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The Urals is a wide-known mountain name.
So they are created. So their towns and people inhabiting
them live. Various lives, deeds and fates comprise "the
everlasting Urals, inhabited by people". Perm was meant
to develop mining and metallurgical industries in Russia.
The town was situated on the Kama banks and through the Kama
ports ships loaded with iron, salt and furs went to Moscow
and Saint Petersburg, down the Kama and Volga. From the east
town gate Siberian highway led to Asia and Perm was called
"the gates of Siberia".
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Karl F. Moderakh (1748 - 1819).
Perm Governor between 1796 and 1811, the author of the
construction plan of Perm
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Enterprise was the most important thing
for all the population of the eighteenth-century town: its
founders, engineers and manufacturers, craftsmen and tradesmen,
builders, officers, doctors, teachers and priests, barge haulers,
sailors and railway-men, members of elective district councils
called Zemstvo, educators, scientists and scholars, masters,
inventors and designers.
On behalf of enterprise the first Vicegerent of Perm and Tobolsk,
E. P. Kashkin ordered to built state buildings, the Governor's
house and the building of the Duma, a town council. On behalf
of enterprise the first shops and stores were built on the
Kama bank. The Governor K. F. Moderakh developed the construction
plan of Perm: some streets run along the Kama, others took
start from the Kama. A simple and clear plan. He did recommend
the Duma to build roads through the town common green as soon
as possible...
It was growing, Perm of works, Perm of trades. The shopping
arcade of Gostiny Dvor was built. A hospital at the works,
an elementary school for common people, a classical school,
some other schools... Educators started their restless and
difficult work. The face of the town was taking shape. A worker's
face. For three centuries the town has been built. Time imprinted
in its buildings. Its builders' work belongs to all of us.
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Eugene P. Kashkin (1738 - 1796).
He was appointed General-Governor of Perm and Tobolsk
in 1780
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Shy streams of the Yegoshikha, Iva, Mulyanka,
Danilikha serve rather works, plants and factories than people.
The Kama itself is to live a working life. Who knows how many
loaded barges, ships, rafts, tugboats and steamers travelled
up and down it?! The embankment has changed - trains run along
the Ural railway and the railway bridge crossed the Kama.
The mankind have gone a long way towards increasing their
industrial power. Perm becomes a big industrial centre. Metallurgical,
engineering, oil-refining and woodusing industries as well
as big defence-oriented works are the prominent features of
our city.
The mankind have gone a long way towards developing sciences
and humanities. Perm becomes a big educational, scientific
and researching centre.
The mankind have been establishing trade and industrial relations.
Perm looks for and finds business contacts with the world
and undertakes new projects.
"Closed" just several years ago, nowadays Perm is
ready for co-operation in any field and gets partners in Austria,
Germany, the UK, India, China, Sweden, the countries of Eastern
Europe, the USA. And again, all this has been done on behalf
of enterprise.
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Old works producing heavy guns
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There is no monument to an unknown peasant
in Russia. What a shame! It was he, an unknown peasant, a
jack of all trades, who settled in the wild Ural forests by
the deserted Ural rivers, put up logged huts, shaped the world
of his own. He always sought but was hardly meant for freedom:
either the lands with all the inhabitants, happened to be
granted to the Stroganoffs in perpetuity, or the whole region
was declared the Tsar's realty. A peasant was turned into
a serf craftsman and labour. He mined copper ore, built weirs
and dams, dug ponds... An ore expert, foundryman, blast-furnace
worker... but still a jack of all trades, a craftsman.
Perm environs abounded in them, well known or unknown craftsmen.
We have no idea of how Ivan Lopatin got skilled in founding
but he did tap the first hearth at the Motovilikha copper
foundry. Who knows how many craftsmen and masters worked at
the steel foundry producing heavy guns? How many - from the
beginning of Motovilikha till nowadays? Many a time the Fire
command was given at the testing grounds of the oldest plant
in Perm. Over the years fireburned in the hearths and furnaces
of Motovilikha. In 1876 white-hot steel spouted out of the
first open-hearth furnace. In 1886 the first electric lights
were turned on. In 1888 an engineer Nikolay G. Slavyanov demonstrated
his new invention - electric-arc welding. The creative flame
used by the mankind.
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Alexey A. Volkov (1738 - 1796).
General-Governor of Perm and Tobolsk between 1789 and
1796, he bought the equipment in Moscow and opened the
first printing house in Perm.
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Motovilikha's heavy guns fired at the
fronts of the Second World War up to the victory day. Four
long years the plant director A. I. Bykhovsky, designers,
engineers and workers never thought of having a rest. The
victory day on the 9th of May, 1945, was their first day-off.
Motovilikha artillery and missile systems still serve our
armed forces.
Another application of the plant's products is the space.
In 1961 its director V. N. Lebedev, engineers and workers
got awards for their successful developing the rocket technology
and supporting the manned space flights.
The trade mark of the Motovilikha Plants joint stock company
is used for high-graded steels and rolled products, new generations
of cranes and excavators.
Many a time aircraft engines produced in Perm were tested
for strength. They didn't fail. The first aircraft plant in
Russia has war records, takes-off and testing grounds of its
own. It has bright designers - A. D. Shvetsov, P. A. Solovyov.
Their school took an important place in the history of aviation
and influenced the development of home aircraft-engine manufacturing
industry. The colleagues and pupils of the famous aircraft
designers, highly skilled engineers and workers still work
at the Perm Motory joint stock company. Here the first stage
of a Proton-PM carrier-rocket was born to take satellites
and space stations to the near-earth orbits. Engines for IL-96
and TU-204 airplanes, reduction gears for KB Mila helicopters
and other technologically advanced products have been made
there. The Perm Motory trademark is reliable both in the sky
and the space.
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Nikolay G. Slavyanov (1854 - 1897)
and the Motovilikha works engineers. A scientist and
metallurgist, he invented the electric-arc welding
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Another Perm enterprise, the Kirov plant
also was a defence-oriented giant. Recently it turned to peaceful
tracks producing polyurethane and acrylicitems, decorative
foamed materials... As for gun powder - well, they still keep
their powder dry!
Perm citizens, both young and old, re member the production
of the Dzerzhinsky plant. Its workers still produce motorized
saws ('The Urals', 'Friendship' and 'Taiga') as well as centrifugal
pumps and oil separators. The 'Telta' joint stock company
offers all kinds of modern telephone sets, from the Government
ones till well protected pay-phones.
Once Perm sent its copper to the mint in Petersburg. Heavy
guns made from Perm copper were spread across Russia. Nowadays
the Goznak factory supplies the country with paper money and
all kinds of securities.
The present Perm trade mark means prefabricated ferro-concrete
structures and construction materials, screw pumps and power
cable, oil-refining products and multichannel telephone equipment,
chemical raw materials and high-voltage insulators, mineral
fertilizers and gas-pumping units, gypsum polymers, greases
and medicines.
They are all made by people.
Shift follows shift... These words are clear to everybody
in Perm. Shift follows shift... No film director is able to
reproduce this movement of people in time and space, all the
workers' shifts at all the plants and factories in Perm over
the years of labour. This stream, this movement is and will
be for ever.
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Perm cabmen
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The first car in Perm
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Building of a tramway in Perm
in the 1920-s
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