The flag and the emblem of Ekaterinburg
The capital of the Urals is more than a thousand and a half miles from Moscow, but it did not escape the waves of renaming that occurred throughout Russia during the political upheavals of the 20th century.
Fortress and factory
Peter the Great clearly realized the importance of miningand metallurgy for the successful course of their reforms, for the economic and military development of Russia. In the spring of 1723, on the eastern slope of the Middle Urals, on the banks of the Iset River, the construction of the largest iron-making plant at that time began. He became, as is customary to say now, a city-forming enterprise. The day when the first water-powered, huge hammers were used to forge Krytsa - a block of iron, obtained from cast iron - was the date of the formation of Yekaterinburg - November 7, 1723.
To name the city in honor of the wife of Emperor Petersuggested Georg Wilhelm de Gennin - the closest associate of the tsar-reformer, who led the construction of the plant. On technical equipment, progressive technology, the Yekaterinburg plant was the best in Europe for the first time. The new capital of the mining region was destined to play the role of one of the locomotives of the country's heavy industry in peacetime and a reliable logistics supplying weapons and ammunition to the front during the wars. Through it lay a railway that connected the European and eastern parts of the country - Ekaterinburg was the gateway to Siberia.
Attributes of the mining and metallurgical industry,symbols of the borderlands of Europe and Asia received the coat of arms of Yekaterinburg. They are present in modern urban emblems, and in the first versions developed by the herald-masters of Peter's time.
The project of Count Santi
Count Francesco Santi, or Franz Matveyevich Santi(1683-1758) was the founder of Russian heraldry. The emblem of Yekaterinburg was one and many attempts to bring motives from the Russian arms of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, known under the name "Titular" (1672), to classical European traditions. Some historians admit the participation in the creation of the first coat of arms of the capital of the Urals by the Russian herald master Stepan A. Kolychev (1674-1735) or the prominent Russian historian Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev (1686-1750).
Picture of the factory shop with a blast furnace and a mine forore mining went into the first coat of arms of Yekaterinburg. Its description contains the attributes of Imperial Russia - the royal crown with red ribbons and two ovals with the monograms of Peter and Catherine I. In addition to them, on a silver cloud emitting golden rays, lie a cross-laying staff, wrapped in snakes, and golden fanfare. The cloud is in the green field, the mine and the plant are in the red.
The county town of Perm governorship
During the reign of Catherine II,administrative reforms. As a result of one of them, Yekaterinburg received the status of a district town as part of the Perm vicegerency. In July 1783, the emblem of Yekaterinburg, which was designed with due regard for its new status, was supremely approved. His authorship is attributed to the famous politician and scholarly Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov (1733-1790), who was once a herald master.
All the coats of arms developed for the cities of Permgovernors, have the same structure and a single color scheme. This is a shield divided in two. The upper part of the shield is the same - the coat of arms of Perm - in a red field a silver bear with the Gospel on it with a golden salary and a silver cross at the top. In the lower part - on the green field - a silver miner mine and a smelting furnace.
Coat of arms of Bernhard Köhne
Since 1860, Alexander II conducted hisadministrative reform, within the framework of which it was envisaged to create new arms for many Russian cities. This work was led by the famous herald-master Bernhard V. Kone. For Yekaterinburg, he created a coat of arms, which remained unapproved.
In the center of the composition is a silver shield withlocated in the upper left corner of the coat of arms of Perm, which meant the city belonged to the Perm province. In the center - a black furnace for melting metal with a scarlet flame, at the bottom of the shield - two rows of black and gold caps. The shield is crowned with a silver crown with three prongs, followed by two cross-laid picks, twisted by Alexander's ribbon.
The coat of arms of Sverdlovsk
Among the heraldic symbols of the pre-revolutionarythe emblem of Yekaterinburg was withdrawn from circulation. Photos with urban symbols were published in the press and on the central streets in preparation for the celebration of the 245th anniversary of the capital of the Urals. The final version was adopted only in 1973.
It was a silver shield containingred (scarlet) image of the perimeter of the fortress, built at the Yekaterinburg plant. On it - a golden or black gear and a strip of azure color, denoting the Iset River. Above on the strip - five shortened strips and a stylized image of a peaceful atom. On the left on the shield is a rising sable, on the right is a lizard.
Symbols of modern times
In September 1991, the citythe historical coat of arms of Yekaterinburg was restored. The vector of public moods of the time was aimed at denying the communist ideology and everything connected with it. But the real support and the necessary landmarks tried to find in the past, sometimes very far.
But it turned out that the use at the end of the twentieth centurythe heraldic symbols of two hundred years ago are unreasonable. In 1996, work began on a new coat of arms and a flag. First, a contest was announced among contemporary heraldists, historians and artists, followed by public discussion. But the presented sketches, in which a lot of stamp elements were proposed - traditional and rarely used - were not fully and unanimously approved.
Some options were not approved amongcitizens, sometimes the new flag and the coat of arms of Yekaterinburg were not examined in the Heraldic Council under the President of the Russian Federation. The final version of the urban symbolism was approved in the spring of 2008 on the basis of a project developed by Herman Ivanovich Dubrovin, the deserved architect of Russia.
The modern coat of arms of Ekaterinburg. Description photo
The main component of the coat of arms is a shield divided into twolowered-crossed fields - green (the traditional color of the Urals) and gold. The upper part, reminiscent of the outlines of the fortress of the Ekaterinburg factory, contains silver images of a log house with a collar designating a miner's mine and an old smelting furnace with a flame of fire in the furnace. The lower part of the shield is crossed by a horizontal double blue wavy line bordered with silver - the symbol of the Iset River.
Above the shield is a tower gold crown of fiveteeth with the addition in the form of a laurel wreath. On the sides - two figures of animal-bearers. Left - symbolizing the European part of Russia, on the right - the symbol of Asia - the Siberian sable. They are decorated with collars of black and gold squirrel fur, and their teeth, like the guards of the city, bared their teeth and their scarlet tongues poked out.
Bear and sable rely on a golden ribbon -symbol of the important status of the capital of the Urals. In the middle of the tape, on top of the shield - an image of the drusen - of intergrown crystals - the personification of the wealth of the Earth's interior of the Urals.
