History

Between the founding of the city and 1932 the site had grown from a few hundred to 250,000, many of whom were still living in the same barracks designed in 1929, though in much more crowded conditions. Many of the incoming workers were housed in Tent cities. Many of the old people in Magnitogorsk still remember winters endured in the tents, where gusts of wind would rip off the canvas and the unlucky residents would have to squeeze in with another group of workers. Many of these new workers were peasants from the surounging area who had been kicked off of their farms in the de-kulakizationand collectivisation movements. Many others were recruited from cities in the west part of the country and still others were regarded as state criminals. This group of people together worked many long years in substandard conditions for low wages and a place to stay. The only thing certain in Magnitogorsk was the employment, backbreaking but guranteed. The government has readily recognised the importance of the pioneers in building the city and has produced a wealth of architecture and rhetoric to extoll their success. A good current example is this large monument entitled "Palatka" which means tent. This monument commemorates the efforts of the construction workers who built the city.

Even after the housing projects had begun developing and the workers could be assured of some permanent shelter, the city remained at the mercy of long range rail lines. This proved to be extremely cumbersome because of the condition of the rails. The railroad was, like much of the rest of the country's infrastructure, built with the utmost speed, while neglecting some of the critical features of safety and reliability. The railroad to Magnitogorsk was built without reinforcement, and therefore could not withstand the forces of trains moving at much more than 10 kph. This proved a problem as the Ural mountains in which the city is located have poor soils and an extremely short growing season. There is also no natural fuel for the cooking fires or for the steel plant, all fuel must be imported via those same railroads. Coal had to be shipped in by train from nearly 2000 kilometers away in Siberia. While the quality and reliability of the rails have been significantly improved, the problem of separation from resources is even more of a problem in Magnitogorsk now that the local iron deposit has run out. This situation has combined to make Magnitogorsk one of the most import dependant cities in the Russia. Though it may seem that the city never should have been built, the oddity of this situation can be explained thusly: Stalin didn't want Russia's primary steel plant accessable to advancing armies from the west. It was therfefore worthwhile to have the plant off behind the Urals. Secondly, the low mountains near the Magnitogorsk site boasted some of the richest and most accessable deposits of iron ore in Russia. This deposit was found to contain at least 228 million tons of iron ore, of which, much was 50%- 60% iron. Here is a picture of the now exhausted mine.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Construction of the steel mill commenced before any other measures were taken to provide workers with adequate housing or medical facilities. As with many projects of the Stalin era, progress was measured only in completion of the plan.

During the first phase of construction as many as 250,000 skilled and unskilled workers participated in the construction of the Magnitogorsk Steel Works, a process that took nearly 10 years to complete. Much of the construction was done under extremely adverse conditions, winters in Magnitogorsk often have temperatures dipping to -40 degrees Celsius and summers where the air temperature exceeds 40 degrees C. This combined for very difficult conditions, particularly with the housing situation, which was far from ideal. Below we see a brigade of workers digging the foundations for blast furnace No. 1 without the aid of modern industrial equipment.
 
 

Despite all of the struggle, the plant progressed at a rapid pace. The first batches of steel were smelted in 1932 and things progressed rapidly from that point on. By 1937 the steel mill was nearly complete and foreigners, were kicked out of the city for good. During the construction phase, many foreign workers had applied their knowledge and enthusiasm for the Socialist ideals of the time period, but as Stalin decreed an ever increasing level of security for the USSR's manufacturing and production sectors, the foreign workers were by and large expatriated.

World War II was the time when the city of Magnitogorsk came into its own. During the war the city underwent a boom in population and activity.The resource-strapped Soviet Army needed steel to produce its military apparatus, and to this task the Magnitogorsk Steel Works set itself. It is said that fully half of all of the steel that went into the making of Soviet tanks during the years of the war was produced at the Magnitogorsk mills. This heroic effort on the part of the Magnitogorsk steel workers is commemorated in typical Soviet style with a tremendous statue depicting the laborer of the city handing a newly forged swoard with which to slay the enemy to the Soviet soldier.

Since WWII Magnitogorsk has undergone a prolonged period of stagnation. It is also hard to get a picture of Magnitogorsk in these years because the city was officially closed in 1937 and opened only in 1989. Other difficulties in determining the actual history because the media apparatus was run entirely by the central government or by the factory soviet. The town really did not undergo major change in the years following WWII. There has been virtually no population growth since the end of steel mill expansion in the 1960's, but the middle years of Soviet rule brought a regularization to the city. The factory soviet under Khruschev and Brezhnev continued building apartment complexes in the typical socialist style, in an attempt to meet the chronically short housing demand that was present from the first days of the city. Along with these housing districts, or microroyans, city infrastructure has been strengthened somewhat, with two more bridges over the lake and more road construction. There has also been the addition of some consumer goods factories in the city. In the industrial secion of the city, near the site of the steel mill there are factories that produceOther than these improvements, the city has stayed very much the same. There was little emphasis in the soviet system for improvements in the technology in the steel millor any other technological or consumer interest. It is just this sort of stagnation, characterized by lack of consumer goods, unimproving conditions and tremendous amounts of red tape, that characterize Magnitogorsk as a typical Soviet city.