Kaluga Oblast

   An administrative region of the Russian Federation. Part of the Central Federal District and Economic Region, Kaluga lies less than 100 kilometers south of the capital, Moscow. It is bordered by the Smolensk, Bryansk, Oryol, Tula, and Moscow oblasts. With just over a million residents, the oblast covers 29,900 square kilometers of plains and forests. Major international highways and railway lines connect European-bound traffic from Moscow to Kiev, Lvov, and Warsaw. The economy is mixed between industry (machine building, food processing, and chemicals) and agriculture. Obninsk, Russia’s “First Science City,” is home to the country’s largest scientific research complex and its oldest nuclear energy plant. The region showed strong support for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation during the early 1990s. The regional governor is Anatoly Artamonov; he replaced Valery Sudarenkov, who was the deputy prime minister of Uzbekistan in the 1980s. Artamonov was elected in 2000 with 56.72 percent of the vote; in 2004, he won reelection with a two-thirds majority and was reappointed by Vladimir Putin in 2005.