Magnitogorsk

City in Chelyabinsk oblast (region), central Russian Federation, on the Ural River; population (1996 est) 425,000. Magnitogorsk is one of the foremost metallurgical centres in the Russian Federation. It has a vast iron and steel plant, which was built here 1929–34. Coal is brought by rail from the Kuznetsk Basin and from Karaganda in nearby Kazakhstan, oil by pipeline from Shkapovo in Bashkiria, and natural gas from Gazli in Uzbekistan. Subsidiary industries include chemicals, cement production, and engineering. The city is an important railway junction and cultural centre, and produces rolling stock.

Magnitogorsk was founded in 1929 to provide accommodation for the builders and workers of the giant steelworks. Iron and steel production here relied initially on local magnetite deposits (Mount Magnitnaya, from which the town took its name, has been worked since the 18th century); later, as these became exhausted, it changed to using poorer ores from Rudny in northwest Kazakhstan.