Translated by Nikiforova Svetlana Gennadievna +7(8482) 680-950
After a crushing defeat of the Volga Bulgaria, the Bulgarians had to go to the forests, to found new settlements and build a new life under new circumstances. At the second half of the XIII-XIVth centuries, the Bulgarians settled outside the Samara Bend on the banks of the rivers Sok, Kondurcha, Kinel, and Samara. The largest settlement has been discovered on the Kinel near the village Dry Small River in the Pohvistnevo District of the Samara Region. During the excavations, there have been found traces of the pottery, metallurgical, glass-blowing and bonecutting craft. That was a craft center, which supplied the rural neighbourhood with its production.
Already at the beginning of the second half of the XIIIth century, the Russians and the Mordvinians began to get into the Samara territory. A mixed Russian-Bulgarian settlement that sprang up at the second half of the XIIIth century and existed for one age has been discovered near the village Beryozovka of the Shigon District (Shygon is a village in the Samara Region). Here the archaeologists have examined different types of dwellings: land houses, half dugouts and actual dugouts. Inside the archaeologists have found the ceramics the most part of which was represented with Russian pots and bronze crosses. Among these finds there were the bones of a pig that is not characteristic of the Bulgarian-Muslims’ settlements. At the same time, due to the finds, in the Beryozovka settlement there also lived the Bulgarians together with the Russians. The Golden-horders must have enslaved the Russians and violently brought them to build cities.
At the second half of the XIII-XIVth century, the Mordvinians who fled to safety from the ruinous raids of the Tatars began to settle the Samara territory. The large city where lived the Bulgarians and the Mordvinians and that existed in the XIVth century was found near the village Muranka. The inhabitants of these settlements led a settled life. However, there also existed the nomadic tribes. The nomads-polovtsy dwelt to the south of the Samara Bend. Before and after the Mongols’ invasion the South-Russian steppes were called “Desht-e-kypchak” that stood for “The Polovets steppe”. They also became the victims of the Mongol-Tatars’ invasion. The defeat of the united forces of the Polovets and the Russians in the battle near the river Kalka in 1223 caused a considerable damage to the Polovetsk nomad areas and trade of the South-Eastern Europe. In 1236 the Tatar-Mongols headed by khan Batu subjugated them and made the Polovets steppe a part of the Golden Horde.
After those events, a great deal of the Mongols moved to the conquered lands together with their families and property. Gradually the Tatar-Mongols became assimilated and related to the Polovets. Already in the XIVth century, the Kypchak language became the main language of the Golden Horde. The Tatars preserved only their name but not the language.
At the second half of the XIIIth and the first half of the XIVth centuries, the Golden Horde became the largest state of Eurasia of the middle ages. In the low part of the Land along the Volga, the khans of the Golden Horde built the cities Saray-Batu, Saray-Berke and others. Unlike the cities of Central Asia and Russia, they sprang up within a short time as administrative centers to rule a vast territory of the low part of the Land along the Volga, while the cities of the Central Asia and Russia sprang up as a result of the long process of division of labor, isolation and hub of the craft and trade. The artisans, who were violently brought from the conquered countries, erected the Golden Horde’s cities.
However, there was no unity inside the Golden Horde, external failures undermined the supreme power’s authority and gradually the state lost its importance. After the Golden Horde broke down there sprang up the new states – The Nogay Horde (Nogay was the Tatar khan) and the Kazan khanate.
Up to the XVIIth century, practically the whole left shore of the Volga was under the control of the nomads of the Nogay Horde. Though the nomads rarely visited the right shore of the Volga, still it was very dangerous for a settled crop-growing population to dwell here because of the constant threat of attack.
The territory of the Big Samara Bend that was much settled until the end of the XIVth century, at the latest period had no constant inhabitants. The absence of any archaeological and documentary sources reveals that fact. The internecine conflicts must have made the settled population leave their place of living.
Nevertheless, at the second half of the XVIth and at the beginning of the XVIIth centuries the native population of the Central Land along the Volga and, first, the Mordva, from time to time used the natural riches of the territory of the Samara Bend. In the same XVIth century, probably earlier, Russian anglers who came here to catch sturgeons pitched on the Samara territory temporary camps.
In the XVIth century in the southern and southern-eastern partially-wooded steppes of Russia appeared the free Cossacks. At the end of the XVIth century, they divided into the Don, Yayik (the name of the river Ural before 1775), Terek (the name of the river in the North Caucasus) and Volga Cossacks. The bands were never long in one place.
When a Dutchman Struys passed along the Volga to Astrakhan in 1669, he noted in his diary, “The Cossacks hide in forests and have no mercy on nobody”.
The riches of the Volga, the merchants and ambassadorial caravans always attracted free atamans than any other places. The Cossacks were afraid to build constant towns and to spend winter on the Volga. However, they came here from the Yaik and the Don to make short raids, ambushes, and worked their chief’s service, for they consider it one of the most profitable businesses. The free Cossacks often robbed the trade caravans that passed by, put devastations and used to burn ships.
Such state of thing spoiled relationship with the ambassadors from foreign states and yielded great losses to tsarist treasury. Thus, in 1669 on the Oka, in the village Dedinovo of the Kolomenskoye district was built the ship Oryol (the Eagle) by the ship makers who were especially invited from Holland. In 1670, the first ship of the Russian fleet was burnt by Razin. The treasury suffered losses of 125 thousand rubles.
The tsarist government tried to call the Cossacks to the state service but after a short while they returned to their former business – robberies and devastations.
The government attempted to give the lands of the Samara Bend to enterprising people. In 1583 tsar Ivan Groznyy granted the lands of the Samara Bend to the merchants the Stroganovs. The granted deed ran that Sovereign granted to the Stroganovs salt the Big and Small, which is in the Volga for their service and gave them the tsarist deed that proved their estate.
The Stroganovs possessed the Samara Bend from 1583 until 1632. One of their services was calling the Cossacks on their side. Ivan Koltso and Yermak Timofeievich were one of those who served the Stroganovs. In 1582, the Volga Cossacks led by Ivan Koltso joined on the river Yaks the force headed by Yermak Timofeievich and arrived together in boats to the merchants whose domain was on the river Kama. The Stroganovs helped them organize a campaign to Siberia. On taking up the struggle with the Siberian khan Yermak began to settle Siberia but was killed in 1585.
In memory of Yermaks’ being in Siberia and the group of the Cossacks who settled there on the Samara Bend, after their leaving a glade that is on the southern shore of the Bend was called by the name of the Yermak glade and the villages Yermakovo and Koltsovo.
1613 was a very harsh year for the inhabitants of the Land along the Volga. The chief of the Don Cossacks Ivan Zarutsky came here with the force of his supporters. He made up his mind to form the so-called “low state”, separate the Land along the Volga and the land along the Black Sea from Russia, and give them to Turkey or Persia. Zarutsky occupied Astrakhan and set there the harshest terror against the supporters of unity with Moscow. However, his plans failed to come true, because under the pressure of government troops he escaped to the Yaik; later he was caught on the Bear Island and executed.
At the same time, there were built some observation posts on the Samara Bend: one was situated not far from the mouth of the river Us, another – near the village Perevoloka (the distance from the Volga to the Us in this place is 2,5 km). The first tsar of the Romanovs Michael Fyodorovich sent to those places two shooting chiefs: Sungur Solovnin and Gorday Palchikov. Sokovnikov and his detachment of 500 persons were to go to the land between the Volga and the Us, find a reliable place, set defences and shelters and protect them and local anglers of strangers. Later in annals the place of fortification was mentioned as “the Perevolotskaya outskirts of town”.
Having built the defensive lines, the tsarist government fixed the Russian state on the Volga and prevented the Cossacks from forming their own state. Watching services were set also on the right shore of the Volga. Gradually there were built the whole towns-forts with garrisons. The fort Samara that was erected in 1586 was a considerable barrier to the free Cossacks.
Nevertheless, in spite of all due measures the government took there were the people who went on rubbing. Such people had no inhabited place. They got the name of the ragged or poor and gladly took part in predatory drives.
The ragged, the escaped people, discontent peasants who lived in the upper reaches of the Volga and the Don little by little came to the fortified camp on the Don, the Kagalnitsky land town that was built by the supporters of Rasin after they were back from campaign.
Stephan Rasin was a very famous Cossack of the Don. He was born in 1630 in the family of a prosperous Cossack in the stanitsa (large Cossack village) Zimoveyskaya. Rasin was a constant participant of campaigns and ambassadorial drives. In 1661he went as a representative of the Don Force to the Kalmyk chieftains of the Russian clerk I. Gorohov, in 1662 was a member of embassy of the Russian ambassador Isakov and a Zaporozhets Timofeev. Already at that time, the Cossacks considered Rasin their leader and several times took campaigns headed by him to the south to the Turkish and Crimean lands.
Rasin possessed organizing ability and that was the reason the Cossacks, serf peasants, merchants, people of the Land along the Volga (the Chuvashes, the Mordvinians, the Tatars) chose him their chief of the movement against serfdom rules, which the government tried to strengthen.
After forming a detachment in April 1670 Rasin moved from the Don to the Volga. After Rasin’s people conquered Tsaritsyn, they went on their way down the Volga and on June 23 they occupied Astrakhan where they exterminated military commanders and nobles, created their form of government and made Astrakhan a strong point of rebellion. Archers and working people reinforced Rasin’ s detachment that seized weapon and ammunition and in June 1670 moved up the Volga. At the beginning of August they occupied Saratov.
In Saratov Rasin’s detachment became much more numerous and contained 10 thousand persons. The inhabitants met Rasin gladly, with ringing of bells, bread and salt and local escaped peasants and the poor of the Land along the Volga willingly joined the detachment. Rasin introduced the Cossack state system and divided the population into squadrons and foremen. General meeting of citizens elected government.
Intelligence forces appeared near Samara on May 31 in 1670 where they approached a fort moving along the Volga and its left shore from a steppe. After they seized the Voznesensk outskirts they launched an assault of the fort. Though they managed to burn two towers, they failed to capture the fort. Then the detachments disposed in the steppe three kilometers from the city, encircled the fort setting main forces of insurgent army on fire.
The insurgents spread the letters, which ran that Rasin was ready to protect ordinary people and called them to struggle with boyars.
In August 1670, Rasin moved his forces to Samara. Before he approached Samara Rasin stayed near the Perevolokskaya outskirts of town where he pitched a camp in the forest. Annals run that Rasin had his constant dwelling in the forest 1 km from the village Ryazan. That was a small set of town surrounded by gullies in the shape of an ellipse. Due to legends, Rasin dug here a large amount of gold and silver.
When Rasin and his supporters approached Samara, the inhabitants of the city revolted against the military commander, his people and boyars. They captured them, opened the gates, admitted Rasin and his detachment inside meeting them with bread and salt and ringing of bells.
After they conquered the city, Rasin’s supporters let the inhabitants loose: they set the population free of taxes, abolished all the debts and discharged prisoners. The military commander Ivan Alfimov and his supporters who particularly scoffed at the poor were drowned in the Volga. The Cossack chieftain Ivan Constantinov became the ruler of the city. Some part of the population joined Rasin’s people who taught them art of war; boyars and officials made cold steel (special axes that had a blade in form of a half-moon and a long shaft) day and night and without rest.
The Cossacks used different kind of cold steel: lances, javelins, swords, yatagans (a kind of a sword), kisten (a short stick with a metal ball or any other load that was hung on a chain or a strap to one side of the stick) and an arm in form of a hammer with a bill-like blade. In spite of it the people had not enough weapon to give everybody, that was why the insurgents armed with sticks and farming tools.
After Rasin conquered Samara, he started his preparations for a campaign to Simbirsk from where he planned to go to Moscow. He understood that it was necessary to fix his power on the Samara Bend. For that reason, Rasin ordered to set an observation post on the Molodetsk hill in the Zhygulyovsk Mountains. From its top one could observe the complete territory of the Volga. The chieftain set his reliable people on the shores of the Volga and ordered them to admit nobody up and down the river except for those who had a special pass with Rasin’s stamp. When the observers noticed any strange or enemy’s vessel they raised the alarm and warriors rushed into an attack going by boats. Along the banks of the river Us were set barrage detachments. A. Chapygin tells about this camp of Rasin in his novel “Stephan Rasin”.
After those events Rasin and 20 thousand of his supporters approached Simbirsk on September 4. The best tsarist forces led by a military commander Miloslavsky and Duke Yuri Baryatinsky met him there.
Rasin launched an attack but after he was injured two times Rasin and a small part of his people had to step back down the Volga where they stayed near the village The Big Ryasan, lower Samara. After a short rest, they moved to the Don in the hope of finding the people (the Cossacks and the poor) to form a new detachment. Another detachment of 2 thousand persons left Simbirsk across the Usolye for the river Uren. It approached the village Rozhdestvenskoye that was situated opposite Samara. Maxim Furious and Michael Nasosny headed the detachment. Both detachments had not the least idea of their further actions that was why they separated and moved in different directions.
On April 14, 1671 in the town Kagalnik the Cossacks seized Rasin and extradited him to the tsarist government. After suffering tortures, Rasin was executed in Moscow on the Red Square on June 6, 1671.
After Rasin’s execution, Fyodor Sheludyak who was the leader of insurgents in Astrakhan attempted to repeat a campaign along the Volga. In Samara, his detachment joined forces headed by Ivan Constantinov and together they started their way to Simbirsk. But the detachment was routed by the tsarist forces and stepped back to the Samara Bend. On one of the cliffs four kilometers from the village Morkvashy Sheludyak set an observing post. This cliff has the name of Rasin’s fellow campaigner so far.
Later Sheludyak had to leave Samara for Astrakhan where he was seized and executed. At the same time in the central Land along the Volga held out a detachment led by a chieftain Semen Buyanka but after a short while it was also routed. Most participants of the rebellion were executed through hanging (11 thousand of insurgents) and rafts with gallows and the hanged men on them were let along the Volga.
There are several reasons for the defeat of the insurgents: the detachments were not numerous, the actions were not concerted and the people had not enough weapons. Only the Cossacks were armed but peasants used, as a rule, farming tools. The letters that were spread by the supporters of Rasin, which ran about giving ordinary people freedom and lands, actually, served as means to reinforce the detachments. In fact, the only goal of the rebellion was just enrichment through robberies of the cities and the rich people. The rebellion changed nothing in the system of government of the state and just made ordinary people’s obligations harsher.
A large amount of geographical names witness about the presence and activity of the Cossacks on the Samara Bend: the Cossack Winter Quarters, the Cossack Ascent – opposite an old now dried mouth of the river Samara; the Irmak glade – between the mountains of the southern bank of the Bend; the Cossack mountain that is down today’s Syzran; the Barbashina glade – the Samara natural boundary and locality that nowadays is part of the city and others. All they might be favorite places of the Cossacks’ camps.
“The Cossack period” in the history of the Samara region did not last long. Building of the fort Samara prevented the Cossacks from forming their own state in these places. Within a century, in 1680 after Syzran was built and the right shore of the Volga completely settled, the free Cossacks lost any opportunity to visit these lands for their robbery raids even for a short time.
The small town Samara was founded in 1586 and primarily served as a fort to defend Russian lands of the nomads’ invasion. The majority of the inhabitants were the served people and namely archers. These people came to these places, settled here, set up houses, started families and were the first native population of Samara. The escaped and free people who came to Central Volga in search of earnings became gradually assimilated to the local population and settled in those lands too. Most migrants moved from the Cossack Land along the Volga, from the lands near Novgorod and central districts of the country. A considerable part of the served men was among the so-called “foreigners” – natives of the Ukraine and Belarus lands. These people enjoyed some privileges than the most part of the garrison that was why the government often granted them the local lands for their service.
Neighbouring nomad arias of the Kalmyks and the Nogays were closely connected with outskirts of Samara. Near the town were often arranged the places for trade with nomads. Samara served also as a transfer point on the roads between Central Asia and Yaik.
Another center of the settling of the Samara Bend in the XVII-XVIIIth centuries was the Nadey Usolye. This territory occupied the western part of the Samara Bend from the Brusyan and the Morkvashy gullies to the land between the rivers Us and Tisherek. The center of the settling of this territory was salt sources situated near the western edges of the Zhygulyovsk Mountains behind the mouth of the river Us. At the beginning of 1630, an enterprising guest Nadey Sveteshnikov who came from Yaroslavl started here a large saltmaking industry. Russian escaped and serf people of Sveteshnikov were the first settlers of the Usolye outskirts and well-defended town.
At the second half of the XVIIth century, the Savvo-Storozhevsky monastery became the new owner of the Nadey Usolye. At the end of the XVIIth – the first half of the XVIIIth century the system of rural settlements and ethnic complement of the population of the Nadey Usolye acquired its close to our days complete face.
At the end of 1650 on the territory of Usolye appeared constant settlements of the Chuvashes. The earliest of them – the Old Warm Camp was founded not far from the Usolye outskirts; the natives of the Old Warm Camp in the region of the today’s village Shygon (the New Warm Camp on the Nogay Ford) and the Big Ryasan (the New Warm Camp near the Brusyanka Spring) founded the other settlements. The Russians, mainly the escaped migrants, founded such settlements as Komarovka, Levashovka, Valy, the Big Ryasan, Aleksandrovka and Aktushy. The Mordva practically took no part in settling of the Nadey Usolye. There is only one fact that witnesses that there once existed a small Mordvinian village in the Apple-tree Gully.
The period of well-known autonomy of the Samara Bend completed at the end of the XVII – the first third of the XVIIIth century. At that time, its territory was the only crop-growing, industrial and crafting settled region on the territory of the Samara District. In the XVIIIth century, the Samara District still served as the frontier area and preserved its military meaning. At the same time, the city of Samara ceased to be an isolated strong point on the left shore of the Volga. The people began to build forts and fortified defence lines deep in steppes.
In 1731, Senate issued a decree about the building of the Novo-Behind Kama fortified defence line. This line stretched from Alekseevka and the mouth of the river Kinel, where the Kinel joined field fortified defence appliance was built, up to the river Sok. There, near the place where the river Kondurcha flows into the Sok, was built a new Krasnoyarsk fort. On the Sok, the people erected a fortified field appliance, which they called the Pretty, the other two appliances they built near the river Orlyanka and two opposite Serjievsk one of which was called Chernorechenskyy. The fortified defence line crossed the Sok and reached the upper waters of the river Lipovka where was another fort and approached the upper waters of the rivers Borovky and Surusha. From here the line stretched up to the river Kondurcha where was built a feldshants (a kind of a field fortified appliance). Than the line went outside on the modern Samara Region and crossing the rivers Cherished and Sheshmu approached the river Kichuya.
The building of the Samara fortified defence line that started in 1763 was of greater importance. It stretched from the city of Samara to the city Orenburg and presented a row of forts: the Red Samara fort, the Borskaya and Olshanskaya, Busulukskaya, Totskaya, Sorochinskaya, Novoserjievskaya that were erected outside the Samara Region.
At the places of many forts, field fortified appliances soon appeared peasant settlements. To serve on the fortified lines were set up four new regiments of “landmilitia” – special troops to defend the steppe frontiers. In closer rear appeared the whole settlements of landmilitia. Among these settlements were the one that nowadays became urban and rural settlements of the Samara and Oranburg Regions and the Tatar Republic.
Gradually such lines lost their defence meaning and the military-served population became assimilated to the peasants.
The building of the fortified appliances that spread deep onto the steppe reduced the importance of the city Samara as a fort but the Samara line preserved its defence meaning until the last quarter of the XVIIIth century. However, the left bank of the river Samara remained rather dangerous because of the nomadic Kalmyks who drove the cattle of the citizens that grazed on the fields away.
Museum of regional studies of Togliatti: Sergeeva Viktoria Mihaylovna phone: +7(8482) 481-070 e-mail:serjiov@rambler.ru
Организации
Пригород
Карта г. Тольятти
Афиша
Транспорт
Новости
Форум
Размещение на портале
