UK-Russia Closed Nuclear Cities Partnership

  Introduction
  History
  Siberian Chemical Combine
  CNCP Projects in Seversk

History

The area is rich in pre-history, and has attracted waves of different settlers since the days of Stone Age hunter gathers. Archaeologists have found evidence of continuous human activity dating from Neolithic times, and it is thought that the first mammoth hunters lived along the lower reaches of the Tom River during the Stone Age, or Paleolithic period, around 17,000 years ago. When the bones of a mammoth were discovered during excavations in 1987, one was found to be decorated with a drawing made by a stone age artist. This is now on display in the Museum of Ethnography and Archeology at Tomsk University. The internationally known Samus Settlement, which dates back to the Bronze Age, is an important archeological site revealing information about an early Siberian culture.Between 1200 and 1300 BC a highly developed tribe of hunter-herdsmen of Eastern-Iranian descent, known as the Irmen, moved into the Kirgizka River area. They were skilled potters, bone-cutters, and craftsmen, capable of casting in bronze and drilling stones. Their descendants, who gradually merged with the Ugro-Finnic hunting tribes, built many monuments, including the Kurlaks castle dating from between 5th and 3rd century BC.

In the early Middle Ages, between 5th-9th century AD, new ethnic groups moved in, a period which saw the Turkization of the local population. These were followed by the invasion of the Kuman-Kypchak tribes between the 12th and 14th centuries. Some of these tribes then moved south when they became known as the Polovets. The first Russian pioneers arrived in the 15th century. The first Russian settlement was the monastery built in the mouth of the Kirgizka River in the beginning of the 17th century, which now located in modern day Seversk city.

Merchants and government officials followed the peasants, and played an important role in the establishment of peasantry in Siberia.There used to be about three dozens of settlements in the territory of the future city. On the middle of the 1920ies various artels were popular, i.e. those of starch, treacle production, fishing, wood processing, cabbing and cooperage.

There are signs of ancient habitation in the territory of ZATO Seversk, which is over 2.5 thousand hectares, especially along river banks and around lakes.

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