The Moscow Region Steel mills of this central industrial region are small and widely scattered. Important centres are Tula, Lipetsk, Vyksa Kulebaki and Gorky. Moscow also has steel plants without blast furnaces. Coal and coke are obtained from the Donetz basin through water routes of the Don and Volga.
The Ural-Kuznestsk Combine: The rich deposits of high grade iron-ore, manganese and various alloy metals throughout the Urals have encouraged iron and steel industry. But the local coal is non-coking. High grade coals is therefore brought here from the distant coal fields of Kuzbas and Karaganda. There are as many as fifty iron and steel centres throughout the Ural mountains. The steel city of Magnitogorsk is situated in the southern Urals at the foot of the Mangetnaya mountain, which once contained a rich deposit of iron-ore. The river Ural flows by the side of Magnitogosk. In a barren empty land, the city has grown as one of the greatest steel centres of the world having six gigantic blast furnaces and two dozens open hearth steel furnaces.
It was possible originally by the creation of a Ural-Kuznetsk Combine, to exchange iron-ore from the Urals for the coking coal of Kuznetsk basin in central Siberia. This exchange led to the development of giant steel plants at Magnitogorsk in the Ural area and at Novokuznetsk (the new name of Stalinsk) in the Kuznetsk coal basin. Moreover the Ural region has machine-building and engineering industries of every description.
But in spite of her progress in the field of iron and steel industry, Russia has a few glaring disadvantages. Raw materials are often found to be too scattered, one lying at a great distance from another. The great industrial districts of St Petersburg and Moscow area are far away from the bigger steel producing centres of the country. Thus, long distance railway transportation is often necessary for assembling raw materials and for sending finished steel to consuming areas. Moreover, many of the steel producing districts of North America and West Europe have advantage of cheap waterways for the movement of coal and iron, but the Russian steel districts have to depend mostly on railways routes.
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