Perm

Perm is the administrative centre of the Perm krai.
Population: 987 thousand people.
The city is located on the shores of the river Kama - the largest left tributary of Volga.

Historical Reference

In 1720 Peter the Great ordered a search for a suitable location for a copper and silver smelting plant in the Siberian province. The start of construction of the Yegoshikhinsky Copper Smelting Plant on May 4, 1723 is considered to be the day when Perm was founded.
Until the 1920's the city played a role of the administrative centre of the Urals - the main mining area of Russia.

City manager Anatoly Makhovikov

Economy

Perm is a large multisectoral centre for industry, research, culture, and logistics. The city's economy is primarily defined by the well-developed heavy industry sector. The leading sectors are electrical power engineering, oil and gas processing, machine building, chemistry and petrochemistry as well as timber processing, printing and publishing, and food industry.
In 2008 the volume of goods shipped by large and medium-sized manufacturing companies alone was:

• extraction of mineral resources - 5.3 billion roubles
• processing industries - 289.2 billion roubles
• production and distribution of electric energy, gas and water - 45.3 billion roubles

Retail sales volume in 2008 amounted to 203 billion roubles. Several international retail chains are operating in Perm alongside with dozens of large commercial stores and shopping and entertainment centres.

The geographic location of Perm is particularly favourable as the city is located in the centre of Russia at the crossroads of the Europe - Asia railway line. Numerous passenger and freight trains pass through the city linking the western regions of Russia with the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East.
Direct flights to dozens of cities in Russia, CIS, and Europe are operated from Bolshoye Savino international airport. The river Kama is an important part of the integrated deep water navigation network of the European part of Russia which further connects the region to the water-ways of the European countries. Freight can be shipped from Perm to ports of the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian Sea, as well as to the river ports of the Pan-European water transport ring. Tourist water routes connect Perm with Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhniy Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, and Astrakhan.
Perm is a large research centre being the home to a number of institutes of the Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, dozens of research and development and design institutes, as well as 7 higher education establishments.

Culture and Education

Perm has 13 independent higher education establishments and over 40 branches of Moscow and Saint Petersburg based universities. The M. Gorky Perm State University, the Perm State Technical University, and the International Institute of Economics and Law are the best known in Russia and abroad.
The cultural potential of the city is represented by six theatres, museums, libraries, cinemas, a philharmonic hall, and a circus. The best known museum is the Perm Art Gallery, which exhibits the world-famous Perm wooden sculpture collection. The Gallery is one of the richest depositories of the Russian icon school masterpieces (the Stroganov icons collection) and artworks (original paintings by Repin, Levitan, Savrasov, and Serov).