party slogans, such as that in this photo - 'Communism grows ever stronger upon the earth', were very characteristic of the urban development communism brought to the city
During the Blockade of Leningrad a great number of children, who were brought over the frozen Lake Ladoga(the so-called Road of life) were evacuated to a safer new life in Yaroslavl. Yaroslavl was at the time also home to a camp for military prisoners of war 'Camp No. 276' for German soldiers imprisoned for taking part in hostilities against the Soviet Union.
In the second half of the century the industrialization and development of the city took the foremost position in Yaroslavl's history. In 1961, an oil refinery was opened and from the 1960s a large number of residential districts began to spring up all over the city, including, for the first time in the city's history, on the left bank of the Volga, where development had traditionally not taken place. This left-bank development was further encouraged by the construction, in 1965, of a new Volga crossing for automobiles. In 1968 the city's population finally rose, for the first time, to over half a million inhabitants; it has been growing, almost constantly, ever since.
A Russian postage stamp celebrating the millennium of Yaroslavl
In July 2005 Yaroslavl's historic city center was inscribed onto the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The support for this was in line with the list's second (a unique example of the combining of cultural and architectural styles between Western Europe and the Russian Empire) and fourth (a unique example of urban development influenced by the Municipal Planning Reform in Russia of Empress Catherine the Great 1763-1830). In the same year the preparations for the celebration of the millennium of Yaroslavl's foundation began; this was finally celebrated on the second weekend in September 2010. Under the conditions of the preparations for the city's 1000th year anniversary the municipal
