History
Simbirsk was founded in 1648 by the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo. The fort of "Simbirsk" (alternatively "Sinbirsk") was strategically placed on a hill on the western bank of the Volga River. The fort was meant to protect the eastern frontier of the Tsardom of Russia from the nomadic tribes and to establish a permanent royal presence in the area.
In 1668, Simbirsk withstood a month-long siege by a 20,000-strong army led by rebel Cossack commander Stenka Razin. Also in Simbirsk another country rebel, Yemelyan Pugachev, was imprisoned before execution. At the time Simbirsk possessed a wooden kremlin, which was destroyed by a fire during the 18th century.
As the eastern border of the Russian Empire was rapidly pushed into Siberia, Simbirsk rapidly lost its strategic importance, but nonetheless began to develop into an important regional center. Simbirsk was granted city status in 1796.
Simbirsk was then considered an exclusive town favoured by the aristocracy, and besides its churches and a Governor's Place, included an Assembly of the Nobles, with a magnificent library. The Holy Trinity Cathedral was constructed in a restrained Neoclassical style between 1827 and 1841. In the summer of 1864, in what was believed an arson attack, Simbirsk was mostly destroyed by fire. However, it was quickly rebuilt and continued to grow. Its population, which was 26,000 in 1856, had reached 43,000 by 1897.
In 1924, the city was renamed Ulyanovsk in honor of Vladimir Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, who was born in Simbirsk in 1870. Two other Russian political leaders, Alexander Kerensky and Alexander Protopopov, were also born in Simbirsk.
The construction of the Kuybyshev hydroelectric plant (completed in 1957) 200 kilometers (120 mi) downstream of Ulyanovsk resulted in the flooding of significant tracts of land both north and south of Ulyanovsk and increasing the width of the Volga by up to 35 kilometers (22 mi) in some places. To this day, some populated neighborhoods of Ulyanovsk remain well below the level of the reservoir, protected from flooding by a dam: it is estimated that its catastrophic failure would submerge parts of the city comprising around 5% of its total population with as much as 10 meters (33 ft) of water.
During the Soviet period, Ulyanovsk was an important tourist center, drawing visitors from around the country because of its revolutionary importance.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the tourist importance of Ulyanovsk sharply decreased. In the 1990s, the city went through the hardest times—a slump in production in all branches, mass unemployment, and a population impoverishment. In the first decade of the 2000s the economy started to grow.
Ulyanovsk slowly recovered from these downturns into regional manufacturing, educational and transportation clusters.
