Kemerovo, Russia

Кемерово

 

Description of Kemerovo

Kemerovo is the capital of Kuzbass, a large industrial city on the Tom River. Having the reputation of being a gloomy and uninteresting place, Kemerovo can, nevertheless, boast of a cozy center of the Soviet era, as well as unique monuments from the times of industrial development of the region. In addition, the main highway to Central and Eastern Siberia passes through the city, it has a good infrastructure and is the most convenient place to stay overnight within a radius of hundreds of kilometers.

Kemerovo marks the northern border of Kuzbass. Coal is mined even further north, but it is in the area of ​​the city that the steppe Kuzbass landscape is replaced by a forest. Despite the abundance of factories, the city does not look too polluted, and the rocks and pine forest on the right bank of the Tom give the eye a break from the urban industrial landscape.

Kemerovo is one of the young regional centers. Its name comes from the village of the same name, which was once located on the right bank of the Tom, and the toponym itself is associated with the Kyrgyz word kemer - a steep cliff (the right bank of the river here is really steep, high). The capitals learned about Kemerovo a long time ago, since already in 1721 coal deposits were discovered in this place. Kuzbass coal began to be mined only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and then the future of Kemerovo began to grow slowly, while being called Shcheglov - in the village on the opposite, left bank of the Tom.

There were also larger villages in the vicinity, the same Kolchugino (now Leninsk-Kuznetsky), but for some reason - perhaps proximity to the Trans-Siberian Railway - the administration of the future Kuzbass region was immediately placed in Shcheglovo. Before the revolution, not much was built (although the railway came to the city even then), and the most interesting stage in the development of Kemerovo is associated with the first years of Soviet power, when an autonomous colony of Kuzbass was organized near the city - an unusual association in which specialists passionate about communist ideas from different countries of the world built the first factories and developed hitherto almost uninhabited region.

Since 1918, Shcheglovo has had city status; in 1932, the city was renamed Kemerovo, perhaps because the locals actively disliked the nickname “finches”. In the late 1930s, Kemerovo became the center of the region, since 1943 - the capital of the newly formed Kemerovo region. Now it is a large regional center with a large-scale industry (state district power station, coking plant, fertilizer production), its own university and an active cultural life. Passing by Kemerovo, it is worth stopping by the city for at least a couple of hours to visit Krasnaya Gorka. If you wish, you can spend half a day here, and devote another half-day to the Tomsk petroglyph - one of the main tourist sites of the Kemerovo region.

 

Orientation

Kemerovo is a city stretched along the Tom River, some of its microdistricts are settlements near mines, 10-15 km away from the center. The center itself is located on the left bank of the Tom to the east of the railway station in the area of Vesennyaya Street and Sovetsky Prospekt. The eastern border of the center runs along the Iskitimka River, the left tributary of the Tom, behind which there are also interesting objects, but the front Stalinist buildings are abruptly replaced by a heap of new buildings and the private sector. To the west of the center, behind the railway, a huge industrial zone begins, and opposite it, across the Tom, is Krasnaya Gorka, the main Kemerovo attraction.

There are two bridges across Tom: Kuznetsky in the very center, next to Krasnaya Gorka, and Kuzbass in the eastern part of the city.

 

Getting in

By plane
Flights to Moscow three times a day, occasional direct flights to St. Petersburg, Simferopol and Sochi. Unlike neighboring Tomsk, there are no local (intra-Siberian) flights to Kemerovo. A larger airport is located in Novosibirsk, it takes 5-6 hours from Kemerovo.

1  Airport them. Alexey Leonov. The cramped building is notorious for long queues in the mornings before the departure of Moscow flights - many residents of Kemerovo believe that Alexei Leonov would have fallen through the ground, having learned what a terrible airport was named after him (this, however, sounds ambiguous, given that cosmonaut Leonov circled the Earth more than one times, and there was no need to overcome it through and through). The reception area has a pretty decent coffee counter, the clean area is rumored to have a better cafe but very little space. Standing in line for check-in or screening, see the makeshift museum of cosmonaut Leonov, including a spacesuit suspended directly from the ceiling, and don't miss the descent spacecraft that has been in space on the forecourt. The hotel - judging by the photographs, is quite decent; single/double room: 2750/3300 rubles, tel. +7 (3842) 39-02-67.
How to get there: the airport is located on the southern outskirts of the city near the Novokuznetsk highway, 12 km from the city center. You can get there by bus number 101 from the railway station. It runs according to a rather strange schedule, on average every 30-60 minutes, the road to the station takes an hour. More regularly, usually every 20 minutes, bus No. 126 runs to the eastern part of Kemerovo (Builders Blvd., Khimikov Ave.), where you can change to other routes and go to the center along Ave. Lenin. A taxi to the center costs 400-500 rubles.

By train
With trains in Kemerovo is very tight. Every other day, the branded Moscow-Kemerovo runs, which is not cheap and travels through Novosibirsk (4.5 hours), but at an inconvenient time. All other trains follow either the Trans-Siberian Railway or (Novokuznetsk) through Leninsk-Kuznetsky. If your train goes along the Trans-Siberian Railway, from the west you can go to Yurga, and from the east - to Mariinsk: in both cases, the bus stations are not far from the railway stations, buses to Kemerovo run frequently. The third, intermediate option is the Yashkino station, from where there are fewer buses to Kemerovo, but along the way you can see the Tomsk petroglyph.

Novokuznetsk trains are more difficult to use because they follow different routes, mostly quite far from Kemerovo. One or two trains a day pass through Topki station, from where Kemerovo is less than an hour away by bus.

2  Railway station, at the beginning of Ave. Lenin.

By bus
In the western direction, you can easily reach Yurga (2 hours), and in the eastern direction - to Mariinsk (3-3.5 hours). Then it makes sense to take a train, since only 2-3 buses a day pass the Mariinsky along the highway, usually they go all the way to Krasnoyarsk (10 hours). Buses to Tomsk (4 hours) every 1-2 hours, to Novosibirsk (4.5 hours) - every hour, moreover, Tomsk ones call at Yurga, and Novosibirsk ones pass along the highway. In the southern direction, buses to Novokuznetsk (3.5-4 hours) run at intervals of 20-30 minutes, there are also several direct buses to Barnaul (7.5 hours).

3  Bus station  Wikidata item, ave. Kuznetsky, 81 (200 m from the railway station).

By car
The federal highway "Siberia" M53 (P255) passes through the city, along which you can get into the city both from the west, from Novosibirsk, and from the east, from Krasnoyarsk.

From the west, from the side of Novosibirsk, there is an alternative route to Kemerovo: in Novosibirsk, you need to go to the Gusinobrodskoye highway, move along the Novosibirsk-Leninsk-Kuznetsky highway, after Zhuravlevo turn to Promyshlennaya. The coverage is slightly worse than on the federal highway, which is offset by fewer heavy vehicles. On the same road you can get to the ski complex Tanay.

 

Getting around

The city has a tram, trolleybus, bus and fixed-route taxis. Travel by municipal transport (tram, trolley bus, bus) costs 20 rubles, by fixed-route taxis 22 rubles. Intracity bus service is very rare, due to the fact that fixed-route taxis use PAZ buses, which are not much inferior to buses in terms of capacity.

Taxi transportation is very developed in the city: "Taxi Maxim", taxi "Bibika", taxi "Blues", taxi "Leader", taxi "Let's go". The most affordable prices in the first two are the fixed price of the trip, which the operator calls even when ordering by phone.

The city has good, by Russian standards, roads. However, increasing motorization makes traffic on the roads extremely busy.

 

Sights

Red hill
Krasnaya Gorka, also known as Gorelaya Mountain, is named after the red rock that arose during the combustion of coal seams. It was this rock that was discovered in 1721 by the explorer Mikhailo Volkov, who reported "to the center" about the discovery of the Kuznetsk coal basin. Coal mining near Kemerovo began in the 1910s. with the creation of a joint-stock company "Kopikuz" (Mining of Kuzbass). Kopikuz managed to organize the construction of the Kolchuginskaya railway, which connected Kuzbass with the Trans-Siberian Railway, but the revolution and the civil war prevented it from developing in earnest. As soon as the situation stabilized, the new Soviet government took up coal mining, setting the matter in a very original way: in line with the general concept of the global international, Lenin announced a course towards the creation of colonies in which communists from different countries of the world would build a bright future in a single impulse the globe.

The property of Kopikuz was transferred to the Autonomous Industrial Colony (AIC) Kuzbass, and in 1923 foreigners flocked to Shcheglovsk: they traveled from Western countries (Finns and Americans predominated), bringing with them experience and the latest technologies, which made it possible to arrange life in a new way. and in a short time to launch - for the first time in such a cold climate - coke production. The age of the colony was short-lived; already in the late 1920s, foreigners began to disperse, tired of the local bureaucracy and gouging. Nevertheless, the colony managed to leave its mark in Siberia, being noted, among other things, by original architecture, the ideologist of which was the Dutchman van Lohem, which in itself is an infrequent case: before that, since the time of Peter I, the Dutch had not built anything in Russia.

How to get there: Krasnaya Gorka is located on the right bank of the Tom River behind the Kuznetsky Bridge to the west of the center. You can walk here or drive by transport to the first stop after the bridge "Naberezhnaya", from where the stairs lead to the monument to the miners.

1  Monument "Memory to the miners of Kuzbass". The monument by Ernst Neizvestny - in the words of the author himself, "a miner's angel" - was installed in 2003. It does not require any special comments, it is one of the symbols of Kuzbass and that rare case when the attribution of a monument to the cultural heritage just a few years after the opening looks completely justified. Also pay attention to the design of the paths and stairs around the monument: they were carried out by local architects, who coped with the task so successfully that Neizvestny himself noted this.
2 "Krasnaya Gorka" Museum-Reserve, st. Krasnaya Gorka, 17. 10:00–20:00. Main exposition: 100 rubles, exposition "Mine": another 100 rubles. The museum territory is located around the house of the manager Rutgers - a pre-revolutionary building (1916), built of dark stone. There is a very interesting museum inside, where facts and photographs tell about the history of the colony and the life of the “colonists” on Siberian soil. In the basement there is a much more primitive exposition "Mine", the main purpose of which is to take pictures in miners' uniforms and watch a video about the work of miners. In front of the museum there is an exhibition of mining equipment and a rather memorable installation with the names of the cities of Kuzbass, but the most important thing here is an observation deck from which you can see the center of Kemerovo (on the left), a state district power station with a pair of tall pipes (in the center) and a coking plant (on the right), which regularly produces giant puffs of smoke: the sight is breathtaking and frightening.

Construction of Krasnaya Gorka: almost all the buildings around the museum appeared in the second half of the 1920s. and served as housing for specialists, they were provided with separate spacious apartments with amenities. They built it differently. For example, stone houses 21 and 24 - neither give nor take Dutch cottages in the style of functionalism, where all apartments are two-story, with bedrooms and therefore small windows in the attic. And the neighboring house 19 looks more like Russians, but also designed by van Lochem, with a brick first floor and a wooden second.

3  School of the Kemerovo mine, st. Abyzova, 12. Another example of Dutch architecture on Russian soil. The school building (1927) has an angular shape with a stone first floor, a wooden second floor and a high (water) tower - at first glance a strange, but in fact a very thoughtful decision. A water pump was arranged here because a site was chosen for the school at the highest point of the village, and a tree was needed for better thermal insulation of the water tank: a concrete frame was made under it, only wooden sheathing here. Aesthetically, the building is also quite interesting, but the best view of it is from the courtyard, which is now closed to outsiders, so be content with old photographs. On the way to the museum, on the right side of Abyzov Street, among the thickets, you can see the ruins of long one-story barracks - houses for workers built according to the project of the same van Lohem. These buildings, popularly known as "sausage houses", were also an innovation, since for the first time they gave ordinary hard workers separate housing, even more primitive than in houses for specialists. From a modern point of view, such buildings are of little use for habitation, so they are likely to be demolished or taken away, regardless of the status of cultural heritage. If you want to see such houses alive, go to Prokopyevsk, where they are still quite intact and inhabited.

4  Headquarters of Kopikuza, st. Graviynaya, 40 (along Mariinskaya street until the first turn to the left and then all the time straight towards the river). Little Kemerovo masterpiece. The stone office building of Kopikuza was built in 1916 in the general style of Siberian stone modernism, when very elegant buildings were made of dark raw stone (another example of such architecture is the old railway station in Novokuznetsk). After the revolution, the building served a variety of functions, then was abandoned and finally passed into private hands, which did not allow it to fall apart, but made it difficult to access the territory: it is guarded by (really evil) dogs, and the best thing left for you is to carefully look through gates.
5 Mountain Gorelay. Actually, the mountain with outcrops of red rock is located in the area of \u200b\u200bthe main office of Kopikuz: after looking for paths or walking along the coast from the Kuznetsk bridge, you can go to the river and find a brick wall there - an old, still pre-revolutionary pier, built in those days when coal was taken out along the Tom by steamboats. There should also be adits filled with the first Kemerovo mines.
6  Observation deck at the Cross. From Krasnaya Gorka, a panorama of the Kemerovo industry opens up, but the city center is seen rather poorly. The best view of it is from the rocks on the opposite side of the Logovoye Highway directly opposite the city (Pritomskaya) embankment. This area is surprisingly patriarchal for a large city and is called Sosnovy Bor. The observation deck is marked with a large cross, which can be reached on foot from the Sosnovy Bor tram stop (next after Krasnaya Gorka) or by car from the side of Ave. Miners and st. Volkov. In the area of the cross, right on the rocks, there is a huge inscription "Kuzbass" with bright night illumination.

 

Center

In the center of Kemerovo there are no selected sights, but it is simply pleasant to walk here, especially along the embankment and along Vesennyaya street with its wide shady boulevard. Fans of Soviet architecture will find not quite typical solutions and a well-preserved ensemble of late Stalinism, interspersed with pre-war buildings with traces of constructivism - most of them are concentrated in the blocks around Ordzhonikidze Street.

7  Building of the City Executive Committee, Sovetsky Ave. 61. The front building in the Stalinist style, built for the administration of the NKVD, marks the beginning of Sovetsky Prospekt, which was built up in the mid-1950s. On the other side of the avenue, the main post office building also has a tower, but of a different shape: this is a rare case in Soviet architecture when the “gates” opening the main city highway are asymmetrical. The towers were most likely planned to be the same, but the tower on the building of the city executive committee fell victim to the fight against excesses and was erected only in the 1980s. The square in front of the building contains a Cyclopean monument to Lenin (1970) and the building of the local administration - another example of late Stalinism.
8 Regional Hospital (from the side of Pritomskaya Embankment and Miracle Park). The city hospital complex began to take shape in the late 1920s. Its oldest building - Building No. 4 (1928) - is easily recognizable by its figured balconies, a wide porch and a vase above the entrance: this project was apparently a continuation of the Palace of Labor built a year earlier, where the features of the old noble architecture are also traced. Both buildings are unusual in that they brought bourgeois decor to the proletarian forms of constructivism. Some other hospital buildings were also built before the war, but in a more utilitarian way - for example, building No. 3 (1934) is a typical example of functional architecture.
9  Hotel of the Pritomsky site, st. Pritomskaya embankment, 7 (in the yard). Another monument of Kemerovo constructivism - this time "honest", without embellishments. The hotel was built in 1932, and it is enough to imagine that at that time it was the third stone building in the city center. The hotel is still in it, although after the war it was expanded with a huge building overlooking the embankment, and the old building remained hidden in the courtyard.
10 Pushkin Square. The poet is immortalized not only by a monument in the center of the square, but also by a huge graffiti on the wall of one of the houses. This is a very recognizable place, there is nothing like it in any other city. Near the square, notice the houses along Arch Street, built in the late 1930s and still bearing a clear imprint of constructivism in the form of high rectangular openings along each of the stairwells. A more radical constructivism is hidden in the yards where there are four long communal houses, they are also houses of a thermal power plant (Arochnaya st., 39 and 41, as well as Ermaka st., 2 and 5) with tiny apartments and shared bathrooms (1931 -34).

11  Monument to the Worker of the Tom River, emb. Pritomskaya, 13. A strange monument in the form of a maiden, with a pose resembling a mermaid, is installed on the city embankment. The expression "Worker Tom" comes from a book published by the Kemerovo author Gennady Yurov in the mid-1970s - environmental journalism in the spirit of "Tsar Fish" by the Krasnoyarsk writer Viktor Astafiev. The embankment itself is a pleasant place for walking. From the shore there are views of the patriarchal right bank of the Tom, including the famous Kemerovo landscape with the inscription "Kuzbass" on the rocks.
12  Monument "Friendship of Peoples", corner of Vesennyaya and Nogradskaya streets. A strange sculptural composition (1980) with figures hanging in the air marks the friendly relations of Kemerovo with the mining sister city of Salgotarjan in northern Hungary (the Nogradskaya street passing here is named after the corresponding Hungarian region). The figures depict two women in national clothes and a miner common to both cities. The author of the monument is the Kemerovo sculptor Alexei Khmelevskoy. A little further along Vesennyaya Street, in front of the hotel building, pay attention to the monument "Kuznetsk Land" (1986) by the same author, where a female figure emerges from the stone, symbolizing Kuzbass.

 

Around the center

13  Palace of Labor, st. Karbolitovskaya, 11. One of the most beautiful Kemerovo buildings was built in 1927 by the Tomsk architect Kryachkov, who was equally good at pre- and post-revolutionary styles. Here he created a hybrid of constructivism and modernity, combining chopped forms with gray stone trim, elegant lanterns and even ramps-arrivals in the spirit of the main entrance of an old noble estate. The building was built as a palace of culture, now it houses an art college. Access to the territory is free. In front of the building, pay attention to the monument to the heroes of the Civil War with expressive bas-reliefs (1968).
14 Sotsgorod (quarters northeast of the railway station). 10 years after receiving city status, Shcheglovo, which had not yet become Kemerovo, did not have a single stone residential building except for a few cottages on Krasnaya Gorka, and the number of inhabitants, meanwhile, exceeded 25 thousand. A social city began to be built for workers, displaced from the center towards factories . Sotsgorod was designed by a group of German architect Ernst May (see Novokuznetsk), but his project was never implemented - it was built, in the end, without any plan, which is why even the grid of streets in this place looks very messy. The first stone buildings of the socialist city were built in 1929-30. faceless three-story buildings, houses of the Iskra cooperative (Krasnoarmeyskaya st., 80 and 82, as well as Kirova st., 57). The buildings of the mid-1930s along Rukavishnikova and Chernyakhovsky streets are more attractive (note how the same project was implemented in houses of different heights), between which there is a cozy square of Communist Street. To the south, towards Lenin Avenue, blocks of pre- and post-war two-story buildings stretch, and in the square between Dzerzhinsky and Chernyakhovsky streets there is a monument to cosmonauts 15 in the form of a young man and a girl who still only dream of going into space.

 

Beyond Iskitimka

16 Znamensky Cathedral, st. Cathedral, 24. Kemerovo became a city only after the revolution, so there are no old churches here, but this did not prevent the formation of religious consciousness. Immediately after the war, regular services were resumed in the Nikolsky Cathedral on the right bank of the Tom, and during the years of Perestroika, as soon as such an opportunity arose, the construction of a large cathedral closer to the city center began. The Cathedral of the Sign was consecrated in 1996. From an architectural point of view, it is ordinary and accurately repeats the appearance of ancient Russian churches; there should be good wall paintings inside.
17  Monument "Cranes", ave. Lenina, 56 (near the circus). The unofficial website of Kemerovo calls this bronze monument of 1983 "the only non-ideologized monument erected during the years of Soviet power" - there is no ideology in it so much that the general symbolism is unknown, although the military theme is guessed.
18  Munira Mosque , Lenin Ave., 147. Interesting in its architecture, the mosque built in 2008 is also one of the brightest monuments to the Kuzbass cult of personality: it was built through the efforts of the father of all Kuzbass, Governor Aman Tuleyev, and named after his mother Munira, who had a Bashkir -Tatar origin.
19  Kuzbass Botanical Garden (in the bend of the Tom to the east of the city).

 

Eat

There are many grocery stores in the city. Retail outlets are represented by retail chains Maria-Ra, Housekeeper, Begemot, Magnit, Pyaterochka. Products in stores are often of low quality, so when buying, you need to make sure the integrity of the packaging, as well as check the expiration date.

Cheap
At most busy intersections, there are kiosks of the Podorozhnik fast food chain. However, they should rather be classified as "quickly available", since in almost any cafe or restaurant a business lunch costs the same as a couple of sandwiches in "Podorozhnik", and in terms of food quality such a business lunch is superior to "Plantain" by an order of magnitude

Average cost
Restaurant "Piccolo Amore" - the price segment is slightly above average, but quite democratic. Cozy atmosphere. Especially beneficial are business lunches from 12 to 16 (a lot, tasty, from 200 to 400 rubles)

Pizzeria "Mama Roma"

Expensive
KRK "Restaurant "Volna" is a good restaurant with a price category above average.

Night life
Unfortunately, the cultural nightlife in the city is poorly developed. There are only a couple of decent clubs, but even they have an uncomfortable atmosphere of "bombastic glamour". In SC "Baikonur" intellectual game "Mafia" is held on weekends.

 

Hotels

Average cost
Hotels "Crystal" and "Crystal-lux". Room from 3000 rubles / day.

Expensive
"Park-hotel "Grail"

Five-star hotel "Tom River Plaza"

 

Connection

Cellular communications are traditionally represented by the Big Three operators (MTS, Beeline, Megafon), as well as Tele2 and Yota. Fixed-line communication is provided by the operators "Rostelecom", "GoodLine".

The city has a very developed Internet service provider. Due to high competition, prices are often lower than in the capital, and the quality is excellent. Cable access (ethernet) is provided by the following large companies: "Goodline", "Beeline", "MTS", "TTK".

 

Precautionary measures

At night, you should avoid visiting the Kirovsky district, as well as the village of Pioner. And also be careful on the Builders Boulevard.

 

Etymology

The city was named after the village of Kemerovo, named after the family of the Kemerovs, the first settlers, - the design in -ovo makes it possible to think of a toponymic transition through a personal name. The village gave its name to the Kemerovo mine that arose under it. In 1925, the city of Shcheglovsk was formed from the two neighboring villages of Kemerovo and Shcheglovo, which in 1932 was renamed Kemerovo after the name of the mine. According to another version, the name is based on the Turkic word kemer - “cliff, coast, cliff”. Residents of the city are called: Kemerovo, Kemerovo, Kemerovo.

 

Physical and geographical characteristics

Geographical position

The city of Kemerovo is the administrative center of the Kemerovo region, located 2997 km (in a straight line) and 3601 km (by road) from Moscow. It is located in the southeast of Western Siberia in the center of the Kuznetsk Basin, in the northern part of the Kuznetsk coal basin, on both banks of the Tom River, in its middle course, at the confluence of the Iskitimka River. The territory of the city is located within the ridged-hilly plain of the north of the Kuznetsk basin, in the forest-steppe southern part of Western Siberia.

It is located on both banks of the Tom River in its middle course, at the confluence of the Iskitimka River. Parts of the city, located on different banks of the Tom, are interconnected by two road bridges (Kuznetsky and Kuzbass) and one railway.

 

Timezone

Kemerovo is located in the MSK+4 time zone. The offset of the applicable time from UTC is +7:00. According to the applied time and geographic longitude, the average solar noon in Kemerovo occurs at 13:16.

 

Climate

The climate of the city of Kemerovo is sharply continental.

The winter period in the capital of Kuzbass is cold and 1.5 months longer than the calendar winter. The average daily air temperature drops below zero on October 25, the last winter day falls on April 9. Summers are quite humid and warm, sometimes very hot in summer. The average duration of the climatic summer (with a period of average daily temperatures above +15 degrees) in Kemerovo is 80 days. Summer begins on average on June 5, the last day of the summer period falls on August 23.

On the afternoon of June 2, 2013, snow fell in the city, and the next night the air temperature dropped to -2.8 °C.

Precipitation in the form of rain and sleet on June 2, 2014 went throughout the region. And weather forecasters recorded the heaviest snowfall in Belov and Tisul, in these settlements up to seven millimeters of precipitation fell

 

Ecological situation

The city has enterprises of the chemical, machine-building and coal industries, which negatively affect the state of the environment.

According to official data, air emissions from enterprises and other stationary sources have decreased over the past 4 years, while an increase in the number of cars has led to an increase in air emissions from this source. However, precise data on air pollution from transport are not available. The city administration explains that episodic emissions in the form of smog and the smell of burning are observed due to changes in the wind rose (calm weather).

 

History of Kemerovo

For the first time, a Russian settlement on the territory of the modern city of Kemerovo was mentioned in 1701. This is evidenced by the “Chorographic Drawing Book of Siberia” by the Tobolsk topographer and geographer Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov, where the village of Shcheglov on the right bank of the Tom is indicated on the “Drawing of the land of the Tomsk city”. The first written mention of the settlement of Komarovo / Kemi (e) rov is contained in the diary of a German scientist in the Russian service D. G. Messerschmidt and is dated April 28 (May 9), 1721: “On the 28th (Friday) we interrogated Lieutenant Eenberg, that there should be a treasurer here ... who could give all kinds of information about all sorts of things [taking place] around; but it must be treated with good vodka. He also said… between Komarova and the village of Krasnaya, on the left side of the river, there must be coal”. This documentary evidence combines the earliest mention of the original name of the place-settlement - "Komarova" - with the date of the mention itself, meaning the starting point of the historical chronology of the modern city of Kemerovo.

Descending along the Tom from Kuznetsk to Tomsk in the autumn of 1734, S. P. Krasheninnikov writes in a travel journal:
Shcheglakova village, on the right side, 5 versts from Bagrovaya, Red Stone, on the same side, 4 versts from Shcheglakova village. This stone is 1 mile long. At the end of the evo stands the village of Kemerovo, 1 verst from Shcheglakova.
S. P. Krasheninnikov in Siberia. Unpublished materials. M.; L., 1966. S. 43, 49-53.

In October 1734, G.F. Miller deployed the village of Kemerovo at the mouth of the Tomsk tributary of the river. Akayeva: “Kemerovo, 8 versts from the prison, on the east coast, at the mouth of the river. Akayeva".

In the 19th century, several Russian settlements were located on the territory of the future city: the village of Ust-Iskitimskoye (Shcheglovo) and the villages of Kemerovo, Evseev, Davydova (Ishanova), Borovaya, Krasny Yar, Kur-Iskitim (Pleshki). After the October Revolution, on May 9-17, 1918, the Shcheglov Congress of Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies took place, which decided to transform the village of Shcheglovo into the county town of Shcheglov. However, already in June 1918, White Czechs seized power in Shcheglovsk. On July 4, 1918, the Provisional Siberian Government, considering Soviet institutions illegal, annulled all decrees issued by the Council of People's Commissars and local councils.

 

20th century

The new authorities were forced to revisit the status of Shcheglovsk. On June 17, 1918, the Tomsk Provincial Land Administration considered the application of the Shcheglovsky volost zemstvo about the need for confirmation from the authorities of the Siberian government of the approval of the city and county. On July 11, she decided to consider the formation of the Shcheglovsky district as final from January 1, 1919, after its approval by the provincial Zemsky Assembly. The final approval of the Shcheglovsky district took place on July 23, 1919, but not by the Provisional Siberian Government, but by the Council of Ministers of the Supreme Ruler A. V. Kolchak.

At the end of December 1919, Shcheglovsk was captured by the Red Army. At the beginning of 1920, a revolutionary committee was created in the city, which also had to deal with the issue of the city status of Shcheglovsk. On April 27, 1920, the question “On the restoration of the resolutions of the Soviet government that took place in 1918 regarding the renaming of the village of Shcheglov into a city” was submitted to a meeting of the Revolutionary Committee. It was decided to ask the Gubernia Committee to communicate with the center and restore the fact of renaming the village of Shcheglov into a city. On May 14-16, 1920, elections were held in Shcheglovsk to the Shcheglovsky city council of workers, peasants and Red Army deputies, and on May 23 the first congress of the Shcheglovsky city council began its work. On May 27, 1920, the congress of the Shcheglovsky city council of workers, peasants and Red Army deputies confirmed the decision of the congress of 1918 on the transformation of the village of Shcheglov into the city of Shcheglovsk and sanctioned the decision of the Revolutionary Committee on this issue.

After the end of the Civil War, the Autonomous Industrial Colony "Kuzbass" operated in the city, a company consisting of foreign specialists - participants in the labor movement of the USA, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and other countries. AIK "Kuzbass" left a big mark in the history of the city: its forces built up several blocks on the right bank of the Tom River according to the designs of the Dutch architect Johannes van Lohem, later nicknamed the "Dutch village". The colony carried out the construction of the Coke Plant, the Central mine and a number of other buildings in the city.

On September 15, 1924, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the "Regulations on Urban and Rural Settlements". A large percentage of the population of the city of Shcheglovsk, engaged in agriculture, did not meet the requirements of the Regulation (no more than 25%), so the question arose about the existence of the city itself, and it lost its county status. However, Shcheglovsk managed to defend the status of a city, and on June 6, 1925, by a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, it was approved as part of the list of Siberian cities, it became the administrative center of the Kuznetsk district of the Siberian Territory.

Nevertheless, the issue of Shcheglovsk's compliance with city status was still on the agenda. To consolidate it, the city authorities had to mechanically increase the percentage of workers in the city. Their eyes turned to the village of Kemerovo on the opposite bank of the river, since there was a mine and a large railway station. The impetus was the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of January 23, 1928, by which the village of Kemerovo was classified as a workers' settlement and a commission was created to organize the village council. But already on November 12, 1928, by a new decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the city of Shcheglovsk included “the former village of Kemerovo, st. Kemerovo of the Tomsk railway, a chemical plant and a village attached to it, a Kemerovo mine and a village attached to it. With the loss of the status of an independent settlement by the village of Kemerovo, the Kemerovo region was also liquidated. By the Decree of the Presidium of the Siberian Regional Executive Committee of February 6, 1929, its territory was completely included in the Shcheglovskiy District.

At the same time, the issue of renaming the district center was raised. This was largely due to discrepancies in the names: the district was called Kuznetsky, the district center - Shcheglovsk, the railway station near it - Kemerovo. On October 24, 1927, the city council decided to rename the city of Shcheglovsk and the Kemerovo station to Novokuznetsk, followed by a petition to the district executive committee and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to approve this decision. But this was strongly opposed by the management of the Tomsk Railway, since by that time there were already two Kuznetsk stations of the same name, which caused constant confusion in the delivery of goods.

In 1930, a decision was made to rename the city of Shcheglovsk to Kemerovo (after the railway station). It took more than a year to coordinate the issue in the highest state authorities. On January 1, 1932, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee renamed the city of Shcheglovsk into the city of Kemerovo and sent a resolution for approval by the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. On March 27, 1932, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided: to satisfy the petition of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and to rename the city of Shcheglovsk in the West Siberian Territory to the city of Kemerovo.

By the Decree of the Presidium of the Novosibirsk Regional Executive Committee of November 26, 1937, No. 301, the city was renamed Sergograd. Decree of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on March 2, 1938, the request for renaming was rejected.

With the beginning of the war, the industry of the city was completely transferred to the needs of the front. 38 enterprises from front-line territories were evacuated to Kemerovo. With a population of 130 thousand people, 60 thousand Kemerovo went to the front during the war years. Among the Kemerovo residents are such war heroes as the partisan Vera Voloshina, one of the 28 Panfilov heroes Illarion Vasiliev, aviation major general Stepan Markovtsev and many others.

 

XXI Century

In 2012, according to the results of the All-Russian competition for the title "The most comfortable urban settlement in Russia", held in 2012, the city of Kemerovo was awarded the third place with the award of a diploma of the Government of the Russian Federation of the III degree.

By the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated September 10, 2021, the city was awarded the title "City of Labor Valor".

The plan for the development of Kemerovo until 2032 was approved. On the basis of Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk, it is planned to create a city / cities with a million inhabitants.

At the end of May 2022, a new city development plan was approved - “5 Steps”, within its framework, applications for improving the city will be accepted on the website of the administration to make it more modern and comfortable.

At the end of June 2022, the Kemerovo administration is developing the construction of ten new residential microdistricts, on the site of private development, a plan for the purchase and demolition of about 670 private houses has already been approved.

 

Territorial affiliation of the city

in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century - as part of the Verkho-Tomsk volost (administrative center - the village of Ust-Iskitimskoye), Kuznetsk district, Tomsk province;
since 1921 - as part of the Shcheglovskaya enlarged volost (created by the merger of several volosts) as part of the newly created Kolchuginsky district of the Tomsk province of the RSFSR. The administrative center is the city of Shcheglovsk;
since the autumn of 1924 - as part of the Shcheglovsky district of the Kuznetsk district of the Tomsk province of the RSFSR (the Kuznetsk district was re-formed by the merger of Kolchuginsky and Kuznetsk districts);
since August 1925, as part of the zoning reform of the RSFSR (the former provinces, counties and volosts are being liquidated), the city of Shcheglovsk has been the administrative center of the Shcheglovsky district of the Siberian Territory of the RSFSR;
since 1930 - the administrative center of the Shcheglovsky district of the West Siberian Territory of the RSFSR;
On March 27, 1932, Shcheglovsk was renamed Kemerovo, becoming the coordinating center of the emerging Kuzbass industrial region as part of the West Siberian Territory of the RSFSR;
in the period from 1937 to January 1943 - the administrative center of the Kemerovo region as part of the Novosibirsk region of the RSFSR;
On January 26, 1943, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Kuzbass industrial region is separated into a new independent region, Kemerovo becomes the administrative center of the Kemerovo region.

 

Economy

In 2013, the city of Kemerovo took 8th place in the ranking of "30 best cities for business", compiled by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.

In 2017, the satellite city of Kemerovo Lesnaya Polyana was recognized as the best integrated development project in Russia.

Kemerovo has competitive advantages that create a basis for the investor to effectively use their financial, material, and intellectual resources. The main goal of the investment policy implemented in Kemerovo is the growth of investments in the city's economy, which contribute to the intensive development of the economy, the production sector, the modernization of production, the increase in the competitiveness of goods and services produced in the city, the growth of incomes of the population, enterprises and the city budget. The Department of Investment Policy and Entrepreneurship Development of Kuzbass considers investments as the main source of growth in the city's economy, renewal of fixed assets, increasing productivity and improving working conditions, as well as improving the quality and, as a result, the competitiveness of products, both in the intraregional and in foreign commodity markets.

The main task of the city administration is to create a favorable and stable investment climate, optimal conditions for the implementation of the investment process, ensuring the interaction of investors with the owners of investment objects, executive authorities, supervisory organizations and territorial divisions of federal executive authorities.

The headquarters of large Russian companies are located in Kemerovo: Kuzbassrazrezugol, Kuzbass Fuel Company, Siberian Cement, Siberian Business Union, Promstroy, Kemerovograzhdanstroy, RegionMart.

Results of the development of the city's economy by years.

The financial market of Kemerovo is represented by federal banks, including Sberbank with 24 branches, VTB with 10 branches, Gazprombank with three branches, etc. There are also more than 100 representative offices of banks in other regions in the city.