Modern Perm Oblast lies on land that was once known as the "Urals Babylon." Numerous tribes lived on the land and legend has it that even the prophet Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, was born in this region. Because of this past, Perm has always attracted mystics and their followers. People interested in the supernatural gather in the eastern part of the oblast, where UFOs are often sighted. Many believe that humans will be able to communicate with the cosmos from this place. During the 18th century, a theory circulated that Perm was the location of the legendary country of Biarmia, described in ancient Scandinavian sagas as where the Vikings went to trade and hunt. Perm is the only city in the world that has a period in Earth's history named after it. The geographer Sir Roderick Murchison named the last of the six periods in the Paleozoic Era the Permian Period in 1841 after a tour of Imperial Russia. The period began 290 million years ago and lasted for 45 million years. For many centuries Perm was a place where political exiles were sent. The exiles fortified the land with culture, and helped build its schools, libraries, and hospitals. Prisoners of all variety were sent here. In the pre-revolutionary period, Klement Voroshilov, who rose to become the nominal Soviet president at the end of the 1950s, was exiled to the city of Cherdyni. During the Stalinist era, the poet Osip Mandelshtam served time in the same place.
 

The First Russians in the Area

The word "Perm" first appeared in the 12th century in the Primary Chronicle, the main source describing the early history of the Russian people. The Perm were listed among the people who paid tribute to the Rus. A Finno-Ugric people, the Perm are the ancestors of the modern Komi (for whom the Komi Republic, just north of Perm, is named). Around this time, the land around the Kama River gradually began to be called Perm the Great. The origins of the word "Perm" remain obscure. Most likely, the word came from the Finno-Ugric languages and means "far land" or "flat, forested place."

The Novgorodian traders were the first to show an interest in Perm. Starting from the 15th century, the Muscovite princes included the area in their plans to create a unified Russian state. During this time the first Russian villages appeared in the northern part of the current oblast. The first industry to appear in the region was a salt factory, which developed on the Usolka river in the city of Solikamsk (which means Kama salt). This region was known for its pristine natural beauty and, before the 1917 revolution, particularly its tasty grouse (Ryabchik in Russian). In his verse, the proletarian poet Vladimir Mayakovskii considered this bird an essentially bourgeois food. Christianity came to the Perm lands in the middle of the 15th century. Today some of the best pieces in the Perm Art Gallery are the unique collections of wooden sculptures of Christ and other biblical figures. The Orthodox Church preserved the ancient traditions of the local tribes who prayed to wooden idols by endowing them with a basis in the Christian faith.
 

The Founding of Perm

The first Russians settled in what is now the city of Perm in 1723, when Peter the Great ordered the construction of a copper factory at the site. Perm became the capital of the Ural region in 1781 when Catherine the Great reformed the territorial structure of the country. At her command, a special commission studied the Ural region and determined that the best place for such a capital would at the crossroads of what is now the Trans-Siberian Railroad, running east-west and the Kazan line, running north-south. Here a new city was built on what was essentially open land. Catherine decree that the city would be named "Perm."

St. Petersburg and Perm are the only two cities in Russia that were built from scratch according to a plan. Both cities have streets laid out along straight lines. Perm's first governor-general, Yevgenii Kashkin, drew up the plan for Perm and the first governor, Karl Moderakh, transformed the drawings into a city. The construction of the main part of the city extended during the course of the nineteenth century. The contemporary writer Andrei Pecherskii noted in awe that Perm "is built even more correctly than New York and impresses any visitor with the straightness of its streets." In 1908 Perm was listed as one of the ten most livable European cities. The czars engaged Moderakh to rebuilt Moscow after it had been destroyed by Napoleon's troops in 1812. He also built the Fontanka Canal in St. Petersburg and the fountains at the Peterhof Palace just outside of St. Petersburg.

More connects St. Petersburg and Perm than their similar origins. During the Second World War, almost all of Petersburg's leading composers, writers, and artists were evacuated to Perm. The Mariinskii (Kirov) company presented its ballets there. Sergei Prokofiev wrote music. In an unheated Perm hotel, Aram Khachaturian composed "Dance with Sabres." Today the Perm Ballet School is one of the best in Russia and is on a level with St. Petersburg's. Many of the Perm Theater operas and ballets have become significant events in Russia's cultural life.

Perm has always been a center of culture. Thus it is no surprise that Catherine created a coat of arms for Perm of a bear, representing unspoiled nature, and a Bible, symbolizing culture and enlightenment.
 

Perm During the Communist Revolution

Through the end of the nineteenth century, Perm was the center for Russia's mining industry. Workers smelted iron, steel, and tin. The region was also a key supplier of copper and produced a quarter of Russia's salt. Kizel provided coal. Prospectors in the Ural Mountains also found gold and platinum.

Toward the turn of the century, the majority of metallurgical factories turned to machine building. Foreign direct investment increased dramatically. In August 1878, the railroad arrived and now the city lies on the main track connecting Moscow with Siberia.

Perm had been the capital of the Central Urals for the 150 years before the 1917 revolution. Its domain included such cities as Yekaterinburg, Nizhnii Tagil, Shadrinsk, and Solikamsk. Many writers who visited commented on the "Perm spirit" and the sense of pride Perm citizens felt for their city. Pecherskii claimed that Perm was a "Russian version of China" since "it considered itself better than all other cities and fought for its place in the world." Anton Chekhov set his play "The Three Sisters" in "a provincial city like Perm."

The great impresario Sergey Diaghilev was born and raised in Perm at this time. His "Russian Seasons in Paris" went on to become a major event in world culture. The inventor of the radio, Aleksandr Popov, graduated from the local seminary. The nobel-prize winner Boris Pasternak included Perm in his great novel Doctor Zhivago as the city of Yuryatina.

Perm opened the first university in the Urals in 1916. Some of the best professors from Petersburg and Tartu taught there during their evacuation during the First World War.

Perm is generally stable and peaceful, so the shocks of 1917 did not reach it right away. They also did not have the same bloody results that they did in Petrograd. Soviet power was established in nearby Yekaterinburg on 26 October, one day after the revolution in Petrograd. Perm tried to distance itself from these excesses and did not share the revolutionary enthusiasm of its neighbor. Residents supported the more moderate parties. The local officials and intelligentsia generally voted for the Cadets, the party that stood for the establishment of a west European style democracy in Russia.

The Bolsheviks finally took power in Perm only in December. Even then, the Reds had to threaten the city that it would receive no firewood if it did not succumb to the Soviets. For a city where winter temperatures often reach to minus 30 centigrade, this was a serious concern.

The Bolsheviks did not forgive the residents of Perm for their resistance to the revolution. They also did not forgive the warm welcome Perm gave Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, the commander of the white forces in the Civil War, in 1918. Thus in the beginning of the 1920s, after the founding of the USSR, the new rulers of the country moved the capital of the Urals region from "bourgeois" Perm to "proletarian" Yekaterinburg (which was renamed Sverdlovsk). As a result, Perm became an ordinary provincial center, although it still had a university and opera that residents of Yekaterinburg could only envy. One British visitor during this era described Perm as a "Urals Cambridge." In 1938, the Urals Oblast was divided in half and Perm became the capital of an oblast that was only one-fourth the size of the czarist-era Perm Guberniya.
 

Post-Soviet Perm

Perm's desire for stability and moderation made the region seem like a "political swamp" during the democratic reforms of the 1990s. There were no intense social conflicts or strikes. Nevertheless, Perm was always among the regions that supported the democratic movement. In the 1999 national parliamentary elections, Sergei Kirienko's Union of Right-wing Forces, whose platform sought to continue the economic and political reforms of the 1990s, won a majority of the votes in the region. At the same time the Communists never played much of a role. While the Communist Party is the biggest voter-getter among all Russian parties nationally, it was only fourth in Perm.
 

Perm's Industry

During the twentieth century, Perm experienced a period of rapid economic growth. In the 1930s, Soviet leaders built one of Europe's largest chemical and non-ferrous metal centers (focusing on nitrogen and potassium, titanium and magnesium) in the city of Berezniki. Among the people who built this center were the parents of Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin grew up here and graduated from the local high school.

During the Second World War more than 120 factories were moved to Perm Oblast and continued to work there after the fighting ended. Chemicals, non-ferrous metallurgy, and oil refining were the key industries after the war. In the forestry sector, Perm boasted Russia's largest cellulose and paper plant, which became Europe's largest wood producer. Other factories produced aircraft engines, telephone equipment, ships, bicycles, and cable. A Perm press produces about 70 percent of Russia's currency and stamped envelops. A river fleet, 13 train stations, and two airports connect Perm to 64 cities.