The capital of the Urals is more than one and a half thousand kilometers from Moscow, but even the waves of renaming that took place throughout Russia during the political upheavals of the 20th century did not escape it.
Named after the first Russian empress, the city since 1924 for 67 years was called Sverdlovsk, in memory of a politician of a completely different kind. The coat of arms of Yekaterinburg over the three centuries of the city’s existence also did not escape the metamorphoses associated with this.
Fortress and factory
Peter the Great clearly recognized the importance of mining and metallurgy for the successful course of his reforms, for the economic and military development of Russia. In the spring of 1723, on the eastern slope of the Middle Urals, on the banks of the Iset River , the construction of the largest ironworks factory at that time began. He became, as they say now, a city-forming enterprise. The day when the first, water-driven, huge hammers for forging kritsa - blocks of iron obtained from cast iron - were tested, the date of the formation of Yekaterinburg was November 7, 1723.
George Wilhelm de Gennin , the closest associate of the reformer king who led the construction of the plant, proposed the city to be named after the wife of Emperor Peter. For technical equipment, the progressiveness of technology, the Yekaterinburg plant was at first the best in Europe. The new capital of the mining region was destined to play the role of one of the locomotives of the country's heavy industry in peacetime and a reliable rear supplying the front with weapons and ammunition during the war years. A railway ran through it, connecting the European and eastern parts of the country - Yekaterinburg became the gateway to Siberia.
The attributes of the mining and metallurgical industry, the symbols of the borderlands of Europe and Asia were received by the coat of arms of Yekaterinburg. They are present both in modern city emblems, and in the first versions developed by the heraldry masters of Peter's time.
Count Santi's project
Count Francesco Santi, or Franz Matveevich Santi (1683-1758) was the founder of Russian heraldry. The coat of arms of Yekaterinburg was one of many attempts to bring motifs from the Russian coat of arms of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, known under the name "Titular" (1672), to classical European traditions. Some historians allow participation in the creation of the first coat of arms of the capital of the Urals, the Russian heraldmeister Stepan Andreyevich Kolychev (1674-1735) or the prominent Russian historian Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev (1686-1750).
The image of the factory floor with a blast furnace and ore mine entered the first coat of arms of Yekaterinburg. Its description contains the attributes of imperial Russia - the royal crown with red ribbons and two ovals with the monograms of Peter and Catherine I. In addition to them, on a silver cloud emitting golden rays, there are crosswise lying rods wrapped in snakes and golden fanfare. The cloud is in the green field, the mine and the plant are in red.
County city of Perm governorate
During the reign of Catherine II, administrative reforms were actively carried out. As a result of one of them, Yekaterinburg received the status of a county town as part of Perm governorate. In July 1783, the emblem of Yekaterinburg was highly approved, developed taking into account its new status. His authorship is attributed to the famous politician and scholar Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov (1733-1790), who at one time was the herald master.
All emblems designed for the cities of Perm governorate have the same structure and the same color scheme. This is a shield divided in two. The upper part of the shield is the same - the coat of arms of Perm - in a red field a silver bear with the gospel placed on its back with a gold salary and a silver cross at the top. In the lower part there is a silver ore mine and a melting furnace on a green field.
Coat of arms of Bernhard Köhne
Beginning in 1860, Alexander II carried out his administrative reform, under which it was envisaged the creation of new emblems for many cities of Russia. This work was led by the famous heraldmeister Bernhard Vasilievich Köhne. For Yekaterinburg, he created a coat of arms that remained unapproved.
In the center of the composition is a silver shield with the coat of arms of Perm located in the upper left corner , which meant that the city belonged to the Perm province. In the center - a black furnace for melting metal with a scarlet flame, at the bottom of the shield - two rows of black and gold hats. The shield is crowned with a tower silver crown with three prongs, behind it are two cross-shaped pickaxes entwined with the Alexander ribbon.
Coat of arms of Sverdlovsk
Among the heraldic symbols of the pre-revolutionary time, the coat of arms of Yekaterinburg was also withdrawn from circulation. Photos with versions of urban symbols were published in the press and on the main streets in preparation for the celebration of the 245th anniversary of the capital of the Urals. The final version was adopted only in 1973.
It was a silver shield containing a red (scarlet) image of the perimeter of the fortress built at the Yekaterinburg plant. On it - a gold or black gear and a strip of azure color, denoting the Iset River. On top of the strip are five shortened stripes and a stylized image of a peaceful atom. On the left of the shield is a rising sable, on the right is a lizard.
Symbols of the new time
In September 1991, the decree of the city authorities restored the historical coat of arms of Yekaterinburg. The vector of public sentiment of that time was aimed at denying the communist ideology and everything connected with it. And they tried to find real support and necessary guidelines in the past, sometimes very distant.
But it turned out that it was unreasonable to use heraldic symbols of two hundred years ago at the end of the 20th century. In 1996, work began on a new emblem and flag. First, a competition was announced among modern heraldists, historians and artists, followed by public discussion. But the presented sketches, which offered many stamp elements - traditional and rarely used - did not receive full and unanimous approval.
Some options did not find approval among the citizens, sometimes the new flag and coat of arms of Yekaterinburg did not pass the examination at the Heraldic Council under the President of the Russian Federation. The final version of urban symbolism was approved in the spring of 2008 on the basis of a project developed by German Ivanovich Dubrovin, Honored Architect of Russia.
The modern coat of arms of Yekaterinburg. Description photo
The main component of the coat of arms is the shield, divided into two low-crossed fields - green (the traditional color of the Urals) and gold. The upper part, resembling the outlines of the fortress of the Yekaterinburg plant, contains silver images of a log house with a collar designating an ore mine and an old melting furnace with a scarlet flame in a firebox. The lower part of the shield is crossed by a horizontal double blue wavy line bordered with silver - a symbol of the Iset River.
At the top of the shield is a five-prong tower gold crown with an addition in the form of a laurel wreath. On the sides are two figures of animal shield holders. On the left - symbolizing the European part of Russia, on the right - a symbol of Asia - the Siberian sable. They are decorated with black-and-gold squirrel fur collars, and they, like city guards, have bared their teeth and stick out scarlet tongues.
The bear and sable are based on a gold ribbon - a symbol of the important status of the capital of the Urals. In the middle of the ribbon, on top of the shield, there is an image of a druse - intergrown crystals - personifying the wealth of the Earth's bowels of the Urals.