Rybinsk, city, Yaroslavl oblast (region), northwestern Russia, on the Volga River. The 12th-century village of Rybnaya sloboda became the town of Rybinsk in 1777. Its river port flourished after the opening (1810) of the Mariinsk Waterway, linking the Volga to the Baltic Sea, and again with the latter’s reconstruction as the deep Volga-Baltic Waterway in 1964. A wide range of engineering and other products are made in the city.
In 1941 a large dam and a hydroelectric station were completed on the Volga immediately above Rybinsk. The city’s first name change occurred in 1946, when it was renamed for A.S. Shcherbakov, an associate of Joseph Stalin; Nikita Khrushchev restored the city’s original name in a de-Stalinization program in 1957. A second name change in 1984 commemorated Yury V. Andropov, but in 1988 the name reverted to Rybinsk. Pop. (2006 est.) 214,945.