— — a working town built around a long pond.
“In the Udmurt Republic, west of the Urals, about a thousand kilometres east of Moscow. Izhevsk grew up around an ironworks founded in 1760 and a long pond made by damming the Izh River. The pond is the centre of the city — frozen most of winter, walked across, skated, fished through. Snow holds the light low for half the year. Onion dome and factory chimney on the same horizon.
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Izhevsk is the capital of the Udmurt Republic, in the Volga Federal District of Russia, about 1,130 km east of Moscow and west of the central Ural range. The city was founded in 1760 around the Izhevsk Ironworks established by Count Pyotr Shuvalov. Its central feature is the Izhevsk Pond, a long reservoir on the Izh River created by the original works dam. Population is roughly 640,000. The Udmurts, a Finno-Ugric people, give the republic its name and one of its two official languages.
Arms manufacturing has defined the city since the early 19th century, when the Imperial Arms Factory was established alongside the original ironworks in 1807. Mikhail Kalashnikov developed and refined the AK-47 here at Izhmash beginning in 1947, and the Kalashnikov Concern remains headquartered in the city. The Kalashnikov Museum opened in 2004 near the central square. Other plants produce Lada cars and Izh motorcycles. The factory whistle still marks shift change for a sizeable share of the workforce.
The climate is sharply continental. January averages near -13°C and snow lies from November through early April. The Izhevsk Pond freezes solid by December, and ice-fishing huts dot it through the cold months. Summers are short and warm — July averages around 19°C — and the surrounding birch and pine forest fills with mushroom and berry foragers. The Udmurt folk festival Gerber, held in late June, marks the end of the spring planting cycle.