Voronezh

Of the crops in 1926, rye occupied the first place, followed by hemp, wheat, millet, sunflower seed, potatoes and oats. Sugar beet, melons and pumpkins and aniseed are also grown. Stock raising, especially of horses, is carried on in the south-east and with it goes a leather industry. Poultry keeping has an export character, and there is still a little bee-keeping. The Voronezh Agricultural institute was opened in 1913. The University of Voronezh was founded in 1915, when the Germans occupied Yuriev (now in Estonia) and its university was therefore trans ferred to Voronezh.

Forests, which in the time of Peter the Great supplied timber for ship-building, are now practically all destroyed, especially the oak forests. The Voronezh river carries the pine forest and marsh of the north southwards into the region along its sandy, low left bank, as does the Bityuga. The hedgehog, badger, squirrel, pole cat, marsh-otter, otter, weasel, ermine, wolf and fox still exist in a few places and marmot fur is worked near Bobrov. The musk rat is found near the Bityuga and the Khoper rivers. But hunting, which even in the early 19th century had some importance and which in the 18th century included the hunting of the wild horse, is rapidly dying out. Factory industries mainly depend on local products and include mainly flour-milling, oil-pressing, distilling, the manufacture of makhorka tobacco, brick-making, leather and rope works.

The population is mainly Great Russian, with a considerable amount of Tatar intermixture. The region has been inhabited from remote times and the east is thickly strewn with kurgans, or mounds; some contain burial relics, and some are the remains of earlier fortifications. The chief towns are Voronezh and Butur linovka (q.v.). No other town reaches a population of I0,000.

Voronezh,

the chief town of the above province and the administrative centre of the Black Earth Area (Central), situated on the navigable Voronezh river, 5 m. above its confluence with the Don, in 51° 42' N., 1o' E. Pop. 212,40o. It has a grain elevator and three railways branching from it and is an important collecting centre for the surrounding agricultural re gion. Its industrial enterprises include machine-making factories, steam flour-mills, oil-pressing mills and the manufacture of bricks, wadding, paint and alcoholic drinks. A university and agricultural institute and museums exist.

The site was occupied in the I I th century by a Khazar town, deserted during the 14th and 15th centuries. The Russians built a fort here in 1586, which was burned by the Tatars in 159o, but rebuilt. Peter the Great in 1695 built here a flotilla of boats for the conquest of Azov. The town was destroyed by fire in 1703, 1748 and 1773, but was always rebuilt.