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Miass is a city in the Chelyabinsk Region, Russia, located 96
kilometers (60 miles) west of Chelyabinsk, on the eastern slope of
the Southern Urals, on the banks of the Miass River. Population:
151,751 (2010 census) 158,420 (2002 census); 167,839 (1989 census).
The name Miass is taken from the Bashkirs (Bashkir: Meys), the
indigenous inhabitants of these places.
It was founded in
1773 as a copper factory. During the 19th century, development was
driven by the discovery of the richest gold deposits in the Urals.
Average annual gold production from the Miass area was about 640 kg
(1,410 lb). In the middle of the 19th century, gold production
declined and the development of Miass also slowed down. The city
status was given to Miass in 1923. In 1941, an automobile plant was
built (which still operates as UralAZ).
Lake Turgoyak (you can get to the public beach from the train
station by minibus 391.).
Megaliths of Vera Island.
Memorial
"Grieving Mother".
City Museum of Local Lore, st. Pushkin, 8. ☎
(3513) 57-80-44. 10-18, closed on Monday.
Ski resort Ryder,
Ilmen-Tau, 22a. ☎ (3513) 54-64-00. Mon-Thu 10: 00-22: 00, Fri 10:
00-23: 00, Sat 9: 00-23: 00, Sun 9: 00-21: 00. 5 tracks, hotel.
Cinema "Hawaii" in the shopping mall "Elephant", Avtozavodtsev Ave.,
65. ☎ 8 (3513) 28-98-18.
Solnechnaya Dolina,
pos. Syrostan. ☎ (351) 356-66-26, (3513) 591-591. Mon-Fri 10: 00-22:
00, Sat-Sun 09: 00-22: 00. Mount Known. One of the main ski resorts
in the Urals, 11 slopes, cottages for living.
Natural Science
Museum of the Ilmensky State Reserve, Ilmensky Reserve, 2. ☎
(8-3513) 59-18-48. Wed-Sun from 10.30 to 17.00. A large museum
dedicated to the nature of the Southern Urals is located at the
entrance to the Ilmensky Reserve. They say that the reserve has the
largest concentration of various minerals per square meter in the
world.
Oikonym Miass (Russian pre-ref. Miass) comes from the name of the river Miass (Bashkir Meiәs), which, in turn, got into the Russian language from Old Ugric or has Iranian origin, like some other toponyms of the Southern Urals: Argayash, Misyash, others with the general formant is "-ash" / "- as", presumably with the meaning "water", "friend".
The first settlement arose in 1773, when the merchant Larion Luginin
began the construction of a copper smelter. Due to the Pugachev
Uprising, the construction of the plant was suspended. The decree of
the Berg Collegium on permission to build was issued on November 18,
1773, the plant was launched on August 12, 1777. In the first decade
of its existence, the plant gradually increased its production
volumes: in 1777-1780 12.9 thousand poods of copper were produced,
in 1781-1790 - 40.2 thousand poods. In 1787 the plant passed to the
founder's nephews Ivan and Nikolai Maksimovich Luginin. In 1798 I.
M. Luginin sold the enterprise to the treasury, in 1799-1800 copper
smelting was not performed. By the middle of the 19th century,
copper production decreased, the maintenance of the plant became
unprofitable, as a result of which it was closed.
According
to the customs adopted at that time, initially the village around
the plant was called the Miassky plant (Miyassky plant),
administratively it was part of the Troitsk district of the Orenburg
province.
The development of gold deposits contributed to the
economic development. In the first half of the 19th century, the
entire valley of the Miass River turned into a huge gold industry.
In 1836, 54 mines and 23 gold placers were developed.
The
most famous is the Tsarevo-Aleksandrovsky (Leninsky) mine. In 1824,
the chargemaster Mejer discovered a placer that turned out to be the
richest: washing the sand showed the content of "more than a pound
of gold in a hundred pounds." In the summer of 1824, a mine was
founded here. During one of his travels here, to the gold mines,
Emperor Alexander I came here. In honor of this visit, the mine got
its name.
It ranked first among the mines of the Miass region
in terms of wealth and the number of large nuggets found. In just
one year, 52 nuggets were found here, in 1842 the artisan Nikifor
Syutkin found one of the world's largest nuggets "Big Triangle"
weighing 36.21 kilograms.
In the middle of the 19th century,
the Miass gold mining partnership of Count Levashov, Daragan and Co.
appeared. The shareholders were representatives of the St.
Petersburg aristocracy. All groups of state mines with a total area
of 23394 hectares were included in the boundaries of the
partnership's allotments. The partnership allowed miners to develop
the placers, which provided more than half of all production.
With the beginning of the partnership's activities, the
introduction of new technical advances in gold mining was
associated, which, along with the ongoing development of rich
placers, made it possible to achieve the flourishing of gold mining
near Miass.
The history of the city is closely connected with
the name of Yegor Mitrofanovich Simonov, who, having gone from a
simple prospector to the owner of the mines, became the richest man
in the city.
Gold mining remained a city-forming industry
until the beginning of the 20th century. After nationalization,
large associations collapsed and began to conduct minor artisanal
trades.
In 1891, the construction of the Trans-Siberian
Railway began simultaneously from Miass and Vladivostok.
Historically, the world famous Transsib is this very section from
here to Vladivostok, built from 1891 to 1916. The length of the
section is about 7 thousand kilometers. The first train (it was a
working train with materials for laying rails) passed the section of
the highway from Miass to Chelyabinsk on July 5, 1892. In 1903, the
first train St. Petersburg - Moscow - Vladivostok passed. In 1992, a
memorial sign was erected at Miass I station in honor of the 100th
anniversary of the beginning of the construction of the Great
Siberian Route. From Moscow to Miass by rail, exactly 2000
kilometers (to the station Miass I 2004 km.).
During the
First World War, in 1915, the tsarist government evacuated from Riga
to Miass the sawtooth plant of the British firm Thomas Firth and
Sons. A year later, the Miass sawing plant was launched, which for a
long time was the leading enterprise in the industry in the country
and the world. Currently Miass Tool Factory.
The issue of
assigning the status of a city to the Miass plant was decided in
December 1919 at the congress of thirteen volost revolutionary
committees of the Troitsk district of the Chelyabinsk province, held
in Miass. The inconvenience of administrative subordination to
Troitsk hindered the development of the economic life of the plant.
Since that time, Miass has become a provincial city, that is,
without a county, and then a county one. In 1926, it was officially
awarded the status of a city.
In 1923, the Miass City Council
proposed to rename the city to Tukhachevsk in honor of M.N.
Tukhachevsky, who took the city during the Civil War, but a meeting
of the Presidium of the Chelyabinsk Provincial Executive Committee,
held on October 30, 1923, ruled that it was economically
inexpedient, the request was rejected.
The industrialization of the country made it possible to
technically re-equip the gold industry. The power substation, built
in 1932, on the outskirts of Miass, increased the power-to-weight
ratio of gold mining enterprises. In the same year, a floating gold
factory - the first electric dredge - was launched at the Leninsky
mine. In 1933, the mines of a number of mines were commissioned. In
the first half of the 20th century, the timber industry developed.
Miass was previously a large supplier of timber; in the vicinity of
Lake Turgoyak, logs, firewood were prepared for the Zlatoust and
Miass factories, and coal was burned. With the creation of the Miass
timber industry enterprise, commercial timber, charcoal, fasteners,
sleepers are sent to the enterprises of the South Urals. Part of the
forest was rafted along the mountain rivers Kushtumga and
Sukhokamenka.
In the spring of 1939, construction began on
the central part of the city. On November 3, 1941, the State Defense
Committee decided to organize an auto-engine production in Miass on
the basis of the evacuated workshops of the Stalin Automobile Plant
(ZIS). At first, engines and gearboxes were produced, and on July 8,
1944, the first Ural car ZIS-5 rolled off the assembly line. The
first batch of cars was sent to the front, the famous Katyushas were
mounted on them. In the postwar years, the Ural Automobile Plant
continued to successfully develop the production and release of new
Ural models. In total, 1 million 270 thousand vehicles rolled off
the assembly line of UralAZ from the moment of launch to the end of
the 20th century.
Almost simultaneously with the car plant,
the workshops of the Moscow plant "Dynamo" were evacuated from the
capital to Miass. On January 15, 1942, Dynamo produced the first
products for the front, laying the foundation for a new enterprise -
the Miaselectroapparat plant.
The central street of the city
is Avtozavodtsev Avenue (originally it was named after I.V. Stalin).
The modern Miass began from the avenue. In the 1940s, a narrow-gauge
railway was laid from the factory entrance to the Miass station,
along which building materials for houses were transported and at
the same time laid cobblestone pavements. German prisoners of war
worked at the construction site. The avenue was built in the
post-war years and has an expressive architecture of the Stalinist
Empire style: small-storey houses with stucco decorations. The
avenue was actively built up in the 1960s.
In 1961, after the
XXI Congress of the CPSU, the party committee of the automobile
plant convened a party and trade union activist, at which it was
decided to rename the Miass plant named after Stalin into the Ural
Automobile Plant (UralAZ), and the Avenue named after Stalin into
Avenue Avtozavodtsev.
Above the road, at the foot of the
Ilmensky ridge, the settlement of Builders was gradually formed.
Volunteers from the south of Russia, street names: Kerchenskaya,
Donskaya, Azovskaya, Sevastopolskaya, came to build new districts of
the city, including Mashgorodok, the youngest district of Miass.
The history of Mashgorodok began in 1955, when the government
decided to transfer the design bureau to Miass from Zlatoust and
create a powerful experimental base for rocketry. With the
relocation to the new site, the design bureau began to be called
Miassky according to its location. The strictest secrecy regime did
not allow references to the name of the city, Mashgorodok, that is
how the place of the enterprise was called.
Residential
buildings, shops, schools, kindergartens were built for the
improvement and improvement of the life of the invited highly
qualified specialists. Each time the missiles were put into service,
Viktor Petrovich Makeev, the general designer of the Mechanical
Engineering Design Bureau (now the V.P. Makeyev SRC), sought funding
for the creation of large social facilities. So, gradually, a
polyclinic with a hospital, a cinema "Vostok", a hotel "Neptune"
with a restaurant, a palace of culture "Prometheus", a sports palace
"Zarya" with a swimming pool, a children's palace of culture
"Yunost", a stadium and other objects were built in Mashgorodok.
social and cultural life.
Since the end of the 1950s,
Mashgorodok has had well-groomed roads and sidewalks, alleys and
squares, flower beds, original and aesthetically pleasing fittings
for the hotel, a swimming pool, cafes and shops, silver fir trees
and linden alleys give a special look. Mashgorodok grew as a new
district of Miass, significantly expanded the boundaries of the city
and renewed its appearance. A group of architects received the State
Prize for the construction of a residential area while preserving
the natural landscape
In 1959, the railway line from Miass
station to the city of Uchaly was put into operation.
In 1970-1980, a large-panel housing construction plant was built.
At the foot of the Ilmensky ridge, a white-stone building of a new
city hospital, a polyclinic and an obstetric and gynecological
building appeared. In 1973 the hotel "Neptune" received the first
guests of the city. In the Ilmensky State Reserve named after V.I.
Lenin, a complex of spacious, bright buildings has been built, which
houses the famous mineralogical museum and scientific laboratories.
In 1976, a polyclinic in the village of Dynamo, a shopping center in
the northern part of the city and many other facilities were
commissioned. On November 6, 1981, a new railway station was opened,
designed for a simultaneous stay of up to 800 passengers. A new bus
station is located in the same building. At the same time, the route
network of city buses was changed, which instead of the old station
went to the new station. Two years later, construction of a
trolleybus line began, linking the northern and central parts of the
city.
In the 1980s, the traffic flow increased, trolleybuses
were launched, and many trees were cut down on Avtozavodtsev Avenue.
Since 1994, the Russian-Italian joint venture Iveco-AMT has been
successfully operating, where the production of heavy vehicles
according to Italian drawings has been established.
As of the 2010s, the city covers an area of 111.9 km², the total
length of roads is 454 km. The area of the housing stock is 3 488
thousand square meters. The city has 34 schools, 68 preschool
institutions, 6 vocational schools, 6 technical schools, 3 branches
of universities, 2 museums, 3 palaces of culture, 11 houses of
culture and clubs, 38 libraries.
Due to the prevalence of
production of the machine-building complex, the city belongs to the
category of single-industry towns. The resort-sanatorium and tourist
zone is developing (resorts on Lake Turgoyak, ski slopes, tours to
the peaks of the Southern Urals on snowmobiles), independent
tourism.
The Ilmensky Festival of Artists' Songs is held
annually in mid-June.
Within a radius of 30 km are the cities
of Chebarkul, Zlatoust, Karabash, as well as many settlements and
villages.