Kolomna

Kolomna (kəlôm`nə), city (1990 pop. 163,000), central European Russia, at the confluence of the Moskva and Oka rivers. Locomotives and synthetic rubber are produced. Known in 1177, the city became a Muscovite outpost in 1301 and has been an industrial center since 1863. Remains of the towers of Kolomna's 16th-century kremlin are still standing.

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Kolomna

a city in the W central Russia, at the confluence of the Moskva and Oka Rivers: railway engineering centre. Pop.: 151 500 (1999 est.)

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Kolomna 

a city in Moscow Oblast of the RSFSR. Located on the Oka River where it flows into the Moskva, Kolomna is a river port and a railroad station on the Moscow-Riazan’ line, 115 km southeast of Moscow. In 1972 the population was 138,000 (in 1939, 87,000).

Kolomna was first mentioned in the Lavrentii Chronicle in 1177 as the border town of the Principality of Riazan’. By the end of the 12th century it had become a commercial and artisan town. The town was annexed to the Principality of Moscow in 1301. From the 13th through the 16th century it was sacked many times by the Tatars. However, by the 17th-18th centuries, Kolomna had regained its importance as a commercial and merchants’ city. With the building of the Moscow-Riazan’ line in 1862, Kolomna was connected by rail with Moscow, and in 1863 the city’s basic machine-building and steam locomotive building plants were established.

Founded in 1901–02, the city’s first Marxist circles united in 1903, forming the Kolomna organization of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). The Kolomna workers participated in the October All-Russian Political Strike in 1905. On October 13 a soviet of workers’ deputies was organized in the city. A punitive expedition executed 27 active participants in the revolution at Golutvin station near Kolomna on December 18.

The Metalworkers’ Union was organized under the leadership of the Bolsheviks in 1906. Soviet power was proclaimed in the city on Oct. 26 (Nov. 8), 1917. Red Guard detachments made up of Kolomna workers took an active part in the struggle to establish Soviet power in Moscow in October 1917. As a result of socialist transformations under the prewar five-year plans, Kolomna became a major industrial, scientific, and cultural center. The V. V. Kuibyshev Kolomna Diesel Locomotive Building Plant, a heavy machine tool plant, and a textile machine building plant are located in the city. The food-processing industry and the building materials industry, which is represented by a cement plant and a reinforced-concrete structural elements plant, have developed. There are furniture and garment factories, a cable plant, a tire repair plant, and an industrial rubber products plant. Kolomna has a diesel locomotive research institute, a pedagogical institute, a branch of the All-Union Correspondence Technical Institute, machine-building and agricultural technicums, and a medical school. There is also a museum of local lore.

Parts of the city kremlin, which was built between 1525 and 1531, are still standing—the brick walls and six towers including the Kolomna (Marinkina) tower. Among the other remaining examples of the early architecture of the city are the Piatnitskie entry gates, the Uspenskii Cathedral (1672–82), the bishop’s house (an 18th-century building in pseudo-Gothic style designed by the architect M. F. Kazakov), and a bell tower (1825).

In 1935–36, N. P. Milonov’s excavations on the site of the Kolomna kremlin uncovered a pre-Mongol culture, with the remains of log houses and workshops. Traces of a smithy, foundry, and pottery shop were discovered, as well as work tools, weapons, and various household articles made by local artisans.

Kolomna does not have a uniform plan; rather, the streets are laid out haphazardly around the kremlin. In the kremlin is the Church of John the Baptist (beginning of the 16th century), the canopied church of the Brusenskii Monastery (1522), and the Voskresenskaia Church of the Spasskii Monastery (14th century; rebuilt in the 17th-18th centuries). The voevoda’s (military governor’s) house was built in the Naryshkin style. The Shevliagin and Meshchaninov houses, as well as those on Levshin and Posadskaia streets, are in the baroque style. Among the examples of the classical style are the complex of buildings and firetower of the fire brigade, the Voznesenie Church with its rotunda (1799, designed by M. F. Kazakov), the bell tower of the Church of Ioann Bogoslov (beginning of the 19th century), and the Church of the Archangel Michael (1833; architect, M. F. Shestakov).

Recently, a number of public buildings (for example, the Palace of Culture and the House of Pioneers) and two residential mikroraiony (neighborhood units in urban planning) have been built.

REFERENCES

Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 3, p. 520; vol. 13, p. 374.
Efremtsev, G. P. Pobeda Sovetov v Kolomne. Moscow, 1957.
Milonov, N. P. “Istoriko-arkheologicheskii ocherk g. Kolomny.” Istoriko-arkheologicheskii sbornik. Moscow, 1948.
Fekhner, M. V. Kolomna. Moscow, 1963.
Golubeva, E. P., and A. I. Guzhov. Putevoditel’ po Kolomne, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1970.