MEZHDURECHENSK

also spelled Mezdurecensk, city, Kemerovo oblast (province), central Russia. It is located where the Usa River flows into the Tom River, in the upper Tom valley. Developed as the coal-mining settlement of Olzheras in the Tom-Usinsky region of the Kuznetsk Basin in the 1950s, it was renamed and incorporated as a town in 1955. In appearance it is a typical heavy-industrial new town, with coal mining as its main activity. Pop. (1994 est.) 107,400.