Kandalaksha
city
Kandalaksha
Кандалакша
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List of cities in Russia |
Kandalakscha ( Russian Кандалакша ; Finnish Kantalahti; Karelian Kannanlakši) is a port city in Russia , in the Murmansk Oblast , with 35,654 inhabitants (as of October 14, 2010).
location
Kandalaksha is located on the Kola Peninsula , 277 km south of the regional capital Murmansk , at the northern end of Kandalaksha Bay , part of the White Sea . The nearest town is Polyarnye Sori, around 20 km away .
history
The native population of the area were Sami . Karelians and Pomors have also lived in the area for centuries .
The place Kandalaksha was already known in the 11th century. In 1526 the Russian Orthodox missionary Theodoret von Kola initiated the construction of the St. John the Baptist Church, in which the Sami from the area were baptized. In 1548 the clergyman founded a monastery on the same site , which existed until the 17th century.
Around 1590 the place was plundered and burned by the Swedes, in 1855 it was destroyed by the English during the Crimean War.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Kandalaksha was given a sea port and a railway connection. Industrialization began here: at the beginning of the 1930s, the first hydropower plant on the Kola Peninsula and a machine factory were built in Kandalaksha .
In 1938 Kandalaksha received city rights.
Population development
year | Residents |
---|---|
1939 | 22,172 |
1959 | 38,222 |
1970 | 42,656 |
1979 | 45,430 |
1989 | 54,080 |
2002 | 40,564 |
2010 | 35,654 |
Note: census data
Economy and Transport
Wood processing and mechanical engineering are important industries in the city, and there are aluminum and fish factories. Kandalaksha is on the M18 trunk road and has a seaport and six hydropower plants. It also has a train station on the Murman Railway from Saint Petersburg to Murmansk.
Attractions
In Kandalaksha there is a memorial to the victims of the Anglo-American intervention (1918–1920). In the nearby village of Kowda stands the Nikolai Church, built in 1705. In the vicinity of the city there is a large bird protection nature reserve, the Kandalakscha Sapovednik .
Personalities
Kandalakscha is an important winter sports location and, among other things, a venue for competitions in natural track tobogganing . For this reason, several well-known natural track tobogganers come from here, including:
- Alexander Jegorow (* 1985)
- Oksana Jelessina (* 1986)
- Ivan Lazarew (* 1983)
- Ekaterina Lavrentieva (* 1981)
- Roman Molwistow (* 1981)
- Pyotr Popov (* 1985)
- Pawel Porschnew (* 1983)
- Julija Wetlowa (* 1983)
Other sons and daughters of the city are:
- Vladimir Varennikow (* 1955), general and politician, son of Valentin Varennikow
Sports
The natural track tobogganing junior European championships in 1991 and 2005 took place in Kandalakscha.
Web links
- Kandalaksha on mojgorod.ru (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Itogi Vserossijskoj perepisi naselenija 2010 goda. Tom 1. Čislennostʹ i razmeščenie naselenija (Results of the All-Russian Census 2010. Volume 1. Number and distribution of the population). Tables 5 , pp. 12-209; 11 , pp. 312–979 (download from the website of the Federal Service for State Statistics of the Russian Federation)
- ↑ History of Kandalaksha , Kandalaksha information portal (in Russian)