Chelyabinsk Oblast (Chelyabinskaya oblast') is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia in the Ural Mountains region, on the border of Europe and Asia. Its administrative center is the city of Chelyabinsk. Its population is 3,431,224. (2021 Census).
During the Middle Ages, Bashkir tribes inhabited the Southern Urals; they formed part of the Golden Horde, Nogai Horde, and smaller Bashkir unions. The Tsardom of Russia incorporated the area in the late 16th century. However, Russian colonization of the region only began in the 18th century, with the establishment of a system of fortresses and trade posts on the then-Russian border by the Orenburg Expedition in 1734. Many cities of Chelyabinsk Oblast, including the city of Chelyabinsk itself, trace their history back to those forts.
In 1743 the Chelyabinsk fortress became a center of the Iset Province, a constituent part of the Orenburg Governorate (a direct successor of the Orenburg Expedition). The period from the 1750s to the 1770s saw the emergence of industrial enterprises in the Southern Urals when the first factory-centered towns like Miass, Kyshtym, and Zlatoust were founded. After the Southern Urals recovered from the Pugachev's Rebellion of 1773–1775, the territory of modern-day Chelyabinsk Oblast started to attract more people from the European part of Russia. By the mid-19th century Chelyabinsk was a major trade center in the Urals, and after the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s, it became an important transport hub that connected Siberia to the rest of the Russian Empire.
In 1919, Chelyabinsk became the regional capital of the newly formed Chelyabinsk Governorate of the Russian SFSR, which combined eastern portions of the Orenburg Governorate with Kurgan of the Tobolsk Governorate. At this time, the population of the new region has already exceeded one million people. In 1923, together with the Perm, Yekaterinburg Governorate and Tyumen governorates, it merged into a single Ural Oblast that lasted only ten years, until 1934.