Chkalovsk is a city and the administrative center of Chkalovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region. Chkalovsk is also the birthplace of the famous pilot Valery Chkalov.
History
The old name of Chkalovsk is Vasilyeva Sloboda. The city owes this name to one of the sons of Yury Dolgoruky — Vasily Yuryevich — although the city itself was founded by Yury Dolgoruky as one of the Russian frontier outposts on the Volga. In the 14th–17th centuries, Vasilyeva Sloboda was the hereditary domain of the Shuisky princes. Its last owner from the Shuisky line was Tsar Vasily Ivanovich. From 1610 to 1764 the sloboda was counted as a monastic holding. After Catherine II's secularization of church lands, it was reclassified as an economic village (ekonomicheskoye selo).
In the 19th century, Vasilyeva Sloboda became a large trading village divided into two parts known as the "bazaar" and the "hill." The "bazaar" was the center of the village, home to its wealthier residents: merchants and steamship owners. On the "hill" lived tradespeople, priests, church servants, owners of craft workshops and drinking establishments, and the local intelligentsia.
The merchants and shipping men kept to themselves. They all adhered to the Old Faith and were engaged in buying and selling grain. Grain was brought in from the Vladimir-Suzdal opole (the fertile open farmland region) and the lower Volga, and sold in the Kostroma and Yaroslavl governorates.
Vasilyeva Sloboda was renowned for its pottery. In the mid-19th century there were 25 pottery workshops here. The sloboda was also known as one of the main suppliers of burlaki (Volga barge haulers). "Every spring," wrote Nizhny Novgorod resident I. Solovyov in the early 20th century, "thousands of these people would gather in Vasilyevo from villages of the neighboring governorates to be hired on as burlaki for the Vasilyevo vessels and other craft from nearby localities that had wintered in the local backwater."
When steamships and heavy-cargo barges appeared on the Volga, the need to establish a dredging fleet became pressing. On September 1, 1883, a shipbuilding and ship-repair enterprise specializing in the construction of technical vessels (dredges and the like) was opened in Vasilyeva Sloboda.
In 1904, Valery Chkalov was born in Vasilyeva Sloboda — the famous Soviet pilot who made the first long-distance nonstop flights. In 1937 Vasilyeva Sloboda was renamed in his honor.
In 1955, due to the flooding of the zone created by the Gorky Reservoir, Chkalovsk was relocated to a new, higher site and entirely rebuilt according to a general plan, receiving the status of a city.