51°40N 39°10E, pop (2000e) 888 000. River port capital of Voronezhskaya oblast, EC European Russia, on R Voronezh; founded as a fortress, 1586; airport; railway; university (1918); agricultural trade, excavators, synthetic rubber, foodstuffs, atomic power generation.
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Voronezh (Russian: Воро́неж) is a large city in southwestern Russia, not far from Ukraine. It is located on the Voronezh River, twelve kilometers away from the spot where the Voronezh River empties into the Don. Voronezh is the administrative center of Voronezh Oblast.
History
The Voronezh River was first mentioned in Hypatian Codex of 1177;
In the 17th century, Voronezh became a considerable commercial and handicrafts centre. Since 1711 Voronezh had been a centre of Azov province, since 1725 - Voronezh province, since 1779 - Voronezh namestnichestvo, since 1824 - Voronezh province.
Today Voronezh is the economical, industrial, cultural and scientific center of the so-called Black Earth Region. The city's large student population includes many foreigners as foreign students in Russia usually take one year of Russian language in Voronezh before moving on to universities elsewhere.
As an industrial centre, Voronezh was integral to the Soviet aircraft construction industry, including the so-called Concordski Tupolev Tu-144.
Many famous people were born in Voronezh and not far from it.
The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam was exiled to Voronezh after his arrest in 1934 and wrote a series of poems there collected under the title "Voronezh Notebooks".
The famous Russian punk band Sektor Gaza was founded in Voronezh.
Around Voronezh there are a lot of kurgans and other interesting archaeological objects.
Nearby Novovoronezh ("New Voronezh") serves nuclear power plants.
Chertovitskoye airport is nearby, at Latitude/Longitude: 51.81,39.23
On October 9, 1989, an official news agency in the Soviet Union reported the landing of a UFO in Voronezh.
Further reading
Charlotte Hobson's book, "Black Earth City", is an accessible and insightful account of life in Voronezh in the early 1990s.
Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope, the first volume of her memoirs concerning the dreadful fate of her husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, provides many details about life and hardship in Voronezh in the 1930s under Stalinist rule.
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