KIROV

formerly (until 1934) Vyatka, or Viatka, city and administrative centre of Kirov oblast (province), western Russia, on the Vyatka River. The city was founded as Khlynov in 1181 by traders from Novgorod and became the centre of the Vyatka Lands, settled by Russians in the 14th to the 15th century. In 1489 it was captured by Moscow. Renamed Vyatka in 1780, it became a provincial seat, but development was slow, and it was used as a place of exile. In 1934 the city was renamed for the Soviet official Sergey M. Kirov. Today, railways radiate from Kirov to Perm, Kotlas, Vologda, and Nizhny Novgorod. The city's once-renowned handicraft industries have been replaced by large-scale, modern industries, particularly nonferrous metalworking, engineering, tire making, and timber working. There are teacher-training and agricultural institutes and a library founded by the Russian revolutionary leader and writer A.I. Herzen during his exile there in the 1840s. Pop. (1994 est.) 491,100. oblast (province), western Russia. The oblast covers an area of 46,650 square miles (120,800 square km) and occupies almost the entire basin of the Vyatka River. It is a rolling morainic plain rising from the broad, central valley of the Vyatka to the dissected limestone uplands of the Severnye Hills in the north and the Vyatsky Hills and Verkhne (Upper) Kama upland in the east. Nearly all the oblast lies in swampy forest, or taiga, of pine, fir, spruce, and birch; in the extreme south deciduous species such as oak begin to appear. There are extensive areas of peat bog and swamp. Most of the population live in the Vyatka River valley. Timber working is a major element in the economy. Iron deposits near Omutninsk, which have been worked since the 18th century, are the base, together with Urals ore, for the oblast's metallurgical industries. Phosphorite is mined at Rudnichny. Agriculture is poor and relatively unimportant, and a heavy emigration of rural population has continued since the 1930s. Kirov city is the administrative centre. Pop. (1995 est.) 1,648,000.