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Kungur is a city of regional significance in the Perm Territory,
the administrative center of the Kungur administrative region (which
is not part of) and the Kungur Municipal District (formed on
December 22, 2020 as a result of the merger with the Kungur
Municipal District). Until December 22, 2020, it had the status of
an urban district.
Kungur was founded in 1663, since 1970 it
has been included in the list of Historic cities of Russia. The city
is located on the Sylva, Iren and Shakva rivers in the southeast of
the Perm Territory, in the Middle Urals, 90 km southeast of the city
of Perm. Kungur is widely known for its unique natural ice cave. The
inhabitants of the city are called Kunguryaks (the name was
previously used - Kungurians).
Population - 64 898 people.
(2020), territory - 68.7 km².
The name of the city was given by the Kungur River, which flows into the Iren at the place where the first fort was built. Hydronym could arise under the influence of significant development of karst phenomena in the vicinity of the city. In this case, the name may be associated with the Turkic Unkur or Ungur (cave, gorge, crack in the rocks).
For the first
time, the foundation of Kungur was mentioned in 1623, but V. N.
Shishonko in his "Perm Chronicle" believes that "the aforementioned
statement should not be given importance", because it is based not
on documents, but "on only one record of a private person." The city
was founded in 1648 on "empty land bought by the Russian people from
the Iren Tatars" by Cherdyn and Solikamsk voivods: the Duma nobleman
Prokofy Elizarov, the stolniks - Prince Peter Prozorovsky and Semeon
Kondyrev. The site for the foundation was chosen 2 versts from the
confluence of the Kungurka river into the Iren, where the village of
Stary Posad (now the village of Troitsk) is located, which is 17
versts south of the present Kungur. The city was rebuilt by 1649 by
immigrants from Cherdyn and Solikamsk, who were later joined by
people from Vyatka, Kaigorod, Solvychegodsk and Ustyug. For the
settlement of Kungur, a detachment of the Solikamsk governor Prokopy
Elizarov conducted in 1647-1648 a search for fugitive peasants in
the possessions of the patrimonials and monasteries of the Solikamsk
district. As a result, 385 families of fugitive peasants, bobs and
townspeople (1222 male souls) were taken to the Iren River in 1648,
providing each of them with a land plot and exemption from paying
taxes for 3 years.
In 1662, an uprising of the Bashkirs broke
out, dissatisfied with the deception on the part of the Russians who
bought land, and the abuse of officials in collecting yasak. Kungur,
which by this time numbered, according to various estimates, from 58
to 96 households, was taken and ruined by the Bashkirs on Ilyin's
day. “After this pogrom,” only those survived who managed to hide in
the surrounding forests and caves along the banks of the Iren and
Sylva.
The surviving residents in the petition to Tsar Alexei
Mikhailovich asked for permission to build a new fortress in the
same year, because "... they do not dare to settle from the
Bashkirs, because they have no prison and guns on Kungur." In
response, a letter came, ordering "... on Kungur, having found a
place where a support, and in the support to arrange a prison." In
1663, Kungur was laid down again, but in a new place, where the
village of Mys or Mysovskoye was located before it. From the south
and south-west, near the hill where the city was built, Iren flowed,
from the north - Sylva. The high and steep climb represented a
natural defense in attack. From 1673 to 1675, Kungur was surrounded
by a wooden Kremlin instead of the previous prison, into which 8
towers were built, two of which - Spasskaya and Tikhvinskaya - were
equipped with gates and were passable. The height of the walls of
the Kremlin in some places reached three fathoms (about 6.5 m).
In 1703, Semyon Remezov, a famous Siberian cartographer, drew up
drawings of Kungur and the district surrounding the city. In the
same year, Kungur was besieged by the registered peasants, who were
dissatisfied with the Verkhotursk voivode who had come to the city.
The siege lasted a week - from July 17 to 23. The next year, 1704,
in Kungur, the construction was completed and the first stone church
in the village, the Annunciation, was consecrated. For the
construction of the temple, 25 kopecks were collected from each
citizen, which did not prevent it from being blown up in the late
1930s for the construction of the Palace of Defense. The latter was
never built.
In 1720, the first 140 leathers were
manufactured in the city, and in 1724 a tannery was opened, which
was engaged in the production of yuft. Initially, tanneries were
located in the upper part of Kungur, and only at the beginning of
the 19th century they were moved to the lower city, since the locks
of leathers and their washing spoiled the water in Sylva, making it
unfit for drinking. In addition, over Kungur there was "... the
smell of leather is everywhere, the obvious thing is that the city
lives on it." In the same 1720, V.N. Tatishchev opened the Mining
Chancellery in Kungur, in 1725 it was renamed Kungurskiy bergamt,
and in 1721 - the first mining school. Kungur became the center of
the mining district, and in 1737 the provincial administration was
transferred to the city from Solikamsk.
In 1770, during his
expedition, Kungur was visited by the famous traveler Dr. I. N.
Lepekhin, who noted that the city Kremlin was "deliberately
dilapidated", and the city itself was all wooden, with the exception
of six churches and a "fairly built" stone town hall.
At the beginning of 1774, the Tatar, Bashkir and rebellious
Cossack detachments of Pugachev under the command of Salavat Yulaev
and Ivan Kuznetsov, with a total number of about 11 thousand people,
approached Kungur. As early as December 27, 1773 (January 7, 1774),
the Kungur voivode fled with all officials to Verkhnechusovskie
Gorodki to the Stroganovs, for which he was subsequently stripped of
his ranks and exiled to Vyatka. The organization of defense was
taken up by the burgomaster Philip Krotov and the president of the
magistrate Ivan Khlebnikov, who without exception armed the
townspeople and asked for help in the surrounding towns. Militarily,
the defense of the city was headed by Seconds-Major Alexander Papov,
who found himself in Kungur for recruitment. He returned Captain
Ryleev from the march with 376 recruits and 12 old soldiers. The
city also arrived: 50 Cossacks from the Yugovsk factories with
artillery and 100 Cossacks with 2 cannons from Yekaterinburg - under
the command of Second Lieutenant Posokhov. Second-Major Papov
repulsed four assaults: on January 4, 5, 9 and 23, undertaken from
various directions, for which he was later awarded the rank of
lieutenant colonel by the Empress. Before the last assault, Major
Seconds D.O. Gagrin with 200 soldiers came to the city from Kazan,
and Nikonov with 170 soldiers from Yekaterinburg. The rebels fled.
After the Pugachev events, in 1775, F. Krotov and the merchant
Emelyan Khlebnikov received swords, and Kunguru was forgiven for
arrears of 5,069 rubles 95 kopecks.
In 1786, Kungur was
transformed from the center of the Perm province into a district
town of the Perm governorate, and after the province was renamed in
1797, into the center of the Kungur district of the Perm province.
In 1783, the city received the improvement of the Siberian tract,
along which in 1790 A.N. Radishchev arrived on his way to exile in
Kungur. From November 28 to December 4, he stayed at the governor's
house. About Kungur Radishchev wrote:
“The city is ancient,
poorly built. Former provincial ... On the mountain there is an old
fortress, that is, a fence with towers, in which there is a gate. On
the square in front of the fence there are 20 cast-iron cannons on
carriages, of which three are good ... The place is beautiful, there
are fields around ... "
In 1837, VA Zhukovsky visited Kungur,
who accompanied the future Emperor Alexander II on his study tour of
Russia. In 1840, the first public library in the city was opened in
Kungur, composed of books by KT Khlebnikov, a researcher of
Kamchatka and Russian America, donated to the city. In the same
year, the merchant Aleksey Gubkin founded a tea trade in Kungur,
which, through the efforts of him and other Kungur entrepreneurs,
soon turned the city into a large tea wholesale center.
V.I.Nemirovich-Danchenko, who visited Kungur in 1875, noted:
Kungur plays a huge role in the trade of this region. This is hardly
the richest city. One listing of its firms is enough to get some
idea of the importance of Kungur in the Perm province. <…> Kungur
is primarily a merchant city. Everyone here lives on what the
merchant gives. He gives tone to the city, he is the first in both
the city and the zemstvo council. In the club, the officials are
thrilled in front of him, in the cathedral, the priest says short
words about his good deeds. The townspeople look into his eyes and
take off their hats from a distance.
In July 1877, Aleksey
Gubkin opened in the city of the Kungur Technical School, which
housed mechanical workshops, which, after the events of 1917, served
as the basis for the creation of the Kungur Machine-Building Plant.
In 1887, an urgent passenger shipping company was established
between Perm and Kungur along the Kama, Chusovaya and Sylva rivers,
and in 1909 the Kungur railway station was opened on the Perm -
Yekaterinburg section, which is a part of the Trans-Siberian
Railway. In the same 1909, the city water supply system and the
local history museum began to function. Two years earlier, in 1907,
a telephone connection appeared in Kungur.
Before the First
World War, in 1913, electric lighting and a wooden cinema “Olympus”
were installed in the city, which changed its names in Soviet times:
first to “Proletarian”, and then to “Star”. It was subsequently
demolished. In 1914, Alexander Khlebnikov opened the Kungur Ice Cave
for inspection, where on July 13 of the same year Victoria von
Battenberg, the sister of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and her
daughter Louise, visited.
On October 28 (November 10), 1917,
Soviet power was established in Kungur. On October 30, pogroms of
"counterrevolutionaries" took place in the city, and in the winter
of 1918 a detachment of the Cheka from Perm arrived in Kungur under
the leadership of A. L. Borchaninov. On the night of February 6, the
first murders took place: the Ageev family was shot "for
participating in a conspiracy against Soviet power." In April and
September - October of the same year, there were several more serial
executions of townspeople - "enemies of Soviet power", and since
June 27, 1918, the local, Kungurskaya, Extraordinary Commission was
already engaged in executions in the city.
In the battles with the White Guards near the city of Kungur, the
30th Infantry Division of the 3rd Army of the Eastern Front of the
RSFSR distinguished itself, which for seven days held a perimeter
defense, holding back the superior troops of General Gaida.
The units of the Yekaterinburg group of forces of the Siberian Army,
who occupied Kungur on December 21, 1918, under the command of Major
General Gaida, found in a barrack opposite the country prison, “38
more unidentified corpses”. On July 1, 1919, the city was taken by
the Red Army. A significant number of middle-class townspeople were
evacuated with the whites.
In 1921, the city newspaper
"Iskra" began to be printed in Kungur, the publication of which
continues to this day. In 1928, a slaughterhouse was built near the
city, on the basis of which a small meat-packing plant arose, now
grown and bearing the name of OOO Kungurskiy Meat Processing Plant,
and in the early 30s. from the enterprises of the Raizagotkontor and
the Cheese Industry of the Rosglavmoloko trust, the Kungurskiy milk
plant was created, now called the Kungurskiy Dairy Plant OJSC. In
1931, the mechanical workshops of the Kungur Technical School were
transformed into a mechanical school-plant, which, in 1933, began
producing excavators of various modifications. Since 1943 it has
specialized in the production of drilling and oilfield equipment and
now bears the name of OJSC "Kungurskiy Machine-Building Plant".
Declared bankrupt, property pledged and sold at auction.
In
May 1941, Kungur received the status of a city of regional
subordination.
During the Great Patriotic War, the city
fought the enemy, releasing everything necessary for the front and
recruiting military units of the Red Army.
So, with the
beginning of the war, the industrial enterprises of Kungur switched
to the production of military products, which were produced both by
local factories and factories, and by those evacuated from Odessa,
Kramatorsk and Tuapse. Over the years, about 25 thousand townspeople
took part in battles on the war fronts.
Back in the pre-war
years (November 1939), with its headquarters in Perm, the 112th
Infantry Division of the Ural Military District was formed (in June
1941, the 22nd Army was formed on its basis). The 416th Infantry
Regiment, which was part of the division, was stationed in Kungur,
and was manned in large part by Kunguryaks. In mid-June 1941, units
of the division began to redeploy to the Western Special Military
District. With the beginning of the war, the 112th Rifle Division
took up defensive positions along the right bank of the Western
Dvina River from Kraslava (Latvia) to Drissa (Belarus).
The
division entered into battle with German troops on June 26, 1941.
The defense of Kraslava itself was carried out by the 416th Rifle
Regiment. The city passed from hand to hand three times. The
intensity of the fighting is evidenced by the fact that in these
battles the fighters of the 416th rifle regiment of the division
destroyed the first German general on the entire Soviet-German front
since the beginning of the war.
Then there were defensive battles
in the north of Belarus, in the area of the Polotsk UR and near
Nevel. Near Nevel, the division, including the 416th rifle regiment,
was completely surrounded, from which less than 1/3 of the personnel
managed to get out (the 416th rifle regiment lost even more
fighters).
The 112th Rifle Division with its units, occupying a
defensive zone on the right flank of the Western Front, held back
the onslaught of superior enemy forces for more than three weeks.
In memory of the tank brigade of the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps
formed in Kungur in 1943, a T-34 tank was installed on Victory
Square.
Since 1970, Kungur has been included in the list of
historical cities of Russia.
Since July 2002, Kungur began
annually to hold the "Heavenly Fair" - an aeronautics festival,
where you can see many balloons of various designs.