Vorsma

a city in Gorky Oblast, RSFSR. Situated on the Kishma River (a tributary of the Oka river) 7 km southeast of the Vorsma Railroad Station (on a branch connecting Pavlovo with Gorky) on the Gorky-Murom Highway. Population, 13,500 (1968).

Vorsma was founded in the 16th century. In the 18th century it became an important center of metalworking cottage crafts (as part of the Pavlovo-Vacha Region). In his work The Development of Capitalism in Russia, V. I. Lenin mentions Vorsma as one of the most important industrial centers in European Russia at that time, classifying it as a “third type of factory center—the ’handicraft’ villages whose largest establishments were often regarded as ’factories or works’” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 3, p. 520). In 1820 on the basis of these small enterprises the Zav’ialovs’ factory was established, later to become a large factory manufacturing medical instruments. Vorsma was given the status of a city in 1955.