History
Founded in 1747 as Pokrovskaya sloboda (Покровская слобода), it was granted town status and renamed Pokrovsk (Покровск) in 1914. Its German name was Kosakenstadt. It became the capital of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, now a part of Saratov Oblast, in 1924, and it was renamed Engels after Friedrich Engels in 1931.
It was founded by Ukrainian settlers, and was settled by Germans during the reign of Catherine the Great; it is now a major center of the Volga German culture. It is the site of Engels Air Force Base, Russia's largest and most active strategic bomber base.
On August 26, 2011, a monument in honor of the Russian-German victims of repression within the Soviet Union was unveiled in Engels.
Read more about this topic: Engels (city)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.”
—Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)