Nizhny Novgorod Vetluga Region

The Vetluga Region is a geographical area in the basin of the The Vetluga River.

The alternative term Privetluzhye is sometimes used to refer to it, but in recent times the term Vetluga Region has become increasingly preferred.

History of the Vetluga Region

Slavs appeared in the remote forested areas of the The Vetluga River basin somewhat later than the Mari people. On the basis of objects discovered at the Veselovsky burial ground and the Cheremissky cemetery, it can be concluded that the Mari lived along the middle reaches of the Malaya Kaksha River and the middle and lower reaches of the Bolshaya Kaksha River from the 8th century AD.

It was previously believed that the Mari people belonged to the Finno-Ugric group of peoples; however, this is not entirely accurate. According to ancient Mari oral traditions, this people came in distant times from ancient Iran, the homeland of the prophet Zarathustra, and settled along the Volga, where they intermixed with local Finno-Ugric tribes while nonetheless preserving their distinct identity.

This version is also supported by philologists. As stated by Professor S. Ya. Chernykh, Doctor of Philological Sciences at Mari State University, of every 100 Mari words, 35 are Finno-Ugric, 28 are Turkic and Indo-Iranian, and the remainder are of Slavic and other origins.

After carefully examining the prayer texts of the ancient Mari religion, Professor Chernykh reached a remarkable conclusion: more than 50% of Mari prayer vocabulary is of Indo-Iranian origin. It is precisely in these prayer texts that the proto-language of the modern Mari has been preserved, untouched by the influence of the peoples with whom they came into contact in later periods.

Despite the differences between their cultures, the mingling of populations did not produce any notable conflicts. The Mari dwelling was the so-called kudo (a hut or shelter) [probably related to the Russian word khudo — "leaky, poor"]. In the language of modern Mari, this word means a farmstead or yard. It consisted of a log frame whose upper courses were brought together from two sides, leaving an opening at the top. The floor was earthen; in the center there was a hearth for cooking, heating the space, and drying clothing and footwear. Smoke escaped through the opening at the top. There were plank sleeping benches. A low doorway with a two-leaf door was cut into one of the walls. The upper logs of the roof frame were caulked with moss and covered with lime-tree bast or spruce bark. Small openings were sometimes cut into the walls in place of windows.

Since ancient Russian culture stood at a higher level of development, the Mari, as economic ties with the Russians were established, gradually adopted their agricultural and technological skills, customs, and way of life. Thus they took over the dwelling with vertical walls, a floor, and a ceiling, as is evident from the names of house components borrowed into Mari — stenya (wall), oknya (window), potolok (ceiling), rama (frame) — while the adoption of arable farming brought them the word for rye, urzha, and for the sokha-kosulia plow, kosilya.

At the same time, the political organization of Mari society was more democratic than that of Rus. The supreme authority among the Mari was the Kuguz (Mari: kugu oza, kugyza — "great master, prince"). Power was not passed to the Supreme Princes by inheritance but was elective.

Unfortunately, the sources give only a vague picture of the structure of the Vetluga kuguzstvo (principality), yet it is nonetheless clear that the power of the princes was limited by a council of elders. Pagan priests also wielded enormous influence, enjoying great authority among the local population.

At the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, the only Mari territory over which the authority of Russian principalities and the Bulgars was fairly nominal was the region between the Vyatka and Vetluga rivers in their middle reaches. Rus had already become Christian, while the neighboring Mari principalities remained pagan.

In 1164, Grand Prince Andrei Yuryevich Bogolyubsky attempted to impose Orthodox Christianity on the Mari tribes by force. Missionary work was carried out by a Novgorod monk named Nikolai, known as Kiy. The first churches were built on the Vetluga, where baptisms were performed. A comprehensive conversion effort failed to materialize, however, as the pagan people were spread across numerous rivers and forests. Unity was not achieved; on the contrary, active resistance arose against the bearers of the Christian faith. Galician manuscripts mention the first battle near Galich in 1170, when a Mari force entered Galician territory and attempted to seize the town of Galich. In 1171 the Mari army was defeated and driven away from Galich Mersky (Dementyev, 1894, p. 24).

In 1174 the Mari population itself came under attack. The "Vetluga Chronicle" records: "Novgorodian free-ranging fighters seized the Mari town of Koksharov on the Vyatka River from the Mari and renamed it Kotelnich, whereupon the Mari withdrew to the Yuma and the Vetluga." In 1181 the Novgorodians conquered territory on the Yuma, prompting the Mari to move to the rivers Pizhma, The Vetluga River, Shanga, and Yakshanga. The Yuma prince Kodzha Yeraltem built a fortified town called Yakshan on the Ener River (Vetluga) and consolidated his principality. Kodzha Yeraltem accepted baptism under the name Yeliazar. In Yakshan the first church on the Vetluga was built, dedicated to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. At the same time, these lands belonged to the Mari kuguz (supreme prince) Kay. Conflicts naturally arose between the two over spheres of influence in this territory. The outcome was a victory for Kay, who united the principalities and made the town of Shanze (Shanga) his center. This fortress on the Ener River (Vetluga) had been built earlier — its founding date is unknown — and Kay is considered its founder, as it was he who established such a powerful military and strategic center of the Mari principality in this territory. The fortress also served as a watchtower (literally "eyes"), monitoring military movements from the north and west and capable of resisting the growing advance of the Russians into Mari lands.

From 1185 onwards, the princes of Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal repeatedly attempted to wrest Shanga from the Mari principality, but the fortress withstood all sieges. Building such a fortified town would have been within the power only of a fairly large military and administrative center (principality) uniting substantial Mari tribes. Moreover, in 1190 the Mari established yet another "town of Khlynov" on the Vetluga River (Dementyev, 1894, p. 26).

In 1237, Batu Khan's invasion swept across Rus.

Refugees, mainly from Galich, flooded the right bank of the Vetluga and built their settlements there. From 1238, Batu established the powerful khanate of the Golden Horde, and the Mari princes, acknowledging him as their overlord, placed their lands under his protection. New fortresses began to be erected on the banks of the Vetluga.

The main fortified zone, however, remained the right-bank fortress of Shanga. This fortress was assigned not only a defensive function but also a rear-support role. It became the key node for collecting tribute for the Golden Horde. This allowed the Mari to grow economically and to pursue an independent economic policy. By the 1240s, the Vetluga Mari principality had developed considerable military potential. Emboldened by their growing power, the Mari of Shanga began to attack, plunder, and burn Russian settlements.

For this reason, Alexander Nevsky in 1242 burned the fortress of Shanga and drove the Mari back beyond the Vetluga River. They rebuilt a fortress called Shanga on the left bank of the Vetluga, but the conflicts did not subside. In 1245, at the complaint of the Galician Prince Konstantin Yaroslavich Udaloy (a brother of Alexander Nevsky), Khan Batu transferred the right bank of the Vetluga to the Galician prince and the left bank to the Mari. Bloody clashes between the Mari and their Russian neighbors flared up with renewed force. Naturally, the Mari princes also grew resentful toward the Great Khan, since Mari settlements on the right bank remained in Russian hands.

To preempt the mounting discontent, in 1246 settlements in the Vetluga Region were subjected to a sudden attack and devastation by Batu's forces. Many inhabitants were killed or taken prisoner, and the rest fled into the forests. The scale of the destruction is conveyed by the "Manuscript Life of the Venerable Varnava of Vetluga."

"In that same year… it was laid waste by the pagan plundering of Batu… along the banks of the river called Vetluga,… and where men had dwelt, everywhere grew up forest, great forests, and it was named the Vetluga Wilderness" (Khersonsky, p. 9). The Russian and Mari populations, hiding from Tatar raids and internecine strife, settled in Shanga and Yakshan (on the left bank of the Vetluga).

After this punitive campaign, the entire right bank of the Vetluga was transferred directly to Prince Alexander Nevsky — that is, to the Grand Principality of Novgorod.

In 1247, Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky made peace with the Mari and ordered that trade and exchange of goods be conducted at Shanga.

During this period, the Mari prince Kay (of the Vetlya-Shangonsky kuguzstvo), fearing Russian armed retinues, reinforced the towns of Khlynov Vetluzhsky and Shanga (on the left bank of the Vetluga). Around the same time, the old prince was succeeded by the next Mari prince, Kiy.

In 1277, the Galician Prince David Konstantinovich (a nephew of Alexander Nevsky) elevated trade relations with the Mari to a high level. Trade was conducted in furs, honey, pottery, and military equipment.

However, already in 1280 David's brother, Vasily Konstantinovich, triggered a conflict with the Mari principality. In one of the battles, the Mari prince Kiy Khlynovsky was killed, and the principality was compelled to pay tribute to Galich. The new Mari prince Bay, remaining a tributary of the Galician princes, strengthened the towns of Shanga and Yakshan, Bulansy and Yur (Bulansy — the village of Odoyevskoye in Sharyinsky District; Yur — a settlement on the Yuryevka River near the town of Vetluga). Tension between the "neighbors" mounted, but neither side moved toward open conflict. A policy of quiet diplomacy was pursued.

In 1290, the Mari prince Bay visited the town of Veliky Ustyug and accepted baptism. Bishop Tarasiy baptized the Mari prince under the name Ivan. From that time on, he promoted the spread of Christianity among the Mari and built churches. However, in his struggle against the shaman-karts (pagan priests), he reverted to paganism after some time. Even so, peace between the neighbors was maintained until 1312.

In December 1312, Khan Tokhta of the Golden Horde died — the last khan who had wielded sufficient authority to prevent open internecine strife in Rus, the last khan who compelled disputes to be settled in the Horde rather than in battle, the last khan who had not gone to war with his Russian vassal. A struggle for supremacy now began in the Golden Horde. Khan Uzbek emerged victorious and imposed Muslim traditions and laws, punishing pagans who refused to submit, including Tatars.

The period 1312–1359 was the zenith of the Golden Horde's power. At the same time, this period was marked by Russian princes fighting over the redistribution of territories. During this time, Ancient Rus also effectively ceased to exist, its lands passing in part to Lithuania, in part to Poland, and in part to Hungary. Lithuania grew from a small principality into a mighty state and continued to expand its power rapidly. The Golden Horde itself became an Islamic state. In the competition for supremacy, Russian princes traveled to the Horde no fewer than 73 times during this period; seven of them were executed there.

In 1359, however, the "Great Turmoil" — a war among several claimants to power — began in the Horde. Power passed to Khan Berdibek. Kulpa and Nawruz rose against Berdibek. The Horde weakened sharply and was no longer capable of guarding its borders. In 1359, Ivan of Moscow died. Khan Nawruz, who controlled the capital at that moment, transferred the Grand Principality of Vladimir to the Suzdal princes. In 1360, Novgorodian ushkuyniks (river pirates) carried out the first major raid on Volga Horde towns and plundered Zhukotin.

In 1361, Khan Ordu-Shaikh came to power but was killed within a month. The following year his son Amurat, who had been financially backed by the Moscow princes, came to power, but was killed in 1364. In this manner power in the Horde changed hands several times. During this period the Muscovites backed the influential Shirin Khan Mamai, seeing his military strength and great influence in the Horde. He was not yet fully sovereign khan, however: Kazan slipped from his influence, and Mamai threatened it and gathered his forces.

In 1368, the Livonian Order attacked Pskov lands. Pskov appealed to the Moscow principalities for help — and received it. That same year, Mamai demanded military assistance from the Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod principalities in order to seize power in Kazan. The Muscovites found themselves fighting on two fronts. The following year, Mamai demanded that troops be led to Kazan.

The Bulgar chronicle describes this as follows: "In 1369, the head of the Shirin (Don) Horde, ulubiy Mamai — the very same who was defeated on the Kulikovo Field — ordered the Russian begs who had submitted to him to compel the Bulgars to resume payment of tribute to Kipchak and to install his daruga — Khan Mamed-Sultan — there."

The subordinate Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow princes organize a campaign against Kazan. "The Jun begs (the Nizhny Novgorod princes) together with Mamai's ambassador marched on Kazan and besieged it, while the Moscow beg, who had been delayed in assembling his forces, followed behind. At the Kara-Idel, Eneytek suddenly attacked the Muscovites from the rear and cut down half of the infidels. The other half, in complete disarray, fled to Kazan and by their appearance threw the Jun camp into indescribable panic. The Jun beg began to retreat hastily with all the Russians along the old Galijian road through Kukjak, and lost his entire army on the way. It is said that 80,000 infidels marched against New Bolgar at that time, and the black ars (Mari) alone killed 60,000 of them. When the first of them came before the emir with the heads of the Nizhny Novgorod residents impaled on spears, Urusov and Azan immediately reclassified them as ak-chirmyshi and freed them from jizya. Hearing of this, the remaining ars divided the heads of the infidels one per man in order that the majority of their people might receive privileges, and appeared with them in Kazan. The emir enrolled them all as ak-chirmyshi."

And so 60,000 ars became ak-chirmyshi and began to call all their people "chirmyshi" (Cheremis). In this way the Cheremis were freed from all tribute, and their warriors became loyal allies and a reserve force in the formation of the armies of the Kazan Khanate.

At this time, taking advantage of the weakening of the Russians, the Lithuanians moved on Moscow. In the winter of 1369–1370, Algirdas defeated the Muscovites and laid siege to Moscow. Unable to take it by storm and wary of assistance reaching Moscow from other principalities, he concluded peace on very lenient terms.

In the summer of 1370, the Moscow army struck back against Algirdas's allies — the princes of Smolensk, Bryansk, and Tver. The Lithuanians were unable to come to their satellites' aid in time, having been defeated by the Germans in the spring at the Battle of Rudau.

In 1371, the prince of Tver obtained from Mamai a yarlyk granting him the right to the Grand Principality and launched a war against Moscow. His main thrust came in the north of Rus, where he seized Kostroma and Uglich and besieged Belozersk. However, Dmitry of Moscow recovered the captured cities and also ravaged and plundered the Tver lands. This led to a break with Khan Mamai, and Prince Dmitry began to prepare for war with him.

Taking advantage of this political situation, Novgorodian Ushkuyniks appeared on the Volga, the Vyatka, the Kama, and the Vetluga River, seizing riverbank towns, merchants' river transport, and simply robbing them. It is generally held that the ushkuyniks were combat detachments of passionary Novgorodian youth — descendants of the Russian Varangians — and that they constituted the unofficial naval force of Novgorod the Great. The Novgorodian veche and the Novgorodian boyars entrusted them with collecting tribute from Novgorod's vast northern territories, as well as other dangerous enterprises. The ushkuyniks frequently exceeded the authority granted to them, acting on their own initiative. But there is another view: the ushkuyniks were ordinary brigands who were sometimes employed by merchants and princes for covert and unsavory operations, naturally for substantial pay. The name "ushkuyniks" derives from the vessel on which their bands conducted their raids and campaigns. An ushkuy was a narrow, light, and swift river craft crewed by 20–30 oarsmen.

In 1374 they appeared among the Cheremis as well, with the result that their entire territory was plundered and devastated. Russian chronicles relate that part of their force, some 40 ushkuys, descended the Vyatka and the Kama and "…went upstream along the Volga and reaching Obukhovo plundered all of Zasurye and Markvash, and having crossed the Volga chopped up all their boats, and themselves set off for Vyatka on horseback, plundering many villages along the Vetluga as they went." [Khersonsky, p. 189]

In 1375, under the command of a certain Prokop, 1,500 ushkuyniks defeated the five-thousand-strong army of the Kostroma governor Pleshcheyev, seized the city of Kostroma, then took Nizhny Novgorod and descended to Astrakhan, plundering everyone along the way — but at Astrakhan the forces of the Golden Horde killed them all.

During this period the Horde demanded that the Moscow princes put an end to the ushkuyniks, but the princes were in no hurry to comply and were preparing for war with the Horde. Mamai also threatened to devastate the Moscow principalities. In the end, in 1380 the Battle of Kulikovo took place — Mamai's army was defeated by Dmitry Donskoy. Power in the Horde passed to Tokhtamysh, who assembled a new army reinforced by the Cheremis, vassals of Kazan, and Nizhny Novgorod residents.

In 1382, Khan Tokhtamysh captured and burned Moscow and once again forced the Moscow prince to pay tribute.

In 1382–83, the Vetluga Region was transferred to the Nizhny Novgorod Principality in recognition of its participation in the campaign alongside the Tatar army and the capture of Moscow. [*]

In 1385, a famine struck the Vetluga Region due to a grain harvest failure and a flood that washed away the town of Khlynov (on the Vetluga). An epidemic broke out and carried off a significant portion of the population. On 19 May 1389, Dmitry Donskoy died in Moscow.

Tokhtamysh, in exchange for a large ransom, granted the yarlyk for the Moscow and Vladimir principalities to Dmitry Donskoy's son, Vasily I, and strengthened his position further by transferring the Nizhny Novgorod Principality and several towns to him. In 1392, following the annexation of the Nizhny Novgorod Principality to Moscow, the lands along the Vetluga were governed by Mari princes. That same year the Cheremis lands were once again raided by the Novgorodian Ushkuyniks, but the Golden Horde already had troubles of its own and sent no assistance.

In 1394, the Mari princes were once again called upon to provide Cheremis reinforcements for Tokhtamysh's army in the internecine war for control of the Golden Horde. His rival was Temür-Qutlugh (brother of the tsarevich of the White Horde, Qoreichaq, who was a protégé of Timur-Tamerlane).

In 1396, Kildibek became the Cheremis prince of the Vetluga, and continued to comply with Tokhtamysh's demands while simultaneously strengthening his own principality and his army. Despite his military power, Tokhtamysh was defeated in the Horde and fled with the remnants of his forces to Lithuania in hope of assistance. At this time an alliance was concluded with Lithuania and Novgorod the Great, headed by the Lithuanian viceroy Vytautas. In exchange for military aid, Tokhtamysh promised to make him master of all the Russian lands. The Nikon Chronicle contains a literarily embellished speech by Vytautas that vividly characterizes the plans of the Lithuanian side: "Let us go and plunder the Tatar land, defeat Tsar Temür-Qutlugh, seize his tsardom and divide his riches and wealth, and install in the Horde as his tsar Tsar Tokhtamysh, and in Kaffa, and in Azov, and in Crimea, and in Astrakhan, and in the Trans-Yaik Horde, and in all the coastal lands, and in Kazan — and all of this shall be ours and our tsar's."

Thus, in 1398, the territory of the Cheremis Vetluga and Vyatka was transferred to the possession of Novgorod the Great.

Enticed by the prospect of his future greatness, Vytautas assembled a large army from all the lands under his control.

In 1399, the great Battle of the Vorskla took place — a battle that has, unfortunately, received scant attention from Russian historians.

At the Battle of the Vorskla, the combined army led by Vytautas — comprising warriors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poles, Russian princes, Teutonic Knights, and the Tatars of Khan Tokhtamysh — suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the forces of Khan Temür-Qutlugh and the temnik Edigu.

All fled: the Poles, the German crusaders, the Belarusian warriors, and the valiant Lithuanians themselves. They retreated in disorder all the way to Kyiv, hoping to find salvation. The Tatars overtook and cut down the fugitives while suffering almost no losses of their own.

Among the slain that day were more than twenty princes. Their deaths dealt a blow to all subsequent generations of the descendants of the legendary Rurik. Within a few decades, the princes of Ostrog, Halych, Kyiv, and Novhorod-Siversky were no more. The numerous descendants of Vladimir the Saint and Yaroslav the Wise seemed simply to dissolve and vanish.

In 1405, Khan Tokhtamysh was killed in one of the battles in the eastern reaches of the Golden Horde, near Tyumen. The Cheremis principalities turned the weakening of their neighbors to their own advantage. In 1417, Kildibek and his army raided Veliky Ustyug, devastated and burned the city, and carried off the treasures of its monasteries and townspeople to be divided among the nobility. At the same time, prisoners from Ustyug, including clergy, were brought to Shanga and Yakshan — among them the Venerable Barnabas. In 1434, Prince Vasily Kosoy of Galich, together with his brothers Dmitry the Red and Dmitry Shemyaka, killed the Cheremis prince Kildibek in the course of internecine conflicts among the princes. As a result, the Cheremis throughout the entire Vetluga Region began to ravage and burn Russian settlements and churches, aided by the Kazan Tatars.

The Venerable Barnabas and the monks escaped, sailing downriver on a small vessel. Along the banks of the Vetluga River they would stop and erect a wooden cross at each camp, then set up a makeshift altar and conduct church services. The local population, mostly Cheremis, would be baptized, accept the Orthodox faith, and help the monks as best they could with food and clothing, and build wooden churches. The monks would then proceed downriver to the next campsite after about a year. The first camp was the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on the bank of the Vetluga, in what is now (as of the 1890 edition) the Pyshchug volost. The second camp was on the site where today, in the Shangsko-Gorodishchenskaya volost, lies the village of Zubovkoye — here the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos was founded. The third camp was in the Rozhdestvenskaya volost, where the Church of the Nativity of Jesus Christ was established. The fourth camp is where the town of Vetluga now stands, and here the Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was restored. From that time onward the campsites received the names that have been preserved in the census church records of 1629: Vozdvizhensky, Bogorodsky, Rozhdestvenskiy, and Voskresensky. The last camp was a remote, elevated spot on the right bank of the river; this place later came to be called "Krasnaya Gorka" (Red Hill). On the hilltop, Barnabas built a small chapel and a cell. At first the Cheremis regarded the monk who had come from afar with wariness, but in time the saint came to be held in great respect among the people of the Vetluga Region. Having mastered the local tongue, the venerable monk preached the Word of God tirelessly, and before long many of the former pagans began to convert to the Christian faith.

In 1439, the Kazan Khan Ulu, following yet another act that he found humiliating by Vasily II, advanced on Nizhny Novgorod and took the outer town within the posad's wooden walls. The citadel held out for a time, but when the voivodes realized resistance was futile, they set fire to the kremlin under cover of night and withdrew. Nizhny Novgorod became the base for a new "sword" that had come to punish Russia. That same year Ulu advanced on Moscow, failed to take the citadel, burned the posad, burned Kolomna on the return march, and went back to Kazan.

In 1439, in place of the slain Cheremis kuguz Keldibek, a new governor arrived among the Vetluga Cheremis to rule and collect tribute — Ibrag — who continued to devastate Russian settlements. The Novgorodians, however, still regarded the Vetluga Region as their own possession. In 1445, following the death of the Novgorodian posadnik Boretsky, his widow Marfa restored the destroyed villages and churches along the Vetluga and settled the church parishes with clergy and her own secular Novgorodian people. The Cheremis attacked the new settlers but were repulsed. Ibrag was captured and, as a brigand, executed in Novgorod the Great. The military force of the Novgorodians subdued the Cheremis principalities and a brief peace was established.

The Moscow Principality grew stronger and more powerful with the accession of Ivan III to the throne in 1462. At this time Novgorod began pursuing a policy of rapprochement with Lithuania. In 1463, "Kazanites with Cheremis came into the Ustyuzhansky district and took many people captive. The men of Ustyug overtook and defeated them." In the same year, "in response Ivan III dispatched the neighboring men of Ustyug, Vologda, and Galich against them."

This situation prevailed not only in the vicinity of Kostroma and Galich, but also throughout the Volga Region, where Cheremis and Kazan armies raided the Volga towns and even Nizhny Novgorod itself — the largest Russian city on the eastern frontier, shielding Moscow from the Volga.

In response, in 1468 Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan Vasilyevich sent Prince Semyon Romanovich Yaroslavsky with an army to devastate the Cheremis Vetluga Region. The campaign took place in winter amid bitter cold. Early that year the prince, having marched through dense forests, laid waste to the Vetluga Region and its entire Cheremis population: many inhabitants were taken captive, many were killed and burned, and their livestock and possessions were destroyed.

One of the Russian chronicles tells us of this campaign: "The Grand Prince sent against the Cheremis to make war… Prince Semyon Romanovich, and with him the boyars' sons, his own household, and having joined together they all set out from Galich on St. Nicholas Day, the 6th of December, through forests with no road, and the winter was most bitter. That same winter, on the 6th of January, on the Feast of the Epiphany, the army of the Grand Prince came into the Cheremis land and wrought much evil upon that land: they cut down the people, led others into captivity, burned others, and all their horses and every kind of livestock that could not be taken away, all of this they cut down, and what moveable goods they had, all of this they took, and they laid waste their land in a single day, stopping short of Kazan." [Khersonsky, p. 279]

Following the Russian conquest of the Vetluga Region, some of the Mari moved east, others to the southeast into the forests, and only a few remained in place, gradually becoming Russified over time. Meanwhile, Russian armies marching out of Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow inflicted several defeats on the horde of Khan Ibrahim. In 1468–69, campaigns against Kazan were undertaken from Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow. After these, the raids of the Kazan khans in both the Volga Region and the Vetluga Region were temporarily halted.

In the 1460s in Novgorod, Marfa Boretskaya led a boyar faction that openly opposed Moscow's unification policy and sought to preserve Novgorod's republican privileges by "detaching" it to Lithuania. "Many people came to her assembly and many hearkened to her seductive and godless words, not knowing that this was to their ruin…" The method of "detachment" that Marfa chose for transferring Novgorod to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was somewhat unusual: "Wishing to marry a Lithuanian lord, a royal man, and thinking to bring him to Novgorod the Great and with him to rule over all the Novgorodian land…"

Indeed, Marfa's marriage to a Lithuanian ruler would have meant the transfer of all her estates — comprising no less than a third of the Novgorodian land — to her husband as a dowry. Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan III could not accept the prospect of losing so significant a territory. On 20 June 1471 he marched with his army from Moscow and in July of that year defeated the Novgorodians on the Shelon River. In 1487 the Russians declared war on Kazan. The city was taken after a siege. The Russians installed Mukhammad-Amin as khan, and Ivan III assumed the title of Prince of Bulgaria. The era of the so-called Russian protectorate began. Kazan was required to coordinate the appointment of the khan with Moscow, to refrain from making war against it, and not to mistreat Russian merchants. The alliance reached its apogee in 1490, when the Russian-Kazan army destroyed the last remnants of the Golden Horde proper and took the city of Sarai.

As a result of this policy, the Vetluga Region came entirely under the control of the Moscow princes and gradually began to be settled by Russians. At this time, exploiting the internecine wars among the Russian principalities, Kazan strengthened its military position and continued to threaten the vital interests of the Moscow Principality.

This began in 1505. At that time the Kazanites first massacred Russian merchants on their own territory, then marched on Nizhny Novgorod. The Kazan army was numerous. The Moscow army did not venture beyond Murom. Nizhny Novgorod found itself alone against 40,000 Tatars and 20,000 Nogais. The matter would have been decided had it not been for the Lithuanian prisoners languishing in the Nizhny Novgorod dungeons. These were gunners who had been captured along with their cannon as far back as 1500 at the Battle of the Vedrosha River (a tributary of the Dnieper). None of the Russians knew how to operate these cannon. The Lithuanians were promised freedom in exchange for accurate shooting. The very first salvo by Fedya Litvich (the Lithuanian) killed a Nogai murza — a remarkable achievement, given the state of artillery at the time and the fact that after five years of captivity the gunners ought to have lost their professional skills. For some reason the Nogais concluded that the murza had been killed by the Tatars and came to blows with them. The Kazan khan, unable to quell the internecine fighting, withdrew his forces from the city. In time, however, the Kazanites sorted out their difficulties, reorganized, and launched new attacks on the eastern borderlands of the Vetluga Region.

In 1522, the Shanga fortlets, fortresses, and other settlements on the Vetluga were seized by the Cheremis and Tatars and remained under their control until 1540. During these same years their raids on other Russian lands resumed.

In response to the devastation of Unzha in 1523, Vasily III sent a river and cavalry force into the Ponizovye. The campaign proved successful. At the confluence of the Sura River with the Volga, on the Kazan side, the fortress-town of Vasilsursk was founded; subsequently timber-and-earth fortresses were built near Soligalich, Kologriv, Galich, Chukhloma, and the present-day settlement of Voskresenskoye on the Vetluga River. The fortresses were not built in vain. In 1532 further raids were carried out against Soligalich and Vologda; in 1536 against Galich; in 1539 and 1540 against Kostroma and the Galich volost. In January 1536, a six-thousand-strong Tatar detachment broke through to Galich, probably through the Vetluga Region, since it could not have passed undetected past Nizhny Novgorod, Vasilsursk, and Gorodets. Having plundered Vologda, Galich, and Kostroma, the detachment attacked Balakhna on its way home.

There is evidence of a campaign in 1542 by a Kazan army of Tatars and Vyatka Cheremis against Veliky Ustyug. Slipping through unnoticed along the Vyatka and its tributary the Moloma, they captured and plundered Veliky Ustyug, taking the population captive. The men of Vyatka, learning of the Tatar raid on their neighbors in Ustyug, decided to attack the invaders. To this end they set an ambush at the mouth of the Moloma. As soon as the Kazanites appeared on rafts with their captives and plunder, the men of Vyatka fell upon them suddenly. The Tatars were utterly destroyed in the fighting; only the Cheremis escaped through the forests to their settlements on the Pizhma.

In 1552, Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible launched his campaign against Kazan, which ended in victory over the Kazan Khanate. After the subjugation of the Khanate, the Vetluga Region was incorporated into the Moscow Principality and gradually began to be settled by Russians. Commercial and industrial ties with the Russian state raised the level of agricultural, craft, and manufacturing culture. Ivan IV's shrewdness in dealing with the local elite — Mari princes and Tatar mursas — by distributing government posts, landed estates with serfs, and various privileges allowed him to peacefully reduce the intensity of the people's struggle against the Russians and to consolidate tsarist authority on the frontiers. By the first half of the 17th century, the right bank of the Vetluga was already settled by Russians; among the other villages that existed there was the village of Shulepnikovo, which was renamed the selo of Verkhnee Voskreseniye when a church was built there in the first half of the 18th century, and became the district town of Vetluga upon the formation of the district in 1778. The church played a major role in consolidating Russian settlements: Orthodox churches were erected in the settlements, around which parishes formed. Such settlements came to be called selos (larger villages).

Population of the Vetluga Region

This territory earned a reputation as a land of brigands. In the 17th and 18th centuries, fugitives and "passportless" drifters poured into this remote, landlord-free backwater straddling the Vologda and Kostroma borderlands. The indigenous inhabitants were of a similar stripe — cut off, in the words of P.I. Melnikov (Pechersky), "from the rest of the baptized world": "They lived in the forest, prayed to a tree stump, were wed around a fir tree, and the devils sang for them." Spiritual authority here was represented by itinerant self-ordained priests who came from the Moloma and the Vyatka, of whom it was said: "A fine priest, the Khlynov man — for a pair of bast shoes he'll marry you to your own mother."

The battered remnants of Razin's "free men" settled here. There is evidence that Razin's comrades Ilya Ponomaryov and Miron Mumarin fled here, to the Vokhma and the Vyatka.

The author of the novel In the Forests, I.P. Melnikov (Pechersky), characterizing the social "leaven" of the Vetluga Region's population, speaks of fugitive reiters and bondsmen, ploughing peasants and sloboda dwellers burdened with quitrent and levies: "All of this surged en masse across the Volga and set up its pochinki (newly cleared farmsteads) and zaymki (squatted holdings) there, in places where until that time no human foot had trod."

Points of Interest

  • Military detachments were frequently dispatched into this wilderness to root out the brigands, and real battles flared up on the banks of the forest rivers. Yet punitive operations produced little result, for in these parts there were no towns, no fortifications, no townsmen's watches for 700 versts in any direction, and written "authorizations" carried no weight whatsoever here.
  • M.V. Lomonosov, in his "Note on the Preservation and Multiplication of the Russian People," describes the forested expanse around the Vetluga River as one of the most sinister places in the Empire: "There, from the Volga, great numbers of barge haulers take shelter in winter, no small portion of whom are brigands. The peasants keep them through the whole winter for fifty kopecks per man, and if the man does some work, they feed him without pay, asking no passport."

See Also