Vinnitsa Oblast

part of the Ukrainian SSR. Established Feb. 27, 1932. Area, 26,500 sq km. Population, 2,132,000 (1970). The oblast is divided into 25 raions and has nine cities and 27 urban-type settlements. The center is the city of Vinnitsa.

Natural features. A great part of the oblast’s territory is located within the Podol’e Upland, having elevations up to 362 m, and the Dnieper Upland, having elevations up to 323 m. The terrain of Vinnitsa Oblast is an undulating plain that rises in the northwest and drops in the south and southeast. The southwestern part is strongly dissected by the narrow valleys of the meridional left tributaries of the Dnestr River.

The oblast has a temperate continental climate. The average temperature of the coldest month, January, is —5.7° C (Vinnitsa) and of the warmest month, July, 18.8° C. The total annual precipitation ranges between 500 and 550 mm. The length of the growing season is about 200 days.

The Iuzhnyi Bug River, with the tributaries Zgar, Rov, Sel’nitsa, and Dokhna on the right and Snivoda, Desna, Sob, and Udych on the left, flows from northwest to southeast through the central part of the oblast. The Dnestr River, with its left tributaries including the Liadova, Nemiia, and Murafa, flows along the oblast’s southwestern border. The rivers are used for small-scale navigation and as sources of hydroelectric power.

In the northeast of Vinnitsa Oblast chernozem predominates and in the central part, gray and light gray soils. In the southeastern and Dnestr regions deep chernozem alternates with podzolized soils.

Vinnitsa Oblast is located in the forest-steppe zone. Forests (oak, horn beam, ash, linden, and maple) and shrubbery cover 12.6 percent of the territory; the nonwooded parts are plowed. The animals found in the area include roes, wolves, foxes, pine martens, squirrels, hares, and field ro-dents. Minks, otters, wild ducks, and geese are found along the shores of small rivers and other bodies of water.

Population. The majority of the population is Ukrainian (about 92 percent); Russians, Jews, Poles, and other nationalities also live in the Oblast. The average density is 80.5 persons per sq km (1970). The regions around the Dnestr’ River and the city of Vinnitsa are the most densely populated. The urban population rose from 17 percent in 1959 to 25 percent in 1970. The major cities are Vinnitsa (212,000 in 1970), Zhmerinka, Kazatin, Mogilev-Podol’skii, Gaisin, Khmel’nik, and Tul’chin.

Economy. Vinnitsa Oblast is a major region of sugar-beet farming and the sugar industry in the USSR. The dominant branch of industry is the food industry, which has developed on the basis of intensive grain and sugar-beet farming, vegetable and fruit farming, and large-scale dairy and meat animal husbandry. Other important industries are light industry, machine-building, metalworking, and the production of construction materials. Electric power is supplied by steam electric power plants in Vinnitsa and other cities as well as in a centralized manner from the unified electric power system of the Ukrainian SSR. The Ladyzhin State Regional Power Plant in Trostianets Raion has been under construction since 1970. From 1940 to 1969 the gross industrial output increased 5.5 times. The largest share of gross output (two-thirds) be-longs to branches of the food industry, including the sugar industry; the latter is represented by 38 sugar plants, the largest being located in Tul’chin, Tyvrov, Teplik and other raions. The oblast’s sugar output, which totaled 958,000 tons in 1968, accounts for 18 percent of the Ukrainian SSR’s output and 11 percent of the USSR’s beet-sugar output. Other developed industries include the meat industry (meat combines in Vinnitsa and Trostianets and poultry combines in Kazatin and Bar), the dairy industry, the fruit canning industry (Vinnitsa, Mogilev-Podol’skii, and Gaisin), the alcoholic beverage industry (Bar and Vinnitsa), and the hulling and milling industry. Vinnitsa oblast is a major producer of sunflower oil (the Vinnitsa Oil and Fat Combine).

The integrated development of the oblast’s economy has greatly increased owing to the postwar development of such industries as the machine-building industry, the chemical industry, and light industry. The enterprises of the machine-building and metalworking industries, which account for 13 percent of the gross output, primarily serve agriculture and the food industry. They include plants producing piling machines used in unloading sugar beets, machines used in sugar plants and bread bakeries, and such accessories as tractor and combine parts and assemblies, electrical equipment, and bearings (Vinnitsa); there are also machine-building plants (Bar and other cities) and plants producing automatic electrical equipment (in Sutiski). The construction materials industry uses local deposits of kaolin (the large Glukhovtsy deposit), granite, and other minerals. Vinnitsa has a large enterprise producing phosphate fertilizers—the la. M. Sverdlov Chemical Combine—which uses phospho-rites from the Khibiny. Most of the workers of the woodworking industry are employed in furniture production, which is represented by 15 enterprises. Light industry, which accounts for 9 percent of the gross output, includes footwear factories (Vinnitsa and Tul’chin), garment factories (Vinnitsa, Bar, and Gaisin), cotton factories, and factories producing nonwoven fabrics and knitted goods.

The major branches of agriculture are sugar-beet and grain farming; dairy and meat animal husbandry is also important. In 1969 the oblast had 632 kolkhozes and 48 sovkhozes. The major operations are mechanized. During 1961-69 the number of tractors rose from 10,700 to 17,300 and the number of grain combines, from 3,600 to 5,000. In the same period the industrial use of electrical power increased 3.4 times in the kolkhozes and 2.6 times in the sovkhozes and the proportion of kolkhozes using electric power rose from 77 percent in 1961 to 100 percent in 1969. In 1968 agricultural land constituted 77.9 percent of all the land, of which 70.4 percent was arable, 2 percent in hay fields, 2.7 percent in pastures, and 2.8 percent in orchards and berry plantings.

During the years of Soviet power, sown areas increased by almost 30 percent compared with 1913. In 1969 the sown area totaled 1,868,800 hectares (ha), including 898,300 ha planted with grain crops (wheat, legumes, corn, barley, and buck-wheat), 285,600 ha with industrial crops (sugar beets, sunflowers, hemp, tobacco, and others), 172,300 ha with vegetables, melons, and potatoes, and 512,600 ha with fodder crops. Fruit farming (apples, pears, cherries, and plums) is developed; there are vineyards in the Dnestr region. Orchards cover 91,000 ha and vineyards, 2,900 ha.

The leading branches of animal husbandry are dairy and meat stock raising and pig farming. On Jan. 1, 1970, the ob-last had 984,000 head of cattle, including 424,000 cows, 1,225,000 pigs, and 301,000 sheep and goats. There is also poultry raising, pond fish breeding, and beekeeping.

Vinnitsa Oblast has a dense network of railroads covering 1,229 km (1969). The most important lines are the Kiev-Odessa line through Kazatin-Zhmerinka and the Kiev-L’vov line through Kazatin-Zhmerinka-Grechany-Ternopol’. There are also several internal communication lines. Paved highways intended for general use total 5,400 km (1969). The major highways are Kiev-Vinnitsa-Khmel’nitskii, Vinnitsa-Nemirov-Mogilev-Podorskii, and Berdichev-UlanovKhmel’nik. There is navigation on the Iuzhnyi Bug and the Dnestr.

Cultural affairs and public health. In the 1914—15 academic year Vinnitsa Oblast had 1,579 schools, mainly church and parochial schools, with 106,800 students. In the 1969-70 academic year there were 1,485 general-education schools of all types with 389,100 students, 20 vocational and technical schools with 8,400 students, and 27,000 specialized secondary educational institutions with 23,900 students. There were more than 10,000 students in the higher educational institutions—medical and pedagogical institutes as well as branches of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute and the Trade and Economic Institute in Vinnitsa. In 1969 there were 35,200 children in preschool institutions.

The oblast has (as of Jan. 1, 1970) 1,517 general libraries with 12,311,000 copies of books and magazines, a music and drama theater, a puppet theater, and a philharmonic society in Vinnitsa. It also has seven museums: regional studies museums in Vinnitsa, Mogilev-Podl’skii, and Tul’chin; the M. M. Kotsiubinskii Literary Memorial Museum in Vinnitsa; the N. I. Pirogov Estate-Museum in the village of Pirogovo; the A. V. Suvorov Museum in the village of Timanovka; and the D. K. Zabolotnyi Museum in the village of Zabolotnoe. There are also 1,158 clubs, 35 motion picture theaters, 1,467 motion picture projectors, and 53 extracurricular institutions.

Two oblast newspapers are published in Ukrainian: Vinnyts’ka pravda (Vinnitsa Truth, since 1917) and KomsomVs’ke plem’ia (Komsomol Generation, since 1923). The oblast radio broadcasts in Ukrainian and Russian and relays radio and television programs from Kiev and Moscow. On Jan. 1, 1970, Vinnitsa oblast had 4,245 doctors of all specialties (one doctor per 502 population) and 20,900 hospital beds (9.8 beds per 1,000 population).