Map of Krasnodar

History

The city originated in 1793 as a military camp, then as a fortress built by the Black Sea Cossacks to defend imperial borders and to assert Russian dominion over Circassia, a claim which Ottoman Turkey contested. In the first half of the 19th century, Yekaterinodar grew into a busy center of the Kuban Cossacks, gaining official town status in 1867. By 1888, about 45,000 people lived in the city, which had become a vital trade center for southern Russia. In 1897 an obelisk commemorating the two-hundred-year history of the Kuban Cossacks (seen as founded in 1696) was erected in Yekaterinodar. The city was the administrative center of the Yekaterinodarsky Otdel of the Kuban Oblast.

Geography

Krasnodar is the largest city and capital of Krasnodar Krai by population and the second-largest by area. It is the 17th-largest city in Russia as of 2010 and the 13th-largest city in Russia as of 2021. It is located on the right bank of the Kuban River. It is 1300 km south of the Russian capital, Moscow. The Black Sea lies 120 km to the west.

Under the Köppen climate classification, Krasnodar has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), bordering closely on a hot-summer humid continental climate, very similar to that of New York City.

Winters are cold and damp, with unstable snow cover. The average temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 1 °C (34 °F).

Economy

Krasnodar is the economic center of southern Russia. For several years, Forbes magazine named Krasnodar the best city for business in Russia. The industrial sector of the city has more than 130 large and medium-sized enterprises.

Krasnodar is a highly developed commercial area, and has the largest annual turnover in the Southern Federal District of Russia. Retail trade turnover in 2010 reached 290 billion rubles. Per capita, Krasnodar has the highest number of malls in Russia. Note that in the crisis year 2009 turnover of Krasnodar continued to grow, while most of the cities showed a negative trend in the sale of goods.

Krasnodar has the lowest unemployment rate among the cities of the Southern Federal District at 0.3% of the total working-age population.

Demographics

Due to internal migration, Krasnodar is one of the fastest growing cities in Russia. In the 2021 census, one million people were counted within the city limits for the first time in the city's history.

Per the 1897 imperial census, Krasnodar—then known as Yekaterinodar—had a population of 65,606. Of them, 34,684 (52.9%) spoke "Great Russian" (Russian), 25,112 (38.3%) "Little Russian" (Ukrainian), and 1,834 (2.8%) Armenian. In 1916, Yekaterinodar had a population of 103,624, composed of 88,508 Russians (85.4%, including Little Russians), 5,963 Europeans (5.8%), 5,900 Armenians (5.7%), and other nationalities.