Lukoyanov — a city and the administrative center of a Lukoyanovskiy District of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, situated on the bank of the Tyosha River, 173 km southeast of Nizhny Novgorod. It is a small, cozy town with a population of over 16,000 residents.
History of Lukoyanov
The selo of Lukoyanov
The history of Lukoyanov dates back to the 16th century. According to tradition, it was named after its first settler, Ivashka Lukoyanov, who built a "mill with a Russian wheel" in the upper reaches of the Tyosha River, thereby laying the foundation for a small village. The village of Lukoyanova was part of the Arzamas Uyezd, which was subdivided into seven stans — Teshsky, Ichalkovsky, Irzhensky, Sobakinskiy, Shatkovsky, and Zalesny. One stan comprised palace and yasak villages. In the census book it was left unnamed; in documents from the 17th–18th centuries it is referred to as the Utishny stan. The greater part of the territory of the present-day Lukoyanov District fell within Zalesye. This stan lay to the east of Arzamas, "beyond the Shatkov and Sobakin gates." Its inhabitants were predominantly Mordva. Until the very end of the 16th century they accounted for 68% of the population. Of the 22 villages of Zalesye, 15 were Mordva villages. On average, each village had no more than 18 households. All around, ancient forests resounded with life, their trees bearing wild beehives in which local residents gathered wild honey.
From the 16th century onward, the tsars of the Muscovite state distributed lands to boyars in various places. This was observed in the Arzamas Uyezd as well. Over the course of a century, however, relatively little land in the Middle Volga Region was transferred to hereditary and service-tenure ownership; from the early 17th century this process took on a much wider scale. According to the "tithe list of noblemen and boyar sons," in the Arzamas Uyezd alone some 85,000 desyatinas of land were distributed as service estates.
Large landowners resettled Russian peasants onto these estates. The newcomers sometimes displaced the indigenous inhabitants from their long-established homes, and sometimes settled alongside them. Yet there is abundant evidence showing that many Mordva villages remained Mordva villages.
In the first half of the 16th century the village of Lukoyanova was part of the hereditary estate of the Buturlin family, and was subsequently granted by Ivan the Terrible to Fyodor Kireyev and Afimya Karpova. In the "partition" and "boundary survey" books of the estates of Fyodor Kireyev and Afimya Karpova for 1586–1594, there is an entry stating that Kireyev received as his service estate "the votchina of Lukoyanova by Ivan's (that is, the tsar's — M.B.) division of the Buturlin property."
All affairs of the estate were managed by Kireyev's steward, Onokha Ivanov. His manor stood in a prominent spot, with a main hall and a kitchen, granaries and timber-framed stables, an ice cellar, and other outbuildings. Nearby, on the hillside, huddled the low, grey peasant cottages. The dreary picture of the village was completed by a cemetery pressed against a rise on the right bank of the Khvoshchevka River. The estate remained in Kireyev's possession until 1612, until the war with the Polish lords, when the landowner betrayed his people by going over to the enemy.
By tsarist decree, Kireyev was executed, and his sons were stripped of their father's estate. The tsar ordered that the village of Lukoyanova, together with all its lands and peasants, be "granted as a hereditary estate to Fyodor Levashov," an active member of the Nizhny Novgorod Militia. However, since Levashov had by that time already received a grant elsewhere, the village passed into the service estate of the Panov family.
By the mid-17th century, as documents attest, the village of Lukoyanova was transferred to the category of economic villages (ekonomicheskiye sela).
The selo of Lukoyanov was a traditional ring-shaped settlement consisting of three blocks. On one side the buildings fronted the right bank of the Tyosha River, while on the other they climbed up the hill. In the center of the square formed by the ring of buildings stood a wooden church. Country roads approached the village from two sides.
In the second half of the 17th century, potash works began to appear in the vicinity of Lukoyanov. As early as the mid-century, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, mindful of palace revenues, issued a decree ordering: "In the forests along the Tyosha and Alatyr rivers, searches shall be conducted for suitable places fit for His Majesty's potash and smolchug works." As a result, numerous potash plants — known as budnye maydany — sprang up in Lukoyanov and the surrounding villages, where peasants toiled around the clock. Potash played an enormous role in Russia's foreign trade, ranking among the most valuable export commodities. The technique for producing potash was straightforward. Oak and alder were burned down to ash, and from the ash a liquid paste was made; this paste was smeared onto pine or spruce logs, which were then stacked into a bonfire. Each row of logs was covered with a layer of ash and set alight. The ash burned and "refined" in this manner was the potash.
Potash production took a devastating toll on the forests, which grew thinner year by year on the right bank of the Volga River. Bees perished from the smoke. Honey became dear.
Under the administrative reform carried out by Catherine II in 1779, the selo of Lukoyanov, along with a number of other villages of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, was elevated to the status of a town. On 16 August 1781, the coat of arms of the town of Lukoyanov was approved: the upper section of the shield bore the Nizhny Novgorod arms, while the lower section displayed, on a green field, two golden plowshares — a symbol of the fertility of these lands.
The fire of 1817 burned the town of Lukoyanov to the ground.
By the mid-19th century the town had only four stone buildings: the Pokrovsky Cathedral, the field church, and two administrative offices. The town's population was entirely illiterate; it was not until the centenary of the town, in 1879, that the laying of the foundation stone for a two-story brick building for the municipal primary school was celebrated as an official event in Lukoyanov. In 1903, with the opening of the Romodanovo railway, Lukoyanov became a major railway station with a locomotive repair depot. A working class began to take shape in the town. The Lukoyanov Uyezd had its own extensive system of cottage industries. Each village in the uyezd had its own economic "specialization," its own traditions and trade secrets. Within the framework of a subsistence economy, villages exchanged the products of their crafts, which stimulated the development of market relations. After the abolition of serfdom, the spread of cottage industries intensified still further.
The town of Lukoyanov became a trading center in the south of the governorate. At the Market Square, flour, grain products, meat, salt, yarn, linen cloth, wax, wheels, barrels, and other goods were bought and sold. The markets fostered the broad development of entrepreneurship, directed primarily at serving the trading public. One form of entrepreneurship was the keeping of coaching inns. The town also had several hotels. Smithery developed considerably: six smithies stood next to the Market Square, serving the owners of horse-drawn transport. In all, Lukoyanov had around 20 smithies. The rapid growth of trade was turning it into the main source of revenue for the town's budget.
Forestry crafts constituted one of the most widespread and varied occupations of the inhabitants: chief among them were the weaving of bast mats and sacks, the plaiting of bast shoes (lapti), the turning of wooden spoons; in addition, people made buckets, sledges, wheels, and carts, and sawed planks. In Lukoyanov, hemp was processed and ropes were twisted. A distinctive craft in the 19th century was the making of bast fiber (mochalo), which employed around 10,000 people throughout the year.
The Lukoyanov Uyezd also had its own specialized trades. The inhabitants of the village of Kryukovka, for instance, were highly skilled craftsmen unsurpassed in construction work throughout the entire district. Quite unusual was the production of smoked hams by the residents of Atingeevo. The peasants there raised pigs, expertly brought them to the required condition, and supplied finished hams to the tsar's table.
The Revolution and the Civil War
The Civil War (1918–1922) severely undermined the economy of the Lukoyanov Uyezd. An important role in the subsequent development of the uyezd's agriculture was played by the broad expansion of agricultural cooperatives. Peasants saw the practical benefits of agricultural cooperatives and joined them willingly.
The restructuring of agriculture in the district proceeded simultaneously with the struggle for cultural development in the town and in the villages. During the years of the first five-year plan, the people of Lukoyanov ranked among the leading districts in the region not only in the organizational and economic consolidation of collective farms, but also in fulfilling their obligations to the state — both in agricultural output and in financial payments. The Lukoyanov District was named among the 26 leading agricultural districts of the USSR.
During the war years many enterprises switched to producing military goods. The Salmoks sewing artel supplied the front with thousands of sets of winter and summer uniforms — quilted jackets, gymnasterka tunics, trousers, and underwear. The artel's seamstresses were entrusted with making the first army shoulder boards. The Krasny Tekstilshchik artel produced camouflage netting, while the Kustar artel made metal anti-submarine barrier nets. The Razinsky logging enterprise and forestry operation produced materials for the aviation industry and made stocks for submachine guns and other weapons; the glass plant began manufacturing special bottles for incendiary mixtures.
Post-war development
In the late 1950s, work began on the full electrification of the district's settlements. In 1958 the Lukoyanov power station was commissioned. In the autumn of 1961 the settlements of the Trans-Alatyr zone were electrified, and the district became fully electrified. In 1955 the first paved road was built, connecting Lukoyanov with the urban-type settlement of Shatki. The year 1960 may be considered the beginning of substantial road construction in the district. The first road built connected Lukoyanov with the district center of the neighboring Gaginsky District. Between 1960 and 1965, with the participation of Gorky factories, roads were built to Saransk and to the village of Bolshoye Mares'yevo and the settlement of Razino. By the mid-1970s Lukoyanov was connected by roads to all the central villages of the district.
All enterprises gradually mechanized their production and built new workshops.
In 1962 a new slaughterhouse refrigeration facility at the meat-processing plant went into operation; in 1967 a skimmed milk powder plant was built; in 1968 a bearing repair plant began operating; in 1971 a brick factory; and in 1973 a large-panel housing construction plant.
In the late 1970s, large-scale residential construction at state expense got underway in the villages. In Lukoyanov, the construction of housing and social and cultural facilities was carried out mainly in two microdistricts.
In 1971 the first gas distribution station was built. The gas pipeline network in the town has expanded every year since. At the same time, work continued on building gas boiler houses, and gasification of the district's settlements progressed. At present, the main gas pipelines have been laid throughout the district, and work is underway to extend gas pipelines from the main lines to every settlement. In 1986 construction of a municipal sewage system began.
The city's present-day significance
Today the city of Lukoyanov is a railway station and a road junction, situated on the Nizhny Novgorod–Penza rail line. The federal highway Nizhny Novgorod–Saransk passes through Lukoyanov. The district is also crossed by a regional highway linking Lukoyanov with the Gaginsky District and Bolsheboldinsky District Districts.
Points of interest
- The Lukoyanov People's Local History Museum.
- The Magnitsky Grove.
- Stands of oak forest — remnants of the ancient Murom forests — and Mordva sacred groves: "Lukash," "Yavley," and "Kshekuravay."
- The Razin Stone, under which, according to legend, the treasures of Stenka Razin are buried.
Interesting facts
- In the 17th–18th centuries, the Lukoyanov Uyezd, by decree of the imperial court, actively supplied potash to Saint Petersburg. Potash was obtained by burning oak and alder (or spruce) wood. As a chemical, it was used in the manufacture of glass, soap, dyes, gunpowder, and other products. The government encouraged the extraction of potash and smolchug by every available means, as these were among the most important export commodities to England and Holland and a major source of state revenue.
- Notably, all the individuals who took part in the seizure of Mordva beehive forests for potash works in the Arzamas Uyezd belonged to the court aristocracy — they were the tsar's relatives and favorites (the Morozovs, the Cherkasskys, and others).