Volgograd, Russia

Image of Volgograd 

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.

 

Timezone

Volgograd, like the whole region, is in the Moscow time zone (UTC + 3).

 

Tourist Information

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.

 

Orientation

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.

 

Getting here

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.

 

Transport

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.

 

Travel Destinations

Mamayev Kurgan Volgograd

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.

Church of All Saints

 

Krasnoarmeisky district

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.

 

What to do

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

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.

 

Shopping

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

 

Restaurants

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.

 

Night life

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.

 

Hotels

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.

 

Connection

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.

 

Precautionary measures

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.

 

Etymology

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.

 

History of Volgograd

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).

 

Watch city (1589-1775)

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.

 

Formation of the industrial center of the region (1775-1920)

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.

 

Interwar period (1922-1941)

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.

 

Battle of Stalingrad

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.

 

1944-2018 years. Post-war period. State of the art

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.

 

Geographical position

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.

 

Climate

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).

 

Flora and fauna

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.

 

Ecology

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.

 

Administrative and political structure

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.

 

History of administrative division and city status

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.

 

Authorities

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

 

City symbols and official dates

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)

 

Population

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.

 

Economy

Industry

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.

 

Transport

Intercity

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.

 

Urban

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.

 

Education and science

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.

 

Culture

Museums

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".

 

Theaters and music

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.

 

Cinemas

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.

 

Other areas

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.

 

City in works of culture

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.

 

Architecture

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.

 

Monuments and sculptures

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 and parks

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.

 

Sport

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.

 

Healthcare

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).

 

Mass media

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 and famous natives

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.

 

City Awards

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).

 

Results of the Battle of Stalingrad

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.