Ufa
 |
 |
The city is considered to have been founded in 1574, when a fortress was built on the site of the city by order of Ivan the Terrible. Ufa was made capital of Ufa Governorate in 1865 when the governorate split from Orenburg Governorate. Ufa's population expanded during the early 20th century.
Today, Ufa's economy consists primarily of the oil refining, chemistry, and mechanical engineering industries; the petroleum company Bashneft and several of its subsidiaries are headquartered in Ufa. Ufa is an ethnically diverse city, home to a substantial number of ethnic Bashkirs and Tatars, with an ethnic Russian majority population. Several educational institutions are located in Ufa, including Bashkir State University, Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa State Petroleum Technological University, and Ural State Law University. The city hosted separate summits of the BRICS group as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2015.
The name Ufa comes from the Ufa River on which the city lies, but the origin of the river's name is disputed. The Russian linguist Aleksandr Matveyev proposes that the name is of Iranian origin, from "ap", meaning water.
In a paper published in 2014, researchers Karimov and Khabibov from Bashkir State Pedagogical University present and argue for a hypothesis according to which before the construction of the foundational Russian fortress in 1574, which has since grown to become the current city of Ufa, there had already been an ancient settlement called Ufa on a hilltop near the mouth of the Ufa River. According to them, this settlement was founded by Turkic-speaking tribes to perform rituals and sacrifices to the sky god Tengri, and they called this place Upe or Ufe because, they argue, in ancient Turkic languages a place of ritual sacrifice used to be called an "opo" or an "ope." They further hypothesize that the inhabitants of the settlement themselves also came to be called the Upe or Ufe tribe and subsequently, the river along which they flourished and expanded their settlement towards its source also came to be called Ufa. Karimov and Khabibov claim that the Russian fortress builders were probably aware of this ancient name and consequently named their new settlement Ufa.
Map - Ufa
Country - Russia
 |
 |
| Flag of Russia | |
The East Slavs emerged as a recognisable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Rus' ultimately disintegrated, with the Grand Duchy of Moscow growing to become the Tsardom of Russia. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union (with three other Soviet republics), within which it was the largest and principal constituent. At the expense of millions of lives, the Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialization in the 1930s, and later played a decisive role for the Allies of World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for global ideological influence; the Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.
Currency / Language
| ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| RUB | Russian ruble | ₽ | 2 |
| ISO | Language |
|---|---|
| CE | Chechen language |
| CV | Chuvash language |
| KV | Komi language |
| RU | Russian language |
| TT | Tatar language |