Founded as a Cossack outpost on the Tom River, it was initially called Kuznetsk (Кузне́цк). It was here that Fyodor Dostoevsky married his first wife, Maria Isayeva (1857). Joseph Stalin's rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union transformed the sleepy town into a major coal mining and industrial center in the 1930s. In 1931–1932 the city was known as Novokuznetsk and in 1932–1961 as Stalinsk (Ста́линск), after Stalin.
On March 19, 2007 a massive methane explosion ripped through the Ulyanovskaya mine in Novokuznetsk killing over 100 people. The mine was the largest coal producing center in the Kemerovo Region, located in an oil rich area of south central Russia known as the Kuzbass region. It is the deadliest mining accident in recent history.
