Orenburg
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- This article is about city which formerly bore the name Chkalov, for famous Soviet pilot see Valery Chkalov.
Orenburg (Оренбу́рг) is a city on the Ural River and the administrative center of Orenburg Oblast in the Volga Federal District of Russia. It lies 1478 km south of Moscow, at Template:Coor dm The city had a population of approximately 548,800 as of the 2002 census.
History
The Russian Empire began plans for the construction of an eastern frontier fortress town in the southern Ural region to be named Orenburg in 1734. The colonists originally founded a settlement in 1735 at the confluence of the Ural River with the Or River. The town's name meant "fortress near the Or," as Burg is German for fortress. This settlement changed its name in 1739 to Orsk. An attempt was made to found another Orenburg at a location called Krasnogar, or "Red Hill," in 1741, but this settlement failed. A third Orenburg was successfully established at its present location approximately 250 km down the Ural from Orsk in 1743.
This third Orenburg functioned as an important military outpost on the frontier with the nomadic Kazakhs. It became the center for the Orenburg Cossacks. After the incorporation of Central Asia into the Russian Empire, Orenburg became a trading station and a prominent railway junction on route to the new Central Asian possessions and to Siberia.
Orenburg functioned as the capital of the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (in present-day Kazakhstan) within Russia from 1920-1925. When that republic was renamed Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925, Orenburg rejoined Russia proper and Alma-Ata (Almaty) became the new capital. Although the republic became the Kazakh SSR in 1936, Orenburg remained in Russia.
From 1938 to 1957, the city bore the name Chkalov (Чка́лов) (after the test pilot Valery Chkalov). The city's distance from the Nazi invasion during World War II led many Soviet enterprises to flee there, helping in the city's economic growth.
External Links
- City History of Orenburg (in English) (http://www.orenburg.ru/city/history_eng.html)
Template:Russia-geo-stubde:Orenburg ja:オレンブルク os:Оренбург ru:Оренбург