Ufa is the capital and largest city of Bashkortostan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Belaya and Ufa rivers, in the centre-north of Bashkortostan, on hills forming the Ufa Plateau to the west of the southern Ural Mountains, with a population of over 1.1 million residents, up to 1.4 million residents in the urban agglomeration. Ufa is the tenth-most populous city in Russia, and the fourth-most populous city in the Volga Federal District.
The city was founded in 1574, when a fortress was built on the site by the order of Ivan the Terrible. Ufa was made capital of Ufa Governorate in 1865 when the governorate split from Orenburg Governorate. Ufa's population expanded during the early 20th century.
Ufa's economy consists primarily of the oil refining, chemistry, and mechanical engineering industries; the petroleum company Bashneft and several of its subsidiaries are headquartered in Ufa. Ufa is an ethnically diverse city, home to a substantial number of ethnic Bashkirs and Tatars, with an ethnic Russian majority population. Several educational institutions are located in Ufa, including Bashkir State University, Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa State Petroleum Technological University, and Ural State Law University. The city hosted separate summits of the BRICS group as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2015.
Etymology The name Ufa comes from the Ufa River on which the city lies, but the origin of the river's name is disputed. The Russian linguist Aleksandr Matveyev proposed that the name is of Iranian origin, from "ap", meaning water.
In a paper published in 2014, researchers Karimov and Khabibov from Bashkir State Pedagogical University present and argue for a hypothesis according to which before the construction of the foundational Russian fortress in 1574, which has since grown to become the current city of Ufa, there had already been an ancient settlement called Ufa on a hilltop near the mouth of the Ufa River. According to them, this settlement was founded by Turkic-speaking tribes to perform rituals and sacrifices to the sky god Tengri, and they called this place Upe or Ufe because, they argue, in ancient Turkic languages a place of ritual sacrifice used to be called an "opo" or an "ope." They further hypothesize that the inhabitants of the settlement themselves also came to be called the Upe or Ufe tribe and subsequently, the river along which they flourished and expanded their settlement towards its source also came to be called Ufa. Karimov and Khabibov claim that the Russian fortress builders were probably aware of this ancient name and consequently named their new settlement Ufa.
It is colloquially called the City of Three Screws, due to the unusual nature of city's name in Bashkir.
History
Early history of the surrounding area of Ufa dates back to Paleolithic times. Presumably, from the 5th to 16th centuries there was a medieval city on the site of Ufa.Псянчин А. В. Башкортостан на старых картах. Уфа, 2001. С 70, 71, Он же. Mons Et Urbis: Уральские горы и город Уфа в европейской средневековой картографической традиции//Архив Башкортостана, № 1. 2007. С. 17–23. On the Pizzigano brothers' map (1367),Рудаков В. Г. К вопросу о двух столицах в Золотой Орде и местоположении города Гюлистана // Научное наследие А. П. Смирнова и современные проблемы археологии Волго-Камья. Материалы научной конференции. Труды ГИМ. Вып. 122. — М., 2000. — Рис. 1. and on the Catalan Atlas (1375),Там же; Псянчин А. В. Башкортостан на старых картах. — Уфа, 2001. — С. 71. a town approximately on the Belaya River was designated as Pascherti (Bashkort),Мажитов Н.А,, Султанова А. Н. Сунгатов Ф. А. Башкирские города по арабским источникам IX—X вв. // Вестник АН РБ. 2008. Т. 13, № 2. С. 44-—48; Мажитов Н. А., Сунгатов Ф. А., Иванов В. А., Сатаров Т. Р., Султанова А. Н., Иванова Е. В. Городище Уфа II. Материалы раскопок 2006 года. Т. 1. Уфа, 2007. 160 с: ил. and Gerardus Mercator's map (1554) also marked the settlement with the name Pascherti. French orientalist Henri Cordier associates the position of Pascherti with the current location of Ufa.«Mercator and Hondius (loth Ed., 1630) and N. Sanson (1650) show Jorman on the south of the Kama R., Pascherti in the position of Ufa, the present head-quarter of the Bashkirs, Sagatin ( = Fachatim of the text) at the head of the Ufa River, Marmorea on the Bielaya south of Ufa». — Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, Chʻeng-wen Publishing Company, 1967. Henri Cordier
Ibn Khaldun called the town, among the largest cities of the Golden Horde, Bashkort.Золотая Орда в источниках. T.I. Арабские и персидские сочинения. М., 2003. С 169.
Russian historian of the 18th century Peter Rychkov wrote that there was a great city on the territory of Ufa before the arrival of the Russians.Рычков П. И. История Оренбургская (1730—1750 гг.). Оренбург, 1896. С. 68,69.
The official of the Orenburg Governorate government Vasily Rebelensky wrote that Ufa was founded by the Bashkirs.«Краткое описание губернского города Уфы с начала его построения до сего 1806 года». // Что ж касается башкирцев, то видно из многих описаний, как сего народа, так и о жительстве их, кои от различных возмущений, как и междоусобных воин, так и соседних своих народов, строили маленькие укрепления и городки и наконец, соединясь во множестве, распространили свои жилища и укрепления, а для сей причины и город Уфа построен.
By order of Ivan the Terrible, a fortress was built on the site of modern Ufa in 1574, and originally bore the name of the hill it stood on, Tura-Tau. 1574 is now considered to be the official date of Ufa's foundation.Official website of Ufa. Brief Information About Ufa Town status was granted to it in 1586.
Before becoming the seat of a separate Ufa Governorate in 1781, the city, along with the rest of the Bashkir lands, was under the jurisdiction of the Orenburg governors. And even though the 1796 reform reunited Orenburg and Ufa again, in 1802, the city of Ufa became a new center of the entire Orenburg Governorate that included large territories of modern-day Republic of Bashkortostan, Orenburg Oblast, and Chelyabinsk Oblast.
Monuments were erected in two of the city's graveyards to commemorate those shot and buried in the 1930s, during and before the Great Terror.
The Belaya River Waterway (1870) and the Samara-Zlatoust Railroad (1890) connected the city to the European part of the Russian Empire and stimulated the development of the city's light industry. During World War II, following eastward Soviet retreat in 1941, the Abwehr operated in Ufa, 1941–1943, some German infiltration, occurred 1914–1943 in espionage, many industrial enterprises of the western parts of the Soviet Union were evacuated to Ufa. On 4 June 1989, the Ufa train disaster occurred about 75 kilometers away from the city when a pipeline leak released gas near a railway line. When two trains approached, the sparks from the brakes of one train ignited the gas, causing an explosion which killed 575 people.
Administrative and municipal status Ufa is the capital of the republicLaw #166-z and, within the framework of the administrative divisions, it also serves as the administrative center of Ufimsky District, even though it is not a part of it.Resolution #391 As an administrative center, it is, together with twenty-four rural localities, incorporated separately as the city of republic significance of Ufa, an administrative unit with status equal to that of the districts, and is likewise home to a unit of Russia's Central Military District; the 12th Separate Guards Engineer Brigade. As a municipal division, the city of republic significance of Ufa is incorporated as Ufa Urban Okrug.Law #162-z
Administrative districts
Ufa is divided into .
No.DistrictPopulation as of January 1, 20201 80,7142 207,7503 162,9584 89,0625 246,4766 164,6827 177,145
Economy According to Forbes, in 2013, Ufa was the best city in Russia for business among cities with a population of over one million.30 лучших городов для бизнеса — 2013 // Forbes.ru
Many urban enterprises engaged in oil refining, chemistry, and mechanical engineering reside in Ufa. Additionally, the economy of Ufa is composed of many fuel, energy, and engineering complexes.
Ufa is home to about 200 large and medium industrial enterprises.
Some important enterprises in Ufa include:
Ufa Engine-Building Production Association: subsidiary of UEC Saturn (gas turbine engines) Ufimsky petrochemical Plant (subsidiary of Bashneft) Novo-Ufimsky refinery plant (subsidiary of Bashneft) Ufimsky refinery plant (subsidiary of Bashneft) Bashkir Trolleybus Manufacturing Plant JSC: trolley manufacturer
Transportation Ufa Station is linked to the rest of Russia, being on a historic branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Ufa is the only city connected to Moscow by more than one federal highway. The M7 motorway links the city to Kazan and Moscow and the M5 motorway links Ufa to Moscow and to the Asian part of Russia.
The Ufa International Airport has international flights to Turkey, Tajikistan, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Cyprus as well as domestic flights to many Russian cities and towns, including Moscow.
The Ufa Metro is a planned and oft-delayed subway system, discussed since the late 1980s. On May 30, 1996, there was a ceremony marking the beginning of preparatory construction work, attended by then-President Boris Yeltsin.Yeltsin lays cornerstone of first subway station , accessed June 6, 2013
Public transportation in Ufa includes trams (since 1937) and trolleybuses (since 1962), as well as bus and marshrutka (routed cabs) lines.
Demographics
The population of Ufa exceeded one million in 1980. It ranks 10th among Russian cities by population, and the 26th among cities in Europe by city proper. As of January 1, 2009, the city accounted for 25.4% of all residents of the republic or 42.2% of the urban population.
As of the 2021 Census, the ethnic composition of Ufa was:
Ethnicity Number Percentage Russians 557,492 48.9% Tatars 308,381 27.0% Bashkirs 233,128 20.4% Others 41,618 3.6%
Geography Ufa is situated in Eastern Europe near its land boundary with Northern Asia, at the confluence of the Belaya (Agidel) and Ufa Rivers, on low hills forming the Ufa Plateau to the west of the southern Urals. The area of the city is .Official website of Ufa. Land Utilization It stretches from north to south for and from west to east for .
Climate Ufa has a warm summer continental climate (Köppen: Dfb). Ufa's climate is characterized by harsh winters, but in some cases, summers can be quite long and hot. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Ufa was −48.5 °C (−55.3 °F) on January 1, 1979. The highest temperature ever recorded was 39.4 °C (102.9 °F) on July 10, 2023.
Ecological problems Periodically, a suffocating, unpleasant chemical odor can be smelled in the Ufa region. The media reports about the smell come out with an impressive regularity. Not all these reports are groundless, and the culprits are getting out of responsibility due to the fact that there is no Continuous Emission Control System (CEMS) in the city.
There are no street vacuum cleaners, road vacuum sweepers, or industrial (street) vacuum cleaners on the streets. Unfortunately, there is a complete lack of sanitation services in the city.