1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Perm (town)

PERM, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, stands on the left bank of the Kama, on the great highway to Siberia, 1130 m. by rail and river N.E. from Moscow. Pop. (1879), 32,350; (1897), 45,403. During summer it has regular steam communication with Kazan, 605 m. distant, and it is connected by rail (311 m.) with Ekaterinburg on the east side of the Urals. The town is mostly built of wood, with broad streets and wide squares, and has a somewhat poor aspect, especially when compared with Ekaterinburg. It is the seat of a bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church, and has an ecclesiastical seminary and a military school, besides several scientific institutions (the Ural society of natural sciences, archives committee, technical society), and a scientific museum. Its industries develop but slowly, the chief works being ship-building yards, tanneries, chemical works, saw-mills, brickfields, copper foundries, machinery works, soap and candle factories and rope works. The government has a manufactory of steel guns and munitions of war in the immediate neighbourhood of the town. The present site of Perm was occupied, as early as 1568, by a settlement named Brukhanovo, founded by one of the Stroganovs; this settlement seems to have received the name of Perm in the 17th century. A copper works was founded in the immediate neighbourhood in 1723, and in 1781 it received officially the name of Perm, and became an administrative centre both for the country and for the mining region.