Volgograd

Volgograd is located almost 1000 km southeast of Moscow on the western bank of the Volga, about 400 km north of the mouth of the river into the Caspian Sea. The city stretches up to 10 km wide for 60 km along the banks of the Volga.

Until 2009, the Volgograd City District included, in addition to the city of Volgograd, the urban-type settlements of Gorkovsky (16,436 inhabitants), Gumrak (6053), Vodstroi (4483), and Yuzhny (1914), as well as 18 villages with a combined population of 6286 (calculated as of January 1, 2009). These localities were incorporated in March 2009, so that the city of Volgograd is now the only locality of the urban district and its population slightly exceeds the million mark again, as in the 1990s, despite a continued downward trend.

Tsaritsyn

Due to its geographical location on the isthmus between the Volga and Don rivers, the area around Volgograd was an important trade route even in ancient times. Scythians settled here in the 5th century BC. In the 8th and 9th centuries the area belonged to the Khazar Empire, and in the 11th and 12th centuries various tribes and hordes resided here, among them the Polovts or Golden Horde, who established one of their centers, the city of Snamensk, about 50 km east of Volgograd, on the river Akhtuba, and dominated Volgograd since the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. The beginnings of Russian Volgograd have not been elucidated. However, the official founding date is considered to be July 2, 1589, when the city was founded as a fortress to protect Russia from nomads from the south. The first name of the city was Tsaritsyn, derived from the nearby tributary of the Volga River.

Built of wood, it was initially located on a now-defunct Volga island opposite the mouth of the river Zariza (from Tatar sari su "yellow water"). After a fire it was moved to the right bank of the Volga. The first stone building was erected in 1664. In the 17th and 18th centuries the town of a few hundred inhabitants was besieged and captured several times by rebellious Cossacks: in 1670 under Stenka Razin and in 1774 under Yemelyan Pugachev. After the conquest of the Crimea and the Kuban region in 1783, Tsaritsyn lost its military strategic importance and gradually developed into a commercial and economic centre. Especially the construction of the railway line to Kalach on the Don in 1862 and to Gryazi in 1872 led to an economic boom and made Tsaritsyn a hub of oil supply and transport links from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea and from the Caucasus to central Russia. As a result, large-scale industry also settled here, including metal- and wood-processing plants, oil refineries for crude oil from Baku, several mills and tanneries.

Renaming in honor of Stalin

During the Russian Civil War of 1917-1920, there was heavy fighting here, as the city was located at the crossroads of food transport routes from the south of the country to Moscow and Petrograd. On April 10, 1925, it was renamed Stalingrad ("Stalin's City") in honor of Joseph Stalin, who had served as army commissar here during the Civil War. In 1926, in the course of the industrialization of the Soviet Union, the Volgogradski Traktorny Zavod was built 14 km from the city center.

During the German-Soviet War, Stalingrad was one of the targets of the "Fall Blue" offensive and was encircled on three sides by over 230,000 soldiers of the German 6th Army in the Battle of Stalingrad in late summer 1942. Fighting began on 23 August 1942, including a massive Luftwaffe bombardment of the city. By September, the fighting reached the city center, with several key points (including the main train station and Mamayev Hill) changing hands several times. The defending Red Army troops could only get their supplies from the unoccupied eastern bank of the Volga by ships. The Wehrmacht's tactical goal in capturing the city was to cut off shipping on the Volga, which was used, among other things, to transport Allied aid supplies from the Persian Corridor and the Caspian Sea to northern and central Russia.

By early November, the Wehrmacht had captured 90 percent of the city. However, the complete conquest of the city did not succeed due to the continued resistance of the Red Army, although Hitler in his speech on 8 November 1942 presented the battle as largely won. Instead, German troops and their allies (mainly Romanians and Croats) were encircled by the Soviet counter-offensive "Operation Uranus" on 19 November 1942. A German attempt to escape with the "Unternehmen Wintergewitter" failed. On 31 January 1943 (Southern Kessel under Gen. Paulus), respectively 2 February 1943 (Northern Kessel under Gen. Karl Strecker) the remnants of the Sixth Army under Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus ceased hostilities. About 108,000 German and allied soldiers went into captivity. During the fighting, the city was almost completely destroyed. Reconstruction began immediately after the liberation in February 1943. In the same year, the town was twinned with Coventry in England. In 1945, the city was awarded the official title of Hero City by the leadership of the Soviet Union.

The town was the site of three Soviet POW camps - 108, 361 and 362 - for World War II prisoners of war, plus POW hospital 5771. Camp 362 existed until 1954.

Renaming to Volgograd

Within the framework of de-Stalinization, the name of the city was changed to Volgograd on November 7, 1961. Since then, there have been repeated proposals to rename the city Stalingrad again, or at least to use this name temporarily or as an alternative. In 2013, for example, the City Duma decided to use the name "Hero City of Stalingrad" on the occasion of the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the surrender of German troops and on other commemorative days. In 2015, a petition signed by 50,000 people demanded that President Putin reinstate the old name, which he did not rule out and recommended a vote on. For commemorative events, the city has again temporarily borne the name Stalingrad since about 2017.

Attacks 2013

Towards the end of 2013, Volgograd saw a series of attacks perpetrated by North Caucasian Islamists who want to break away their home region from Russia and establish a Muslim emirate there. In October, a female suicide bomber blew up a bus, killing six passengers. On December 29, an assassin detonated a belt of explosives in a train station with the explosive force equivalent to 10 kilograms of TNT, killing 17 people. The following day, another suicide bomber killed at least 16 people on a bus.