Kurgan

The city is situated on the Tobol river 1973 kilometres away from Moscow.
The population of the city is 324 thousand people.

The city was founded in 1662. First it was called Tsaryovo Gorodishche (Tsar's Settlement Site).
In 1695 the settlement had been given an additional name - Tsarekurganskaya Sloboda (Tsar's Barrow Village) - which, owing to the situation near the border, soon became a fortress guarding the Southern Trans-Ural lands from nomads' raids.
In 1738 the settlement was renamed Kurganskaya Sloboda (Barrow Village). On 19 (30) January 1782 the Empress Catherine the Great had signed the Decree for the establishment of the Tobol region ruled by a governor which included Kurgan uyezd (district) and the village Kurganskaya Sloboda received the status of the city with the name Kurgan.

Most of the plants and factories we see in Kurgan today have been evacuated here from the Western regions of the USSR during the World War II.
Most important Kurgan factories are machine-building plants - Kurganmashzavod, Kurganpribor, Kurganstalmost, Khimmash, Sintez, KAvZ, Rubin, Rusich, Korvet, Kurgandormash.
The city has modern airport and a railway station facilities.
In 2008 the industrial production index was 104.5% compared to the level of 2007 which is better than the Russian nationwide average. The consumer market has been growing dynamically.

Culture & Education

The city has a puppet theatre "Gulliver", a drama theatre, a philharmonic hall. There are several museums in the city - for arts, aviation, local lore, there are house museums of Decembrists, poets, and fairy tale writers.
The city has a State University (created 30 September 1995 by the merger of the teaching and the machine-building institutes), the T. S. Maltsev Agriculture Academy, the Border Control Institute of the Federal Security Service of the RF, the Institute of Public and Municipal Administration, a branch of the Ural State University of Railway Transport.

The academic community is represented by the Russian Ilizarov Scientific Center for Restorative Traumatology and Orthopaedics, the Institute for Retraining of Education Workers, a branch of the Institute of Economics of the Urals Branch of RAS.

The following people from Kurgan are world-famous: Gavriil Ilizarov (1921-1992) - a trauma surgeon, a member of RAS, the inventor of an orthopaedic apparatus which carries his name, and Yakov Vitebskiy, MD, professor, the creator of a new sphere in science - valvular gastroenterology.

The city of Kurgan is twinned with Rufina (Florence, Italy) and Appleton (Wisconsin, USA).