Kazan is the capital city of Tatarstan and one of Russia's largest cities. It is a major industrial, commercial and cultural center, and remains the most important center of Tatar culture.
Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga (Idel) and Kazanka (Qazansu) rivers in central European Russia.
In 1552, the city was conquered by Russia under Ivan the Terrible. During the governorship of Alexander Gorbatyi-Shuisky, most of the city's Tatar residents were killed, repressed, or forcibly Christianized. Mosques and palaces were ruined. The surviving Tatar population was moved to a place 50 km away from the city and this place was forcibly settled by Russian farmers and soldiers. Serving to Russia Tatars was settled in the Tatar Bistäse settlement near the city's wall. Later Tatar merchant
s and handycraft masters also settled there.
Kazan was largely destroyed as a result of several great fires. After one of them in 1579, the icon Our Lady of Kazan was discovered in the city. During the Time of Troubles in Russia the independence of the Kazan Khanate was restored with the help of the Russian population, but this independence was suppressed by Kuzma Minin in 1612. The history of that period requires further research.
In 1708, the Khanate of Kazan was abolished, and Kazan became the center of a guberniya. After Peter the Great's visit, the city became a shipbuilding base for the Caspian fleet. It was largely destroyed in 1774 as a result of a revolt by border troops and peasants led by the Don Cossack ataman (captain) Yemelyan Pugachev, but was rebuilt soon afterwards, during the reign of Catherine the Great. Catherine also decreed that mosques could again be built in Kazan. But discrimination against the Tatars continued.
In the beginning of 19th century Kazan State University and Printing Press were founded by Alexander I. The Qur'an was firstly printed in Kazan in 1801, and it became an important centre for Oriental Studies in Russia. By the end of the 19th century, Kazan had become an industrial center of the Middle Volga. People from neighboring villages came to the city looking for work. In 1875, a horse railway appeared; 1899 saw the installation of a tramway.
After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Tatars were allowed to revive Kazan as a Tatar cultural center. The first Tatar theater and the first Tatar newspaper appeared.
During World War II, many industrial plants and factories were evacuated to Kazan, and the city subsequently became a center of the military industry, producing tanks and planes.
In the 1990s, after the dissolution of the USSR, Kazan again became the center of Tatar culture, and separatist tendencies intensified. Since 2000, the city has been undergoing a total renovation. A single-line metro, the north-southeast running Central Line, opened on 27 August 2005. The Kazan Metro has five stations. But there are plans to extend the line in both directions, bringing the total number of stations on it to 11, according to Website UrbanRail. Net; Five stations will cross the Kazanka River and extend further north, while one station will complete the line's southeast end. Kazan celebrated its millennium in 2005, when the largest mosque in Russia was inaugurated in the kremlin, and the holiest copy of Our Lady of Kazan was returned to the city. The date of "millennium", however, was fixed rather arbitrarily.
Wooden Kazan :
In the beginning of 1990s most of Central Kazan was covered by wooden building, usually consisting of two floors. There was a historical environment of Kazan citizens, but not the best place to live in. During the Republican programme "The liquidation of old apartments" most of them (unlike other Russian cities), especially in Central Kazan, where the land isn't cheap, were destroyed and their population was moved to new areas at the suburb of the city (Azino, Azino-2, Quartal 39). Nearly 100,000 citizens resettled by this programme.
Education :
The Kazan State University was founded in 1804 and has had several prominent students, including Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin.
Kazan State Technical University was established in 1932. Today the University is one of the leading institutions in the development of aircraft and rocket engineering, engine- and instrument-production, computer science and radio engineering.
There are nearly 20 institutes and universities in Kazan, but they are not so prominent and the most of them are commercial institutes.
Transport :
Kazan is served by the Kazan airport approximately 15 kilometers from the city centre.
Kazan is connected with Moscow, Ulyanovsk, Yoshkar-Ola and Yekaterinburg by railways and highways. There are highway connections to Samara, Orenburg, Ufa, Cheboksary, Naberezhnye Chelny (Yar Callý), Almetyevsk (Almat), Bugulma (Bogelma), and Chistopol (Cístay).
There are municipal tramways, trolleybuses and buses, and also a lot of private mini-buses, called marshrutka. There are four bridges connecting banks of Kazanka (Qazansu), and one bridge connecting Kazan with another bank of Volga. This article is licensed under the [GNU Free Documentation License]. It uses material from Wikipedia
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Kazan is the capital city of Tatarstan and one of Russia's largest cities. It is a major industrial, commercial and cultural center, and remains the most important center of Tatar culture.