30 April 2003, 03:30
Labinsk
City in Krasnodar kray(region), kray subordination, rayon (sector) centre, 281 km east of Krasnodar. Located in Ciscaucasia, on the Laba River (tributary of the Kuban), at its exit from the foothills to the plain. Railway station (Labinskaya) in the Kurgannaya - Shedok branch of the Armavir - Tuapse line. Population (1992 est.) 59.2 thousand, (1979 est.) 53.9 thousand.
Founded in 1841 as a fortress. At the end of the 19th century, it was the stanitsa (Cossack village) of Labinskaya, Labinsk otdel (section), Kuban oblast (province), with population of more than 14 thousand people; there were 2 churches, a male 2-class and a female schools, a hospital, 17 mills, 20 steam and 7 horse threshers, 122 commercial and industrial establishments. Grain market.
By the beginning of the 1990s, Labinsk had food industry (a cannery, a sugar-refinery, an oil-extraction plant, a dairy factory and a meat-processing plant, etc.), light industry (a clothes factory, a shoe factory), woodworking industry, engineering industry (equipment for cattle-breeding farms), chemical industry. Production of containers.
