The 17th century Beginning in 1618, the government on an almost continual basis organized expeditions to the Urals and Siberia to search for ore deposits. Also, the practice of issuing permits was used, which made it possible to search for ores throughout the territory of the state. In the 16th-17th centuries, primitive blast furnaces were built by peasant families in the forests adjacent to their villages. The resulting metal pieces were processed into iron in forges or sold. It is known that 40 years before the arrival of
Georg Wilhelm de Gennin to the Urals, the peasants of the Aramil settlement smelted iron in small furnaces and sold it, paying
tithes to the district office. Even at the beginning of the 18th century, the smelting of ore in small blast furnaces was widespread in many regions of the Urals. In 1720–1722, the artisanal farms of the
Kungur district produced 3 thousand
poods of iron, 203 poods of strip iron and 897 poods of other varieties. Subsequently, artisanal metallurgical production was legally prohibited on the initiative of G. W. de Gennin. In the 1630s, with the involvement of foreign engineers, the construction of arms metallurgical factories began in the central part of Russia. Despite the construction of more than 20 state and private factories in the central region in the 17th century, the country experienced a shortage of metal and continued to buy it abroad. In 1629, 25 thousand poods of iron bars were bought in
Sweden. To meet the needs of the Ural and
Siberian enterprises (primarily salt-making) and settlements settled by Russians, iron was purchased in the central regions. At the same time, the cost of the metal increased sharply with the distance to the east due to transport costs. The impetus for the development of the Ural industry at the beginning of the 17th century was the plans of the authorities to create metallurgical enterprises in the eastern regions of Russia. After his trip abroad,
Peter I, realizing the shortage of
coal in the central regions and the need to strengthen weapons potential, ordered the construction of mining plants in the Urals, providing them with engineers from Tula, Kashira and other factories. The Ural factories were built on the model of factories in central Russia, which, in turn, were created using the French, German and Swedish types. The rapid development of the metallurgical industry in the Urals in the 17th-18th centuries was facilitated by the abundance of rich natural alloyed (copper,
chromium and
vanadium) ores in the region, as well as the availability of accessible forest and water resources. The lack of railways led to the development of a large number of small mines. Iron ore reserves were considered practically inexhaustible, while copper ore reserves, on the contrary, were quickly depleted, which led to the closure of 40 copper smelters in the Western Urals in the late 17th - first half of the 18th century. In the absence of their own specialists in mining and metallurgy, craftsmen were invited from abroad, but they worked mainly in the central regions of the country. In 1618–1622, the Englishman John Water, and in 1626 Fritsch, Gerold and Bulmerr, together with Russian attendants, carried out fruitless expeditions to search for ores in the region of the upper
Kama and the
Pechora. Others such as the Bergman brothers also unsuccessfully searched for ore in 1626 in the
Cherdyn region. Only in 1635, the Saxon, Aris Petzold, and the Moscow merchant Nadia Sveteshnikov found two copper deposits, which became the basis of the first copper smelter in the Urals -
Pyskorsky. Failures of geological exploration expeditions at the beginning of the 17th century forced the state to weaken its monopoly on exploration for non-ferrous and
precious metals. Major rewards were promised for the found deposits. This decision was followed by a series of discoveries of new deposits of copper and iron in the Urals. In particular, thanks to local residents who brought samples of bog ore to the offices of the Turin and
Tobolsk governors for a fee, the deposits of the first iron-making plant in the Urals - Nitsynsky - were discovered. In the 1670s, the expeditions, not finding ore in the Penza district, began to advance to the Urals and found silver ores along the banks of the Kama, Yayva and
Kosva. In 1669–1674, the state organized an expedition to the Trans-Urals to search for silver and gold ores. During the expedition, no suitable ore was found. Rich ores were found only at the end of the 17th century far beyond the Urals, in the valley of the
Argun River, on the basis of which, in 1704, the first Russian silver-smelting
Nerchinsk plant was launched. In general, the Ural metallurgy in the 17th century did not go beyond the limits of artisanal production, the central regions received greater development during this period.
Mining factories With the appearance of the first factories in the Urals and the establishment of production and economic relations between the authorities and the owners, pronounced features of a
subsistence economy appeared: everything necessary to ensure production was prepared and carried out at the factories on their own. Mining factories had their own landholdings, mines, quarries, forestry, stable yards, hayfields, marinas, courts, mills, and various auxiliary workshops. Such industrial and economic complexes were called mining districts and were legally described in the Mountain Regulations of 1806. The first mining plants of the Urals were fortified settlements with defensive structures to protect them from the raids of the
Bashkirs. In total, about 250-260 mining plants of various specializations were built in the Urals and the Kama region: iron foundries, copper smelting, iron-making and processing plants. In total, there were about 500 mining plants in Russia. Krasnoborsky (1640), Tumashevsky (1669), Dalmatovsky Monastery Zhelezenskoye settlement (1683, the Kamensky iron foundry was founded on the site of the plant) and the plant in Aramashevskaya Sloboda (1654). The first full-fledged mining plants in the Urals were the
Nevyansky and Kamensky plants, founded in 1699-1700 and equipped with blast furnaces, the last mining plant was Ivano-Pavlovsky, launched in 1875. Later, metallurgical plants and
mills were already under construction. The iron obtained from this ore was studied by Moscow gunsmiths and the Tula blacksmith
N. D. Antufiev (Demidov) and was given a high appraisal. On May 10 and June 15, 1697, decrees were issued for the construction of the first Ural factories. And the date of birth of Ural metallurgy is considered to be 1701 when blast-furnace plants were launched and produced the first cast iron. A specific feature of the Ural mining plants was the obligatory presence of a
dam and a
pond, which ensured the operation of factory mechanisms through
water wheels. Therefore, mining plants were built in close proximity to ore deposits and the river. In a drought, when the water level in the navigable river decreased, the passage of ships was ensured by the synchronous discharge of water from several factory ponds located on the tributaries. The supply of charcoal was provided by the vast forest
dachas assigned to the factories. The length of the dams of large factories reached 200–300 m and more (the largest dam of the Byngovsky plant was 695 m long), the width was 30–40 m, and the height was 6–10 m. Due to the climatic conditions of the Urals, it was necessary to maintain a large volume of water in the pond in order to avoid it freezing in the winter. The complete dependence of factories on the availability of water in the ponds led to frequent shutdowns of enterprises or their individual shops for a period of up to 200 days a year. To increase the water pressure, various methods were used: connecting ponds through channels with lakes or other ponds, replenishing ponds from high-mountain reservoirs through gutters. Another difference from European dams was the presence of
pine or
larch log cabins with valves to regulate the water level in the pond. A wide (up to 10 m and more) slot or "Veshnyak" served to let in excess water during spring
floods or in summer after heavy rains. A narrower (about 2 m wide) working slot was intended to supply water to a water conduit - a wooden trough, which was laid along the entire length of the plant's territory and through which water was supplied by a system of wooden pipes and gutters to the
impellers of numerous plant mechanisms. The dams of large factories had several slots. All production buildings were located along the working slots. At the same time, industries that required more energy to drive mechanisms were located closer to the dam. Directly behind the dam there was usually a blast-furnace shop, behind it - blast factories, further along the trough there were drilling, stacking, steel, armature and auxiliary factories. The blast furnace was connected to the dam by a bridge across which ore, coal and fluxes were delivered. Almost all the Ural mining plants of the 18th century had two blast furnaces in their composition; in the future, the number of furnaces could increase. Pig iron, as a rule, was sent to a blast factory, where it was processed into blast iron and pounded with hammers. At large factories, the number of hammers reached 8–13. As a rule, the factory office, the manor house, the houses of the employees of the plant administration, and the church were located on the square in front of the plant. Subsequently, with the expansion of factories, such a layout became environmental stress on factory settlements, which gradually grew into cities. Factory ponds, where industrial waste was dumped, were at the same time a source of drinking water, which contributed to the spread of all kinds of illnesses. The plants located close to each other were eventually united by one settlement: Verkh-Neyvinsky and Nizhny-Verkhneyvinsky plants in
Verkh-Neyvinsky, Yekaterinburg and Verkh-Isetsky plants in Yekaterinburg, and others. The management of state-owned factories was carried out on the military settlements model. Mining superiors, who received the title of generals, were appointed by the authorities. The plant was provided with a military garrison, which partly supported the convoy with products. The work was led by mining officers and craftsmen, who were replaced on average every five years. In 1834, state-owned factories were legally equated with military organizations and their workers with soldiers. The management of private factories was carried out by the factory owners under the supervision of the state. The presence of one owner of factories in different regions contributed to the exchange of experience and technologies between enterprises. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the term "mining plant" is practically not used.
The 18th century (1656–1725) At the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, the country's need for metal was exacerbated by the outbreak of wars for access to the
Black and
Baltic Seas. Olonets and
Kashiro-Tula plants in the central and northwestern parts of Russia had already depleted forest and ore bases and did not meet the growing demand for weapons-grade metal, and could not produce high-quality metal due to the presence of harmful impurities in the ores, primarily
sulfur and
phosphorus. These same prerequisites contributed to the shift of priority from the smelting of non-ferrous and noble metals towards iron. After the defeat of the Russian troops at
Narva on November 19, 1700, the Swedes were left with all the Russian artillery, which exacerbated the need for accelerated production of guns. To make up for these losses, Peter I gave the order to melt the church bells into cannons and mortars. As a result, 300 cannons were cast in one year. In 1696, at the initiative of the head of the Siberian order, the Duma clerk
A.A. Vinius, the ore found in the Verkhotursky district was sent for examination to the Moscow gunsmiths and the Tula blacksmith N. D. Antufiev (Demidov). The samples were highly appraised, which played a decisive role in government decision-making. On May 10 and June 15, 1697, decrees of Peter I were issued on the construction of the first Ural blast furnace plants. The construction was supervised by the Siberian Order headed by A. A. Vinius. The first craftsmen arrived in the Urals to build the Nevyansk and Kamensk factories in the spring of 1700. By 1717, out of 516 workers at the Nevyansk plant, 118 people came from central Russia, including 52 from Tula, and 66 people from Moscow and the Moscow region. The launch of the first two plants in 1701 showed good prospects for Ural metallurgy. In 1702, the Uktussky, Verkhne- and Nizhne-Alapaevsky plants were launched, supplying metal, including for the construction of buildings in
St. Petersburg. On March 4, 1702, by the decree of Peter I, the unfinished Nevyansk plant was transferred to the private property of N. D. Demidov. He proved to be a talented organizer and was able to significantly increase production volumes, with the support of the authorities. Demidov easily achieved the registration of additional peasants to factories, as well as relaxation in taxes and supervision by local administrations. Since 1716, the
Demidovs became the first Russian exporters of iron to
Western Europe. In total, the Demidovs built 55 metallurgical plants, including 40 in the Urals. By 1740, the Demidov factories produced about 64% of all Ural and 46% of Russian iron. At the same time, the productivity of the Demidovs' factories was on average 70% higher than that of state-owned. In April 1703, the first convoy with guns and iron made in the Urals (323 cannons, 12
mortars, 14
howitzers) was sent from the Utkinskaya pier on the
Chusovaya River. From the factories, the
guns were transported by horse-drawn transport 176
versts to Chusovaya, then they were delivered by water to
Moscow or St. Petersburg, wintering in
Tver. The first convoy arrived in Moscow in 11 weeks and 6 days, on July 18, 1703. Tests of the first guns, which had been cast in a hurry, were unsuccessful: of the first two guns, one was torn into 20 parts due to the poor quality of the cast iron. Later, in the course of mass testing of the guns, 102 guns out of 323 were torn apart. After that, A. A. Vinius ordered the guns to be tested at the factories before shipment. Later, due to the unsatisfactory quality of the metal and high transportation costs, the manufacture of cannons was moved to the factories of the Central part of Russia. By a decree on 19 January 1705, the smelting of cannons at the Ural factories was terminated. In the first years of the 18th century, with the launch of the first state-owned and private factories, the production base of mining districts and the management system of the enterprises included in them began to be built. Almost all of the first Ural factories were built by local peasants, who were then assigned to factories. In 1700, the first registration of more than 1.6 thousand peasants to the Nevyansk plant was carried out. In 1703, an additional postscript was made to the same plant, which was already owned by N. D. Demidov. By 1762, about 70% of
state peasants were assigned to factories in the Middle Urals and Kamsky Urals. The registered peasants at the factories performed mainly auxiliary work: they prepared firewood for the production of coal and heating houses, mined and fired ore and
limestone, transported goods, and erected dams. On December 10, 1719, the privileges of miners were enshrined in law with the Berg Privilege, which allowed representatives of all classes to search for ores and build metallurgical plants. At the same time, manufacturers and artisans were exempted from state taxes and
recruiting, and their houses were exempt from the post of troops. The law also guaranteed the inheritance of the ownership of factories, proclaimed industrial activity a matter of state importance and protected manufacturers from interference in their affairs by local authorities. The same law established the
Berg Board, and managed the entire mining and metallurgical industry, and local administrations. The provisions of the Berg Privilege were extended to foreign nationals in 1720, and remained in force until the early 19th century. In the 1720s,
V.N. Tatishchev and, later, V. de Gennin, who founded the Yekaterinburg state-owned plant in 1723, were sent to the Urals as leaders of the local mining administration. Tatishchev came into conflict with Demidov, trying to weaken his power at the beginning of his work in the Urals. Demidov complained of infringement in Petersburg, and Tatishchev was recalled. Later, de Gennin, who came to replace Tatishchev, and completed the construction of the plant in 1722–1723, confirmed the abuse of the Demidovs in organizing the work of private plants. In 1720, Tatishchev established the Office of Mining Affairs in
Kungur, and in 1722 transferred it to the Uktussky plant and renamed it the Siberian Mining Authority, and then the Siberian Higher Mining Authority. De Gennin transferred the Office to Yekaterinburg in 1723 and renamed the institution the Siberian Ober-Bergamt. The achievements of Tatishchev include creating competition for the Demidovs by inviting other mining companies to the Urals, developing rules for managing mining plants and staffing standards. In the 1720s and 1740s, the Yekaterinburg plant, which gave rise to Yekaterinburg, was the largest metallurgical plant in Europe. The blast furnaces of the plant were more economical and more productive than the English and Swedish ones, which were considered the best in the industry at that time. If the specific consumption of charcoal per 100 kg of iron in Swedish furnaces ranged from 300 to 350 kg, then in Yekaterinburg the consumption of coal was 150–170 kg. On January 18, 1721, a decree was issued that allowed factory owners, regardless of whether they had a noble rank, to buy
serfs. At the same time, the villages purchased by the tycoon with their population could only be sold together with the factory. Later, these peasants and the factories that used their labor became known as possessory factories. Later, in 1744, the norms for the purchase of peasants with factories were established: in the factories of ferrous metallurgy with one blast furnace — 100 peasants, and in the copper smelters - 200 men for every thousand pounds of copper. In the first quarter of the 18th century, 20 blast furnaces were built in the Urals, and in 1725 they smelted about 0.6 million poods of cast iron. During the same period, small businesses built several small metallurgical plants: Mazuevsky, Shuvakishsky, and Davydovsky. All of them existed for no more than 40 years. After the end of the
Northern War, due to a decrease in demand for
ferrous metals, the construction of iron smelters was suspended, mainly copper smelters were built. From 1721 to 1725, 11 plants were built in the Urals, of which only Nizhny Tagil was blast-furnace and iron-making, the rest were either copper-smelting (
Polevskoy and Pyskorsky), or copper-smelting and iron-making (Verkhne-Uktussky and Yekaterinburg). In total, from 1701 to 1740, 24 state and 31 private metallurgical plants were built in the Urals, which determined the specialization of the region as a quality industrial metallurgical center. Private factories were characterized by higher profitability compared to state-owned. The growth of iron smelting in the Urals over 25 years (from 1725 to 1750) amounted to 250%: from 0.6 million poods to 1.5 million poods. In the 1730s, the construction of fortresses and factories began in the Southern Urals, on the lands of the Bashkirs. In 1734,
Anna Ioannovna approved the project of colonization of the Southern Urals submitted by the Chief Secretary of the
Senate, I. K. Kirilov, and appointed him the Chief Commander of the Orenburg expedition. The tasks of the expedition included the construction of the fortress city of
Orenburg, a line of defensive fortresses in order to exclude the raids of the Bashkirs, development of the natural resources of the region, and the opening of trade routes to
Asia. In autumn of 1736, 100 versts to the south-east of
Ufa and 10 versts from the Tabynsky fortress, the construction of the Resurrection (Tabynsky) copper smelter, the first in the Southern Urals, was started. On May 22, 1744, a decree of the Berg Collegium was issued, which allowed for the purchase from the Bashkirs and other owners of the deposit, forests and land for the construction of mining plants. In the period from 1745 to 1755, 20 factories were built on the territory of
Bashkiria. By 1781, there were 38 factories in total. During the years of the
Peasant War, 89 mining plants were damaged to varying degrees. With the beginning of the uprising, in the first half of October 1773, the closest private copper plants to Orenburg were seized: Verkhotorsky, Voskresensky, Preobrazhensky and Kano-Nikolsky plants. From November to December, all plants in the Southern Urals (24 plants) were seized. By the beginning of 1774, the uprising covered the Middle Urals, the number of captured factories in January reached 39, in February - 92. Individual factories resumed work for short periods of time in 1774, despite the occupation. With the suppression of the uprising, the work of the factories began to recover. By the beginning of 1775, about two thirds of all the Ural factories were working. By the end of 1775, the least destroyed factories of the Southern Urals began to resume their work. Since the middle of the 18th century, state-owned Ural factories began to produce
gold, and since 1819,
platinum. Later, mining was permitted for all Russian subjects, which led to the rapid propagation of gold mines in the Urals. In the 1750s and 1760s, the construction of factories in the Urals continued intensively, thanks to the high profitability of production and the support of the authorities. In addition to the Demidovs and
Stroganovs, entrepreneurs Osokins, Tverdyshevs, I. S. Myasnikov, and M. M. Pokhodyashin, as well as officials and nobles:
P. I. Shuvalov, M. M. Golitsyn, and A. I. Glebov began to build factories. Only the Yekaterinburg and Kamensky plants remained in the state administration, the rest were transferred to private management. Later, many private factories were returned to the treasury for debts (in 1764 — the factories of Count Shuvalov, in 1770 —
Count Chernyshev's, in 1781 —
Count Vorontsov's). By the end of the 17th century, the largest companies in Russia were the Demidovs, Yakovlevs, Batashovs and Mosolovs, which produced about half of all iron in the country. In 1767, about 140 metallurgical plants operating in the Urals made the region a leader in world iron production and secured a monopoly position in Russia in copper smelting. By the end of the 18th century, the number of serf workers in the Ural factories reached 74.1 thousand people, and the number of registered peasants reached 212.7 thousand people. In 1800, the Ural factories produced 80.1% of cast iron, 88.3% of iron, and 100% of copper of the all-Russian production volume. Thanks to this, Russia came out on top in the world for iron production and smelted from 20 to 27% of the world's copper. From the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, problems with the supply of wood worsened at most of the Ural mining plants. The forests of the factory dachas were cut down at a distance of 5 to 25 versts. The old factories had even greater distances: the Kamensk plant had 50-55 versts, and the
Nevyansk plant had 40-70 versts. Decrees were issued prohibiting unauthorized logging. File:Уктусский завод.jpg|Uktussky factory plan, 1720 File:Екатеринбург, 1874.jpg|Yekaterinburg plant layout, 1874 File:План Екатеринбурга 1729 год.jpg|Yekaterinburg factory plan, 1729 File:Kolomenskoe_old_artillery_01.jpg|12-foot cannon of the Kamensky plant, 1704 File:Метенков В.Л. Спуск барок на Уткинской пристани, 1893.jpg|Descent of the barges on the Utkinskaya pier, 1893
The 19th century The
industrial revolution at the Ural mining plants consisted of three major stages: • Early 19th century - 1830s: the appearance of the first
steam engines, the development of blast furnace production, and the introduction of rolling mills. • 1840-1870s: the development and implementation of more progressive methods of obtaining iron:
puddling, kontuaz furnaces, and Lancashire hearth. • 1880-1910s: introduction of
open-hearth and
Bessemer methods of
steel production, and the complete displacement of water wheels by steam and other engines. The replacement of wooden
bellows with cylindrical blowers in the early 19th century reduced coal consumption by up to 20% and doubled the productivity of blast furnaces. Further development of blast furnace technology was associated with increasing the height of the furnaces, optimizing their profile and increasing the power of the blower motors.
Cupola furnaces appeared at factories, and the
casting of metals became a separate production. In 1808, serf S. I. Badaev invented a method for producing cast steel, later called Badaevskaya, for which he received his freedom and in 1811 was sent to the
Votkinsk Plant to organize production. At the Zlatoust plant since 1828, experiments on the production of cast steel were conducted by
P. P. Anosov. in
Zlatoust Foreign engineers played a significant role in the development of existing plants and the construction of new ones in the Urals. In the 18th century, up to 600 German metallurgists worked at the factories of the Yekaterinburg Department at various times. At the beginning of the 19th century, 140 craftsmen from Europe were invited to the
Izhevsk Arms Factory, and 115 German gunsmiths and steelworkers were invited to the Zlatoust Arms Factory. After the end of the contract, many foreigners remained in the factories as freelance workers. Administrative changes at the beginning of the 19th century were associated with the approval in 1806 of the Mining Charter, compiled by A. F. Deryabin and later included in part in the
Code of Laws of 1832, and the formation of the Mining Department, which was transformed in 1811 into the Department of Mining and Salt Affairs. In the period from 1801 to 1860, 37 new plants were built in the Urals, including 3 copper smelters. Next to the previously built factories, auxiliary plants were built, which used the wastewater of the main factories and were actually their rolling shops. During the same period, 14 Ural copper smelters were closed due to the refusal of
mints' coinage and the transition to paper money. To stabilize the situation, the government in 1834 abolished all taxes from factories, except for tithes. At the same time, the level of copper production at the beginning of the century was reached only in 1826. Since the 1850s, due to the appearance of cheap English, and later —
Chilean,
North American, and
Australian copper on the market, the metallurgical industry of the Southern Urals entered a period of long-term crisis. In 1859, the price of Russian copper in comparison with the level of 1854 had decreased by 50%. Steam engines were introduced and took root in the Urals slowly. The first steam engines appeared in the Ural factories in the last years of the 18th century. From 1800 to the 1810s, machines often failed and consumed a lot of firewood, which caused their slow spread. In the 1830s, the machines became more reliable, there were machine-building enterprises that designed, assembled, and repaired steam engines. In 1834, the
Cherepanovs built the
first steam locomotive and the first railway with a length of 853.4 m, designed to deliver ore from the Vysokogorsky mine to the Vysky plant. By 1840, the number of steam engines in the Ural factories reached 73 units. Also in the 1840s,
hydraulic turbines became widespread in the Urals, replacing low-performance water wheels. In the 1840s, the introduction of the Kontuaz method of iron production began at the Ural factories. The Yuryuzan-Ivanovsky plant in 1840 and the Simsky plant in 1842 were the first to switch to it. Subsequently, the Kontuaz forges were built at state-owned factories, and later at private ones. By 1861, 364 Kontuaz forges operated at 37 factories in the Urals. In the 1860s and 1870s, when production was already supplanted by steelmaking, Lancashire forges appeared in the Urals. A more productive puddling process was introduced in the Urals in 1817 in a test mode at the Pozhevsky plant, from 1825 to 1830 at the Nizhniy Tagil plant, and in September 1837 the Votkinsky plant completely switched to puddling. By 1861, among 58 factories, there were 201 puddling furnaces, 34 gas puddling, 153 welding, and 23 gas welding furnaces. Before the widespread use of steel-making processes in 1857, P. M. Obukhov invented a cheap method, called Obukhov, of steel production at the Zlatoust plant. The height of the Ural blast furnaces in the 19th century reached 18 meters, which significantly exceeded the height of European furnaces. This advantage made it possible to carry out the blast furnace process on a cold blast with relatively low costs. This led to the later introduction of
hot blast in the Urals, although successful experiments on its use were carried out back in the 1830s and 1840s at the Kushvinsky, Lysvensky, Verkh-Isetsky, and other plants. Thanks to the events of the
Industrial Revolution in England, the average productivity of blast furnaces in the Ural factories in the second half of the 19th century was already inferior to those in England. So, in 1800, one blast furnace in the Urals produced an average of 91.6 thousand poods of iron, and in 1860, 137 thousand poods. British furnaces produced respectively 65.5 thousand and 426 thousand poods. Since the middle of the 19th century, rolling production has developed, and steel and iron casting continued to develop. Castings from the
Kasli plant have become world-famous. At large factories, rail rolling production was mastered. During the
Patriotic War of 1812, many Ural factories were converted to weapons production facilities. The Kamensk plant issued 87,274 poods of artillery pieces during 1810–1813. At the same time, the war substantially reduced the demand of the domestic market for metal, which led to inflation and long standstills at factories. The casting of artillery pieces resumed in 1834. Before the beginning of the
Crimean War, from 1834 to 1852, the Ural factories cast 1,542 guns instead of the 3,250 ordered, on average, orders for the production of shells were fulfilled by about 23-25 %. Already during the war, the supply of 60-pounder guns was disrupted due to a gap in testing. During the defense of Sevastopol, 900 Ural guns were unsuitable. Since the 1820s, gold and platinum mining has been rapidly developing in the Urals. In 1823, there were 309 mines in the region. 105 poods of gold were mined. In 1842, the largest Ural gold nugget weighing 36.04 kg was found at the Tsarevo-Alexandrovsky mine. Platinum was mined at the mines of the Nizhniy Tagil district of the Demidovs, at the Isov mines of the Verkh-Isetsk district, and at the Krestovozdvizhensk mines. In the 19th century, the Urals produced 93–95% of the world's platinum. In the 18th century and first half of the 19th century, the use of adolescent and child labor was widespread in the mines and factories of the Urals, sanctioned by a number of legislative acts and reinforced in the Mining Statute of 1842. In the 1850s, children and adolescents accounted for 30 to 50% of all workers in factories, and in mines - from 40 to 85%. At the beginning of the 19th century, women were employed in 17% of factories. In the 1850s, female labor was already more widely used, and the proportion of women was about 10% of the workers. converter of the Nizhnesaldinsky plant (19th century) at the exposition of the Museum of the
Ural State Academy of Architecture and Arts in
Yekaterinburg By the time of the abolition of
serfdom, the Ural metallurgy was in a deep crisis, which was facilitated by a sharp increase in grain prices in 1857 due to crop failures, especially significant in the Northern Urals. Of the 41 mining districts, 13 had a total debt of 8.1 million rubles, which increased to 12.4 million rubles by the end of the 1860s. The transition to freelance labor led to a sharp reduction in the number of workers in factories. If in 1860 there were 8,663 workers at the seven Goroblagodatsky factories, in 1861 — 7,030, then in 1862 the number decreased to 4,671 people, in 1863 - to 3,097, and in 1864 - to 2,839 people. In 1824, to support the miners, the government established a State Loan Bank. According to the data of 1849, the State Loan Bank pledged the Kanonikolsky, Beloretsky, Voskresensky, Troitsky, Blagoveshchensky, Yuryuzan-Ivanovsky mining districts a total amount of 1,106,995 rubles in silver. In 1851, the Beloretsk Mining District was re-mortgaged to the bank, and in 1852, the Preobrazhensky Plant was mortgaged to private investors in the amount of 300 thousand rubles with the obligation to pay the debt to the bank. In general, the pre-reform level of production at the Ural factories was reached only in 1870. The Government provided support to mining companies in the form of soft loans secured by metals and orders for the construction of railways. The industry was heavily influenced by commercial banks and wealthy entrepreneurs who bought up entire mountain districts. In the 1880s, mining plants began to be
incorporated. In 1870, at the invitation of the Russian government, the Austrian metallurgist P. von Tunner visited an industrial exhibition in St. Petersburg and inspected the Ural metallurgical plants. As a result of this trip, in 1871, he published a book with a description of the factories, in which he noted the technical and organizational backwardness of the metallurgy of the Urals, and the high cost of production. Von Tunner's book eventually became the first systematic description of the Ural mining plants. In the 1880s and 1890s, 16 metallurgical plants were built in the Urals, including the large Chusovsky (1883) and Nadezhdinsky plants(1896). The old factories underwent significant modernization, including the introduction of mechanical processing plants, the construction of open-hearth shops, power plants, and air heaters. The introduction of hot blast was promoted in the 1860s and 1870s in the factories of the Urals. Rashet blast furnaces equipped with trapping devices for heating the air were used. Despite these successes, since 1896, the Urals has lost the primacy in the share of metal produced to enterprises in Southern Russia. In 1900, the Ural factories smelted 50.1 million poods of iron. The first
open-hearth furnaces in the Urals were built in 1871 at Votkinsky and in 1875 at the
Perm Cannon Factory. By 1900, there were a total of 42 of the furnace. Bessemerization in the Urals was first introduced at the Nizhnesaldinsky and Katav-Ivanovsky plants. In 1900, 48.9% of the Ural finished ferrous metal was produced by open-hearth and Bessemer methods. and P. A. Zemyatchensky (in the center) at the Kushvinsky plant, 1899 By the end of the 19th century, with the expansion of factories in the Urals, the problems with the depletion of forest resources and environmental pollution intensified. In 1899, on behalf of S. Yu. Witte, an expedition of scientists headed by D. I. Mendeleev was sent to the Urals, the main task of which was to find out the causes of stagnation in the metallurgical industry. In his report, Mendeleev called the main reasons for the industrial crisis of the Ural metallurgy, off-road conditions, the preserved serf relations between factory owners and peasants, the use of outdated equipment and technologies, the monopoly of large entrepreneurs on ore and forests, and the arbitrariness of local authorities. As a result of the expedition, a plan was drawn up for the development of Ural metallurgy with an increase in the volume of iron smelting to 300 million poods per year, which did not find the support of the authorities. == The 20th to the 21st centuries ==