Orel

Capital city, economic and cultural centre of Orel oblast (region), Russian Federation, on the River Oka 325 km/210 mi southwest of Moscow; population (1996 est) 348,000. Orel is a major industrial centre with engineering works producing agricultural and textile machinery, textile mills, and breweries. The city stands at a major railway junction.

Orel was founded in 1566 as a fortress town guarding Muscovy against the Tatars. It became a provincial capital in 1778. In the 18th–19th centuries it developed into an important commercial and industrial centre. It was the scene of intense fighting between Soviet and Nazi forces in 1943.

Orel was the birthplace of the 19th-century writer Ivan Turgenev (1818–83).

Orel

Oblast (region) of the western Russian Federation; area 24,700 sq km/9,537 sq mi; population (1996) 914,000 (63% urban). Industries include mining and machinery manufacture. Grain (especially wheat), hemp, sugar beet, and potatoes are grown, and there is dairy farming and pig breeding.

Geography Orel is a heavily ravined area situated in the central Russian upland and the black earth (chernozem) belt. As part of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, it has extensive iron ore deposits, together with phosphor, brown coal, and other minerals. The main city is Orel.

History In the Middle Ages the area belonged to Chernihiv, then to Novgorod-Severski; it was intermittently Lithuanian from 1356, and became part of the territory of Muscovy in 1503.