Old Town Modern-day Karaganda dates back to 1833, when local shepherd allegedly found coal on the site of the city, prompting a coal mining boom. By the late 19th century, the local mines had attracted workers from nearby villages, Russian merchants, and entrepreneurs from France and England. Most of the
ethnic Germans were Soviet
Volga Germans who were collectively deported to
Siberia and Kazakhstan on
Stalin's order when
Hitler invaded
Soviet-annexed eastern Poland and the Soviet Union proper in 1941. Until the 1950s, many of these deportees were interned in labor camps, often simply because they were of German descent. The population of Karaganda fell by 14% from 1989 to 1999 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union; it was once Kazakhstan's second-largest city after Almaty. Over 100,000 people have since emigrated to
Germany. There is also a concentration of
ethnic Poles in the city.
Robert F. Kennedy (later
US Attorney General and
US Senator), alongside
US Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas, visited "five Soviet Central Asian Republics":
Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan,
Tadzhikistan,
Kirghizia, and
Kazakhstan. While on the six week trip (e.g.,
Bukhara, 300 to 1 mosque after Soviet rule), his biographers reported that their delegation was not allowed to visit the city of Karaganda which was one of the sites of the most notorious
labor camps within the confines of the
Soviet Union. The delegation was diverted to
Siberia after four denials of visas.
1962 electromagnetic pulse incident Karaganda suffered the most severe
electromagnetic pulse effects ever observed when its electrical
power plant was set on fire by currents induced in a long shallow buried
power cable by Soviet Test ‘184’ on 22 October 1962. The test was part of the
Soviet Project K nuclear tests (
ABM System A proof tests), and consisted of a 300-
kiloton high-altitude nuclear explosion at an altitude of over
Zhezkazgan. Prompt
gamma ray-produced EMP induced a current of 2,500 amps measured by
spark gaps in a stretch of overhead telephone line to Zharyq, blowing all the
protective fuses. The late-time
MHD-EMP was of low enough frequency to enable it to penetrate into the ground, overloading a shallow buried lead and steel tape-protected long power cable between
Aqmola (now called Astana) and
Almaty. It fired
circuit breakers and set the Karaganda power plant on fire.
Late 20th century Kuznetsov's master plan for the city was intended to accommodate 300,000 inhabitants, which was surpassed by the late 1960s.
21st century 2019 archaeological findings In July 2019, remains of a young couple buried face to face dated 4,000 years back were unearthed in Karaganda region by a group of archaeologists led by Igor Kukushkin from Saryarka Archaeological Institute in Karaganda. It is assumed that the
Bronze Age couple were 16 or 17 years old when they died. From the buried gold and jewelry artifacts, ceramic pots, woman's two bracelets on each arm beads, remains of horses and knives found in the grave, Kukushkin supposes that they were from a 'noble family.
2023 Kostenko mine fire On 28 October 2023 the Kostenko mine, a
coal mine in Karaganda run by ArcelorMittal Temirtau, the local unit of
ArcelorMittal,
caught fire, killing at least 32 people. In weeks prior to the fire, the
Kazakhstani government announced it was in talks to take over part of ArcelorMittal Temirtau's operations, in part due to its dissatisfaction by ArcelorMittal's failure to invest more in its operations, including equipment upgrades and safety precautions. == Geography ==