VORONEZH  , a

town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on the river Vorcnezh, 5 M. above its confluence with the Don and 367 M. by rail S.S.E. of Moscow . Pop . (Igor) 84,146 . It is one of the best-built and most picturesque provincial towns of Russia, and is situated on the steep bank of the river, surrounded by three large suburbs —Troitskaya, Yamskaya and Chizhovka . It has a military school of cadets, two museums, a monument (186o) to Peter the Great, a railway college, a pilgrimage church, and a theatre which figures in the history of the Russian stage . It was the birthplace of two peasant poets, who wrote some of the finest examples of Russian poetry—A . V . Koltsov (1809–1842) and I . S . Nikitin (1824–1861) . A memorial to the former was erected in 1868 . There are factories for cleansing wool and for the preparation of linens, woollens, bells, tallow and oil, as well as some distilleries .

Voronezh is an important entrep6t for

corn, flax, tallow, hides, sugar, wood and coal from the Don . The city was founded in 1586, as a fort against Tatar raids, on a site which had been occupied from the 11th century by a Khazar town, but had been deserted during the r4th and 15th centuries . Four years afterwards it was burned by the Tatars, but again rebuilt, and soon became an important trading place . Peter the Great recognized its importance, and in 1695 built here a flotilla of boats for the conquest of Azov . The town was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1703, 1748 and 1773, but was always rebuilt .