Jezkazgan


Jezkazgan or Zhezkazgan, formerly known as Dzhezkazgan, is a city in Karaganda Region, Kazakhstan, on a reservoir of the Kara-Kengir River. Population: Its urban area includes the neighbouring mining town of Satpayev, for a total city population of 148,700.
55% of Jezkagan population are Kazakhs, 30% Russians, with smaller minorities of Ukrainians, Germans, Chechens and Koreans.

Geography and climate

Jezkazgan is situated in the very heart of the Kazakh upland. It is also near the geographic center of the country. It has an extremely continental semi-arid climate ; rain is frequent but never heavy and monthly rainfall has never reached. The average temperature ranges from in July to in January, whilst extremes ranges from in June 1988 to in February 1951.

History

The city was created in 1938 in connection with the exploitation of the rich copper deposits. In 1973 a large mining and metallurgical complex was constructed to the southeast to smelt the copper that until then had been sent elsewhere for processing. Other metal ores mined and processed locally are manganese and iron.
During the Soviet era, Jezkazgan was the site of a Gulag labor camp, Kengir, mentioned in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago, and Alexander Dolgun's "An American In The Gulag", and the period of forced resettlement of Koreans from the Russian Far East.

Industry

Today the city is the headquarters of the copper conglomerate Kazakhmys, the city's main employer. The company has subsidiaries in China, Russia and the United Kingdom and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. There is a power station, Kazakhmys Power Plant, with generation capacity of 207 MW and a 220- metre-tall main chimney.

Transport

Jezkazgan has a rail line to the regional capital city Karaganda.
Jezkazgan is connected by road to Karaganda via European route E018 and Kyzylorda and Arkalyk via European route E123. The city is accessible by air via the Zhezkazgan Airport.

Soyuz emergency landings

The Soyuz 33 spacecraft returning cosmonauts from outer space landed in the remote flat countryside surrounding Jezkazgan in 1979. The Baikonur Cosmodrome lies to the southwest and, by tradition, every cosmonaut plants a tree on Jezkazgan's Seyfullin-Boulevard to mark his or her safe return from space.
Again on 11 October 2018 the Soyuz MS-10/56S landed near Jezkazgan when a booster failed during launch.
Luna 16's samples from the moon returned close to here on 24 September 1970.

Persons associated with Jezkazgan