Oral

Oral stands where the Chagan joins the Ural, the river once called the Yaik. Known to Russians as Yaitsky Gorodok, it became the principal town of the Yaik Cossacks. The river linked the Caspian steppe with lands farther north, while Cossack families, Tatars, Kalmyks and merchants gave the town a varied population.

Around 1613 Cossacks moved their town to the confluence of the Chagan and Yaik. The community took part in the uprising of Stenka Razin in the seventeenth century. In the 1770s it was again at the centre of revolt: Yemelyan Pugachev drew support from Yaik Cossacks, while government troops and loyal Cossacks held the stone Cathedral of the Archangel Michael against the besieging rebel forces. The cathedral had been built by the Cossacks in the middle of the century. During the siege the defenders used its strong walls as a citadel, resisting rebel attempts to destroy the building and its bell tower.

After the rebellion was suppressed, Catherine II renamed the town Uralsk in 1775, replacing the old name associated with the Yaik. The cathedral remained a prominent enduring witness to the siege. The town's history was shaped by the river, the autonomy of its Cossack inhabitants and the steadily growing power of the Russian state along the steppe frontier.