99-573: Magnitogorsk (Russian: Магнитого́рск , IPA: [məɡnʲɪtɐˈɡorsk] , lit. ' [city] of the magnetic mountain ' ) is an industrial city in Chelyabinsk Oblast , Russia, on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River . Its population is currently 410,594 ( 2021 Census ) . Magnitogorsk was named after Mount Magnitnaya ,
198-716: A center of the Iset Province [ ru ] , a constituent part of the Orenburg Governorate (a direct successor of the Orenburg Expedition). The period from the 1750s to the 1770s saw the emergence of industrial enterprises in the Southern Urals when the first factory-centered towns like Miass , Kyshtym , and Zlatoust were founded. After the Southern Urals recovered from the Pugachev's Rebellion of 1773–1775,
297-703: A distinct four-season humid continental climate ( Dfb ) with relatively severe winters for the latitude. This climate type is typical for southerly Russian areas far from large bodies of water. The average July high is around 25 °C (77 °F) with lows of 13 °C (55 °F) with January averages ranging from −10 °C (14 °F) in daytime high to −18 °C (0 °F) in average low. Temperatures approaching 34 °C (93 °F) or above have been measured from May to September with real severe frosts below −36 °C (−33 °F) have been measured in all other months than that except transitional months April and October. Ethnic composition (2010):. Magnitogorsk
396-531: A double team of interrogators. Bukharin's confession in particular became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel Darkness at Noon and philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror . His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pleaded guilty to "sum total of crimes", he denied knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Some astute observers noted that he would allow only what
495-509: A fabricated confession by the interrogators. After the interrogations the files were submitted to NKVD troikas, which pronounced the verdicts in the absence of the accused. During a half-day-long session a troika went through several hundred cases, delivering either a death sentence or a sentence to the Gulag labor camps. Death sentences were immediately enforceable. The executions were carried out at night, either in prisons or in secluded areas run by
594-456: A geological anomaly that once consisted almost completely of iron ore , around 55% to 60% iron . It is the second-largest city in Russia that is not the administrative centre of any federal subject or district . Magnitogorsk contains the largest iron and steel works in the country: Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works . The official motto of the city is "the place where Europe and Asia meet", as
693-772: A massive scale as victims of the repression. In addition to ordinary citizens, prominent members of the Communist Party were also targets for the purges. The purge of the Party was accompanied by the purge of the whole society. Soviet historians organize the Great Purge into three corresponding trials. The following events are used for the demarcation of the period: Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember
792-588: A number of the Soviet Union's diaspora nationalities: the Finnish , Latvian , Estonian , Bulgarian , Afghan , Iranian , Greek , and Chinese . Of the operations against national minorities, it was the largest one, second only to the "Kulak Operation" in terms of the number of victims. According to Timothy Snyder , ethnic Poles constituted the largest group of victims in the Great Terror, comprising less than 0.5% of
891-553: A plan to set up in Magnitogorsk a copy of the US Steel steel-mill in Gary. The contract was increased four times, and eventually the new plant had a capacity of over four million tons annually. It was a showpiece of Soviet achievement. Huge reserves of iron ore in the area made it a prime location to build a steel plant capable of challenging its Western rivals. However, a large proportion of
990-596: A power-sharing agreement with the government of Russia, granting it autonomy. The agreement would be abolished on 2 February 2002. On 15 February 2013, a 10,000 ton meteoroid entered the Earth's atmosphere over Russia at about 09:20 YEKT (03:20 UTC). It passed over the southern Ural region and exploded in a meteor air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast. About 1,500 people were reported injured, including 311 children. Health officials said 112 people had been hospitalized, mainly from injuries caused by glass from windows shattered by
1089-638: A several kilometer stone river, forests, woodlands and mountain tundra, ancient mineral mines and mountain rivers flowing both to Europe and Asia. Taganay National Park was established on 5 March 1991, the first in the Urals. Gagarin Central Park is a 12-hectare recreational space in Chelyabinsk. The park is named after Yuri Gagarin , a Soviet cosmonaut and the first person to enter space. The park contains forest walks, lakes, old quarries, and landscaped gardens. There
SECTION 10
#17328514575281188-573: A shock wave; two were reported to be in serious condition. As many as 3,000 buildings in six cities across the region were damaged by the explosion and impacts. The meteor created a dazzling light as it air burst, bright enough to cast shadows during broad daylight in Chelyabinsk. The largest companies in the region include Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works , Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant ( Mechel group), Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant , Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant , Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant , Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant . Chelyabinsk Oblast
1287-615: Is twinned with: Chelyabinsk Oblast Chelyabinsk Oblast is a federal subject (an oblast ) of Russia in the Ural Mountains region, on the border of Europe and Asia . Its administrative center is the city of Chelyabinsk . During the Middle Ages, Bashkir tribes inhabited the Southern Urals ; they formed part of the Golden Horde , Nogai Horde , and smaller Bashkir unions. The Tsardom of Russia incorporated
1386-517: Is 2,750 km (1,710 mi), and the Oblast measures 400 km (250 mi) from north to south and 490 km (300 mi) from west to east. The highest point of Chelyabinsk Oblast, reaching 1,406 metres (4,613 ft) above sea level, is located in the Nurgush , a 50 kilometres (31 mi) long mountain range rising near lake Zyuratkul . It also borders the country of Kazakhstan , specifically
1485-626: Is a popular mountain skiing base nearby, built by the MMK . Several sports clubs are active in the city: The city is located on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River. Magnitogorsk was mentioned in the Blacksmith Institute 's 2007 survey of the world's worst polluted cities, placed in the report's unranked list of the 25 most-polluted places outside
1584-452: Is also a showground with rides. There are several monuments in Chelyabinsk, many of which are on Kirovka street, a pedestrian street in the center of Chelyabinsk. The monuments include a monument to Igor Kurchatov , a nuclear scientist, which opened in 1986 to the 250th anniversary of Chelyabinsk; a monument to Orlenok, on the Aloe polye in Chelyabinsk, which opened on 29 October 1958 on the day of
1683-426: Is debated by historians, but there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint at which Stalin decided to take action and begin the purges. Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged the murder, or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion. Kirov was a staunch Stalin loyalist, but Stalin may have viewed him as a potential rival because of his emerging popularity among
1782-476: Is highly urbanized. According to a 2012 survey, 30.9% of the population of Chelyabinsk Oblast adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church , 8% are unaffiliated generic Christians , 5% adheres to other Eastern Orthodox Churches , 8% of the population is Muslim , 1% adheres to Slavic Rodnovery (Slavic Neopaganism), and 0.4% to forms of Hinduism ( Vedism , Krishnaism or Tantrism ). In addition, 29% of
1881-926: Is incorporated as the City of Magnitogorsk—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts . As a municipal division , the City of Magnitogorsk is incorporated as Magnitogorsky Urban Okrug. The city is connected by the Magnitogorsk International Airport and by a railway. Public transport includes trams, buses, and taxis. The city is ranked 8th in the world and 2nd in Russia for automobile congestion. There are two establishments of higher education in Magnitogorsk: Magnitogorsk State Technical University (MSTU) and Magnitogorsk State Conservatory (MSC). Magnitogorsk State University (MaSU), founded in 1932, in 2013
1980-411: Is on the eastern slope of the Southern Urals. Only a small part of the territory to the west is on the western slopes of the Southern Urals. Chelyabinsk Oblast is situated in the Southern Urals, near Kurgan and Sverdlovsk oblast . Most of the Oblast is located to the east of the Ural Mountains , which form the continental boundary between Asia and Europe . This boundary is marked by a stone pillar at
2079-676: The Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant , originated at this time. The economy continued to grow after the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, as industries evacuated from the western parts of the Soviet Union to the Urals , and to Chelyabinsk Oblast in particular. During the war, Magnitogorsk alone produced one third of all Soviet steel, while the city of Chelyabinsk became the main center of Soviet tank production, earning
SECTION 20
#17328514575282178-701: The Governor of Chelyabinsk Oblast , is the highest executive body in the region, and includes territorial executive bodies such as district administrations, committees, and commissions that facilitate development and run the day-to-day matters of the province. Population : 3,431,224 ( 2021 Census ) ; 3,476,217 ( 2010 Census ) ; 3,603,339 ( 2002 Census ) ; 3,623,732 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . Vital statistics for 2022: Total fertility rate (2022): 1.47 children per woman Life expectancy (2021): Total — 69.16 years (male — 64.36, female — 73.79) Source : Chelyabinsk Oblast
2277-597: The Gulag labor camps . The NKVD targeted certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans , and Soviet citizens of Polish origin, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. Throughout the purge, the NKVD sought to strengthen control over civilians through fear, and frequently used imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and executions during its mass operations . In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on
2376-511: The Kostanay Region . Chelyabinsk Oblast has a very diverse landscape, ranging from lowlands and hilly plains to mountain ranges with peaks exceeding 1,000 m, including Nurgush mountain (1406 m). The mountainous area has several ski resorts . The West Siberian Plain is bounded on the west horizontal (elevation 190 m above sea level), which passes through the village of Bagaryak, Kunashak and continues through Chelyabinsk to
2475-492: The Miass , Uy , Ural , Ay , Ufa, Uvelka, and Gumbeyka, pass through the area and are longer than 200 km (124 mi). Chelyabinsk Oblast is also home to more than 3,748 lakes, mostly located in the north and east and covering a total area of 2,125 km (820 sq mi). Many of the lakes in this area, including Lake Turgoyak , Zyuratkul , and Lake Itkul , are famous for their clear waters and attract tourism. Some of
2574-723: The Pittsburgh Penguins , Ilya Samsonov (b. 1997) of the Vegas Golden Knights , and Nikolai Kulemin (b. 1986), formerly of the New York Islanders , all used to play for the club and all are Magnitogorsk natives. Metallurg Magnitogorsk won the Gagarin Cup in the 2013–14 , 2015–16 , and 2023–24 KHL seasons. The town's football team is FC Magnitogorsk , playing in the Amateur Football League . Abzakovo
2673-753: The Trial of the Twenty-One , is the most famous of the Soviet show trials, because of persons involved and the scope of charges which tied together all loose threads from earlier trials. Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", supposedly led by Nikolai Bukharin, the former chairman of the Communist International , former premier Alexei Rykov , Christian Rakovsky , Nikolai Krestinsky , and Genrikh Yagoda , recently disgraced head of
2772-499: The Tsarist regime , former members of political parties other than the communist party, etc.). They were to be executed or sent to Gulag prison camps extrajudicially, under the decisions of NKVD troikas. The following categories appear to have been on index-cards, catalogues of suspects assembled over the years by the NKVD and were systematically tracked down: "ex-kulaks" previously deported to " special settlements " in inhospitable parts of
2871-528: The Yezhovshchina ( Ежовщина [(j)ɪˈʐofɕːɪnə] , lit. ' period of Yezhov ' ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. It sought to consolidate Joseph Stalin 's power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and aimed at removing the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky within the Soviet Union. The term great purge was popularized by
2970-674: The "commission" authorized by the Politburo and gave assurances that death sentences would not be carried out. After the trial, Stalin not only broke his promise to spare the defendants, he had most of their relatives arrested and shot. In May 1937, the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials , commonly known as the Dewey Commission, was set up in
3069-574: The 1930s when, according to Stalin's Five-Year-Plans , Magnitogorsk was to become a one-industry town modeled after two of the most advanced steel-producing cities in the United States at that time: Gary, Indiana , and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . At this time, hundreds of foreign experts streamed in to implement and direct the work. In 1928 a Soviet delegation arrived in Cleveland, Ohio , to discuss with American consulting company Arthur G. McKee
Magnitogorsk - Misplaced Pages Continue
3168-536: The 1930s. Scott discusses the fast-paced industrial and social developments during Stalin's first five-year plan and the rising paranoia of the Soviet regime preceding the Great Purge of the late 1930s. In 1937 foreigners were told to leave, and Magnitogorsk was declared a closed city . There is little reliable information about events and development of the city during the closed period. The city played an important role during World War II because it supplied much of
3267-737: The Chairman of the Oblast Executive Committee (executive power). Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CPSU lost its monopoly on power. Today, the Charter of Chelyabinsk Oblast governs the political structure of the region. The Legislative Assembly of Chelyabinsk Oblast serves as the province's regional parliament and exercises legislative authority, with the power to pass laws, resolutions, and other legal acts and oversee their implementation and observance. The Oblast Government, led by
3366-520: The Holy Trinity". Russian iron-ore mining in this region dates back to 1752, when two entrepreneurs named Tverdysh and Myasnikov decided to explore the feasibility of mining in the area. They took advantage of the fact that Mount Magnitnaya did not belong to anyone at that time; they secured it for themselves by way of petition to Empress Elizabeth. In 1759 the petition was accepted, and they launched iron-ore production. The city underwent rapid change in
3465-406: The Moscow Trials to be frame-ups." In the second trial, Karl Radek testified that there was a "third organization separate from the cadres which had passed through [Trotsky's] school," as well as "semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites, people who helped us, not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us, people who from liberalism, from a Fronde against
3564-428: The NKVD was the largest of this kind. The Polish operation claimed the largest number of the NKVD victims: 143,810 arrests and 111,091 executions according to records. Snyder estimates that at least eighty-five thousand of them were ethnic Poles. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry. Poles comprised 12.5% of those who were killed during the Great Terror, while comprising only 0.4% of
3663-447: The NKVD and located as a rule on the outskirts of major cities. The "Kulak Operation" was the largest single campaign of repression in 1937–38, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed, more than half the total of known executions. A series of mass operations of the NKVD was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, on the order of Nikolai Yezhov . The Polish Operation of
3762-400: The NKVD. Although an Opposition Bloc led by Trotsky and with zinovievites really existed, Pierre Broué asserts that Bukharin was not involved. Differently from Broué, one of his former allies, Jules Humbert-Droz , said in his memoirs that Bukharin told him that he formed a secret bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev in order to remove Stalin from leadership. The fact that Yagoda was one of
3861-579: The NKVD. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military. The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society: intelligentsia , wealthy peasants —especially those lending out money or wealth ( kulaks )—and professionals. As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries began affecting civilian life. The purge reached its peak between September 1936 and August 1938 under
3960-507: The Party, gave us this help." By the "third organization," he meant the last remaining former opposition group called the Rightists , led by Bukharin, whom he implicated by saying: I feel guilty of one thing more: even after admitting my guilt and exposing the organisation, I stubbornly refused to give evidence about Bukharin. I knew that Bukharin's situation was just as hopeless as my own, because our guilt, if not juridically, then in essence,
4059-405: The Soviet Union and restore capitalism. These trials were highly publicized and extensively covered by the outside world, which was mesmerized by the spectacle of Lenin's closest associates confessing to most outrageous crimes and begging for death sentences: It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants. From
Magnitogorsk - Misplaced Pages Continue
4158-417: The Soviet economy in the late 1920s, veteran Bolsheviks no longer thought necessary the "temporary" wartime dictatorship, which had passed from Lenin to Stalin. Stalin's opponents inside the Communist Party chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption. This opposition to current leadership may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries
4257-500: The Soviet government desired to put Trotsky on trial during the purge, his exile prevented this. Trotsky survived the purge, though he would be assassinated in 1940 by the NKVD on the orders of Stalin. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, a power vacuum opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the Soviet Union (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. By 1928, Joseph Stalin,
4356-707: The United States by supporters of Trotsky, to establish the truth about the trials. The commission was headed by the noted American philosopher and educator John Dewey . Although the hearings were obviously conducted with a view to proving Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the specific charges made at the trials could not be true. For example, Georgy Pyatakov testified that he had flown to Oslo in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place. Another defendant, Ivan Smirnov , confessed to taking part in
4455-592: The Uraltau pass near the Urzhumka station (8 km (5.0 mi) from Zlatoust ), which has "Europe" written on one side and "Asia" on the other. In Chelyabinsk Oblast, Zlatoust city, Katav-Ivanovsk , and Satka and Chelyabinsk , Troitsk , and Miass are in Europe. Magnitogorsk is located on both continents. The area of Chelyabinsk Oblast is 88,900 km (34,300 sq mi). The total length of its external border
4554-410: The accounts of former OGPU officer Alexander Orlov and others, the methods used to extract the confessions are known: such tortures as repeated beatings, simulated drownings, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families. For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation,
4653-535: The accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was based solely on confessions. He finished his last plea with the words: [T]he monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all. Romain Rolland and others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency for Bukharin, but all
4752-518: The accused showed the speed at which the purges were consuming their own. It was now alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder Maxim Gorky by poison, partition the USSR and hand its territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain, and other charges. Even previously sympathetic observers who had accepted the earlier trials found it more difficult to accept these new allegations as they became ever more absurd, and
4851-538: The area in the late 16th century. However, Russian colonization of the region only began in the 18th century, with the establishment of a system of fortresses and trade posts on the then-Russian border by the Orenburg Expedition [ ru ] in 1734. Many cities of Chelyabinsk Oblast, including the city of Chelyabinsk itself, trace their history back to those forts. In 1743 the Chelyabinsk fortress became
4950-481: The assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, at a time when he had already been in prison for a year. The Dewey Commission later published its findings in a 422-page book titled Not Guilty . Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. In its summary, the commission wrote Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds: The commission concluded: "We therefore find
5049-524: The basis of denunciations or because they were related to, were friends with or knew people already arrested. Engineers, peasants, railwaymen, and other types of workers were arrested during the "Kulak Operation" based on the fact that they worked for or near important strategic sites and factories where work accidents had occurred due to "frantic rhythms and plans". During this period the NKVD reopened these cases and relabeled them as "sabotage" or "wrecking." The Orthodox clergy , including active parishioners,
SECTION 50
#17328514575285148-634: The city occupies land in both Europe and Asia. Magnitogorsk is one of only two planned socialist realist settlements ever built (the other being Nowa Huta in Poland). Magnitogorsk was founded in 1743 as part of the Orenburg Line of forts built during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth . By 1747 the settlement had grown large enough to justify the building of a small wooden chapel, later named "the Church of
5247-552: The country ( Siberia , the Urals , Kazakhstan, and the Far North ), former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the White Army , participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, persons deprived of voting rights, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, ordinary criminals, like thieves, known to the police and various other "socially harmful elements". However, a large number of people were arrested at random in sweeps, on
5346-667: The country as threatened from within by fascist spies. From the October Revolution onward, Lenin had used repression against perceived and legitimate enemies of the Bolsheviks as a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating control over the population in a campaign called the Red Terror . As the Russian Civil War drew to a close, this campaign was relaxed although the secret police did remain active. From 1924 to 1928,
5445-407: The defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion. Zinoviev and Kamenev demanded, as a condition for "confessing", a direct guarantee from the Politburo that their lives and that of their families and followers would be spared. This offer was accepted, but when they were taken to the alleged Politburo meeting, only Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov , and Yezhov were present. Stalin claimed that they were
5544-527: The estimated number of "kulaks" and "criminals" in their districts. These individuals were to be arrested and executed, or sent to the gulag camps. The party chiefs complied and produced these lists within days, with figures which roughly corresponded to the individuals who were already under secret police surveillance. On 30 July 1937, the NKVD Order No. 00447 was issued, directed against "ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements" (such as former officials of
5643-580: The factory, with a strip of greenery, or greenbelt, separating them. Planners would align living and production spheres so as to minimize necessary travel time: workers would generally live in a sector of the residential band closest to the sector of the industrial band in which they worked. However, by the time that May completed his plans for Magnitogorsk, construction of both factory and housing had already started. The sprawling factory and enormous cleansing lakes had left little room available for development, and May therefore had to redesign his settlement to fit
5742-412: The first three into fervent anti-communists eventually. To them, Bukharin's confession symbolized the depredations of communism, which not only destroyed its sons but also conscripted them in self-destruction and individual abnegation. On the first day of trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. However, he changed his plea
5841-922: The fortieth anniversary of the Komsomol ; the Sculpture of the Postman; the Memorial to Law and Order Soldiers; the Monument to Soldiers-Internationalists; and a sculpture of a firefighter. During the Soviet period, the highest authority in the Oblast was shared between three positions: the First Secretary of the Chelyabinsk CPSU Committee (who held the most power), the Chairman of the Oblast Soviet (legislative power), and
5940-604: The historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror , whose title was an allusion to the French Revolution 's Reign of Terror . The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the interior ministry and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936, the NKVD under chief Genrikh Yagoda began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks , government officials, and regional party bosses . Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned or executed by
6039-483: The human cost of the first five-year plan and the collectivization of agriculture . From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants and the resulting famine of 1932–1933 , as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as
SECTION 60
#17328514575286138-402: The kulaks (i.e., wealthy peasants that owned farmland) in a policy called dekulakization . The kulaks responded by destroying crop yields and other acts of sabotage against the Soviet government. The food shortage led to a mass famine across the USSR and slowed the Five Year Plan. A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on
6237-412: The lakes in the eastern foothills have tectonic origins as water accumulated in tectonic failures (basins), resulting in very deep lakes that can reach 30–40 m (98–131 ft). Taganay National Park is located northeast of the city of Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk Oblast. Taganay National Park is a popular tourist destination in the Urals. The park contains mountain ranges, alpine meadows, stone outcrops and
6336-504: The late stages of the Purge rather than deliberate discrimination in sentencing). The wives and children of those arrested and executed were dealt with by the NKVD Order No. 00486 . The women were sentenced to forced labour for 5 or 10 years. Their minor children were put in orphanages. All possessions were confiscated. Extended families were purposely left with nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well, affecting up to 200,000–250,000 people of Polish background depending on
6435-427: The leadership of Nikolai Yezhov , hence the name Yezhovshchina . The campaigns were carried out according to the general line of the party , often by direct orders of the politburo headed by Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of people were accused of various political crimes (espionage, wrecking , sabotage , anti-Soviet agitation , conspiracies to prepare uprisings and coups). They were executed by shooting or sent to
6534-472: The leading defendants were executed except Rakovsky and two others (who were killed in NKVD prisoner massacres in 1941). Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina , was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband posthumously rehabilitated a half-century later by the Soviet state under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988. On 2 July 1937, in a top secret order to regional Party and NKVD chiefs Stalin instructed them to produce
6633-474: The mass repression – including incarceration in the Gulag system – dropped significantly. By 1929, Stalin had defeated his political opponents and gained full control over the party. He organized a committee to begin the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union. Backlash against industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture escalated, which prompted Stalin to increase police presence in rural areas. Soviet authorities increased repression against
6732-422: The moderates. The 1934 Party Congress elected Kirov to the central committee with only three votes against, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 votes against. After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged the ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder as well as a growing list of other offenses, including treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage. Another justification for
6831-412: The modified site. This modification resulted in a city being more "rope-like" than linear. Although the industrial area is concentrated on the left bank of the river Ural, and most residential complexes are on its right bank, the city inhabitants are still subjected to noxious fumes and factory smoke. The book Behind the Urals , by John Scott , documents the industrial development of Magnitogorsk during
6930-473: The new form of Party organization, the Politburo, and Stalin in particular, were the sole dispensers of ideology. This required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious "old guard" of revolutionaries. As the purges began, the government (through the NKVD) shot Bolshevik heroes, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Béla Kun , as well as the majority of Lenin's Politburo, for disagreements in policy. The NKVD attacked
7029-488: The newly formed Chelyabinsk Governorate of the Russian SFSR , which combined eastern portions of the Orenburg Governorate with Kurgan of the Tobolsk Governorate . At this time, the population of the new region has already exceeded one million people. In 1923, together with the Perm , Yekaterinburg Governorate [ ru ] and Tyumen governorates, it merged into a single Ural Oblast that lasted only ten years, until 1934. On 17 January 1934, Chelyabinsk Oblast
7128-660: The next day after "special measures", which dislocated his left shoulder among other things. Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known that his interrogators were given the order "beating permitted", and were under great pressure to extract confession out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin initially held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. But when he read his confession amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with
7227-506: The nickname "Tankograd" (Tank City). Chelyabinsk Oblast has been home to top-secret nuclear research since the 1940s. While there are no nuclear power stations in Chelyabinsk, a number of production reactors were located there starting with the early Cold War. A serious nuclear accident occurred in 1957 at the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant , 150 km (93 mi) north-west of the city, which led to evacuations and fatalities throughout
7326-671: The oblast, although not in Chelyabinsk city. The province was closed to all foreigners until 1992, with the sole exception of allowing a British medical team in following a two-train rail explosion in the mid-1980s. Sławomir Grünberg has made the documentary Chelyabinsk: The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet (1994) about the unsafe dumping of radioactive waste in the Techa River and in Lake Karachay . On 4 July 1997, Chelyabinsk, alongside Bryansk , Magadan , Saratov , and Vologda signed
7425-403: The party's General Secretary, had triumphed over his opponents and gained control of the party. Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929, and Stalin's doctrine of " socialism in one country " became enshrined party policy. However, in the early 1930s, party officials began to lose faith in his leadership, largely due to
7524-465: The party. In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official Sergei Kirov was assassinated . The assassination, in December 1934, led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals. Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself. The validity of these confessions
7623-565: The passport regime", etc. were also dealt with in a summary way. In Moscow, for example, nearly one third of the 20,765 persons executed on the Butovo firing range were charged with a non-political criminal offence. To carry out the mass arrests, the 25,000 officers of the State Security personnel of NKVD were complemented with units of ordinary police, and Komsomol ( Young Communist League ) and civilian Communist Party members. Seeking to fulfill
7722-516: The population deems itself to be " spiritual but not religious ", 14% is atheist , and 4.7% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question. Chelyabinsk Oblast cooperates with: Great Purge The Great Purge , or the Great Terror ( Russian : Большой террор , romanized : Bol'shoy terror ), also known as the Year of '37 ( 37-й год , Tridtsat' sed'moy god ) and
7821-469: The population. Overall, national minorities targeted in these campaigns composed 36% of the victims of the Great Purge, despite being only 1.6% of the Soviet Union's population. 74% of ethnic minorities arrested during the Great Purge were executed while those sentenced during the Kulak Operation had only a 50% chance of being executed, (though this may have been due to the Gulag camp's lack of space in
7920-404: The potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies." The term " purge " in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression purge of the Party ranks . In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people. But from 1936 until 1953,
8019-558: The purge expanded to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin and Kalinin . No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing. For some prominent communists such as Bertram Wolfe , Jay Lovestone , Arthur Koestler , and Heinrich Brandler , the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism, and even turned
8118-399: The purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war. Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich , participants in the repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge; they each signed many death lists. Stalin believed war was imminent, threatened both by an explicitly hostile Germany and an expansionist Japan. The Soviet press portrayed
8217-508: The purges, criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions, and oversaw the execution of Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov , who headed the NKVD during the purge years. Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million. Despite the end of the Great Purge, the widespread surveillance and atmosphere of mistrust continued for decades. Similar purges took place in Mongolia and Xinjiang . While
8316-419: The quotas, the police rounded up people in markets and train stations, with the purpose of arresting "social outcasts". Local units of the NKVD, in order to meet their "casework minimums" and force confessions out of arrestees worked long uninterrupted shifts during which they interrogated, tortured and beat the prisoners. In many cases those arrested were forced to sign blank pages which were later filled in with
8415-429: The reconstruction of the railway and the building of a new airport. With the depletion of the substantial local iron-ore reserves, Magnitogorsk has to import raw materials from northern Kazakhstan . On December 31, 2018, an apartment block in the city of Magnitogorsk suffered a gas explosion and collapse which killed 39 of its residents, and injured 17 more. Within the framework of administrative divisions , it
8514-446: The size of their families. National operations of the NKVD were conducted on a quota system using album procedure . The officials were mandated to arrest and execute a specific number of so-called "counter-revolutionaries", compiled by administration using various statistics but also telephone books with names sounding non-Russian. The Polish Operation of the NKVD served as a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting
8613-469: The south. The lowlands are located in the northeast, and the elevation drops to 130 m in the eastern border region. Numerous rivers originate within the region, within the basins of the Kama , Tobol , and Ural rivers. The region is home to 348 rivers longer than 10 km (6.2 mi) (totaling 10,235 km (6,360 mi) in length), 17 of which are over 100 km (62 mi) in length. Seven rivers,
8712-418: The state offered to its high-paid elite. The Ryutin affair seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions. Ryutin was working with the even larger secret Opposition Bloc in which Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev participated, and which later led to both of their deaths. Stalin enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending democratic centralism . In
8811-589: The steel for the Soviet war effort. Furthermore, its strategic location east of the Ural Mountains made Magnitogorsk safe from seizure by the German Army . During perestroika , the closed-city status was removed, and foreigners were allowed to visit the city again. The years after perestroika brought a significant change in the life of the city; the Iron and Steel Plant was reorganized as a joint-stock company Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MISW or MMK), which helped with
8910-520: The supporters, friends, and family of these "heretical" Marxists, whether they lived in Russia or not. The NKVD nearly annihilated Trotsky's family before killing him in Mexico; the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov , under the personal orders of Stalin. By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control over
9009-454: The term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution. The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin , respectively. Following the Civil War and reconstruction of
9108-583: The territory of modern-day Chelyabinsk Oblast started to attract more people from the European part of Russia. By the mid-19th century Chelyabinsk was a major trade center in the Urals, and after the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s, it became an important transport hub that connected Siberia to the rest of the Russian Empire . In 1919, Chelyabinsk became the regional capital of
9207-528: The top ten. Pollutants include lead , sulfur dioxide , heavy metals and other air pollutants. According to the local hospital, only 1% of all children living in the city are in good health. The Blacksmith Institute says that, according to a local newspaper report, "only 28% of infants born in 1992 were healthy, and only 27% had healthy mothers". However, according to Blacksmith Institute, plant managers have upgraded much of their equipment in recent years and emissions have been reduced by about 60%. Magnitogorsk has
9306-472: The workforce, as ex- peasants , typically had few industrial skills and little industrial experience. To solve these issues, several hundred foreign specialists arrived to direct the work, including a team of architects headed by the German Ernst May . According to the original plans, the city was to have followed the linear city design, with rows of similar superblock neighborhoods running parallel to
9405-610: Was finally established. Its current boundaries were formed when Kurgan Oblast was detached from it in 1943. During the 1930s the regional economy and industrial output grew as Chelyabinsk Oblast became a key focus of the First Five-Year Plan . Key factories and enterprises that formed the core of the modern Chelyabinsk economy, including the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works , the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant and
9504-435: Was in written confession and refuse to go any further. The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. One observer noted that after disproving several charges against him, Bukharin "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case." He continued by saying that "the confession of
9603-843: Was merged with MSTU and ceased to exist as a separate university. There are also three theatres: Pushkin Drama Theatre (the oldest in the city), the Opera and Ballet House, and the Puppet Theatre. The Church of the Ascension of the Lord opened in 2004. Magnitogorsk is home to the Rear-front Memorial . Metallurg Magnitogorsk is an ice hockey team based in Magnitogorsk, playing in the Kontinental Hockey League . Evgeni Malkin (b. 1986) of
9702-414: Was nearly annihilated: 85% of the 35,000 members of the clergy were arrested. Particularly vulnerable to repression were also the so-called "special settlers" ( spetzpereselentsy ) who were under permanent police surveillance and constituted a huge pool of potential "enemies" to draw on. At least 100,000 of them were arrested in the course of the Great Terror. Common criminals such as thieves, "violators of
9801-516: Was the same. But we are close friends, and intellectual friendship is stronger than other friendships. I knew that Bukharin was in the same state of upheaval as myself. That is why I did not want to deliver him bound hand and foot to the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs. Just as in relation to our other cadres, I wanted Bukharin himself to lay down his arms. The third and final trial, in March 1938, known as
#527472