Kizel

Kizel (Finn. Kissele, Russ. Кизел) is a Uralican city, located in Permski Rayon, roughly 40 kilometres southeast of Berezniki and about 25 kilometres north of Gubakha. It sits directly on Highway UH-12.

The city's history has been likened to a yo-yo by some historians, as mining operations once had Kizel's population over sixty thousand - even presently, with the Uralican-induced growth spurt, the population is nowhere near that. Mining of coal and iron was what got the settlement started in the mid-18th century (to be specific, 1750), and later, coal would become the number one export from the town, to the end that Kizel was given city status in 1926. However, lack of regulations would soon make Kizel one of the most inhospitable cities in which to live, due to air and water pollution.

It is worth noting that, although Kizel had a large population in the 1950s, about a fifth of the city's inhabitants were behind barbed wire - Kizel was also the site of a gulag.

Starting in the 1960s, Kizel began to shrink, as the coal began to run out and the pollution took its toll. By the time of Cataclysm, Kizel's population was a third of what it was at its apex, with most of the remaining industry devoted to mining and smelting iron and to the textile industry. Kizel would stabilise after Great War I, but Great War III would be an unmitigated disaster for the city, much like Perm'. It would lose its city status in July of 2007. The population hit its lowest in December of the same.

It would be another year after losing its city status before things finally began to look up for the city. It was annexed by Uralica not particularly long after Berezniki and Solikamsk were, in tandem with Gubakha. When Lasse Mäkelä first set foot in the city, he was utterly disgusted with the state of Kizel. Reporting to the Tribal Council, he got support for a gigantic cleanup effort of the area. It would take the equivalent of a year working on it (the project was suspended along with Uralica's constitution in September of 2008 after the War of the Coalition) but in October of 2009, Kizel was finally declared clean.

While Mäkelä was at cleaning up the environmental mess in Kizel, he was also looking for new sources of work to replace the now completely depleted coal. Geologists and mineralogists from Big Stone Head Land were called in to help with the endeavour of trying to find something that Kizeltsy could use to rebuild themselves, and eventually, a few medium-sized patches of useful non-metallic minerals, a molybdenum vein, and a small lens of white marble were found. When the marble was exhausted, though, Kizeltsy found a massive amount of iron ores.

This revitalised the city's industry, which now relies heavily on mining and metallurgy of iron and molybdenum ores, but also, has decent-sized sectors in machine-building, textile production, and small consumer-goods production.

Culture
Kizel's population is largely Russian, although there are also many Finns in the city, and even a few Bashkirs.

Many of the city's historical monuments were destroyed during Great War III, including a statue of Lenin and a couple other statues. However, the Savelyev Monument, although renamed to take out Soviet references, still exists. Newer cultural curiosities include the Second Historical Museum of Kizel and the Mäkelä House, the latter of which is basically an art gallery/theatre combination, named after the aforementioned Lasse Mäkelä.

Neighbourhoods and Suburbs

 * Volodarsky
 * Domennyy Ugor
 * Vyashcher
 * Shakhta
 * Obshchi Rudnik
 * Rudnichnyy
 * Frunze
 * Yuzhny Kizel
 * Zakizel
 * Kospash (subordinate village)