The Central Black Earth/ Chernozemye Region is a region in European Russia, located south of Central Russia and north of Ukraine.
Divnogorye is a natural museum-reserve in the center of the Voronezh
region with amazing chalk pillars (divas), and inside one of these chalk
mountains there is a functioning cave church of the Sicilian Icon of the
Mother of God.
Oryol Polissya is a national park in the north-west of
the Oryol region, which boasts not only that Turgenev wandered in the
local forests, who dedicated most of his famous "Hunter's Notes" to
them, but also the largest population of bison in Russia - they are
already here more than 400 individuals.
Prokhorovka - here is the
famous Prokhorovka field - the third military field of Russia, where the
most important battle of the Battle of Kursk took place.
Svoboda is a
place in the vicinity of Kursk, where on the picturesque bank of the
Tuskar River stands one of the most famous monasteries in the Black
Earth region - the Root Hermitage, founded in 1597 on the site of the
appearance of the revered Kursk Root Icon. In the XVIII-XIX centuries.
Kursk Korenskaya Fair, one of the largest in the Russian Empire, was
held here.
Spasskoe-Lutovinovo - here in the north of the Orel region
is the family estate of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. One of the main
literary places in the region, where the museum-reserve of the classics
of Russian literature now operates.
The economic region received its outlines within the boundaries of
the administrative-territorial division of the central regions of Russia
in the 20th century. Currently, it is not geographically the center, as
it is located near the western border.
The isolation of the
territory as an administrative unit was in the early stages of the new
settlement of the outskirts of North-Eastern Rus' in the 16th-17th
centuries. By that time, the territorial division of the military and
administrative and economic activities of the Discharge Order into the
Moscow (in charge of not only Moscow, but also national affairs),
Belgorod, Vladimir, Novgorod, Sevsky and Kiev tables. The Russian State
Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) stores a large amount of information
about the economic affairs of the Black Earth regions in the lists of
the Belgorod table.
The administrative-territorial division of
the current Chernozem region changed as a result of multiple state
reforms. In 1880, a statistical edition of the book Volosts and the most
important villages of European Russia was published. Issue I. Provinces
of the central agricultural region. The central agricultural region
includes 8 provinces: Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga, Orel, Kursk, Voronezh,
Tambov and Penza.
In 1928, the Central Chernozem Region was
formed from the former Voronezh, Kursk, Orel and Tambov provinces with
the center in Voronezh. In 1934 the region was abolished. The
conditional statistical division and allocation of the region has been
preserved, only the modern Oryol region is not included in it.
The active development of industry and the new localization of the
Chernozem region began only in Soviet times. This was mainly due to
industrialization, the development of iron ore resources of the Kursk
magnetic anomaly and the creation of a number of machine-building
enterprises.
On May 31, 1991, the order of the Chairman of the
Supreme Council of the RSFSR "On the organization of associations for
economic interaction between the regions of the Central Black Earth
region of the RSFSR and measures to create conditions for their
accelerated development" was issued.
From 1991 to 2001, the
Chernozemye Association included 10 regions: Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk,
Lipetsk, Novgorod, Oryol, Smolensk, Tambov, Tula and Bryansk.
According to the zoning grid of the State Planning Committee of the
USSR and in modern Russia, the CCR includes 5 regions: Belgorod,
Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk and Tambov regions.
Area: 167856 km²,
0.98% of the entire territory of Russia;
Population: 7141554 people
(2022), 4.86% of the total population of Russia;
Population density:
43 people/km²;
Level of urbanization: 68% of the population lives in
cities, in rural areas - 32%.
The Central Black Earth economic region borders on the leading industrial region of the country - Central and is conveniently located in relation to the fuel and energy bases of the Volga region, the North Caucasus, Donbass and Ukraine. The territory of the district is located on the watershed, along the upper reaches of the rivers Oka, Don and Seim (a tributary of the Desna), Seversky Donets. The western part of the region is located on the Central Russian Upland, the middle part is on the Oka-Don Lowland. A feature of the modern relief is a lot of ravines, which was facilitated by both natural factors (Dnieper glaciation) and socio-economic factors (massive deforestation, excessive plowing of steppes and meadows).