Pre-World War II Fortress Dubna () belonging to
Rostov-Suzdal Principality was built in the area in 1132 by the order of
Yuri Dolgoruki and existed until 1216. The fortress was destroyed during the feudal war between the sons of
Vsevolod the Big Nest. The village of Gorodishche () was located on the right bank of the Volga River and was a part of the
Kashin Principality. Dubna customs post ( was located in the area and was a part of the
Principality of Tver. Before the
October Revolution, few villages were in the area: Podberezye was on the left bank of the Volga, and Gorodishche, Alexandrovka, Ivankovo, Yurkino, and Kozlaki () were on the right bank. Right after the Revolution one of the first
collective farms was organized in Dubna area. In 1931, the
Orgburo of the
Communist Party made a decision to build the
Volga-Moscow Canal.
Genrikh Yagoda, then the leader of the
State Political Directorate, was put in charge of construction. The Canal was completed in 1937.
Ivankovo Reservoir and
Ivankovo hydroelectrical plant were also created as a part of the project. Many villages and the town
Korcheva were submerged under water. Dubna is mentioned in
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book
The Gulag Archipelago as the town built by Gulag prisoners.
Science The decision to build a
proton accelerator for nuclear research was taken by the
Soviet government in 1946. An impractical place where the current town is situated was chosen due to remoteness from Moscow and the presence of the
Ivankovo power plant nearby. The scientific leader was
Igor Kurchatov. The general supervisor of the project including construction of a settlement, a road and a railway connecting it to Moscow (largely involving
penal labour of
Gulag inmates) was the
NKVD chief
Lavrentiy Beria. After three years of intensive work, the accelerator was commissioned on 13 December 1949. The town of Dubna was officially inaugurated in 1956, together with the
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), which has developed into a large international research laboratory involved mainly in
particle physics,
heavy ion physics, synthesis of
transuranium elements, and
radiobiology. In 1960, a town of Ivankovo situated on the opposite (left) bank of the Volga was merged into Dubna. In 1964, Dubna hosted the prestigious
International Conference on High Energy Physics. Currently, a construction of the
NICA particle collider, a megascience project is underway in Dubna. Outstanding physicists of the 20th century including
Nikolay Bogolyubov,
Georgy Flyorov,
Vladimir Veksler, and
Bruno Pontecorvo used to work at the institute. A number of elementary particles and nuclei of
transuranium elements (most recently,
element 117 tennessine) have been discovered and investigated there, leading to the honorary naming of
chemical element 105
dubnium (Db) for the town. ==Administrative and municipal status==