a city in northern Bulgaria. Administrative center of Ruse District. Population, 165,000 (1974).
Ruse is one of Bulgaria’s major industrial and transportation centers and its main Danube port. The railroad and automobile bridge between Ruse and Giurgiu, Rumania, is a major artery on the principal land route linking Bulgaria with Rumania and the USSR. Much of the population works in transportation. A new port, Ruse-Vostok, has been under construction since 1975.
Machine building accounts for more than one-third of Ruse’s industrial output; it includes shipbuilding and ship repair and the production of computer equipment, instruments, electrical goods, machine tools, and agricultural machinery. The chemical industry accounts for one-tenth of Ruse’s industrial ouput; it produces varnishes and paints, simulated parquet flooring, and artificial leather. The food industry accounts for one-fifth; it produces sugar, meat, milk, canned goods, and wines. Ruse also has oil refining and produces textiles, leather, and furniture.
Ruse is an important cultural center, with opera and drama theaters, a historical museum, and a library. It also has an institute of agricultural mechanization and rural electrification.
E. B. VALEV
Ruse was founded by the Romans in the first century A.D. as a military landing stage. It was an economic and military center until the sixth century, when it was destroyed. From the 15th century it was a Turkish stronghold and commercial and administrative center, called Rushchuk.
In all the Russo-Turkish wars, Ruse, together with the fortresses of Silistra (Silistria), Shumen (Shumla), and Varna, made up the strategically significant rectangle of fortresses that marked the division between eastern and western Bulgaria and served as a sector of flanking operations from the Danube to the Balkans. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12, after an unsuccessful attack in July 1810 and a siege in September 1810, the Russian forces compelled the Turkish garrison at Ruse to capitulate. On June 22 (July 4), 1811, 4 km south of Ruse, a Russian army of 15,000 men, commanded by General M. I. Kutuzov, fought Turkish forces of about 60,000 men, commanded by the vizier Ahmet Pasha. The Russians used artillery fire and counterattacks to repel the Turks and force them to retreat. The Turks lost as many as 5,000 dead and captured; the Russians lost about 500. In October 1811, Kutuzov surrounded the Turkish army to the northwest of Ruse, in the vicinity of Slobodzei.
During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, about one-half of the Russian army (the Rushchuk detachment) was tied down in the vicinity of Ruse, and there was stubborn fighting at the approaches to Ruse. Under the terms of the Berlin Treaty of 1878, Ruse’s fortifications were dismantled.