Economy
The Ural
stretches as “a stone belt” for thousands of kilometers from iced Arctic ocean
to endless Southern steps of Kazakhstan. The Ural region includes historically 5
smaller regions: Perm, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk regions and two republics:
Udmurtiya and Bashkortostan. The Ural Mountains chain is the natural border of
Europe and Asia. The history of Ural started about 200 000 years ago. Now more
than 100 representatives of different nations inhabit the territory of the Ural.
The Ural is the richest storeroom of Russia. There are more than 1200 places of
various minerals which were discovered during 3000 years of Ural mining history,
about 1000 minerals are worked out and used in manufactures nowadays.
There are over 19 mln people - 8% of the whole
population of Russia. Various ethnic minorities settled here due to favourable
natural conditions and resources. Most numerous are Russian, Tatars, Bashkirs,
Udmurts. Their location was also dependent on disposition of industrial
enterprises. The heaviest population rate is typical of the mining territories.
The density of population varies between the northern and southern regions.
According to its industrial potential the Urals region takes the second place in the country after the Central economic region. It is leading in accordance with development of its ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy, coking coal production, production of potash fertilizers, oil refining and heavy engineering. There are three leading branches in the industrial structure of the Urals economic region: ferrous metallurgy, nonferrous metallurgy and machine building. The Urals metallurgy has more, than two dozens metallurgical enterprises of various capacities. Among them the famous gigantic enterprises: Magnitogorsky, Nizhnetagilsky and Orsko-Khalilovsky. There are several centers of nonferrous metallurgy in the Urals, which produce titanium, magnesium, copper, nickel, aluminum and other metals. The Urals stands out by its production of equipment for metallurgy and chemical industry. They produce transportation means there, engines and many other articles of machine-building. Like in Povolzhsky economic region there is a fuel industry in the limits of the region and oil refining and petrochemical industries, connected with it. The Urals economic region occupies the second place in the country on production and consumption of electric power. Though there are several especially large fuel power stations in this regions, it lacks electric energy and it gets it from the Surgut group of electric According to the data on the 1st January 2006, there are 1215 real objects of cultural heritage in the Sverdlovsk’s region: 279 archaeological, 209 historical, 711 architectural and 16 cultural monuments.
