Kohtla-Jarve is a large Estonian city. It is located in northeast Estonia. In terms of population, the city is at the bottom of the top five largest Estonian cities. Its population is approximately 45 thousand inhabitants. Where is ?

It is in Kohtla-Jarve that the association “State Oil Shale Industry” is located, which is of great importance for Estonia.
The extraction and processing of oil shale plays a large role in the development of the city and also influences its culture.

In addition to slate processing, there are also a number of other large enterprises in the city, such as clothing production, production of building materials, and metalworking. They also play a significant role in the life and development of the city.
Currently, the city of Kohtla-Jarve is divided into several large districts, located somewhat apart from each other, and at the same time having connections with each other. Each of them, although relatively similar, has its own distinctive features, thanks to which they were divided.

What is the best way to get to Kohtla-Jarve

There used to be a railway station in Kohtla-Järve, but it is not currently used for passenger transport. The only way to get into the city by rail is by the Tallinn-Narva train, which stops in the Oru area.
You can get into the city with transfers. First, you can get to the town of Jõhvi, which is located near Kohtla-Järve, in any convenient way, and then take a taxi.

In addition, the city has a fairly good transport network, allowing you to get from any city to Kohtla-Jarve by car. Proximity to major transport networks facilitates comfortable travel between cities in Estonia, as well as between the regions of Kohtla-Jarve.

You can get around Kohtla-Jarve itself by bus. Local buses run between the areas of Kohtla-Järve regularly and are relatively inexpensive.

Hotels and shopping in Kohtla-Jarve

A large number of hotels and inns are located in different parts of Kohtla-Jarve. There are both inexpensive rooms with relatively good conditions and expensive apartments with all amenities. The average cost of living in an average room varies from 1000 to 4000 rubles per night.
In Kohtla-Jarve there are many different shopping centers, full of names. They offer goods for any even sophisticated taste, color and income. You can buy food, clothing and souvenirs in Kohtla-Jarve at relatively low prices.

What interesting things to see and where to go in Kohtla-Jarve

There are no ancient architectural buildings or architectural monuments in Kohtla-Jarve. However, Kohtla-Jarve has very beautiful nature, which many tourists come to admire every year.

One of the most popular attractions among tourists in the city of Kohtla-Järve is the Valaste waterfall. It is the highest waterfall in the country. The height of the waterfall is constantly increasing as the water erodes the rock underneath. So, from the initial 25 meters it has already increased to 30 meters. The first mention of the waterfall dates back to the 19th century, when a German newspaper published about it, but it has existed much longer. The waterfall was recently declared a natural heritage site as well as a national Estonian symbol.

The city center is represented mainly by architecture from Stalin times. Here is a waste heap, left over from a once closed mine. Its height reaches 182 meters.

Also in the city you can go on an excursion to the Kohtla-Nõmme mine. This is a local mine museum, which regularly hosts tours for everyone who wants to get acquainted with the culture of oil shale mining.

Currently, Kohtla-Järve has two mines currently in operation, as well as three quarries. All of them belong to the Eesti Energy company.
The city has a unique slate museum. Its exhibition is dedicated to the history of the development of the oil shale mining and processing industry.
Another interesting place is the windmill, restored in the 20th century.

The natural symbol of the country is the glint in Ontik, which shows layers of different eras and eras.
There are few architectural monuments in the city. One of them is the Pyukhtitsa Assumption Monastery. At first it was a church built in the 16th century, and at the end of the 19th century a convent consisting of 6 churches was founded here.

Moscow. 23 September. website - A large-scale police operation is underway in the Finnish archipelago of Turku and in the Varsinais-Suomi region in connection with the activities of a company allegedly linked to Estonia and Russia, local media reported.

According to them, we are talking about a company that has been buying land plots near strategically important sites in Finland for years.

Prime Minister Juha Sipila told Yle Radio Suomi on Sunday that the government had been informed of the ongoing police operation in the Turku archipelago.

During the operation, police conduct searches in houses and also check the offices of a company registered in Finland, the owners of which are located in another EU country. The police do not disclose what kind of company it is or where its owners are located. A total of 17 objects were checked. Eyewitnesses say that the inspection area is surrounded by patrol boats and aircraft, and the area is closed to flights.

The Central Criminal Police suspects that the company was involved in money laundering on a particularly large scale and also used illegal immigrants for its work. As for financial fraud, we are talking about several million euros.

Police detained three suspects, one of whom was released on Sunday.

The Swedish-language Svenska Yle Spotlight reported earlier this year that a company linked to Russians was in trouble with Finnish authorities for providing tourist accommodation services in violation of a building permit received from Finnish authorities.

A cameraman from the Yle TV channel, who visited the scene of the operation, said that the police blocked the road leading to the house, which belongs to the company Airiston Helmi Oy.

According to the Iltalehti newspaper, the company is connected to Russia and operates in Estonia.

The publication recalled that in 2016, the Finnish Security Police warned against Russians purchasing real estate near strategically important sites.

Estonian newspaper Postimees reported on its website on Sunday that Alfons Hakans Oy has emergency powers to carry out dredging work and, for example, build docks and landing pads for helicopters. The company also shows interest in old ships of the Finnish Defense Forces, under the guise of a tourism project, it acquired a warship, and the owner and director of Alfons Hakans Oy, Joakim Hakans, purchased a minelayer at an auction of the Finnish Navy Supply Service, which eventually became available to Ariston Helmi .

County Coordinates Mayor

Evgeny Solovyov

Based First mention City with Square Official language Population National composition

80% Russians, 15% Estonians, 5% others

Timezone Telephone code Postcode Postal codes

30323,30324,30325,30326

Official site

Monument to the Miners in Järve

Areas of activity

The most important areas of activity are related to oil shale. Large enterprises include mines (at the moment there are 2 mines and 3 quarries), they are managed by Estee Energy JSC; The leading company in the field of shale chemistry is Viru Keyemia Group JSC, the chemical enterprise Nitrofert. The local energy economy is also based on oil shale - thermal power plants that provide the city with heat operate on oil shale.

Education

The city has 6 secondary schools and 8 basic schools, 3 vocational schools, the Virumaa College of the Tallinn Technical University and partly the Slate Institute of the Tallinn Technical University. 34 different sports facilities and facilities in the city offer opportunities for sports. Medical care is provided by six hospitals and clinics. The history of oil shale mining is introduced by the Kohtla-Järve Oil Shale Museum, whose branch hosts art exhibitions.

Twin Cities

Notes

Links

Ida-Viru County

It is one of the youngest Estonian cities. It received this status only in 1946. Despite such a short history of existence, the city has interesting sights, which makes it an attractive tourist destination.

What to see in Kohtla-Jarve?

The city is famous for its rich oil shale deposits, which is why Kohtla-Järve is considered an important industrial site in the country. But thanks to such natural features, the city offers unique tourist sites for tourists to see, among which the following can be listed:

Kohtla-Jarve (Estonia) – architectural landmarks

Kohtla-Jarve has a very unusual layout. From the moment of its foundation until the 60s, the unification of nearby settlements took place. Then some of them left this composition. Currently, Kohtla-Järve has six districts, but the individual urban parts are separated from each other.

The central city part is called Socialist, which has the status cultural center of Kohtla-Jarve. There are architectural buildings dating back to the Stalin period and picturesque parks.

In the immediate vicinity of Kohtla-Jarve there is Kuremäe village, where the main architectural landmark of this region is located - Pyukhtitsa Assumption Monastery. A legend is associated with its origin, which says that a shepherd who was located near the village had a divine revelation. For several days he saw a beautiful woman wearing radiant clothes. As soon as he tried to get closer, the vision disappeared. This happened near a source of holy water, and later residents found in this place an ancient icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God, which is still in the monastery. The peculiarity of this icon is that the Mother of God is depicted standing on the ground. The church was built in the 16th century, and a convent was formed in 1891. During the Soviet Union, this monastery was the only one that operated throughout its entire territory.

There are about ten children in a school class. Misha, sitting in the second row, reads the text from his notebook.

“Today I am on duty in the 5th “A” class. I am 11 years old. There is a book, a notebook and pens on my desk.”

He speaks Estonian, but with a Russian accent. Grammar errors are corrected by teacher Riina Kazatsenko. She teaches at a secondary school in the center of Kohtla-Järve, the country's official language is Estonian.

There are many students because only 10% of the city's residents are Estonians. Russian is predominantly spoken in the city. Every fourth resident of Estonia considers Russian to be their native language.

“If at home they tell a child that Estonian is not needed, because since I didn’t need it, then you won’t need it either, then the result will be obvious,” says Kazachenko.

The children are given a homework assignment to memorize a poem by their favorite Estonian writer Ellen Niit, “The Bear's Winter Song.” Then the teacher asks who, as agreed, watched the news on the Estonian channel in the evening. Not a single hand went up.

- Why?

- I didn't find him.

“We don’t have Estonian channels,” the children answer.

Russian television channels operate in Kohtla-Jarve. Television dishes decorate Stalinist brick houses and Soviet standard buildings.

The main building in the central square of the city is the shopping center. There used to be a cinema "Pobeda" here. Hammers, sickles and five-pointed stars greet you from its walls. The owner of the building decided he would keep them while he was renovating them. The Kohtla-Järve Culture Palace was also renovated in the same spirit.

In other territories of the former Soviet Union, such as Lithuania and Ukraine, all such symbols have been destroyed.

“You can’t escape history. We can’t pretend that it all started only 26 years ago, when Estonia gained independence,” explains entrepreneur Mark Fedorov.

He was born 25 years ago, exactly the same year that the Soviet Union collapsed.

The city is predominantly dominated by yellow and gray colors. The buildings from Stalin's times might look beautiful, but they are under protection and are deteriorating without repair.

“The facades would need to be repaired in accordance with standards, but there is no money for this,” explains Fedorov.

The revival of the city is one of the themes of Fedorov’s election campaign. The young man wants to get involved in politics in his district in order to solve issues in the life of his city.

A natural choice would be the government Estonian Center Party, which is represented in Kohtla-Jarve and other counties where the majority of the population is Russian. In the upcoming elections this fall, the Center Party will advocate with even greater persistence for improving the situation of the Russian-speaking population.

Surprisingly, Mark Fedorov says he will seek to become a member of the Estonian Reform Party, whose representatives view the Russian minority as an internal security threat. He believes that it is ordinary people who can change something in Kohtla-Jarvi.

Mines can be seen and felt everywhere in Kohtla-Järve. The waste heaps transform the initially flat silhouette of the city into a hilly one. My hair sticks together and the smell of gas fills my nose. Even the city's central park is built around the mine.

For centuries, the territory of Kohtla-Järve consisted of scattered villages and estates. Then Estonian gold - oil shale - was found in the depths of Ida-Viru County. This united all the villages into one city.

The Germans also realized the value of oil shale. The mines of Ida-Virumaa supplied fuel and fuel to Nazi Germany. Jews were taken to labor camps from occupied Ostland, mainly from Lithuania. The Red Army soldiers who came after the Germans found corpses in the mines.

© flickr.com, Bernt Rostad Abandoned mine in Kohtla-Jarve, Estonia

In Kohtla-Jarve, the Red Army is still remembered as a liberator. The end of World War II is celebrated on May 9. On this day, residents of Kohtla-Järve gather at the monument to those killed during the Second World War, and a representative of the Russian Embassy lays a wreath at the foot of the monument.

Orange and black St. George ribbons, symbols of Russia, can still be seen here today.

During the years of Soviet power, oil shale production developed in full force. The mines provided well-paid jobs, and thousands of people from all over the Soviet Union went to Kohtla-Jarve. The city began to be built, and the Estonians became a minority.

Then both time and industry changed. Jobs disappeared, human flows changed direction.

Ida-Viru County has been at the top of the list of areas with high unemployment rates for many years. The income level of the population here is lower than in other regions of Estonia. The number of inhabitants of Kohtla-Järve decreases by a thousand every year due to migration.

A banner with the inscription “Our hockey, our victory” and the coat of arms of the city of Kohtla-Jarve will be stretched over the ice stadium.

In Estonia, hockey is played mostly by the Russian-speaking population. In the stands, a dozen parents are shivering from the cold; at the side of the box, two fathers are shouting instructions to their offspring passing by.

On the ice, Alexander Smetanin is closely watching the players. He coaches the Kohtla-Järve Everest youth team.

Smetanin was born in Kohtla-Jarve. In the 1980s, his own coach came to recruit young players directly into kindergarten. Smetanin remembers how they followed the coach, holding on to the rope.

“There were forty of us then. Now I can’t even assemble a team from my players,” he says.

The team is strengthened by players from Tallinn, Tartu and Narva. Then they go to St. Petersburg, where Everest plays in its age group.

St. Petersburg, which is located on the other side of the border, is a popular destination for many residents of Ida-Viru County. You can cross the border with a Russian passport or with a so-called “gray” passport without a visa. A gray passport is a travel document for stateless persons. 80 thousand Estonian Russians have such a passport.

At first, 36-year-old Smetanin also had a gray passport. At the age of 18, he left to play professional hockey in Belarus and Russia. There he received Russian citizenship.

Context

A Russian party is being created in Estonia

Yle 01/13/2017

Estonia: ambitions of a new TV channel for Russians

Dagbladet 07/06/2016

Russian speakers do not want to become part of Russia

Deutsche Welle 12/17/2015
After 10 years, there was less work, and he returned to Estonia. He learned Estonian and passed the citizenship exam. Now he has an Estonian passport, a wife and three sons in Kohtla-Jarve.

“I know I could survive anywhere, but Kohtla-Järve is my home,” he says.

Smetanin loves his native land, like all the residents of Kohtla-Jarve.

Three years ago, immediately after the seizure of Crimea, representatives of international media came to Ida-Viru County with the goal of finding separatists among the Estonian Russians. It was believed that the district, where the Russian minority lived, would be the next zone of unrest. But instead of little green men, journalists found ordinary residents of small towns with their usual problems.

The majority of Estonian Russians do not understand the statements of the country's main population, which require the Russian-speaking population to integrate into Estonian society. For them, Estonia is already home. Children grow up speaking Russian, but under the Estonian flag.

“People here work hard and try to live with dignity. When you work as hard as you can where you are now, what’s happening in the world doesn’t play a big role,” says Smetanin.

"God bless! Hallelujah! Amen!"

People stand and sway to the music. Some raised their hands up, others had them clasped together. The church service began. The choir harmoniously performs gospel songs - multi-voiced rhythmic songs.

“I bless the Russians, I bless the Estonians, I bless all living,” the priest proclaims between songs.

At first glance, it seems that the church community consists of middle-class people and, at the same time, all happy people without exception. However, if you look closely, you can see traces of a hard life on many.

Many of those participating in the service are former alcoholics and drug addicts. There are many of these in Kohtla-Jarve. Social problems have increased, and cheap alcohol and other products are flowing across the eastern border.

“I was in prison three times and lived in a warehouse for six years,” says 58-year-old Valery Serebryakov after his service.

One morning he woke up after another drinking session and saw a bag full of food near the warehouse door.

“I thought that I had robbed someone again,” recalls Serebryakov.

A few days later, two church ministers appeared at the warehouse and brought Serebryakov food and God’s Word.

His 38-year-old wife Olga has almost the same story. She was saved by Vladimir Vasin, an activist in the Methodist Church and the support of all drug addicts and alcoholics.

The gloomy-looking Vasin himself was a former drug addict. He has seen everything like no one else, but he does not consider Kohtla-Järve a hopeless place.

“It all depends on how a person perceives himself. I can’t say that there are no opportunities here,” says Vasin.

In the south of Kohtla-Jarve there is a microdistrict with a name that is surprisingly familiar to Finns. Outokumpu is one of the most desirable addresses to live in, and for good reason.

“Finnish houses are very well built,” resident Anton Karkhanin praises the microdistrict.

The Outokumpu microdistrict was built in the 1970s according to the designs of the Finnish sister city of Outokumpu. In North Karelia, in turn, there is Kokhtla-Jarvi Square.

These houses can have no more than five floors, because there are adits under the plots, and significant loads cannot be created on the surface.

The Karkhanina family in Outokumpu has two apartments in one entrance, because for ten children one apartment would not be enough.

The three eldest have already left for Tallinn. The oldest, 22-year-old Kirill, studies at the Maritime Academy, 21-year-old Daria at the Estonian Academy of Music, and 20-year-old Simeon at the Police College. But they are going to go back.

“Our family’s motto is where you are born, you are useful there,” explains Kirill.

Daria studies and already works at a local music school.

“Kohtla-Jarve gave me a lot. Now it’s my turn to give him something in return,” she says.

The dreams of the children from the Karkhanin family are no exception. Many of their friends are also planning to return to their native home.

Many have finally learned Estonian in educational centers. They have an Estonian passport in their pocket because the generation born after the liberation of Estonia receives it automatically.

They no longer miss the mines because education opens the door to other jobs. One of the waste heaps in Ida-Viru County was turned into a ski slope, and a museum was opened in a mine in a neighboring county. They have become popular tourist attractions.

Young Estonian Russians are responsible for the future of society, but they are also attracted by the opportunities of their native land. Kohtla-Järve is being built again - and a beautiful city can be reborn from the ashes.