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History of Petrozavodsk


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On September 11, 1703, Prince Menshikov founded the settlement of Petrovskaya Sloboda ("Petrine Sloboda"). He did so at the behest of Tsar Peter the Great, who needed a new iron foundry to manufacture cannons and anchors for the Baltic Fleet at the time of the Great Northern War (1700�1721). At first the foundry used the name Shuysky zavod (literally, "factory at the Shuya River"), but a decade later it became Petrovsky zavod ("Petrine factory"), after the name of the reigning monarch. From this form the present name of the city derives.

By 1717, Petrovskaya Sloboda had grown into the largest settlement in Karelia, with about 3,500 inhabitants, a timber fort, a covered market, and miniature palaces of the Tsar and Menshikov. The town's best-known landmark became the wooden church of Saints Peter and Paul, rebuilt in 1772 and renovated in 1789. The church retained its original iconostasis until this relic of Peter's reign was destroyed by fire on October 30, 1924.

After Peter's death, Petrovskaya Sloboda became depopulated and the factory declined. It closed down in 1734, although foreign industrialists maintained copper factories in the vicinity.

The industry revived in 1773 when Catherine the Great established a new iron foundry upstream the Lososinka River. Designed to provide cannons for the ongoing Russo-Turkish Wars, the foundry was named Alexandrovsky, after Alexander Nevsky, who was considered a patron saint of the region. The factory was modernized and expanded under supervision of  Charles Gascoigne in 1787�96. Local pundits claim that the first railway in the world was inaugurated for industrial uses of the Alexandrovsky foundry in 1788.



A church in Petrozavodsk, as photographed ca. 1912 by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

Round Square in central Petrozavodsk

During Catherine's municipal reform of 1777, Petrovskaya Sloboda was incorporated as a town, whereupon its name was changed to Petrozavodsk. A new
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