Samara

Samara is a city in the Russian Federation, the center of the Samara region, one of the largest industrial, cultural and scientific centers of Russia. The city is located on the left bank of the Volga River (Saratov reservoir), in its middle course, at the confluence of the Samara River with the Volga, 1098 km east of Moscow. Samara is a major junction of railway lines and highways, there is a river port and an airport in the city, the metro has been operating since 1987. The main branches of urban industry: aerospace engineering (production of space technology, aircraft), aircraft engines, mechanical engineering and metalworking, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, oil refining, electrical engineering, light, food industry.

History

Samara Fortress on the arrow of the Volga and Samara rivers was built in 1586 to ensure the safety of the Volga river route. The construction of the fortress was led by the voivode Prince Grigory Zasyekin. In 1600, a customs house and a pier on the Volga were established in Samara. Merchants from Russia and Central Asian countries traded at the Samara bazaar. By order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, additional fortifications were being built in Samara in 1645. In August 1670, an uprising of the poor rose in the city, and the gates of the fortress were opened to Stepan Razin. But after the defeat at Simbirsk, the Razintsy were no longer allowed into the fortress. On December 25, 1773, Samara sided with Emelyan Pugachev. The city was liberated from the Pugachevites by the field team of Lieutenant Colonel P. Grinev, who became the prototype of one of the characters in A. C. Pushkin's story "The Captain's Daughter".

In 1688, the fortress of Samara was renamed the city. In 1730, the first coat of arms of the city was approved. In 1780, it was confirmed by the decree of Catherine II in its former form — in the form of a shield, which depicts "a wild white goat standing on the grass in a blue field." In 1851 Samara became the center of the province. Before the revolution, it was an important center of grain trade on the Volga. In search of characters for their paintings, I. Repin and V. Surikov came to the Volga shores in the Samara Region.

On January 27, 1935, Samara was renamed Kuibyshev. During the Great Patriotic War, the city acquired the status of the second capital of the USSR. The People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, the diplomatic corps, the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Party and the Komsomol, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR moved here. During the war, there were troupes of a number of Moscow and Leningrad theaters in the city. Dmitry Shostakovich's famous Seventh Symphony was completed and performed here for the first time. During these years, writers A. Tolstoy, V. Vasilevskaya, I. Ehrenburg, V. Ivanov, V. Kataev lived in Kuibyshev.

In the autumn and winter of 1941-1942, equipment of a number of enterprises of Ukraine, Belarus, Moscow, Leningrad was evacuated to Samara. The factories built in Samara during the war and the specialists of these enterprises predetermined the powerful development of the region's industry in the post-war period. A large concentration of military-industrial enterprises "closed" the city for foreigners to visit.

After the war, Kuibyshev continued to develop as a major industrial center. Kuibyshev was the administrative center of the Kuibyshev region.

After the collapse of the USSR, the historical name of Samara was returned to the city, and the Kuibyshev region was renamed back to Samara.

Today Samara is a very beautiful and modern city with a very large number of museums and historical attractions, which allows it to compete on an equal footing with St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod.

Attractions

Samara — one of the most beautiful Volga cities - has preserved the charm of the old merchant city. The leading role in the structure of life, everyday life and culture of the city belonged to the merchants. In the architecture of the city there are no buildings in the Empire style, but there are eclecticism, neo-Russian style and Art Nouveau. Ensembles in the style of constructivism are interesting.

Among the buildings of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, erected in the styles of eclecticism and stylization: Drama Theater (1887-1888, "Russian" style — Moscow Baroque; architect M. N. Chichagov); the mansion of engineer I. A. Klodt (1880s, neo-Romanticism, architect A. A. Shcherbachev) similar to the fairy-tale house of a gnome; Trading Exchange (1890s, neoclassical, architect A. A. Shcherbachev); Peasant Land Bank (Technical University; 1912, in the style of Scandinavian architecture, architect A. I. Gauguin); Volga-Kama Bank (1913-1915, neoclassical, architect V. I.Yakunin); the former Yakimov mill (turn of the 19th-20th century, "Russian" style); the Shikhobalov mansions (1890s, neo-Baroque, architect A. A. Shcherbachev); Naumova (1903-1905, Neo-Renaissance, architect A. A. Shcherbachev); the Subbotina-Martinson apartment house (1914, neo-Gothic; architect Kvyatkovsky); Lutheran church (1860-1870s, neo-Gothic); church The Hearts of Jesus (1906, neo-Gothic, architect F. O. Bogdanovich).

In the Art Nouveau style, a real school was built (1840, reconstructed in 1906-1909; architect P. V. Shamansky); the Olympus Circus theater (1907, architect Shamansky); the Grand Hotel (now the Zhiguli Hotel, 1908-1909, architect M. Kvyatovsky), the mansions of von Wakano (northern Modern; architect D. N. Werner), Kurlina (early 1900s, architect A. U. Zelenko). In the Central Park area, almost at the very edge of the steep bank, there is a building of the former summer residence of the artist Konstantin Golovkin (1908-1909; architect V. Tepfer), on the platform in front of which there are two stone elephants facing each other. The facades of this Art Nouveau building are completely different from each other and clearly stand out against the background of the surrounding greenery.

One of the oldest religious buildings is Samara's Ascension Cathedral (1830). The Pokrovsky Cathedral (1859-1861) was built on donations from wealthy families of Samara, among whom were merchants Shikhobalov, whose family crypt was arranged in the fence of the church. The Peter and Paul Temple (1861) was built in classical traditions, the icons for the iconostasis of the temple were painted by the master Grigory Zhuravlev, a cripple from birth, who painted icons holding a brush in his teeth. Samara Synagogue (1903-1908; architect Z. Kleinerman) was built in the Moorish style, at the time of construction it was one of the largest in Europe. In 1999, the Cathedral Mosque in Samara was opened, at that time the largest Muslim temple in Russia.

Of great interest are the museums of Samara: local history, history of Samara, aviation and cosmonautics, military history, art, literature, archeology of the Volga region, Stalin's bunker and the house Museum of V. I. Lenin. In the exposition of the Samara Art Museum you can see the works of Repin, Surikov, Kramskoy, Polenov, Yaroshenko, Makovsky, K. Golovkin, which came from the collections of rich Samara merchants. Here is the richest collection of works of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century, first-class works by Malevich, Konchalovsky, Lentulov, Burliuk are stored.

The exposition of the Museum-workshop of folk costumes of the Samara province presents national costumes and attributes of the peoples of the Volga region (Russian, Mordovian, Chuvash, Tatar), products of masters of decorative and applied art. In the vicinity of Samara in the Sokoliye Mountains there is a cave of the Greve brothers, where scientists found traces of a Bronze Age parking lot in the labyrinths of the karst system. Bones of a cave bear and a woolly rhinoceros were also found here. The Volga, Krasnaya Glinka, and Ivushka sanatoriums treat diseases of the cardiovascular system, central and peripheral nervous system, musculoskeletal system, gynecological, and skin diseases.