Нижний Новгород
Contents
History ………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
Economy ……………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Transportation …………………………………………………………………………… 9
City layout …………………………………………………………………………………. 10
Main sights ………………………………………………………………………………..11
Sports ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 14
Nizhny Novgorod (Russian: Ни́жний Но́вгород), colloquially shortened as Nizhny,
is the fourth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, and
Novosibirsk. Population: 1,311,252 (Russian Census (2002);[8] 1,438,133 (1989
Census).[13] It is the economic and cultural center of the vast Volga-Vyatka
economic region, and also the administrative center of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast
and Volga Federal District.
From
1932 to 1990, the city was known as Gorky (Го́рький),[11] after the writer
Maxim Gorky who was born there.
The
city is an important economic, transport and cultural center of the nation
History
A seat of medieval princes
After
the destruction of the Mordvin Inäzor Obram administrative centre and
fillfort named Obran Osh (Ashli) at the site of future stone Kremlin in 1220, a
small Russian wooden hillfort was founded by Grand Duke Yuri II of Russia in
1221. Located at the confluence of two most important rivers of his
principality, the Volga (Mordvin "Rav" or "Rava"), and the
Oka, and Obran Osh was renamed Nizhny Novgorod. Its name literally means Lower
Newtown, to distinguish it from the older Novgorod. Its independent existence
was threatened by the continuous Mordvin attacks against it. The major attempt
made by Inäzor Purgaz from Arzamas in January 1229 was repulsed, but after
the death of Yuri II on March 4, 1238 at the Battle of Sit River the Mongols
occupied the fortress and the remnants of small Nizhny Novgorod settlement
which surrendered without any resistance in order to preserve what had been
developed since Purgaz's attack eight years earlier. Later a major stronghold
for border protection, Nizhny Novgorod fortress took advantage of a natural
moat formed by the two rivers.
Along
with Moscow and Tver, Nizhny Novgorod was among several newly-founded towns
that escaped Mongol devastation on account of their insignificance, but grew
into during the period of the Tatar Yoke. With the agreement of the Mongol
Khan, Nizhny Novgorod was incorporated into the Vladimir - Suzdal Principality
in 1264. After 86 years its importance further increased when the seat of the
powerful Suzdal Principality was moved here from Gorodets in 1350. Grand Duke
Dmitry Konstantinovich (1323-1383) sought to make his capital a rival worthy of
Moscow; he built a stone citadel and several churches and was a patron of
historians. The earliest extant manuscript of the Russian Primary Chronicle,
the Laurentian Codex, was written for him by the local monk Laurentius in 1377.
The strongest fortress of Muscovy
Аfter the city's
incorporation into Muscovy (1392), the local princes took the name Shuisky and
settled in Moscow, where they were prominent at the court and briefly ascended
the throne in the person of Vasili IV. After being burnt by the powerful
Crimean Tatar chief Edigu in 1408, Nizhny Novgorod was restored and regarded by
the Muscovites primarily as a great stronghold in their wars against the Tatars
of Kazan. The enormous red-brick kremlin, one of the strongest and earliest
preserved citadels in Russia, was built in 1508–1511 under the supervision of
Peter the Italian. The fortress was strong enough to withstand Tatar sieges in
1520 and 1536.
In 1612, the so-called
national militia, gathered by a local merchant, Kuzma Minin, and commanded by
Knyaz Dmitry Pozharsky expelled the Polish troops from Moscow, thus putting an
end to the "Time of Troubles" and establishing the rule of the
Romanov dynasty. The main square before the kremlin is named after Minin and
Pozharsky, although it is locally known simply as "Minin Square."
Minin's remains are buried in the citadel. (In commemoration of these events,
on October 21, 2005, an exact copy of the Red Square statue of Minin and
Pozharsky was placed in front of St John the Baptist Church, which is believed
to be the place from where the call to the people had been proclaimed.)
The historical coat of
arms of Nizhny Novgorod in 1981 was: A red deer with black horns and hooves on
a white field. The modern coat of arms circa a ribbon with colours of the
Russian national flag.
Great trade centre
In 1817, the Makaryev Fair, one of
the liveliest in the world, was transferred to Nizhny Novgorod, which thereupon
started to attract millions of visitors annually. By the mid-19th century, the
city on the Volga was firmly established as the trade capital of the Russian
Empire. The world's first radio receiver of engineer Alexander Popov and the
world's first hyperboloid tower and lattice shells-coverings of engineer
Vladimir Shukhov were demonstrated at the All-Russia industrial and art
exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896. According to official Imperial Russian
statistics the population of Nizhny Novgorod as of 14 January 1913 was 97.000
(rounded to the nearest thousand).
The largest industrial enterprise was the Sormovo Iron Works which was
connected by the company´s own railway to Moscow station in the upper
part of Nizhny Novgorod. The private Moscow — Kazan Railway Company´s
station served the lower part of the town. Other industries gradually
developed, and by the dawn of the 20th century it was a first-rank industrial
hub as well. Henry Ford helped build a large truck and tractor plant (GAZ) in
the late 1920s, sending along engineers and mechanics, including future labour
leader Walter Reuther.
The Soviet Era
There were no bridges over
the Volga or Oka before the October Revolution in 1917. The first bridge over
the Volga was started by the Moscow-Kazan Railway Company in 1914, but only
finished in the Soviet Era when the railway to Kotelnich was opened for service
in 1927.
The famous writer Maxim
Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1868 as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. In his
novels he realistically described the dismal life of the city proletariat. Even
during his lifetime, the city was renamed Gorky following his return to the
Soviet Union in 1932 on invitation of Joseph Stalin. The city bore Gorky's name
until 1991. His childhood home is preserved as a museum, known as the Kashirin
House (Russian: Домик Каширина), after Alexei's grandfather who owned the place.
During
much of the Soviet era, the city was closed to foreigners to safeguard the
security of Soviet military research and production facilities, even though it
was a popular stopping point for Soviet tourists traveling up and down the
Volga in tourist boats. Unusually for a Soviet city of that size, even the
street maps were not available for sale until the mid-1970s. Mátyás Rákosi,
communist leader of Hungary died here in 1971.
The
physicist and the Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov was exiled there during 1980-1986
to limit his contacts with foreigners.
Economy
Nizhniy
Novgorod Oblast ranks seventh in Russia in industrial output, while the
processing industry predominates in the local economy. More than 633 industrial
companies employ nearly 700 000 people, or 62% of the workforce involved in
material production. Industry generates 83% of the regional GDP and makes 89%
of all material expenditures. The leading sectors are engineering and
metalworking, followed by the chemical and petrochemical industries and the
forestry, woodworking, and paper industries. The first three sectors account
for about 75% of all industrial production.
Nizhniy
Novgorod Oblast has traditionally been attractive to investors. In 2002,
Moody's rating agency confirmed a Caa1 rating based on the region's long-term
foreign currency liabilities.
The
region maintains trade relations with many countries and has an export surplus.
The largest volume of exports goes to Ukraine, Belarus, Switzerland,
Kazakhstan, Belgium, and France. Imports come mainly from Ukraine, Germany,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Austria, the Netherlands, China, and the United States.
The
stock market infrastructure is quite well developed in Nizhniy Novgorod, and
the exchange business is expanding. Companies and organizations registered in
the region include 1153 joint-stock companies, 63 investment institutions, 34
commercial banks, 35 insurance companies, 1 voucher investment fund, 1
investment fund, 17 nongovernmental pension funds, 2 associations of
professional stock market dealers, and 3 exchanges (stock, currency, and
agricultural). Nizhny Novgorod Region is noted for having relatively highly
developed market relations.
Information
technology
Nizhniy
Novgorod is one of the centers of the IT Industry in Russia. It ranks among the
leading Russian cities in terms of the quantity of software R&D providers .
In Nizhniy Novgorod there are number of offshore outsourcing software
developers, including Devetel Ltd., MERA Networks, RealEast Networks, and
Teleca, that specialize in delivering services to telecommunication vendors.
Also Intel has opened a software R&D center with more than 500 engineers in
Nizhniy Novgorod.
There
are 25 scientific R&D institutions focusing on telecommunications, radio
technology, theoretical and applied physics, and 33 higher educational
institutions, among them are Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, Nizhny
Novgorod State University, Nizhny Novgorod Technical University, as well as
Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Information Technologies (former MERA Networks
training center), that focuses on information technologies, software
development, system administration, telecommunications, cellular networks,
Internet technologies, and IT management.
Nizhniy
Novgorod has also been chosen as one of four sites for building an IT-oriented
technology park—a special zone that has an established infrastructure and
enjoys a favorable tax and customs policy.
Engineering industry
The
engineering industry is the leading industry of Nizhniy Novgorod economy. It is
mainly oriented towards transportation, i.e., the auto industry, shipbuilding,
diesel engines, aircraft manufacture, and machine tools, with the auto industry
being the leading sector (50%). Largest plants are:
JSC
"Krasnoye Sormovo" - river and sea ships, submarines;
JSC
"Sokol" - airplanes, jets;
JSC
"Nitel" - TV sets;
JSC
"RUMO" - diesel generators;
JSC
"Krasnyy yakor" - anchor chains;
JSC
"ZeFS" - metal-cutting machines.
Transportation
Gorkovskaya Railroad
(Горьковская железная дорога), which operates some 5,700 km of rail lines
throughout the Middle Volga region (of which some 1,200 are in Nizhny Novgorod
Oblast), is headquartered in Nizhny Novgorod. Overnight trains provide access
to Nizhny Novgorod from Moscow. Since December 2002, a fast train transports
passengers between Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow in less than five hours. One can
continue from Nizhny Novgorod eastward along the Trans-Siberian Railway, with
direct trains to major cities in the Urals and Siberia, as well as to Beijing.
Nizhny Novgorod Strigino
Airport has direct flights to major Russian cities, as well as to Frankfurt
(three flights a week by Lufthansa). The air base Sormovo was an important
military airlift facility, and Pravdinsk air base was an interceptor aircraft
base during the Cold War. S7 Airlines goes to Moscow Domodedovo airport daily.
Nizhny Novgorod is an
important center of Volga cargo and passenger shipping. In the summer, cruise
vessels operate between Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and
Astrakhan. In 2006 a small number of Meteor-class hydrofoils resumed operations
on the Volga river.
The city is served by Russian highway
M-7 (Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod – Kazan – Ufa), and is a hub of the regional
highway network.
Public
transport within the city is provided by a small subway system (Nizhny Novgorod
Metro), tramways, marshrutkas or minibuses, buses and trolleybuses. Electric
and diesel commuter trains run to suburbs in several directions.
Free
shuttle buses run from several points in the city to the MEGA shopping complex,
which opened in October 2006 in Fedyakovo, a few kilometers to the east of the
Nizhny Novgorod city line.
City
layout
Nizhny Novgorod is divided by the
Oka River into two distinct parts. The Upper City (Russian: Нагорная часть,
Nagornaya Chast) is located on the hilly eastern (right) bank of the Oka. It
includes three of the eight city districts into which the city is
administratively divided:
Nizhegorodsky (the
historical and administrative center of the city);
Prioksky;
Sovetsky.
The Lower City (Russian: Заречная часть, Zarechnaya Chast) occupies the low
(western) side of the Oka, and includes five city districts:
Moskovsky
(home of the Sokol Aircraft Plant and its airfield);
Sormovsky
(where Krasnoye Sormovo and the Volga Shipyard are located);
Avtozavodsky
(built around the GAZ automotive plants);
Leninsky.
All
of the today's lower city was annexed to Nizhny Novgorod in 1929–1931.
The city has many industrial suburbs, such as Kstovo, Dzerzhinsk, and Bor. The
town of Semyonov, to the north of Nizhny Novgorod, is known as a craft center
for Khokhloma wood painting. Another suburb, Balakhna, is noted for its
medieval architecture.
Main sights
Much
of the city downtown is built in the Russian Revival and Stalin Empire styles.
The dominating feature of the city skyline is the grand Kremlin (1500-11), with
its red-brick towers. After Bolshevik devastation, the only ancient edifice
left within the kremlin walls is the tent-like Archangel Cathedral (1624-31),
first built in stone in the 13th century.
Cultural features
There are more than six
hundred unique historic, architectural, and cultural monuments in the city;
that gave grounds to UNESCO to include Nizhny Novgorod in the list of 100
cities of the world which are of great historical and cultural value.
There
are about two hundred municipal and regional art and cultural institutions
within Nizhny Novgorod. Among these institutions there are eight theatres, five
concert halls, ninety-seven libraries (with branches), seventeen movie theaters
(including five movie theaters for children), twenty-five institutions of
children optional education, eight museums (sixteen including branches), and
seven parks
Nizhny Novgorod art gallery
The
art gallery in Nizhny Novgorod is a large and important art gallery and museums
of human history and culture.
Nizhny
Novgorod has a great and extraordinary art gallery with more than 12,000
exhibits, an enormous collection of works by Russian artists such as Viktor
Vasnetsov, Karl Briullov, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Kramskoi, Ilya Yefimovich Repin,
Isaak Iljitsch Lewitan, Vasily Surikov, Ivan Aivazovsky, there are also greater
collections of works by Boris Kustodiev and Nicholas Roerich, not only Russian
art is part of the exhibition it include also a vast accumulation of Western
European art like works by David Teniers the Younger, Bernardo Bellotto, Lucas
Cranach the Elder, Pieter de Grebber, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Giovanni Battista
Piranesi, and lot more.
Finally
what makes this gallery extremely important is the amazing collection Russian
avant-garde with works by Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Natalia
Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov and so on. There is also collection of East Asian
art.
Churches
Other notable landmarks
are the two great medieval abbeys. The Pechersky Ascension Monastery features
the austere five-domed cathedral (1632) and two rare churches surmounted by
tent roofs, dating from the 1640s. The Annunciation monastery, likewise
surrounded by strong walls, has another five-domed cathedral (1649) and the Assumption
church (1678). The only private house preserved from that epoch formerly
belonged to the merchant Pushnikov.
There
can be little doubt that the most original and delightful churches in the city
were built by the Stroganovs in the nascent Baroque style. Of these, the
Virgin's Nativity Church (1719) graces one of the central streets, whereas the
Church of Our Lady of Smolensk (1694-97) survives in the former village of
Gordeevka (now, part of the city's Kanavinsky District), where the Stroganov
palace once stood.
the
Saviour Cathedral, also known as the Old Fair Cathedral, a huge domed edifice
built at the site of the great fair to an Empire style design by Agustín
de Betancourt and Auguste de Montferrand in 1822;
the so-called New Fair
Cathedral, designed in the Russian Revival style and constructed between 1856
and 1880 at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga;
the
recently reconstructed church of the Nativity of John the Precursor (1676-83),
standing just below the Kremlin walls; it was used during the Soviet period as
an apartment house;
the
parish churches of the Holy Wives (1649) and of Saint Elijah (1656);
the
Assumption Church on St Elijah's Hill (1672), with five green-tiled domes
arranged unorthodoxly on the lofty cross-shaped barrel roof;
the
shrine of the Old Believers at the Bugrovskoe cemetery, erected in the 1910s to
a critically acclaimed design by Vladimir Pokrovsky;
the
wooden chapel of the Intercession (1660), transported to Nizhny Novgorod from a
rural area.
There
is also a mosque in Sennaya Square, where the Muslim populations of the city go
for Friday prayers, Islamic activities and activities which are organised by
the mosque. There is also a small shop to buy halal meats. Most of the Muslims
in this city are Tatars.
The
centrally located Nizhny Novgorod Synagogue was built in 1881-83; disused
during the Soviet era, it was renovated and reopened ca. 1991.
Other
A singular monument of industrial
architecture is a 128-metre-high open-work hyperboloid tower built on the bank
of the Oka near Dzerzhinsk as part of a powerline river crossing by the eminent
engineer and scientist Vladimir Shukhov in 1929.
A staircase connecting the Kremlin
with the Volga river offers a panoramic view of the surroundings. The staircase
itself was constructed in the late 1940s by German prisoners of war forced to
labour around Gorky.
Sports
The
city ice hockey team Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod play in the KHL. The city is
represented at football by FC Volga Nizhny Novgorod who play in the Russian
First Division. The other footbal team from Nizhny Novgrod, FC Lokomotiv Nizhny
Novgorod who had played in the Russian Premier League and Intertoto Cup became
defunct in 2006. The city field hockey team are HC Start. Their bandy team
Start plays in the highest division of the Russian Bandy League. In 2002 they
reached the final against Vodnik. Both matches were played in Arkhangelsk due
to warm weather. After that an artificial ice was built.