Belozersk

city, center of Belozersk Raion, Vologda Oblast, RSFSR. Landing stage on the Volga-Baltic Waterway. Located on the southern shore of Lake Beloe, 118 km north of the Cherepovets railroad station and 242 km northwest of Vologda. Population, 12,100 (1969).

Belozersk has a timber enterprise, a woodworking plant, a fish cannery, and a creamery, as well as medical and pedagogical colleges. This city was mentioned in a chronicle under the year 862 as Beloozero; beginning in 1238 it was the center of the Beloozero Principality and a major center for trading and crafts. At the end of the 14th century the city was laid waste by epidemics of the plague, and it was moved 17 km to the west, to the site of present-day Belozersk. Still preserved are the ramparts of the kremlin (1487), the stone, five-cupola Uspenie Church (1553, architects Goriain Tsarev and Tret’iak Rostovka), and the wooden Church of Il’ia (1690), in addition to houses and churches dating from the 17th through the 19th centuries.