DRAFT
Chelyabinsk, Siberia, Russia
Roman Catholic Parish
Parish Environment
© Copyright 1997 Capuchin Province of Mid-America and FEEFHS, all rights
reserved
First posted: 5 January 1997
Parish Environment
Immaculate Conception Parish is in the Metalurgical Region of Chelyabinsk, a city of 1.6
million people on the eastern edge of the Ural mountains, which divide Europe from Asia,
and on the western edge of Siberia. The second largest city of the Ural industrial region, it is
the capital of Chelyabinsk oblast of the Russian republic. It is on the Miass River, 125 miles
(200 kilometers) southeast of Yekaterinburg, 930 miles (1,500 km) east of Moscow (seat of
the Catholic bishop for European Russia), and a similar distance west of Novosibirsk, where
Bishop Joseph Werth, S.J. http://feefhs.org/lfs/werth.html, the bishop for
Asian Russia, is located.
The city is on the northern margins of a brown-coal basin and on the Soviet Union's major
east-west railroad. Since World War II, when it was developed as an arsenal for the war
effort, Chelyabinsk has been a center of heavy industry.
The Chelyabinsk area is also the site of two of the world's worst nuclear accidents in the
postwar period. In September 1957, a cooling mechanism failed in nearby Kyshtym and
contaminated the area with 70 or 80 tons of radioactive material, and at the Mayak nuclear
bomb plant 80 miles northwest of Chelyabinsk huge quantites of radioactive waste was
dumped (1951-1961) into a local lake which has since evaporated leaving the lethal threat of
radioactive dust.
Related web sites
Ural regional webpage: http://www.urc.ac.ru">http://www.urc.ac.ru">http://www.urc.ac.ru
Pollution in the Area http://ww1.logtv.com/webpages/grunberg/chelyachel.html
Map of the Asian-Russian Catholic Churches http://feefhs.org/lfs/csiberia.gif
This page has been designed as an adjunct to "A Letter from Siberia," http://feefhs.org/lfs/frg-lfs.html.
Any questions relating to its content or design should be directed to Fr. Blaine Burkey, O. F.
M. Cap. eMail address: tmpbb@fhsuvm.fhsu.edu
1701 Hall Street
Hays Kansas 67601-
Telephone: (913) 625-6577 or (913) 625-4483
FAX: (913) 625-3912
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