Oktyabrsky, 1958: A visit to a new Soviet oil city

The city's main street in 1958

From the Soviet Press in 1958. Oktyabrsky didn't even exist in 1937. But it went from prospector's shacks to a city of 70,000 in just 20 years. And this despite the war. A true reflection of the dynamism of Soviet socialism in that era. The city now has a population of around 115,000

By Anver Bikchentayev, Bashkir Writer

Oil workers call it the "White City of Black Gold.” It is an apt phrase for Oktyabrsky, the new oil center in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the southwest Urals, a radiating city with a population of 70,000 that grew up around a cluster of temporary wooden cottages built to house oil prospectors in 1938.

I remember this Bashkir country in my youth. It was a land of great and quiet expanses. One could ride horseback for hundreds of miles and see nothing but steppe, nothing but the golden eagle or the black kite winging overhead to break the emptiness of the desolate plain. It was a land of few towns, of nomad shepherds and grain farmers, of unchanging ways and ancient superstitions.

Bashkiria has been transformed over the years. The republic now has a population of more than three million. There are many industrial enterprises and the area is one of the most important oil sources in the Soviet Union.

Original prospector's shacks versus the housing of 1958

A number of new cities have grown up, such as Ishimbai, Saran , Alzamai and Oktyabrsky. Most have been founded within the last few years and they demonstrate the rapid industrial progress of a once un developed area . The descendants of illiterate nomads have become industrial workers, engineers and doctors, schoolteachers, cultured farmers and agronomists.

The settlement of Oktyabrsky had no name in 1938, it was simply a number of wooden houses, a laundry and a bakery grouped together on the grassy plain. Six years later it was on the way to becoming a city .

Lake Akai-Kul, near the village of Zaitovo, according to an old folk tale, was devil- ridden. Satan himself lived on its shore, waiting to grab the unwary who walked there after dark. The lake was said to be bottomless and old people warned that a man who ventured on it would do well to prepare his will beforehand.

These old tales cropped up again with new improvisations when strangers arrived with tools and instruments about thirty years ago. To begin with, they erected a shack for their instruments and tents for themselves. They listened to the old stories about the " accursed" lake, smiled a bit and went on with their work, measuring and tapping and surveying the shore and the land about the lake. These were prospectors who sounded the depth of newly discovered Tuimazy oil deposits.

Then other men came and built steel towers twice the height of the minaret of the village mosque. The tool shack was the first building in the still unnamed city of Oktyabrsky. Over the past 20 years the city has grown by leaps and bounds and it continues to expand. It is a comfortable city now , with electricity, modern plumbing, telephone and radio service. Building has proceeded at a steady pace, interrupted only by the war. Some 7,000 new housing units were erected within the past ten years alone.

Building of private houses has been encouraged with the help of long-term loans and materials. There are broad avenues there now lined with both one and two - family houses in the western and southern districts of the city. Each of these houses has its own small orchard of apple trees, berry bushes and grape vines.

Oktyabrsky is an oil town and many of its 95 streets bear names relating to that industry . The oldest street is Devonskaya, derived from Devonian, the geologic age. Gubkin street is named for a noted Soviet petrologist and is the business center of the city. The favorite street for strolling is Sverdlov Street, with its wealth of greenery and flowers.

New Cities on the Map

How, where and why do new cities arise ? They have been springing up because of the industrialization of the country and the harnessing of new areas to the nation's economy. The distribution of these cities is very instructive. During the Soviet period the number of cities east of the Urals has more than doubled.

New towns rise near mineral deposits, at the sites of huge hydro electric power plants, and on major river and sea routes. A geologists' camp that stood in the steppe near Kustanai two years ago has grown into the town of Rudny, whose inhabitants are developing its rich iron ore deposits. It is the same way everywhere: a steppe grain port, Volzhsky, rose on the Volga River ; the lead and copper town of Almalyk in Uzbekistan ; the oil town of Almetievsk in the Tatar Autonomous Republic.

The story of the new city of Oktyabrsky is also the story of the men and women who founded it. In my own case I have seen both Oktyabrsky and its people change right before my own eyes.

Let us take a few typical examples. There is the membership of the Oktyabrsky City Soviet which includes K. Saderdinov, a loader foreman , and M. Sipaev, a painting foreman. They sit alongside C. Batershin, a drill operator; N. Nabiev, a concrete worker; and N. Strekalov, a lathe operator. Each of these men, and hundreds of others like them, developed their skills and qualifications by studies in the technical and specialized schools of the city or at on -the-job training courses.

These training courses are very popular in Oktyabrsky, and the various technical studies draw more than 3,000 workers into classes. Only recently a branch of the Scientific Geological Research Institute was opened in the city. It is busy today training skilled geologists who will soon join the working population to add to the city's steady, planned development.

Needs grow as a city develops. Not very long ago a single school, a dispensary and small library sufficed . Today Oktyabrsky has six clubs, 21 motion picture houses, 57 libraries and a school enrollment of almost 8,000 youngsters. A specialized secondary school for oil technicians has 1,500 students. There are eleven kindergartens and nine nurseries to serve the children. There are 70 medical units of various kinds with combined staffs of 560 doctors and nurses.

The House of Culture, which is a big community center, has two amateur theater groups presenting plays both in Bashkir and in Russian, besides all sorts of clubs for gymnasts, photographers and hobbyists.

It is startling to think of all the changes that have taken place in my own lifetime in Bashkiria, and I am not an old man . There was much that was instructive, interesting, and sometimes even amusing in the struggle against the survivals of the past.

I have seen old women who refused to move into the new houses, dreading the gas ranges. The samovar continued to be used in many homes although it was much easier to boil water for tea on the gas range. Old people forbade their children to go to the theater. Painting was prohibited by the Mohammedan faith , and the elders in some families did not allow any pictures to be put up on the walls. Twenty years have passed since then, and it all seems quite unreal now.

We take the changes for granted these days. Nobody even blinks an eye when there is talk about plans for controlling the weather. The dry southern winds churn up violent dust storms in the region. Oktyabrsky is planning to grow shelter belts of trees to block these devastating winds. And this in a region that was wild, thinly populated steppe no more than 20 years ago.

There is no easy explanation for all this remarkable growth. But a large part of it can be found in the character of the people themselves. From a nomadic past with all the superstitions and fears of generations, they have become an educated, industrial people.