History of the city

So when did the history of Izhevsk start?

An ancient “Kazan’s particularistic factory keepers Record” gives a clear answer: "The process of building of Izhevsk iron plant specialized at forging iron from mountain cast began on 10^th of April, 1760 with His Excellency’s decree and that plant occupied the state territory on the Arsk road in the Kazan province on the river Izh”. His Excellency was Petr Ivanovich Shuvalov, an outstanding personality, uncommonly gifted and ingenious man of the Empress Elizabeth time.

One February day in 1760 an ordinary kibitka and two saddle horses drove out from the Kazan road to a hardly noticed country track near the settlement Studenyi Klyutch. That was the way the founder of the city on Izh - a mountain engineer Alexey Stepanovich Moskvin – appeared in our region.

Detailed estimates and plans of the iron plant’s and weir’s building were sent to the mountain authorities to Kazan already in March. And soon a decree appeared there: "To allocate territories for that plant’s building according to the vacant land availability and its section’s dimensions…”.

Thus, on the 10^th of April, 1760 the city of Izhevsk began counting its days with the first pick strokes against the frozen ground.

That is why 1760 is considered the year of Izhevsk foundation.

In 1763 bloomery iron was produced on the plant for the first time. Tula small arms factory, armories of Saint Petersburg, Bryansk, Warsaw and the Black Sea Admiralty became its monopolistic consumers.

Izhevsk Ironworks manufactured to two hundred thousand poods of iron per year. But already in one year after plant’s foundation peasant unrest broke out there. The plant stood idle and in 1774 it was occupied by Pugachev army rebels. Some years after that were the ones of stagnation and decay for the factory.

In 1807 under the leadership of an engineer Andrey Fedorovich Deryabin an armory was established in Izhevsk and that event signified its second birth. Gun production, the glory and pride of the future city, was set up in a rather brief space of time.

Izhevsk appeared in the map of Russia more than two centuries ago as a settlement at Izhevsk plant. Still its swift development resulted in the fact that already in the beginning of the previous century the village Izhevo outnumbered principal cities of  neighbouring provinces, such as Perm, Novgorod, Ufa, according to the indices of the quantity of inhabitants.

The unique identity of Izhevsk was evinced not only in the number of people that resided there. For a long time Izhevsk didn’t have an official status of the city, but still in fact it already was a big industrial center of that region with some particular features of a capital that became apparent with the functioning of two classical schools, a theatre, a cinema, a library, a printing establishment, “The school of choral singing and orchestral music”, a telegraph, a power plant, etc.

Revolutionary events of the beginning of the previous century became of a great importance for the city and had a significant influence on its political life.

On February 21^st, 1918 in the building of former Officer Assembly the members of Izhevsk Soviet of working, soldier and peasant deputies resolved Izhevsk Ironworks to be transformed into the city.

In November, 1920 indigenous population of the region obtained the status of autonomy which was lately transformed to the Udmurt Republic. And less than in a year the Presidium of VTsIK of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic resolved that since June 10th, 1921 Izhevsk became the centre of Udmurtia. Nowadays this very date is considered official Birthday of Izhevsk. Every year since 1988 the capital of the Udmurt Republic had been celebrating it as the most important city holiday that gathered thousands of citizens in the Central Square.

It is appropriate to mention that the Second World War became the very special chapter in the history of the city of Izhevsk. In autumn, 1941 some defence industry plants were evacuated to Izhevsk. 1942 was marked by the establishment of Izhevsk Mechanic Plant. The city-factory produced 12 500 000 units of small arms during the years of War.

In 1948 another event of a great importance took place in Izhevsk: the production of Avtomat Kalashnikova (AK-47) was started on the Motor Factory.

On May 27th, 1999 the Certificate №000634 of entry into the Federal register of the Russian Federation municipalities was issued to the city of Izhevsk.

After the establishment of the state celebration of the Day of Russia Izhevsk, as well as many other cities, unified two holidays. Since then, the Day of the City of Izhevsk has been celebrating on 12th of June annually.