city, Kemerovo oblast (region), central Russia. It is located where the Usa River flows into the Tom River, in the upper Tom valley. Developed as the coal-mining settlement of Olzheras in the Tom-Usinsky region of the Kuznetsk Basin in the 1950s, it was renamed and incorporated as a town in 1955. In appearance it is a typical heavy-industrial “new town,” with coal mining as its main activity. Pop. (2006 est.) 103,672.