Figure 1.--Here we see A group of children in the Ural Mountains. The photograp was taken in 1910. Maurizio |
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Much of Russia is a relatively flat plain. The most prominant mountain range is the Urals. This is a geographical term, not a Russian administrative district. The Urals are generally seen as the dividing line between Europe and Asia. The Urals played a role in World War II. The Soviets after the Germans launched Barbarossa moved war industries east of the Urals by railm beyond the range of Luftwaffe bombers.
Name
The Ural Mountains are known in Russia as Ура́льские го́ры or Uralskiye gory. There existence was known in abtiquity and referred to as the Riphean Mountains.
The Urals run 2,500 km roughly north and south from the hot Kazakh steppes north of the Caspian Sea to the frozen Arctic coast. Actually the Urals extend into the Arctic as the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya is a continuation of the range. The Urals are generally seen as the admitedly aribtrary dividing line between Europe and Asia.
Geologically the Urals are one of the oldest mountain ranges. The Urals rose in the late Carboniferous period. At this time modern Siberia was a separatecconginent. It collided with the great supercontinent which had been formed by Laurasia (Europe and North America) and Gondwana. Europe and Siberia have since been united. As a result of the Urals early formation, the peaks while impressive are relatively modest in comparison to some other great ranges. The highest peak is Mount Narodnaya (Poznurr, 1895 m). The Urals have vast mineral resources. The Middle Urals in particular have rich deposits of iron, copper, chromium, nickel, gold, platinum, abestos, and other minerals. There are also reserves of coal and oil. As a result, the Middle Urals have become one of the most heavily industrialized regions of Russia focused on the production of iron and steel. The Urals also contain gem stones like topaz and beryl. The Komi Forest is located along the northern Urals and is largely virginal making it an important World Heritage site.
The name Urals comes from the Uralian tribe that once populated northern Asia. These prople were
were hunter-gatherers. The Uralians gradualy dispersed throughout Asia because of the scarce resources in the north. I am less sure about the moder population of the Urals, but believe it is largely Russian. I am not sure just when the Slavs first arrived in the Urals. Yekaterinburg is the city most strongly associated with the Urals. Important industrial cities include Perm, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), Magnitogorsk, and Zlatoust.
The Soviet Union at the time of Barbarossa, the NAZI World war II invasion, had the largest arms industry in the world. The Soviets set about a major effort to move whole factories east of the Urals beyond the range if Luftwaffe bombers. The machiery was taken east by rail and set up, even, before a building could be built around it. The Soviet arms production had not recovered from the NAZI invasion until 1943. In that same year the Americans and British beegan the around the clock strategic bombing of Germany. While German war prduction would not begin to collapse until late 1944. there was no way that German war production even at its peak could match the combined production of Britain, the Soviet Union, the United states an allied nations.
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