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 steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)