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city in the south-west of Russia
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Kursk (Russian: Курск, IPA: [ˈkursk]) is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym rivers. It has a population of 440,052 (2021 census).
Kursk is the oldest city in the oblast; it is first mentioned in written sources in 1032. Kursk has served as the seat of regional administration since 1779. The area around Kursk was the site of a turning point in the Soviet–German struggle during World War II and the site of the single largest battle in history.
The name Kursk is derived from the Kur River, which itself comes from kurya, meaning 'channel'.
Kursk probably emerged as a fortified settlement of the Severians by the 9th century. It became part of Kievan Rus' in the late 10th century and was a city by the early 11th century, when it was one of the strongholds of the Kievan princes on the southeastern border of the realm. The first written record of Kursk dates back to 1032; it is mentioned in the Life of Theodosius of the Caves, as well as the Instruction of Vladimir Monomakh, dating to 1068. It is also mentioned as one of the Severian towns by Prince Igor in The Tale of Igor's Campaign:
Saddle, brother, your swift steeds. As to mine, they are ready, saddled ahead, near Kursk; as to my Kurskers, they are famous knights—swaddled under war-horns, nursed under helmets, fed from the point of the lance; to them the trails are familiar, to them the ravines are known, the bows they have are strung tight, the quivers, unclosed, the sabers, sharpened; themselves, like gray wolves, they lope in the field, seeking for themselves honor, and for their prince, glory.
It is also mentioned in the Primary Chronicle under the year 1095, when a princely throne was temporarily established in Kursk for Iziaslav, a son of Vladimir Monomakh. In the early 12th century, it became the seat of a separate appanage principality. Kursk was raided by the Turkic-speaking Polovtsians in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1239, the Mongols under Batu Khan devastated the city, but it was soon rebuilt. However, by the end of the 13th century, it had again been devastated by the Golden Horde, after which the city fell into disrepair.
From the 14th to the 16th centuries, Kursk is mentioned in various Russian, Lithuanian, and Crimean Tatar sources, although there is no evidence that it existed as an urban settlement during this period. For instance, Kursk is mentioned in the List of Russian Cities, Far and Near (before 1381), a list of cities belonging to Švitrigaila of Lithuania (1402/1432), and a treaty between Sigismund I and Sahib I Giray (1540), although in these sources, Kursk is mentioned only as a topographical marker and is not connected with any historical events.
The revival of Kursk is associated with the construction of a new fortress in 1596 during the reign of Feodor I of Russia. From the end of the 16th century, Kursk was the center of an uyezd. In 1604, it was captured by supporters of False Dmitry I, a pretender to the Russian throne. The people of Kursk took part in the Uprising of Bolotnikov of 1606–1607. At the same time, its inhabitants refused to recognize the authority of Dmitry Shuisky as tsar, instead recognizing False Dmitry II, another pretender.
During the Polish–Russian War of 1609–1618, it withstood sieges by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1612, 1616, and 1617, as well as a siege in 1634 during the Russo–Polish War of 1632–1634. It was also subject to raids by the Crimean Khanate in 1646 and 1647, as well as attacks by the Nogai Horde in 1615. Following the construction of the Belgorod Line, Kursk became one of the largest trade and craft centers in southern Russia.
Residents of Oryol and other southern Russian cities were resettled in Kursk (by 1678, 2,800 had been resettled). The city developed due to its advantageous geographical position on the shortest route from Moscow to the Crimea and from Moscow to Kiev. It was an important center of the corn trade with Ukraine and hosted an important fair, which took place annually under the walls of the monastery of Our Lady of Kursk. Thousands of residents died to an epidemic in 1690.
Kursk was successively part of the Kiev Governorate (1708–1727), Belgorod Governorate (1727–1779), and Kursk Viceroyalty (1779–1797). It received city status in 1779. It became the administrative center of Kursk Governorate in 1797. In the 18th century, it was the most important center of transit trade between Central and South Russia and Little Russia. By the mid-18th century, it was among the ten largest Russian cities.
After a fire in 1781 devastated Kursk, a new plan for the city was developed in which a market center would be placed in the central square, known as the Red Square. In 1768, the Voskresensko-Ilinskaya Church was built (Russian: Воскресенско-Ильинская церковь). In 1778, both the baroque Sergiev Cathedral and Trinity-Sergius Cathedral were completed. The city opened its first school for nobility in 1783. A men's gymnasium was opened in 1808 and a seminary in 1817. A women's gymnasium was opened in 1872.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Kursk played a dominant role in the food industry (Kvilitsu AK, one of the largest breweries in Russia, operated in Kursk) and in other industries; in the 1900s, the city had 4 sitoproboynye shops (of which the largest was the Tikhonov works, whose products were exported to Germany, Austria-Hungary, etc.). There were several engineering enterprises operating in Kursk (in 1914 there were seven, including a railroad one). The working conditions in the factories of Kursk were harsh, and workers' strikes were frequent (for instance, the workers at the sugar mill went on strike in 1901–1903). The Kursk workers also participated in the general political strike during the 1905 Russian Revolution.
After the October Revolution, Soviet power was established in Kursk on 26 November [O.S. 9 December] 1917. On 28 November 1918, the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine was established in Kursk. On 20 September 1919, during the Russian Civil War, the city was occupied by the Armed Forces of South Russia. On the night of 17–18 November, it was retaken by the Red Army. In 1934, it became the center of Kursk Oblast within the Russian SFSR.
The Soviet government valued Kursk for its rich deposits of iron ore and developed it into one of the major railroad hubs in the Russian southwest. In 1932, Yamskaya Sloboda was incorporated into the city. In 1935, Kursk got its first tram system. Sometime in the 1930s, the area of the city of Kursk was divided into Leninsky District (the left bank of the Kura River), Dzerzhinsky District (the right bank of the Kura River) and Kirov District (Yamskaya Sloboda). In 1937, Stalinsky District was formed at the southern outskirts of the city. During the Great Terror, some two thousand were shot and buried in the Solyanka park in Kursk.
During World War II, Kursk was occupied by Germany between 4 November 1941 and 8 February 1943. The Stalag 384 prisoner-of-war camp was based in the city from 1942 before its relocation to Konotop in 1943. The occupiers also operated a Jewish forced labour battalion in the city. In July 1943, the Germans launched Operation Citadel in an attempt to recapture Kursk. During the resulting Battle of Kursk, the village of Prokhorovka near Kursk became the center of a major armoured engagement – the Battle of Prokhorovka – between Soviet and German forces: one of the largest tank battles in history. Operation Citadel was the last major German offensive against the Soviet Union. Kursk was subjected to heavy German air raids.
Rebuilding efforts in the city began in February 1944. In 1945, it was included in the list of 15 cities subject to priority restoration by decree of the Council of People's Commissars. The cultural life recovered as well: on 19 February, a cinema was reopened, and on 27 February a drama theatre. By 1950, the urban economy had been completely restored. In 1953, the tram system began operating again. On 17 August 1956, Stalinsky District was renamed Promishlenost District, and Dzerzhinsky District was abolished and its territory divided between Promishlenost and Leninsky Districts.
In 1992, the remains of those executed during the Great Terror were reburied in a common grave with a memorial in Solyanka Park.
In 2009, for the first time in 90 years at the site of the Theotokos of Kursk, the most revered icon in the Russian Orthodox Church, received the name Hodigitria Russian diaspora.
Until 2010, Kursk had the status of historical settlement, but the Russian Ministry of Culture deprived the city of this status on 29 July 2010 in resolution No. 418/339.
On 29 October 2011, for the first time in 30 years, the city opened a new firehouse for the protection of the Central District, with modern equipment. In 2012, Kursk celebrated its 980th anniversary.
Kursk was originally built as a fortress city on a hill dominating the plain. The settlement was surrounded on three sides by the Kur River (Amur basin) to the west and the Tuskar river to the south and east. Forest thickets approached it from the north. By 1603, Kursk had become the military, administrative, and economic centre of a vast territory in the south of the country. The new fortress was built under the leadership of governors Ivan Polev and Nelyub Ogaryov. The Kursk fortress was given a particularly important role, since in these places the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, who made regular slave raids on Russia, traditionally crossed the Seym river, and their main road, the Muravsky Trail, passed east of the city. In this regard, Kursk, despite not being part of the Belgorod Protection Line, became one of the most important fortresses in the southern region. In 1616, there were 1600 people in the Kursk garrison.
By 1782, the buildings of Kursk were located on the heights of two hills and in the valley of the Kur River. There were meadows and pastures on the banks of the river. The city streets that laid on the slopes of the hills had steep ascents and descents in many places, and travel in the city was made uphill almost everywhere. The presence of six ravines that cut through the hill of the Nagornaya part significantly hampered the development of Kursk. Heavy rains sometimes eroded the soil of the hillsides and formed ditches and gullies. The plan of Kursk in 1782 was to be implemented in the conditions of the existing buildings of the city. In the 1880s, Kursk was already a significant settlement. It housed 14 churches, not including the churches of the Znamensky Monastery. Most of them were of stone and built around the time period of 1730 to 1786. By 1782, Kursk was composed almost entirely of wooden houses. Fences and services went out in the direction of the streets, and houses were hidden in the depths of the courtyards. Many streets and lanes were no wider than 2.5 to 3 metres. The only stone mansion that has survived in present time after redevelopment is located at the corner of Pionerov (former Troitskaya) and Gaidar (former Zolotarevskaya) streets.
There were powerful fortifications and natural obstacles in the center of Kursk. Settlements were located around the city. Cossack and Pushkarnaya were on the slopes of the hills and in the valley of the Kur River, Yamskaya – away from the city, on the plain. At that time, Yamskaya was a small village concentrated around the Vvedenskaya church. The settlements Streletskaya and Kozhevenny were located in the lowlands and were often flooded by the Tuskar river.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Kursk”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.