History of Volgograd

Volgograd has lived for four and a half centuries under three names. Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad, Volgograd — each of them marks the turning of an era and an almost complete transformation of the city. It grew up from a wooden fort on the portage between the Volga and the Don, weathered Razin’s free-Cossack rising and the Pugachev revolt. By the end of the 19th century the city had become a major trade and industrial hub of the Russian Empire, was nearly wiped off the map by the war in 1942, and was rebuilt from scratch in the 1950s. The whole history of Volgograd is a chain of metamorphoses: from Cossack revolts and oil piers to industrial grandeur and the memorial status of a Hero City stretching for dozens of kilometres along the great river.

The Tsaritsyn fort: 1589 – 17th century

The official founding date of the Tsaritsyn fort is 12 July 1589. On that day Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich issued a charter to Grigory Zasekin, voivode of Kazan, to Roman Olferov and to Ivan Nashchekin ordering them “to build a fort on the portage.” Prince Grigory Osipovich Zasekin, a descendant of the Yaroslavl Rurikids, already had experience of building fortresses on the Volga: in 1586 he founded Samara, and later raised Saratov. Tsaritsyn became the third fortress in the chain that sealed off the southern Volga route.

The site for the fort was not chosen at random: here the Volga and the Don come closest to each other, and between them ran a narrow portage — an ancient route along which boats had been dragged for centuries. Whoever held the portage controlled both trade and raiding. The first fort was set up not on today’s bank but on an island opposite the mouth of the Tsaritsa, a small steppe river that gave the town its name. According to one theory the name “Tsaritsyn” comes from the Turkic “sary-su” — “yellow water”; according to another, from “sary-chin,” meaning “golden sand.”

Early Tsaritsyn was precisely a fortress, not a town. A streltsy garrison was quartered here, wooden walls stood around it, and the service guarded the Volga caravans from “outlaw Cossacks” and Nogai detachments. In 1608 the first stone church appeared inside the fort — the Church of St John the Forerunner. In the summer of 1670 the fort was taken by storm by the forces of Stepan Razin: the townspeople met the Cossacks with bread and salt, but the Razinites drowned the voivode Timofey Turgenev in the Volga. A few months later the ataman went upriver towards Simbirsk, where he was defeated, and soon tsarist troops recovered the town.

The century of revolts did not end there. In 1708 Tsaritsyn was seized by the detachments of Kondraty Bulavin — the garrison scattered, and the fortress was recovered only in July of that same year. In 1717 the town and the Volga settlements were plundered during a major raid by Kuban Nogais and Circassians. This “Kuban rout” entered local legend as one of the most terrible calamities of the era.

From border-guard line to trading city: 18th–19th centuries

The response of Peter I and his heirs to the threat from the steppe was the Tsaritsyn Guard Line — an earthen rampart about 60 versts long, stretching from the Volga to the Don. It was built between 1718 and 1720, reinforced with fortresses and outposts, and for a long time it shut the Lower Volga off from steppe raids. Thanks to this Tsaritsyn ceased to be only a fortress and gradually grew into a place ringed with suburbs, trading rows and salt warehouses.

In 1774 the town withstood the siege of Yemelyan Pugachev. The garrison successfully beat off the assault, which became one of the last defeats of the “peasants’ tsar” before his final rout at Chorny Yar. And earlier still, in 1765, thirty versts south of Tsaritsyn there appeared a unique island of European culture — a colony of Herrnhuters. German Protestant Moravians, invited from Saxony, founded Sarepta with its Kirche, apothecary, school and mustard factory. Later this settlement was absorbed into the city, becoming a monument of 18th-century German architecture on the Lower Volga.

The real turning point came in the second half of the 19th century, when the railway reached Tsaritsyn. In 1862 the Volga–Don line — the first railway of the region — went into service, joining the Volga and the Don across the very portage for the sake of which the fort had once been built. In 1870 traffic opened on the Gryazi–Tsaritsyn line, which linked the town with central Russia. By the end of the century the Nobel Brothers’ oil depot (1879) had appeared here, together with sawmills, flour mills and the Ural-Volga metallurgical works (the future “Krasny Oktyabr”).

By the beginning of the 20th century Tsaritsyn had turned from a provincial district town into one of the largest trade and industrial hubs of the Volga region. It was called the “Russian Chicago” for its frantic pace of development, its oil flows, the noise of its wharves and its artels many thousands strong. A symbol of the new era was the electric tram, which took to the city’s streets on 9 April 1913.

Stalingrad: revolution, industrialisation, battle

The First World War and the Civil War interrupted the city’s industrial growth. In 1918–1919 Tsaritsyn found itself at the centre of heavy fighting: the Red Army three times held the town against the Cossack corps of Ataman Krasnov and the Don Army. The defence of Tsaritsyn went down in history as one of the key operations of the Civil War, and for the political commissar Joseph Stalin these events became a defining moment in his biography. It is no surprise that on 10 April 1925 the city was renamed Stalingrad.

Rapid industrialisation soon followed. In 1930 the Stalingrad Tractor Plant (STZ) turned out the first Soviet tractor. In its wake the giants of industry went into operation: “Krasny Oktyabr,” “Barrikady” and StalGRES. The city stretched out along the Volga in a narrow strip of factories and workers’ settlements. This linear layout later predetermined both its wartime fate and the look of present-day Volgograd.

By the summer of 1942 Stalingrad had become the main objective of the German offensive towards the Caucasus. On 17 July, when the leading units of Army Group B clashed with Soviet troops in the great bend of the Don, the Battle of Stalingrad began. On 23 August the city lived through the most terrible date in its history: a massive bombing raid by the Luftwaffe’s 4th Air Fleet turned the centre into ruins within a few hours, taking the lives of tens of thousands of civilians. Street fighting continued deep into the autumn. Every workshop of every factory and every floor of every apartment house was turned into a fortress. The legendary “Pavlov’s House,” which a group under Sergeant Yakov Pavlov held for 58 days, became the symbol of that courage.

The turning point came on 19 November with the launch of Operation Uranus, in the course of which Soviet troops encircled the 6th Army of General Paulus. On 2 February 1943 the grouping surrendered. The battle, which lasted 200 days and nights, became the turning point of the Second World War. The city lay in ruins: more than 90% of its buildings were destroyed, and total losses on both sides, according to various estimates, ranged from one to one and a half million people.

The rebuilding of Volgograd

Already in 1943–1944 residents huddling in cellars and dugouts began returning to the ruined city. Reconstruction was carried out according to the “Simbirtsev Master Plan,” which turned the centre into a coherent ensemble of Stalinist architecture. The first to be reborn was Mira (“Peace”) Street (1945–1950): according to tradition, its name became a symbol of the return to peaceful life. It was followed by the Alley of Heroes, the Square of the Fallen Fighters and the embankment with its majestic propylaea. In 1952, in the Krasnoarmeysky district, the first lock of the Volga–Don Canal — a triumphal arch marking the fulfilment of Peter I’s dream of joining two seas — was ceremonially opened.

In 1961, on the wave of de-Stalinisation, the city changed its name. On 10 November, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, Stalingrad became Volgograd, taking its name from the river rather than from the leader. The new name did not take hold at once, and to this day it stirs debate: on days of remembrance — 2 February and 9 May — the city officially reclaims its historic name for a few hours.

The symbolic finale of the post-war era came on 15 October 1967 with the opening of the memorial complex on Mamayev Kurgan. The sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich raised above the Volga the 85-metre “Motherland Calls” — at that moment the tallest statue in the world. Ever since, the kurgan has remained the city’s chief site of memory: here the military oath is taken, flowers are laid and large-scale laser shows called “The Light of the Great Victory” are staged.

Volgograd today

In the 1970s and 1980s Volgograd continued to grow along the Volga. A landmark event was the opening on 5 November 1984 of the first line of the high-speed tram. Unique in Russia, the “metrotram” with its five underground stations — “Ploshchad Lenina,” “Komsomolskaya,” “Profsoyuznaya,” “TYuZ” and “Yelshanka” — became not only an important transport artery, linking the northern industrial districts with the centre and the south of the city, but also its calling card. By the 2018 FIFA World Cup the city’s appearance was transformed once again: at the foot of Mamayev Kurgan rose “Volgograd Arena,” and the 62nd Army Embankment was extended as far as the river station.

Today Volgograd is a city of over a million and the administrative centre of the region. Its main peculiarity is its extraordinary length: development stretches along the Volga for more than 60 kilometres. Volgograd is a living architectural collage: here surviving fragments of merchant Tsaritsyn stand alongside the Stalinist Empire style of Mira Street, the industrial outskirts of the 1930s and the memorial complex on Mamayev Kurgan. History here has not frozen into museums — it is woven into everyday life, from the names of avenues to the familiar routes of the metrotram.