History of Makhachkala

By historical standards, the capital of Dagestan is a young city: it appeared on the map only in the middle of the 19th century, when the Russian army established a small fortification on the shore of the Caspian Sea. The history of this land, however, reaches back into deep antiquity. For centuries, trade flourished at the foot of Mount Tarki-Tau; Persian and Russian campaigns passed along the coastal strip, and the area itself became a crossroads for the destinies of the Kumyks, Avars, Dargins, Laks, Azerbaijanis, and Russians.

In this piece, we trace how a Petrine outpost turned into the port town of Petrovsk, why during the revolutionary years the city was briefly called Shamil-Kala, and how in 1921 it acquired its present name in honor of the revolutionary Makhach Dakhadaev.

Before the city: Tarki and Peter the Great’s Caspian campaign

Four kilometers from the current center of Makhachkala, at the foot of the Tarki-Tau plateau, the settlement of Tarki still exists — one of the oldest inhabited places in Dagestan. For a long time it served as the administrative and trading center of the coastal strip. A number of researchers link Tarki with Semender, the capital of the early Khazar Khaganate, and the first reliable written mention appears in the 8th century in the writings of the Armenian historian Ghevond in connection with the Arab campaigns. By the 10th century, gardens and vineyards had already spread beneath the walls of Tarki, and the settlement itself had become a notable hub of trade between the North Caucasus, Iran, and the Volga region.

From the late 16th century, Tarki became the capital of the Tarki Shamkhalate — the largest Kumyk domain on the Caspian. Caravan routes linking Derbent with Astrakhan and the interior regions of the Caucasus passed through it. In 1722, Peter I set up camp here during his Persian campaign. According to legend, the emperor halted on the very hill where the Petrovskoye fortification was later established. Russian sources of the time described Tarki as a large settlement of several thousand households and the principal town of the coastal strip. Russia’s presence at that point was brief, however: by the 1730s the garrisons had been recalled, and the coast once again came under the rule of local sovereigns.

The Petrovskoye fortification and the town of Petrovsk (1844–1917)

The Russian Empire returned here at the height of the Caucasian War. In 1844, on the Andzhi-Arka height, right on the shore of the Caspian, the Petrovskoye fortification was laid down — a small military outpost named in memory of Peter I’s camp. The location was chosen with a dual purpose: to control the overland road along the sea and to set up an anchorage that was missing between Astrakhan and Derbent. In the early years the garrison lived a soldier’s life behind rampart and moat, but as early as 1857 the settlement received town status and the name Petrovsk. Later it came to be called Port-Petrovsk to avoid confusion with other towns of the same name in the empire.

The real turning point came at the turn of the 1860s and 1870s. In 1870, construction of an artificial harbor and port at Petrovsk was completed — the first major investment that changed the scale of the place. From a border garrison it turned into the maritime gateway of Dagestan. Fish, grain, petroleum products from Baku, and manufactured goods from central Russia passed through the port. Overland logistics followed the port: in 1894 a branch line to Vladikavkaz opened, and by 1900 the southern line — through Derbent to Baku — was completed, incorporating the town into the empire’s unified transport network.

Fisheries, canneries, brick plants, mills, and a brewery appeared; workers from the mountains and from Astrakhan Governorate were drawn to the town, as were Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Persian merchants. By the beginning of the 20th century, Petrovsk had become a colorful port town, where the Russian administration and officer corps existed side by side with Caucasian merchants and artisan quarters, while the neighborhoods of the mountain peoples descended from Andzhi-Arka right down to the sea.

Industrial growth ran parallel to political tension. The port of Petrovsk became an important hub of social-democratic agitation. Newspapers and literature spread through it, and workers at the fisheries and the railway went on strike regularly. In 1905 the unrest reached here as well, and by 1917 the town approached the revolution with active Bolshevik, Socialist-Revolutionary, and Musavat groups, national councils, and pressure from various directions — Astrakhan, Baku, and the mountain districts.

From Port-Petrovsk to Makhachkala (1918–1923)

The Civil War on the Caspian proved to be one of the most tangled on the territory of the former empire. From 1918 to 1920, Port-Petrovsk changed hands repeatedly: it was entered by Red detachments, by Denikin’s troops, and by the insurgents of Imam Najmuddin Gotsinsky. During this period the town briefly bore the name Shamil-Kala — “the fortress of Shamil” — in memory of the leader of the 19th-century mountain resistance. The port was a strategic prize: whoever held the Petrovsk harbor controlled Caspian supply lines for the whole of southern Russia.

One of the key leaders of the Dagestani Bolsheviks was Magomed-Ali (Makhach) Dakhadaev — a railway engineer by training, a publicist, and an organizer of Red detachments. He advocated the alliance of the mountain peoples with Soviet power, took part in forming revolutionary structures in Temir-Khan-Shura and Port-Petrovsk, and was killed in September 1918 in the Avar village of Aymaki. After Soviet power was definitively established in 1921, the town was renamed in his honor: thus Makhachkala — “the fortress of Makhach” — appeared on the map. The old name vanished from official documents but was preserved in the memory of the townspeople and in place names, for instance in the name of the Petrovsky Lighthouse.

In January 1921, the Dagestan ASSR was proclaimed, and in 1923 Makhachkala became its capital. The choice fell not on the historical administrative center Temir-Khan-Shura (present-day Buynaksk), but on the young port town. Makhachkala fit perfectly into the Soviet project: the sea, the railway, industrial potential, and room for large-scale construction. From that moment began an accelerated remaking of the urban space: the old settlements gave way to new blocks of construction, and the first republican institutions, higher-education institutes, and theaters appeared.

Soviet Makhachkala (1923–1991)

In the interwar period, Makhachkala was transformed rapidly. In the 1930s the city became a major industrial center: instrument-making and fish-processing enterprises, a cannery, and powerful milling complexes opened here, while in neighboring Kaspiysk the Dagdizel plant began operating. The cultural sphere developed in parallel: pedagogical and agricultural institutes were founded, and a distinctive theatrical palette took shape — it was then that the system of three national dramatic theaters — Russian, Avar, and Kumyk — came into being.

During the Great Patriotic War, Makhachkala became a front-line city. Supplies for the Transcaucasian Front passed through its port and railway hub, along with evacuation cargo and factory equipment. At the end of 1942, fighting reached the approaches to Dagestan, in the Kizlyar direction and on the soil of Grozny, but the front never reached Makhachkala itself. After the war the city received a fresh impetus: enterprises were relocated here from neighboring regions, mass housing construction was underway, and the port was expanded.

On May 14, 1970, Dagestan experienced one of the strongest earthquakes in Soviet history. Tremors of about magnitude 6.7 destroyed many buildings in Makhachkala, Buynaksk, and the mountain districts. In the capital, the old late-19th-century buildings and the first Soviet houses suffered the most. Reconstruction across the republic took several years and noticeably changed the look of the center: part of the old built environment was demolished or replaced, standardized apartment blocks appeared, and development began on residential microdistricts beyond the historical core.

By the end of the Soviet era, Makhachkala had grown into a large city of half a million people with a fishing port, machine-building plants, higher-education institutes, and theaters. This growth, however, was accompanied by mounting contradictions: rapid urbanization and the influx of population from the mountain districts created an infrastructure deficit, while the ecological problems of the Caspian and stagnation in the traditional branches of industry became serious challenges for the city’s future.

From the 1990s to the present day

The collapse of the USSR hit Makhachkala’s industry especially hard: the fishing sector, machine-building, and the defense plants of the Caspian coast cut output several times over. At the same time the city faced the consequences of the conflicts in neighboring Chechnya and a wave of internal migration: Makhachkala’s population grew very quickly during the 1990s and 2000s, largely due to migrants from the mountain districts and refugees. Spontaneous construction on the outskirts, water shortages, and transport problems formed the backdrop for the entire post-Soviet urban history.

At the same time, however, a process of recovery was underway. In the 1990s and early 2000s the Central Juma Mosque — the largest in Dagestan — was built. New higher-education institutes and business districts opened, and the promenade and the city beach were reconstructed. In the early 2000s Makhachkala won the all-Russian “Most Well-Maintained City of Russia” competition three times. In the 2010s the appearance of the center was transformed: a pedestrian zone appeared on Rasul Gamzatov Avenue, and the Rodopsky Boulevard and the park zone by Lake Ak-Gol were renewed.

Today Makhachkala is the largest city of the North Caucasus Federal District, with a population of more than 660,000. The capital of Dagestan has turned into an important transport hub with an international airport, a commercial port, and a railway station. Over a century and a half, the city has come a long way from a small seaside fortification to a modern metropolis, where mosques and Orthodox cathedrals, national theaters and bustling markets, Soviet microdistricts and renewed seaside promenades stand side by side. The link between the eras has not been broken: the Tarki-Tau plateau still rises above the southern outskirts, and the name of Makhach Dakhadaev on the city map recalls the turning-point year of 1921, when Port-Petrovsk became the capital of Soviet Dagestan.