Arzamas


Arzamas

(ərzəmäs`), city (1990 pop. 110,000), E European Russia, on the Tyosha River. A rail junction, it has food-processing plants and industries that produce farm implements. An ancient Mordovian settlement, Arzamas became a fortress after Czar Ivan IV captured it from the Kazan Tatars in 1552.

Arzamas

 

a city, the center of the Arzamas Raion in the south of Gorky Oblast, RSFSR, on the Tesha River (tributary of the Oka). Intersection of railroad lines (Murom, Gorky, Kazan, and Ruzaevka lines). In 1969 the city had a population of 62,000. Its industries include machine-building (machines for municipal services, light industry, and so on), railroad transport, felt, ornamenting of cloth, leather and shoe factories, food (liqueur and vodka distilleries, breweries, and so on), and production of building materials. An automobile spare parts factory is being built (1970). The city has a pedagogical institute, technicums for the mechanization and electrification of agriculture, cooperative and medical schools, and a college of music. There is also a theater of drama, a museum of local history, and the memorial home (now museum) of A. Gaidar, who lived in Arzamas in his childhood.

The city of Arzamas sprang up in 1578. After 1779 it was the chief town of the district. From 1802 to 1862, Arzamas was the location of the first provincial school of painting in Russia. In 1901, M. Gorky was exiled to Arzamas; he portrayed the customs of Arzamas in his novella The Town of Okurov.


Arzamas

 

a literary circle which existed in St. Petersburg from 1815 to 1818. It was named in connection with the humorous work by D. N. Bludov, Apparition in an Arzamas Tavern, Published by a Society of Scholars. Among the members were V. A. Zhukovskii, K. N. Batiushkov, P. A. Viazemskii, A. S. Pushkin, and V. L. Pushkin. As supporters of the reforms of N. M. Karamzin, they opposed the conservative ideas of the Forum of the Lovers of the Russian Word and were in favor of bringing the literary language closer to the spoken language and of new genres in poetry.

REFERENCE

“Arzamas” i arzamasskie protokoly. [Introduction by M. S. Borovkova-Maikova. Foreword by D. Blagoi.] Leningrad, [1933].