Kemerovo Oblast.

History

The region's oldest city, Novokuznetsk, grew out of the Kuznetsk fort, which Cossacks built on the Tom River in 1618. Coal was found near the future Kemerovo in 1721, though the first mines opened only in 1907. In 1921 the Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony settled here: some 650 workers from twenty countries built what became the coke and chemical plant. During the Second World War, steel from Novokuznetsk went into tens of thousands of tanks and aircraft, and the oblast itself was created on 26 January 1943.

Culture & traditions

The region's indigenous people are the Shors, Turkic-speaking inhabitants of Mountain Shoria who traditionally hunted, fished, gathered pine nuts and could smelt iron from ore. Russians therefore called them the 'blacksmith Tatars', which probably gave Kuznetsk ('smithy') its name. Fyodor Dostoevsky married his first wife in Novokuznetsk in 1857, an event remembered in a literary museum. Kuzbass is one of Russia's most urbanised regions, with over 70 per cent of people living in its nine main cities.

Nature

To the east runs the Kuznetsk Alatau, a range about 300 kilometres long whose highest summit, Staraya Krepost, reaches 2,217 metres. Fir forest covers the lower slopes, Siberian pine grows higher up, and the tops are boulder fields, subalpine meadows and tundra; part of the range is protected by the Kuznetsk Alatau Nature Reserve. In the foothills of the Kondoma basin grow lime-tree woodlands that are rare for Siberia. In the south lies Mountain Shoria, with the valleys of the Kondoma and Mras-Su, where snow cover in the mountains can reach four metres.

Sport

Kemerovo is a bandy city, home to the club Kuzbass, and it hosted the Bandy World Championship in 2007. A motorcycle speedway team, also called Kuzbass, raced from 1968 to 1992. Ice hockey players Sergei Bobrovsky and Kirill Kaprizov come from Novokuznetsk. Since the early 2000s Sheregesh in Mountain Shoria has grown into a ski resort.

Food & drink

The gifts of the taiga — pine nuts, game and river fish — fed the Shors for centuries and remain part of the local table. Otherwise the cooking is broadly Siberian, with pelmeni, which Siberians traditionally froze outdoors and took into the taiga.

Practical information

Kemerovo has an international airport named after cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, and Novokuznetsk has Spichenkovo Airport. Kemerovo is linked to the Trans-Siberian by a branch line, and Novokuznetsk is a major rail junction. Local time is four hours ahead of Moscow (UTC+7). The climate is continental, averaging −17 to −20 °C in January and around +17 to +18 °C in July; winter is Sheregesh season, and summer is the time for hiking in the Kuznetsk Alatau.

What to see

• Sheregesh — Mountain Shoria's ski resort, with deep snow and the spring Grelka Fest
• Novokuznetsk — a city on the site of the 1618 fort, with a Dostoevsky museum
• Kemerovo — Kuzbass's capital, once home to an international industrial colony
• Kuznetsk Alatau — mountain taiga, a nature reserve and summits above 2,000 metres
• Mountain Shoria — homeland of the Shors, with the Kondoma and Mras-Su valleys

Cities on the map

• Kemerovo 544,600
• Novokuznetsk 528,747