A small city in the Ulyanovsk region did not escape the fate of renaming, according to Soviet tradition. In 1972, Melekessians became Dimitrovgrad residents. The population of Dimitrovgrad in recent decades is constantly decreasing, which is associated with not the best state of the urban economy.
General information
The city is the administrative center of the eponymous urban district and Melekessky district of the Ulyanovsk region. Located on the left bank of the Kuibyshev reservoir near the confluence of the Bolshoy Cheremshan River. At a distance of 85 km is the regional center, the nearest cities of the neighboring Samara region: about 160 km to Samara, 100 km to Togliatti. It covers an area of about 4150 ha. The population of Dimitrovgrad in 2016 was 116, 678 people.
The historical name is Melekess. It was renamed in connection with the 90th anniversary of the Bulgarian anti-fascist and activist Georgi Dimitrov.
The Government of Russia is recognized as a single-industry town with a very difficult socio-economic situation. In the urban district there are about 40 industrial enterprises representing various industries, including engineering, construction.
Geographic information
It is located in the left-bank part (Zavolzhye) of the Ulyanovsk Region in the middle Volga region, not far from the confluence of the Bolshoi Cheremshan and Melekessk rivers in the Kuibyshev reservoir. Fluctuations in the terrain are insignificant within 50-100 meters above sea level.
During the development of the western areas of the city in the middle of the twentieth century, large tracts of forests with pine forests and mixed forests were preserved. Therefore, the population of Dimitrovgrad often calls this western part "a city in the forest." The ecological situation in the region is determined by the key elements of the natural landscape - large bodies of water (reservoir and rivers), large forests in the urban area and large tracts with park areas.
Ancient history
The settlement of the territory of the modern city, between the Volga and Cheremshan, began in the second half of the 17th century. Under the Russian tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, the construction of a fortified line was begun here to protect the nomadic Kalmyks, Kyrgyz and Bashkirs from raids. In 1656, peasant families were forcibly relocated to these places from the Yelabuga district of the Vyatka province, including from the small Tatar settlement Melekes. In memory of their native places, the river and the new village of Melekess were named, however, according to the fashion of those times, they added another letter “c”.
The exact date of the founding of the city could not be established, therefore, 1698 was adopted for this date, when the village of Yasak Chuvash was built. The first written mention dates back to 1706, it contains a record of the participation of local peasants in public work on surveying the volost. There is no data on how many people lived in Dimitrovgrad of those times. But all people were the property of the royal family. The main occupation of the inhabitants was agriculture, cattle breeding, fishing and hunting.
Pre-revolutionary city
By 1890, Melekess became a developed industrial city, in which 18 factories and factories worked, including brewing, leather, potash, soap factories. According to the All-Russian Population Census, 8, 500 people of various classes lived in the village.
In subsequent years, urban industry and trade developed successfully, by 1910 the turnover reached 2-3 million rubles. The population of Dimitrovgrad / Melekess was 9878 people, 88% of whom were Russians. About 1, 500 wooden and 500 stone houses were built in the settlement. According to the latest data from the tsarist period of 1915, about 16, 000 people lived in the city.
Soviet period
During the years of Soviet industrialization, there was a rapid increase in the number of Melekess inhabitants, mainly due to the influx of peasants from the surrounding villages who came to work at industrial enterprises. From 1931 to 1939, the population of Dimitrovgrad / Melekess grew from 18, 900 to 32, 485 people. During the war years, 6, 000 evacuated people lived in the city. A knitwear factory named after Klara Zetkin was transported from Vitebsk, which continued to work in the city after the war.
In 1956, construction began on a complex of a research institute of the nuclear industry and a residential town for its employees, currently the Western region. By 1967, the number of inhabitants grew to 75, 000. In the following Soviet years, the modern appearance of the main areas (Western, Pervomaysky and Central) was finally formed after the transfer of the factory to them. K. Zetkin. In the last year of Soviet rule, the population of Dimitrovgrad was 127, 000.
