Korosten

a city (since 1926) in Zhitomir Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, on the Uzh River, a tributary of the Pripiat’. It is a junction for highway routes between Izmail and Leningrad and Kiev and KoveP, as well as for railroad lines leading to Kiev, Ovruch, Zhitomir, Sarny, and Novograd-Volynskii. Population, 57,000 (1972).

Korosten’ is one of the industrial cities of Ukrainian Poles’e. There are plants for road machinery, chemical machine building, reinforced-concrete ties, porcelain, and household chemicals, as well as a woodworking combine. Furniture, clothing, cotton-spinning, and textile-spinning factories are also located there. Food-processing enterprises, including a meat and poultry combine and a dairy, are also important. A branch of a machine-building technicum is located in Korosten’. On the city’s outskirts, granite is quarried, and there are plants for processing it.

In the past, Korosten’ was called Iskorosten’, one of the oldest Russian cities, and was the major fortified city of the tribe of the Drevliane. It is first mentioned in the chronicles under the year 945. Parts of old Iskorosten’ still remain—five or six sites with walls and moats, situated in a tight group along the Uzh River. In 945, Prince Igor’ was killed near Iskorosten’. The next year his wife, Princess Ol’ga, burned the city to avenge his death. Subsequently, Iskorosten’ became a city of the land of Kiev.