Svobodny () is a
town in
Amur Oblast,
Russia. Population: 58,730 (2010 est.); 63,889 (
2002 Census);
Geography
The town is located north of
Blagoveshchensk on the right bank of the
Zeya River.
History
The town was founded in 1912 in conjunction with the construction of the Amur Railway (the
Trans-Siberian Railway's "bypass" route, which was to provide a railway connection from European Russia to the Pacific entirely over the Russian soil, without
crossing the north-eastern China). The town was originally named
Alexeyevsk in honor of the then
crown prince Alexey. After the abdication of
Tsar Nicholas II following the
February Revolution, the city was renamed Svobodny,
Russian for
free.
During the
Stalin era, the
BAMLag prison camp was built in Svobodny, with the intention of providing
forced labor for the planned construction of the
BAM railway. The camp became one of the largest in the
gulag system, with ca. 190,300 convicts in October 1935. The camp claimed the lives of thousands of political and clerical prisoners.
It is the birthplace of the director
Leonid Gaiday, whose memorial was unveiled in September 2006.
Economy and infrastructure
The town is an important junction for both rail and river traffic, with two railway stations on the
Trans-Siberian Railway including rolling-stock repair facilities, and a
river port on the
Zeya.
The town is also home to factories producing...
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