The city of Irbit is located 204 km. east of Yekaterinburg, on the right bank of the Nice River at the confluence of the Irbit River. Through the city passes the railway Yekaterinburg - Tavda - Ustye-Aha, as well as roads going to Kamyshlov and Artemovsk, to Turinsk and Tyumen, and to the north-west - to Alapayevsk. Irbit is one of the oldest cities in the Urals, serving for almost three centuries as the site of the annual trading of European Russia with Siberia, Central Asia and China. Soviet Irbit is inextricably linked with the former largest motorcycle factory in the Union. Today, the city is gaining a new face, defining its place in modern Russia. The first phenomenon of the Irbit land was the foundation in 1629 (on the site of the modern village of Rudnoe, Irbit district) of the second in Russia and the first state ironworks in the Urals, which supplied Siberia with iron for seven decades. In 7140, from the creation of the world (1631-1632 according to the modern chronology), at the confluence of the Irbit River in Nice, the Irbit Sloboda arose, in which the torzhok soon appeared, gradually growing to the second largest fair in Russia. In 1686, the Irbit treasury was legalized, and a century later, in 1775, Catherine the Great, “never leaving laudable merit without a worthy retribution,” granted the settlement the status of the city for the “unwavering loyalty of the residents of Irbit” to her empress in the fight against the “villainous gangs” of Pugachev. The following year, the city received a coat of arms that adorns it to this day. Pre-revolutionary Irbit, according to one of the authors of the XIX century: In ordinary times is the most ordinary, modest, provincial county town of the Russian Empire. But during January and February, he completely changes his face and character. Tens of thousands of peoples flock here, here you can see representatives of opposite ends of the eastern continent: Western Europeans - Germans, French and English, and residents of China, Mongolia, Persia. Goods worth up to 60,000,000 rubles are brought here. In short, here is the famous Irbit fair – the annual exchange of works of Asia and Europe. The remarkable Russian nugget N. M. Chukmaldin, who spent the first half of his life in Siberia, wrote: “The Irbit fair in its size then seemed so colossal that our Siberians were only surprised at this fair, not finding any measure for comparison with it.” About the fair and expressed more monosyllabic words and signs of exclamation: “Ah, Irbit!” or “It was in Irbit!”, implying that this fair is the basis, center, denouement of all cases, a kind of “extreme judge”. The world war of the early XX century, the events that followed it finally undermined the Irbit Fair. Reborn temporarily during the NEP years, she died quietly towards the end of her twenties. The city was reborn by industrialization. Soviet Irbit became a significant industrial center of the Trans-Urals. The city developed engineering, production of building materials, pharmaceutical, light and food industries. During the war, a motorcycle factory evacuated from Moscow was located in Irbit. Over fifty years, more than three million motorcycles have rolled off its assembly line. Irbit residents became legislators in domestic motorsport. The events of the late XX century closed the industrial stage in the development of the city. Today, the glory of Irbit is created by workers of dairy and bakery factories, on the Irbit land there are the best in the region and one of the best in Russia collective farms - "Ural" and "Russia". The cultural heritage of Irbit is becoming more important. The city has preserved material evidence of the great fair: the remains of the living yard, the passage, the houses of famous Russian merchants. Here is a unique collection of heavy motorcycles (domestic and foreign), which is a national treasure. “Irbit miracle” was the appearance in the city of the State Museum of Fine Arts, which has the works of Durer and Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Goya.
All this allows us to talk about Irbit as a unique city not only for the Urals, but also for Russia.
Use of material from www.irbit.info
