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Pavlodar (Павлодар)
Coat of arms
Coordinates: 52°18′N 76°57′E
Country	Kazakhstan
Province	Pavlodar Province
Settled	1720
Incorporated	1861
Government
- Akim	Bakir Demeuov
Area [1]
- City	400 km²  (154.4 sq mi)
Population (2006)
- City	314,500
- Density	786.3/km² (2,036.5/sq mi)
- Urban	304.8
Time zone	UTC+6 (UTC+6)
Postal code	140000
Area code(s)	+7 3182

Coordinates: 52°18′N 76°57′E

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Pavlodar (Павлода́р) is a city in northeastern Kazakhstan. It is located 350km northeast of the national capital Astana, and 400km southeast of Russia's Omsk along the Irtysh River. The city is the capital of Pavlodar Province, and has a population of 300,500 (1999 census), down 9% from the 1989 figure. Russian-speakers outnumber Kazakhs by two to one. There are smaller minorities of Ukrainians (20,000) and Germans (15,000). The town is served by Pavlodar Airport.

Siberian cossacks founded Pavlodar in 1720 as fort Koryakovskiy. They named the fort after the nearby lake where they mined salt. It remained a small cossacks' settlement well into the 19th century, focused on salt-mining, and slowly developing mining of lead, copper and silver. The growing trade finally resulted in 1861 in an upgrade to zashtatnyj, a self-governing town. It gained the name Pavlodar, Gift of Paul, in honor of newly born Prince Pavel Aleksandrovich.

The town consisted of a collection of clay huts and warehouses lacking paved streets and central plumbing, open to the dry, sandy winds of the steppes. Churches and the mosque's minaret were destroyed during the Soviet anti-religion campaign in the 1930s, though one unfinished cathedral survived until the 1970s.

In 1955 the Virgin Lands Campaign gave start to modern Pavlodar. Mass youth immigration from other parts of the Soviet Union, industrialization and rapid construction created a fully-serviced clean new city, though at a price of being a faceless Soviet template. As the location of a major tank factory, the city was closed to foreigners until 1992.

Since the fall of communism, Pavlodar has seen some character-defining projects, including ethnic festivals, new parks and fountains, churches, grand mosque, Irtysh embankment. As one of independent Kazakhstan's bigger cities, Pavlodar shares in the energy and mineral-exporting profits the country rakes in. Predominantly Russian-speaking, the city is closely watched by the government seeking to control the country under one national idea.

• Bydgoszcz, Poland

• Pavlodar's Portal
• Photos of the city