Karaganda

Karaganda (Russian: Караганда) or Qaraghandy (Kazak: Қарағанды) is the capital of the audany (Russian oblast) of the same name in Kazakhstan. It is located at , with a population of 437,000 (1999). It is the third most populous city in Kazakhstan, behind Almaty and Astana.

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The name "Qaraghandy" approximately translates to "place rich in acacia". Karaganda is an industrial city, built to exploit nearby coal mines using the slave work of prisoners of labor camps. It was briefly considered as a candidate for the capital of the (then) recently independent Republic of Kazakhstan, but its bid was turned down in favor of Astana. In support of this bid, a large international airport was built, which today goes mostly unused.

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It is the birthplace of the late Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov. It is also the home city of Kazakh World War II hero Nurken Abdirov. A statue in Abdirov's honor is located in the center of the city.

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The original site of Karaganda is now labeled on city maps as the "Old Town," but almost nothing remains on that site. In exploiting the rich coal deposits next door, the Soviets undermined the entire city, and the town had to be abandoned completely and moved several miles to the south. Only three or four buildings remain in the ghostly Old Town, of which one is the old (and once ornate) theatre, and another an old fire station mentioned in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

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Russian: Russian can mean:...

Kazak: REDIRECTKazaks...

Oblast: An oblast (Slavonian verbalism or term, Czech: oblast, Slovak: oblas?, Russian, Ukrainian: ????????, Bulgarian: ???????) English equivalent area, province or zone....