Berezniki is a large industrial centre of the Perm Territory and the second largest city of the region.

It is located on the left bank of River Kama, 180 kilometres northward from Perm.

The city takes the area of 431 square km (including the right-bank microdistrict Usolsky). Its population is 166 thousand persons.

The first settlements on the area of modern Berezniki appeared in the 16th -17th centuries on the basis of salt-mines. In 1579 for the first time there was a record of Zyryanka Village, in 1670 there appeared a settlement, and later the mountain town of Dedyukhin. At the same time several separate settlements – Lyonva, Berezniki, Veretye, Churtan, etc. were formed nearby the local saltworks.

An important stage in the history of the future Berezniki was the foundation of Russia’s first soda factory in the Perm Province on the left bank of Kama, opposite to ancient Usolye, in summer 1883. In the course of nationalization the factory was transformed into V.I. Lenin Bereznikovsky Exemplary Soda Factory (1923).

The city’s development was also promoted by the unique (one of the world’s richest ones) Verhnekamsky deposit of potash salts. Right in the city territory there are Bereznikovsky and Durymansky sites of the deposit. At the end of the 19th century a railway was built to connect Verhnekamye with Perm. Salt-mining was perfected and trade developed. A huge chemical industrial complex was put into operation in spring 1932. On March, 20th the same year workers’ settlements were united into one city under the name of Berezniki.

Modern chemical manufacture was developing there on a large scale, thus giving grounds for writer K. G.Paustovsky to call Berezniki the “republic of chemistry”.

Even before the war it became clear that the “chemical republic” needed powerful “lungs”. Therefore the talented forestry specialist V.L.Mindovsky was invited to Berezniki in 1935. For twenty years he worked on planting of greenery in the city.

During the Great Patriotic War, despite extreme difficulties, the soda, nitrogen fertilizing and chemical factories in Berezniki went on developing and increasing rates of manufacture. In 1943, in the hard conditions of the wartime, the first production of the magnesium factory was released. Production of titanium sponge was mastered at the magnesium factory in the 1960s. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s the 2nd, the 3rd and the 4th potash industrial complexes were constructed, today united as Uralkaliy JSC.

Sights of Berezniki

In 1981 the city was connected by a bridge to the town of Usolye, which has monuments of architecture of the 17th- 19th centuries: the Spaso-Preobrazhenskiy (Our Savior’s Transfiguration) Cathedral with a separate belltower, the Stroganovs’ Palaces now housing a museum, several churches and mansions.

One of the architectural monuments in Berezniki itself is the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos.

A vivid example of the Soviet architecture is the building of the cinema Avant-guard. Singularity of its construction is revealed in the photos taken from above: the building is constructed in the shape of a huge film projector.

On the bank of Chashkinsky Lake there is a unique archaeological complex of federal significance – the ancient site of Khutorskaya settlement. It is a sample monument of Kama neolith, dated to the 5th- 3rd B.C.