Chita, Russia

Чита

Description of Chita

Chita is a city in Eastern Siberia, the Russian Federation. It is the administrative center of the Trans-Baikal Territory and the Chita district. Forms the municipal formation of urban district of the city of Chita as the only settlement in its composition.

Population of Chita is 349,005 people. (2018). It is located in a hollow at the foot of the hills, on the banks of the Chita River at its confluence with the Ingoda River. The climate is sharply continental. Leading industries are energy and food production. Transport hub on the Trans-Siberian Railway and federal highways Р258 “Baikal” and P297 “Amur”, and A350 branches Chita - Zabaykalsk; international Airport.

The historic center has retained a rectangular grid of streets, according to a draft of 1862. Among the monuments of the pre-revolutionary period: “the Church of the Decembrists” of the late 18th century, numerous stone and wooden houses of gold merchants of the early 20th century.

 

Destinations

Kazan Cathedral, st. Butina, 6. ☎ +73022358819. 07:30-19:00.
Chita datsan "Damba Bribunling", st. Bogomyagkova, 72. 08:00-20:00.
Chapel of Alexander Nevsky, Titovskaya Sopka. around the clock. Modern chapel of original architecture.
Museum of the Decembrists. Mikhailo-Arkhangelskaya Church, st. Dekabristov, 3. ☎ +73022310412, +73022310408. 10:00-18:00. The church was built in 1776, even before the appearance of the exiled Decembrists in Chita. The museum in the church opened in 1985.
Shumovsky Palace, st. Lenina, d.84.
Central Park of Culture and Leisure. Victory, st. General Belik.
District House of Officers of the Russian Army (ODORA) , st. Lenina, d.88. 09:00-23:00.

 

What to do

Trans-Baikal Regional Museum of Local Lore. A.K. Kuznetsova, st. Babushkina, 113.
Trans-Baikal Regional Drama Theatre, Profsoyuznaya st., 26.
Museum and Exhibition Center of the Trans-Baikal Territory.
Museum of Military Glory of the Siberian Military District.
Museum of the Decembrists.
Museum of the Trans-Baikal Railway.

 

Archeology

In the valley of the Ingoda River near the Sukhotinsky Rocks on Titovskaya Sopka in the Ingodinsky District, there is a settlement of the Mustier culture Sukhotino-1 (Middle Paleolithic) and settlements of the Upper Paleolithic era Sukhotino-2, 3, 4. Based on the Late Upper Paleolithic site Sukhotino-4 with a developed micronucleus technique the Sukhoyta culture was distinguished, on the monuments of which the bifacial technique was used in combination with the developed microblade technique[en] and with a wide representation of tools from flakes, less often from blades. At the settlement of Sukhotino-4, an engraved rib of a saiga depicting plague dwellings and a sculptural image of a mammoth made of stone were found. Also, within the city there are a number of monuments with rock art, including Titovskaya Sopka, Sokhatiny Kamen and Smolensk Rocks.

 

Events

Since 2004, the festival of modern choreography "Young talents of Transbaikalia" has been held annually in Chita, in which choreographers from the Transbaikal Territory and members of dance groups take part.

Since 2011, the city has hosted the Zabaikalsky International Film Festival annually.

From July 2 to July 7, 2014, Chita became the capital of the International Festival "Student Spring of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - 2014". The city was visited by representatives of 14 SCO member states and their partners (PRC, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Turkey, Belarus, Venezuela, Iran, Pakistan) and 32 delegations from the regions of the Russian Federation. The total number of participants was about 4 thousand.

Chita also in 2015 hosted the participants of the All-Russian military-patriotic game "Zarnitsa" timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War. The Zarnitsa game, the experience of which the city already has, was held in Chita as part of the Student Spring Festival of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - 2014. When choosing the venue for Zarnitsa-2015, the candidacy of the capital of Transbaikalia was chosen unanimously.

In honor of the city are named: dry-cargo ship "Chita" (1973), submarine B-260 as part of the Pacific Fleet (2006).

 

How to get here

By plane
Chita International Airport "Kadala" (IATA:HTA). Air communication with the cities of Moscow (S7 airlines, Ural Airlines) Novosibirsk (S7), Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk and Chara.

By train
Chita is on the Trans-Siberian. The station of the train arriving in the city is Chita-2.

By car
The federal highway M55 "Baikal" runs through Chita, connecting Chita and Irkutsk (1100 km) and the federal highway M58 "Amur", which goes to Khabarovsk (2100 km). From Chita to Zabaikalsk (490 km) goes the federal highway A166.

 

Around city

Trolleybus, taxis, fixed-route taxis, suburban buses, bus routes around the region and the Republic of Buryatia. The fare is 30 rubles in a trolleybus, 33 rubles in a minibus. Taxi services ask for fares in different ways. An average of 80 rubles per kilometer.

 

Shopping

TC Gallery (Lenina, 108)
Shopping center Fortuna (Nedorezova, 1)
Supermarket Arbat (Leningradskaya, 24)
Shop Spring (Lenina, 41)
Market Viten (Chkalova, 1a)
Supermarket Light (Zhuravleva, 68)
Shopping center Maxi (Shilova, 100)

 

Eat

Doshevo
Fast food: Subway
Restaurant "Noodles and Dumplings" - ul. Malaya 3, str. 3.
Cafe "Times" is it. Leningradskaya, 76.
Cafe "Yermak" - street, Lazebnogo, 2.
Cafe "U Berega" - 76 Yaroslavskogo str.

Expensive
Restaurant "Bachus" str. Malaya
Restaurant "Aleksandrovsky Garden" str. Leningradskaya
Restaurant "Schastye" str. Lenina (Hotel "Visit")

 

Hotels

Cheap
Hotel "HOME"  , Serova, 30. ✉ ☎ +79141363434. 1000 rubles.

Average cost
Hotel "Dauria", Profsoyuznaya, 17. ☎ 88007377798, +73022325390, +73022262350. 1840-5500 rubles.
Hotel "Tourist", Babushkina, 42a. admin@chitaturist.ru ✉ Prices are different. There are both rooms for 400 rubles, and for 5500.
Hotel "Zabaikalie", Leningradskaya, 36. ☎ 88007377799, +73022359819, +73022230033. 1000-5800 rubles.
Panama City Hotel  , md. Severny, 64. ☎ +73022453131, +73022453232.

Expensive
Hotel "Arcadia", Lenina, 120. ☎ tel: +73022352636. 2450-5450 rubles.

 

Precautionary measures

The city has a sharply continental climate with cold, dry, snowless winters and quite hot, but short summers. There are a lot of sunny days a year here, one of the highest levels of solar activity in the country, exceeding that in the South Coast.

Very sharp diurnal temperature changes in both winter and summer.

The city is located at an altitude of 600 to 900 meters above sea level, i.е. here is constantly low atmospheric pressure, below 700 mm Hg. (which is generally typical for Transbaikalia). It may take a long time to adjust (some people only get relief from regular headache pain medication).

 

Etymology

The toponym "Chita" comes from the hydronym of the Chita River. But there are still disputes about what the word chita means. At different times and in different sources, the city was called differently.

Most likely, the word chita comes from one of the local languages. The most common is the Orochen word chita - “birch bark rug”, which suggests that somewhere in the valley of the Chita River there was birch bark of a special quality. The Evenki word chata or chatala means "clay", they also mean mud (on the shore), slate, coal. At the same time, the mud is not only of very high quality, but also more of a bluish color, and “blue” in Evenki sounds like chaturin and chatum. There is also the word chate - “black earth (coal shale), coal”, which is associated primarily with the Chernovsky brown coal deposit, located near Chita. There is a word chit in the Uyghur language, which was used to call the fortresses built by the Uyghurs. Chaata-chyt means "dwelling" in modern Uyghur.

There is also an assumption that Chita is the name of a person. So there is information about a letter of 1777-1799 addressed to Prince Chita Matuganov, but the hydronym Chita is known in the literature of the second half of the 17th century. Also, this version is not compatible with the local beliefs of those times, according to which they tried not to pronounce the name of a person after his death.

If you look at the upper reaches of the Chita River, then at the Yumurchen (the right tributary of the Vitim) on the same mountain where the source of the Chita, on the northwestern side, there is a tributary called the Chitnak. Based on this, there is an option that the origin of the name of the river should be sought in connection with its upper reaches.

 

History of Chita

According to legend, the city was founded by the boyar son Peter Beketov. The legend arose from notes published by Fischer.

Many researchers repeat it, although modern archaeological data refute this legend.

A detachment of the Yenisei son of the boyar P.I. Beketov arrived in Transbaikalia in 1653. Then, having founded on September 24 (October 4) on the river. Khilok, near the lake. Irgen, Irgen prison, the Cossacks began to raft on October 19 (29) along the river. Ingoda. However, having sailed along the river among the ice floating on it, the service people came across solid ice. It turned out that the river had been standing for more than 10 days. In view of this, P. I. Beketov “ordered the service people to cut down the winter hut of the sovereign’s anbar and three Cossack huts, and in the winter hut and near the winter hut he ordered to build fortresses”
— Fischer

It was this winter hut, according to a number of researchers, that laid the foundation for the predecessor of the Chita prison - the village of Plotbishche. In fact, Beketov with a detachment of Cossacks built the Ingodinsky winter hut 10 miles below the confluence of the Rushmaleya into the Chita River. It was a temporary building and it could not claim to be the beginning of the city of Chita. There is also no reason to consider the “notch” in which the archpriest Avvakum, who was part of the Pashkov detachment, spent the winter in 1657-1658, as Izgachev insists.

In cartography, for the first time, the name Plotbishche appears on the drawing of the Amur basin in 1690, which was included in the atlas of S. U. Remezov as part of the “Evidence of the Daurian colonel Afonasy Ivanovich son of Beidon”, which was compiled from the words of the head of the defense of the Albazinsky prison from the Manchus in 1686-1689, Colonel A. I. Bayton, which also came down to us as part of S. U. Remizov’s “Chorographic Drawing Book” of 1697-1711. On the later “Drawing of the Land of the Nerchinsk City” of the “Drawing Book of Siberia” of 1701 by the same author, on the left bank of the Chita River, there is a settlement of Sloboda Chitinskaya.

The first written information about the village of Plotbische is contained in the travel notes on the Russian embassy to China (1692-1695) by Ambassador Izbrant Ides and embassy secretary Adam Brand.

Izbrand-Ides On May 15 (25), 1693, upon arrival at the Plotyard, he wrote:

"Plodbishche place on the river Tsete lies" The spelling of "Tset", apparently, is a mistake of the translator, as well as Nertsa instead of Nertsch. According to Adam Brand, on November 15 (25), 1693, the embassy arrived “in a village called Plotter, in which there were six houses; the small river Chita washes this only recently inhabited place. The ambassador himself wrote in his diary: “We had to stay for several days in the village of Plotbishche, which lies on the Chita River, partly to give the animals a rest and partly to make rafts on which we could go down the Ingoda and Shilka rivers to Nerchinsk”

In 1701, the Chita Sloboda was mentioned for the first time in the Gazette of Siberian Cities, and in 1705 there were already 21 servicemen in it. In 1709, Stepan Senotrusov was the clerk of the Chita settlement. At that time, a brewery and a tavern already existed in the settlement, in which “61 buckets of 2 quarters of wine” and six pounds of tobacco were sent for sale that year.

For the first time, the settlement appears as a prison in the salary book of 1711, and then, in the revision tale of 1719, where the “Chitinsky prison of the Arkhangelsk church” is mentioned. priest Stefan Medvedev. In 1725. The Chita prison was controlled by a serviceman Pyotr Tutilov. In the prison and the villages assigned to it, there were 36 horse and foot Cossacks.

On June 8 (19), 1735, G. F. Miller visited the Chita jail. According to his description:

“This point is called a prison, abusing the name, as in the case of the Stretensky prison, although, like the latter, it was never fortified with a palisade.”

In view of this, it must be assumed that the term "fort" in relation to the Chita settlement meant giving it an administrative function equal to other Nerchinsk prisons. The very same prison with towers and a palisade in Chita never existed. In the 1740s, a customs office appeared in the Chita jail, where the duty was collected in money, goods and “soft junk”. In 1751, a duty collection of 57 rubles 70 kopecks, 1253 lambskins, 30 wolf skins and more than 500 less valuable ones were collected there. However, in the second half of the 18th century, the Chita prison fell into disrepair. In 1752, there were only 18 Cossacks in it, customs fees were reduced. According to the revision of 1762, only six families of Cossacks, 13 families of raznochintsy and four families of peasants lived in the prison - a total of about 100 inhabitants.

In 1772 P.S. Pallas named the settlement as Chitinsk.

In 1797, the Chita prison was officially made a village and assigned to the Gorodishchenskaya volost, and the peasants who inhabited it were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Nerchinsk Mining Administration.

Chita officially lost the name of the prison in 1821, when it was renamed into a village. At the end of the 18th century, peasants, residents of Chita, were assigned to Nerchinsk factories. In this regard, many fell into ruin and began to scatter. This and the liquidation of the prison delayed the development of Chita, and trade fell into decay. Not a trace remains of the former revival. Chita turned into a provincial village.

In 1827, the Decembrists were exiled here. In 1851, in connection with the formation of the Trans-Baikal region, the village of Chitinskoye was elevated to the status of a regional city. The new city then had only about one thousand inhabitants and had an unsightly appearance.

So, eyewitnesses passing in 1858 noted:
“Chita is a city without inhabitants ... From the memories of Chita, sand remains most of all in my memory: the city itself now seems to me to be some kind of unusual mass of sand - sand is everywhere: at the entrance, inside the city, in apartments and at the exit - everything is sand and therefore Chita rightly called a sandy city ... Nerchinsk is better and more crowded than Chita.

In 1851, it received the status of a city, becoming the center of the Transbaikal region, the administration of the Transbaikal Cossack army was located here.

In 1897, the Trans-Siberian Railway was laid through Chita. On July 15 (27), 1899, the existing station building was laid and traffic began on the section of the Chita-Sretensk railway. After the construction of the railway in 1900, Chita became the largest transport hub and industrial center of Transbaikalia. During the First Russian Revolution, the Chita Republic was proclaimed in the city.

Soviet power in Chita was established in February 1918. In the period from 1920 to 1922, Chita was the capital of the Far Eastern Republic, from 1922 - the center of the Transbaikal province. From 1926 to 1930 it was the capital of the newly formed Chita District of the Far Eastern Territory, and from 1937 it was the center of the Chita Region. Since March 1, 2008 - the administrative center of the Trans-Baikal Territory. Until 2010, the location of the headquarters of the Siberian Military District.

Until 2007, Chita was a city of regional significance, in 2007 it was included by law in the administrative district (Chitinsky), along with other settlements that were under regional subordination. This feature of the administrative-territorial structure was preserved during the transformation of the Chita region into the Trans-Baikal Territory in 2008.

Chita is a member of the Association of Siberian and Far Eastern Cities (1998), the Congress of Municipalities of the Russian Federation (2002), the Russian Union of Historical Cities and Regions (2003).

 

Physical and geographical characteristics

Geographic data

The city is located in Asia, in the central part of Transbaikalia, geographical coordinates are the 52nd parallel north with the east meridian 113º30'. Chita lies in the Chitino-Ingodinskaya depression and on the slopes of the Yablonovy (from the west) and Chersky (from the east) ridges, at the confluence of the river. Chita (locals often call it "Chitinka") in the river. Ingoda. The highest elevation within the city is 1039 m (mountain Chita), the lowest is 632 m (in the valley of the Ingoda river between the village of Peschanka and the village of Atamanovka). Within the city there is Mount Titovskaya Sopka (946 m) - a volcanic structure, the formation of which began in the Upper Paleozoic. According to the geological structure, there are sandstones, siltstones, in some places effusive rocks and granites (Sokhotino cliff in the Ingoda River valley, Dvortsy rocks in the Kadalinka stream valley).

The area of the city is 538 km² (11th place in Russia). On the territory of the city there are lakes Kenon and Ugdan (the second one is currently dried up) - the remains of the lake basin of the Pleistocene era. Within the city limits, areas of natural landscapes are preserved, including riverine meadows, islands of steppes and forest-steppes, as well as a significant mountain taiga (located northeast of the television center up to the Chita-Khabarovsk highway). The anthropogenic landscapes of the city include, in addition to urban areas, summer cottages, arable land, hayfields and several lakes on the site of former mines (in the vicinity of the village of Chernovskie Kopi).

 

Timezone

Chita is in the MSK+6 time zone. The offset of the applicable time from UTC is +9:00. In accordance with the applied time and geographic longitude, the average solar noon in Chita occurs at 13:26.

 

Climate

The climate is influenced by the height of the city - 650 m above sea level. The climate in the Chita region is sharply continental with monsoon features. Precipitation is distributed extremely unevenly, 93% of the total falls in summer. The winter period in the capital of Transbaikalia is very cold, with little snow and almost three months longer than the calendar winter. The average daily air temperature drops below zero on average on October 16, the last winter day falls on April 9, that is, winter lasts 177 days. The winter period is characterized by temperature inversions, smog. The average daily air temperature in January is -25.2 ° C, with a minimum value of -49.6 ° C (January 1892). Summer is warm, more humid in the second half, but short - 15 days shorter than the calendar one. The average duration of the climatic summer (with a period of average daily temperatures above +15 degrees) in Chita is 77 days. Summer begins on average on June 7, the last day of the summer period falls on August 22. The average July air temperature is +18.7 °C with a maximum value of +43.2 °C (June 1898) and +40.6 °C (August 1936). The transitional seasons (spring and autumn) are short and are characterized by unstable weather, spring returns of cold weather, late spring and early autumn frosts. In spring, the average daily air temperature is above 5 °C, on average, on April 27 and reaches 10 °C on May 18. In autumn, the average daily temperature drops below +10 °C on September 11 and below +5 °C on September 30. Annual precipitation averages 349 mm, of which about 80% falls during the warm season. The daily temperature in Chita in summer is mostly high, in the current century in 2013, only one June was without days with a temperature of +30 ° C and above, July never did without a temperature of +30 ° C, but with sunset the air cools down quickly, as a result of which the nights in the city are very cool. The prevailing winds are from the west and northwest. In winter, there are occasional thaws.

On June 5, 1898, the highest temperature in Siberia in the entire history of meteorological observations was recorded in Chita - +43.2 °C. 76 maximum temperature records were recorded in 1898. Chita is one of the sunniest cities in Russia, as there are 43% more hours of sunshine per year than in Moscow, and according to this indicator, the city roughly corresponds to such southern Russian cities as Anapa or Nakhodka.

The average annual temperature is -1.4 °C
The average annual wind speed is 2.3 m/s
Average annual air humidity - 65%
Sunshine 2477 hours

 

Ecological state

The ecological situation is generally unfavorable. According to Rosstat, at the end of 2015, the city ranked first in Russia in terms of air pollution. In 2016, Chita topped the anti-rating again.

According to Nikolai Sigachev, director of the Institute of Natural Resources, Ecology and Cryology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chita, the regional center ranks second in the country after Vladivostok in terms of the number of cars per capita, which is one of the sources of air pollution in the city. In addition, the ecologist noted that modern cleaning systems are practically not used at the boiler houses of Chita.

There is a problem of urban water pollution. CHPP-1, which provides heat and electricity to almost the entire city, threatens the ecological state of the nearby Kenon Lake. Getting into the lake, untreated groundwater changes its chemical composition. As another problem associated with the proximity of the thermal power plant and the city, the ecologist named the ash dump, which was built behind the thermal power plant. In addition to polluting groundwater, the ash, drying up, begins to dust, which also worsens the overall environmental situation, Sigachev noted.