with spacious streets and avenues, in
which pre-war architecture had the right to life only if it “did not
interfere” with the new highways of the city: Mira Street, Alley of
Heroes, Lenin Avenue. Back in the 1960s, houses restored after the
Battle of Stalingrad were demolished, in which people lived for 15-20
years after the war. Nevertheless, Volgograd has managed to preserve
bits of complex development from almost every era, and the number of
individual buildings in the post-war quarters is in the hundreds. In
general, nothing remained only of the walls and bastions of the
Tsaritsyn fortress.
1770-1820 years. The oldest houses in the
city are the houses of the German Herrnhuter colony in Sarepta, now the
Sarepta Museum. Kirkha (1772 - the oldest building in Volgograd), a
distillery, a library, a "house for unmarried women", "a house for
single men" and other buildings of this era lined up around a small
square. Sarepta is in a very deplorable state. Only a few buildings have
been restored, the rest are gradually moving from an emergency state to
ruins.
1800-1900s. The county Tsaritsyn was partially preserved in
Beketovka. The church of Nikita the Confessor has survived to this day.
sh. 44°24′00″ E (1795 - the oldest surviving one), Paraskeva Pyatnitsa
Church 48°36′43″ s. sh. 44°25′53″ E (late 18th century). The oldest
wooden huts of the 19th century have been preserved, from the forest,
which sailed here on the Volga Belyany, including Shumilov's hut 48 °
35′13 ″ N. sh. 44°25′59″ E where during the Second World War the
headquarters of the 64th Army was located.
1880-1915 years. One of
the features of the architecture of Volgograd is the “hidden streets”,
when inside the perimeter of the monumental Stalinist buildings
unexpectedly there are Tsaritsyno houses, often at an angle from the
existing streets, repeating the contours of the long-defunct fortress
wall. Hidden streets have been preserved on the streets of Ostrovsky,
Pushkin, Volodarsky, Kirsanov. The Tsaritsa merchants most of all liked
the Russian style of historicism, popular in the 19th century - this is
the most common historical style of the city. There are few buildings in
a different style that have survived to our time: the Meat Corps of 1910
in the Art Nouveau style, the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium of 1877 in the
style of classicism.
1910-1912 years. As its ally in the future World
War I, England, represented by the Vickers company, helped build the
Tsaritsyno artillery factory and housing for workers. This village of
Lower Barricades went down in history as Lyudnikov Island and was badly
damaged, but most of the buildings were restored in 1943-1945 in their
original form. Now Pribaltiyskaya street 48°46′28″ s. sh. 44°35′10″ E
and Volzhsky prospect 48°46′27″ s. sh. 44°36′13″ E look like other
English working-class neighborhoods of the early 20th century, with a
few patches of post-war Stalinist buildings.
1920s. During these
years, the country began to recover from the upheavals of 1914-1920, but
the pace had not yet been picked up. Therefore, houses of the style of
socialist constructivism are scattered around the city as they were
built - one by one: the Guest House, the Tatar baths, the March 8
Garment Factory.
1930s. A very powerful decade from the point of view
of influencing the architecture of Stalingrad, numerous complex
buildings remained throughout the city, except for the Central District,
where after the war they decided to build from a “clean slate”. The most
numerous (more than 50 buildings) is the Sotsgorod Tractor Plant -
Dzerzhinsky Street and other streets of the Upper and Lower Tractor
Villages. It is a socialist mini-city with huge schools, an institute, a
kitchen factory, a cinema, a circus 48°47′58″ s. sh. 44°35′49″ E (now a
vegetable market with a standard circus diameter of 16 meters), parks,
embankment. It suffered in the war, but was restored already in the 40s
in almost the same style - post-war Stalinism. At the address
Dzerzhinsky, 32, there is a house 48 ° 48′22 ″ with. sh. 44°35′35″ E on
its end reflecting the history of the street: socialist construction -
the inscription "In the third year of the second five-year plan - 1930",
Stalingrad
1990s No apartment buildings were built in this decade, but it left
its mark in the private sector - the development of prestigious places
near the Volga with private houses of new Russians. The “boys” built in
their own idea of beauty: a huge house with small, loophole-like
windows, columns ridiculous for an ordinary house, an extension to the
house of a porch in the form of a parody of an old Russian tower made of
low-quality red brick.
2000s - to the present. During this period,
high-rise construction resumed, including residential complexes. For the
first time after Stalin, they began to try to make new houses beautiful,
but already in a modern form. In the private sector, a sense of
proportion is increasingly emerging - new houses, even in the budget
version, are harmonious, with large windows, with facades made of facing
bricks. Since 2014, the city has been preparing for the matches of the
World Cup. At the foot of Mamayev Kurgan, the international stadium
"Volgograd Arena" was built. In addition, for the World Championship in
the city, 3 training grounds were built and reconstructed on the basis
of the Academy of Physical Culture and Sports, SC "Olympia" and the
stadium "Zenit"; 3 new hotels. The Clinical Emergency Hospital No. 25
was reconstructed with the construction of a helipad on its territory;
roads (with a total length of 280 km); engineering communications, a
number of airport facilities.
The oldest surviving monument to Gogol in 1910 in the Komsomol garden
near the NET theater. It survived because the writer Gogol had nothing
to do with power and politics, all other monuments to statesmen of the
tsarist era were destroyed in the 1920s. Also, 3 pre-war monuments have
survived to this day: Yerman 1925, Dzerzhinsky 1935 and Kholzunov 1940.
Survived the war with damage and restored after the typical Barmaley
fountain, but in 1951 it was demolished as not representing artistic
value. But thanks to the famous photograph of Evzerikhin, which showed
the horror of war - a sculpture of a children's round dance against the
backdrop of a burning city and over the years has become a symbol of the
Battle of Stalingrad, a replica of the fountain was recreated on the
Station Square.
After the war, numerous monuments of the Battle
of Stalingrad were erected in key battlefields, 3 destroyed buildings
were left as monuments: the Gerhardt mill, Lyudnikov Island, the factory
laboratory of the Krasny Oktyabr plant. At the junction of the Volga-Don
shipping canal and the Volga in 1952, a giant sculpture of Stalin was
built, later replaced by a sculpture of Lenin, the largest living person
in the world. During the Khrushchev period, numerous typical monuments
to Stalin were demolished, and the same numerous typical monuments to
Lenin were installed. On the roof of the planetarium in 1954, the last
work of Vera Mukhina "The World" was installed. In 1967, the sculpture
“Motherland Calls” was built on Mamayev Kurgan, at the time of its
creation the tallest statue in the world, and now (2020) it is 11th from
the list of the highest. For the inhabitants of the USSR, it became a
symbol of Volgograd, and for foreigners, along with the poster "The
Motherland is calling!" idea of Mother Russia. Also, the sculptures
“Stand to Death” and “Grieving Mother” became the symbols of the city.
The front line between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht at the most
difficult moment for the Soviet troops - November 1942, marks the
monument "Defence Line" - a chain of T-34 tank towers, 3 more T-34 tanks
stand on pedestals within the city.
After perestroika, military
monuments were erected: those who died in the First World War, in
Afghanistan, in the wars in the North Caucasus, and the Cossacks who
went to war. In Volgograd, there are: A monument in honor of the
founding of Tsaritsyn (1589-1989), the first governor of Tsaritsyn
Grigory Zasekin, the patron saint of the city Alexander Nevsky,
"Blessing" - a monument to Saints Peter and Fevronia, "Protected from
the atom" - a monument to the liquidators of the consequences of the
accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant . Also, for the first
time, monuments without a historical or patriotic reason began to appear
in the city: the Guardian Angel, the first teacher, the sculpture
“Knowledge is Power”, a biker, a motorist, a penny, a sculpture of
lovers, a horseshoe of happiness, a girl with an accordion, a stork with
a newborn, a walking hippo, dogs, cat and cat.
Embankments occupy no more than a tenth of the total length (about 60
kilometers) of the coast and alternate with industrial zones. This
situation has developed since the beginning of the 20th century, when
industrial complexes with their own workers' settlements began to be
built from the city center to the north and south. The oldest one, the
Central Embankment, has been a river port and a trading warehouse since
the founding of the city. In the 1930s, wooden piers and merchant
warehouses were demolished on it, the shore was concreted, trees and
flower beds were planted, and walking alleys were laid. During the
Battle of Stalingrad, the central embankment was destroyed and after the
war it was rebuilt in the Stalinist Empire style, becoming one of the
most beautiful embankments on the Volga. Traktorozavodsky,
Krasnooktyabrsky, Kirovsky and Krasnoarmeisky districts also have
embankments built in the 1930s-1950s. Then they were illuminated,
decorated with flower beds, benches, typical plaster Soviet statues.
During the late Soviet period and especially during the post-Soviet
period, this infrastructure was lost. Now these embankments have become
just a concrete shore, they are used for swimming, sports and fishermen,
but only the Central one performs the function of a walking recreation
area.
City authorities began to engage in park recreation for
citizens in the middle of the 18th century. In 1886, the oldest park in
the city, the Komsomolsky Garden, was opened on the site of the
17th-century Sorrowful Cemetery, which had ceased to be used for its
intended purpose. The central park of Tsaritsyn before the revolution
was the Concordia park in the floodplain of the Tsaritsa River - it was
not preserved in the 20th century. In the 1930s, parks were laid near
the workers' settlements of Stalingrad enterprises, all of them survived
the war and were used for their intended purpose before perestroika. Now
their fate is different: some of them fit into the new realities - there
are cafes and attractions, some are abandoned.
In the 1960s, the
TsPKiO, the largest park in Volgograd, was founded in the Central
District. Large free areas in the very center of the city arose due to
the decision of the post-war city authorities not to restore the oil
depot (the former Nobel oil depot), which was destroyed during the
Battle of Stalingrad, but to transfer oil loading operations to the
southern outskirts of the city. In the 90s, the park experienced
desolation, now it has been restored with the assistance of the
Azerbaijani government and is winning the former love of the
townspeople.
The history of sports in the city begins with the transition from a
village-merchant to an industrial-urban way of life in the second half
of the 19th century. Together with foreign specialists from the DUMO
factories and the Nobel oil depot, a passion for football came. Its
history in Tsaritsyn began in 1909 with the Shturm and Shtandart teams
of the DUMO plant, which landscaped a wasteland for a football field
(now the oldest stadium in Volgograd, Monolit) for matches[245]. From
the players of this team in 1916 the team "Republic" was formed. In
1925, the Dynamo professional team was founded. Since the 1930s, sport
has acquired the importance of national importance, the city authorities
have done a lot of work to create gyms, stadiums, swimming pools in all
areas. In 1929, the Traktorostroitel team, the future Rotor, was
founded. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the sports life of the city was
revived, the priority of sports for the city authorities is evidenced by
the date of the first football match - May 2, 1943 (3 months after the
liberation of Stalingrad). In the post-war period, teams were founded:
handball "Dynamo" and "Caustic", water polo "Spartak", basketball "Red
October", football "Olympia". In 1960, the Academy of Physical Culture
began its work.
During the period 1920-1980, numerous sports
facilities were built, the largest of them: the Tractor Stadium (1931),
the Central Stadium (1962), the Sports Palace (1967), the Central Pool
(1967), the Zenit Stadium (1980). In the post-Soviet period, the Olympia
stadium was built, and the Volgograd Arena football stadium was built
for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, located on the site of the Central Stadium.
The sports infrastructure developed during the Soviet period gave rise
to famous Volgograd athletes: Isinbaeva, Slesarenko, Opaleva, Petrov,
Ilchenko and other world and Olympic champions.
World
Championship 2018 in Volgograd
In 2018, Volgograd hosted 4 matches of
the World Cup. For this purpose, a modern stadium "Volgograd Arena" was
built in the city. The stadium has a capacity of 45,000 people,
including press seats, VIP seats and seats for people with limited
mobility.
The arena hosted matches:
Group G: Tunisia v England
18 June, 21:00
Group D: Nigeria v Iceland 22 June, 18:00
Group A:
Saudi Arabia - Egypt June 25, 17:00
Group H: Japan v Poland 28 June,
17:00
On the Embankment named after the 62nd Army, a FIFA Fan
Festival was organized for football fans. It ran throughout the
tournament. Fans were able to watch matches on the big screen, as well
as visit entertainment areas and food outlets. Famous foreign musical
groups Arash and Kadebostany came to the FIFA Fan Fest.
The organization of health care in the city began in 1807 with an entry in the city budget: to spend 10,727 rubles on the construction of a “business house for the sick, a barn, medical quarters with a pharmacy and fences”, and in those years, patients meant those infected with cholera, typhoid, plague, whose epidemics periodically seized Tsaritsyn. In 1807, the first medical worker appeared - a graduate of the St. Petersburg midwifery institute Ulyana Andreeva. Until the 1890s, the city had only a zemstvo hospital with 40 beds. By 1913, Tsaritsyn had 4 hospitals and 4 outpatient clinics, 135,000 people were served by only 35 doctors. During the Soviet period, Volgograd residents of all ages were covered by city health care. During the post-Soviet period, the following began to function: the Eye Microsurgery Branch (1988), the Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences of Orthopedics and Orthopedic Cosmetology (1992, now the Volgograd City Center for Orthopedics and Orthopedic Cosmetology), the Cardiology Center (1997), the Perinatal Center (2010), the Hemodialysis Center (2015).
The first newspaper in Tsaritsyn, Volzhsko-Donskoy Listok, was
published on January 2, 1885. Its founder and real editor-in-chief
Zhigmanovsky was expelled from St. Petersburg University for
participating in illegal student circles, was considered unreliable, and
therefore used a figurehead, retired lieutenant Petrov, as a publisher.
In 1897, Zhigmanovsky succeeded in publishing a new newspaper under his
own name, Tsaritsynsky Vestnik. This newspaper became the most
circulated in the city and was published until 1917. After the
revolution, the publication of this newspaper was discontinued, the new
authorities began to publish the newspaper Borba, which, through a
series of renamings, became Volgogradskaya Pravda, and for almost 100
years has been the official newspaper of the city government. Local
newspapers are also published in the city: City News, Evening Volgograd,
AiF - Volgograd, a local tab in Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Stalingrad
Radio began work on September 5, 1933, and has been operating with a
break for 1942-1943 to the present, now it is an integral part of Radio
Russia. Regular television broadcasting in Volgograd began on March 16,
1958, after the construction of a television center on Mamaev Kurgan was
completed. Immediately in the shops of the city there was a rush demand
for televisions. The Cold War was on, televisions were subject to
mandatory accounting and the regional party committee knew their exact
number in 1959: 14021 in Stalingrad, 2086 in Volzhsky, 527 in the
surrounding villages. For 2015, Volgograd news broadcasting is carried
out by 2 state channels - the regional division of the channel Russia-24
NGTRK "Volgograd-TRV" and (MTV) Municipal Television of Volgograd.
Honorary citizens were contemporaries who contributed their strength and talent to solving the most important problems of their time. In merchant Tsaritsyn, these are patrons who donated funds for education and health care. Then the fighters and commanders of the Red Army, participants in the defense of Tsaritsyn and the Battle of Stalingrad. Since the 1950s, metallurgists, architects, and artists have become honorary citizens.
The results of the defense of Tsaritsyn
May 14, 1919 - the first
of the cities was awarded the Honorary Revolutionary Red Banner.
April 19, 1924 - the highest award of Soviet Russia - the Order of the
Red Banner (now an exhibit of the Stalingrad Battle Museum-Reserve, is
on display at the Memorial and Historical Museum).
By order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin dated May 1,
1945 No. 20, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol and Odessa were named
hero cities. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the
USSR of May 8, 1965, the city of Volgograd was awarded the Gold Star
medal and the Order of Lenin.
November 29, 1943 - Winston Churchill
presented the city with the sword of Stalingrad, forged by decree of
King George VI of Great Britain (now an exhibit of the Battle of
Stalingrad Museum-Reserve, is on display at the Panorama Museum).
June 23, 1984 - French President Francois Mitterrand presented the Order
of the Legion of Honor to Volgograd.