Orenburg

This article is about city which formerly bore the name Chkalov, for famous Soviet pilot see Valery Chkalov.

Orenburg (Оренбу́рг) is a city on the Ural River and the administrative center of Orenburg Oblast in the Volga Federal District of Russia. It lies 1478 km south of Moscow, at 51°47′ N 55°06′ E The city had a population of approximately 548,800 as of the 2002 census.

History

Russians founded Orenburg as a fortress in 1735: the city originally stood at the confluence of the Ural River with the River Or (hence its name, meaning "town at the mouth of the River Or"). In 1740 the name was given to a settlement downstream along the Ural River, which remains to the same site since 1743. The name of the original settlement was changed to Orsk. The town functioned as an important military outpost and Cossack centre on the frontier with the nomad Kazakhs.

After the incorporation of Central Asia into the Russian Empire, Orenburg became a trading station and a prominent railway junction on route to the new Central Asian possessions and to Siberia.

In 1920 – 1925 Orenburg functioned as the capital of the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Russia (renamed Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925, which became the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936, now the country of Kazakhstan)

From 1938 to 1957, the city bore the name Chkalov (Чка́лов) (after Valery Chkalov).