a city and center of Karaganda Oblast, Kazakh SSR; located in the Kazakh Hills. Railroad station on the Petropavlovsk-Chu line. Karaganda has a population of 541,000 (1972; as compared with 154, 000 in 1939) and is the second largest city in Kazakhstan (after Alma-Ata).
Karaganda was founded on the site of a miners’ settlement that had formed in the center of the Karaganda Coal Basin. In 1932, Karaganda became a city and in 1936, the oblast center. The main branch of industry is coal mining. The city has machine-building plants that produce mining equipment, sanitary engineering equipment, and metal structural elements. Enterprises of such industries as light industry, food industry, and building materials are also located in the city. Karaganda consists of several developed areas that are separated by considerable distances (for example, the Old City dating to the second half of the 19th century, the New City, Maikuduk, Bol’shaia Mikhailovka, and Fedorovka). The center of modern Karaganda is the New City (the master plan of 1934–35, architects A. I. Kuznetsov and A. N. Kornoukhov; a new master plan was approved in 1971). The New City has a large recreation park and is located on both banks of the Bol’shaia Bukpa River. The main thoroughfares are Sovetskii Prospect, Lenin Prospect, Nurken Abdirov Prospect, and Peace Boulevard. The streets are lined with large public buildings and residential houses, including the House of Soviets (1938, architect A. M. Genin); a traumatological hospital (1948) and the Miners’ Palace of Culture (1952), both by the architect I. I. Brenner; the post office and telegraph office (1953, architect A. K. Belavina); the Sports Palace (1957), and the building of the oblast party committee (1958), both by the architect A. M. Meksel’; the oblast drama theater (1962); the Palace of Pioneers (1967); and the Turist Hotel (1972). The city also has a university; polytechnical, medical, and cooperative institutes; an institute for teachers of physical education; a branch of the Alma-Ata Institute of National Economy; mining, industrial pedagogical, trade and cookery, and evening power construction technicums; a technicum for physical culture and sports; and schools of medicine, music, and culture and education. Karaganda is also the site of two drama theaters (Russian and Kazakh), a museum of local lore, and botanical gardens.