— Well, the Urals!.. What a beauty! The Lord is a great master at adorning the earth: forests, rivers, mountains — He placed them well!
Maxim Gorky, Confession, 1908
The Ural Range. Source: sovselo.ru
The Urals are a unique region on the country's map, stretching between the East European and West Siberian plains. There is a beautiful legend explaining the origin of the name of this remarkable land. An old Bashkir tale tells of a giant who wore a huge belt with deep pockets and hid immeasurable riches in them. One day the giant took off his belt, laid it across the land, and it stretched from the Kara Sea to the Caspian Sea. Thus the Ural Range was formed. In the Bashkir language the word "Ural" means "belt".
The "giant's belt" generously endowed the Urals with natural resources and minerals. It is in the Urals that 80% of the country's active resources are concentrated: coal, uranium, ferrous and non-ferrous metals (iron and chromium ores, copper, zinc, bauxites, nickel), non-metallic minerals (quartz, asbestos, talc, graphite, magnesite, kaolin) and precious metals (gold, platinum). All this made the Urals Russia's El Dorado — a place attracting the best minds of scientists and adventurers.
Mount Zyuratkul. Source: sportishka.com
One of the Urals' chief riches is, without doubt, its platinum deposits. But platinum was not always considered valuable. Until 1748, platinum was mined and produced only in the Americas and was unknown in the Old World. The first mentions of this metal appear in European literature of the 16th century: heavy platinum grains were often found in gold placers and discarded with the waste rock because they could not be worked due to their high melting point. By the way, platinum got its name from the Spanish word "plata" ("little silver"), and in Russia it was called "serebrec".
Soon after, European counterfeiters and jewelers discovered platinum's ability to alloy with gold and silver and began adding the metal to jewelry and coins. The Spanish government soon adopted their practice and started adding platinum to state coins to conserve gold reserves. The first platinum items began to appear only in the 1770s. The discovery of platinum's valuable properties — inertness, density and chemical resistance — made it a costly and attractive resource.
Platinum — the ideal setting for diamonds
Russian platinum deposits were first discovered at Ural placer mines in 1819. In 1824 extraction of the precious metal began. The metal was processed by alloying with arsenic. By decree of Nicholas I, from 1828 to 1845 three-ruble, six-ruble and twelve-ruble coins were minted in the Russian Empire — this was the world's first series of platinum coins for circulation.
Imperial platinum coins with denominations of 3, 6 and 12 rubles
In August 1904, the "Ural Giant" was found at the Isovskoye deposit — a platinum nugget weighing 7,860.5 g. The Ural bergmeister presented it on a golden platter as a personal gift to Nicholas II. The "Ural Giant" remains the largest known and preserved platinum nugget. You can see this wonder, as well as the famous nugget "The Jaws", found in the Urals in the first half of the 19th century, in the collection of the Diamond Fund of the Moscow Kremlin.
Ural nugget "The Jaws", Diamond Fund of the Moscow Kremlin
You can truly appreciate the region's wealth at the Ural Geological Museum. The exhibition features precious and semi-precious stones: emeralds, amethysts, topazes, aquamarines, tourmalines, morions, citrines, rhodonite, malachite. Of particular interest are minerals first discovered in the Urals and named after their places of occurrence — ilmenite, ilmenorutile, sysertskite, nevyanskite, vishnevite and others. The collection includes a rare specimen — a quartz crystal 170 cm tall and weighing 784 kg. The museum also displays various samples of gold and platinum.
Gold and platinum from Ural placers in the collection of the Geological Museum (UGGU)
By the mid-20th century the platinum deposits were virtually exhausted, so today the placer deposits within the old mining concessions are being exploited. In any case, the presence of Ural deposits played a huge role in the development of the Russian economy, politics and industry and had a direct influence on the course of national and world history.
