Kemerovo

The history of many cities goes back centuries and millennia. In the life of the city 90 years is a small period. But it is in this short period of time on the site of the remote and little-known village of Shcheglov built a modern city, a major industrial and cultural center of our country, the administrative center of the land Kuznetskaya.

From a remote village, where there was not a single children's institution and a center of culture, where the only parish school dragged a miserable existence, and every second was illiterate to a city with a high level of culture, where every fourth citizen of the city studies in universities, secondary special educational institutions and general education schools - such are the successes of the development of the city of Kemerovo.

Population: 556,382 (2020).

On the site of the modern city was a village, leaving its almost three hundred-year biography in the history of the development of Siberia. In 1701, in the geographical atlas of Siberia, compiled by Tobolsk historian and geographer Semyon Ustinovich Remizov, on the "Drawing of the Tomsk City Land" the lock "Shcheglovo" is indicated at the confluence of the Nameless River (Iskitimka) into Tom. In 1721, a Russian miner, the Cossack son Mikhailo Volkov, climbing on a strug upstream of Tomi on the one hundred-twentieth line from Tomsk, discovered at the very edge of the water a three-saturated coal seam. He sent pieces of coal to the Moscow Berg College.

Thus was discovered Kuznetsk "Flammable stone". But it took almost 200 years for the Tsarist government to start developing Kuznetsk coals. Although there should not have been any major problems with the development and operation of the mine. There was no need for the cost of construction of the road – Tom opened the way for coal to the Ob, Irtysh, and up to the Urals, where fuel hunger is already acute. It was here, in the area of the small village of Shcheglova on the left bank and Kemerovo on the right, that the first mines were laid.

Here, at these mines, the first Bolshevik cells appeared. And on November 24, 1917, the Soviet of Workers' Deputies of the Kemerovo mine and coke plant took power into its own hands. From the very first days of the establishment of Soviet power in the territory of Kuzbass, it became obvious that the old petty-bourgeois city of Kuznetsk, remote hundreds of kilometers from the Kemerovo and Kolchugin mines and densely populated agricultural district, would not have the necessary impact on the transformation of life.

On March 30, 1918, the Tomsk provincial executive committee decided to form a new county. The district formed became known as Shcheglovskiy and was formed from Shcheglov village of Verkhotom volost in the district city of Shcheglov.

Already in 1921, the rise of coal production began in Kuzbass. This allowed him in the next five years to take a leading place in the creation of the base of coke production. In the summer of 1921, an initiative group of American workers led by the Dutch engineer-communist S. Rutgers and the American communist B. Heywood appealed to the Soviet government with a proposal to create a colony of foreign workers and specialists in Kuzbass. On June 28, 1921, S. Rutgers, accompanied by T. Barker, B. Heywood, G. Calvert and B. Kornblit, left for Kuzbass.

Inspired by the consciousness of their international duty, the colonists brought a living creative beginning to the economic life of the young city.

In the autumn of 1924, the Kuznetsk and Shcheglov counties were separated from the Tomsk province and transformed into a separate Kuznetsk district, the administrative center of which was Shcheglovsk.

With the development of industrial construction, the city begins to grow. In June 1930, a session of the City Council considered a draft plan for Shcheglovsk. The city was designed for 130,000 residents. When considering the project, the question of the name of the city arose. Residents took an active part in the discussion of this issue. All unanimously agreed that the name of the former trading village Shcheglov has no direct historical connection with the city based on the mining and processing of coal. Therefore, the City Council appealed to the Presidium of the West Siberian Regional Executive Committee with a petition to rename Shcheglovsk in the city of Kemerovo.
On March 27, 1932, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a resolution renaming Shcheglovsk in Kemerovo.

And just nine years later, the city spread alarming news. War...

In the first days of the war, hundreds of Kemerovo citizens put on soldiers' overcoats and went to the front. The first of our countrymen who took part in the battle with the Hitler hordes were soldiers and officers of the 681st Regiment of the 133rd Division. Almost all the commanders here were from Kemerovo. A young Kemerovo girl, a former honorary student of 12 secondary schools, Vera Voloshin, was caught in the walls of the Moscow Trade Institute. While performing a combat mission in November 1941, she was captured by the Nazis and executed. Kemerovo residents cherish the memory of V.Voloshyna - her name is borne by the former city Palace of Pioneers, the park and the school where she studied.
On January 26, 1943, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Kuzbass industrial region became an independent region. Kemerovo becomes the administrative center of the Kemerovo region.

The war found Kemerovo wooden, one-story, with dirty undeveloped streets and swampy wastelands. The residential area consisted of barracks and covered the left bank part - from the coke plant to the Iskitimka river. Several capital houses on the Pritomsky site, eight four-storey school buildings, the Palace of Labor and the Moscow cinema were the decoration of the city. In the pre-war and war years, Kemerovo was built without a master plan, although in the 30s an attempt was made to develop it. In 1947-1951-ies was drawn up a master plan, which carried out the development of the city until the end of the 60-ies. According to this plan, the rapid development of the city, its residential area in the Zaiskitimskaya part of the city was provided. In the 70-80s, the city continued to expand development. On April 27, 1979, the Shalgotaryan microdistrict was laid in the Leninsky district. The new neighborhood was distinguished by an unusual novelty of layout - high-rise buildings were lined with ceramic tiles, and shopping and household points were made into the built-in between the houses. Currently, the construction of housing and socio-cultural facilities is intensively developing in the city. The newly built temple complex of the Kemerovo Orthodox Diocese has no analogues in Siberia.

Currently, Kemerovo is one of the largest industrial centers in the east of Russia, a city of energy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry.

There is an old saying: “No city is a hole.” It definitely fits Kemerovo as well. His biography, his problems, his still largely unwritten history.