Saratov (English) Саратов (Russian)
-  City  -
Location of Saratov Oblast in Russia
Saratov
Coordinates: 51°32′N 46°01′E / 51.533°N 46.017°E / 51.533; 46.017Coordinates: 51°32′N 46°01′E / 51.533°N 46.017°E / 51.533; 46.017
Coat of arms	Flag
Administrative status
Country	Russia
Federal subject	Saratov Oblast
Administrative center of	Saratov Oblast
Municipal status
Urban okrug	Saratov Urban Okrug
Mayor	Vyacheslav Somov
Representative body	City Duma
Statistics
Area	393 km2 (152 sq mi)
Population (2010 Census, preliminary)	837,800 inhabitants
- Rank in 2010	16th
Population (2002 Census)	873,055 inhabitants
- Rank in 2002	15th
Density	2,132 /km2 (5,520 /sq mi)
Time zone	MSD (UTC+04:00)
Founded	1590
Postal code(s)	410000
Dialing code(s)	+7 +7 8452
Official website

Saratov (Russian: Сара́тов) is a major city in southern Russia. It is the administrative center of Saratov Oblast and a major port on the Volga River. Population: 837,800 (2010 Census preliminary results); 873,055 (2002 Census); 904,643 (1989 Census). In addition to ethnic Russians, the city also has many Tatar, Ukrainian, Jewish, and German residents.

History

Saratov is in a location which has long been inhabited by successive cultures. Historians generally consider Ukek, a medieval outpost of the Golden Horde, as the likely ancestor to today's Saratov. According to legend, Gelonus, a Scythian city that was the northernmost colony of the Greeks, was thought to have been sited near the present-day city. Gelonus is mentioned in the Sixth Book of the Histories of Herodotus, according to which the city was burnt to the ground by the Persian Emperor Darius in 512 B.C.

The modern city traces its history to the reign of Tsar Feodor Ivanovich, who constructed several settlements along the Volga River in order to secure the southeastern boundary of his state. During the summer of 1586, the fortress of Samara was founded, followed by Tsaritsyn in 1589 and finally Saratov, located midway between Samara and Tsaritsyn, in 1590. Saratov was built at the insistence of count Grigory Zasekin. All three forts were located in a region where the Volga and the Don flow nearest one another, which allowed the Duchy of Moscovy to secure both rivers and to ensure control over the recently annexed khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in the years following the Livonian War.

The future town's buildings were first constructed in the upper reaches of the Volga, a full year prior to the in situ foundation of Saratov. In the spring of 1590, workers disassembled the constructions, marked each log, and delivered the "town" to its destination via the river. This method allowed the buildings to be rapidly erected in just a few weeks.

The name Saratov may derive from the Turkic words Saryk Atov, which mean ‘hawks' island’. Another version of the name origin is Sary Tau (Сары Тау), meaning "yellow mountain" in the Tatar language. There are sandy hills around the city.

By the 1800s, Saratov had grown to be an important shipping port on the Volga. The Ryazan-Ural Railroad reached Saratov in 1870. In 1896 (26 years later), the line crossed the Volga and continued its eastward expansion. A unique train-ferry, owned by the Ryazan-Ural railroad, provided the connection across the river between the two parts of the railroad for 39 years, before the construction of a railway bridge in 1935.

During the World War II, Saratov was a station on the North-South Volzhskaya Rokada, a specially designated military railroad providing troops, ammunition and supplies to Stalingrad.

Until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Saratov was designated a "closed city", that is, strictly off limits to all foreigners due to its military importance. This was due to the presence of a vital military aircraft manufacturing facility in the city.

The German community

Saratov is an important city in the history of the Volga Germans. Until 1941, the town of Pokrovsk, today Engels, located just across the Volga from Saratov, served as the capital of the Volga German Republic. The ethnic German population of the region numbered 800,000 in the early 20th century, with some people whose families had been there for generations. The Russian czars had invited German immigration in the 18th and 19th centuries to encourage agricultural development in the area.

Saratov Bridge across the Volga, formerly the longest in the Soviet Union

The Volga German community came to include industrialists, scientists, musicians and architects, including those who built Saratov's universities and conservatories. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, the government forcibly expelled more than half of all Volga Germans to Uzbekistan, Siberia and Kazakhstan; few ever returned to the Volga region, even after rehabilitation. Others were expelled to western Europe after the end of the war.

Beginning in the 1980s, a large portion of the surviving members of the ethnic Germans emigrated from the Soviet Union to Germany. Reminders of the once prominent place of Germans in the city remain, with the Roman Catholic St. Klementy Cathedral (seat of the historic Diocese of Tiraspol) on Nemetskaya Street the most notable. The building was converted into the children's cinema "Pioneer" during the Soviet period.

Modern Saratov

The Saratov region is highly industrialized, due in part to the rich in natural and industrial resources of the area. The region is also one of the more important and largest cultural and scientific centres in Russia. Saratov possesses six institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 21 research institutes, 19 project institutes, as well as the Saratov State University, the Saratov State Socio-Economic University, the Saratov State Technical University, and many scientific and technological laboratories attached to some of the city's large industrial enterprises.

Saratov is served by Saratov Tsentralny Airport, and also hosts the general aviation airfield Saratov West. The aerospace manufacturing industry is served by the Saratov South airport. Nearby Engels Air Force Base is the main base for Russian strategic Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers .

Places of interest, art, and culture

One of the city's most prominent landmarks is the 19th century neo-Gothic Conservatory. When it was built in 1912, the Conservatory was Russia's third such institution (after Moscow and St. Petersburg). At the time, Saratov, with a population of 240,000, was the third-largest city in Russia.

The Saratov Dramatic Theater

The Saratov Dramatic Theater was founded in 1802, making it one of Russia's oldest. It is ranked as one of Russia's National Theaters. In Soviet times, the theater was renamed in honor of Karl Marx, but now carries the name of Ivan Slonov (1882–1945), an actor, theatrical director and educator, born in the city. The full name in Russian is The I. A. Slonov Saratov State Academic Theater (Саратовский государственный академический театр драмы имени И. А. Слонова).

The Radischev Art Museum

Saratov is noted for several art museums, including the Radischev Art Museum, named for Alexander Radishchev. It contains more than 20,000 exhibits, including ancient Russian icons, as well as works by some of the finest Russian painters (e.g. Aleksandra Ekster, Pavel Kuznetsov, Aristarkh Lentulov, Robert Falk, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Martiros Saryan, Fyodor Rokotov).

Sports

PFC Sokol is based in the city and plays in the Russian Second Division. Saratov also fields a basketball team, Avtodor, and an ice hockey team Kristall Saratov, who play in the Russian Major League. The Saratov bandy club Universal plays in the 2nd highest division.

Twin cities

• Bratislava, Slovakia
• Dallas, Texas, United States
• Dobrich, Bulgaria
• Taiyuan, Shanxi, China
• Shaoyang, Hunan, China
• Łódź, Poland
• Marseille, France
• Tours, France
• Bristol, England, United Kingdom; Active in early 1950s,
• Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States

Notable people

Church in downtown Saratov

The Saratov region was the birthplace or at some point hometown of:

• Philanthropist Alexander Dubitsky
• Politician Pyotr Stolypin
• Geneticist and Biologist Nikolai Vavilov died of starvation under Stalin in a Saratov jail about 1943
• painter Mikhail Vrubel
• Aircraft designer Oleg Antonov
• Writer Mikhail Bulgakov
• Sisters of Vladimir Lenin
• Philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky
• Architect Fyodor Shekhtel
• Chemist Nikolai Zinin
• Geometrician Jean-Victor Poncelet
• Writer Konstantin Fedin
• Painter Viktor Borisov-Musatov
• poet Gavrila Derzhavin
• home of chess player Natalia Pogonina
• composers Alfred Schnittke and Leonid Sobinov
• writer Aleksandr Radishchev
• writer Lev Kassil
• painter Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
• painter Pavel Kuznetsov
• chemist Nikolay Semyonov (Nobel Prize Winner)
• painter and creator of Radishchevskiy Museum in Saratov Aleksey Bogolyubov
• actor Oleg Tabakov
• actor Oleg Yankovskiy
• actor Boris Andreyev
• actor Alexander Mikhailov
• actor, director Boris Babochkin
• Russian folk singer Lidiya Ruslanova
• Pop Singer with Serebro - Anastasia Karpova
• Pop singer Valeriya
• Pop band Kombinaciya
• cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin the first man in space trained in Saratov and landed nearby.
• hockey player Andrei Lulin
• poet Rachel Bluwstein
• billionaire businessman Roman Abramovich
• writer Konstantin Paustovsky
• politician and writer Eduard Limonov
• Herwarth Walden, German expressionist artist, publicist and gallerist, fled 1933 from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union and died in 1941 as a political prisoner in Saratov.
• Gottlieb Nathaniel Bonwetsch, German Protestant theologian, born on Norka near Saratov
• ice hockey player Sweeney Schriner, member of the Hockey Hall of Fame

Cities and towns in Saratov Oblast Administrative center: Saratov Arkadak · Atkarsk · Balakovo · Balashov · Engels · Kalininsk · Khvalynsk · Krasnoarmeysk · Krasny Kut · Marks · Novouzensk · Petrovsk · Pugachyov · Rtishchevo · Shikhany · Volsk · Yershov