History of Tula

Tula stands on the Upa River, at the boundary between the forest and steppe belts of the East European Plain — along the invisible line that for centuries separated the Russian principalities from the Wild Field. This location shaped the city’s story: first a border fortress, then an arms-making forge, and finally a provincial capital and industrial hub.

Tula’s first mention in the chronicles is traditionally dated to 1146. The date comes from the Nikon Chronicle, compiled in the 16th century, and is enshrined in the city’s official reckoning of its age. That said, some historians consider the entry a later insertion. They prefer to rely on a more reliable document — the treaty charter of 1381 between Dmitry Donskoy and the Ryazan prince Oleg Ivanovich, in which Tula is mentioned as an already established city.

The name of the city’s founder has not survived, and the name itself, according to Vladimir Dal’s widely cited version, derives from the Old Russian word “zatulye” — a hidden, sheltered place, one “behind the palisade.” Other researchers link the toponym to the Tulitsa River, a tributary that flows into the Upa north of the historic center.

From a Ryazan borderland to a Muscovite frontier

In the 12th–15th centuries, Tula was a remote outpost that changed hands several times: first it lay under the authority of Chernigov, then of Ryazan. The route of Horde armies ran through these lands; it was here in 1382 that the forces of Tokhtamysh passed on their way to Moscow. The constant threat of raids dictated the rhythm of life: the town would be rebuilt, burn down, and change masters. Tula’s fate was settled once and for all in 1503, when under Ivan III it joined the Muscovite state. The city remained a border town, but now it became Moscow’s “shield,” taking the brunt of attacks from the Crimean Khanate.

The Kremlin, the Great Abatis Line, and the Time of Troubles

The first serious fortification on the site of the future Tula appeared in 1509: by decree of Vasily III, a wooden ostrog was raised in a bend of the Upa River. Five years later, in 1514, work began here on a stone fortress — the Tula Kremlin — completed by 1520. The Kremlin turned out to be atypical: unlike most Russian fortresses, it was built not on a natural rise but on low ground, right by the water. The choice was dictated by the calculation that the river and marshy floodplain would provide defense, as well as by the convenience of mustering troops before setting out “into the field.” Inside the Kremlin were the garrison, government offices, and cathedrals, while the posad quickly spread out beyond its walls.

The Tula Kremlin became the southern keystone of a unified defensive system — the Great Abatis Line, which stretched from the forests of Bryansk to the wooded tracts of Meshchera. Construction began in the 1530s and continued under Ivan the Terrible. The Abatis Line consisted of belts of felled and interwoven timber — “zaseki” — earthen ramparts, wooden forts, and watchtowers. Tula was its headquarters. In 1552 the city withstood a siege by the forces of the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray, who was trying to disrupt Ivan IV’s campaign against Kazan. In the second half of the century, the khan’s detachments approached the walls of Tula more than once. Only by the mid-17th century, after the construction of the Belgorod Line farther south, did Tula move back from the front line of defense.

At the beginning of the 17th century, during the Time of Troubles, Tula was already a notable political actor. In 1605 the city briefly became the de facto capital of False Dmitry I: the impostor lingered here on his way to Moscow, receiving delegations of boyars and representatives of other towns. Even more significant, however, was the uprising of Ivan Bolotnikov. In the summer of 1607, the retreating rebels shut themselves inside the Tula Kremlin. The tsarist forces of Vasily Shuisky besieged the city for four months and eventually took it with the help of water: they dammed the Upa River, causing the water to rise and flood the cellars where supplies were kept. Bolotnikov was handed over, taken north, and drowned in Kargopol. Tula emerged from the Time of Troubles heavily ravaged but with a strengthened reputation as a stronghold of the Muscovite crown.

Peter I, the Demidovs, and the arms-making capital

The 17th century was for Tula a time of recovery and the flourishing of the metalworking craft. Whole neighborhoods of blacksmiths, founders, and locksmiths took shape in the posad. As early as 1595, by decree of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, several dozen master craftsmen of the “samopal trade” were resettled here, and by the middle of the century Tula muskets were being supplied to the sovereign’s Cannon Chancellery. During the same period, an industrial breakthrough began on the Tulitsa River: the Dutch merchant Andries Vinius received a charter from Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich to build factories. By 1637 the Gorodishche works were up and running here — the first blast-furnace manufactories in Russia and the prototype of the future Urals industry.

Peter I cemented Tula’s special role. The young tsar visited the city on numerous occasions and, at the turn of the century, took notice of a talented blacksmith, Nikita Demidov. Having received state contracts for the production of weapons, Demidov soon became the owner of the Urals ironworks, founding a dynasty of the empire’s greatest industrialists. In 1712, by decree of Peter, the first state-owned arms factory in Russia was established in Tula, working for the needs of the regular army.

From that moment on, an artisan settlement was transformed into a powerful industrial center: it produced muskets, pistols, and bayonets, and later revolvers and machine guns. The arms trade gave impetus to related crafts: by the end of the 18th century, Tula was famous not only for its muskets, but also for copper samovars, and from the 1770s onward for its celebrated printed gingerbread. These three crafts became the city’s calling card for good.

A provincial capital and the 19th century

Tula acquired its administrative status under Catherine II: in 1777 the Tula Vicegerency was established, with the city at its center. On December 12, 1796, Paul I reorganized it into the Tula Governorate, and it existed within those borders until the administrative reform of 1929. The 19th century turned Tula into one of the key industrial hubs of Central Russia. The arms factory was modernized, private manufactories multiplied around it, and in the second half of the century the city was linked to both capitals and to the Volga region by the Moscow–Kursk (1867) and Syzran–Vyazma (1874) railways. By the end of the century the population of Tula had reached 115,000 — an impressive figure for a provincial city of the era.

The cultural legacy of the period is no less remarkable than the industrial one. The Tula Governorate is the homeland of Leo Tolstoy, whose estate Yasnaya Polyana lies fourteen kilometers south of the city, and to which the writer returned throughout his life. The prose writer Gleb Uspensky was born in Tula itself, and at the arms factory the designer Sergei Mosin worked for decades; his rifle of the 1891 model remained in service with the Russian and Soviet armies for more than half a century. The urban environment was also transformed: a garden was laid out at the walls of the Kremlin, and on the site of former dumping grounds the sanitary physician Pyotr Belousov founded the Central Park, which today bears his name.

The 20th century: the defense of 1941 and the title of Hero City

Tula lived through the Revolution and the Civil War without major battles, remaining an arms base for the Red Army. The real test came in the autumn of 1941. At the end of October, Heinz Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Army reached the southern outskirts of the city and launched an assault. The defense was held by units of the 50th Army and the Tula Workers’ Regiment, formed from militia volunteers — gunsmiths, metalworkers, and railwaymen. For more than forty days, from October 24 to December 5, German forces tried in vain to take the city. The failure to outflank Moscow from the south became one of the decisive factors that ensured the success of the winter counteroffensive. For the courage of its defenders, Tula was awarded the Order of Lenin, and in 1976 it received the title of “Hero City” — the only one in Central Russia outside the capital.

The postwar decades passed in an industrial vein: the arms, machine-building, combine, and cartridge factories were in operation, and by the 1980s the city’s population had exceeded half a million people. Despite the downturn of the 1990s, the arms-making core survived: the Instrument Design Bureau named after Academician A. G. Shipunov is to this day a world leader in the development of precision-guided weapons.

Since the mid-2010s, the city has been going through a new wave of development — this time an urbanist one. The Kazanskaya Embankment along the Upa has been rebuilt, Metallistov Street has been made pedestrian, and a creative cluster has opened in the workshops of the Oktava factory. The eight and a half centuries that have passed since the first chronicle mention in 1146 have come together as a single biography of a city — a fortress, a forge, and a provincial capital that has at last turned to face its people.