Kursk Oblast

   An administrative region of the Russian Federation. Part of the Central Federal District and Central Black Earth Economic Region, Kursk borders Bryansk, Oryol, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Belgorod, and northeastern Ukraine. Kursk Oblast has a land area of 29,800 square kilometers and a population of 1.2 million. Generally, the region is hilly, with an average elevation of between 175 and 225 meters. There are nearly 1,000 rivers and streams in the oblast, endowing the region with extensive water resources. Much of the forest has been cleared, making the region suitable for farming the rich chernozem soil; key crops include wheat, corn, sunflowers, and sugar beets.

   The region was the scene of the pivotal Battle of Kursk during 1943, one of the turning points in the Soviet-Axis conflict. The region is one of Russia’s most industrially developed with nearly 10,000 firms in operation (more than 90 percent of which are privately owned). Manufacturing accounts for nearly half of the regional GDP, with engineering, nuclear energy, metalworking, and chemicals being the most important sectors. The oblast is on the site of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, the world’s largest iron ore basin; both open-pit and underground mining of dolomite, copper-nickel ores, and bauxite are prevalent in the region.

   Kursk, one of Russia’s oldest cities, is an important scientific, cultural, and industrial center, with transportation links to Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation drew strong support from Kursk in the early 1990s. In 1996, former Russian Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoy was elected governor with 76 percent of the vote; however, he was prevented from standing for office in 2000 for failure to properly register his car. A Communist, Aleksandr Mikhailov, won the election in 2000 with a campaign that smacked of anti-Semitism; he left the KPRF in 2005 to join United Russia and was quickly reappointed by Vladimir Putin. Mikhailov has greatly expanded his oblast’s relationship with Ukraine and Belarus while in office.