Serov (Russian: Серо́в) is a mining and commercial town in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains, on the left bank of the Kakva River (a tributary of the Sosva), about 350 kilometers (220 mi) north of Yekaterinburg.

[9]Archaeological evidence suggests that the Mansi or their ancestors populated the area of Serov as early as 1000 BCE.

The situation changed in 1893, when the chief manager of Bogoslovsk Mining District, Alexander Auerbakh, proposed a construction of a cast iron and rail plant on the Kakva River near the end of an existing railroad.

The growing demand for workforce was met by hiring workers from China and Korea, as well as prisoners of war (POWs).

In October 1918, the army of the Provisional Government of Siberia, which opposed the Soviets in the Russian Civil War, occupied Nadezhdinsk.

The Central Executive Committee decree of 5 April 1926 Nadezhdinsk was approved within the cities of the Ural region.

In 1934 the town was renamed Kabakovsk, after Ivan Dmitrievich Kabakov [ru], the leader of the Bolshevik Party in Sverdlovsk Oblast.

In 1937, Kabakov was dismissed and executed in Stalin's purges, and the town's name changed back to Nadezhdinsk.

Due to the shortage of males, who were conscripted into active service, most steel jobs were taken by women.

Numerous organizations evacuated to Serov from the Soviet territories occupied by Germans: hospitals from Polotsk and Smolensk, and Lenkom Theater from Leningrad.

In the early 1990s the failed reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev brought the town economy to a record low level.