History of Voronezh

The history of Voronezh is traditionally counted from 1585, when Tsar Feodor Ioannovich ordered the construction of a wooden fortress on the high right bank of the river of the same name. The main works, led by voivodes Semyon Saburov and Vladimir Birkin, were completed by 1586 — this is the year the city officially considers as its birthdate. That said, records in the Razryad Prikaz attest that life here was already bustling before the fortress walls appeared. The new stronghold became an important outpost on the southern frontiers of the Russian state, shielding the road to Ryazan and Moscow from the raids of the Nogais and Crimean Tatars who moved along the Nogai Trail.

The origin of the city’s name is still a matter of debate. The most popular version links it to the Old Russian name Voroneg: the toponym is thought to have been brought to the Don by settlers from the Principality of Chernigov as early as the 11th–12th centuries. Folk legends about “the raven and the hedgehog” are merely a pretty tale with no scientific basis. There are also hypotheses connecting the name to the color of the water in forest rivers, similar in sound to the word “voronoy” (raven-black). Either way, by the 16th century the name had firmly attached itself to the river, the fortress and, later, the entire uyezd.

From border fortress to trading town

For its first decades Voronezh lived to the rhythm of the borderland: watches, reconnaissance across the steppe, receiving fugitives and meeting Don Cossacks who delivered salt and fish. Sloboda settlements of servicemen — streltsy, cannoneers and boyar children — grew up around the fortress. Even the fire of 1590, set by Cherkasy raiders, did not break the settlement: the fortress was rebuilt in the shortest possible time.

By the middle of the 17th century, with the construction of the Belgorod Defensive Line, the southern frontier moved farther away, and Voronezh lost its status as a purely military outpost. In return, it swiftly turned into a trading hub: along the Don stretched strugi loaded with grain, timber and fish, bound for the Cossack towns and further on — to the Sea of Azov.

By the end of the 17th century the city had become a notable settlement with a population of several thousand. Its appearance was defined by wooden walls, the gostiny dvor, the prikaz office and the monasteries — Uspensky and Alekseyevo-Akatov. The local posad prospered: smiths, carpenters, saddlers and rope-makers supplied both townspeople and visiting merchants with their goods. It was precisely this developed infrastructure — shipyards, proximity to forest tracts and shipbuilding experience — that predetermined the fate of Voronezh and made it the main protagonist of the next, Petrine era.

Peter I and the birth of the regular fleet

In 1695 Peter I’s first Azov campaign failed: without a fleet, the Russian army could not cut off the Turkish fortress from the sea. The Tsar then decided to build ships deep inside the country, on a tributary of the Don. That was how the choice fell on Voronezh. In February 1696 Peter came to the city for the first time and personally led the work. Over a few winter months, more than five hundred strugi, dozens of seagoing boats and rafts were assembled at the Voronezh shipyards, and by spring the first galleys were launched. In July of that same year Azov was taken: the Russian fleet blockaded the fortress from the sea, and the Turks had to surrender.

It was from this moment that Voronezh received the title of the cradle of the Russian regular navy. In 1698–1700 the first Russian ship of the line, “Goto Predestinatsia”, was built here, designed by the Tsar himself and constructed without the help of foreign shipwrights. Peter visited Voronezh more than a dozen times, lived for long stretches in the German Quarter on the left bank, and kept the admiralty, rope and sail yards, as well as foundries here. Over two decades the Voronezh shipyards launched around two hundred warships, and foreign engineers, doctors, apothecaries and the first arithmetic school appeared in the city.

The era of the Voronezh fleet ended after the Pruth campaign of 1711: under the terms of the peace treaty Russia lost Azov, and maintaining a fleet on the Don lost its strategic sense. In 1723 the admiralty was moved to Tavrov and later closed altogether. Yet Voronezh forever preserved the memory of the “carpenter-tsar”: in the look of the old center, in the Petrine churches and in the legends about the ruler who worked in the smithy alongside the craftsmen.

Provincial capital of the 18th–19th centuries

In 1725, during a new reshaping of Russia’s administrative map, the independent Voronezh Governorate was separated out from the Azov Governorate. Its center became Voronezh. From that moment the city turned into the main administrative, judicial and spiritual hub of a vast region — from Tambov to the Don.

In the Catherinian era a regular development plan was approved for Voronezh. Straight streets, stone government buildings, trading rows, a gymnasium and a seminary appeared. By the end of the 18th century the city already had leather, cloth and candle manufactories in operation, and a large port worked on the river.

The 19th century was for Voronezh a time of calm but steady growth. In 1802 the boys’ gymnasium opened, in 1845 — the Mikhailovsky Cadet Corps, in 1861 — the Mariinsky Girls’ Gymnasium. The first public library, the provincial printing house and a permanent theater appeared.

In 1868 the railway reached the city from Kozlov (present-day Michurinsk), in 1871 it was extended to Rostov-on-Don, and in 1894 a link with Kursk opened. The black-earth region gained a direct outlet to the Baltic and Black seas. Voronezh quickly turned into one of the largest grain hubs in Russia.

The Voronezh Railway Workshops appeared in the city, as did the Stoll and Richard-Pohle mechanical plants, elevators, steam mills and oil presses. The population, which in the middle of the century had barely exceeded 40,000, had grown to 84,000 by 1897.

Many literary names are linked to Voronezh. The poet Alexei Koltsov was born and spent his youth here. Ivan Nikitin lived and studied here. In 1870 Ivan Bunin — the future first Russian Nobel laureate in literature — was born in Voronezh. In 1934–1937 Osip Mandelstam was in the city as an exile. It was here that his “Voronezh Notebooks” were created — one of the most piercing and powerful poetic testimonies of its era.

Revolution, constructivism and the pre-war years

Voronezh met the revolution as a major railway junction with working-class outskirts. Soviet power was established here at the end of October, but the Civil War brought the city considerable upheaval: it changed hands twice. In the autumn of 1919 Voronezh was occupied by the corps of Mamontov and Shkuro, but on 24 October Budyonny’s Red cavalry drove the Whites out of the city. This victory became one of the key points in the campaign to the south.

In the 1920s–1930s Voronezh experienced an industrial surge. Industrial giants grew up in the city: the Comintern plant, “Elektrosignal”, the aviation plant and the SK-2 synthetic rubber plant — one of the first in the world, which put out its production in October 1932. In parallel the city center was transformed: in the spirit of constructivism the Dom Knigi, the building of the South-Eastern Railway administration, the famous “Utyuzhok” and the “concertina house” on Karl Marx Street were erected.

A landmark event for the whole country was 1930: the first mass parachute drop in the USSR took place in the outskirts of Voronezh, giving rise to the airborne troops. By 1939 the city’s population had grown to 344,000.

212 days of war and postwar reconstruction

In the summer of 1942 the front line was shifting rapidly to the southeast. On 7 July German troops broke into the right-bank part of Voronezh, but they failed to take the city as a whole: Soviet units dug in on the left bank and held a bridgehead on the right, including the area of the agricultural institute. The front line ran right through the city streets, factory workshops and the river’s surface. Street fighting stretched over 212 days — a rare case in the history of the war when a major regional center was literally cut in half by a line of trenches.

On 25 January 1943, in the course of the Voronezh–Kastornoye operation, the troops of the Voronezh Front completely cleared the city of German, Hungarian and Italian units. The price of victory was terrible: 92% of the buildings lay in ruins, and of twenty thousand residential houses fewer than two thousand survived. Voronezh was included among the twelve most damaged cities of Europe and the fifteen cities of the USSR requiring top-priority reconstruction. A large-scale reconstruction program, launched by a Sovnarkom decree in November 1945, became a second birth for the city.

Over the postwar decade Voronezh was effectively rebuilt from scratch. Reconstruction went not along a temporary scheme but in a solid way: architects managed to restore the pre-war look of the facades while simultaneously reviving the plants and laying out new arterial roads. By the end of the 1950s the rubber combine was up and running, the aviation plant switched to producing civilian and military transport equipment, and the excavator plant became one of the largest in the country. In 1972, after the construction of a dam near the village of Shilovo, the Voronezh Reservoir spilled out — the largest artificial body of water in the Chernozem region, forever changing the city’s appearance.

The city grew and acquired new symbols. In 1961 the theater of opera and ballet opened on Lenin Square, and in 1972 — a permanent circus with two thousand seats. In 1998 a bronze White Bim appeared by the “Shut” puppet theater — a monument to the hero of the novella by Voronezh writer Gavriil Troepolsky, which became one of the city’s most recognizable sculptures. By 1989 the population of Voronezh had exceeded 887,000, and in 2012 it officially became the fifteenth city in Russia with a population of over a million.

In 1996, for the 300th anniversary of the Russian navy, Admiralty Square and the Rostral Column appeared on the shore of the reservoir. In 2008, for the heroic defense of 1942–1943, the city was awarded the honorary title of “City of Military Glory”. In 2009 the Annunciation Cathedral rose above the city — one of the tallest Orthodox churches in the country, and in 2014, by Admiralty Square, a historical replica of the ship “Goto Predestinatsia” was moored for eternal harbor, closing the storyline begun by Peter I three centuries earlier.

Today’s Voronezh is the administrative center of the Chernozem region, a major educational, industrial and logistics hub on the M-4 “Don” highway. The naval bearing of the Petrine era, the merchant steadiness, the constructivist audacity of the twenties, the scars of forty-two and Soviet industrial might have all woven themselves together here into a complex, multi-layered urban landscape that draws travelers with its unique atmosphere.