[citation needed] Magnitogorsk is one of only two planned socialist realist settlements ever built (the other being Nowa Huta in Poland).

Magnitogorsk was founded in 1743 as part of the Orenburg Line of forts built during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth.

By 1747 the settlement had grown large enough to justify the building of a small wooden chapel, later named "the Church of the Holy Trinity".

[6] In 1928 a Soviet delegation arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, to discuss with American consulting company Arthur G. McKee a plan to set up in Magnitogorsk a copy of the US Steel steel-mill in Gary.

Huge reserves of iron ore in the area made it a prime location to build a steel plant capable of challenging its Western rivals.

To solve these issues, several hundred foreign specialists arrived to direct the work, including a team of architects headed by the German Ernst May.

The sprawling factory and enormous cleansing lakes had left little room available for development, and May therefore had to redesign his settlement to fit the modified site.

[citation needed] The book Behind the Urals, by John Scott, documents the industrial development of Magnitogorsk during the 1930s.

Scott discusses the fast-paced industrial and social developments during Stalin's first five-year plan and the rising paranoia of the Soviet regime preceding the Great Purge of the late 1930s.

Furthermore, its strategic location east of the Ural Mountains made Magnitogorsk safe from seizure by the German Army.

With the depletion of the substantial local iron-ore reserves, Magnitogorsk has to import raw materials from northern Kazakhstan.

[9] On December 31, 2018, an apartment block in the city of Magnitogorsk suffered a gas explosion and collapse which killed 39 of its residents, and injured 17 more.

[12] Magnitogorsk has a distinct four-season humid continental climate[13] (Dfb) with relatively severe winters for the latitude.