a city in Kemerovo Oblast, RSFSR; on the Bachat River (Ob’ basin). Railroad station 140 km south of Kemerovo. Population, 108,000 (as of 1970; 43,000 in 1939). Major industrial center of the Kuznetsk coal fields. Belovo’s main industries are coal and nonferrous metallurgy. Coal mining began in the Belovo region in 1851. There is a large zinc plant, opened in 1931, which is supplied by the polymetal mines of Salair and eastern Kazakhstan. There is also the Kuzbassradio Radio and Electronics Plant, a casting and machinery plant, ore-concentration plants, and building-materials enterprises. Belovo has a power construction technicum, an evening electronic machine-building technicum, and medical and pedagogical schools. The Belovo State Regional Hydroelectric Power Plant was constructed near Belovo in 1964. Belovo has been known since 1726; it became a city in 1938.