Janet M. Hartley - The Volga - A History

THE VOLGA

Copyright 2021 Janet M. Hartley

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020942541

ISBN 978-0-300-24564-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to my husband, Will Ryan

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

MAPS

EDITORIAL NOTE

Transliteration of Russian in the notes and the bibliography is according to the Library of Congress system. The transliteration has been amended in the main text: soft signs have been omitted; Russian surnames ending in ii and yi have been standardized to y.

Russian names forenames, patronymics and surnames have for the most part been given in this system (for example, Nikolai Ivanovich Ilminsky), except in the case of tsars, where the anglicized form of the name has been used when it is more familiar (for example, Ivan III, but Peter I, Catherine II, Alexander I, Nicholas II), and where there is a commonly used English spelling of prominent Russians, such as literary figures (for example, Tolstoy and not Tolstoi, Alexander Pushkin and not Aleksandr).

The words Russia and Russians are controversial in the medieval period. I have used the word Rus in the medieval period for the east Slav peoples and for the names of the principalities which were located in what is present-day European Russia and part of present-day Ukraine. Ivan IV took the title tsar of all Russia at his coronation in 1547; after this date, I refer to the principality of Moscow as Russia and to the population of the principality as Russians.

Notes referencing the archives in Russia use Russian descriptors: fond, opis, tom, delo and listy (abbreviated to l. or ll.).

The Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, first and second series, is abbreviated in the text to PSZ, the Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva is abbreviated to SIRIO.

Distances and weights are given in metric measures; Russian weights and measures are explained in the text.

From January 1700 to February 1918, Russia used the Julian calendar, which lagged behind the Gregorian calendar used in the West by 10 days in the seventeenth century, 11 days in the eighteenth century, 12 days in the nineteenth century and 13 days in the twentieth century until February 1918. Dates in this book before February 1918 are given in the Julian form (that is, the February and October revolutions in 1917, not the March and November revolutions). Dates after February 1918 follow the Gregorian calendar.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND THANKS

I owe thanks to many kind colleagues and friends. The text has been much improved by suggestions for further reading from Liisa Byckling in Helsinki, Leah Bushkanets in Kazan, Andrei Stepanov in St Petersburg and Aleksandr Kiselev in Volgograd, by the anonymous readers for Yale (both of the proposal and of the text) and by the meticulous copy editor. I have been helped in the identification and reproduction of appropriate archival materials by Iaroslav Golubinov in Samara, Viktor Kulikov in Iaroslavl and Mikhail Pavlenko in Astrakhan. In particular, I should like to thank Chulpan Samatova in Kazan, whose enthusiasm and scholarly dedication resulted in far richer archival material in Kazan than I could possibly have found by myself. Kind friends read all or part of the text of the book and made excellent suggestions for improvements. I am very grateful to them all: Professors Simon Franklin, Tomila Lankina, Dominic Lieven, Margot Light, Peter Waldron. My research outside the United Kingdom was conducted in Moscow and St Petersburg, but also in Kazan, where I received enormous hospitality from members of the Federal University. In September 2018, Viktor Kulikov took me and my husband on a wonderful and unforgettable trip from Tver to the source of the Volga. My project also benefited from financial support from the Paulsen programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science. This book is dedicated to my husband, Will Ryan, not only for his editing precision, but also for his constant support and enthusiasm not only for this project, but for all my work on Russian history.

A NOTE ON PLACE NAMES

A considerable number of the towns cited in the text, mostly on the Volga, changed names at various times (usually, but not always, in the Soviet period). The following places appear more than once in the text. They are listed below in alphabetical order by their current name, but the name used most commonly in the text is highlighted in bold.

DIMITROVGRAD MELEKESS (17141972), DIMITROVGRAD (1972)

A village in Simbirsk/Ulianovsk province, situated at the confluence of the river Melekesska and the Bolshoi Cheremshan, which is a tributary of the Volga. Melekess was named after the river; it was renamed in 1972 to honour Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian revolutionary and first leader of the communist Peoples Republic of Bulgaria. It has retained this name.

ENGELS POKROVSKAIA SLOBODA (17471914), ALSO KNOWN AS KOSAKENSTADT, POKROVSK (191431), ENGELS (1931)

Engels is in Saratov province, on the left bank (eastern side) of the Volga, opposite the town of Saratov. The town was founded as Pokrovskaia Sloboda (sloboda means settlement in this context). It was given town status as Pokrovsk in 1914, and in 1918 became the capital of the short-lived German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The town was also commonly known as Kosakenstadt (Cossack town in German) from the eighteenth century. In 1931, it was renamed Engels in honour of Friedrich Engels, and that name has been retained.

IOSHKAR-OLA TSAREVOKOKSHAISK (15841919), KRASNOKOKSHAISK (191927), IOSHKAR-OLA (1927)

The town is situated on the river Malaia Kokshaga. It was founded in 1584 after the death of Ivan IV as the tsars town on the river Kokshaga, on territory which had been within the khanate of Kazan. It was renamed Krasnokokshaisk, the town on the red Kokshaga river. The old Mari name for the town was Charla. The town was renamed in 1927 and means red city in Mari. It is now the capital of the Mari El Republic, a federal republic within the Russian Federation, which borders the river Volga in the west.

NIZHNII NOVGOROD NIZHNII NOVGOROD (12211932), GORKII (193290), NIZHNII NOVGOROD (1990)

The town was founded in 1221 by Prince Iurii of Vladimir at the confluence of the Volga and Oka rivers. Between 1932 and 1990 it was named after the writer Maksim Gorky (the pen name of Aleksei Peshkov), who was born in Nizhnii Novgorod in 1868 and located some of his stories there. The name reverted to Nizhnii Novgorod in 1990.

ORAL IAITSK (16131775), URALSK (17751991), ORAL (1991)

The town was founded in 1613 as a Cossack fort on the river Iaik. After the suppression of the Pugachev revolt, the town was renamed Uralsk and the river was renamed the Ural. The town is now in the independent state of Kazakhstan and was renamed Oral in 1991.

ORENBURG ORENBURG (17341938), CHKALOV (193857), ORENBURG (1957)

The town was founded in 1734, although its location changed over the next decade, at the confluence of the Ural (formerly Iaik) and Samara rivers. It was chosen as the location of the Muslim Spiritual Assembly from 1788 until 1917 and had jurisdiction over Muslims in Kazan and elsewhere on the Volga (and in Siberia). It was capital of the short-lived Kirgiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1920 to 1925 and then became part of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The city was renamed Chkalov from 1938 to 1957 in honour of the test pilot Valerii Chkalov.