Sverdlovsk Oblast

Sverdlovsk Oblast is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia located in the Ural Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Yekaterinburg, formerly known as Sverdlovsk. Its population is 4,268,998 (according to the 2021 Census).

Geography

thumb|left|Landmark indicating the border between Europe and Asia in Sverdlovsk Oblast.

Most of the oblast is spread over the eastern slopes of the Middle and North Urals and the Western Siberian Plain. Only in the southwest does the oblast stretch onto the western slopes of the Ural Mountains.

The highest mountains all rise in the North Urals, Konzhakovsky Kamen at and Denezhkin Kamen at . The Middle Urals is mostly hilly country with no discernible peaks; the mean elevation is closer to above sea level. Principal rivers include the Tavda, the Tura, the Chusovaya, and the Ufa, the latter two being tributaries of the Kama.

Sverdlovsk Oblast borders with, clockwise from the west, Perm Krai, the Komi Republic, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Tyumen Oblast, Kurgan Oblast, Chelyabinsk Oblast, and the Republic of Bashkortostan.

The area is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude.

Natural resources

Rich in natural resources, the oblast is especially famous for metals (iron, copper, gold, platinum), minerals (asbestos, gemstones, talcum), marble and coal. It is mostly here that the bulk of Russian industry was concentrated in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Climate

The area has continental climate patterns, with long cold winters (average temperatures reaching to on the Western Siberian Plain) and short warm summers. Only in the southeast of the oblast do temperatures reach in July.

History

Early history

thumb|left|upright=0.6|Wooden sculpture dated to 11,500 years ago may have stood more than 5 m high

The territory of the region has been inhabited since ancient times. Numerous sites of ancient people were discovered, dating from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age. The Upper Paleolithic includes the Garinsky site on the right bank of the Sosva river near the village of Gari, the site in the Shaitansky grotto, and the site in the Bezymyanny cave (X millennium BC). In 1890, the 11 thousand years old (Mesolithic) Shigir idol was discovered.

A settlement and a burial ground in the Kalmatsky Brod tract are located on the right bank of the Iset river and date back to the Sarmatian time (from the 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD). They belong to the Kalmak archaeological culture. In the Kalmatsky Brod burial ground, the skeletal skulls were strongly deformed by tight bandaging in early childhood, which indicates the penetration of steppe ethnic elements to the north.

thumb|Pictograms on the Neyva River

There are numerous pictograms on the Koptelovsky stone, on the Oblique stone, on the Two-eyed stone, Starichnaya, Serginskaya, the rock paintings of the Bronze Age on the Neyva River, Tagil River (villages Brekhovaya, Gaevaya, Komelskaya), rock carvings on Shaitan-Kamen on the right bank of the Rezh river tied to indigenous Ural population, possibly speakers of a Ugric language. The Gostkovskaya Pisanitsa refers to the Middle Ages. Local industry received another impetus during World War II, when important producing facilities were relocated here from the European part of Russia to safeguard them from the advancing Germans (for example, IMZ-Ural, Kamensk-Uralsky Metallurgical Works). In the postwar period much of the region was off-limits to foreigners. It was over Sverdlovsk that the American U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers was shot down on May 1, 1960, while on a reconnaissance mission.

In 1979, there was an anthrax outbreak caused by an accident in a facility to develop biological weapons.

Post-Soviet transition

In 1993, Governor Eduard Rossel responded to perceived economic inequality by attempting to create a "Ural Republic." Sverdlovsk led the "Urals Five" (Kurgan Oblast, Orenburg Oblast, Perm Krai, Chelyabinsk Oblast and Sverdlovsk) in a call for greater regional power. They argued that the oblasts deserved as much power as the ethnic homeland republics. The Urals Republic Constitution went into effect on October 27, 1993. Then Russian president Boris Yeltsin dissolved the Urals Republic and the Sverdlovsk Parliament 10 days later (on November 9).

Administrative divisions

{| border=1 align="right" cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;"

! bgcolor="#ccccff" style="padding:0 0 0 50px;" | Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia

| width="50px" | 50px|Flag of Sverdlovsk Oblast

| colspan=2 align="center"|Administrative center: Yekaterinburg

| colspan=2 align="center"|As of 2013:

| Number of districts (районы)|| 30

| Number of cities/towns (города)|| 47

| Number of urban-type settlements (посёлки городского типа)|| 27

| Number of selsovets (сельсоветы)|| 431

| colspan=2 align="center"|As of 2002:

| Number of rural localities (сельские населённые пункты)|| 1,796

| Number of uninhabited rural localities (сельские населённые пункты без населения)|| 128

thumb|Map of the Administrative Divisions of Sverdlovsk Oblast (Divide 4 regions)

Demographics

thumb|300px|Life expectancy at birth in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Population:

Vital statistics for 2024:

Births: 36,948 (8.8 per 1,000)
Deaths: 57,874 (13.7 per 1,000)

Total fertility rate (2024):

1.52 children per woman

Life expectancy (2021):

Total — 68.79 years (male — 63.72, female — 73.80)

Settlements

Ethnic groups

There were twenty-one recognized ethnic groups of more than two thousand persons each in the oblast. Residents identified themselves as belonging to a total of 148 different ethnic groups, including:

Religion

Christianity is the largest religion in Sverdlovsk Oblast. According to a 2012 survey Before the reform, members of the legislature served four-year terms with half of the Duma re-elected every two years. The Duma (28 members) was elected in party lists. The 21 members of the House of Representatives were elected in single-seat districts in a first-past-the-post system. The Legislative Assembly was the first bicameral legislature outside an autonomous republic, and the first regional legislature in Russia to elect members based on both party lists and single-seat districts. As of 2021, the Legislative Assembly is a unicameral legislature with a total of 50 seats, with half of the members elected by single-mandate constituencies and the other half elected in party lists for five-year terms.

Compliance with the Charter is enforced by the Charter Court. The existence of such regional courts in Russia, formed and functioning outside the federal judiciary, although challenged, has been upheld and persisted successfully in most constituent members of the Federation where they were established.

Until President Putin's reforms of 2004, the governor was elected by direct vote for terms of four years. Eduard Rossel has been the only elected governor (first elected governor for an oblast in Russia) since 1995 (appointed in 1991 and dismissed in 1993 by President Yeltsin), re-elected in 1999 and 2003.

Since March 2025, the oblast's acting governor is Denis Pasler.

Chairmen of the Oblast Duma

{| class="wikitable"

! Name

! Period

|Vyacheslav Surganov

|April 20, 1996 – April 2000

|Yevgeny Porunov

|April 26, 2000 – April 2002

|Nikolay Voronin

|April 24, 2002 – April 23, 2003

|Alexander Zaborov (acting)

|April 23, 2003 – July 3, 2003

|Nikolay Voronin

|July 3, 2003 – March 23, 2010

|Elena Chechunova

|March 23, 2010 – December 2011

Chairmen of the House of Representatives of the Legislative Assembly

{| class="wikitable"

! Name

! Period

|Aleksandr Shaposhnikov

|April 20, 1996 – May 1998

|Pyotr Golenishchev

|May 14, 1998 – April 2000

|Viktor Yakimov

|April 21, 2000 – April 2004

|Yury Osintsev

|April 6, 2004 – September 2007

|Lyudmila Babushkina

|October 2007 – December 2011

Elections

In the 1990s, the Oblast's population was distinguished by relatively high support for parties and candidates of the right and democratic persuasion. In the 1996 presidential election, Boris Yeltsin, a native of the region who lived in Sverdlovsk until the 1980s, won over 70% of the vote. In the regional elections in 2010 in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, United Russia received minimal support relative to other regions - only 39.79% of votes.

Economy and transportation

Even though it could do with modernizing, the region's industries are quite diverse. 12% of Russia's iron and steel industry is still concentrated in Sverdlovsk oblast. Iron and copper are mined and processed here, the logging industry and wood-processing are important, too.

The largest companies in the region include Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, UralVagonZavod, Enel Russia, Nizhniy Tagil Iron and Steel Works, Federal Freight.

Transport

Yekaterinburg is a prominent road, rail and air hub in the Ural region. As the economic slump subsided, several European airlines started or resumed flights to the city. These include Lufthansa, British Airways, CSA, Turkish Airlines, Austrian Airlines and Finnair. Malév Hungarian Airlines used to be among those carriers but they had to drop their flights to SVX (IATA airport code for Sverdlovsk) after a few months.

The Alapaevsk narrow-gauge railway serves the communities around Alapayevsk.

Терминалы A и B аэропорта Кольцово.jpg|Koltsovo International Airport

E-burg asv2019-05 img21 Sverdlovsk Railway building.jpg|Main office of Sverdlovsk Railway

Объездная.jpg|E22 bypass in the Yekaterinburg

Alapayevsk-narrow-gauge bridge.jpg|Alapaevsk narrow-gauge railway

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Sister relationships

Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu province, Vietnam
Harbin, China

Notable people

Vladik Dzhabarov, Russian cyclist
Andrey Fedyaev, Russian cosmonaut
Boris Yeltsin, 1st president of Russia

Notes

References

External links

Investment portal of Sverdlovsk Oblast
Official website of the Government of Sverdlovsk Oblast