phd viva nerves

Twitter

What happened in my PhD viva – a tale of nerves

Published by michelle reeve on 27 february 2017.

So, the first post of Clutter. What shall I write about? Something cheery? That would be ideal. But I’d instead like to write about my PhD viva. ‘Viva’ is actually an antonym for ‘cheery’, in case you didn’t know (note: untrue, but feels like it should be true).

My PhD viva took place in January of this year (2017), so is still pretty fresh on my mind, no matter how hard I try to forget. A viva, just like the PhD itself, is a very unique and individual experience. Some people have a great time talking through their work, and some people don’t enjoy it quite as much. Guess which category I fit into?

There are several stages to a viva – not just the actual thing, but in the weeks and months before and after – handing in your thesis, preparing for your viva, the viva itself, and digesting everything afterwards. Let me take you through them in turn, and how they played out for me.

I was told that once you hand-in, you need to think about your viva. So I thought about it, a lot. But I had no idea how to actually prepare.

Ideally, setting up a mock viva would have been helpful, but that’s quite hard to fit in when you go straight into a full-time, non-academic job, like I did. I had to give a ’20 minute’ presentation (more on this later) to my examiners at the beginning of mine, so in preparing that I did at least have a proper look over all my work. I also read through my thesis cover to cover, and produced an ‘errata sheet’ of typos and incorrect grammar and minor mistakes to hand in to my examiners at the beginning of my viva. I thought it would demonstrate how thorough I was being, and give me something simple to work on when I started my corrections.

However producing this took a while longer than I thought, and though it was useful, in hindsight there was probably some more useful preparation I could be doing (though quite what I have no idea). I couldn’t do much more than this with my full-time job, and I needed to get a job straight away because, well, I have to pay my rent, so that was that.

Cue viva day. So nervous. More nervous than any job interview. This is the culmination of four years of my life – judgement day.

Get out laptop. Figure out how to use ridiculous university AV kit while examiners sit there. (I am more than capable of setting up my own laptop with AV kit but if you insist on using strange non-standard gear, the least you could do is send a technician to help during a frankly incredibly stressful situation. Rant over.)

Begin my ’20 minute’ presentation.

“Can I stop you there?”

I think You CAN, but I’d rather you didn’t.

What I say is “Yes, of course!” Big smile. Feel sick.

Then commences an agonisingly long round of questions, another slide of my presentation, and more questions. Repeat cycle. This goes on for an hour. After this, I am exhausted.

Now, I am not great at long meetings. During my PhD itself I requested with my supervisor that we limit meetings to an hour tops, and ideally 30 minutes. It’s just the way my brain works – at about half an hour I meet my maximum capacity for being able to digest new information and questions and produce coherent answers. For this reason I always have a notebook to write down things discussed in the meeting, so if need be I can refer to it and think about them later. Even during a casual chat about something work-related I have to do this or I forget things – Matt will vouch for after seeing all the scribbles written during our pub-based meetings.

So knowing that after this very intense 60+ minutes of standing up presenting and defending my work I would sit down and be questioned further was a bit difficult to deal with. The presentation was supposed to be a brief overview of my work, something to put me in a confident position from which to continue the rest of the viva, but in fact with the questioning it drained so much out of me that I think I performed quite poorly afterwards. In hindsight it was naive of me to think I wouldn’t get stopped for questions throughout my talk, but as this isn’t standard practice for a UK PhD viva I hadn’t really anticipated having to give a presentation at all.

In the end, my viva was just under 4 hours long. My examiners were reasonable, we had a good chat about things, some things I answered well and some things I didn’t. I was totally exhausted, and in hindsight probably not all that well prepared. I got sent out of the room while they discussed an outcome, and was waiting for an agonisingly long time. What can you do in that situation? I paced the freezing cold corridors and drank a lot of water. I eventually got called back in, discussed outcomes with my examiners. I didn’t fail – hurrah! But I have a reasonable amount of amendments – luckily mostly writing based, which is a lot easier to fit in around a full-time job and a life than collecting more or extensively reanalysing data. And I also have quite a while to do them in, which again is pretty handy.

I texted my mum, called a friend who’d also had a rough viva, had a little cry and then went home to drink whisky with my long-suffering boyfriend.

The next day I updated social media that I had indeed survived my viva and hadn’t fallen into a pit of despair, and got loads of lovely congratulatory messages from people calling me Doctor and promptly felt like a complete impostor (I have since learnt that this is also a normal reaction – a shitty, but seemingly normal one).

In the following couple of weeks I waited for my corrections; read my corrections; had a panic attack; got a migraine; and then calmed down.

And that’s about the stage I’ve got to now. It has been a fair few weeks since my viva, but I haven’t done much about my corrections just yet. I was given a reasonable time to do them in, so I am taking advantage of that and giving myself a little downtime. The PhD was a very stressful experience for me, and so was the viva – I think I deserve a few weeks away from it. Now, of course, is crunch time – that time off has given me (some) renewed enthusiasm for getting this thing done, and so that is what I shall be doing.

I’d like conclude by saying that although I didn’t especially enjoy my viva, this is certainly not the case for everyone. Your experience depends on many many things, and vary widely by examiner – remember that they may also be having a bad day and try not to take comments too personally. All badness aside, it is a very thorough way of making sure you and your work are worthy of a PhD. I know that my thesis will be infinitely better because of it.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Naomi Boxall · 1 March 2017 at 21:39

Girl!! My first panic attack was in the middle of the night while procrastinating about the 7 typo/grammatical bloody amendments needed prior to leather binding.It took me 9 weeks, I think, to finally have them done. I sat up in bed at 4am one morning, feeling oh-so-peculiar, then realised what was causing the problem, picked up the laptop and sorted them. This article brought it allllll back. Thanks??!

You’ll forget it eventually. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. You won’t. But you’ll Ave everything else that follows it. NOTHING else is so awful.

michellereeve · 2 March 2017 at 20:11

Ahh, this sounds familiar! Sorry to bring back the bad memories…! I do agree, everything scary that has happened since my viva has been approached with an attitude of “well this can’t be as bad as my viva” – it has made me more confident, in a strange way. Thanks for sharing! 🙂

lewismackenzie · 11 July 2017 at 23:14

Vivas are scary things! During my viva day, my average heart rate was 130 bpm (thanks fitbit)! Even in the pub afterwards my heart-rate was just as high!

A couple of days later I was on the train with my laptop and hand-written thesis corrections in my rucksack. Half way through the train journey I released that if someone stole my rucksack from the luggage rack, then all trace of the hand-written corrections would be lost forever. This was incredibly anxiety inducing, and I kept glancing over my shoulder back to the luggage rack. Fortunately a couple of nice people took pity on me and let me swap seats so that I could see the luggage rack. I got home with the corrections and everything is fine. Now I use the 3 submitted copies of my thesis to prop up my laptop on my desk!

Michelle Reeve · 24 July 2017 at 13:03

Hmm I need to check my Fitbit data to compare!! Oh wow that sounds very stressful. I envisage using my final thesis copies for the same thing 😉

A long time coming | There's A Spider In The Bath! · 15 August 2017 at 13:35

[…] guess the biggest thing PhD-wise was my viva. I wrote about my viva there for my first post. I’m still not sure I’m over it. I know that my viva was not the […]

Am I still a scientist? Imposter syndrome post-PhD

I like writing. I’ve missed writing since finishing my PhD, even though I didn’t really enjoy writing my thesis. Rather, I didn’t enjoy the style my thesis had to be written in – I kept Read more…

Freelancing doesn’t mean working for free

A few years ago, while I was still doing my PhD, I attended a science communication conference. One of the sessions was all about freelancing; though I wasn’t doing so at the time, I figured Read more…

How to Excel in Your Doctoral Viva

© 2022
Stacey Bedwell 0 ,
Isabelle Butcher 1

Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Explains what the viva is, how the process works, and what the purpose of the viva is
Explores the course of preparing for a viva examination, focusing on organisation through to dealing with viva concerns
Features contributions from over 25 academics for a unique insight into the experiences of PhD candidates and examiners

3099 Accesses

1 Citations

4 Altmetric

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as EPUB and PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

About this book

Why Tourette syndrome research needs philosophical phenomenology

Enactments in Transference: Embodiment, Trauma and Depression. What Have Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences to Offer to Each Other

The Madness of Interpretation and Meaning in Psychoanalytic Treatment and Literature: Reading Patrick Casement’s ‘A Retrospective Overview’

life sciences
social sciences
research degree

Table of contents (11 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

Stacey Bedwell, Isabelle Butcher

What Is the Viva?

Isabelle Butcher

Urban Myths about the PhD Viva

Stacey Bedwell

Real Viva Experiences

Making the most of and enjoying your viva, after the viva, practice questions, being confident in your thesis, the viva preparation timeline, participating in a mock viva, viva concerns, back matter.

— Sarah Lloyd , final year PhD candidate

— Gemini Katwa , PhD candidate

Authors and Affiliations

About the authors.

Dr. Isabelle Butcher was awarded her PhD in Psychology in 2021 from the University of Manchester, UK, for her work on the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and traumatic life events. Isabelle’s current research interests are in the area of adolescent mental health and the impact of traumatic life events. Isabelle also has a keen interest in the ethics of research and is currently chair of an NHS ethics research committee.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : How to Excel in Your Doctoral Viva

Authors : Stacey Bedwell, Isabelle Butcher

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10172-4

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Education , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-031-10171-7 Published: 16 September 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-031-10172-4 Published: 15 September 2022

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XIII, 183

Number of Illustrations : 69 b/w illustrations

Topics : Science Education , Higher Education , Psychology, general

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

What is a PhD Viva Like? Sharing Graduates’ Experiences

When you’re trying to prepare for a PhD viva it can be really difficult to know what to expect. Unlike pretty much every other exam you’ll have experienced, the viva isn’t a standardised exam so you won’t find any past papers to practice on!

In this post I’ll be sharing the inside scoop on what a PhD viva is like. Both from my own experiences plus those of a few other PhD graduates.

Preparing for your viva? You may also want to take a look at some of the other PhD viva content I’ve written:

How to Defend a Thesis: An Introduction to the PhD Viva

Common phd viva questions.

Note: Every viva is different, in this post I’m focussing on my viva which took place in the UK. Two PhD graduates in Spain and the US also share their experiences.

What is a PhD viva?

For those who aren’t already familiar with what a PhD viva is, I’d highly recommend reading my full post on How to Defend a Thesis: An Introduction to the PhD Viva . This delves into how a PhD viva is assessed, who is present, the potential outcomes and what follows after.

As a quick recap, a PhD viva (also called a defense in some countries) is the final assessment a PhD student undertakes in order to pass their PhD. The format the viva can take varies from country to country and even institution to institution, but it typically involves discussing and defending your PhD thesis with experts in your field.

In this post you’ll hear about the viva experiences of three PhD graduates, each with a slightly different format.

To get the best understanding of how PhD vivas take place at your university I’d recommend:

Checking out any webpages your university have which formally outline the viva process
Speaking to your PhD supervisor
Chatting to colleagues such as postdocs who’ve been through it

Viva Experiences from PhD Grads

Prof elizabeth bondi-kelly , phd from harvard university, usa. assistant professor in computer science at university of michigan.

What was your PhD viva like? At my (virtual) defense, I had my committee, adviser, labmates, and family/friends. I was fortunate to give my job talk presentation again for my defense, so I had already had a lot of practice with presenting it and being asked questions about it.

How do you suggest people prepare for their PhD viva? For anyone who hasn’t had that opportunity, I highly recommend practicing to get a polished talk and practice answering questions about it.

Prof Raúl Santos-Rodríguez , PhD from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. Full Professor in AI at University of Bristol.

What are PhD vivas like in Spain? The viva process in Spain varies from university to university. In most cases there are a few previous filters (internal/external reports) that make it such that, once you are through those, most of the pressure is off for the actual defence. The viva consists of a public presentation (usually with colleagues, friends and family in the audience) followed by questions from a panel, with each member asking their questions in turns. Both presentation and Q&A tend to be time limited (around 45 minutes each).

What was your PhD viva like? My viva experience was nerve-wracking but rewarding too. I remember how the exercise of putting together the presentation with the panel in mind actually gave me quite a different perspective on how to tell the story of my thesis. The event took place in a rather formal lecture room in our faculty. The panel consisted of five examiners (three externals including one from abroad, and two internals), all of whom were experts in my field of study. The panel asked me a wide range of questions, covering both very specific details and very high level matters. Once I answered their questions to their satisfaction, and after a short deliberation, I was given the good news. Overall, I found the viva to be a challenging but stimulating experience — and a good memory.

How do you suggest people prepare for their PhD viva? In terms of advice, I would suggest to:

Expect to be surprised by unexpected questions about your research
Be clear and concise, allowing examiners to ask for more details if needed
Practice your presentation without being constrained to say the same things every time
Not be afraid to ask for clarification if you don’t understand and take your time to respond
Enjoy the interaction with the examiners as they are experts that have a lot to add to your work

Portrait of PhD grad Prof Raul Santos-Rodriguez

Me! PhD from Imperial College London, UK. Research Fellow in AI at Bristol.

What was your PhD viva like? My viva, which took place over Microsoft Teams, included just an internal examiner, external examiner and myself. I gave a short presentation giving a summary of my PhD then about five hours were spent giving suggestions to improve content I was preparing to submit to journals. It was much less intimidating than I was expecting.

How do you suggest people prepare for their PhD viva? I mainly suggest to not over prepare! Sure, reread your thesis and swot up on any content you don’t feel comfortable describing (for instance certain techniques you’ve used), but I would caution against rehearsing too much: come to terms with the fact that you won’t be able to predict all the questions you’ll get asked.

I’ll be sharing more details on my viva experience in the rest of the post.

How To Prepare For a PhD Viva: The Advice I Was Given

Ahead of my own viva I typically got told to:

Relax and take your time in replying . This is somewhat sensible advice but a bit like telling someone to calm down: it doesn’t always work. Furthermore, relaxing can be hard to do when you also get told to…

Be prepared to answer questions about every part of your work . At face value this can seem reasonable: if you did the work, and deserve a PhD, you should be able to explain your work. Like many of us I heard the horror stories of examiners asking students to provide an explanation of fundamental techniques from first principles such as: “derive energy”!

However, I don’t think any rational examiner can expect a student to be able to answer every possible question about their PhD work. Not least because many students aren’t relaxed during the viva and instead are filled with nerves.

Thankfully, the reality is that examiners simply need to check that you’ve done the work and understand it. Therefore, yes you should be able to give a broad explanation of the techniques you’ve used but you can’t be expected to know everything about every technique.

Once it strays from your work to underlying principles I suggest that you explain as much as you feel comfortable then push back – the internal examiner (who acts as a moderator) should also step in if unreasonable questions are being asked. For more details on what PhD examiners are looking for, read this section of another post I’ve written .

How I Prepared for My PhD Viva

The time between submitting my thesis (14th February) and viva (25th March) was shorter than for most people. On top of that I didn’t spend long writing my thesis, meaning that the time between finishing my actual research and my viva was pretty short (around two months). Therefore I didn’t feel the need to “revise” for my viva. As in, sometimes you’ll hear of people reminding themselves of how certain experimental or analytic techniques work, but it was pretty fresh in my memory.

Instead, about 48 hours before my viva I started to read through my thesis. This is going to sound really bad but this was actually my first (and only) time properly reading through my thesis. No, I didn’t outsource or use ChatGPT to write my thesis!

When I submitted my thesis I had of course assembled all the chapters but had never given it a proper cohesive read all the way through. I read through the thesis over the course of 4-5 sittings. Reading fiction is definitely more fun .

I personally didn’t prepare by trying to come up with answers for lots of potential questions. But if you’re keen to have those to hand, read my Common PhD Viva Questions .

Preparing for your own viva? I’ve created a set of viva preparation worksheets which are available for free in the resource library. Click the image below for access!

Image showing free viva preparation worksheets which can be downloaded from the resource library

Why didn’t I prepare more?

I felt pretty relaxed about my viva. This isn’t because I am crazy clever or knowledgable. In fact, like many of us I’ve felt imposter syndrome, waiting for the moment that my lack of knowledge gets discovered: and if there ever a moment you’d expect this to happen it would be at your viva.

These three things relaxed me for the viva:

The external examiner seemed nice from the time I’d met him in the past at a conference. Certainly not a sure-fire sign that he wouldn’t turn into a scary beast during a viva but it seemed like a good starting point.
It was virtual. My viva took place right at the start of COVID and as such took place over Teams. For some reason this felt reassuring, as if I could get away with just unplugging my internet connection if they asked anything particularly scary. Thankfully I didn’t ever feel the need to try this out!
I had published PhD work in a well-ranked respected peer-reviewed journal. This was far and away the most reassuring thing. As mentioned in another post, examiners have to be confident in all of the following things to let you pass your PhD viva. If you have published some of your work somewhere respectable you tick many of the boxes immediately:

Oh, and I also didn’t prepare much because I was preoccupied with moving from London the week before my viva because of COVID and the start of lockdowns. Unexpectedly I ended up moving in with my girlfriend’s parents. It was rather chaotic but probably a useful distraction too.

Photo of the cluttered spare bedroom where I had my PhD viva: a tiny desk with laptop near a bed and lots of belongings

My PhD Viva Experience

Who was at my viva.

Unlike vivas in other countries, such as the two international experiences shared above, a viva in the UK usually only involves:

PhD student – me in this case!
Internal examiner – an academic working in the same research area from the host university. They’re there to moderate the discussion and check that the university’s viva regulations are followed.
External examiner – another academic working in the research area from a different university. In my case this was someone who was a leader in the field who came from another UK university.

Optionally the PhD student may ask their supervisor to attend. I’ve known of a few people who’ve had their supervisor there too, though it’s pretty rare and unnecessary in my opinion.

How long did my PhD viva last?

All in all it was about five and a half hours.

This was much longer than I anticipated. When we scheduled the viva to start at 10am I naively expected us to be finished by lunch. Admittedly the examiners did suggest stopping for a break at lunch time but again I naively thought we’d be done shortly afterwards, so declined the opportunity for more than a 5 minute comfort break. In the end we finished up around 3:30pm.

How was my PhD viva structured?

Pie chart showing the four sections of my PhD viva: as described below

Introductions (2 minutes) . I’d actually never met my internal examiner (who should act as a moderator) so introductions were necessary.
Presentation (10 minutes) . A few weeks in advance of the viva I asked whether or not the examiners would like a presentation, and if so of what length. They said yes, 10-12 minutes. My supervisor strongly suggested making it on the shorter side: short and snappy is good and you’re about to have hours to discuss the details.
Discussion (5 hours, yes, really!) . More on this in a moment.
Decision and final comments (10 minutes) . I was asked to leave the metaphorical room (Teams call, remember!) and after a few minutes was invited back in after which they told me I’d passed with minor corrections. They gave a summary of the next steps, which were mostly administrative with paperwork, and briefly went over what changes/corrections they were expecting to the thesis.

What did we discuss for five hours?

Before my viva I had visions of it being like a job interview that lasts for hours and hours. They ask a slightly tough or awkward question, you try and answer, rinse and repeat x 100. The reality was really different.

The experience was much less intense than I was expecting. The examiners said from the outset that they were happy with the quality of the work and just aimed to give feedback to improve both the thesis and publications.

The vast majority of the viva was spent going page by page through the thesis covering points that the examiners had written down: not questions, merely suggestions. Very little of the viva involved me getting questioned: most of what I said was probably along the lines of “I agree, that’s a great idea”.

The examiners commented that they liked the [short] length of the thesis (140 pages before references) which may have helped. I was expecting at least a few dodgy questions such as explaining the content of a particular reference or deriving something from first principles. In all honestly I’m not sure I’d have been prepared for some of this, so was fine with not getting a hard time of it.

There were very few questions in general which was somewhat of a relief, though I was kind of looking forward to more of a discussion around the project. There were only two actual questions I think I got asked: one explaining why a particular technique wasn’t representative, and secondly a much more fluffy question of what would I do differently if I was starting again. That was it. I was really expecting more questions.

Every viva is unique so I can’t claim that my experience is representative but I will say that it was a relief to get through it unscathed.

What I wish I’d done differently

Asked more questions myself . The viva is one of the few times you’re likely to have hours of access to academic experts with such a keen interest in your work.

Was it tiring?

A little, just as any meeting which lasts over five hours would be. But because I didn’t feel like I was actually getting quizzed the whole time it was nowhere near as tiring as it could have been. Mostly I was tired just from having to pay attention for that long: I usually don’t sit still for more than 20 minutes!

What happened afterwards?

My viva was in March 2020, at the start of lockdown. I’d moved from London just the week prior and had to cancel the scheduled celebratory drinks with colleagues. So instead I had a glass of champagne with my girlfriend and her parents (who I was staying with).

Photo of me smiling with a glass of champagne after my viva

After that, I got cracking right away the next morning on making the examiners’ suggested changes to my thesis.

My Advice If You’re Preparing For Your Own PhD Viva

Download my free viva preparation guide .
Read your thesis!
Look up likely questions (if you want), here are some Common PhD Viva Questions
Don’t over prepare
Be honest. If you’re not sure about something, make this clear. Feel free to say you’re not sure.
Ask questions
Enjoy it! Channel those nerves as excitement and make the most of having experts show such an interest in your work.

Do you have any other questions about the PhD viva experience? Let me know in the comments and I’ll answer them as best I can!

If you’d like personalised help with preparing for your PhD viva I am now starting to offer a small number of one-to-one sessions. Please contact me to find out more or click here to book a call.

If you’re currently preparing for your own PhD viva, best of luck and remember to enjoy it! Be sure to check out the couple of other viva-related posts I’ve written .

Privacy Overview

University of Strathclyde -->

Thank you for viewing this 1newwebsite site. Unfortunately you are using an out of date browser that we have yet to test on. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Strathclyde Business School

How to (and how not to) prepare for your phd viva.

Anyone doing a PhD will feel nerves kick in as they approach the date of the PhD viva. Here, Rohan Sachdev explains how he coped and gives some tips on how to get yourself ready for that all important event.

After having spent years writing my doctoral thesis, the moment of submission for examination was quite confusing for me. I felt a sense of relief but also a wave of panic for the PhD viva. I had written all I could and it was approved by my supervisors. But now I had to prepare to defend it in person in front of a panel that would decide the fate of my hard work. The only question that crippled me for the first couple of weeks was “Where do I start?”

The process of preparing for this once-in-a-lifetime experience can be intimidating. With so much information out there on the process, I wondered, “how much of it is relevant to me?” I spent countless nights reading about other researcher’s experiences and fixated on the bad experiences. Of course, I thought, this would happen to me.

Having gone through this emotional and intellectual roller coaster, I now know better; I now know where I went right and where I went wrong in my preparation. There is no one appropriate guide on how to prepare for a viva. There is no singular “right way” of preparing for it. It all depends on your thesis, your subject area, your university, and even the country you’re studying in.

In saying that, there are some pointers to consider. These are not hard lines that one must do, but things you may want to keep in mind while preparing.

Do: Read through all the guidance issued to you by your academic team

Remember, your supervisors and faculty in your department do this all the time, they may have been external examiners, internal examiners, chairs, and they have even gone through the same process you are going through. Ask them for advice. Check with them if a mock viva can be arranged for you about a week before the big day.

Don’t: Read through horror stories of badly gone vivas on the internet

The internet is a house of horrors when it comes to viva preparation. People are more likely to express and discuss their negative experiences. They may not even be relevant to you; their systems may be completely different where they studied. It may be good to know the potential outcomes, but not at the cost of scaring yourself.

Do: Systematically review your entire thesis end to end

After you’ve submitted, take some time off, go to that restaurant you’ve been eyeing, have some fun. Then print your thesis, sit down, and read it thoroughly without a pen in your hand. Know what is in your thesis without any additional notes. It is key to prepare well for your viva, but overpreparation may be counterproductive.

Don’t: Make extensive notes of your thesis

Making long notes will only stress you out. Once you’ve read your thesis thoroughly without a pen, take another week-long break and read it again - this time, with a pen. If you come across any typos, mark them. On the top of each page, write down one sentence about what’s on that page. Make a list of potential questions and consider how you could answer them. Avoid memorising pre-written answers. These steps will make it easier for your final revision the week before your viva.

Do: Ask for advice from your peers who have been through it before

Just as with your supervisors, fellow students from your department who have recently finished their PhD will have a good idea of the experience. Get an insight into what they went through. Ask for any tips and generic questions they were asked at the start of their viva. These will all be more relevant to you than anything you read online.

Don’t: Take advice from your non-academic friends and family

Sometimes, the advice you get from people around you who don’t completely understand the process of a PhD and/or what you’re doing can stress you out. Try and stick to talking about your in-depth preparation strategy to peers and friends who have a good idea of what the processes are.

Do: Lightly read blogs on viva preparation (NOT outcomes)

A lot of blogs and discussion threads out there are dedicated to viva preparation. Find these threads so you can interact with people and get hints from them. Try not to think about the outcome, you will only stress yourself out more. One of the keys is to relax and enjoy the experience.

Don’t: Google “how to fail your PhD in 1 minute”

If you’re as obsessive about the viva as I was, you may be tempted to gauge exactly what the examiners are thinking and end up googling things you shouldn’t. Coming across such posts, blogs and videos is the ultimate ‘don’t’ when it comes to preparation. Try to stay off these negative thoughts and focus on the other more important steps.

Do: Check out what your examiners have worked on

Having a good idea of the point of view your examiners come from is good to prepare for the types of questions you could get asked. Find their published papers and go over them. See what similarities you have to their style of writing and things they focus on for a hint on what to expect.

Don’t: Try to appease your examiners and change things to appeal to them

Having read their work, it is now too late to change your thesis to appease your examiners. Moreover, the point of doing your research is to express your point of view. Politely defend yourself in the viva, but don’t change things when you’re explaining them to make them happy. You are now on your path to becoming an independent researcher, after all!

In the end, the "dos and don’ts" are just for guidance, and represent the things that worked well for me. If there is anything different that works better for you, do that. This is your journey.

The three keys to eventual success are: Prepare, relax, and don’t obsess. You’ve done your best in writing the thesis, now it's time to show the examiners how well you can explain it. Remember, you’re inching towards the finish line. You’ve got this!

For more information on PhDs at Strathclyde, please click here and for more information on research degrees at Strathclyde Business School, click here

About Rohan Sachdev

Rohan Sachdev, a PhD Graduand in Economics at Strathclyde Business School, will graduate in November. He is now based in Belfast, working as a Research Economist at the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute Northern Ireland. His PhD thesis is titled “The use of Multi-Sectoral Models in evaluating the Macroeconomic impacts of reduced Household Consumption of Sin Goods: The Case of Alcohol Consumption in Scotland”.

Stay in touch

The Business School Blog Latest Newsletter Join us on Linkedin Follow us on Twitter Join us on Facebook Visit our YouTube channel

Contact details

Undergraduate admissions +44 (0)141 548 4114 [email protected]

Postgraduate admissions +44(0)141 553 6118 / 6119 [email protected]

Strathclyde Business School University of Strathclyde 199 Cathedral Street Glasgow G4 0QU

Triple accredited

14 top tips to help you prepare for the PhD viva

doctoral-academy-blog

doctoral academy
postgraduate

The viva examination can be an exciting but nerve-wracking experience – the culmination of years of hard work and research. Prior planning for the event will help ease the nerves and boost your confidence.

The following ideas are taken from publications, my own experience and discussions with other PhD students and should help you prepare for a more enjoyable viva. You don’t need to do all of these. Remember, if you’re at the stage where you’re preparing for your viva, you’ve already done 99% of the work!

1) Annotate your thesis I used highlighters and different pens as well as post-its indicating emphasis, important literature, the contribution of the study, typos, useful extracts, and sections.

2) Find out about the viva process Who will be there? What are their roles? Would you like your supervisors to attend? Take part in the Cardiff University Doctoral Academy viva course to understand what to expect.

3) Do some (more) research Look at the examination procedures, university guidance, and criteria. To what extent does your thesis meet the criteria?

4) Get reading I read the book How to Survive Your Viva: Defending a Thesis in an Oral Examination by Rowena Murray; it is filled with helpful information about viva preparation.

5) Think ahead Plan certain topics in advance that you can refer to during the viva, such as:

the key authors/main studies in the field
the gap in research and your original contribution
a short summary of the thesis
a more extended summary of the thesis
summaries of each chapter
questions for the examiner
the highlights of your thesis

6) Practise and rehearse What are the most commonly asked questions in your field? Plan and practise your answers in advance. Elaborate; plan how you can extend the answers. Think about how to say what you did and why you did it. I found listening back to recordings of myself answering some trickier questions really effective.

7) Buy yourself time Plan what you will say if you do not know the answer to a question. The examiners may ask you things that you have not thought about. You are allowed to ask for clarification, or you can come back to the question later.

8) Present at a conference This will help you to practise articulating your work to others, get used to answering questions about your research and gain confidence. You know your research better than anyone; be ready to defend it.

9) Mock it up Arrange a mock viva with your supervisors or ask a colleague to ask you questions. Practise giving concise and confident answers in an examination situation.

10) Look at the examiners’ work You are probably already familiar with what they have done; they may ask about things they are interested in and have published about.

11) Listen to podcasts The PhD Life Raft podcast has excellent episodes, such as Preparing for Your Viva , and What Does a PhD Examiner Look for in a Thesis? . Some Viva Survivor podcast episodes could also be beneficial.

12) Visualise and mentally prepare Imagine yourself in the viva situation, successfully discussing your research. Think about all the achievements, the efforts you have put in, successes, and positive feedback throughout your PhD. Everyone gets nervous. Can you rest, exercise, or do something enjoyable in the days leading up to the viva?

13) Prep your ‘on the day’ details What will you wear? Pack paper and pens for note taking and the annotated thesis. What else are you going to take with you? The viva can last up to a few hours; will you need water, food, or your laptop?

14) Finally, try to enjoy the big day! The viva is a unique opportunity to discuss your work with experts in the field. They have spent time reading your thesis; now is your opportunity to demonstrate your contribution, your knowledge of the field, the work you have put in, your learning, and your research skills.

Get in touch with Kaisa on Twitter/X and LinkedIn.

You can also hear more about her PhD journey on the PhD Life Raft Podcast .

Want more tips?

The Doctoral Academy is running the following online sessions on the Viva:

Examination and the Viva (Humanities and Social Sciences) – 29 November
The Viva – 11 December

Book your place now via the Learner Portal .

Have you signed up to Dr App yet?

On this resource you’ll find lots of great videos including one on preparing for the viva. To sign up, complete our Dr.App registration form .

Search this blog

Follow us on Twitter

Doctoral academy blog.

Supporting Postgraduate Research Students at Cardiff University

Cardiff University blogs

Start a blog
Explore more blogs
Report a post or blog

Unless otherwise stated, the views contained within this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Cardiff University.

Log in
Site search

5 tips for passing your PhD viva

Every Doctoral researcher is expected to defend their thesis through an oral test known as a viva voce - so discover how to prepare for your PhD viva and ensure you make a good impression on the examiners

1. Understand what's expected of you

The PhD viva exam has traditionally always taken place in person, with the interview style discussion overseen by at least two (internal and external) examiners. Afterwards, you would be provided with a joint written report detailing any corrections that need to be made.

However, during the pandemic, the online PhD viva become more commonplace with this exam more likely to take place via Microsoft Teams, Skype or Zoom. Even now, a number of years later, many universities still allow for the viva to take place online, or a hybrid of online and in-person assessment.

The virtual experience still follows much the same format, but you'll be briefed in advance about the arrangements and any technical aspects to bear in mind. You can prepare for an online PhD viva by reading our video interview tips .

The chair of the viva is usually the internal examiner, although it can be an independent person. If you and the examiners agree, your PhD supervisor can also be present.

The examiners' main objective is to ascertain that you've written your own thesis, so if you have and are ready to talk through how you completed it, there's no need to panic. You may even enjoy the viva voce test.

In addition to assessing your thesis, the examiners are also there to assist you in deciding how and where this research might be published.

There are various results between a 'pass' and 'fail' but it's very rare to slip up at this point of a PhD. Most Doctorate awards will be made upon the condition that a number of minor corrections are made, with re-submission requests far less common.

While the pass rate is high, the viva exam itself can still be intellectually demanding. This is because you'll be debating issues that are conceptually complex, so preparation is crucial to your success.

At the end of it, whatever the outcome, be prepared to take on board any advice, as the examiners are there to help you improve your argument or the presentation of your thesis.

2. Know your thesis inside out

While this isn't a memory test - as you're fine bringing notes and a copy of your thesis with you - it's still important to gain a good understanding of what you've written and be knowledgeable about your field of study.

You'll need to think carefully about where this original piece of work would be placed in the context of the wider body of research carried out in this field. Questions will be asked about this, as well as whether the project could possibly be developed further through any future research.

As you'll be explaining parts of the document to the examiners (who'll also have a digital or physical copy), make sure the pagination is the same in your version as the one they're looking at to avoid any issues regarding everybody being on the same page.

If you get stuck at any point during the viva exam, you can use looking at the thesis as an excuse to re-focus and gather your thoughts.

3. Anticipate the PhD viva questions

The examiners will have prepared a series of questions for you to answer at the viva voce, but this is nothing to get too concerned about. The questions will all be based on your thesis - what it's about, what you did and what you found out - and why this matters, in relation to your field of study.

So when getting ready for the viva, consider the types of questions you're likely to be asked, including:

What original contribution has your thesis made to this field of study?
Explain the main research questions you were hoping to address.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of your thesis?
If you had to start the thesis again, what would you do differently?
If funding was no object, describe how you'd follow on from this project.
What are your plans for the future?

It can be helpful to practise your answers beforehand, ideally vocalising them by arranging a mock mini viva - although, as you aren't restricted in terms of referring to notes in the exam, you can leave room for spontaneity, and you don't need to learn it all off by heart.

If your viva is being held online, you can ensure any technical issues are identified before the day by having a run through with your supervisor or a friend.

While it may sound simple, stick to answering the questions posed. It's really easy to go off on a tangent and this can open up other lines of enquiry from the examiners - possibly in areas you hadn't expected to be quizzed about.

On the other hand, it's completely fine to bring personality to your reasoning and use stories as a means of describing the learning process you've gone through and the techniques mastered over the last three or four years that have brought you to this point.

4. Learn about your examiners' own work

The senior and well-respected academics who'll be reading your thesis will have their own ideas on conducting PhD standard research. Therefore, it's worth taking a look online at their academic and LinkedIn profiles to discover if there's any correlation with the research they've had published and your own work.

From this, you should be able to gain a better idea of their motivations, their possible views on your thesis and the kinds of questions they might wish to discuss after having read through it.

You should research up-to-date theories, read any recent papers on the subject and speak to others who've recently had their own viva exam. Think about how your work differentiates from the research carried out by others in your chosen field.

Prepare to provide any supporting evidence asked of you by the examiners - for example, they may request to see experimental data you mention once the exam is over.

It's also necessary to check the policies and practices in place at your university and be sure of what the roles of the examiners are and how the viva panel will be structured. In many cases, Doctoral students can choose the examiners conducting the PhD viva.

5. Plan towards the viva exam

From the moment you know the date of your viva voce, work backwards and plan the steps you'll need to take before the day itself. Allow enough time to assess and review your work so that as the day approaches, you can focus on the practicalities.

This encompasses everything from making sure you relax, eat and sleep well the day before to arranging transport so you get to the viva on time.

An online PhD viva will present its own challenges, so ensure your working space is presentable and you still make an effort in terms of what you'll be wearing.

It's always advisable to adhere to interview etiquette and go with something that's both smart and comfortable. By looking the part, this should get you in the right frame of mind to communicate in a professional manner.

In the build-up, avoid any situations that might make you feel stressed and instead try to adopt a positive attitude, one that results in a genuine eagerness to engage in a debate about the work you've been toiling over.

If you're travelling to the exam, be sure to check that you have everything you need, including the thesis, plus any notes or other materials that will help support your claims.

The Doctoral viva can last between one and four hours - usually two - so it's necessary to pace yourself to get off to the best possible start.

Remember, the examiners aren't trying to trip you up - they want you to pass and are primarily there to hear you talk about your project. So, after the polite introductions, they'll typically start with an icebreaker to put you at ease and help calm the nerves.

It's meant to be an open and honest conversation about your work, so feel free to politely disagree with the examiners, especially on areas you feel strongly about. Don't forget to use examples from your thesis to back up what you're saying, remembering to be clear and concise.

If you know your way around your thesis and can explain your thinking and way of working, this test shouldn't be a problem. And if you don't know the answer to a specific question - admit it, as it's better to concede your limitations in an area than ramble on and hope they don't notice you're struggling to come up with an explanation.

Remember that no research is perfect, so it's important to appreciate this during the discussion - but don't be too overcritical about your work either, as that's not your job.

Finally, as the PhD viva can quickly move from a series of friendly questions to those that are more in-depth, take some time to think before answering. Don't worry about any periods of silence from the examiners, as this certainly isn't an indication that you're doing badly.

Find out more

Read about 5 challenges faced by PhD students .
Explore possible careers at your PhD, what next?
Consider getting an academic job .

How would you rate this page?

On a scale where 1 is dislike and 5 is like

Dislike 1 unhappy-very
Like 5 happy-very

Thank you for rating the page

Blog – Reflections on My PhD Viva & Next Steps

Blog by Hannah Hussain

After successfully completing my PhD viva, I felt it was important to take a moment to reflect on the entire experience and share some valuable insights. The viva often feels like the final boss in a long, challenging academic journey, but with thorough preparation and the right mindset, it doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it may initially seem. In this blog, I will provide a detailed account of how I approached and navigated my viva, along with the key lessons I learned along the way, which I hope will be helpful to others embarking on a similar path.

Give Yourself Time to Prepare

It’s important to start preparing in advance. Around three weeks of revision time was enough for me, but you need to feel confident in your work and give yourself enough time to review everything thoroughly. Go over each chapter of your thesis, ensuring you fully understand all aspects, especially any feedback you received during the writing process. The examiners will be exploring the depths of your work, so you want to be as prepared as possible. It’s easy to forget what you did at the start of your PhD programme, and I got quite a few questions about my early systematic review – including how I developed my search strategy. No detail is too little to refresh your mind on, so take the time to revisit it all beforehand.

Request a Mock Viva

My mock viva was one of the most beneficial things that I did to prepare. Ideally, this should be done with someone outside your supervisory team to simulate a real viva more closely. Your supervisors are familiar with your work, so bringing in a fresh perspective will better reflect the actual experience. I had my mock viva one week before the real one, and to be honest, I was more nervous for that than the actual viva! The mock gave me a chance to refine my responses and receive critical feedback before the big day.

Viva Day, Where Confidence is Key

On the day of your viva, be sure to remind yourself that you know your work better than anyone else. The examiners aren’t there to catch you out, they want to ensure the work is genuinely yours and that you are a competent researcher. If your viva is in person, dress smartly and treat it professionally, and don’t forget to be confident in what you’ve achieved. All of my supervisors were present for the decision afterward, and it was so supportive, they even took notes on the corrections for me. By that point, after nearly three hours of questioning, my brain was ready to check out, so having them there on hand was extremely beneficial.

After the Viva Seek Clarity of Corrections

Once the viva is over, you’ll certainty feel a wave of relief, but there may still be corrections to make. Take some time to process everything but be sure to seek clarity on what’s expected for your corrections so you know exactly what to work on. I chose to submit my corrections in a “response-to-reviewer” format, outlining each correction clearly and where they sat within the updated thesis (i.e., page numbers). My examiners really appreciated this, and it has made the process smoother.

Taking Time Off vs. Diving Into the Job Market

After your viva, it’s a great idea to take some time off if you can, but this may not be feasible. I chose to pursue job applications during my submission. I actually had my job interview with the Office of Health Economics (OHE) the day after my viva! If you’re doing the same, don’t be afraid to ask for a delayed start. Prioritising your corrections and mental health is key, and trust me, you’ll need a bit of time to breathe.

In terms of job hunting, I found it tricky to navigate the transition from academia to industry. I had been advised to “apply up” for more senior roles, but in my experience, applying for an entry-level position got me further. I ended up being offered a more senior position after my interview, so sometimes this approach can work better, especially given the currently saturated job market.

A New Chapter

On a more personal note, I am no longer technically a dementia researcher! While I hope to continue working on dementia projects, I’ve transitioned into a new role as an economist at OHE. My work will now focus on a variety of projects, and I’m excited to see where this new path takes me.

This brings me to the close of my blogging journey with the dementia researcher team. Writing for this platform has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me, and I hope that my insights have been helpful to those of you on your own PhD journey. Although this is goodbye for now, you can follow my progress at OHE or connect with me on LinkedIn .

Thank you so much for listening and for all of the support!

Hannah Hussain

Hannah Hussain is a PhD Student in Health Economics at The University of Sheffield. As a proud third generation migrant and British-Asian, her career path has been linear and ever evolving, originally qualifying as a Pharmacist in Nottingham, then Health Economics in Birmingham. Her studies have opened a world into Psychology, Mental Health and other areas of health, and with that and personal influences she found her passion for dementia.

x (twitter)

Blog – The Evolving Landscape of PhD Funding

Blog – My Experience as a Co-Researcher

Blog – Making Friends When You’re the Newcomer

Blog – The Joys of Academia (Seriously)

Blog – Inequity in dementia drug development

Blog – Think big – moving from the individual to the population

What is the PhD Viva?

Written by Mark Bennett

The viva voce is the final assessment for a PhD. It is an oral examination where the student defends their research to two academic examiners. This involves answering questions about your work, typically related to the literature, methodology, your findings and the significance of your conclusions. In some countries (like the USA ) the viva is actually referred to as a 'PhD defence', because the candidate defends their thesis from these questions.

This guide explains exactly how the viva works, what to expect on the day, how to prepare and what happens afterwards.

An overview of the PhD viva

The PhD viva can seem like an intimidating process, but it actually serves a very simple purpose: proving that your research is original, that you understand its contribution to knowledge and – most importantly – that your work is your own. It's also very rare for students to fail.

Who attends a viva?

A PhD viva usually involves two examiners: one internal examiner (from your university) and one external examiner (from another university). Both should be familiar with your field and the external examiner in particular should be a recognised expert in your specific research area.

The internal examiner usually acts as the chairperson for the exam, making sure it follows your university's procedures.

Your supervisor doesn't normally attend the viva itself, but they will help you prepare for it and should be around to provide support on the day.

How long does a PhD viva take?

There is no set length for a viva voce exam, but most take between one and three hours .

A longer viva doesn't necessarily indicate any problems with your thesis: it may simply be that the examiners are enjoying the discussion. Equally, a shorter viva may just mean that your examiners are satisfied with the thesis and your responses to their questions.

Why is the viva necessary?

The most basic function of the viva is to prove that your work is original (i.e. not plagiarised). This is especially important because the criteria for a doctorate is to offer a significant new contribution to knowledge.

By discussing your work with you directly and confirming that you fully understand your thesis, examiners can be confident that this is your own research.

Do all PhD students have to have a viva?

Almost always. One exception is for PhDs by publication (as the work in these will already have been through academic peer review). Some countries such as Australia and New Zealand also take a slightly different approach as their location makes it harder to invite external examiners for a face-to-face defence.

The viva format

Universities set their own viva voce processes, but most will follow a fairly similar format.

Before the exam

Many supervisors let you choose an external examiner . They need to have expertise in the topics you have researched, but not someone you have collaborated closely with during your PhD or who you have a strong personal friendship with (as these might create a conflict of interest).

Your supervisor will normally discuss possible options and then submit the invitation on your behalf. This usually happens just before you complete your PhD.

The next step is to submit your thesis . Nowadays most universities only ask for a digital submission which is sent out to your examiners for you.

The gap between submission and viva is usually one to three months. This allows time for both examiners to thoroughly read and consider your thesis and for you to prepare.

Your supervisor/s should offer to conduct a mock viva with you shortly before the real exam. They'll ask the sort of questions an examiner might have about your thesis so that you can practice answering and discussing them.

Your supervisor will normally meet with you before the viva begins to help you relax and ease any last minute nerves.

The exam room will be somewhere on your university campus that has been booked for the occasion. It will be laid out very similarly to a job interview, with space for you and the examiners to sit with your notes. Drinking water is also normally provided.

Most vivas are recorded and will begin with the internal examiner explaining the rules and regulations as a formality. Either they or the external will then begin asking questions about your thesis.

The examiners will usually help you relax and settle in to the discussion by asking something quite general, such as what interested you in this PhD project or what the most enjoyable part of the research was. Subsequent questions will be more specific, often referring the arguments made at particular points in your thesis.

The examiners will end the viva once they have completed their questions and feel able to come to a judgement. You will then be asked to leave the room whilst they discuss your performance and decide on a result to recommend. This normally takes around fifteen minutes or so.

After the viva

The next steps depend on your viva result. The examiners will invite you back in to explain their recommendation and provide general feedback on your work. This may include advice on whether or not you should seek to publish any of your PhD thesis and what sort of edits or further work might be required to prepare it for that.

Hopefully you'll then be able to celebrate with your supervisor, but they should be on hand to offer their to support and advise you whatever the outcome.

The majority of students have some corrections (usually minor) to make before resubmitting a final version of the thesis to be checked by the internal examiner. Once the final copy of your thesis is approved, you will be awarded your PhD! It's time to look forward to using your new title (and wearing some exceptionally elaborate robes at your graduation).

Viva preperation tips

It may feel like you're at the end of a long PhD journey by the time the viva comes around (and you are) but the oral exam is an important part of your doctorate and you should prepare accordingly.

Whatever else you do or don't do, listen to the advice of your supervisors. They'll have experience of all sides of the process, from sitting their own viva voce to preparing previous students for theirs. Chances are they've also served as internal or external examiners too and will know exactly what sort of questions they'd ask about a thesis like yours.

Here are seven tips for effective viva preparation.

#1 Take a (short) break first

Chances are you've been working very hard on your PhD recently, getting it written up, responding to feedback from your supervisor, making edits, sorting the bibliography (which you still left to the last minute, right) and getting the whole thing printed in time for the final deadline.

Whatever happens next, you've just successfully submitted a PhD thesis and you deserve a break. So take one.

A week or two away from your PhD will be ideal (no, don't take a copy of your dissertation with you). You'll get some mental rest and be in a better place to take a fresh look at your thesis and think clearly about it.

There's no need to feel guilty: the time between submission and viva is partly intended to make this possible.

#2 Read through your thesis

You may feel pretty familiar with your thesis by now but, actually, you aren't. You're familiar with a series of chapters that may well have developed separately over several years. It was probably only recently that you wrote them up in their final form, added an introduction and conclusion and turned the whole thing into a dissertation setting out your entire PhD thesis.

You need to know that thesis inside out and be completely familiar with the structure of the dissertation that contains and communicates it: which page a key concept or topic appears on for the first time, where key stages of your argument occur, where you cite or critique particular scholarship, and so on.

At the very least, this means reading your full thesis through at least once. Really though, you should be re-reading each chapter a couple of times and. . .

#3 Annotate key points

The PhD viva isn't a closed-book exam and you're expected to take a copy of your thesis with you. It's perfectly fine to consult it in response to questions, so make that process easy by annotating the most important stages of your argument.

There are lots of ways to do this, but, really, there's no substitute for sticking markers through your dissertation and scribbling in the margins.

If the copy of the thesis you take into the exam room looks like it's survived an explosion in a post-it note factory and then spent several years being read by rough-fingered undergraduate students in the library, well, you're on the right track.

#4 Note down potential questions (and answers)

You'll never be able to guess all of the questions that will come up at your viva, but you should be able to anticipate a few of them. Sketching out some bullet-point answers in advance will help you think critically about your thesis and boost your confidence going into the exam.

Spend extra time on any questions you're concerned about. If there's a point where your argument gets a bit strained or where you think your conclusions might be easy to challenge, have a think about how you'd defend them. Remember that your thesis doesn't have to be perfect, but you do need to be able to make a case for it – so practice doing that.

Incidentally, no one has been able to completely test the hypothesis that preparing for a viva question ensures it doesn't actually come up, but, well, the anecdotal evidence is strong. Prepare anyway.

#5 (Re)familiarise yourself with your examiners' work

The viva is about your thesis, but your examiners will have been selected due to the relevance of their own research and their perspectives will be at least partly informed by it.

It makes sense to consider how their work might inform their attitudes towards yours (this should also help you antitipate some questions, as above).

#6 Definitely take up the offer of a mock viva

Your supervisor/s should offer to arrange a mock viva with you shortly before the actual exam (once you've had time to prepare). This is a really helpful process.

The mock viva won't be anything like as long as the real thing and it won't cover every question your examiners will ask (or necessarily predict any of them). But it doesn't need to.

The most valuable feature of a mock viva is to get feedback on how you answer questions. Your supervisors will be able to spot whether you're coming across as too hesitant or too confident, or whether your answers are sufficiently clear.

#7 Try to enjoy it

Chances are you'll be sick of hearing this advice by the time your exam comes around, but it's true. A PhD viva voce really can be fun.

This is your chance to sit down with two experts in your academic field who have read and carefully considered your thesis and whose attention, for the duration of the exam, is entirely on your research. That's a privilege and it's one you've earned by getting to this stage.

Prepare effectively and give the viva voce the respect it deserves. But, once you get into that exam room, be confident, own your ideas and enjoy the chance to let them take centre stage in a serious academic discussion.

Viva results

The vast majority of PhD students pass their viva. By the time you're ready to submit your PhD you will be an expert in your subject area, more than capable of discussing and debating it. You'll also have done so many times before: at conferences, in conversations with your supervisor, and in your own writing.

Your supervisor will also ensure your thesis is ready for examination before they recommend you proceed to this stage. The only exceptions to this will be if you submit against the advice of your supervisor (never a good idea) or if you've over-run the time period for your PhD and have to hand in a thesis that isn't ready (you're unlikely to get to this point unless your PhD has been going badly for some time).

PhD viva outcomes

It's rare to fail a viva, but it's also rare to pass outright. Instead, most students are asked to make some corrections to their thesis.

Here are the possible outcomes of a PhD viva voce:

Pass with no corrections – (uncommon) – Your viva has revealed no significant issues with your thesis and the dissertation itself is error-free. Congratulations, you are eligible to receive your PhD now!
Pass with minor corrections – (very common) – Your thesis is essentially sound, but there are some minor issues with your dissertation (such as typographical errors, or missing references). You will normally have three months to submit a corrected thesis.
Pass with major corrections – (fairly uncommon) – There are some parts of your argument that need to be clarified, expanded or otherwise rewritten. You will normally have six months to submit a revised thesis, but won't need a second viva.
Revise and resubmit – (fairly rare) – Your thesis is potentially good enough for a PhD, but it needs some significant work, usually including some substantial additional research. You will have around a year to re-submit an improved and updated version of your dissertation for a second viva voce exam.
Be recommended for MPhil – (rare) – Your thesis isn't good enough for a PhD, but it is sufficient for an MPhil (a research Masters that doesn't require a substantial original contribution to knowledge). You may receive the MPhil outright, or after some edits and corrections.
Fail – (exceptionally rare) – Your thesis does not meet the required standard for a PhD (perhaps due to fundamental flaws in your data and analysis, or due to evidence of plagiarism) and it cannot be converted into an MPhil. You have failed your doctorate and cannot resubmit your thesis.

Those last couple of results may appear scary but, in practice, it's only a few % of candidates each year who don't pass with corrections. The only way a PhD is likely to fail outright is if you have run down the clock on your registration period, submitted a poorly written thesis based on insufficient data and probably done so against the advice of your supervisor/s. The entire PhD process is designed to prevent this happening.

So relax. The likelihood is that your PhD will pass with minor corrections (or better) and that your next challenge will be deciding what to use your new 'Dr' title on first.

Can you appeal a viva result?

If you think your viva outcome was incorrect or unfair, then you may be able to appeal it with your university. The first thing to do is check their guidelines and appeal process. Your students' union may also be able to support and advise you.

Note that you can't normally appeal on academic grounds . Your examiners' judgement is generally final. It is also difficult to appeal a PhD result if you submitted without the support of your supervisor/s or have otherwise ignored their advice at other points in your project.

You may have grounds for appeal if you can demonstrate that you have been poorly advised or supervised (you will need evidence of this and of the specific impact it has had) or if there was an irregularity in the conduct of your viva (such as interruptions, an unsuitable venue, or a lack of consideration for relevant disabilities or health conditions that may have impacted your performance).

Common viva questions

The questions your examiners ask will obviously be very specific to your thesis and anticipating them is a big part of your specific viva preparation . There are a few things that are likely to crop up more often than not, though.

Here are some example viva questions , along with some tips for answering them well.

"Why did you choose this PhD project?" / "What interested you most about this topic?"

This is a classic icebreaker: it's an invitation to speak generally and positively about your work. As well as being a fairly easy question to answer (after all, there must be at least something you enjoyed about your PhD) this should also help you channel your passion and enthusiasm for your research as the viva gets going.

"What was the most challenging part of the project?"

This probably won't be the first question you're asked, but it might also come up early in the viva as the examiners ease you into talking about your project. It doesn't mean that they think your PhD is flawed. All research involves overcoming obstacles. This is an invitation to talk about how you did that and reflect on the practicalities of your project.

"What is the original contribution to knowledge made by this thesis?"

This question is highly likely to come up at some point in the viva and it's one you absolutely must have a clear answer for. You should be able to explain in one or two sentences what your contribution is, how it's original and why it matters.

Some examiners might not be so explicit or direct in asking this, so be on the lookout for questions like "why is this PhD important?", "why was this project worth completing?", "what were your main findings?" or "why does this research matter?". If you hear any of those, it's time to deploy the original contribution answer.

"Why did you include / exclude X?"

All doctoral projects need to be selective about what they can and can't include, and successful PhD students need to set boundaries for their research. At some point your examiners will probably want to see the logic behind yours.

Be confident and own your decisions. If there was a particular topic or approach you didn't include, then give your reasons for that.

Remember that there are lots of reasons why something might not make the cut for a PhD and the examiners aren't trying to catch you out. They don't even need to agree 100% with your decisions, but they do need to hear that you had credible reasons for making them.

It may be that there wasn't space to cover everything (in which case you should justify prioritising the material you did include). Or perhaps you felt that there was already sufficient scholarship related to a particular source or concept and your aim was to take the field in a different direction (this is a very good answer, if you can make it convincingly).

"If you were to repeat this project, what would you do differently?"

This question (or one like it) may come towards the end of the viva as you reflect on the project as a whole.

Again, the aim isn't to try and undermine your thesis, but rather to see whether you can constructively critique your own work and approaches. Or, to put it another way, have you learned anything from the experience of doing a PhD? You should have. After all, a doctorate is partly about learning to become an effective researcher and mistakes are a great thing to learn from.

In any case, this shouldn't be too hard to answer. There are likely to be all sorts of things you would do differently in future: from adopting different approaches or directions sooner, to heading off blind alleys or methodological mistakes.

"What do you think the next steps might be for this research?"

Relax, your examiners aren't expecting you to dive straight into another PhD. But they may want to hear where you would take this research next, or what you think other scholars could do to build on your findings. After all, part of the value in a new contribution to your field should lie in what it makes possible, as well as what it is .

It's best to be modest and realistic here, rather than making sweeping claims for how your findings will allow other researchers to reinvent the wheel (unless you have actually come up with a new technique for designing wheels, in which case, go ahead).

"Do you have any questions or comments for us?"

Your examiners will probably end the viva by asking if you'd like to ask them any questions, or say anything else about your thesis. This might seem a bit odd, but it's actually a helpful way for you to revisit or clarify any of your earlier answers.

For example, you might like to acknowledge a specific critique and reiterate your reasons for believing the thesis to be valid in spite of it. Or you might want to confirm that the examiners understood what you meant at a particular point in the previous discussion.

It's not a good idea to try and rehash large chunks of the viva here, but it's fine to pick out one or two things and be assertive. This demonstrates your confidence and commitment.

Equally, you can take the opportunity to ask the examiner's opinions on areas of the thesis that haven't come up, if you wish. This is fine, provided you're confident in those sections and comfortable discussing them.

Browse current PhD opportunities

Ready to begin the journey towards your own viva? Search thousands of PhDs on our site right now.

Our postgrad newsletter shares courses, funding news, stories and advice

Mark bennett.

Mark joined FindAPhD to develop our first ever advice articles in 2013 and now serves as our Director of Audience & Editorial, making sure our websites and information are as useful as possible for people thinking about Masters and PhD study. He has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Sheffield, as well as Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Kent and the University of South Wales.

Select your nearest city

You haven’t completed your profile yet. To get the most out of FindAPhD, finish your profile and receive these benefits:

Monthly chance to win one of ten £10 Amazon vouchers ; winners will be notified every month.*
The latest PhD projects delivered straight to your inbox
Access to our £6,000 scholarship competition
Weekly newsletter with funding opportunities, research proposal tips and much more
Early access to our physical and virtual postgraduate study fairs

Or begin browsing FindAPhD.com

or begin browsing FindAPhD.com

*Offer only available for the duration of your active subscription, and subject to change. You MUST claim your prize within 72 hours, if not we will redraw.

Create your account

Looking to list your PhD opportunities? Log in here .

About the LSE Impact Blog
Comments Policy
Popular Posts
Recent Posts
Subscribe to the Impact Blog
Write for us
LSE comment

Eva Lantsoght

November 30th, 2021, defending a phd thesis is an emotional moment candidates and supervisors should be prepared for.

4 comments | 55 shares

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

The PhD defence, or viva, is significant academic rite of passage, which as well as marking the culmination of years of study, can also be a highly charged emotional moment. Drawing on years of collecting accounts of PhD defences on her blog and her recent book (Planning and Passing Your PhD Defence, co-authored with Olga Degtyareva), Eva Lantsoght , discusses how both PhD students and supervisors can benefit from a more engaged understanding of the emotions underlying the PhD defence.

In the days leading up to my doctoral defence, I had a recurring nightmare about my supervisor forgetting to show up for my defence. I was well-prepared, and since I was defending in the Netherlands, my thesis was already printed and approved. Failing was virtually impossible. Why then, was I nervous about my doctoral defence to the point of having recurring nightmares?

After eventually passing my doctoral defence, I decided to collect stories about the doctoral defence (or viva, depending on the country) around the world for my blog. I was originally fascinated by the differences between defence formats (such as the sword newly minted doctors receive in Finland and the medal in Chile ). Over time, however, I started to see that below the superficial differences, all types of defence show similarities. One is that there is always an emotional dimension to the defence. My worries before my defence were hardly an isolated case. Many doctoral candidates report strong emotions around thesis submission, in the weeks leading up to the defence, during the event, and even afterwards, when the post-defence blues may kick in.

Typically, discussions on the doctoral defence centre around the scholarly dimension. A defence is often viewed solely as an academic event marking and evaluating the end of a research project

Typically, discussions on the doctoral defence centre around the scholarly dimension. A defence is often viewed solely as an academic event marking and evaluating the end of a research project. However, in our recent book Planning and Passing Your PhD Defence , which I co-wrote with Olga Degtyareva, we have paid special attention to the emotional dimension of the defence (of course, in addition to the scholarly dimension preparing for answering questions, and other traditional aspects related to the doctoral defence). This was in part because, we strongly felt that we shouldn’t consider the defence as a regular examination, where a standard set of criteria are used to assess a student. Besides its function as an examination, the defence is also a rite of passage, a confirmation, a celebration, and the culmination of years of independent research work. Emotions are murky and difficult to factor in for assessment. The emotions involved in the doctoral defence make it a unique event: for the candidate, the examiners (or committee members), and for the supervisor. Being aware of these emotions, and bringing them to light, is important to understanding the defence better and the role it plays in a research career.

In my work on the doctoral defence, I found (to my surprise) that the major differences between defence formats did not influence the candidates’ perception much . On the other hand, I did find important differences in the emotions felt by candidates related to the defence, as a function of socio-demographic aspects, notably gender. Women doctoral candidates experience more negative feelings before the defence, and if they had a negative experience during the defence, the negative impact on their perception as a researcher could often be long-lasting. Being aware of how different groups experience the emotions related to the defence differently is important, especially for supervisors and examiners, and can be empowering for candidates. Besides simply being aware of the emotional dimension, it can also enable the small changes that can help settle things when emotions run high: taking a short break, offering water, getting up to open a window, or moving to another topic of the thesis.

While each PhD candidate, each research study, and each PhD trajectory are unique, there are some common emotions that deserve to be mentioned. First of all, in the weeks or days leading up to thesis submission, candidates often feel that the work is not enough, worthless, or otherwise insufficient, and these feelings can contribute to perfectionism. Other candidates may be so tired of the thesis that every small action may feel like a terrible chore. Some feel relieved upon submission, and others worry about how it will be received.

Many candidates also worry about how they will perform. For candidates in the United Kingdom, where the viva takes place before final submission of the thesis and may determine the level of corrections required for the thesis, candidates worry about what the outcome of the thesis and viva will be. Major revisions could potentially add months to the doctoral journey. Because the viva is behind closed doors, candidates also may not know very well what to expect. In the Netherlands, where candidates are sure they will pass, other causes lead to worry and anxiety. As the defence is public, candidates feel the pressure to perform well in front of the committee, friends, colleagues, and family.

it is also important for supervisors and examiners to be aware of this emotional dimension, and to know how different groups of candidates experience these emotions

The first step in dealing with this anxiety, is to name and acknowledge it, and to know that these feelings are normal. Candidates who passed without corrections worry about passing their defence as much as those who had more work on their thesis after the defence. Breathing techniques, meditation, and relaxation exercises can help. University counselling services should be there to support as well. Being well-prepared for the day of the defence itself may also help candidates to feel more in control over the day and their feelings. A positive action, such as stopping by colleagues and expressing gratitude to them before the defence, can improve defence-day-anxiety. Many candidates feel more nervous right before and at the beginning of their defence. Taking notes, repeating the question, or asking for clarification of the question, are all valid options to start answering in a calm and controlled manner. At the end of the defence, candidates can be nervous to hear the outcome, and the minutes while the committee is in deliberation may feel like hours. Then, after hearing the verdict, often the final flood of emotions (relief, happiness, pride, or perhaps disappointment, anger, or worry about the thesis revision) comes.

Emotions play an important role leading up to and during the doctoral defence. Understanding the role of these emotions is important for candidates, so that they know that what they are feeling is normal, and does not mean that they are not worthy of a doctorate. At the same time, it is also important for supervisors and examiners to be aware of this emotional dimension, and to know how different groups of candidates experience these emotions. Being aware of and holding space for these emotions allows all those who are involved in the defence to experience the defence, not simply as a test of knowledge, but as the important moment it is, in the formation and affirmation of a new scholar.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Impact Blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

Image Credit: Ralph Leue via Unsplash.

About the author

Dr. Eva Lantsoght is a Full Professor in Civil Engineering at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador and tenured assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Her blog and co-hosted podcast PhD Talk addresses the mechanics of doing research, PhD life, and general academic matters. Find her @evalantsoght or at evalantsoght.com.

Pingback: Defending a PhD thesis is an emotional moment candidates and supervisors should be prepared for - Multidimensional News for Educators

In Australia there is no defence process and typically no discussion between the examiners…lots of secrecy and anonymity for some reason.

Pingback: 2021 In Review: Living and Working in Academia | Impact of Social Sciences
Pingback: Defending a PhD thesis is an emotional moment candidates and supervisors should be prepared for | Impact of Social Sciences – Cem S. Sütcü

Peer review for academic jobs and grants continues to be shaped by metrics, especially if your reviewer is highly ranked

November 26th, 2021.

Keeping a research journal that works for you

November 4th, 2021.

F**k Ups in Social Research: Learning from what goes ‘wrong’

August 2nd, 2021.

Reflecting on discomfort in research

February 24th, 2021.

Visit our sister blog LSE Review of Books

Viva Survivors

Daily viva help for PhDs

Save Points

Video games have been a big part of my pandemic coping strategies. Interactive stories, complex challenges, puzzle solving and sometimes great big emotional experiences to distract me from the background of life right now.

Save points have featured a lot too: either specific locations within a game where I have to pause and record my progress or a menu option that takes me out of the moment so I can make sure my journey through the game’s experience is recorded.

Save points are useful in viva prep too for keeping you on target. Rather than simply record your state for the next time, a prep save point could act as a very quick review – a growing record to look at and know that you are getting closer to being ready.

Any time that you take time to get ready, as you finish, just ask yourself:

How long did I invest in my future success?
What did I do?
How did it help?
What could I do to keep building on this progress?
What will I do when I next do some viva prep?

Each time you finish some prep task respond to these, quickly, a few words or sentences for each. Two minutes to capture something that helps prove to yourself that you are getting ready.

You are getting closer to that big achievement of passing your viva.

Viva Survivors Summer Sabbatical: I’m taking July, August and September off from new writing to concentrate on other creative projects, so will be sharing a post from the archives every day throughout those months. Today’s post was originally published on February 13th 2021.

Comfortable Silence

There are many reasons for silence in the viva:

A moment while a broadband router buffers in the background.
Time while a page is consulted or a note made.
Processing time while someone thinks through the implications of a comment.
Thinking time in a candidate’s mind while they prepare a response.

The latter might feel unnerving, but none of these could feel particularly comfortable. Silence invites speculation. Knowing possible reasons doesn’t dissolve fears, it simple gives you something else to wonder about.

Rehearsals help. A mock viva won’t be a way to learn your lines like a play, but can give you the confidence to be in that space. Silence is just silence. The reasons don’t matter in a way. The silence is the space between the discussion. You have to wait for it to pass, or use it to help you think.

Practise and get comfortable with the little moments of quiet that you’re sure to find in your viva.

You Need To Get Ready

The practical tasks involved in viva prep are not hard, but shifting focus to do the work can be tough.

Why? Perhaps because you’ve done it all before. You did this work! Haven’t you done enough already? You did the research, you wrote the thesis, you checked it and now you have to read it again and do more work for the viva. Really?!

Or maybe your response is lead by nervousness. Maybe you have lots of questions in the way. What exactly will be involved in the viva? What do examiners do? How do they behave? If viva prep is another step closer then putting it off means you might not have to inspect your own nervousness yet, at least for a little while.

Or you could be busy. Steering your attention to prep when you have a job, or you’re looking for one, or when you have responsibilities is just a hard ask. You know it needs doing, but finding the time or feeling energised enough when you need to prepare can be tough.

Whatever it is, whatever is proving a barrier, you need to find a way around it. Whatever the problem is you still need to prepare. You need to get ready for your viva.

You’ve done the research – but you need to get ready for your viva.
You could be nervous – but you need to get ready for your viva.
And of course you’re busy – but you need to get ready for your viva.

It’s not as simple as saying just get ready . Whatever is in the way of you shifting your focus to preparation is real. You have to find a way forward though. Everyone is different, so every solution is going to be unique.

Generally you have to make a plan that works for you, that is driven by what time you have, how you feel and what gaps you see in your preparation. Recognise the barrier and figure out a way around it.

And then you have to do to the work.

You need to get ready for your viva.

Once Upon A Time

There’s a fairytale aspect to the viva.

Generally there’s a rhythm and sense of how one will unfold. More often than not, a clear sense of beginning, middle and end, patterns by which the story comes together.

Only a few important people in the story, a clear protagonist, a series of challenges – though thankfully no goblins, ogres, giants or trolls.

And like fairytales, when you ask around you discover that nearly every viva has a happy ending.

Sensible Prep

Getting ready for the viva involves big pieces of work and little tasks.

It could feel like there’s lots to do, maybe even too much, especially if you have other responsibilities. Start the process by getting everything out from your brain and onto a space you can track.

Write a list. Jot things down on a whiteboard. Start a new document and type anything that comes to mind.

Once you think you’ve got everything out, try to put some order in place. What comes first? What goes last? How could you fit this jigsaw of jobs together?

It’s possible to get ready for the viva by simply doing something productive for an hour per day for enough days.

It’s sensible to get ready for the viva by thinking a little, planning a little and then getting to work.

Why-How-What

If you’re looking for a way to share a summary of your research, as you might in the viva, think Why-How-What :

Why is your topic worth researching?
How have you gone about researching it?
What have you found?

Every time you give a summary of your work you get to try new ways to communicate what’s important. These questions are only the beginning, you might want to elaborate. You have to start somewhere though.

What’s Your Worry?

Don’t keep your viva worry bottled up in your brain where you can merely be anxious about it.

Write it down. Tell a friend. Talk to your supervisor.

Your worry could be unfounded. Talking to someone who has had their viva or knows about the process could put your concerns in perspective. They could help you see what you can do to help yourself.

Your worry could be easily resolved. Being clear with yourself and knowing what’s wrong and could allow you to move forwards.

Your worry could be a tough situation – in which case exploring what you could do and what you will do, possibly with support from others, will allow you to work past that worry.

It’s natural, given the importance of your viva, that you might have worries. If you do then you can also do something about them.

The One And Only?

On the one hand, yes, the viva is your one and only opportunity. You have to do it, defend your thesis, engage with your examiners’ questions and discuss your work. You have to do it well enough to pass, and this is your chance to do it.

But on the other hand, it’s the latest opportunity you’ve had to do all these sorts of things. It’s not the first time you’ve talked about your work. It’s not the first time you’ve faced a challenge with your research. It’s not the first time you’ve had to really think about what you’re doing.

The viva is the latest challenge, for someone experienced at rising to meet challenges. It could be tough, it could be tricky, but it won’t be beyond you.

You’re the one and only person who could pass your viva.

Expect Unique

If you ask around about viva length, two to three hours is fairly common. If you google you’ll find lots of lists of standard questions. On the day you will probably find out the result within thirty minutes of the end. (and you’ll probably get minor corrections)

There are broad expectations for the format and tone of the viva. But you can also expect that yours will be unlike anyone elses. My viva was four hours long and I was stood for the entire viva in front of a blackboard. I didn’t expect that and I don’t expect it for your viva! I started stood up giving a short presentation, and things just went from there.

Ask your friends who have had vivas recently what they were like. See if there are common experiences but know that yours will be a custom experience to examine you and your work.

7 questions you should prepare in advance for your PhD viva

The dreaded PhD viva. But how prepared can you really be?

The nature of the exam at the end of your PhD journey that determines whether you are awarded your doctorate or not can be a daunting and overwhelming thought. So, naturally the need for any PhD student is to be as prepared as possible.

But – spoiler alert! – you will never be 100% prepared. It all depends on how well you wrote your thesis, your examiners’ backgrounds and interests, how they like to conduct vivas too and whether they like to go through every page or skip through to key bits, and so many other factors. All of this and more will influence the questions you get asked and the discussions you will have.

But having said all that – there is no such thing as being over prepared for your viva because at the end of the day it is all about confidence. If you feel prepared enough then any question they throw at you, you will take in your stride. But more from me about viva prep and a step by step guide to help you keep your cool is coming very soon.

So, I have said that you never know what is going to come up in a viva. And most of the time that is true but there are 7 ‘types’ of question that you can prepare in advance because I can guarantee that at least one of these will come up in your viva and the vivas of everyone around you too.

So, here are more than 7 questions you can prepare for in advance of your PhD viva:

You can now check out this post too for 67 practice viva questions!

1. Summarise your thesis/research in 3 minutes.

The classic starter question to summarise your research. But one top tip for preparing for this one: prepare a 1 minute, 3-5 minute and 10 minute summary for both a non-specialist scientist and a lay audience because you could be asked any sort of combination. As this is usually a favourite opening question with the aim of getting you to relax with something familiar.

But this sort of question also applies for each chapter in your thesis. Before venturing into each chapter, your examiners might ask you to summarise what a particular chapter was about before getting into the detail. So, it is always good to practice a short paragraph so that you don’t get flustered by that sort of question.

2. What is the point?

Another favourite of many examiners to get you thinking more philosophically, because after all you are trying to become a Doctor of Philosophy. An example that was given to me during my preparations was:

‘So there are millions of people in the world starving and you have had thousands of pounds for you to try and answer this really niche research question. Surely that money is more well spent trying to help these more global problems?’

Now don’t panic. It sounds like a difficult question. And I can imagine you all having a face like I did when I heard this for the first time. But there is no right or wrong answer, and I don’t even think that the examiners would be that bothered by your answer. Their goal with this question is to test your thinking and being able to defend why you invested your time into this. But for this type of question, have something prepared that can answer the big ‘why’ questions to start the flow of your answer. Tell your examiners why your work is important.

3. What does this figure tell us?

Figures are great, especially schematics and summary ones. Because we all know that a picture paints a thousand words. But examiners also love them in a viva and instead of trawling through the actual words you have written in your thesis, they might just look at the picture to understand what you are talking about. But they will also stop at these focal points in your viva and get you to explain them. It is also a sneaky check to see that you also didn’t just copy a figure from another location, even if you have referenced it, and didn’t understand it. So prepare your descriptions for each figure – primarily the ones in your introductions and discussions as describing your results I imagine comes much easier to you as you are the expert.

4. How do you get from A to B?

Your examiners won’t be asking you for directions in your viva – I don’t think at least. So, what do I mean by this type of question. Well, the examiners want to understand your thought processes, rationale and knowledge. So, this type of question could be:

‘How do you get from cells to performing a PCR reaction?’

Why did you choose to do that experiment after this result?

You more than likely know all this like the back of your hand with the amount of times you would have repeated experiments, but sometimes it is difficult to vocalise. So I highly recommend having a practice and answering those questions out loud not not get flustered in your exam again and just remind yourself of all the steps.

5. What about your thesis is original and contributes to knowledge?

Another type of viva question that you will probably all too familiar with but another one that is good to practice vocalising beforehand so you can get your words out clearly in the exam and portray confidence even if you are a ball of nerves on the inside. But just remind yourself of what was known before and what you have added as part of being awarded your PhD is to contribute novel knowledge.

6. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your research?

The examiners are not there to tear your thesis apart even if they are really going through it with a fine tooth comb. This type of viva question is to test your ability to reflect, evaluate and adjust. Take some time to think what bits of your thesis are really great and which bits of experiments or analysis could have been improved. Just show your examiners that you haven’t just taken the data that has been spat out at you at face value but you have considered how truly reflective it is and if you could do it again how you would change anything. But always make sure you have some answers to both strengths and weaknesses no matter how great or awful you think your thesis is. There will always be pros and cons.

7. What are the real world applications of your research?

The big picture question. You would have spend the last 3+ years of your life trying to figure out the smallest of details to a very niche question, so before you walk into your viva, it is good to take a step back and think about how this new knowledge you are contributing fits into the wider world. How could it be relevant? This question will be easier to answer for some than others depending on your research, and is probably something you have thought about before – especially if you have done outreach or public engagement activities. But it is one of those questions that you are more than likely going to get asked in your viva so it is good to be prepared.

So, there are 7 generic types of questions you can prepare in advance for your PhD viva. But I just want to remind you that you cannot prepare for every eventuality.

In fact, from my PhD viva experience, I got tested for most of these ‘types’ but not as they appear here or even in a logical order – so just remember what the examiners are looking for from the question to help you form your answer.

Be as prepared as you can be, but preparing for every possible question is not going to do you much good mentally and emotionally as you prepare. These are just some suggestions of questions that can help you do that in advance and hopefully help you relax into it a little easier.

I hope this post was helpful for you. I would love to know your feedback. Also, if you want any tips on how to prepare for these sorts of questions then, get in touch via the comments below or any of the links in the menu on the right. But there are more viva blogs on coming soon – a list of example questions and also a step by step guide on how to prepare for your viva.

PhD Viva Voces – A Complete Guide
Doing a PhD
A PhD viva involves defending your thesis in an oral examination with at least two examiners.
The aim of a PhD viva is to confirm that the work is your own , that you have a deep understanding of your project and, overall, that you are a competent researcher .
There are no standard durations, but they usually range from one to three hours, with most lasting approximately two hours .
There are six outcomes of a PhD viva: (1) pass without corrections (2) pass subject to minor corrections, (3) pass subject to major corrections, (4) downgrade to MPhil with no amendments, (5) downgrade to MPhil subject to amendments, (6) immediate fail.
Almost all students who sit their viva pass it, with the most common outcome being ‘(2) – pass subject to minor corrections’.

What Is a PhD Viva?

A viva voce , more commonly referred to as ‘viva’, is an oral examination conducted at the end of your PhD and is essentially the final hurdle on the path to a doctorate. It is the period in which a student’s knowledge and work are evaluated by independent examiners.

In order to assess the student and their work around their research question, a viva sets out to determine:

you understand the ideas and theories that you have put forward,
you can answer questions about elements of your work that the examiners have questions about,
you understand the broader research in your field and how your work contributes to this,
you are aware of the limitations of your work and understand how it can be developed further,
your work makes an original contribution, is your own and has not been plagiarised.

Note: A viva is a compulsory procedure for all PhD students, with the only exception being when a PhD is obtained through publication as opposed to the conventional route of study.

Who Will Attend a Viva?

In the UK, at least two examiners must take part in all vivas. Although you could have more than two examiners, most will not in an attempt to facilitate a smoother questioning process.

One of the two examiners will be internal, i.e. from your university, and the other will be external, i.e. from another university. Regardless, both will be knowledgeable in your research field and have read your thesis beforehand.

In addition to your two examiners, two other people may be present. The first is a chairperson. This is an individual who will be responsible for monitoring the interview and for ensuring proper conduct is followed at all times. The need for an external chairperson will vary between universities, as one of the examiners can also take on this role. The second is your supervisor, whose attendance is decided upon by you in agreement with your examiners. If your supervisor attends, they are prohibited from asking questions or from influencing the outcome of the viva.

To avoid any misunderstandings, we have summarised the above in a table:


Examiners	Mandatory and minimum of 2	Your supervisor	Yes
Chairperson	Optional	Your university	No
Your Supervisor	Optional	You, in agreement of both examiners	No

Note: In some countries, such as in the United States, a viva is known as a ‘PhD defense’ and is performed publicly in front of a panel or board of examiners and an open audience. In these situations, the student presents their work in the form of a lecture and then faces questions from the examiners and audience which almost acts as a critical appraisal.

How Long Does a Viva Last?

Since all universities have different guidelines , and since all PhDs are unique, there are no standard durations. Typically, however, the duration ranges from one to three hours, with most lasting approximately two hours.

Your examiners will also influence the duration of your viva as some will favour a lengthy discussion, while others may not. Usually, your university will consult your examiners in advance and notify you of the likely duration closer to the day of your viva.

What Happens During a Viva?

Regardless of the subject area, all PhD vivas follow the same examination process format as below.

Introductions

You will introduce yourselves to each other, with the internal examiner normally introducing the external examiner. If an external chairperson is present, they too are introduced; otherwise, this role will be assumed by one of the examiners.

Procedure Explained

After the introductions, the appointed chair will explain the viva process. Although it should already be known to everyone, it will be repeated to ensure the viva remains on track during the forthcoming discussion.

Warm-Up Questions

The examiners will then begin the questioning process. This usually starts with a few simple opening questions, such as asking you to summarise your PhD thesis and what motivated you to carry out the research project.

In-Depth Questions

The viva questions will then naturally increase in difficulty as the examiners go further into the details of your thesis. These may include questions such as “What was the most critical decision you made when determining your research methodology ?”, “Do your findings agree with the current published work?” and “How do your findings impact existing theories or literature? ”. In addition to asking open-ended questions, they will also ask specific questions about the methodology, results and analysis on which your thesis is based.

Closing the Viva

Once the examiners are satisfied that they have thoroughly evaluated your knowledge and thesis, they will invite you to ask any questions you may have, and then bring the oral examination to a close.

What Happens After the Viva?

Once your viva has officially ended, your examiners will ask you to leave the room so that they can discuss your performance. Once a mutual agreement has been reached, which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, you will be invited back inside and informed of your outcome.

PhD Viva Outcomes

There are six possible outcomes to a viva:

Immediate award of degree: A rare recommendation – congratulations, you are one of the few people who completely satisfied your examiners the first time around. You do not have to do anything further at this point.
Minor amendments required: The most common recommendation – you obtain a pass on the condition that you make a number of minor amendments to your thesis, such as clarifying certain points and correcting grammatical errors. The time you have to make these changes depends on the number of them, but is usually one to six months.
Major amendments required: A somewhat uncommon recommendation – you are requested to make major amendments to your thesis, ranging from further research to collecting more data or rewriting entire sections. Again, the time you have to complete this will depend on the number of changes required, but will usually be six months to one year. You will be awarded your degree once your amended thesis has been reviewed and accepted.
Immediate award of MPhil: An uncommon recommendation – your examiners believe your thesis does not meet the standard for a doctoral degree but meets the standard for an MPhil (Master of Philosophy), a lower Master’s degree.
Amendments required for MPhil: A rare recommendation – your examiners believe your thesis does not meet the standard for a doctoral degree, but with several amendments will meet the standard for an MPhil.
Immediate fail: A very rare recommendation – you are given an immediate fail without the ability to resubmit and without entitlement to an MPhil.

Finding a PhD has never been this easy – search for a PhD by keyword, location or academic area of interest.

What Is the Pass Rate for Vivas?

Based on an analysis of 26,076 PhD students who took their viva exam between 2006 and 2017, the PhD viva pass rate in the UK is 96%; of those who passed, about 80% were required to make minor amendments to their thesis. The reason for this high pass rate is that supervisors will only put their students forward for a viva once they confidently believe they are ready for it. As a result, most candidates who sit a viva are already well-versed in their PhD topic before they even start preparing for the exam.

How Do I Arrange a Viva?

Your viva will be arranged either by the examiners or by the chairperson. The viva will be arranged at least one to two months after you have submitted your thesis and will arrange a viva date and venue that is suitable for all participants.

Can I Choose My Examiners?

At most universities, you and your supervisor will choose the internal and external examiners yourselves. This is because the examiners must have extensive knowledge of the thesis topic in order to be able to examine you and, as the author of the thesis in question, who else could better determine who they might be than you and your supervisor. The internal examiner is usually quite easy to find given they will be from your institution, but the external examiner may end up being your second or third preference depending on availability.

Can I Take Notes Into a Viva?

A viva is about testing your competence, not your memory. As such, you are allowed to take notes and other supporting material in with you. However, keep in mind that your examiners will not be overly impressed if you constantly have to refer to your notes to answer each question. Because of this, many students prefer to take an annotated copy of their thesis, with important points already highlighted and key chapters marked with post-it notes.

In addition to an annotated copy of a thesis, some students also take:

a list of questions they would like to ask the examiners,
notes that were created during their preparation,
a list of minor corrections they have already identified from their viva prep work.

How Do I Prepare for a PhD Viva?

There are several ways to prepare for a PhD viva, one of the most effective being a mock viva voce examination . This allows you to familiarise yourself with the type of viva questions you will be asked and identify any weak areas you need to improve. They also give you the opportunity to practise without the pressure, giving you more time to think about your answers which will help to make sure that you know your thesis inside out. However, a mock viva exam is just one of many methods available to you – some of the other viva preparation methods can be found on our “ How to Prepare for a PhD Viva ” page.

Browse PhDs Now

Join thousands of students.

Join thousands of other students and stay up to date with the latest PhD programmes, funding opportunities and advice.

Feb 21, 2021
20 min read

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

What is the Dyatlov Pass incident? Well, as we’ll find out, it was when nine Russian hikers died in the northern Ural Mountains between February 1st & 2nd in 1959, under supposed uncertain circumstances. The experienced trekking group, who were all from the Ural Polytechnical Institute , had established a camp on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl , in an area now named in honour of the group's leader, Igor Dyatlov. During the night, something caused them to cut their way out of their tent and attempt to flee the campsite while not being dressed for the heavy ass snowfall and subzero temperatures. Subzero was one of my favorite Mortal Kombat characters… god I loved that game.

After the group's bodies were grusomly discovered, an investigation by Soviet authorities determined that six of them had died from hypothermia while the other three had been killed by physical trauma . One victim actually had major skull damage, two had severe chest trauma, and another had a small crack in the skull . Was all of this caused by an avalanche or from something nefarious? Four of the bodies were found lying in running water in a creek, and three of these had soft tissue damage of the head and face – two of the bodies were missing their eyes, one was missing its tongue, and one was missing its eyebrows. It’s eyebrows! The Soviet investigation concluded that a "compelling natural force" had caused the untimely deaths. Numerous theories have been brought forward to account for the unexplained deaths, including animal attacks, hypothermia, avalanche , katabatic winds , infrasound -induced panic, military involvement, or some combination of these. We’ll discuss all these in further detail later on.

Recently, Russia has opened a new investigation into the Dyatlov incident in 2019, and its conclusions were presented in July 2020: Simply put, they believe that an avalanche had led to the deaths of the hikers. Survivors of the avalanche had been forced to suddenly leave their camp in low visibility conditions with inadequate clothing, and had died of hypothermia. Andrey Kuryakov, deputy head of the regional prosecutor's office, said: "It was a heroic struggle. There was no panic. But they had no chance to save themselves under the circumstances." A study published in 2021 suggested that a type of avalanche known as a slab avalanche could explain some of the injuries. However, we’ll run through everything and you can come to your own conclusion.

Ok, let’s dive into the details of the event.

In 1959, the group was formed for a skiing expedition across the northern Urals in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Soviet Union. According to Prosecutor Tempalov, documents that were found in the tent of the expedition suggest that the expedition was named for the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and was possibly dispatched by the local Komsomol organisation.Which was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union , which was sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Igor Dyatlov, a 23-year-old radio engineering student at the Ural Polytechnical Institute; now Ural Federal University, was the leader who assembled a group of nine others for the trip, most of whom were fellow students and peers at the university.Ok, so they were mostly students. Each member of the group, which consisted of eight men and two women, was an experienced Grade II-hiker with ski tour experience, and would be receiving Grade III certification upon their return. So, this trekk was like a test. I hated tests. Especially ones that could KILL YOU! At the time, this was the highest certification available in the Soviet Union, and required candidates to traverse 190 mi. The route was designed by Igor Dyatlov's group in order to reach the far northern regions of Sverdlovsk Oblast and the upper-streams of the Lozva river. The route was approved by the Sverdlovsk city route commission, which was a division of the Sverdlovsk Committee of Physical Culture and Sport. They approved of and confirmed the group of 10 people on January 8th, 1959. The goal of the expedition was to reach Otorten, a mountain(6.2 mi north of the site where the incident took place. This path, taken in February, was estimated as a Category III, the most difficult time to traverse.

On January 23rd, 1959 the Dyatlov group was issued their route book which listed their course as following the No.5 trail. At that time, the Sverdlovsk City Committee of Physical Culture and Sport listed approval for 11 people. The 11th person was listed as Semyon Zolotaryov who was previously certified to go with another expedition of similar difficulty (that was the Sogrin expedition group). The Dyatlov group left the Sverdlovsk city (today called Yekaterinburg) on the same day they received the route book.

The members of the group were Igor Alekseyevich Dyatlov, Yuri Nikolayevich Doroshenko, Lyudmila Alexandrovna Dubinina, Georgiy (Yuri) Alexeyevich Krivonischenko, Alexander Sergeyevich Kolevatov, Zinaida Alekseevna Kolmogorova, Rustem Vladimirovich Slobodin, Nikolai Vladimirovich Thibeaux-Brignolles, Semyon (Alexander) Alekseevich Zolotaryov, and Yuri Yefimovich Yudin

The group arrived by train at Ivdel , a town at the centre of the northern province of Sverdlovsk Oblast in the early morning hours of January 25, 1959. They took a truck to Vizhai, a little village that is the last inhabited settlement to the north. As of 2010, only 207 really, really fucking cold people lived there. While spending the night in Vizhai, and probably freezing their baguettes off, the skiers purchased and ate loaves of bread to keep their energy levels up for the following day's hike.

On January 27, they began their trek toward Gora Otorten. On January 28, one member, Yuri Yudin, who suffered from several health ailments (including rheumatism and a congenital heart defect ) turned back due to knee and joint pain that made him unable to continue the hike. The remaining nine hikers continued the trek. Ok, my first question with this is, why in the fuck was that guy there, to begin with??

Diaries and cameras found around their last campsite made it possible to track the group's route up to the day before the incident. On January 31st, the group arrived at the edge of a highland area and began to prepare for climbing. In a wooded valley, they rounded up surplus food and equipment that they would use for the trip back. The next day, the hikers started to move through the pass. It seems they planned to get over the pass and make camp for the next night on the opposite side, but because of worsening weather conditions—like snowstorms, decreasing visibility... large piles of yeti shit—they lost their direction and headed west, toward the top of Kholat Syakhl . When they realised their mistake, the group decided to set up camp there on the slope of the mountain, rather than move almost a mile downhill to a forested area that would have offered some shelter from the weather. Yudin, the debilitated goofball that shouldn’t have even been there speculated, "Dyatlov probably did not want to lose the altitude they had gained, or he decided to practice camping on the mountain slope."

Before leaving, Captain Dyatlov had agreed he would send a telegram to their sports club as soon as the group returned to teeny, tiny Vizhai. It was expected that this would happen no later than February 12th, but Dyatlov had told Yudin, before he departed from the group, that he expected it to actually be longer. When the 12th passed and no messages had been received, there was no immediate reaction because, ya know… fuck it. Just kidding, these types of delays were actually common with such expeditions. On February 20th, the travellers' worried relatives demanded a rescue operation and the head of the institute sent the first rescue groups, consisting of volunteer students and teachers. Later, the army and militsiya forces (aka the Soviet police) became involved, with planes and helicopters ordered to join in on the search party.

On February 26th, the searchers found the group's abandoned and super fucked up tent on Kholat Syakhl . The campsite undoubtedly baffled the search party. Mikhail Sharavin, the student who found the tent, said “HOLY SHIT! THIS PLACE IS FUCKED UP!”... No, that’s not true. He actually said, "the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty, and all the group's belongings and shoes had been left behind." Investigators said the tent had been cut open from inside. Which seems like a serious and quick escape route was needed. Nine sets of footprints, left by people wearing only socks or a single shoe or even barefoot, could actually be followed, leading down to the edge of a nearby wood, on the opposite side of the pass, about a mile to the north-east. After approximately 1,600 ft, these tracks were covered with snow. At the forest's edge, under a large Siberian pine , the searchers found the visible remains of a small fire. There were the first two bodies, those of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko, shoeless and dressed only in their tighty whiteys. The branches on the tree were broken up to five meters high, suggesting that one of the skiers had climbed up to look for something, maybe the camp. Between the pine and the camp, the searchers found three more corpses: Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, and Slobodin, who died in poses suggesting that they were attempting to return to the tent. They were found at distances of 980, 1,570, and 2,070 ft from the tree.

Finding the remaining four travellers took more than two frigging months. They were finally found on May 4th under 13 ft of snow in a ravine 246 ft further into the woods from the pine tree. Three of the four were better dressed than the others, and there were signs that some clothing of those who had died first had been taken off of their corpses for use by the others. Dubinina was wearing Krivonishenko's burned, torn trousers, and her left foot and shin were wrapped in a torn jacket.

Let’s get into the investigation. A legal inquest started immediately after the first five bodies were found. A medical examination found no injuries that might have led to their deaths, and it was concluded that they had all died of hypothermia .Which would make sense because it was colder than a polar bear’s butthole. Slobodin had a small crack in his skull, but it was not thought to be a fatal wound.

An examination of the four bodies found in May shifted the overall narrative of what they initially believed transpired. Three of the hikers had fatal injuries: Thibeaux-Brignolles had major skull damage, and Dubinina and Zolotaryov had major chest fractures. According to Boris Vozrozhdenny, the force required to cause such damage would have been extremely high, comparable to that of a car crash.Also, the bodies had no external wounds associated with the bone fractures, as if they had been subjected to a high level of pressure.

All four bodies found at the bottom of the creek in a running stream of water had soft tissue damage to their head and face. For example, Dubinina was missing her tongue, eyes, part of the lips, as well as facial tissue and a fragment of her skullbone, while Zolotaryov was missing his friggin eyeballs, and Aleksander Kolevatov his eyebrows. V. A. Vozrozhdenny, the forensic expert performing the post-mortem examination , judged that these injuries happened after they had died, due to the location of the bodies in a stream.

At first, there was speculation that the indigenous Mansi people , who were just simple reindeer herders local to the area, had attacked and murdered the group for making fun of Rudolph. Several Mansi were interrogated, but the investigation indicated that the nature of the deaths did not support this hypothesis: only the hikers' footprints were visible, and they showed no sign of hand-to-hand struggle. Oh, I was kidding about the Rudolph thing. They thought they attacked the hikers for being on their land.

Although the temperature was very low, around −13 to −22 °F with a storm blowing, the dead were only partially dressed, as I mentioned.

Journalists reporting on the available parts of the inquest files claim that it states:

Six of the group members died of hypothermia and three of fatal injuries.

There were no indications of other people nearby on Kholat Syakhl apart from the nine travellers.

The tent had been ripped open from within.

The victims had died six to eight hours after their last meal.

Traces from the camp showed that all group members left the campsite of their own accord, on foot.

Some levels of radiation were found on one victim's clothing.

To dispel the theory of an attack by the indigenous Mansi people, Vozrozhdenny stated that the fatal injuries of the three bodies could not have been caused by human beings, "because the force of the blows had been too strong and no soft tissue had been damaged".

Released documents contained no information about the condition of the skiers' internal organs.

And most obviously, There were no survivors.

At the time, the official conclusion was that the group members had died because of a compelling natural force.The inquest officially ceased in May 1959 as a result of the absence of a guilty party. The files were sent to a secret archive.

In 1997, it was revealed that the negatives from Krivonischenko's camera were kept in the private archive of one of the investigators, Lev Ivanov. The film material was donated by Ivanov's daughter to the Dyatlov Foundation. The diaries of the hiking party fell into Russia's public domain in 2009.

On April 12th, 2018, Zolotarev's remains were exhumed on the initiative of journalists of the Russian tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda . Contradictory results were obtained: one of the experts said that the character of the injuries resembled a person knocked down by a car, and the DNA analysis did not reveal any similarity to the DNA of living relatives. In addition, it turned out that Zolotarev's name was not on the list of those buried at the Ivanovskoye cemetery. Nevertheless, the reconstruction of the face from the exhumed skull matched postwar photographs of Zolotarev, although journalists expressed suspicions that another person was hiding under Zolotarev's name after World War II .

In February 2019, Russian authorities reopened the investigation into the incident, yet again, although only three possible explanations were being considered: an avalanche, a slab avalanche , or a hurricane . The possibility of a crime had been discounted.

Other reports brought about a whole bunch of additional speculation.

Twelve-year-old Yury Kuntsevich, who later became the head of the Yekaterinburg-based Dyatlov Foundation, attended five of the hikers' funerals. He recalled that their skin had a "deep brown tan".

Another group of hikers 31 mi south of the incident reported that they saw strange orange spheres in the sky to the north on the night of the incident.Similar spheres were observed in Ivdel and other areas continually during the period from February to March of 1959, by various independent witnesses (including the meteorology service and the military). These sightings were not noted in the 1959 investigation, and the various witnesses came forward years later.

After the initial investigation,

Anatoly Gushchin summarized his research in the book The Price of State Secrets Is Nine Lives. Some researchers criticised the work for its concentration on the speculative theory of a Soviet secret weapon experiment, but its publication led to public discussion, stimulated by interest in the paranormal .It is true that many of those who had remained silent for thirty years reported new facts about the accident. One of them was the former police officer, Lev Ivanov, who led the official inquest in 1959. In 1990, he published an article that included his admission that the investigation team had no rational explanation for the incident. He also stated that, after his team reported that they had seen flying spheres, he then received direct orders from high-ranking regional officials to dismiss this claim.

In 2000, a regional television company produced the documentary film The Mystery of Dyatlov Pass . With the help of the film crew, a Yekaterinburg writer, Anna Matveyeva, published a docudrama of the same name. A large part of the book includes broad quotations from the official case, diaries of victims, interviews with searchers and other documentaries collected by the film-makers. The narrative line of the book details the everyday life and thoughts of a modern woman (an alter ego of the author herself, which is super weird) who attempts to resolve the case. Despite its fictional narrative, Matveyeva's book remains the largest source of documentary materials ever made available to the public regarding the incident. Also, the pages of the case files and other documentaries (in photocopies and transcripts) are gradually being published on a web forum for nerds just like you and i!.

The Dyatlov Foundation was founded in 1999 at Yekaterinburg, with the help of Ural State Technical University, led by Yuri Kuntsevitch. The foundation's stated aim is to continue investigation of the case and to maintain the Dyatlov Museum to preserve the memory of the dead hikers. On July 1st 2016, a memorial plaque was inaugurated in Solikamsk in Ural's Perm Region, dedicated to Yuri Yudin (the dude who pussed out and is the sole survivor of the expedition group), who died in 2013.

Now, let’s go over some of the theories of what actually took place at the pass.

On July 11 2020, Andrey Kuryakov, deputy head of the Urals Federal District directorate of the Prosecutor-General 's Office, announced an avalanche to be the "official cause of death" for the Dyatlov group in 1959. Later independent computer simulation and analysis by Swiss researchers also suggest avalanche as the cause.

Reviewing the sensationalist " Yeti " hypothesis , American skeptic author Benjamin Radford suggests an avalanche as more plausible:

“that the group woke up in a panic (...) and cut their way out the tent either because an avalanche had covered the entrance to their tent or because they were scared that an avalanche was imminent (...) (better to have a potentially repairable slit in a tent than risk being buried alive in it under tons of snow). They were poorly clothed because they had been sleeping, and ran to the safety of the nearby woods where trees would help slow oncoming snow. In the darkness of night, they got separated into two or three groups; one group made a fire (hence the burned hands) while the others tried to return to the tent to recover their clothing since the danger had passed. But it was too cold, and they all froze to death before they could locate their tent in the darkness. At some point, some of the clothes may have been recovered or swapped from the dead, but at any rate, the group of four whose bodies was most severely damaged were caught in an avalanche and buried under 4 meters (13 ft) of snow (more than enough to account for the 'compelling natural force' the medical examiner described). Dubinina's tongue was likely removed by scavengers and ordinary predation.”

Evidence contradicting the avalanche theory includes:

The location of the incident did not have any obvious signs of an avalanche having taken place. An avalanche would have left certain patterns and debris distributed over a wide area. The bodies found within a month of the event were covered with a very shallow layer of snow and, had there been an avalanche of sufficient strength to sweep away the second party, these bodies would have been swept away as well; this would have caused more serious and different injuries in the process and would have damaged the tree line.

Over 100 expeditions to the region had been held since the incident, and none of them ever reported conditions that might create an avalanche. A study of the area using up-to-date terrain-related physics revealed that the location was entirely unlikely for such an avalanche to have occurred. The "dangerous conditions" found in another nearby area (which had significantly steeper slopes and cornices) were observed in April and May when the snowfalls of winter were melting. During February, when the incident occurred, there were no such conditions.

An analysis of the terrain and the slope showed that even if there could have been a very specific avalanche that found its way into the area, its path would have gone past the tent. The tent had collapsed from the side but not in a horizontal direction.

Dyatlov was an experienced skier and the much older Zolotaryov was studying for his Masters Certificate in ski instruction and mountain hiking. Neither of these two men would have been likely to camp anywhere in the path of a potential avalanche.

Footprint patterns leading away from the tent were inconsistent with someone, let alone a group of nine people, running in panic from either real or imagined danger. All the footprints leading away from the tent and towards the woods were consistent with individuals who were walking at a normal pace.

Repeated 2015 investigation [ edit ]

A review of the 1959 investigation's evidence completed in 2015–2019 by experienced investigators from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) on request of the families confirmed the avalanche with several important details added. First of all, the ICRF investigators (one of them an experienced alpinist ) confirmed that the weather on the night of the tragedy was very harsh, with wind speeds up to hurricane force,(45–67 mph, a snowstorm and temperatures reaching −40 °C. These factors weren't considered by the 1959 investigators who arrived at the scene of the accident three weeks later when the weather had much improved and any remains of the snow slide had settled and been covered with fresh snowfall. The harsh weather at the same time played a critical role in the events of the tragic night, which have been reconstructed as follows:

On 1 February the group arrives at the Kholat Syakhl mountain and erects a large, 9-person tent on an open slope, without any natural barriers such as forests. On the day and a few preceding days, a heavy snowfall continued, with strong wind and frost.

The group traversing the slope and digging a tent site into the snow weakens the snow base. During the night the snowfield above the tent starts to slide down slowly under the weight of the new snow, gradually pushing on the tent fabric, starting from the entrance. The group wakes up and starts evacuation in panic, with only some able to put on warm clothes. With the entrance blocked, the group escapes through a hole cut in the tent fabric and descends the slope to find a place perceived as safe from the avalanche only 1500 m down, at the forest border.

Because some of the members have only incomplete clothing, the group splits. Two of the group, only in their underwear and pajamas, were found at the Siberian pine tree, near a fire pit. Their bodies were found first and confirmed to have died from hypothermia.

Three hikers, including Dyatlov, attempted to climb back to the tent, possibly to get sleeping bags. They had better clothes than those at the fire pit, but still quite light and with inadequate footwear. Their bodies were found at various distances 300–600 m from the campfire, in poses suggesting that they had fallen exhausted while trying to climb in deep snow in extremely cold weather.

The remaining four, equipped with warm clothing and footwear, were trying to find or build a better camping place in the forest further down the slope. Their bodies were found 70 m from the fireplace, under several meters of snow and with traumas indicating that they had fallen into a snow hole formed above a stream. These bodies were found only after two months.

According to the ICRF investigators, the factors contributing to the tragedy were extremely bad weather and lack of experience of the group leader in such conditions, which led to the selection of a dangerous camping place. After the snow slide, another mistake of the group was to split up, rather than building a temporary camp down in the forest and trying to survive through the night. Negligence of the 1959 investigators contributed to their report creating more questions than answers and inspiring numerous conspiracy theories.

In 2021 a team of physicists and engineers led by Alexander Puzrin published a new model that demonstrated how even a relatively small slide of snow slab on the Kholat Syakhl slope could cause tent damage and injuries consistent with those suffered by Dyatlov team.

Ok, what about the Katabatic wind that I mentioned earlier?

In 2019, a Swedish-Russian expedition was made to the site, and after investigations, they proposed that a violent katabatic wind was a plausible explanation for the incident. Katabatic winds are a drainage wind, a wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity. They are somewhat rare events and can be extremely violent. They were implicated in a 1978 case at Anaris Mountain in Sweden, where eight hikers were killed and one was severely injured in the aftermath of katabatic wind. The topography of these locations were noted to be very similar according to the expedition.

A sudden katabatic wind would have made it impossible to remain in the tent, and the most rational course of action would have been for the hikers to cover the tent with snow and seek shelter behind the treeline. On top of the tent, there was also a torch left turned on, possibly left there intentionally so that the hikers could find their way back to the tent once the winds subsided. The expedition proposed that the group of hikers constructed two bivouac shelters , or just makeshift shelters, one of which collapsed, leaving four of the hikers buried with the severe injuries observed.

Another hypothesis popularised by Donnie Eichar 's 2013 book Dead Mountain is that wind going around Kholat Syakal created a Kármán vortex street , a repeating pattern of swirling vortices , caused by a process known as vortex shedding , which is responsible for the unsteady separation of flow of a fluid around blunt bodies. which can produce infrasound capable of inducing panic attacks in humans. According to Eichar's theory, the infrasound generated by the wind as it passed over the top of the Holatchahl mountain was responsible for causing physical discomfort and mental distress in the hikers. Eichar claims that, because of their panic, the hikers were driven to leave the tent by whatever means necessary, and fled down the slope. By the time they were further down the hill, they would have been out of the infrasound's path and would have regained their composure, but in the darkness would have been unable to return to their shelter. The traumatic injuries suffered by three of the victims were the result of their stumbling over the edge of a ravine in the darkness and landing on the rocks at the bottom. Hmmm...plausible.

Military tests

In another theory, the campsite fell within the path of a Soviet parachute mine exercise. This theory alleges that the hikers, woken up by loud explosions, fled the tent in a shoeless panic and found themselves unable to return for their shit. After some members froze to death attempting to endure the bombardment, others commandeered their clothing only to be fatally injured by subsequent parachute mine concussions. There are in fact records of parachute mines being tested by the Soviet military in the area around the time the hikers were out there, fuckin’ around. Parachute mines detonate while still in the air rather than upon striking the Earth's surface and produce signature injuries similar to those experienced by the hikers: heavy internal damage with relatively little external trauma. The theory coincides with reported sightings of glowing, orange orbs floating or falling in the sky within the general vicinity of the hikers and allegedly photographed by them, potentially military aircraft or descending parachute mines. (remember the camera they found? HUH? Yeah?)

This theory (among others) uses scavenging animals to explain Dubinina's injuries. Some speculate that the bodies were unnaturally manipulated, on the basis of characteristic livor mortis markings discovered during an autopsy, as well as burns to hair and skin. Photographs of the tent allegedly show that it was erected incorrectly, something the experienced hikers were unlikely to have done.

A similar theory alleges the testing of radiological weapons and is based partly on the discovery of radioactivity on some of the clothing as well as the descriptions of the bodies by relatives as having orange skin and grey hair. However, radioactive dispersal would have affected all, not just some, of the hikers and equipment, and the skin and hair discoloration can be explained by a natural process of mummification after three months of exposure to the cold and wind. The initial suppression by Soviet authorities of files describing the group's disappearance is sometimes mentioned as evidence of a cover-up, but the concealment of information about domestic incidents was standard procedure in the USSR and thus nothing strange.. And by the late 1980s, all Dyatlov files had been released in some manner.

Let’s talk about Paradoxical undressing

International Science Times proposed that the hikers' deaths were caused by hypothermia, which can induce a behavior known as paradoxical undressing in which hypothermic subjects remove their clothes in response to perceived feelings of burning warmth. It is undisputed that six of the nine hikers died of hypothermia. However, others in the group appear to have acquired additional clothing (from those who had already died), which suggests that they were of a sound enough mind to try to add layers.

Keith McCloskey, who has researched the incident for many years and has appeared in several TV documentaries on the subject, traveled to the Dyatlov Pass in 2015 with Yury Kuntsevich of the Dyatlov Foundation and a group. At the Dyatlov Pass he noted:

There were wide discrepancies in distances quoted between the two possible locations of the snow shelter where Dubinina, Kolevatov, Zolotarev, and Thibault-Brignolles were found. One location was approximately 80 to 100 meters from the pine tree where the bodies of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko were found and the other suggested location was so close to the tree that anyone in the snow shelter could have spoken to those at the tree without raising their voices to be heard. This second location also has a rock in the stream where Dubinina's body was found and is the more likely location of the two. However, the second suggested location of the two has a topography that is closer to the photos taken at the time of the search in 1959.

The location of the tent near the ridge was found to be too close to the spur of the ridge for any significant build-up of snow to cause an avalanche. Furthermore, the prevailing wind blowing over the ridge had the effect of blowing snow away from the edge of the ridge on the side where the tent was. This further reduced any build-up of snow to cause an avalanche. This aspect of the lack of snow on the top and near the top of the ridge was pointed out by Sergey Sogrin in 2010.

McCloskey also noted:

Lev Ivanov's boss, Evgeny Okishev (Deputy Head of the Investigative Department of the Sverdlovsk Oblast Prosecution Office), was still alive in 2015 and had given an interview to former Kemerovo prosecutor Leonid Proshkin in which Okishev stated that he was arranging another trip to the Pass to fully investigate the strange deaths of the last four bodies when Deputy Prosecutor General Urakov arrived from Moscow and ordered the case shut down.

Evgeny Okishev also stated in his interview with Leonid Proshkin that Klinov, head of the Sverdlovsk Prosecutor's Office, was present at the first post mortems in the morgue and spent three days there, something Okishev regarded as highly unusual and the only time, in his experience, it had happened.

Donnie Eichar , who investigated and made a documentary about the incident, evaluated several other theories that are deemed unlikely or have been discredited:

They were attacked by Mansi or other local tribesmen. The local tribesmen were known to be peaceful and there was no track evidence of anyone approaching the tent.

They were attacked and chased by animal wildlife. There were no animal tracks and the group would not have abandoned the relative security of the tent.

High winds blew one member away, and the others attempted to rescue the person. A large experienced group would not have behaved like that, and winds strong enough to blow away people with such force would have also blown away the tent.

An argument, possibly related to a romantic encounter that left some of them only partially clothed, led to a violent dispute. About this, Eichar states that it is "highly implausible. By all indications, the group was largely harmonious, and sexual tension was confined to platonic flirtation and crushes. There were no drugs present and the only alcohol was a small flask of medicinal alcohol, found intact at the scene. The group had even sworn off cigarettes for the expedition." Furthermore, a fight could not have left the massive injuries that one body had suffered.

YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

Facebook
Twitter
Google+
e-mail

Page Top

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of country or topic discussed in the article. This constitutes 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. If you are the copyright owner and would like this content removed from factsanddetails.com, please contact me.

Yekaterinburg



and the from


Show map of Russia Show map of Sverdlovsk Oblast
Coordinates: 60°36′46″E / 56.83556°N 60.61278°E / 56.83556; 60.61278
Country

Founded	18 November 1723
City status since	1781
Government
• Body
• Head	Alexey Orlov
Area
• Total	1,111 km (429 sq mi)
Elevation	237 m (778 ft)
Population ( Census)
• Total	1,349,772
• Estimate	1,536,183
• Rank	in 2010
• Density	1,200/km (3,100/sq mi)

• Subordinated to	of Yekaterinburg
• of	, City of Yekaterinburg

• Urban okrug	Yekaterinburg Urban Okrug
• of	Yekaterinburg Urban Okrug
	( )

	+7 343
ID	65701000001
City Day	3rd Saturday of August
Website

Yekaterinburg [lower-alpha 1] is a city and the administrative centre of Sverdlovsk Oblast and the Ural Federal District , Russia. The city is located on the Iset River between the Volga-Ural region and Siberia , with a population of roughly 1.5 million residents, [14] up to 2.2 million residents in the urban agglomeration. Yekaterinburg is the fourth-largest city in Russia, the largest city in the Ural Federal District, and one of Russia's main cultural and industrial centres. Yekaterinburg has been dubbed the "Third capital of Russia", as it is ranked third by the size of its economy, culture, transportation and tourism. [15] [16] [17] [18]

Imperial era

Contemporary era, demographics, administrative districts, administration, living costs and the labor market, finance and business, retail and services, transportation, public transit, media and telecommunications, life and culture, architecture, international relations, bric summit, twin towns – sister cities, notable people, bibliography, external links.

Yekaterinburg was founded on 18 November 1723 and named after the Orthodox name of Catherine I (born Marta Helena Skowrońska), the wife of Russian Emperor Peter the Great . The city served as the mining capital of the Russian Empire as well as a strategic connection between Europe and Asia. In 1781, Catherine the Great gave Yekaterinburg the status of a district town of Perm Province , and built the historical Siberian Route through the city. [3] Yekaterinburg became a key city to Siberia, which had rich resources. In the late 19th century, Yekaterinburg became one of the centres of revolutionary movements in the Urals. In 1924, after the Russian SFSR founded the Soviet Union , the city was renamed Sverdlovsk after the Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov . During the Soviet era, Sverdlovsk was turned into an industrial and administrative powerhouse. On 23 September 1991 the city returned to its historical name.

Yekaterinburg is one of Russia's most important economic centres and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup . The city is currently experiencing an economic and population boom, which resulted in some of the tallest skyscrapers of Russia being located in the city. Yekaterinburg is home to the headquarters of the Central Military District of the Russian Armed Forces , as well as the presidium of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences .

Yekaterinburg is famous for its constructivist architecture [19] [20] [21] and is also considered the "Russian capital of street art ". [22] [23] [24]

The area was settled in prehistory. The earliest settlements date to 8000–7000 BC, in the Mesolithic period . The Isetskoe Pravoberezhnoye I archaeological site contains a Neolithic settlement dated to 6000–5000 BC. It includes stone processing workshops with artefacts such as grinding plates, anvils, clumps of rock, tools, and finished products. Over 50 different types of rock and minerals were used in tool making, indicating extensive knowledge of the region's natural resources. The Gamayun peninsula (left bank of the Verkh-Isetsky Pond) has archaeological findings from the Chalcolithic Period : workshops for producing stone tools (upper area) and two dwellings of the Ayat culture (lower area). There are also traces of the Koptyak culture from 2000 BC: dishes decorated with bird images and evidence of metallurgical production. The Tent I site contains the only Koptyak culture burials discovered in the Ural Mountains . In the Bronze Age , the people of Gamayun culture lived in the area. They left fragments of ceramics, weapons, and ornaments. [25] [26] [27]

Archaeological artifacts in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg were first discovered during railway construction, at the end of the 19th century. Excavation and research began in the 20th century. Artifacts are held at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore , at the Hermitage , at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences, and at other museums. [26]

The first Russian settlements within the boundaries of modern Yekaterinburg appeared in the second half of the 17th century — in 1672, an Old Believers village arose in the area of Shartash lake [28] (this fact is disputed by historians, since no evidence of the founding of the village at that time was found in the sources), [29] and in 1680 – 1682, the villages of Nizhny and Verkhny Uktus appeared on the banks of Uktus River (now the territory of the Chkalovsky district of the city). [30] In 1702, by the initiative of the head of Sibirskiy prikaz Andrew Vinius , the Uktus state ironwork plant was founded near Nizhny Uktus — the first ironworks within the boundaries of modern Yekaterinburg. [31] In 1704, the Shuvakish ironworks was built (now the territory of the Zheleznodorozhny district of the city). [28] With the beginning of active construction of factories in the Urals in the 18th century, relations with their southern neighbors, the Bashkirs , became strained. As a result of the Bashkir raid in 1709, the village of Verkhny Uktus was devastated, all buildings, including the wooden church and chapel, were burned, the residents fled to the protection of the Uktus plant fortifications. [30] On the night of 5 April 1718, a fire destroyed all the factory buildings of the Uktus plant, except for the dam, and the plant was restored only by 1720 under the supervision of Timofey Burtsev. [32] However, the plant did not receive further development due to the lack of water in Uktus river.

In 1720, by decree of Peter I , a delegation led by mining specialist Johann Blüher and statesman Vasily Tatishchev was sent to the Urals . [33] They were entrusted with managing the mining industry, identifying the causes of the collapse and reduction of production at state-owned factories. [33] On 29 December 1720, [33] Tatishchev and Blüher arrive at the Uktus plant, which became their main residence in the Urals. As a result of familiarizing himself with the state of nearby state-owned factories, Tatishchev came to the conclusion that on the basis of these factories, even if they were reconstructed and expanded, it would not be possible to quickly increase the production of iron, and it would be more profitable to build a new large plant. After inspecting the immediate area, together with the commissary of the Uktus plant, Timofey Burtsev, a place rich in ore and forest was chosen on the banks of the more full-flowing Iset River , 7 versts from Uktus. [33] On 6 February 1721, Tatishchev sent a message to the Collegium of Mining , in which he asked permission to begin construction of the plant, with detailed explanations and justification for this project. [33] On 1 March 1721, without waiting for a response from the Collegium, Tatishchev began construction of the new plant, [28] but he failed to convince Collegium, and by the Collegium decree of 10 December 1721, he was removed from the leadership of mining affairs in the Urals. [28] In 1722, by decree of Peter the Great, a mining engineer, Major General Georg Wilhelm de Gennin , was sent to the Urals in place of Tatishchev. Having studied all the circumstances, de Gennin fully supported Tatishchev’s project, and on 12 March 1723, construction of the plant on Iset resumed. [28]

Russian historian Vasily Tatishchev and Russian engineer Georg Wilhelm de Gennin founded Yekaterinburg with the construction of a massive iron-making plant under the decree of Russian emperor Peter the Great in 1723. [34] They named the city after the emperor's wife, Yekaterina, who later became empress regnant Catherine I . [2] Officially, the city's founding date is 18 November 1723, when the shops carried out a test run of the bloomery for trip hammers. [2] The plant was commissioned 6 days later, on 24 November. [35] 1723 also saw the establishment of Yekaterinburg fortress , which would encompass many of the settlement's earliest buildings. Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak very vividly described the beginning of the construction of a mining plant and a fortress: "Imagine completely deserted banks of the Iset river, covered with forest. In the spring of 1723, soldiers from Tobolsk, peasants of the assigned settlements, hired craftsmen appeared, and everything around came to life, as if by the dictates of a fairy tale. They dropped the forest, prepared a place for the dam, laid blast furnaces, raised the rampart, set up barracks and houses for the authorities... ". [36]

In 1722–1726 the Verkhne-Uktussky mining plant was built, [37] which was officially called the plant of the princess Elizabeth (the future village of Elizabeth, or Elizavetinskoe) and became a part of modern Yekaterinburg in 1934. [38] In 1726, Wilhelm de Gennin founded an auxiliary Verkh-Isetsky plant with a working settlement 2 versts from Yekaterinburg upstream ('verkh' in Russian) the Iset River. [39] The plant's dam formed the Verkh-Isetsky pond. Colloquially called by the Russian acronym VIZ, it was a satellite town until in 1926, with a population of over 20,000 people by this time, it was incorporated into Yekaterinburg as the core of the Verkh-Isetsky district. [39]

Plan of Yekaterinburg, 1743 PlanYekaterinburg1743.JPG

Yekaterinburg was one of the industrial cities of Russia prompted at the beginning of the 18th century by decrees of Tsar Peter the Great which demanded the development of the metalworking industry. With extensive use of iron, the city was built to a regular square plan with ironworks and residential buildings at the centre. These were surrounded by fortified walls so that Yekaterinburg was at the same time both a manufacturing centre and a fortress at the frontier between Europe and Asia. It, therefore, found itself at the heart of Russia's strategy for further development of the entire Ural region. The so-called Siberian Route became operational in 1763 and placed the city on an increasingly important transit route, which led to its development as a focus of trade and commerce between east and west, and gave rise to the description of the city as the "window to Asia". With the growth in trade and the city's administrative importance, the ironworks became less critical, and the more important buildings were increasingly built using expensive stone. Small manufacturing and trading businesses proliferated. In 1781 Russia's empress, Catherine the Great, granted Yekaterinburg town status and nominated it as the administrative centre for the wider region within Perm Governorate . [3] In 1807, the role of the capital of the mining and smelting region was confirmed by assigning it the status of the only "mountain city" in Russia. Until 1863, Yekaterinburg remained subordinate to the head of the mining plants of the Ural ridge , the minister of finance and personally to the emperor, and enjoyed considerable freedom from the governor's power. Since the 1830s, mountainous Yekaterinburg has become the center of mechanical engineering. [36]

In 1820–1845, 45% of the world's gold was mined in Yekaterinburg. This is the first ever "Gold Rush". [40] Until 1876, 80% of the coins in circulation in the Russian Empire were produced at the Yekaterinburg mint. [41]

Following the October Revolution , the family of deposed Tsar Nicholas II was sent to internal exile in Yekaterinburg where they were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House in the city. In July 1918, the Czechoslovak Legions were closing on Yekaterinburg. In the early hours of the morning of 17 July, the deposed Tsar, his wife Alexandra , and their children Grand Duchesses Olga , Tatiana , Maria , Anastasia , and Tsarevich Alexei were murdered by the Bolsheviks at the Ipatiev House. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk later the same day. The Legions arrived less than a week later and captured the city. [42] [43] The city remained under the control of the White movement in which a provisional government was established. The Red Army took back the city and restored Soviet authority on 14 July 1919. [44] [45]

Snow-covered statue of Yakov Sverdlov Ekaterinbourg.jpeg

In the years following the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War , political authority of the Urals was transferred from Perm to Yekaterinburg. On 19 October 1920, Yekaterinburg established its first university, the Ural State University , as well as polytechnic, pedagogical, and medical institutions under the decree of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin . Enterprises in the city ravaged by the war were nationalised, including: the Metalist (formerly Yates) Plant, the Verkh-Isetsky (formerly Yakovleva) Plant, and the Lenin flax-spinning factory (formerly Makarov). In 1924, the city of Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk after the Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov . [46] [28] [44]

By the 1934, following a series of administrative reforms carried by the early Soviet government, the earliest Russian settlements which predated Yekaterinburg and laid the basis of its founding, were incorporated into the city proper. [38] [47]

During the reign of Stalin, Sverdlovsk was one of several places developed by the Soviet government as a centre of heavy industry. Old factories were reconstructed and new large factories were built, especially those specialised in machine-building and metalworking. These plants included Magnitogorsk and the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant in Chelyabinsk oblast , and Uralmash in Sverdlovsk. During this time, the population of Sverdlovsk tripled in size, and it became one of the fastest-growing cities of the Soviet Union. At that time, very large powers were given to the regional authorities. By the end of the 1930s, there were 140 industrial enterprises, 25 research institutes, and 12 higher education institutions in Sverdlovsk. [48] [49]

During World War II, the city became the headquarters of the Ural Military District on the basis of which more than 500 different military units and formations were formed, including the 22nd Army and the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps. Uralmash became the main production site for armoured vehicles. Many state technical institutions and whole factories were relocated to Sverdlovsk away from cities affected by war (mostly Moscow), with many of them staying in Sverdlovsk after the victory. The Hermitage Museum collections were also partly evacuated from Leningrad to Sverdlovsk in July 1941 and remained there until October 1945. [50] In the postwar years, new industrial and agricultural enterprises were put into operation and massive housing construction began. [51] [44] The lookalike five-story apartment blocks that remain today in Kirovsky, Chkalovsky, and other residential areas of Sverdlovsk sprang up in the 1960s, under the direction of Nikita Khrushchev 's government. [52] In 1977, Ipatiev House was demolished by order of Boris Yeltsin in accordance to a resolution from the Politburo in order to prevent it from being used as a rallying location for monarchists . Yeltsin later became the first President of Russia and represented the people at the funeral of the former Tsar in 1998. [53] There was an anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk in April and May 1979, which was attributed to a release from the Sverdlovsk-19 military facility . [54]

During the 1991 coup d'état attempt , Sverdlovsk, the home city of President Boris Yeltsin, was selected by him as a temporary reserve capital for the Russian Federation, in case Moscow became too dangerous for the Russian government. A reserve cabinet headed by Oleg Lobov was sent to the city, where Yeltsin enjoyed strong popular support at that time. [55] Shortly after the failure of the coup and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, the city regained its historical name of Yekaterinburg on 23 September 1991. However, Sverdlovsk Oblast, of which Yekaterinburg is the administrative centre, kept its name. [56] [57]

In the 2000s, an intensive growth of trade, business, and tourism began in Yekaterinburg. In 2003, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder negotiated in Yekaterinburg. On 15–17 June 2009, the SCO and BRIC summits were held in Yekaterinburg, which greatly improved the economic, cultural, and tourist situation in the city. On 13–16 July 2010, a meeting between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took place in the city. [58]

In 2018, Yekaterinburg hosted four matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and hosted the inaugural University International Sports Festival in 2023. [59]

Geographically, Yekaterinburg is in North Asia, close to the Ural Mountains (which divide Europe from Asia), 1,667 km (1,036 mi) east of the nation's capital Moscow.

The city has a total area of 1,111 km 2 (429 sq mi) .

Yekaterinburg is on the eastern side of the Urals. The city is surrounded by wooded hills, partially cultivated for agricultural purposes. Yekaterinburg is located on a natural watershed, so there would be many bodies of water close and in the city. The city is bisected by the Iset River , which flows from the Urals into the Tobol River . There are two lakes in the city, Lake Shuvakish and Lake Shartash. The city borders Verkh-Isetskiy Pond, through which the Iset River flows. Lake Isetskoye and Lake Baltym are both near the city, with Lake Isetskoye located near Sredneuralsk , and Lake Baltym located near the towns of Sanatornyy and Baltym.

Yekaterinburg uses the Yekaterinburg Time, which is five hours ahead of UTC (UTC+5), and two hours ahead of Moscow Time . [60]

The city possesses a humid continental climate ( Dfb ) under the Köppen climate classification . [61] It is characterised by sharp variability in weather conditions, with well-marked seasons. The Ural Mountains, despite their insignificant height, block air from the west, from the European part of Russia. As a result, the Central Urals are open to the invasion of cold arctic air and continental air from the West Siberian Plain. Equally, warm air masses from the Caspian Sea and the deserts of Central Asia can freely penetrate from the south. Therefore, the weather in Yekaterinburg is characterised by sharp temperature fluctuations and weather anomalies: in winter, from frost at −40 °C to thaw and rain; in summer, from frosts to temperatures above 35 °C (95 °F) . [61]

The distribution of precipitation is determined by the circulation of air masses, relief, and air temperatures. The main part of the precipitation is brought by cyclones with a western air mass transfer, that is, from the European part of Russia, while their average annual amount is 601 mm. The maximum falls on a warm season, during which about 60–70% of the annual amount falls. For the winter period is characterized by snow cover with an average capacity of 40–50 cm. The coefficient of moistening(the ratio of yearly precipitation and potential evaporation ) – 1. [61]

The average temperature in January is −12.6 °C (9.3 °F) . The record minimum temperature is −44.6 °C (−48.3 °F) (6 January 1915);
The average July temperature is 18.9 °C (66.0 °F) . The record maximum temperature is 40.0 °C (104.0 °F) (11 July 2023);
The average annual temperature is 2.1 °C (35.8 °F) ;
The average annual wind speed is 2.9 m/s (10 km/h; 6.5 mph) ;
The average annual humidity is 75%;
The average annual precipitation is 534 mm (21.0 in) ;

Climate data for Yekaterinburg (1991–2020, extremes 1831–present)
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °C (°F)	5.6 (42.1)	9.4 (48.9)	18.1 (64.6)	28.8 (83.8)	34.7 (94.5)	36.4 (97.5)	40.0 (104.0)	37.2 (99.0)	31.9 (89.4)	24.7 (76.5)	13.5 (56.3)	5.9 (42.6)	40.0 (104.0)
Mean daily maximum °C (°F)	−9.3 (15.3)	−6.6 (20.1)	0.9 (33.6)	10.1 (50.2)	18.3 (64.9)	22.6 (72.7)	24.3 (75.7)	21.4 (70.5)	15.0 (59.0)	6.9 (44.4)	−2.6 (27.3)	−7.8 (18.0)	7.8 (46.0)
Daily mean °C (°F)	−12.6 (9.3)	−10.8 (12.6)	−3.6 (25.5)	4.7 (40.5)	12.2 (54.0)	16.9 (62.4)	18.9 (66.0)	16.2 (61.2)	10.4 (50.7)	3.6 (38.5)	−5.4 (22.3)	−10.7 (12.7)	3.3 (37.9)
Mean daily minimum °C (°F)	−15.5 (4.1)	−14.1 (6.6)	−7.3 (18.9)	0.3 (32.5)	6.9 (44.4)	12.0 (53.6)	14.4 (57.9)	12.2 (54.0)	6.8 (44.2)	1.0 (33.8)	−7.8 (18.0)	−13.3 (8.1)	−0.4 (31.3)
Record low °C (°F)	−44.6 (−48.3)	−42.4 (−44.3)	−39.2 (−38.6)	−21.8 (−7.2)	−13.5 (7.7)	−5.3 (22.5)	1.5 (34.7)	−2.2 (28.0)	−9.0 (15.8)	−22.0 (−7.6)	−39.2 (−38.6)	−44.0 (−47.2)	−44.6 (−48.3)
Average mm (inches)	25 (1.0)	19 (0.7)	25 (1.0)	31 (1.2)	47 (1.9)	73 (2.9)	93 (3.7)	75 (3.0)	45 (1.8)	41 (1.6)	33 (1.3)	28 (1.1)	534 (21.0)
Average extreme snow depth cm (inches)	33 (13)	42 (17)	38 (15)	5 (2.0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	1 (0.4)	8 (3.1)	21 (8.3)	42 (17)
Average rainy days	1	1	5	13	20	20	19	22	22	17	6	1	147
Average snowy days	26	23	18	10	4	0.4	0	0	2	13	23	25	144
Average (%)	79	75	68	60	58	63	68	73	75	75	78	79	71
Mean monthly	47	94	164	206	256	272	269	217	143	78	51	37	1,834
Source 1: Pogoda.ru
Source 2: NOAA (sun 1961–1990)

Historical population
Year
1897	37,399	—
1926	134,831	+260.5%
1939	425,533	+215.6%
1959	778,602	+83.0%
1970	1,025,045	+31.7%
1979	1,211,172	+18.2%
1989	1,364,621	+12.7%
2002	1,293,537	−5.2%
2010	1,349,772	+4.3%
2021	1,544,376	+14.4%

According to the results of the 2021 Census , the population of Yekaterinburg was 1,544,376 ; [64] up from 1,349,772 recorded in the 2010 Census . [7]

As of 2021, the ethnic composition of Yekaterinburg was: [65]

Ethnicity	Population	Percentage
	1,172,704	91.0%
	27,431	2.1%
	13,102	1.0%
	8,769	0.7%
	6,121	0.5%
	4,987	0.4%
	4,755	0.4%
	4,307	0.3%
	4,014	0.3%
Others	42,033	3.3%

Christianity is the predominant religion in the city, of which most are adherents to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Yekaterinburg and Verkhotursky diocese is located in the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the city. Other religions practised in Yekaterinburg include Islam , Old Believers , Catholicism , Protestantism , and Judaism .

Yekaterinburg has a significant Muslim community, but it suffers from a lack of worship space: there are only two small mosques . Another mosque was built in the nearby city of Verkhnyaya Pyshma . On 24 November 2007, the first stone was laid in the construction of a large Cathedral Mosque with four minarets , and space for 2,500 parishioners in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral and a synagogue , thus forming the "area of the three religions". [66] The mosque was planned to be built for the SCO summit, but due to funding problems, construction did not move from zero and is now frozen.

Construction of a Methodist church started in 1992, and with the help of American donations, finished in 2001. [67] A synagogue was opened in 2005, on the same place a 19th-century synagogue was demolished in 1962.

Most of the city's religious buildings were destroyed during the Soviet era, in addition to the synagogue, the three largest Orthodox churches in Yekaterinburg were demolished – the Epiphany Cathedral, the Ekaterininsky Cathedral, and the Great Zlatoust Church . Other Christian churches such as the Lutheran Church of Yekaterinburg and the Roman Catholic Church of St. Anne (a new Catholic St. Anne's Church was built in 2000) were demolished as well. Other churches were used as warehouses and industrial sites. The only religious building in Yekaterinburg in the Soviet era was the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Recently, some churches are being rebuilt. Since 2006, according to the surviving drawings, the Great Zlatoust Church was restored in 2012. On 17 April 2010, the city was visited by Patriarch Kirill . [68]

Yekaterinburg is the administrative centre of Sverdlovsk Oblast . [1] Within the framework of the administrative divisions , it is, together with twenty-nine rural localities , incorporated as the City of Yekaterinburg, [9] an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts . [1] As a municipal division, the City of Yekaterinburg is incorporated as Yekaterinburg Urban Okrug. [10]

Administrative districts of Yekaterinburg

Label	Name	Area (2019)	Population (2019)	Founded	Head	Website	Dialing code(s)	Subdivisions
1	Akademicheskiy		81,000	2020	Smirnyagin Nikolai Sergeevich		+7 3432, +7 3433	3
2	Verkh-Isetsky	240 square kilometres (93 sq mi)	221,207	1919	Morozov Andrey Mikhailovich	1 December 2021 at the	+7 3432, +7 3433	5
3	Zheleznodorozhnyy	126.3 square kilometres (48.8 sq mi)	221,207	1938	Pershin Vitaly Pavlovich	1 March 2022 at the	+7 343	8
4	Kirovsky	72 square kilometres (28 sq mi)	228,864	1943	Bolikov Vladimir Yurievich	15 March 2022 at the	+7 343	7
5	Leninsky	25 square kilometres (9.7 sq mi)	156,723	1934	Beruashvili Elena Zauryevna	15 March 2022 at the	+7 343	3
6	Oktyabrsky	157 square kilometres (61 sq mi)	148,981	1934	Kostenko Igor Vitalievich	10 November 2021 at the	+7 3432	11
7	Ordzhonikidzevsky	102 square kilometres (39 sq mi)	286,482	1934	Kravchenko Roman Gennadievich	16 March 2022 at the	+7 3433	6
8	Chkalovsky	402 square kilometres (155 sq mi)	275,571	1943	Shipitsyn Evgeny Viktorovich	9 May 2019 at the	+7 3432	10

Each district is not a municipal formation, and the historical centre of the city is divided into five inner-city districts (except Chkalovsky and Ordzhonikidzevsky).

A district named Akademicheskiy was formed from the parts of Leninsky and Verkh-Isetsky districts on 3 January 2020. [70] On 1 October 2021, more settlements were transferred from Verkh-Isetsky to Akademicheskiy district. [71]

The Charter of Yekaterinburg establishes a four-link system for the organisation of local authorities, which includes: the Head of Yekaterinburg, who serves as the chairman of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, the Yekaterinburg City Duma, the Administration of the City of Yekaterinburg, and the Chamber of Accounts. [74]

According to the charter of Yekaterinburg, the highest official of the municipal formation is the mayor of Yekaterinburg. The mayor is elected by universal suffrage, but since 3 April 2018, the procedure for direct elections of the mayor of the City of Yekaterinburg was abolished. The mayor of the city is endowed with representative powers and powers to organize activities and guide the activities of the City Duma. In addition, the mayor of the city exercises other powers such as concluding a contract with the head of the city administration and ensuring compliance with the Russian Constitution, Russian legislation, the city charter, and other normative acts. [75] [76]

In the event of a temporary absence of the mayor of Yekaterinburg, his authority under his written order is exercised by the deputy mayor of Yekaterinburg. [77]

The representative body of the municipal formation is the Yekaterinburg City Duma, which represents the city's entire population. The membership of the Duma is 36 deputies (18 deputies were elected in single-mandate constituencies and 18 in a single electoral district). Residents of the city elect deputies on the basis of universal suffrage for a period of 5 years. [74]

The executive and administrative body of the municipal formation is the Administration of the City of Yekaterinburg, led by the head of the Administration, currently held by Aleksandr Yacob. The administration is endowed with its own powers to resolve issues of local importance, but it is under the control and accountable to the Yekaterinburg City Duma. The building of the Administration of Yekaterinburg is located on 1905 Square . [76]

The Chamber of Accounts is a permanently operating body of external municipal financial control. The Chamber is formed by the apparatus of the City Duma and is accountable to it. The Chamber consists of the chairman, deputy chairman, auditors and staff. The structure and number of staff of the chamber, including the number of auditors, is determined by the decision of the City Duma. The term of office of the Chamber staff is 5 years. The Chamber of Accounts is a legal entity. [77]

In accordance with the regional charter, Yekaterinburg is the administrative centre of the Sverdlovsk Oblast. [1] The executive power is exercised by the governor of Sverdlovsk Oblast, the legislative power by the legislative assembly of Sverdlovsk Oblast, and the judicial power by the Sverdlovsk Regional Court, located in the building of the Palace of Justice. [78] The building serving the regional government is the White House and the building serving the legislative assembly is located next to it on October Square. The ministries of the Sverdlovsk Region are located in the building of the regional government, as well as in other separate buildings of the city. [79]

Yekaterinburg serves as the centre of the Ural Federal District. As a result, it serves as the residence of the presidential envoy , the highest official of the district and part of the administration of the President of Russia. The residence is located the building of the regional government on October Square near the Iset River embankment.

In addition, Yekaterinburg serves as the centre of the Central Military District and more than 30 territorial branches of the federal executive bodies, whose jurisdiction extends not only to Sverdlovsk Oblast, but also to other regions in the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and the Volga Region.

According to the results of the September 2013 elections, the mayor of the city was Yevgeny Roizman , nominated by the Civil Platform party. Out of the 36 seats in the City Duma, 21 belong to United Russia , 7 to A Just Russia , 3 to the Civil Platform, 2 to the Communist Party and 1 seat to the LDPR . The turnout in the mayoral elections was 33.57%. [80]

Russian federal legislative election, 2016
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
			78,289	38.4%
			31,288	15.4%
			25,869	12.7%
			22,293	10.9%
			11,340	5.6%

It was the last popular vote in Yekaterinburg. Since 2018, there have been no elections, but a vote in the Municipal Duma. On 25 September 2018 the majority of the representatives in the Duma voted in favour of the Vice-Governor of Sverdlovsk oblast, Alexander Vysokinskiy.

Yekaterinburg is one of the largest economic centres in Russia. It is included in the City-600 list (it unites the 600 largest cities in the world that produce 60% of global GDP), compiled by the McKinsey Global Institute, a research organisation. In 2010, the consulting company estimated the gross product of Yekaterinburg to be about $19 billion (according to the calculations of the company, it should grow to $40 billion by 2025). [82] [83]

By volume of the economy, Yekaterinburg ranks third in the country, after Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to a research of the Institute for Urban Economics, in the ranking of the largest cities and regional capital cities according to economic standards for 2015, Yekaterinburg ranked third. The city's gross urban product (GVP) was 898 billion rubles. Per capita GDP was 621.0 thousand rubles (18th place). [84] In 2015, the gross urban product of the Yekaterinburg metropolitan area amounted to 50.7 billion international dollars (the fourth place in the country) or 25.4 thousand international dollars in terms of per inhabitant of the metropolitan area. [85]

In the Soviet era, Yekaterinburg (as Sverdlovsk) was a purely industrial city, with a share of industry in the economy of 90% (of which 90% were in defense production). With Chelyabinsk and Perm, the three cities formed what to be the Urals industrial hub. [86]

The former head of Yekaterinburg, Arkady Chernetsky, has set the goal of diversifying the city's economy, which has resulted in the development of sectors such as warehousing, transportation, logistics, telecommunications, financial sector, wholesale and retail trade, etc. in Yekaterinburg. [86] Economist-geographer Natalia Zubarevich points out that at the present stage, Yekaterinburg has practically lost its industrial specialisation. [87]

The standard of living in Yekaterinburg exceeds the average standard across Russia. According to the Department of Sociology of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, it is among the top ten cities with the highest standard of living. Compared to other Russian cities with a population of around or over one million, in 2015, Yekaterinburg held a leading position in terms of average monthly wages and retail turnover, in terms of the total volume of investments in fourth place of fixed assets, and second place in housing placement. [88] [89]

The average monthly wage in Yekaterinburg following the results of 2019 was 54,976 rubles. This is the first place among the millionth municipalities of the Russian Federation. [90] There are on average 440,300 people employed by large and middle-sized organisations and companies. The unemployment rate at the end of 2015 was 0.83% of the total economically active population. Locals labelled the main problems of the city such the current state of the healthcare system, housing system, and transportation system. [89] [91]

The budget of Yekaterinburg in 2015 was executed on income in the amount of 32,063.6 million rubles, for expenses in the amount of 32,745.8 million rubles. Among the budget expenditures: 17 billion rubles were spent on education, over 1 billion rubles on culture, and about 900 million rubles on health. The main part of the revenue of the city treasury was its own tax and non-tax revenues (more than 18 billion rubles). The revenues from the regional and federal budgets were at the lowest level in 10 years. Specialists noted a decrease in tax revenues and an increase in tax debt (exceeded 2 billion rubles). [89] [92]

The main budget expenditures are the development of the economy (which accounts for 19% of expenditures) and the social security of the townspeople (11% of expenditures go). Cities such as Perm, Kazan and Ufa, spend for these purposes in a smaller percentage of costs (from 2 to 6%). Also, a fairly strict budgetary discipline is noted—the budget deficit is kept at the level of 2% of its volume. [93]

Yekaterinburg is one of the largest financial and business centres in Russia, with offices of multinational corporations, representative offices of foreign companies, and a large number of federal and regional financial and credit organisations. The financial market of Yekaterinburg is characterised by stability and independence, based both on the broad presence of large foreign and Moscow credit organisations and on the availability of large and stable local financial holdings. [94]

The financial sector of Yekaterinburg has more than 100 banks, including 11 foreign banks. The list of the largest Russian banks for assets for 2016 included 10 banks registered in Yekaterinburg, including but not all: Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development, SKB-Bank, Uraltransbank, and UM Bank. [95] [96]

IT "SKB Kontur" from Yekaterinburg – the largest software manufacturer in Russia – first place according to the RAEX rating [97]

Also in Yekaterinburg is the Ural headquarters of the Central Bank of Russia. Since 7 August 2017, by order of the Bank of Russia, the branches of the Siberian, Far Eastern and part of the Prevolzhsky Federal Districts have been transferred to the control of the Ural Megaregal Directorate. Thus, this is one of the three main departments of the Mega-regulator in the territory of Russia. [98]

A major role in the formation of Yekaterinburg as a business centre has its infrastructural potential, which is growing at a high rate: transport accessibility for Russian and foreign economic entities, the availability of hotels, advanced communication services, business related services (consulting, exhibition activities, etc.). [94] Yekaterinburg has its own central business district, Yekaterinburg City. [99]

1st Pyatiletka Square, where Uralmash is headquartered MainBildingUralmash.jpg

Yekaterinburg has been a major industrial centre since its foundation. In the 18th century, the main branches were smelting and processing of metal. Since the beginning of the 19th century, machine building appeared, and in the second half of the 19th century, light and food (especially milling) industry was widely spread. A new stage in the development of production occurred during the period of industrialisation – at this time in the city, factories were built, which determined the industry specialisation of heavy engineering. During World War II, Yekaterinburg (as Sverdlovsk) hosted about sixty enterprises evacuated from Central Russia and Ukraine. As a result, there was a sharp increase in the production capacity of existing plants and the emergence of new branches of the Urals industry.

At present, more than 220 large and medium-sized enterprises are registered in Yekaterinburg, 197 of them in manufacturing industries. [94] In 2015, they shipped 323,288 million rubles worth of own-produced goods. Production by industry was divided accordingly: metallurgical production and metalworking 20.9%, food production 13.3%, production of electrical equipment, electronic and optical equipment 9.2%, production of vehicles 8.4%, production of machinery and equipment 6.4%, chemical production 5.5%, production of other nonmetallic mineral products 3.7%, production of rubber and plastic products 2.8%, pulp and paper production, publishing and printing 0.5%, and other 29.3%. [100]

Several headquarters of large Russian industrial companies are located in the city: IDGC of Urals, Enel Russia, Steel-Industrial Company, Russian Copper Company, Kalina, NLMK-Sort, VIZ-Stal, Sinara Group, Uralelectrotyazhmash, Automation Association named after academician NA Semikhatov, Ural Heavy Machinery Plant (Uralmash), Fat Plant, Fores, confectionery association Sladko, Machine Building Plant named after M.I. Kalinin, Ural Turbine Plant, Uralkhimmash and others. [101]

Yekaterinburg ranks first in retail trade of the Russian Federation per capita, ahead of Moscow. [102] The consumer market contributes significantly to Yekaterinburg's economy. Revenue of retail stores in 2015 amounted to 725.9 billion rubles, and the number of retailers totaled 4,290. [103] As of 1 January 2016, 36 shopping centers operate in the city, taking up a total area of which was 1,502,700 m 2 (16,175,000 sq ft) . The availability of shopping centres per 1,000 inhabitants increased to 597.2 m 2 (6,428 sq ft) . [104]

Retail areas amounted to 2,019,000 m 2 (21,730,000 sq ft) , with the availability of retail space reached 1,366.3 m 2 (14,707 sq ft) per 1,000 inhabitants. According to these statistics, Yekaterinburg holds leading positions among other major cities of Russia. In the consumer market of Yekaterinburg, 1041 network operators are represented. The number of wholesale enterprises totalled 1,435. Among the Federal construction stores represented in the city, you can select: Leroy Merlin, [105] Castorama, [106] Domostroy, [107] Maxidom, [108] OBI, [109] Sdvor. [110] Yekaterinburg has an agricultural market named Shartashsky. [104] [111]

The revenue of catering in 2015 totalled 38.6 billion rubles. The network of catering enterprises in Yekaterinburg is presented as follows: 153 restaurants, 210 bars, 445 cafes, 100 coffee houses, 582 dining rooms, 189 eateries, 173 fast-food establishments, 10 tea shops, 319 other types of institutions (buffets, cafeterias, catering companies). 82.6% of catering enterprises provide additional services to consumers. [112]

The revenue of the services industry in 2015 totalled 74.9 billion rubles. The fastest pace in the city is developing hairdressing services, sewing and knitting atelier services, pawnshop services, fitness centre services. The network of public service enterprises in Yekaterinburg includes 5,185 facilities. In 2015, the provision of service areas for service enterprises totaled 382.1 m 2 (4,113 sq ft) per 1,000 citizens. The highest concentration of household services is observed in the Verkh-Isetsky, Oktyabrsky and Leninsky districts. [113]

Greenwich Shopping Center, as of 2021, is the largest shopping center in Europe. [114]

The largest store in the world by area is Sima-Land. [115]

Yekaterinburg is a major centre for the Russian tourist industry. In 2015, the city was one of the top five most visited Russian cities (others being Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk , and Vladivostok ) according to the Global Destinations Cities Index, which represents the payment system Mastercard . [116] In recent years, a lot of work has been done to create a positive image of Yekaterinburg as a centre for international tourism, including holding of summits for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in 2008 and 2009 and the international exhibition Innoprom in 2009 and 2010. [117] In 2014, Yekaterinburg ranked third among Russian cities in popularity among foreign tourists after Moscow and St. Petersburg. [118]

In 2015, the total flow of inbound tourism grew by 10% compared to the previous year and amounted to 2.1 million people. [119] In recent years, there has been a tendency to reduce the role of business tourism in the overall flow: if in 2013 about 80% of trips were business, in 2015 their number was already 67%. Most tourists go to "bow to the memory of the last [czar] and his family." In addition, new tourist ideas are developing such as the Bazhov theme, the geological and mineralogical theme, industrial tourism, and the event calendar. [120]

Yekaterinburg is the third largest transport hub of Russia, behind Moscow and St. Petersburg. The city has 6 federal highways, 7 main railway lines, and an international airport. The location of Yekaterinburg in the central part of the region allows for 7 to 10 hours to get from it to any large city of the Urals. [121] The formation of Yekaterinburg as an important transportation hub is largely due to the city's favourable geographical location on a low stretch of the Ural Mountains, through which it was convenient to lay the main roads connecting the European and Eastern parts of Russia. [122]

E22 bypass in the Chkalovsky District Ob'ezdnaia.jpg

Yekaterinburg is one of the ten Russian megacities with the largest car fleet (0.437 megacars were registered in the city in 2014), which has been intensively increasing in recent years (by 6–14% annually). [123] [124] The level of car ownership in 2015 has reached 410 cars per 1,000 people. [125] Its pace in the past few years has seriously exceeded the pace of development and the capacity of the road infrastructure. For the first time, transport problems started to appear in Yekaterinburg in the 1980s and though it did not seem threatening at first, the situation gets worse every year. Studies have shown that as early as 2005, the capacity limit for the road network was reached, which has now led to permanent congestion. [126] To increase the capacity of the street-road network, stage-by-stage reconstruction of streets is being carried out, as well as multi-level interchanges being built. In order to reduce the transit traffic, the Sverdlovsk Oblast administration announced two road projects in 2014: the Yekaterinburg Ring Road (EKAD) and an overpass road on Sovetskaya Street. The Yekaterinburg Ring Road would surround the largest municipalities of Yekaterinburg. Its purpose would be to help the city's economy and reduce traffic on the Middle Ring Road of the city, making it easier for civilians to commute around the city than going through the city's traffic congestion. Eventually, the Ring Road would connect to other federal roads in order for easier access between other Russian cities. Construction of the road started in the same year. The projects were assigned to the Ministry of Transport and Communications since the projects were crucial to the city's economy. Officials hope the road projects will build environments more conducive to improving local quality of life and outside investments. Completing these major inter-regional roads will increase productive traffic by 50% to 100%, improving the local economy with its ease of access to industries. [127]

Since 2014, the project for the introduction of paid parking in the central part of Yekaterinburg is being implemented. The project is implemented in parallel with the increase in the number of intercepting parking lots and the construction of parking lots. At the end of 2015, in the central part of the city there were 2,307 paid parking places. [125]

The total length of the road network in Yekaterinburg is 1,311.5 km (814.9 mi) , of which 929.8 km (577.8 mi) is cobbled carriageways, 880 km (550 mi) is with upgraded coverage, 632 km (393 mi) is backbone networks, of which 155 km (96 mi) are on the citywide backbone network movement. 20 interchanges have been constructed at different levels within the city limits, including 11 on the EKAD and 9 on the middle ring. 74 transport facilities (27 bridges across the Iset River, Patrushikha, Mostovka, Istok Rivers, 13 dams on the Iset, Patrushikha, Istok, Olkhovka, Warm, Shilovka Rivers, 23 road overpasses , and 18 out-of-the-way pedestrian crossings) were built as well. [128]

Yekaterinburg is served by the following highways: [129]

Yekaterinburg uses almost all types of public transport. The largest transportation services—the Municipal Association of Bus Enterprises, the Tram-Trolleybus Office, and the Yekaterinburg Metro —transported 207.4 million people in 2015. [130] The total volume of passenger transportation by all land transport modes decreases annually. If the annual passenger traffic of municipal transport was 647.1 million people in 2002, and according to this index the city occupied the third place in the country with a wide margin, then in 2008 this figure would be 412 million people (the fourth place in Russia). [131] [132]

Since 1991, the city operates the sixth metro in Russia and the thirteenth in the CIS . At the moment there is one line with 9 stations. In 2015 49.9 million passengers were transported; according to this metric the Yekaterinburg Metro is the fourth in Russia, behind the Moscow Metro, Saint Petersburg Metro, and Novosibirsk Metro . [133] Although the metro is the second most popular type of public transport, in recent years significant problems have appeared in its work: loss-making, obsolete rolling stock, and a shortage of funds for modernisation. [134] The tram network was established in 1929 and currently [ when? ] plays a leading role in the urban transport system. The volume of passengers carried for 2013 is 127.8 million, [135] but this declines every year (245 million people in 2013 [136] ). In 2016 there were 30 routes operating 459 cars. The total length of the tracks is 185.5 km. As of 2016 [ update ] , the construction of a tram line "Ekaterinburg-Verkhnyaya Pyshma" was planned. [137]

There are 93 bus routes operating in Yekaterinburg, including 30 municipal ones (EMUP "MOAP"). [138] In 2007, 114.5 million passengers were transported by municipal intercity buses (124.6 million in 2006). [139] The decrease in volume is due to the increasing role of the fixed-route taxis in the urban transport system of Yekaterinburg, as well as the high cost of travel. However, the city bus transport network provides significant employment for the people of Ekaterinburg, including the formidable babushkas who collect passenger fares. In the park of EMPU, there are 537 buses. [140] In 2013, there are 19 routes, which employ 250 trolleybuses. The total length of trolleybus lines is 168.4 km. The number of passengers transported by trolleybus in 2007 amounted to 78.4 million (84.3 million in 2006). [139]

In addition, the city operates an electric train route linking the north-western and the southern parts of Yekaterinburg, from Sem' Klyuchey to Elizavet.

Yekaterinburg is a major railway junction. In the Yekaterinburg node, 7 main lines converge (to Perm , Tyumen , Kazan , Nizhny Tagil , Chelyabinsk , Kurgan , and Tavda ). The Sverdlovsk Railway Administration is located in the city, which serves trains on the territory of the Sverdlovsk and Tyumen Regions, the Perm Territory, the Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Districts, as well as parts of the Omsk Region, and there is a single road traffic control centre. The Perm–Yekaterinburg–Tyumen section is now part of the main route of the Trans-Siberian Railway .

Yekaterinburg is served by two primary airports: Koltsovo International Airport (SVX) and the smaller Yekaterinburg Aramil Airport . Koltsovo Airport is one of the largest airports in the country, serving 5.404 million passengers (including 3.485 million serviced by domestic airlines, 1.919 million at international flights) in 2017, making it the sixth busiest airport in Russia . [141]

Yekaterinburg has an extensive network of municipal, regional and federal health facilities. There are 54 hospitals, designed at a capacity of 18,200 beds, [142] 272 ambulatory polyclinics, and 156 dental clinics and offices. [143] Some health facilities are based on medical research institutes such as the Research Institute of Phthisiopulmonology, [144] the Research Institute of Dermatology and Immunopathology, [145] and the Ural State Medical University, as well as others.

In clean areas of the city, there is the Yekaterinburg Medical Centre, which includes the Sverdlovsk Regional Clinical Hospital No. 1 (also includes a polyclinic and a boarding house), Central City Hospital No. 40 (polyclinic, therapeutic building, surgical building, infectious body, neuro-surgical building, maternity hospital), Regional Cardiology Centre, Centre for Prevention and Control of AIDS, and MNTK Eye Microsurgery. [146]

Other large medical centres are the Uralmash Health Centre (Hospital No. 14), the Hospital of veterans of the Great Patriotic War, the district hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the district military hospital, the Oncology Centre, the Sverdlovsk Oblast Psychiatric Hospital, the Disaster Medicine Centre, the Sanguis Blood Transfusion Centre, children's versatile hospital No. 9, and the regional rehabilitation centre on Chusovsky lake. There are about 300 pharmacies in the city. [143] The number of doctors in public medical institutions is 11,339 people (83.9 per 10,000 people) and the number of nurses is 16,795 (124 per 10,000 people).

Private medical institutions also operate in the city. [147]

Yekaterinburg's education system includes institutions of all grades and conditions: preschool, general, special (correctional), and vocational (secondary and higher education), as well as others. Today, the city is one of the largest educational centres of Russia, with Yekaterinburg considered to be the leading educational and scientific centre of the Urals . [148]

There are 164 educational institutions in Yekaterinburg: 160 of them operate in the morning and the other 4 in the evening. In 2015, 133,800 people were enrolled in general education institutions, which holds a capacity of 173,161 people. [149] Yekaterinburg's education system also includes state pre-school educational institutions, non-state pre-school institutions, out-of-town health camps, and municipal city health facilities with a one-day stay. [150] Five educational institutions of the city: SUNC UrFU, Gymnasium No. 2, Gymnasium No. 9, Gymnasium No. 35, and Lyceum No. 135, were included in the rating of the five hundred best schools in the country by the Moscow Center for Continuous Mathematical Education and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation . [151]

On 16 July 1914, the Ural Mining Institute of Emperor Nicholas II (now the Ural State Mining University ) was established as Yekaterinburg's first educational institution. [152] In 1930, the Sverdlovsk Power Engineering College (now the Ural Technical Institute of Communications and Informatics) was opened to train specialists in the field of communications. The Alexei Maximovich Gorky Ural State University (now the Ural Federal University ) became the first university in Yekaterinburg by decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR , signed by Vladimir Lenin on 19 October 1920. The Sverdlovsk Engineering and Pedagogical Institute (today the Russian State Vocational and Pedagogical University) became the first university of the USSR for the training of engineering and pedagogical personnel when it was opened in 1979.

In terms of the level of qualification of the graduates, Yekaterinburg's universities are among the leading in Russia, in particular in terms of the number of graduates representing the current managing elite of the country, Yekaterinburg universities are second only to the educational institutions of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. [153] [154] Currently, there are 20 state universities in the city, which currently holds a total of 140,000 students. [155] In addition, there are 14 non-state institutions of higher education in the city, such as the Yekaterinburg Academy of Contemporary Art and the Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary. The prestigious architecture school, the Ural State Academy of Architecture and Arts , is also located within the city limits. Other institutions of higher education Ural State Pedagogical University, Ural State University of Forestry, Ural State University of Railway Transport, Ural State University of Economics, Military Institute of Artillery, Ural State Conservatory , Ural State Agricultural Academy, Ural State Law Academy , Ural State Medical University, Ural State Academy of Performing Arts, Ural Academy of Public Service, and Institute of International Relations .

In May 2011, the Ural State University and Ural State Technical University merged to form the Boris N. Yeltsin Ural Federal University , making it the largest university in the Urals and the largest university in Russia. As of 1 January 2016, the university had 35,300 students and 2,950 teachers. The university's budget in 2015 totalled 9,1 billion rubles and the volume of research and development work totalled 1,6 billion rubles. [156] As of 2021, UrFU is the largest university in Russia in terms of the number of students, being on the 351st place in the QS World University Rankings. [157] [158] The number of publications of the university in the Web of Science database is about a thousand per year. [159]

There are many branches of non-resident universities in the city, including the Ural branch of the Siberian State University of Telecommunications and Informatics, the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Private Law, the Yekaterinburg branch of the Plekhanov Russian Economic Academy, the Yekaterinburg branch of the University of the Russian Academy of Education, the Yekaterinburg branch of the Moscow State University, and Sholokhov Humanitarian University, as well as others.

In Yekaterinburg, a large number of print publications are published: about 200 newspapers, the most read being the Ural Worker , Vecherny Yekaterinburg , Oblastnaya Gazeta , and For Change! , and 70 magazines, with most read being Red Burda and I'm Buying . [160] [161]

A television studio was built in Yekaterinburg (as Sverdlovsk) in 1955 and on 6 November of the same year, the first telecast appeared. Coloured television later appeared in 1976. [162] Now the television is broadcast by 19 companies, including but not all: STRC Ural, Channel Four, 41 Home, Channel 10, OTV, Union (Orthodox), and UFO 24. Broadcasting is carried out from the TV tower on Lunacharsky street (television studio GTRK Ural), the TV tower on the Moskovskiy Hill, and from the TV tower (radio relay tower) on Blyukher Street. In 1981, construction of a new television tower was started, which was to become the second tallest in Russia after the Ostankino Tower and cover the territory of most of the Sverdlovsk region, but economic difficulties postponed construction. As a result, the television tower was the tallest uncompleted structure in the world. On 24 March 2018, the television tower was demolished by detonation for the city's beautification in preparation of the 2018 FIFA World Cup . [163] The Shartash radio mast, which broadcasts, is the tallest structure in the city, with a height of 263 meters. [164] In addition, several dozens of national and local news agencies are broadcast in Yekaterinburg, with the most watched being ITAR-TASS Ural, RUIA-Ural, and Interfax-Ural.

At the moment [ when? ] , there are 26 internet providers and 6 cellular operators in the city. [165] According to Yekaterinburg News , the city has signed a cooperative agreement with the Russian mobile operator Vimpelcom , working under the Beeline brand. The partnership will involve cooperation on investment projects and social programmes focused on increasing access to mobile services in the city. Beeline has launched an initiative to provide Wi-Fi services in 500 public trams and trolley buses in Yekaterinburg. [166]

Operators of mobile communication in Yekaterinburg
Generation	Mobile communication standard	Operators
		, , , , Motive
		MTS, MegaFon, Beeline, Tele2 Russia, Motive
		MTS, MegaFon, Beeline, Tele2 Russia, Motive
	,	MTS, MegaFon, Beeline, Tele2 Russia
		MTS, MegaFon, Beeline, Tele2 Russia
		MTS, MegaFon, Beeline, Tele2 Russia
		MTS, MegaFon, Beeline, Tele2 Russia, Motive,
		MTS, MegaFon, Beeline,

Yekaterinburg is a multipurpose cultural centre of the Urals Federal District. [148] There are about fifty libraries in the city. The largest library organisations are the Sverdlovsk Oblast Universal Scientific Library, the V.G. Belinsky Scientific Library, which is the largest public library in Sverdlovsk Oblast, and the Municipal Library Association, which is composed of 41 libraries throughout the city, including the AI Herzen Central City Library. [167]

There are about 50 different museums in the city. [168] Yekaterinburg has unique museum collections, such as the collections of Russian paintings in the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts and the Nevyansk icons in the Nevyansk Icon Museum , with more than 300 icons representing the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries on display. There is also a unique exhibit, the Kaslinsky cast iron pavilion, which received main awards at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. The Kasli Pavilion was registered by UNESCO as the only cast-iron architectural structure in the world, which is in the museum collection. [169] Museums of the city also have collections of jewellery and stone ornaments. The United Museum of Writers of the Urals presents exhibitions in memory of writers such as Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak and Pavel Bazhov . It also is the home of the Shigirskaya Kladovaya ( Шигирская кладовая ), or Shigir Collection, which includes the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world. The sculpture was found near Nevyansk and originally estimated to have been made approximately 9,500 years ago, but now is estimated to have been made 11,500 years ago. [170] Yekaterinburg museums annually participate in the international event Long Night of Museums .

Yekaterinburg has the third most theatres in Russia. [171] The influence of theatrical life of the city was made by the Moscow Art Academic Theater and the Central Theater of the Soviet Army when they evacuated to Yekaterinburg (as Sverdlovsk) during World War II, and they had their own theater in the city. [172] Notable theatres that operate in the city are Academic Theater of Musical Comedy, Drama Theater, Kolyada-Theater , the youth theatre, and the puppet theatre, as well as others. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater received four awards at the Golden Mask 2020 Festival in Moscow, including the main Golden Mask for the Best Opera Performance [173]

In 2014, the city showcased its education, literary, art, and theatre culture through the Russian Year of Culture Programme. [174]

The city has a well-developed film industry. Opened back in 1909, Laurage was the first cinema in Yekaterinburg. In 1943, the Sverdlovsk Film Studio was opened and produced its first feature film Silva a year later. After the Second World War, the studio produced up to ten feature films a year. There are more than 20 cinemas in Yekaterinburg, the oldest of which is the Salyut, while the most capacious is the Cosmos spacecraft. [175] [176] There are also chains of movie theatres such as Premier-Zal, Kinomaks, and Kinoplex, which usually open in shopping and entertainment centres.

A number of popular Russian rock bands, such as Urfin Dzhyus, Chaif , Chicherina , Nautilus Pompilius , Nastya, Trek, Agata Kristi , Slaughter to Prevail and Smyslovye Gallyutsinatsii , were originally formed in Yekaterinburg ( Ural Rock is often considered as a particular variety of rock music. Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg are actually considered to be the main centres of the genre in Russia). Also, opera singers like Boris Shtokolov , Yuri Gulyayev , Vera Bayeva graduated from the Urals State Conservatory. The Ural Philharmonic Orchestra (currently conducted by Dmitry Liss ), founded by Mark Paverman and located in Yekaterinburg, is also very popular in Russia and in Europe, as well as the Ural Academic Popular Chorus, a folk-singing and dance ensemble. [ citation needed ]

Yekaterinburg V. I. Filatov State Circus is located in the centre of the city, on the western bank of the Iset River. In 2012, the Yekaterinburg Circus was nominated "Best Circus of the Year" for the circus show Sharivari by the Rosgoscirk and the Ministry of Culture . [177]

The Presidential Center named after Boris Yeltsin was built in Yekaterinburg in 2015. It is considered to be a public, cultural and educational center. Center has its art gallery, library, museum equipped with the newest multimedia technologies that help to present the documents, video materials and archive photos. In 2017, the Yeltsin Center was recognized as the best museum in Europe by the Council of Europe, the first of the museums in Russia. [178]

The Urals Society of Natural Science Lovers pushed Yekaterinburg to have a zoo. Currently, the zoo has more than 1,000 animals that belong to more than 350 species. The zoo covers an area of 2.7 hectares.

On 18 June 2011, Yekaterinburg launched Red Line as a pedestrian tourist route for self-guided tours by residents and visitors to go to 34 landmarks in the historical section of the city. [179]

Many buildings of Yekaterinburg are ranged from a different number of architectural styles. The city had a regular layout, based on the fortresses of the Renaissance and by the principles of French town planning during the 17th century. By the 18th century, the Baroque movement was not that influential in Yekaterinburg, with the style being seen in churches which later declined [180]

In the first half of the 19th century, neoclassicism grew influential in the Yekaterinburg's architecture. The estates were built in the neoclassic style, including the main house, wings, services, and often an English-style park. This style's influence in Yekaterinburg is mostly due to the contributions of architect Michael Malakhov, who worked in the city from 1815 to 1842. He designed the assemblies of the Verkhne-Isetsky factory as well as the Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery. [180]

At the beginning of the 20th century, eclecticism became a dominant influence in Yekaterinburg's architecture. Buildings such as the Opera House and Yekaterinburg railway station were built in this style. During the 1920s and the 1930s, constructivism took effect, influencing residential complexes, industrial buildings, stadiums, etc. Architects Moses Ginzburg, Jacob Kornfeld, the Vesnina brothers, Daniel Friedman, and Sigismund Dombrovsky contributed greatly to the constructivism in the city. More than 140 structures in Yekaterinburg are designed through the constructivist style. [181]

During the 1930s to 1950s, there was a turn back to neoclassicism, with much attention paid to public buildings and monuments. Notable examples include the buildings of the Ural Industrial Institute on Lenin Avenue, the City Party Committee and the City Council Executive Committee building (now the City Administrative building), the District Officers' House, and the House of Defense complex. Cultural buildings are built in the squares in orderly composition. In these years, architects Golubev, K. T. Babykin, Valenkov worked fruitfully in Yekaterinburg with this style. In the 1960s, changes in the approach to construction led to widespread distribution of apartment blocks common in the Khrushchev era . Buildings built by individuals were rare, among them being: KKT "Kosmos", the Palace of Youth, and DK UZTM. [182]

From the 1960s to the 1980s, as industrial development grew in Yekaterinburg, so did rationalism . The situation changed in the 1990s when Russia transferred into a market economy. At that time, older buildings were restored, giving the urban area a new environment such as: the Cosmos Concert Hall, the Puppet Theater, the children's ballet theatre The Nutcracker, the Palace of Justice, the Cathedral of the Blood, and the Church of the Transfiguration . At the same time, the construction of new buildings was accompanied by the demolition of historical buildings, leading to the development of the "facade" phenomenon, where the facades of historic buildings are preserved while adjacent modern buildings are built. [183]

The centre of Yekaterinburg became the centre of new construction, where banks, business centres, hotels, luxury residential complexes, and sports and shopping centres were built. High-tech architecture grew influential, with buildings such as the Center for Railway Transportation Management, the Summit business centre, the Aquamarine residential complex, and the retail strip at Vaynera Street being notable examples. Along with this, postmodernism revived interest in the older architectural styles of Yekaterinburg, growing more emphasis on historicalism and contextualism. In the late 1990s, architects grew interested in regionalism . [183]

At the beginning of the 21st century, Yekaterinburg architects turned back to the Soviet-based avant-garde, and influence future city buildings with the neoconstructivist style. The practice of attracting large foreign investors to projects has become popular. In 2007, the construction of the Central business district started, being headed by the French architect Jean Pistre. [183] In 2010, Yekaterinburg became one of the largest centers for the construction of High-rise buildings. In the city, 1,189 high-rise buildings were built, including 20 skyscrapers, the tallest of which is the Iset Tower , with a height of 209 meters. [184]

Yekaterinburg is also a leading sports centre in Russia. A large number of well-known athletes, both world and Olympics champions, are associated with the city. Since 1952, Yekaterinburg athletes have won 137 medals at the Olympic Games (46 gold, 60 silver and 31 bronze). In the 2008 Summer Olympics , 8 residents of Yekaterinburg returned with medals (1 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze). [185]

In 1965, Yekaterinburg (as Sverdlovsk), along with a number of Russian cities, hosted the Bandy World Championship . In 2018, Yekaterinburg was one of the 11 Russian cities that hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The matches were played on the upgraded Yekaterinburg Arena (called Central Stadium before the World Cup). [186]

Yekaterinburg has a total of 1728 sports facilities, including 16 stadiums with stands, 440 indoor gyms and 45 swimming pools. There are 38 sports children's and youth schools for reserves for the Olympic Games, in which more than 30,000 people are participating. [187]

Sport clubs

Yekaterinburg has many professional sports clubs in sports such as volleyball, basketball, futsal , bandy , and ice hockey for both women and men. Bandy club SKA-Sverdlovsk , women's volleyball club VC Uralochka-NTMK , women's basketball club UMMC Yekaterinburg , and futsal club MFK Sinara Yekaterinburg were among the best teams in Russia and Europe.

Club	Founded	Current League	League Tier	Stadium
	1930		1st
	2006		1st
Avto Yekaterinburg	2009		Jr. 1st
Spartak-Merkury	1992	Women's Hockey Championship	1st	Sports Palace Snezhinka
	1937		1st
	1935		2nd
	2006		2nd
	1938		1st
Lokomotiv-Izumrud Yekaterinburg	1945		2nd
	1966	Women's Volleyball Superleague	1st	Metallurg-Forum
	1992		1st

2018 FIFA World Cup

Yekaterinburg hosted four matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup [59] Yekaterinburg is one of the 11 Russian cities that hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The matches were played on the upgraded Yekaterinburg Arena . [186]

For the World Cup 2018, from 7 October 2015 to 29 December 2017, the Central Stadium was upgraded to bring it into compliance with FIFA requirements for the World Cup and was renamed Yekaterinburg Arena. The architectural concept of the new stadium is built on a combination of historical walls and the built-in core of the modern arena. During the reconstruction of the sports facility, which is a monument of history and culture, the facades are carefully preserved, and the arena itself is equipped with the latest technical achievements of the sports industry. Temporary stands extending outside the stadium's original perimeter were erected to comply with the FIFA requirement of seating for 35,000 spectators. They can hold a total of 12,000 spectators, but the seating will be removed after the World Cup, decreasing the seating capacity back to 23,000. [188] [189]

The FIFA Fan Fest in Yekaterinburg is located in the Mayakovsky Central Park of Entertainment and Culture. Located just outside the city centre in a popular and well-known amusement park, it will have a capacity to hold 17,000 people. [190]

Koltsovo Airport was also reconstructed and had a second runway built. In addition, work was done to prepare another passenger terminal, modernize the technical infrastructure, and launch the business aviation hangar. The airport's capacity in preparation for the World Cup has increased to two thousand people per hour. The street and road network was also upgraded. [191]

The United States, [192] United Kingdom, [193] Germany, [194] France, [195] China [196] and several other countries have consulates in Yekaterinburg.

The BRIC countries met for their first official summit on 16 June 2009, in Yekaterinburg, [197] with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , Dmitry Medvedev , Manmohan Singh , and Hu Jintao , the respective leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, all attending.

The foreign ministers of the BRIC countries had also met in Yekaterinburg previously on 16 May 2008.

In June 2013, at the 153rd General Assembly of the Bureau of International Expositions held in Paris, representatives from Yekaterinburg presented the city's bid to host the 2020 World Expo . Yekaterinburg's concept for the upcoming exhibition relates to the impact of globalisation on the modern world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed during a televised statement in English to earmark the required funds to build an exhibition complex large enough to receive the estimated 30 million visitors from more than 150 countries. [198]

Yekaterinburg later bid for the Expo 2025 . Yekaterinburg's concept for the bid exhibition relates to the technologies to make people happy by changing the world with innovation and quality of life. The host was announced on 23 November 2018 and Yekaterinburg lost out to Osaka, Japan.

Yekaterinburg hosted the Global Summit on Manufacturing and Industrialization (GMIS — 2019) GMIS under the auspices of the United Nations. [199] The annual INNOPROM exhibition is among the five largest industrial exhibitions in the world. [200]

Yekaterinburg is twinned with: [201]

Anton Bakov , Leader of the Monarchist Party
Irina Antonenko , Miss Russia 2010
Aleksei Balabanov , film director, screenwriter, producer
Vera Bazarova , pairs figure skater
Pavel Bazhov , folklorist and children's author
Old Man Bukashkin , artist and poet
Pavel Datsyuk , ice hockey player
Nikolay Durakov , bandy legend
Chiang Fang-liang , former first lady of Taiwan
Aleksey Fedorchenko , film director, producer
Denis Galimzyanov , sprinter cyclist
Anna Gavrilenko , Group rhythmic gymnast Olympic Gold medalist
Nikolay Karpol , national women volleyball team coach
Nikolai Khabibulin , ice hockey player
Alexei Yashin , ice hockey player
Alexei Khvostenko , avant-garde poet, singer-songwriter, artist, and sculptor
Nikolay Kolyada , actor, director, writer, playwright, and playwriting teacher
Ilya Kormiltsev , poet, translator, publisher
Olga Kotlyarova , Olympic runner
Maxim Kovtun , figure skater
Vladislav Krapivin , children's author
Valeria Savinykh , WTA Professional player
Nikolay Krasovsky , mathematician
Yulia Lipnitskaya , figure skater
Iskander Makhmudov , businessman
Vladimir Malakhov , ice hockey player
Gennady Mesyats , vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Maxim Miroshkin , pairs figure skater
Vladimir Mulyavin (1941 – 2003), Belarusian musician and the founder of the folk-rock band Pesniary [202]
Alfia Nazmutdinova , rhythmic gymnast
Ernst Neizvestny , sculptor
Oleg Platonov , writer, historian, and economist
Daria Pridannikova , rhythmic gymnast
Eduard Rossel , ex-governor of Sverdlovsk Oblast
Boris Ryzhy , poet
Mikhail Shchennikov , race walker
Vera Sessina , rhythmic gymnast
Georgy Shishkin , painter
Vassily Sigarev , playwright, screenwriter, film director
Anastasiia Tatareva , Group rhythmic gymnast Olympic Gold medalist
Sergei Tchepikov , Olympic biathlon competitor
Vladimir Tretyakov , ex-rector of the Ural State University
Lev Vainshtein , Olympic shooter
Sergei Vonsovsky , physicist
Alexander Dudoladov , writer
Alexander Malinin , singer
Petr Yan , Former UFC Bantamweight Champion
A ballistic missile submarine of the Project 667BDRM Delfin class ( NATO reporting name: Delta IV ) is named Ekaterinburg (K-84/"807") in honour of the city.
The asteroid 27736 Ekaterinburg was named in the city's honour on 1 June 2007.