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city in eastern Russia
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Tyumen is the administrative center and largest city of Tyumen Oblast, Russia. It is situated just east of the Ural Mountains, along the Tura River in North Asia. Fueled by the Russian oil and gas industry, Tyumen has experienced rapid population growth in recent years, rising to a population of 847,488 at the 2021 Census. Tyumen is among the largest cities of the Ural region and the Ural Federal District. Tyumen is often regarded as the first Siberian city, from the western direction.
Tyumen was the first Russian settlement in Siberia. Founded in 1586 to support Russia's eastward expansion, the city has remained one of the most important industrial and economic centers east of the Ural Mountains. Located at the junction of several important trade routes and with easy access to navigable waterways, Tyumen rapidly developed from a small military settlement to a large commercial and industrial city. The central part of Old Tyumen retains many historic buildings from throughout the city's history.
Tyumen is an important business center. It is the transport hub and industrial center of Tyumen Oblast – an oil-rich region bordering Kazakhstan – as well as the home of many companies active in Russia's oil and gas industry.
In Turkic and Mongolic languages, "Tümen/Түмэн" (in Siberian Tatar Tömän/Төмән) means a myriad, or ten thousand. Etymologically connected to the Tumen River that delineates sections of the borders between North Korea, Russia, and China.
The Cossack ataman Yermak Timofeyevich conquered the Tyumen area, originally part of the Siberia Khanate, for the Tsardom of Russia in 1585. The fighting completely destroyed both capitals of the Siberia Khanate, Sibir/Qashliq and Tyumen/Chimgi-Tura (the capital in the 15th century). Sibir was never rebuilt - though it gave its name to all concurrent and future lands in North Asia annexed by Russia - but Tyumen was later re-founded. On July 29, 1586, Tsar Feodor I ordered two regional commanders, Vasily Borisov-Sukin and Ivan Myasnoy, to construct a fortress on the site of the former Siberian Tatar town of Chingi-Tura ("city of Chingis"), also known as Tyumen, from the Turkic and Mongol word for "ten thousand" – tumen.
Tyumen stood on the "Tyumen Portage", part of the historical trade-route between Central Asia and the Volga region. Various South Siberian nomads had continuously contested control of the portage in the preceding centuries, and Siberian Tatar and Kalmyk raiders often attacked early Russian settlers. The military situation meant that streltsy and Cossack garrisons stationed in the town predominated in the population of Tyumen until the mid-17th century. As the area became less restive, the town began to take on a less military character.
By the beginning of the 18th century, Tyumen had developed into an important center of trade between Siberia and China to the east and Central Russia to the west. A influx of prisoners-of-war from the Swedish army which surrendered after the Battle of Poltava in 1709 arrived in Tyumen - some of them settled permanently. Tyumen became an important industrial center, known for leatherworkers, blacksmiths, and other craftsmen. In 1763, 7,000 people were recorded as living in the town.
In the 19th century, the town's development continued. In 1836, the first steam boat in Siberia was built in Tyumen. In 1862 a telegraph service reached the town, and in 1864 the first water mains were laid. Further prosperity came to Tyumen after the construction, in 1885, of the Trans-Siberian Railway. For some years, Tyumen served as the Russian Empire's easternmost railhead and as the site of transhipment of cargoes between the railway and the cargo boats plying the Tura, Tobol, Irtysh, and Ob Rivers.
By the end of the 19th century, Tyumen's population exceeded 30,000, surpassing that of its northern rival Tobolsk, and beginning a process whereby Tyumen gradually eclipsed the former regional capital. The rise of Tyumen culminated on August 14, 1944 when the city finally became the administrative center of the extensive Tyumen Oblast.
Early in the Russian Civil War in 1917, forces loyal to Admiral Alexander Kolchak and his Siberian White Army controlled Tyumen. Soviet insurrectionists took control on January 5, 1918; the White Army took over on 20 July 1918; and Red Army troops drove out Kolchak's forces on 8 August 1919.
During the 1930s, Tyumen became a major industrial center of the Soviet Union. By the onset of World War II, the city had several well-established industries, including shipbuilding, furniture manufacture, and the manufacture of fur- and leather-goods. World War II saw rapid growth and development in the city. In the winter of 1941, twenty-two major industrial enterprises evacuated to Tyumen from the European part of the Soviet Union. These enterprises went into operation the following spring. Additionally, war-time Tyumen became a "hospital city", where thousands of wounded soldiers were treated. When it seemed that Moscow might fall to German forces during Operation Barbarossa, in October 1941 Vladimir Lenin's body was secretly moved from his mausoleum in Moscow to a hidden tomb in what is now the Tyumen State Agriculture Academy. Between 1941 and 1945, more than 20,000 Tyumen natives fought at the front, and some 6,000 were killed.
Rich oil- and gas-fields were discovered in the Tyumen Oblast in the 1960s. While most of these lay hundreds of kilometers away, near the towns of Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk, Tyumen was the nearest railway junction and so the city became their supply base while the railway was extended northwards. As the result of this economic and population boom, with tens of thousands of skilled workers arriving from across the Soviet Union between 1963 and 1985, the rapid growth of the city also brought a host of problems. Its social infrastructure was limited and the lack of city-planning has resulted in uneven development, with which Tyumen has continued to struggle.
Tyumen is located in Western Siberia, 1,700 km (1,100 mi) east of Moscow, 300 km (190 mi) east of Yekaterinburg, and 1,100 km (680 mi) west of Siberia's largest city, Novosibirsk. The city covers an area of 235 square kilometers (91 sq mi). Its primary geographical feature is the Tura River, which crosses the city from northwest to southeast. The river is navigable downstream of the city. The left bank of the Tura is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills. The Tura is a shallow river with extensive marshlands.
The river floods during the snow melting season in the spring. The spring flood usually peaks in the second half of May, when the river becomes 8–10 times wider than during the late-summer low water season. The city is protected from flooding by a dike which can withstand floods up to 8 meters (26 ft) high. The highest ever flood water level in Tyumen was 9.15 meters (30.0 ft), recorded in 1979. More recently, in 2007, a water level of 7.76 was recorded. In spring 2005, a flood higher than the critical 8 meters (26 ft) mark was expected, but did not appear.
Tyumen has a strongly humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb) with warm, somewhat humid summers and long, very cold (though average by Siberian standards) winters. The weather in the region is very changeable, and the temperature in town is always higher than in the surrounding area by a few degrees. The town area also attracts more precipitation. The average temperature in January is −16.7 °C (1.9 °F), with a record low of −50 °C (−58 °F) measured in February 1951. The average temperature in July is +18.6 °C (65.5 °F), with a record high of +38 °C (100 °F).
The average annual precipitation is 457 millimeters (18.0 in). The wettest year on record was 1943, with 581 millimeters (22.9 in), and the driest was 1917, with only 231 millimeters (9.1 in).
Historically, Tyumen occupied a small area on the high bank of the Tura River around the foundation site of the city. The city consisted of one and two-storey wooden buildings, surrounded by a number of villages. With time, the territory of the city was developed and extended by including the surrounding villages.
When viewed from above, present-day Tyumen appears to be a collection of low-rise towns with occasional clusters of tall buildings. Two areas of the city, Yamskaya Sloboda and Republic Street are noted for their historic character. These areas are dominated by old brick and wooden merchant houses and buildings, with the occasional intrusion of mid-century Soviet low-rise buildings.
Bukharskaya Sloboda is a historic residential area on the low bank of the Tura river. This area is mostly made up of very old one and two-storey wooden buildings. The area is part of the Historical Centre on the city and has a mostly Muslim population. Low bank Dormitories is a cluster of standard 9-storey buildings was built on reclaimed land east of Bukharskaya Sloboda – Zareka and Vatutina.
The area to the east of the historical town centre built between 1948 and 1978 and is mostly 4 and 5-storey buildings. Earlier buildings in this area have individual designs, but the later buildings have a rectangular style. This area contains most of the political and business activities of the town.
The Old Dormitories area features standard five-storey blocks of flats constructed in the 1960s and 1970s at the west and east extremities of the city. However, today this area is actually in the town centre. While there are almost no variety in the area's architecture, this area has the most greenery in the city and the best social infrastructure.
The New Dormitories area features clusters of standard tall buildings constructed after 1980 at the south and south-east edges of Tyumen. This area is considered to be the worst place to live in the city. The area is remote, badly planned, and has very poor social infrastructure.
In 2022, the Ministry of Construction published an updated rating of the new urban digitalization index. Tyumen entered the top three cities with a population of 250 thousand to a million people.
Tyumen is not characterized by any particular architectural style. The town was built without planning for decades and because of that its architecture is an eclectic mix of buildings of different styles and eras.
Tyumen's nickname is the Capital of Villages because most of its territory is built up by lumber houses. Many of the wooden buildings located in the historical part of the city are considered culturally valuable.
Tyumen is the administrative center of the oblast and, within the framework of administrative divisions, it also serves as the administrative center of Tyumensky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as the City of Tyumen—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the City of Tyumen is incorporated as Tyumen Urban Okrug.
Tyumen is divided into four administrative okrugs: Kalininsky, Leninsky, Tsentralny, and Vostochny.
The legislative authority of Tyumen is the City Duma. In addition to legislative activities, the City Duma appoints the Head of the Tyumen City Administration, who is the chief executive officer of the city.
Since Tyumen is the administrative center of the oblast, all the governing bodies of the oblast are located in the city. They include the elected Legislative Assembly (Duma) of Tyumen Oblast, which also confirms the appointment of the Governor of Tyumen Oblast, who is nominated by the President of Russia.
Tyumen's population grew steadily from the 16th century through the 19th century. However, when the Trans-Siberian Railway arrived at the end of the 19th century, the town's rate of population growth was greatly boosted. Tyumen rapidly became the largest town in the region, with about 30,000 inhabitants by the beginning of the 20th century. Tyumen again experienced rapid population growth with the coming of World War II. The evacuation of workers from factories in central Russia in 1941 more than doubled Tyumen's population to 150,000.
In the 1960s, the discovery of the rich oil and gas fields in Western Siberia caused the city's population, which had not been forecast to exceed 250,000 inhabitants that decade, to swell to almost half a million. After the growth of the 1960s, a period of population stability lasted until 1988, when economic depression hit the Soviet Union. The city's population in 1989 was 476,869, according to the census of that year. However, within five or six years Tyumen was again a major economic center with a rising population. By 2002, Tyumen's population had risen to 510,719. Further population growth (mainly due to migration and the incorporation of surrounding settlements) meant that by 2021 Tyumen's population increased to 847,488 inhabitants.
While the population of Tyumen includes people from over a hundred different ethnicities, most belong to one of the following ethnicities:
Text from the Wikipedia article “Tyumen”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.