Map of Kirov

History

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Vyatka remained a place of exile for opponents of the Russian Empire, including many prominent revolutionary figures. In 1920, a number of small southern and eastern districts (volosti) and villages were shifted from Vyatka as a result of the formation of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the Mari and Votskaya (now the Udmurt Republic) autonomous regions.

The territory did not escape the Russian Civil War and intervention of 1918–1921. Then between 1921 and 1922, it was hit by famine, followed by a typhus epidemic in late 1922. The death rate doubled during those years.

Geography

The oblast is bordered by Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Kostroma and Nizhny Novgorod Oblasts, as well as by the republics of Komi, Mari El, Tatarstan, and Udmurtia, and Perm Krai. Animals living in the oblast include bears, beavers, squirrels, moose, wolves, etc.

Natural resources include forests (mostly conifers), phosphate rock, peat, furs, water and land. There are widespread deposits of peat and non-metallic minerals: limestone, marl, clay, sand and gravel, as well as the rare mineral volkonskoite.

In recent decades, a minor recoverable oil reserve was revealed in the east of the region, as well as deposits of bentonite clays. The region also contains the Vyatsko-Kama deposit of phosphate rock, the largest in Europe.

Economy

Kirov Oblast is part of the Volga–Vyatka economic district located in the central part of European Russia in the Volga and Vyatka river basins. Its economic complex had already begun forming and developing before the Revolution, in large part because of the transfer points and trading posts located in Vyatka, which later led to the formation of large railway. Trading Centers Agriculture was the priority sector at first, but starting in 1940, there was an upsurge in development of an industrial complex, especially the engineering, metalworking, and chemical industries.

Kirov Oblast is part of the Volga–Vyatka agricultural zone, where more than half of the area sown in grain is located in Kirov Oblast itself. Agricultural land occupies 27% of the region's territory.

Demographics

1,153,680 (2021 census); 1,341,312 (2010 census); 1,503,529 (2002 census); 1,692,655 (1989 Soviet census).

35,385 people were registered from administrative databases, and could not declare an ethnicity. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group.

According to a 2012 survey, 40.1% of the population of Kirov Oblast adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church, 5% are unaffiliated generic Christians, 1% are Orthodox Christian believers not belonging to churches or members of non-Russian Orthodox churches, 1% are adherents to Islam, 1% to the Old Believers.