Kurgan is the administrative center of the Kurgan region, a territorially inhabited locality located on the banks of the Tobol River in the Urals Federal District. The city has a long history, and in modern realities it does not differ at all in the low standard of living of the population.
A brief history of the formation of urban agglomeration
In the second half of the seventeenth century, a peasant Timofey Onisimovich Nevezhin settled on the banks of the Tobol River, and other immigrants came after him. After a short period of time, a prison and a posad appeared. So the Tsarevo settlement was founded. The official date of the city settlement on the site of the modern Kurgan is currently considered to be 1679.
The settlement received its first name according to Tsarev Kurgan, which was discovered in the 20th century by the Ural archaeologist Konstantin Salnikov. Later, after moving downstream, the village was renamed Tsarekurgan settlement (Tsarevo-Kurgan), but the city was officially named Kurgan from the end of 1782.
The processes of the formation of the main urban infrastructure intensified in the first half of the nineteenth century. Then the first educational institution, a fire station, a hospital opened in the city. For some time, the village was used by the Soviet government as a place of exile, but by 1856 Kurgan had become a major center for trade and agriculture at that time, a children's shelter appeared in the city, a kind of hotel, an insurance company, a dining room for those in need, and a telephone line was built.
During the Great Patriotic War, several evacuated enterprises worked in the city, the population of Kurgan was replenished with 150 thousand evacuated citizens from the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSR. In the future, administrative reforms were carried out more than once, which also affected the population: in 1943, Kurgan became the regional center of the newly formed region, in 1944 several more adjoining areas were included in the settlement, and in 1962 it was developed and approved by the authorities city development plan, providing for the expansion of almost three hundred thousand inhabitants.
Today's population and other demographic indicators
The population of the mound is just over three hundred thousand people (according to 2016). According to the national composition of the city residents are divided as follows:
- Russians (almost 96%);
- Ukrainians (slightly less than 1%);
- Tatars (0.5%);
- Kazakhs (0.4%);
- other national groups (a little over 2%).
The population density in Kurgan is 827 people per square kilometer.
Population dynamics
The population of Kurgan as of 2016 was 325 thousand 189 people. After a brief improvement in the demographic situation, the birth rate again fell along with an increase in mortality rates per 1000 people. In 2014-2015, the population of the Kurgan, although very slightly, but increased. True, a slight improvement did not save the general demographic situation.
In general, the first statistics describing the population of the Mound date back to 1682. Then, only 200 people lived on the territory of the settlement. The population of Kurgan reached a thousand inhabitants by 1788, and by the beginning of the twentieth century there were already 10 thousand people. Negative indicators of the population in comparison with the previous reporting period were not observed either during the revolution or during the First and Second World Wars.
Stably negative dynamics (excluding 1997-1999) has been observed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even an active social policy, improving the quality of life of the population and the provision of jobs did not become the reasons for the change in the number of residents of the city in a big way. The only thing that pleases against the background of negative dynamics is the fact that the population of the city of Kurgan in quantitative terms is not decreasing as rapidly as in some other settlements. So the situation can still be corrected.
The main reasons for the negative dynamics of the population
The main reason that the population of the Kurgan continues to decline amid an active demographic policy and an improvement in the quality of life of the population is considered a powerful migration outflow. Many residents prefer the capital city or larger industrial centers to their hometown.
