This is not a joke, the coat of arms of Chelyabinsk is a camel against the background of a fortress wall. The animal has always been present on the banners, flags and coat of arms of the millionaire Southern Urals, but camels were never bred here.
Chelyabinsk became famous throughout the country for its metallurgical industry. In the 20th century, the city's population grew from 200 thousand to 1.2 million in 50 years thanks to the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Why then does the coat of arms depict not a plant or a factory, but a beast of burden?
Coat of arms of Iset province
The camel on the coat of arms of Chelyabinsk is a historical symbol. The animal appeared in 1740, when the city did not exist as such. Initially, the coat of arms belonged to the Iset province, which was part of the Russian Empire. The camel was depicted against the background of a wall, surrounded by guns and cannons. The brick wall has always been present in the heraldry of the Iset province and Chelyabinsk for an obvious reason: the city was also a fortress.
The camel on the coat of arms is a cause for controversy. The most common version is related to the Great Silk Road. Was Chelyabinsk really a city in which foreigners actively traded?
The Great Silk Road
The version says that Chelyabinsk and Troitsk were large fortresses included in the northern branch of the Great Silk Road. The camel is the best proof. However, the Great Silk Road never went this far to the North. A detour through the Iset province was simply unprofitable.
In fact, Chelyabinsk at the end of the 18th century almost became a center of trade with Central Asia. Since 1742, the Iset province actively conducted barter with the Kazakhs. The main office at that time was located precisely in the Chelyabinsk fortress. For obvious reasons, traders went to the fortress: it was easier to negotiate a price with the authorities. Later, the office was moved to the Trinity Fortress, which did not allow the future Chelyabinsk to become a shopping center. But the symbol remained.
At first, it was possible to exchange a limited number of goods with the Kyrgyz-Kaisaks (Kazakhs). Usually bread was exchanged for sheep. However, in 1750 the range expanded significantly.
A loaded camel is a symbol of trade
In 1751, trade with the Kazakhs brought the Orenburg province nine thousand rubles and a decent amount of silver. Governor Ivan Neplyuev submitted a proposal to the Senate of the Russian Empire to legalize trading. It was decided to organize fairs near the Trinity Fortress. Kazakhs began to flock to the future Troitsk in May and left in October. Caravans came from Bukhara, Tashkent and other large Kazakh cities.
Thus, the Chinese and the Great Silk Road have nothing to do with the camel on the coat of arms of Chelyabinsk. The city owes its strange coat of arms to its close neighbors and trading partners - the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz.
The camel from the coat of arms of Chelyabinsk could disappear
Chelyabinsk received the coat of arms as an inheritance from the Iset province. Over time, the heraldry changed, but the beast of burden still appeared on the banners. The coat of arms of Chelyabinsk as a city first appeared in 1864. It featured three red camels against the background of a silver shield and a fortress wall. In 1994, the coat of arms was replaced with a new one: one camel against the background of a wall. The modern coat of arms was developed in 2000. From this moment on, the animal received a natural color.
Soviet version of the coat of arms
Chelyabinsk almost lost its camel in the USSR. On one of the Soviet projects, the coat of arms featured a caterpillar tractor, a mining tower and an open book. However, there was another design for the coat of arms: a steel ladle on a red background, and next to it were small images of a sable and a camel. The medals that were issued for the city's 250th anniversary in 1986 did not depict any animals. A ladle and the number 250 were minted on the metal. The Soviet version of the Chelyabinsk coat of arms was never approved.
Which of our settlements was “sent to the soap”, and which one “received the pumpkin”?
With the approval of the leadership of the Chelyabinsk region, a competition was organized there for the best idea to immortalize the day when a meteorite exploded over the region. Among the most “creative” proposals from citizens is changing the region’s coat of arms, on which it is proposed to place a meteorite next to a camel.
Coat of arms of Chelyabinsk.
MK studied the strangest coats of arms of Russian regions and cities. What we didn’t find there: from a Negroid tiger to a sacrifice, an opium poppy and fragments of cellulose.
Let's start with the Chelyabinsk residents. Now the main element of the coat of arms of this region and its capital is the camel. The image of the “ship of the desert” appeared on the heraldic shield during the time of Empress Catherine the Great. The description of the coat of arms of Chelyabinsk, approved on July 6, 1782, says: “In... the lower part of the shield there is a loaded camel, as a sign that they are brought to this city with goods.” The authors meant that from ancient times a caravan route passed through this Ural city along which goods from Mongolia and China were delivered to the European part of the country. So, from a historical point of view, the existence of the Chelyabinsk “coat of arms” camel is quite logical and justified.
The same cannot be said about the “hero of animal origin” who settled on the coat of arms of the city of Serpukhov. The heraldic symbol of this regional center near Moscow has been the peacock for more than 200 years! (I just want to spread the slogan among the people: “The Moscow region is the homeland of peacocks!”)
Coat of arms of Serpukhov
But how did the exotic bird of paradise “build a nest” in our northern regions, on the banks of the Oka? It turns out that when at the end of the 18th century, by order of the already mentioned Empress Catherine, a campaign began in the country to massively assign coats of arms to cities, the then chief herald of the empire, Count Francisco Santi, sent out questionnaires to all corners of the country, wanting to find out which “exclusive” was available in each city and town. “- so that it can be displayed on the coat of arms. In the response received from Serpukhov, Santi’s attention was attracted by the phrase: “in one monastery peacocks will be born...” (This meant the Vysotsky Monastery, to whose monks back in 1691 the okolnichy Mikhail Kolupaev gave a peacock and a peacock as a contribution, from which the Serpukhov peacock family began.) Such an insignificant remark in the questionnaire became the reason for the “enshrinment” of the peacock on the coat of arms of Serpukhov.
However, a peacock at least “sounds proud.” Some other settlements received much less “top” birds. For example, the city of Elabuga in Tatarstan, now famous for automobile production, 232 years ago was awarded a coat of arms on which “... in the lower part of the shield in a silver field there is a woodpecker sitting on a stump, pecking at it, for there are many birds of this kind there.”
But Irkutsk acquired an animal on its coat of arms, which in reality does not exist at all. This unique specimen is a “Negroid” tiger, equipped with webbed paws and a flat “fleshy” tail, like a beaver.
Coat of arms of Irkutsk
Where did such a mutant come from? – We read the description of the coat of arms, approved in the fall of 1790: “There is a running tiger in the silver field of the shield, and a sable in its mouth.” Well, there is nothing supernatural here, because in those ancient times, in the east of the vast Siberian province, tigers were not uncommon. However, this very name of the animal somehow did not catch on among the Siberians, and instead of it, the locals called the mighty tabby cat babr. It’s easy to imagine the further development of events: officials, far from Siberian exoticism, easily confused the local babr with the widespread “aquatic animal” - the beaver. So it turned out later, according to official documents, that the inhabitants of Irkutsk have a running beaver (!) on their coat of arms, holding a sable in its mouth. In order to somehow fit the “picture” to this awkward description, the tiger from the Irkutsk coat of arms was painted with “beaver” hind legs and tail, and the striped coloring of the skin was removed, replacing it with plain black.
Among other Russian coats of arms, equipped with images of animals, there was one very “sadistic” one. The coat of arms of the Kargopol district of the Arkhangelsk region flaunts, according to the description approved in June 2004, “in an azure field, a silver ram with golden horns, lying on golden brands; everything is engulfed in scarlet (red) flame.” That is, the process of roasting a ram is actually depicted - uncut, right in all its naturalness. The explanation for the appearance of such a “horror” on the coat of arms is that the ritual of sacrificing a ram has been widespread in the Russian North since pagan times. In some villages of the Kargopol district, “Ram Sunday” even existed before the revolution, during which peasants slaughtered a ram and sacrificed it to Elijah the Prophet.
Among hundreds of Russian city emblems, there are some whose images, in modern times, can be interpreted as prohibited propaganda.
On the coat of arms of the village (formerly a city) Epifan in the Tula region you can see the drug - hemp.
Epifan village coat of arms
According to the ancient description of the coat of arms, it represents “a shield, a silver field with black soil below, from which three hemp epics grow, showing that the surroundings of this city, among other works, abound in hemp.” It is clear that our great-grandfathers, when drawing hemp on the coat of arms of Epifani, did not even think about the narcotic properties of this “weed”. In those days, this plant was actively cultivated to obtain hemp from it for weaving strong ropes and useful hemp oil.
The same “criminal” hemp is depicted on the coat of arms of some other territories where the cultivation of hemp for economic needs flourished in the past - the Kimovsky district of the Tula region and the city of Novozybkov in the Bryansk region (in this latter case, hemp stems are depicted rolled into a green sheaf, and in 1980s, when hemp was already on the “black lists”, instead of a sheaf they began to draw a more “harmless” heraldic element - a cannon).
Another narcotic “object” also made its way into heraldry. Here is a description of the coat of arms of the city of Derbent, approved in March 1843, in what is now Dagestan: “...In the lower half of the shield, divided into two parts and having a silver field, on the right side there is an old fortress wall with a gate...; on the left side are the intertwined roots of a madder plant and several stems of poppy, tied with a golden rope, as a sign that the residents are processing madder with great success and breeding poppies to make opium (shiryak) from it.”
Coat of arms of Derbent
The opiate is also depicted on the coat of arms of the city of Karachev (present-day Bryansk region), which was approved in 1781. “...In the lower part of the shield of the coat of arms there is in a silver field a bunch of blossoming poppies tied with a golden rope, of which there are quite a few in the fields around this city they sow and trade with it.”
Some coats of arms are “equipped” with rather unexpected elements. For example, in the old (1781) description of the coat of arms of the city of Shuya (Ivanovo region) it is written: “... In the lower part of the shield there is a bar of soap in a red field, meaning the glorious soap factories located in the city.” True, in the modern version of the coat of arms, approved in 2004, this bar of soap has turned into a kind of abstract “golden bar with three visible sides - the front, facing straight, the top and the left.”
Coat of arms of the city of Shuya
By the will of the capital's kings of arms, the city of Sengilei (present-day Ulyanovsk region) received a pumpkin. In the literal sense of the word: “...At the bottom of the shield are two large pumpkins with branches in a silver field, signifying the abundance of this kind of fruit.”
Sometimes the very names of old Russian settlements became a “hint” to the creators of coats of arms. Here, for example, are two cities in the current Penza region - Verkhniy and Nizhny Lomov. Here you don’t need to strain your imagination too much - in both cases, in the city coats of arms, in their lower part, there appear “five iron crowbars placed in a star, with sharp ends up, meaning the name of this city.”
Come on, most savvy readers, guess how to illustrate the name Dukhovshchina on the coat of arms? For those who did not cope with this task, we quote a fragment from the description of the coat of arms approved in 1780 for this city in the territory of the present Smolensk region: “...In the lower part of the shield in a white field there is a rose bush producing a pleasant spirit.”
Of course, the creativity of the inventors of coats of arms “from the time of the construction of developed socialism in the country” has moved away from all this archaism. In the USSR, cities and towns received “propaganda” coats of arms – in the spirit of propaganda posters. They depicted power plants, factories, turbines, icebreakers, steel ladles, gears (well, the heraldic element was very popular!), pipes, ears of corn, hammers... On the coat of arms of the city of Bratsk, approved in 1980, where the largest pulp mill was built paper mill, among other things, even “stylized fragments of the chemical formula of cellulose” were depicted.
“How long have wolves been preaching the innocence of foxes?
How long have Russians been talking about honor? – Russians feel it.
If the Germans write it on their coats of arms, then we keep honor in our hearts.”
A. Bestuzhev.
Chelyabinsk residents! Residents of a harsh Russian city! No one doubts that you protect and honor the memory of your ancestors. But why is the coat of arms of Chelyabinsk a camel? Where did the camel come from to the cold climate city, the steel capital of Russia? How did a heat-loving inhabitant of the sands end up in a place located at the junction of the Urals and Siberia? Reveal the secret, harsh residents of Chelyabinsk!
Two designs of the coat of arms of the Iset province
The undying interest in the coat of arms of regions and cities, in its origin, is quite understandable - after all, flags and coats of arms colorfully tell about the history of places, geographical nuances and the riches of nature of their native land. Each coat of arms reflects the glorious past of the ancestors, their courage and self-sacrifice. The monogram of Chelyabinsk, which went down in history, is a clear confirmation of this.
The origin of the city's coat of arms
The Southern Urals, favorable and convenient for living, has always attracted people - it was in these areas that archaeologists discovered the largest settlements of ancient man. The mysterious Arkaim, the oldest settlement of proto-urban civilization, the same age as the legendary Egyptian pyramids, became a worldwide sensation. In the Middle Ages, the South Ural regions bordered the Kazan Khanate and represented the most important economic interests of Russia.
The 18th century marked the development and foundation of the Chelyabinsk region. The plans corresponded to the laid down policy of Peter I, who dreamed of expanding Russian borders. At this time, the largest fortifications were founded, one of which was the Chelyabinsk Fortress (Chelyab) - the most important defense point of the state border.
A year later, the Iset province of the Siberian province was formed, and Chelyabinsk in 1743 became its center. In 1737, statesman, researcher and traveler Vasily Tatishchev presented two heraldic designs of the Iset province to the court of the Great Empress Catherine.
Stamp descriptions
The first sketch was a silver wall erected on a black gloomy field with a shield depicted on it and a yellow dog tied to it. The shield was proudly crowned with a camel's muzzle and a Tatar crown. According to Tatishchev’s idea, the wall meant the newly built ramparts, and the dog was a symbol of the conquest of the Bashkirs.
The second image was a black shield serving as the main background, depicting a white front garden with a tied Bactrian camel. The shield was crowned with a Tatar crown. This option symbolized Russia's trade with Asia. A little later, the coat of arms was modified - the animal was loaded with sacks of cargo, which symbolized the developed trade with the Asian region, when the caravan routes passed through the Chelyabinsk fortress.
But the empress rejected such developments in heraldry. In 1761, another heraldic design for the Iset periphery saw the light of day. The coat of arms proudly displayed a loaded “ship of the desert” against the background of a shield hanging on the ramparts. On both sides there were military weapons, banners fluttered. The base was decorated with the state crown. The red color of the coat of arms spoke of the power of fire, beautiful mercy and fearlessness.
The next stamp project arose in 1781 (at the time when Chelyabinsk turned into a district settlement of the Ufa governorship). When creating fresh heraldry, the ancient emblem of Ufa (marten) was used. She was depicted in the left zone of the monogram, with a loaded camel standing below. A proudly raised head of an animal meant successful trade.
In June 1782, this symbolism was solemnly and Supremely approved for the district town of Chelyabinsk. Until now, this is the only coat of arms of the Chelyabinsk region of official significance.
In the winter of 1864, the heraldry was supplemented with a silver-plated crown on the tower (evidence of the central district for Chelyabinsk). This monogram existed in the settlement until the revolutionary coup of 1917.
The Ural town had an official coat of arms, approved by her Majesty in 1782. The heraldry was not abolished, but they decided to restore and transform it by analogy with the realities of the Soviet era. But for a long time the city could not acquire its own monogram, although the heraldic pedigree of Chelyabinsk preserves numerous competitions in its history:
1966. On this significant date, in honor of the half-century since the October Revolution, the city authorities announced a competition to create a modern city coat of arms. According to the management's plan, heraldry is obliged to convey the dignity of the labor merits of representatives of the working class. The coat of arms of Chelyabinsk depicts a camel, and next to it is a steel-smelting furnace.
1985. On the occasion of the city's birthday, its 250th anniversary, the city authorities announced another tender to improve the city heraldry. Books, a ladle and a sable were added to the coat of arms.
1994. The next page in the history of the existence of Chelyabinsk heraldry. This time the marten was removed and a fragment of the fortress with a gilded tower crown was added. A loaded camel settled on a light green background - a sign of the wealth and prosperity of the city. At the top of the shield stood a five-pronged crown. And behind her appeared two golden-colored hammers, connected by an Alexander ribbon.
2000. The heraldic composition has changed in accordance with the current rules of the Russian Union of Heraldists. Chelyabinsk officially acquired a modern coat of arms. The city's monogram was registered on September 12, 2000.
Heraldic description of the modern coat of arms
« In a walled wall with a jagged head on a silvered edge and on the grassy life-giving earth stands a loaded golden camel“- this is how heraldry tells about the monogram of Chelyabinsk. On the silver-plated shield, symbolizing the holiness of plans, sanity and power, is depicted:
- Part of the fortress wall. This is historical evidence of the founding of the city (the fort was founded as a Russian fortress).
- A golden camel is drawn. A symbol of the importance of the settlement in trade relations with the regions of Asia. The yellow color indicates that the development of Chelyabinsk directly depends on the success of trade relations.
- Green field. It signifies the wealth of thoughts and tolerance of the intellectual component of the city.
The coat of arms of modern Chelyabinsk is an improved stylistic version of the oldest city monogram. Its true interpretation says: " At the top of the shield is the coat of arms of Ufa, at the bottom there is a camel loaded with luggage. This is a sign that these animals are being brought into the harsh town with loads, and in large quantities».
This is interesting. The camel was not a curiosity for Russia. The inhabitants of Rus' knew very well what a “ship of the desert” looked like. Evidence of this are many geographical names in the Urals:
- Camel Mountain. Located near the village of Vostochny (Orenburg region). In appearance, the mountain really resembles a lying camel with its muzzle raised.
- camel rock. Located in the foothills of Kachkanar (Sverdlovsk region). The Kachkanarsky mining plant is located next to the rock.
Camels could be found in the southern regions of the Orenburg region until the 50s of the last century. These areas were historically inhabited by Kazakhs, and the camel for the “steppe children” is an important assistant in the household. And the central figure of Chelyabinsk heraldry! Now we know which city’s coat of arms depicts a camel, and where it came from!
