PERM - The poem of the town PERM - The poem of the town
PERM - The poem of the town PERM - The poem of the town

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HISTORICAL PERM

 

There is a Permian age in the history of the Earth.

It was over 300 million years ago. Once our land was covered with the sea, planted with exotic trees and abundant in huge reptiles, dinosaurs. Later on the sea stepped back and the mountains started rising. Deep faults and inselbergs in the primeval fold system of the earth's crust are a show of cosmic proportions. It was the outer space people saw them from in the twentieth century.

Permian Period. 250-290 million years ago

250-290 million years ago: there is a Permian age in the history of the Earth...

Our land, severely magnificent in the scenery and fabulously rich in the bowels of the earth, was formed through this titanic work of Nature.

When travelling across the Urals, the English geologist R. Murchison made out the original system of these geological strata and called it Permian. Since 1845 the Perm symbol has been put on all geological maps in the world. In the Permian period Nature started storing up copper and ferrous ores, coal, salt and oil for its future restless children.

Centuries passed, and people started making themselves home on the earth. Little by little stone tools and weapons the prehistoric people used were replaced by bronze ones. In the environs of Perm archaeologists unearthed some artefacts of the prehistoric Gari Culture - stone arrow tips and cutting tools, flint and bronze knives, fishing hooks, bronze ornaments. The Turbina tribes (named after the village of Turbina, a part of the present Ordoenikidze District) had bronze and silver weapons. In the Ananyino burial-grounds, iron knives and swords, hoes and horse harness were discovered. The Ananyino tribes of forest horse men were warlike while the Gladyenovo prehistoric farmers cleared arable plots of trees and shrubs in the forest, worked the land and invented a calendar of their own to make their farming more accurate. They are called after the village of Gladyenovo at the place of the present Big Savino airport.

In 1915 the poet �. D. Balmont saw a mammoth skeleton in Perm Scientific-Industrial Museum that inspired his poems

In 1915 the poet Ê. D. Balmont saw a mammoth skeleton in Perm Scientific-Industrial Museum that inspired his poems

Scythes, pestles, grain-grinding stones, vessels, figurines of animals and birds were dug out there. Their masters never thought of the man flying iron birds in the sky! Who could imagine this in the third century ÂÑ or in the fourth century AD?

Many generations had changed one another before prehistoric villages, towns and crafts came into being. The Rodanovo Culture left ploughs, long-handle scythes and millstones in our land. The Rodanovo people had potters, carvers in bone, smiths and foundrymen. War and toil made their life dangerous and hard, but it also had joy and beauty the signs of which are numerous ornaments found there. The ornaments de monstrate the Perm animal style. The prehistoric people made every effort to decorate their clothes and dwellings. "The silver from beyond the mounts" glittered in their shrines.

Ancient bronze ornaments in Perm animal style

Ancient bronze ornaments in Perm animal style

Russian peasants came to the Urals in search of free land and freedom. They settled, built roads, fought in wars. In the fifteenth-century Perm the Great was already well-known. Its capital was Cherdyn. Single pioneer farms, villages, towns and salt-works appeared in the north of the region. But nobody settled by the Yegoshikha River yet.

Sassanian silver got to the Kama banks via ancient merchants' ways

Sassanian silver got to the Kama banks via ancient merchants' ways

Russia needed iron and copper. So, in the early eighteenth century Vasily N. Tatishchev, the head of the state mines and works, arrived to the Urals and chose the place to built a copper foundry and a stronghold. Based on his plans and drawings, the construction works were started on the 4th of May, 1723.

The settlement on the Yegoshikha bank is a cradle of Perm. Having taken over from Tatishchev, General Georg Wilhelm de Gennin kept the work up and sent the first copper bar to the Russian Empress Anna.

This was the beginning of the town upon the Kama that was to grow up into a big industrial centre of Russia.

 
Vasily N. Tatishchev (1686 - 1750)

Vasily N. Tatishchev (1686 - 1750). The Russian statesman, scientist of encyclopaedic knowledge, the founder of mines and works at the Urals, the founder of the city of Perm

Georg Wilhelm de Gennin (1676 -1750)

Georg Wilhelm de Gennin (1676 -1750). He built a plant and settlement on the Yegoshikha River in 1722

 
     
 
The Yagoshikha River
 
 

The Yagoshikha River. Photo: the second half of the 19th century

 
     
 
V. Hudoyarov. Copper mines. The first half of the 19th century
 
 

V. Hudoyarov. Copper mines. The first half of the 19th century

 

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Perm. The poem of the town: Photo album. Publishing house «Pushka», 2003

Sunday 30 April

Alexander Kashintsev © The city of Perm

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