a city in Altai Krai, RSFSR. It is a wharf situated at the confluence of the Biia River with the Katyn’. It is the terminal station on the Altai-Biisk railroad line and the beginning point of the Chuisk Highway, which goes through Altai to the border of the Mongolian People’s Republic. Population, 186,000 (1970; 80,000 in 1939).

The city has machine-building enterprises (producing boilers, equipment for food industries), light industry (clothing, shoes, down and feather factories, and a flax combine), a food industry (a meat combine, a dairy, a sugar refinery, an oil mill, a vitamin factory, and others), a chemical combine, a lacquer and dye plant, and woodworking enterprises. The Pedagogical Institute, the evening department of the Altai Polytechnic Institute, and the following technicums are located here: chemical-mechanical, mechanic-technological, for the mechanical treatment of wood materials, forestry, and for agricultural mechanization. There are also medical, pedagogical, and musical academies. There is a dramatic theater and a museum of local lore. Biisk originated in 1709 as a military fortress and became a city in 1782.