28 April 2003, 17:52
Proletarsk
Rayon (sector) centre in Rostov oblast (province), 206 km south-east of Rostov-on-Don. Located at the north of Ciscaucasia, in the Salsk steppe, on the right bank of the Vostochny Manych River (the Proletarskoye Reservoir). Railway station in the Volgograd - Novorossiysk line. A motor road junction. Population (1992 est.) 19.6 thousand.
Known from the end of the 18th century as the stanitsa (Cossack village) of Velikoknyazheskaya. It was an administrative centre of the Kalmyk okrug since 1806, and of the Salsk okrug (referred to as the Land till 1870) of the Don Cossack area in the 1884-1920s. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a large part of the population of the okrug were the Kalmyks, ranked as army class and serving on a par with the Don Cossacks. The main occupation of the Kalmyks was distant-pasture sheep-breeding and horse-breeding. The stanitsa of Velikoknyazheskaya was given the name of Proletarskaya in the 1920s. Town since 1970.
Present Proletarsk is an agricultural centre (crops of grain, including rice on irrigated areas; cattle breeding, primarily sheep-breeding; fishery). In town has enterprises processing agricultural raw materials (a rice-hulling plant, a creamery, a fish-factory) and producing building materials.
