a city, the center of Magadan Oblast, RSFSR. A port (Nagaevo) on Nagaevo Bay of the Sea of Okhotsk. Population, 102,000 (1972; 27,000 in 1939). The Kolyma highway begins at Magadan. Magadan is linked by air with Moscow, Leningrad, Simferopol’, Novosibirsk, and other cities and populated points.

Magadan was constructed at the beginning of the 1930’s, with the opening up of the natural resources of the Northeast USSR; it has been a city since 1939. Enterprises in the city turn out mining equipment and fuel machinery; others repair boats, motor vehicles, and tractors. There are also construction materials establishments, a garment factory, a leather shoe combine, and a heat and electric power plant. Magadan is the site of the Northeast Complex Research Institute and the Institute of Northern Biological Problems of the Far East Scientific Center of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the All-Union Research Institute of Gold and Precious Metals, the Zonal Scientific Research Institute of Agriculture of the Northeast, and a department of the Pacific Institute of Fishery and Oceanography. The teaching institutions include branches of the All-Union Correspondence Polytechnic Institute and the All-Union Correspondence Legal Institute; there is a pedagogical institute and polytechnic, medical, and music schools. Magadan also has a drama and music theater, a television center, and a museum of local lore.