Ioshkar-Ola

Ioshkar-Ola:

see Yoshkar-OlaYoshkar-Ola
or Ioshkar-Ola
, city (1989 pop. 242,000), capital of Mari El, E central European Russia. Manufactures include pharmaceuticals and agricultural machinery. The city was founded in 1578 as a Russian outpost.
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, Russia.

Ioshkar-Ola

 

(Tsarevokokshaisk until 1919, Krasnokok-shaisk from 1919 to 1927), a city, the capital of Mari ASSR. Located 50 km north of the Volga, on its left tributary, the Malaia Kokshaga. The city has a railroad station on a branch of the Kazan-Moscow line, and it is a highway junction. Population, 180, 000 (1972; it was 1, 700 in 1897, 4, 300 in 1926, and 27, 000 in 1939).

Ioshkar-Ola was founded in 1584 on the orders of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich after the incorporation of the Mari lands into the Russian state. It became part of Kazan Province in 1708 and became a district center in 1781. Soviet power was established there on Dec. 23, 1917 (Jan. 5, 1918). An anti-Soviet mutiny of Socialist Revolutionaries and bourgeois nationalists broke out in the city on Aug. 14, 1918, but was suppressed on August 28 by the 1st Nizhny Novgorod Workers’ Detachment and the 1st Lettish Revolutionary Detachment.

In the years of Soviet power Ioshkar-Ola has become a big industrial center. The leading branches are machine building and metalworking, with the Elektroavtomatika Plant (which produces electrical automatic equipment), a plant producing semiconductor instruments, the Kontakt Plant, and plants producing commercial equipment, lumber machinery, and tools. The food industry is represented by a vitamin factory, a dairy, a canning plant, a meat-packing combine, and a confectionary factory; light industry is represented by an artificial leather plant and knitted goods, clothing, and footwear factories. Furniture and building materials are also produced. The educational institutions of Ioshkar-Ola include a university, a polytechnical institute, a pedagogical institute, a technological technicum, a construction technicum, a sovkhoz-technicum, a medical school, a music school, a cultural and educational school, and a research institute of language, literature, and history. The museum of local lore, which was founded in 1924, has archaeological collections and a collection of Soviet art. The city is the site of the Mari-language M. Shketan Theater of Music and Drama (1960, architects P. A. Samsonov and M. F. Ni), a Russian-language drama theater, a puppet theater, and a television station.

The Voznesenskaia Church (1756) and 19th-century stone and wood houses ornamented with carvings have been preserved. Several industrial buildings have been erected in the Soviet period. The university (1936, architect A. Z. Grinberg), the Sovetskaia Hotel (1960, architect I. I. Vinogradov), and a monument to V. I. Lenin (1966, sculptor M. G. Manizer) are located on Lenin Square, and the building of the oblast party committee of the CPSU and of the republic Council of Ministers (1971, architect S. A. Kleimenov) is on Lenin Prospect. Housing is being expanded on a large scale, and a plan for the further reconstruction of the city was drawn up in 1968.

REFERENCES

Samsonov, P. A. Ioshkar-Ola-stolitsa Mariiskoi ASSR. Ioshkar-Ola, 1960.
Samsonov, P. A. Gorod na Kokshage. Ioshkar-Ola, 1970.