Millerovo

Town in Rostov oblast (province), oblast subordination, rayon (sector) centre, 218 km north of Rostov-on-Don. Located at the south-east end of the Central Russian Upland, on the Glubokaya River (the left tributary of the Seversky Donets, the Don basin). Large junction of railway lines (to Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Lugansk), highways (including the Millerovo - stanitsa Veshenskaya highway); the Moscow - Voronezh - Rostov-on-Don highway runs near Millerovo. Population (1992 est.) 38.1 thousand, (1979 est.) 38.3 thousand.

The town was founded in 1786 by the Sergeant-Major Ivan Abramovich Miller as the manor and settlement of Millerovo. Until 1920, the settlement of Millerovo (Millerovo - Glubokinsky) was a constituent of the Don Cossack area (referred to as the land until 1870). In 1872, Millerovo was crossed by the Rostov - Voronezh - Kozlov railway. After construction of the railway to Lugansk (1898), Millerovo became an important railway junction. It was here that considerable part of agricultural products delivered from areas of the Upper Don and the Ukraine were processed to be dispatched to central governments (provinces) of Russia. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Millerovo built steam mills, oil-mills, an elevator; an oil-pressing factory and an ironworks (manufacturing agricultural implements), etc. During the Civil war, Millerovo repeatedly passed from hands to hands of the struggling parties; in 1918, it was the centre of the Donetsk okrug (district) of the Don Soviet Republic. Town since 1926. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, it was occupied by Nazi troops from July 15, 1942 to January 17, 1943; there was a concentration camp for Soviet war prisoners, Dulag-125, often referred to as Millerovo Pit within the town.

Present Millerovo is an agricultural centre (crops of grain, technical crops, including sunflower, and feed crops; cattle breeding, aviculture, fruit-farming), an industrial centre of Rostov oblast (province). By the beginning of the 1990s, Millerovo had a factory of agricultural machines, a metallurgical equipment works, a general mechanical rubber factory; flavouring industry (a mill house, a meat-processing plant, a dairy, a winery, etc.); a clothes and furniture factories.

Millerovo is the hometown of the writer К.А. Trenyov. Millerovo is the town where the Hero of the Soviet Union, Air Marshal А.N. Yefimov spent several years of his life.