In past times, the area where the city is located was considered impassable due to its dense forests and swamps. In sources of the 17th through 19th centuries it was called Sobinskaya (Sobennaya, Sobina) wasteland whose name, according to one version, comes from the male personal name of Sobin.
Sobinka is located 44 km from Vladimir and 161 km from Moscow.
In the old days, for dozens of versts from here, towards Meschera, there were only dense forests, peat bogs, and forests again with century-old oaks rooted in the ground with their strong rhizomes, slender pines, and curly birches. They stretched along the entire right bank of the deep-flowing Klyazma. The local area, the so-called Sobinovaya wasteland, was impassable and hardly travelled through.
A little over a hundred years ago, four miles from this wasteland there was a railway track. The railway ran parallel to the famous Vladimirka and connected the capital of Russia with Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod. It opened up broad prospects for all sorts of entrepreneurs, allowing them to trade on a grand scale and develop industrial production. At that distant time, the Losev brothers appeared in these untrodden places. Two brothers, Matvey and Luka, scraped up a fortune, and they needed a solid business. They purchased a plot of land from Count Zubov for 2,500 silver rubles and decided to build their own textile factory. The place suited well for a factory. The construction of the Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod railway was underway. Timber, fuel, water (from the Klyazma river), and a lot of cheap labour in the surrounding villages were in close proximity.
Construction of the factory began in 1856, and in August 1858 it started operating. Along with the factory, they started building housing for workers. These were a few uncomfortable wooden buildings. This is how the workers’ settlement was set up. Four years later, the Sobinskaya Manufactory Association was formed. Soon after this, the Sobinova wasteland changed its name to Sobinka.
Sobinskaya manufactory became one of the largest enterprises in the Vladimir province. At the end of 1907, a new three-story factory was laid, the construction of which was completed in 1910; a little later, a two-story brick school was built. There were no cultural institutions. But there were enough drinking establishments. There were no street names in the village.
After the Great October Socialist Revolution, the factory was given a new lease of life. On 28 July 1918, the factory was nationalised and became the property of the state.
On 18 September 1939, by decree of the President of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, Sobinka was given the status of a city. The old pre-revolutionary Sobinka was changing its appearance very quickly, but peaceful construction was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
A turning point in the history of the city came in 1955, when a new textile factory was put into operation with the installation of 2,285 looms.
Later, large-scale housing construction started. In 1967, the first high-rise building was built in Sobinka, and the city was supplied with gas.
Conditions were created for highly productive labour: the living conditions of textile workers were improved, dining rooms were improved, nurseries and gardens were built, and large-scale housing construction was underway. Thanks to the factory three new residential neighbourhoods were built in the city. The enterprise contributed much to the city's beauty and land improvement.
Today, about 20,000 people live in Sobinka. More than 150 enterprises and organisations and about 1,500 private entrepreneurs are registered in the city. The stable functioning of the entire urban housing and utility infrastructure and the availability of all the types of utilities to the residents are of high importance for the city.
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