In use Novokuznetsk, the largest city of the Kemerovo region (560 thousand inhabitants), name simply - Kuznja. It is necessary to visit here to understand, to what exact definition: though the industry takes not too a lot of place in a city landscape, its presence is felt continuously. Closing eyes here, you see, how fire burns, turn приводные wheels, conveyors creep, the fused iron flows. It seems, as if even cars, trams, passers-by - all is parts of industrial chains. Novokuznetsk is a present City of Workers, and at once it is visible that "sellers of air" here not in the price. And among industrial giants of Russia it perhaps, the most huge: here two metallurgical industrial complexes of a full cycle (similar on the post-Soviet territory is only in Mariupol, but there industrial complexes it is less), factory of ferroalloys, aluminium factory and some collieries. The history of local metallurgy totals at all hundreds (as in Ural Mountains), and thousand years: In Kuznetsk a hollow long since lived абинцы, or flat шорцы, which else Cossacks in 17 century have not casually nicknamed "Kuznetsk people" - they supplied with iron products half of Great Steppe.
My story about Novokuznetsk will consist of three parts. In the third we will examine Old Kuznetsk based in 1617 as a jail for conquest of Southern Siberia; in the second we will take a walk on the Garden-city - to one of the best Stalin ensembles of 1930th years; well and the first we descend on Kuznetsk metallurgical industrial complex with which construction the city and became Novokuznetsk.