A small old town on the Kulikovo field during the entire period of development was and remained small. The population of Efremov lovingly calls the amazingly beautiful surroundings "Tula Switzerland", which the large chemical enterprises located here could not poison.
General information
The city is located on the picturesque banks of the Beautiful Sword River, a tributary of the Don. Efremov is the administrative center of the municipality, has the status of an urban district. It is located at a distance of 149 km from the regional center of Tula and 310 km from Moscow. On the Moscow-Donbass line is the Efremov station of the Moscow Railway. The federal highway M4 "Don" passes nearby, and a branch from the highway M2 "Crimea" also adjoins.
In 2018, the city was awarded the status of a priority development area. Efremov is also a single-industry city, with city-forming enterprises of the chemical industry. The main products are synthetic rubber, feed additives and sulfuric acid. Since 2011 by an American companyCargill opened the largest production site in Europe, where food enterprises are located. The main products are vegetable oils, semi-finished poultry products, premixes and much more.
City formation
With the advent of a settled population, some areas of terrain or forest land were named after a nickname or a personal name. So, a small part of the forest began to be called Ofremovsky (Efremovsky). During the development of the territory of the Chernozem region in the 17th century, the land became the patrimony of the nobleman Ivan Turgenev. Around 1630, he founded the village of Efremovskaya (according to another version, the village of Efremovskoye).
In 1637, by decree of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, an oak prison was built in Efremov, which stood until 1689, after which it was dismantled. The fortress was inhabited by boyar children and city Cossacks. They served to protect the borders of the country and were rewarded with land in the vicinity. At first, the peasants moved to Efremov voluntarily. Under Peter, the lands gradually passed into the landowner's possession, where serfs began to be imported. In the course of ongoing administrative reforms in 1719, Efremov became a county town.
Population in pre-revolutionary times
The first people settled on the territory of modern Efremov in the 16th century, the settlements were small. Almost the only craft was beekeeping. The first data on the population of Efremov date back to 1800. Then the population of 1800 people consisted of philistines,who were mainly engaged in the production and trade of grain. The development of manufactories and small handicraft industries led to an increase in the number of inhabitants up to 3,000 people. Further, the population continued to grow, in 1856 reaching 9800 people, and by 1861 it had grown to 10,500 people.
After the abolition of serfdom, peasants began to leave the poor agricultural region to work in industrial centers - Tula and Moscow. In 1897, the population of Efremov dropped to 9,000. After the construction of the railway, the grain trade revived again, the processing of agricultural products developed - flour milling and distillery. As a result, the number of residents rose to 12,600 in 2013. The latest pre-revolutionary data from 1914 showed a population of 14,500.
Population: between the two wars
The post-revolutionary years had a heavy impact on the city, the surplus appraisal - the confiscation of food from the already poor population - caused famine and a peasant uprising. As a result, by 1926 the population of Efremov in the Tula province had decreased by a third, to 10,000 people. Due to extreme poverty, the population lived on a semi-subsistence economy and by 1931 had already decreased to 9,300 inhabitants. After the beginning of the industrialization policy, several industrial enterprises were built in the city, including factories for the production of ethyl alcohol and synthetic rubber. The population of Efremov more than doubled by 1939, to 26,708 people.
Population in modern times
First post-war data 1959years recorded 28,672 inhabitants. In the 60s, the construction of new lines for the production of synthetic rubber was declared by the All-Union Komsomol construction site. Young people from all over the country came to the city to build, and then to work in chemical industries. The population in 1970 reached 48,156. Up to 1989, the population continued to increase due to the influx of labor resources into expanding and new industries. During these years, a chemical plant and a glucose-syrup plant were built. New residential neighborhoods built.
In 1986, the maximum number of inhabitants was reached - 58,000. In the post-Soviet years, the population of Efremov gradually decreased almost all the time. Despite the fact that the chemical industry survived the crisis relatively painlessly, and the American company Cargill, one of the largest in the world, came to the glucose-syrup plant. Like any small provincial town, and besides a single-industry town, Efremov cannot offer jobs to young people, except in the city-forming enterprises. Therefore, young people leave for larger cities. In 2017, the population of Efremov, Tula region was 35,505 people.
