An ordinary small Russian town, built in ancient times on the border with the steppe region. The beautiful old buildings of the 18-19th century, combined with the strange monuments of the Soviet period, create their own unique flavor. Now the life of the population of Buzuluk depends on the level of oil production and prices for hydrocarbons.
general information
Buzuluk is a city in the Orenburg region, built on the banks of the Samara, Buzuluk and Domashka rivers. The official name of the inhabitants: men - Buzuluchan, women - Buzuluchan, citizens - Buzuluchans. The regional center of Orenburg is at 246 km, another major city, Samara, is at 176 km. For some time the city was among the best in terms of economic development in the Volga Federal District.
The total volume of production in the region in 2017 amounted to 230 billion rubles. This is a good indicator for a small town. The main part of the production falls on the mining and oilfield services industry, which produced 214.3 rubles worth of products. The increase compared to last year amounted to 10.1%. The volume of production of machine-building enterprises increased due to orders for drilling equipment. A slight decrease occurred in the food and light industries. 1393 people turned to the Buzuluk Employment Center in search of work.
Etymology
The fortress was named after the tributary river of Samara, on which it was built. Buzuluk is a fairly common name in the steppe regions where Turkic tribes wandered. The rivers of the same name flow in the Volgograd and Dnepropetrovsk regions.
It comes from the ancient Turkic toponym "buzuluk", which translates as "ice". Usually nomadic tribes called small rivers, filling only in spring, during the melting of snow and ice. In Crimea there is a Buzuluk cave, the bottom of which is covered with melting ice. From the Crimean Tatar name is translated as "glacier" or "ice accumulation."
There is another version - that Buzuluk comes from the Tatar "bosau" - "calf" or "bosaulyk" - "calf fence". According to this hypothesis, the place where the river flows into Samara is very convenient for grazing calves. According to another alternative version, the Turkic tribe Buzu or base gave the name to the city, which translates as "rebellious" and "rebellious".
Story
Buzulutskaya fortress was founded in 1736, in 1781 it was given the status of a county town as part of the Ufa governorate. For a long time, the inhabitants of the city were hunting, fishing, farming and trading. The city did not pass the cataclysms experienced by the country. In 1774, the city was one of the centers of the Pugachev uprising. In the civil war, Buzuluk was occupied either by the Reds from the Chapaev Division, or by the White troops of Ataman Dutov and Kolchak.
During World War II, the first foreign military units were formed in the city - the Czechoslovak battalion under the command of Ludwig Freedom. After the war, when he became president of the country, Freedom came to Buzuluk and awarded the city with the Order of the Red Star of Czechoslovakia. Enterprises from the occupied part of Russia were evacuated here, where they were engaged in the production of tanks and armored cars. Then they were redesigned for the production of metallurgical and mining equipment
Population: from the foundation to the revolution
At the time of the construction of the fortress, the population of Buzuluk was a little more than 500 people, including 478 Yaik Cossacks, 19 Nogais and 47 different classes. Lists of residents of the Buzuluk fortress are preserved in historical archives. In 1740, 629 people were recorded in ancient acts, of which 240 were Cossacks, the rest were family members. Some of the Cossacks were "paid" - 148 people who received payment for military service. Others lived off agriculture - "arable", 92 people. Interestingly, of all the adult men, only three were able to sign their testimony. The city grew slowly, in 1811 1000 people lived in it.
According to the first official data of 1856, 5600 people already lived in the city. The population grew both due to the recruitment of Cossacks and peasants who reached here from the central provinces in search of a better share.
The main forms of employment of the population of Buzuluk were agriculture and handicrafts. By 1913, the population reached 16,500 people. Buzuluk's growth was facilitated by the expansion of the Russian Empire into Central Asia, since the region was the main transit point on the way from the central regions.
Modern population
In Soviet times, the population of Buzuluk grew rapidly, in the early years - due to industrialization, when the rural population replenished the city. In 1939, the number of inhabitants reached 42,400. In the post-war period, oil was discovered in the region, and due to the opening of enterprises in the industry, the population of Buzuluk reached 76,000 by 1976.
In post-Soviet times, the urban population continued to grow, reaching a maximum of 88,900 inhabitants in 2008. Despite the fact that almost all industrial enterprises closed, oil companies compensated for the decline in production in other sectors of the economy. The main vacancies of the Buzuluk Employment Center during these years were related to the professions of this industry. After the fall (in 2010-2011) in subsequent years, the number of residents grew smoothly. In 2017, 86,316 people lived in the city.