The history of metallurgy in the Urals stands out to historians and economists as a separate stage in the history of Russian industry and covers the period from the 4th millennium BC to the present day. The emergence of the mining district is connected with the history of Ural metallurgy. The geography of the Ural metallurgy covers the territories of modern Perm Krai, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Udmurtia, Bashkortostan, Chelyabinsk Oblast and Orenburg Oblast. In the 18th century, periods of formation and development of industrial metallurgical centers stand out in Urals metallurgy, for example, the rapid construction and economic growth of more than two hundred metallurgy factories during the 18th to the first half of the 19th centuries until the abolition of serfdom on February 19, 1861, in the Russian Empire, which led to reductions in the labor force. There was also a sharp drop in production rates in the early 1900s but that was followed by recovery and growth by 1913. In the 20th century, after recovering from the decline caused by the Russian Revolution(s): 1905, February 1917, and October 1917 and the Russian Civil War (November 1917 - June 1923), Ural metallurgy had a strategic impact on ensuring the defense of the USSR on the Eastern Front of World War II which is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. In the 21st century, the development of metallurgical enterprises in the Urals is associated with the formation of vertically integrated full cycle companies.
The main milestones in the development of metal production technologies in the Urals include the transition from bloomery or the old iron production method to the Kontuazsky forge (for remelting heavy scrap) and the puddling method in the second half of the 19th century. Later, there was the development of hot blast at the end of the 19th century. Further, there was a transition to coke fuel and the introduction of steam engines. Finally, there was the development of open-hearth and Bessemer methods of steel production at the beginning of the 20th century.
Primitive metallurgy The first period of metallurgical production in the Urals date back to the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. During the Bronze Age, primitive copper-bronze metallurgy was developed among the pastoral tribes of the Urals. The beginning of the development of the Kargalinsky copper ore deposit, located along the Kargalka and Yangiz Rivers, began during this period. In the first half of the third millennium BC, centers of copper metallurgy were formed in the Western Urals and in the Kama region, the ore base that provided numerous mineral deposits of copper sandstone. The second millennium BC was characterized by the massive spread of copper-bronze metallurgy practically throughout the Urals, and the development of new technologies and metal processing. The Seima-Turbino phenomenon of the distribution of high-quality bronze products in the vast expanses of the forest-steppe zone of Eurasia belongs to this period. The centers of metallurgy of the Southern Urals of the 2nd millennium BC include settlements of the Sintashta, Abashevo and Arkaim cultures. The development of bronze metallurgy in the Urals was hindered by the lack of tin deposits, the alloying of copper which allowed to obtain high-quality bronze. Therefore, the metal objects found at the excavations of the Bronze Age settlements are mainly represented by products made of ordinary copper and arsenic bronze. During the period from the end of the 2nd millennium BC to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, the most ore-rich areas of the southern Ural copper mines were depleted and abandoned. In the middle of the first millennium BC, metallurgical products were mastered by representatives of Srubnaya culture. In the second half of the 1st millennium BC, there were isolated pockets of Ananyino culture in the Kama-Volga region and Itkul culture in the Urals. The appearance of iron in the Urals dates back to the 1st millennium BC. In the Kama-Volga region iron products were made from the 8th to the 6th centuries BC, and in the Ural Mountains from the fifth to the fourth centuries BC. In general, the massive penetration of primitive iron metallurgy with the use of forges in the Urals began in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Forest tribes of the northern Urals and in the north of Western Siberia mastered iron metallurgy by the end of the 1st millennium BC. In the settlements of the Gorokhovo and Kara-Abyz cultures, along with bronze, iron products were found to be in use. The 1st millennium AD was characterized by the massive distribution of iron in the Urals and Western Siberia. The oldest blast furnace in the Urals, belonging to the Pyanoborsk culture, was discovered by Vladimir Gening at the settlement of Cheganda I, on the territory of modern Udmurtia. Also, for the settlements of the Upper Kama region at the beginning of the Iron Age, the separation of metallurgical production into a separate craft was characteristic, which made up the specialization of entire villages or parts of them. The spread of iron crafts was facilitated by the resettlement of the Ugric tribes of the Petrogrom culture in the Urals. Remains of iron-smelting furnaces of the 6th-9th centuries were found during excavations of hill forts near modern Yekaterinburg.
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