page_title: Bronnitsy
section_title: Industrialization
hierarchical_section_title: Bronnitsy / History / Industrialization
caption_attribution_description: English: Sovetskaya Street, Bronnitsy, Moscow Oblast. Русский: Cоветская улица в Бронницах (старое Рязанское шоссе).
context_page_description: Bronnitsy is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located 54.5 kilometers southeast of central Moscow and 13 kilometers west of the Bronnitsy station on the Moscow–Ryazan railroad. The town is surrounded by Ramensky District but is administratively incorporated as a town under oblast jurisdiction. Population: 21,102.
  Local economy relies on food processing and packaging, construction services and jewellery manufacturing. Bronnitsy is listed among the twenty-two historical towns of Moscow Oblast.
  Existence of Bronnitsy is attested since 1453. The village emerged as a stopover station on the highway between Moscow and Ryazan, and its population and economy traditionally tended to horses. The House of Romanov stables, established in Bronnitsy by 1634, evolved into stud farms supplying riding horses to the cavalry. In the 1780s the administrative reform of Catherine the Great turned the village into a proper small town with a grid plan and a growing merchant community. In the second half of the 19th century Bronnitsy was gradually industrialized, becoming a town of small textile mills and jewelers.
context_section_description: Railroad boom of the 1860s bypassed Bronnitsy: eponymous Bronnitsy railroad station, operating since 1864, was actually built 12 versts (13 km) from the center of the town, on the opposite bank of the river. The dam and bridge across the river were built by local contractor Smorchkov in 1872. Residents were eagerly leaving Bronnitsy for industrial and service jobs in Moscow: by 1882, Bronnitsky, Podolsky, Serpukhovsky, and Moskovsky Uezds were the leading suppliers of manpower to the metropolis. Bronnitsky Uyezd was sending twice as many men as densely populated and far better industrialized Bogorodsky Uyezd.
  Relative share of migrants to total population, however, was less than in the western uyezds of Moscow Governorate. Bronnitsy gradually became a minor textile industry hub and its factories employed a substantial share of the remaining population, especially under-age girls. By the end of the 19th century one quarter of all local girls under the age of twelve and 65% of the girls under the age of fourteen were employed in the industry, compared to only 7% and 23% for Volokolamsky Uyezd. Jewelers emerged in Bronnitsky Uyezd earlier, in the middle of the 19th century, and by 1900 there were 737 independent, predominantly male craftsmen. The largest jewellery business, in nearby Sinkovo, employed around twenty workers. Cost of living in Bronnitsy was very low, at least according to imperial government: the 1902 Army regulations placed it in the seventh grade of housing costs—just a notch above the cheapest eighth grade, or two and a half times cheaper than Moscow and Odessa.
  Mayor Alexander Pushkin (the third) struggled to improve the performance of peasant households; increase in average area of a family lot, he reasoned, would enable a switch from obsolete three-field crop rotation to intensive farming methods. He set up five model farms attended by qualified agronomists and provided subsidized loans to the peasants. In twenty years of his tenure, the uyezd opened twenty-five new elementary schools, two high schools for boys, and one high school for girls. Despite Pushkin's efforts, cultural split between landed peasants and urbanized classes widened to a point of armed conflict. During the 1905 Russian Revolution liberal-minded teachers and medics supported the political changes while the peasants distrusted their promises, fearing a return to dreaded serfdom system. On one occasion the peasants stormed and burnt down a school building housing a convention of zemstvo employees who barely escaped the mob.
  The town slowly grew until World War I. By 1914, Bronnitsy hospital acquired an X-ray machine, one of the first in the region. According to Bronnitsy Museum staff, in 1914 the Fifth Air Company of Bronnitsy operated from a military airfield near the town; local pilot Konstantin Savitsky, distantly related to the Pushkin family, and lieutenant Mikhail Lyaschenko were killed there in an accident in April 1914. In November 1914, the company left Bronnitsy; a different air wing was based there from 1917 to 1919. According to pilot Ivan Spirin, in 1924 Moscow-Bronnitsy-Moscow route was used to test new instrument flying technologies.
caption: Main street of Bronnitsy, the old Moscow-Ryazan highway
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