Today’s city is one with the strange name of Syktyvkar, it’s home to some key industries and its fair share of wild bears even! With that in mind, here is what you’ll need to know.  

Since Syktyvkar is the transport hub of the Komi Republic, you can easily get here by plane or by train from most major Russian cities.

The train from Moscow to Syktyvkar runs several times a week and the prices aren’t too bad, but of course, this depends on the level of comfort, which might be something to take into account seeing as you’ll be traveling for about 26 hours.

As for the train from Saint-Petersburg, it runs several times a week and takes about 41 hours to get there.

Syktyvkar is the capital of the Komi Republic and you can find it in the North-West of the Russian Federation where it stands on the high left bank of River Sysola.

As for some of the facts, Syktyvkar is an industrial centre where there are about 40 key industrial enterprises, a third of which are of key importance for Russia. The wood-processing, cellulose and paper industries make up for about 62% of the entire city’s commercial output.

Paper aside Syktyvkar is a place where one particular Russian stereotype is quite true for: the one I’m talking about is the bear stereotype. There are some people out there who think that bears freely roam around Moscow, which is, of course, not the case - but it almost is in Syktyvkar. Seeing as how woods make up 72% of the city area a person can come across a bear or a wild boar in the outskirts along with all kinds of other wildlife species including the elk, the biggest taiga resident around. The city emblem even has a picture of a bear on it!

Some of the biggest problems for local dwellers are caused by wild boars and wolves, especially since the wolf population has grown in recent years. Seeing how most potential tourists will be in and around the city center this probably won’t be something to worry about.

If you were wondering about the city’s name, until 1930 it was called Ust-Sysolsk but the current name of Syktyvkar comes from the Komi language and means “the city on the river Sysola”. In Komi, Sysola sounds like ‘Syktyv’, and kar is ‘city’.

One thing to say about this city is that the weather there changes very fast and the forecast may be wrong. The winter there is generally long and severe and summer is quite short and warm. The average winter temperature is 15 degrees below zero and in summer the average temperature is 17 degrees centigrade, so make sure you bring the right clothing.

Now, from clothing and climate, if you decide to pay the city a visit, you’ll want to know about some of the sights.

To start things off on a literary note, you could go and see the literature and theater museum that was set up in 1989 and named after Nikolai Dyakonov. He born in the Komi republic and was a well-known dramatist, actor, director and recognized artist of the Soviet Union. His most famous work was probably ‘a wedding with a dowry’ but apart from that he was the author of over 80 plays. Each year the museum holds one-two theatrical exhibitions and over 10 temporary exhibitions which always have a different theme.

A sportier themed place is Raisa Smetanina’s Museum of Olympic champions. This one is actually located inside the cottage where the famed skier lives. The lady herself is a four-time Olympic champion and seven-time world champion and she’s in the Guinness book of records too. The museum houses a collection of exclusive material on the development of biathlon and includes things like photos, film clips and recollections by sportsmen and coaches. The museum also has on display a lot of her medals and awards.

For something less sporty and more artsy, you can go and see the Komi Republic’s national gallery – the only one of its type in the republic.  It was opened in 1943 and its collection is now made up over about 7000 works of art from the 17th to 21st century.

The main sections in there are devoted to Christian art, old Russian art, Russian art at the start of the 20th century, foreign art from the 17th century and visual arts from the Republic of Komi.

Seeing as how the Republic of Komi pops up quite a bit, you might like to know a bit more about that.

And there’s no better place to do that than the Komi Republic national museum, which also happens to be the largest and oldest in the republic. Here you’ll find precious ethnographic, archeological, historical and natural science exhibits that paint you a picture of all the important events that affected the Komi region over time.  The museum’s collection there has over 250,000 expositions with some real rare examples of Russian icon painting, coin collections and an impressive photo archive.

Coming from some of the museums to the streets of Syktyvkar, one this to see is the fire tower that dates back to 1907. Although serving a different purpose nowadays, the tower is one of the city’s sights and is home to the Komi republic’s 1st firefighting division. The fire tower has a clock on it too that chimes out music from 8.00 to 22.00 every day.

If you like Russian churches, you should go and see the city’s best example of religious architecture which is the St. Stephan Cathedral. This church was consecrated initially in 1896 to mark 500 years since the death of Stephan Permsky, or Saint Stephan of Perm as he is sometimes referred to in English.  He was a 14th- century missionary credited with the conversion of the people to Orthodoxy. 

In 1929 the cathedral was closed and then in 1932 the belfry was destroyed but after the fall of the Soviet Union it was totally rebuilt and the new cathedral that you can see now is in perfect working order and was consecrated in 2001.

The first description of Syktyvkar (when it was known as Ust-Sysolsk) was found in the chronicles of 1586 and in those days there weren’t exactly many buildings there.

What the Russians refer to as the Time of Troubles didn’t have much effect on the town and toward the end of the 17th century the pace of development and growth had picked up nicely and ended with the town turning into a large settlement that eventually came to be called Ust-Sysolsk. 

Ust-Sysolsk’s population was mainly made up of peasants and merchants and, at the time, it was ahead of many of the other regional villages in terms of farming. At the start of the 1700s there were only about 80 homes there in which around 1000 people were living, although it did become an important transport point. 

It was later, in the 18th century, when Ust-Sysolsk developed into a big commercial and political center of the Komi Republic. Thanks to its geographical location it traded with St. Petersburg, Moscow, Siberia and some other parts of Russia. In 1780, by decree of Empress Catherine II, Ust-Sysolsk gained city status and was made a part of the Vologda province.

Although it was far away from Moscow, Ust-Sysolsk didn’t fall behind the events of 1812 during the Patriotic war against Napoleon (which shouldn’t be confused with the Great Patriotic war which is what Russians refer to WW2 as). Apart from participation from its residents, in 1814, 100 captured French were brought to Ust-Sysolsk and a special holding quarter was built for them, along with an infirmary since a lot of them were sick and suffering from frostbite. After the war, they were sent home.

At the end of the 19th century to the start of the 20th^, Ust-Sysolsk was still the most important city of the Komi territory, but it wasn’t exactly developing at break-neck speed. By the beginning of the 20th century, the population had grown to 6000 people and the tsarist government made the Komi region somewhat of a place of political exile.

In those days the majority of the people were still merchants and peasants and generally, the inhabitants’ main occupations were agriculture, cattle-breeding, hunting, fishing, and trade.

In 1921, after revolutionary events had swept over Russia, the Ust-Sysolsk district was established and 9 years later, in March 1930 the city of Ust-Sysolsk was renamed to Syktyvkar. Not many years after this, the independent area of Komi was transformed into the Autonomous Soviet Socialistic Republic of Komi and Syktyvkar became its capital.

Shooting forward in time to the present-day Russian Federation, Syktyvkar is now capital of the Komi Republic, minus the Soviet Socialist part, and is an important administrative, cultural and industrial center.