Kirovsk, known as Khibinogorsk (Хибиного́рск) until 1934, is a town in Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located at the spurs of the Khibiny Mountains on the shores of the Lake Bolshoy Vudyavr, 175 km south of Murmansk. Population:
History
A settlement which eventually became Kirovsk was founded in 1929, soon after an expedition led by Alexander Fersman had discovered large deposits of apatite and nepheline in the Khibiny Massif in the 1920s. By the end of 1930, its population grew to ten thousand people, and a mining and chemical plant here was well under construction.[6]
The new urban settlement was largely populated by forced settlers, dekulakised peasants from other parts of the country. Death rates in the 1930s were high and they were buried next to the highway in what became the town cemetery.[7] A stone monument was erected there in 2005.
Due to the rapid growth, the Presidium of the Murmansk Okrug Executive Committee petitioned on January 18, 1931 to grant the settlement town status and to name it Khibinogorsk.[6]