Scary stories in the village of unzha. Unzha (Kostroma region)

Last autumn, during a large-scale trip around the Kostroma region, we visited an amazing place, the atmosphere of which was imbued immediately upon arrival. The village of Unzha or, as it was called in the past, the Old Town is one of the oldest settlements in the Northern Trans-Volga region, whose history goes back centuries. The first written mention of it is found in 1219, which puts Unzha on a par with such cities as Kostroma and Galich in terms of scientific significance, and in antiquity puts it among the earliest ancient Russian settlements of the Kostroma land. The medieval past of Unzha in our time is reminiscent of a settlement with a military engineering earthen structure of the 15th century, and three ancient churches and a number of historical buildings of the village tell about later centuries, the 18th - 19th centuries.

It was autumn, the trees had long bare their branches, the vast fields were covered with the first snow, and only in places a green cover could be seen. The weather, as usual for our trips, turned out to be overcast, every now and then a strong gusty wind came up. But all this severity and cold gloom that met us made this region even more expressive. The village, whose best times have sunk into oblivion, together with the ancient settlement, mound and abandoned churches, made an unforgettable impression. Despite the gloomy sky, the piercing wind and the feeling of life leaving here, the place fascinated and captivated us with its indescribable atmosphere, some kind of drama. And his name is the village of Unzha. It received its non-Slavic name by the name of the Unzha River, on the high bank of which it is located (translated from Mari means "calm, quiet") The history of Unzha is so deep and rich that it cannot be described in a couple of paragraphs, therefore, as the story progresses, I will make historical digressions.

And we'll start with a short digression into the depths of centuries. In the field season of 2014, an archaeological expedition led by V.L. Shcherbakova conducted a survey of the territory of the village, as a result of which the settlement of a medieval city was discovered. Further deeper - we managed to find the oldest part of the settlement of the pre-Mongolian period. According to the research, there is reason to believe that the first settlement arose here no later than the 11th century, which means that Unzha is one of the oldest ancient Russian settlements in the Kostroma Territory. In the XII-XIII centuries. the strengthened Vladimir-Suzdal principality in its expansion, stretching to the east and south, faced the resistance of the Bulgars, Mordovians and Cheremis. To secure the borders, the Vladimir princes founded fortresses: Gorodets, N. Novgorod, Belogorodie (not preserved), etc. According to historians, Unzha, as a stronghold, was founded by Prince Vsevolod the Big Gnezd between 1176 and 1212. The first written mention refers to 1219, when the Bulgars, whose state was located on the Middle Volga and Kama, attacked Veliky Ustyug. And on the way back they tried to take possession of Unzha.

Above are photographs from the middle of the 20th century. But the lower one, where the chapel of Macarius Zheltovodsky (not preserved) stands in the foreground, is already a pre-revolutionary photo. The chapel was erected in the 3rd quarter. XIX century on Sennaya Square.

Until 1917, the village of Unzha was better known to the people under the name of the Old City. In the archive photo below, we can see what the Old Town looked like at the beginning of the 20th century. What a big village. This is all the city of Makaryev is "to blame".

Well, we're back to our days. Having parked near the pre-revolutionary building, we proceed to sightseeing in Unzha. By the way, this two-story house is also visible in the old picture (above). Judging by the featureless windows and closed shutters, "Manufactured goods" The population is not served, and for a very long time. Despite the large number of abandoned houses and closed public buildings, i.e. Despite the typical, to put it mildly, sad picture of the rural life of modern Russia, Unzha is a residential village: there are many houses and inhabitants in it. And, God forbid, its history will last for more than one century (although, according to anyone, this is unlikely).

The first point we find ourselves on the main market square (in the past).
Where before us on a small hill appears the Church of Macarius Zheltovodsky, she is the Nativity of Christ, built in 1822.

As you can see, the church also had a bell tower. However, it collapsed in the mid-1990s.

By the way, services in the Makaryevskaya church never stopped. Even in the Soviet years, they took communion there, I suppose, more often than now, because the parish consisted not only of the crowded Unzha, but also of neighboring, now disappeared, villages.

In the meantime, having rounded the hill, we descend to another "mountain". I must say right away that the place is amazingly amazing in its energy. However, I don’t really believe in this, but there, definitely, it blows for centuries. Before our eyes is not just a hill or a hill - it is a settlement with a military engineering earthen structure of the 15th century. It was here that in ancient times there was a city-fortress. In the Chronicles of the Makariev Unzhensky Monastery (1888) I.K. Khersonsky, a member of the Kostroma Scientific Archival Commission, it is mentioned that in 1522 the Tatars attacked Unzha. There is a description of this battle, in all likelihood, which took place right here.

The serpentine road goes around the rampart of the settlement and rises up, where in the center there is a recess with a temple located in it. Of course, centuries ago, rampart walls were taller and more powerful. On the way, we met an Unzha guard (though originally from Moscow, but his soul, his soul, is from there).

It looks incomparable (not a guard, but everything around). When you realize that you have just climbed the walls of an ancient settlement, where a wooden fortress existed a long time ago. And now, although modest, but worthy of attention, there is an abandoned two-hundred-year-old temple. It’s a pity the wind picked up and everything tilted in the frame. On the site of a stone temple there was a wooden church of the 16th century. Today, the Cathedral of the Resurrection Church of the former city of Unzhi, built in 1810, appears before the eyes.

Eh, the clouds are missing. But we will dilute the dullness of the sky with history. At the beginning of the 14th century, the danger of an attack on the borders of the already formed Moscow state by the evil Cheremis decreased. And Unzha turned into a center that controlled the trade that the Volga region conducted with the North along the Unzha River. In the spiritual charter of Prince Vasily Dmitrievich of 1405, the city is named "Unzhenskaya tamga"- a toll collector (tamga). However, in the 16th century, Unzha again had to carry out a military mission. As a result of the collapse of the Golden Horde, the Kazan Khanate was formed on the Middle Volga, and the Tatars, together with the Cheremis (what would they!) began to raid the outskirts of the Muscovite state, including the Galich district. Unzha stood in the way. Sheets half-decayed from time "Galician chronicler" say: “In the summer of 7029 May on the 26th day ( 1521 - approx.) Kazan Tatars came with Cheremis to the Unzha volosts and to the Parthians ( residents of the city of Parfenyev) and committed a lot of evil and was full of mischief, and others were gone. And unzhenya came to the passage and a lot of Tatars were bishas and many Tatars and Cheremis were beaten and the whole captivity was otyasha ( selected) and on the bones of the stash ( sealed the victory)". On the back of the same Chronicle Sheet there is another entry: “On the same summer of the month of June, on the 4th day, the Tatars came near Unzhu and approached the city and set fire to the bridge and the gate. And help the Lord God to the unzhans of the Tatars a lot of beating squeakers and guns ... "

But over time, the former glory of Unzhi departed. A description of 1616 (with abbreviations) has been preserved: “The city of Unzha is decrepit, on the Unzha River, on a scree, and there are entrance gates and other secret ones and four towers, and in the city there is a cathedral church in the name of the Resurrection ... yes a jail ... in prison, there is a hut moving out, and a customs hut, and the court of sovereigns, and clerks are placed on it, and the zemstvo court, and foreigners pan Pyata and comrades stand in it ( Poles exiled to Unzha)". In addition, there were six farmsteads for stopping visitors from different volosts, six gunners' courtyards, an executioner's courtyard, coachmen's courtyards and 14 shops. And in total - 39 yards.

In Soviet times, the church building was adapted to the needs of the local collective farm. Therefore, the interior did not survive, the painting became damp.

It is worth paying attention to how curiously the second tier of the bell tower is decorated.

It is getting dark, there is no time to indulge in sensations for a long time. Therefore, we rush to the iron box on wheels and quietly (otherwise it is impossible) head to the huge mound visible in the neighborhood. And on the way we explore the historical buildings of the village.

The first administrative building of the Old Town is the City Hall building, where the merchant council first met, and then the city government (on the bottom photo). Date of construction 1861. In the Soviet years, its walls were occupied by a school. Since we touched on the topic of education, let's dwell on it in a little more detail. In the autumn of 1873 in Unzha, in the old house of priest Shiryaev, a three-year school was opened for the first time. The first teacher was Nikolai Grigorievich (surname unknown), who treated children well. But priest Vasily, who taught the law of God, generously rewarded the guys with clicks. In 1910, a two-year school was opened. However, after 1914 the situation in the village deteriorated, including in terms of education. An excerpt from the memoirs of a local resident: “... They dressed badly, walked in bast shoes, the clothes were homespun. There was no paper, so in the classroom they used various magazines, and wrote with beet juice ... "

The stone building where we parked upon arrival turned out to be the house of the middle of the 19th century, the local merchant I.I. Rodionovsky (pictured below). In 1918, a school of the 2nd stage was located within its walls. In 1926-27. the School of Peasant Youth was opened here, in 1935 the ShKM was transferred to the house of Zakharyin and became seven years old. In the 1970s, the contingent of students numbered 500-600 people, so the school was located in as many as five buildings. Imagine! Some students were half a dozen. During this period, a boarding school was opened for older students from neighboring villages. The Unzha school has repeatedly been a participant and winner of the regional and all-Union Exhibition of Economic Achievements. And in 1980, all the guys moved to the new modern school building. By the way, in 2002 there were only 82 students, and not at all because new schools were built in the neighborhood. Now, I think, at best, there will be five dozen.

We follow further and pass the house of the tradesman Ivan Semyonovich Shabarov, built in 1852.
In the Soviet years, it housed a village club, then a Kindergarten. Now abandoned.

Photo taken in 1983. May 1 rally, in my opinion. Just near the bourgeois house presented above. It should be noted that I am especially grateful to Galina Suslova, a native of Unzhi, who remembers, loves and honors the history of the village, for providing photographs and information about the life of the village.

The city of Unzha was for a long time a significant trading center, and only with the formation of the city of Makaryev in 1778, which is 18 versts from Unzha, did it begin to decline. In 1861, Unzha is mentioned in the following way: “... except for the earthen rampart, inside which the inhabitants took refuge during the invasion of the Kazan Tatars, this city has no other historical monuments. ... neither in trade nor in industrial terms is anything remarkable. There are 221 private wooden houses, 5 shops and 1446 inhabitants in the city.” At that time, 5 nobles, 32 representatives of the clergy and 149 merchants lived in the city. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Old Town, although there were 1284 people, a post office, a fire station, a hospital, several shops and large fairs were held in it, it was still a provincial town whose population was engaged in gardening. Most of the urban population (tailors, shoe-makers, artisans) usually went away for a long time for seasonal work, many to the Urals and Siberia "to roll felted shoes". A handful of rich people, merchants and priests (Sheshins, Rodionovskys, Shabarovs) followed the rules of all life. In their hands was the land, forests, meadows and all trade.

In the meantime, we are passing by the house of the Lyakins family (on the top photo).
And in this house (bottom photo), the Muravyov family lived in one half, and the Korepovs in the other.

From the memoirs of I.I. Shvakova: “From the age of 12 I had to go to work as a laborer, because I was born into a poor family, in the village of Lysitsa ( merged with Unzha - approx.). There were five of us in the family, and we had little land, bread was enough for half a year. The older brother remained to cultivate, and my share - to go to the farm laborers. For years I worked for the kulaks on their land plots until I was 22, but in the winter they took me to the burner. Poverty was, of course, great. He married in 1924 (all the clothes were someone else's on me), he also took a farm laborer in Bykovo - Anastasia Petrovna ... And in 1928 collectivization began in our places. For the poor, this was a salvation from hunger, from the poor. They worked with great enthusiasm, with the hope of a new, happier and more satisfying life ... It must be taken into account that there were no fields around Unzha, so the forests had to be uprooted and plowed up. And the people - the burghers, who for centuries lived only gardening, had no idea about arable farming. I had to teach and plow, and sow, and mow, and thresh, grow flax ... ". Prior to this, most ordinary residents could buy bread in merchant grocers or exchange it for products obtained from their gardens (onions, cabbage, etc.). On all sides of Unzha there were lands of landowners, merchants and clergy, while the poor were deprived of arable and hay plots.

The building of the Village Council, on Sovetskaya Street. It has not been functioning properly for a long time.

After the October Revolution, access to education was opened for the general population of the city. In the first years of the new government, the teachers and the rural intelligentsia did a great deal of educational work among the population. With their participation, there were reading huts, a people's house, in which performances and concerts were regularly staged. Young people were actively involved in sports: they built sports grounds on their own. In 1935, on the basis of several farms, the collective farm "New Way" began to work. In 1952, electricity appeared in the village. Clubs and selmags opened. His creamery made delicious cheese, milk, sour cream. In the photo: Unzha residents, mid-1950s.

In May 1966, a monument was erected "To the Warriors of the Compatriots of the Unzhensky Village Council, Who Died in the Second World War 1941-1945".

The next point we went to another part of the village of Unzhi - to the mound, as the locals call it. Previously, his entire field was occupied by a collective farm garden. And now ... A hill, an open huge space and a lonely old church visible in the distance. All this penetrates to the depths of the soul.

We shorten the path to the fry by moving across the field by car. But after a while we understand, in order to really feel the atmosphere, in order to feel the spirit of this metsa, we get out and stomp on our two feet to the abandoned temple, thinking about the history and origin of this mound along the way. But its origin is still a mystery to us. It is only known that in the past there was the village of Voznesenskoye, which was considered part of the Old Town of Unzhi.

From history, it turned out to be remarkable for me that in 1670 in Unzha there was a detachment of Stepan Razin under the command of Ilya Ponomarev. While in Unzha, Ponomarev forced the zemstvo headman Taraska Grigoriev to gather the people, and priest Timofey to read "Appeal to the people of Stepan Razin". Having learned about the existence of the Makaryevsky monastery, the detachment went there, but on the way they were met by the troops of the Moscow governor Vasily Narbekov and were defeated. However, the detachment was not completely defeated, and consisting of 400 cavalry and 300 foot soldiers retreated through the territory of the Kologrivsky district to the city of Sudai ( we were there too) and put him down. Ponomarev left the foreman of the Miron Mumarin detachment to lead the siege, and he himself, with nine fighters, went to Totma to recruit new forces and find weapons. But on December 11, 1670, on a deaf forest road near Totma, he was caught by a detachment of the Totma governor Rtishchev and the next day he was hanged near Totma on the bank of the river. Sukhony. The foreman Miron Mumarin from Suday reached Veliky Ustyug, where he was also caught and sent to Moscow. They were probably executed there. Eternal memory to the national heroes-robbers!

As long as they remembered the old times, slowly blown from all sides by the winds, they finally got to the "stone fortress" - the Church of the Ascension, built in 1777.

Outwardly, the temple is modest and without architectural frills, but there is something ancient and powerful in this simplicity.

This is how the Ascension Church looked decently in the beginning. XX century.

In Soviet times, they tried to save this attraction. Until now, a metal plaque from those times hangs on the western facade: "Comrade! Ascension Church is an architectural monument. Don't destroy it. She decorates your area. And the wooden covering of the domes is the only one in the region.”

As can be seen from the photo, the church domes were covered with plowshares. And Sasha and Yura somehow managed to get into the central drum.

The only fragment of the painting survived from the interior, depicting a certain composition with Jesus Christ. I don't remember this iconography.

It’s already five in the evening, taking into account the cloudiness, it’s getting dark earlier than usual, and we still have 140 km of the way to the place of spending the night, represented by the city of Kologriv, which you can read about here:. Therefore, it only remains for us to say goodbye to the temple, to the village of Unzhey, promise her to return (which we did this summer) and go to the car. Along the way, I will tell another living story. Although there are many unimagined life stories: how the new government came to the region, how the Unzhen people supported the counter-revolutionaries, but changed their minds, there were also difficult times in the 1930s, etc. etc. But to cover them all within the framework of one post, well, it’s not realistic at all. Therefore, I will tell you the most interesting for me.

From the memoirs of R. Usov: “... a lot of people were walking along the village street. Icons were carried in front of the procession, and the ministers of the church led it ... Everyone sang prayers. Suddenly, there was a hitch at the end of the column... a scuffle broke out. The gendarmes, walking along the columns of the column, rushed to pacify. Oh, and they got it hard. My neighbor Petka and I subsequently saw how one of the officers was lying in a ditch. And serve him right. Later, from the conversations of adults, we learned that the mobilized people started this fight. They were sent to the First World War. People did not want to fight for the tsar... The war already aggravated the plight of the peasants...”. So there were in Unzha both the glory of ancient times, and the heyday of the medieval city, and the decline, when the Old City turned into a quiet gardening rural wilderness. Then Unzha revived for half a century and began to live a stormy life, new streets and houses appeared. But the next period has come, the current one, which is worse than even pre-revolutionary times, because it leads to the extinction of the Russian village with more than eight centuries of history.

Site of T. Shvakova "Village Unzha"
- Orthodox churches of the Kostroma province
- material of VKontakte groups

Unzha River, Unzhenskoye settlement, Makariev, ancestral mounds, blue Kostroma taiga. This is in that part of Russia, which is not talked about on the pages of glossy magazines and on TV news. On the border of the Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod region there is a wonderful, lost, patriarchal world, where children on the streets of the villages themselves come up to you and say “Hello”, girls with slightly slanted eyes, red hair and freckles smile sweetly at you, the peasants are sedate and laconic, and the guest in a sign of a special location can bring precious Meryan black salt.

This is the Unzha River, a green sea of ​​forests with occasional dusty roads and veins of icy rivers, sometimes drying up in summer.

The old Vyatka tract near the village of Deshukovo. Photo from http://valuh.livejournal.com

The capital of the Unzha region is the city of Makaryev. There are no trains to Makariev. To get to this former land of timber merchants, millionaire peasants, schismatics and sectarians, folk artists and strong sorcerers is possible only by car. Almost 200 kilometers from Kostroma along broken roads through Sudislavl, Ostrovskoye, Kady. In winter, smoke from stoves, and in summer, patriarchal Makariev will meet you with grassy streets and domes of churches.

The settlement, which later grew into a city, was formed around the monastery founded in 1439 by the Monk Macarius Zheltovodsky, who came here after the devastation of the Zheltovodsky monastery by the Tatar Khan Ugu-Mohammed, where he was rector.

Unzha river in spring. Photo from http://valuh.livejournal.com

Unzha on which the city stands is a river of the ancient Meryan-Mari borderland. The right bank is Meryan, the left is Mari. So it was in the early Middle Ages, so it was a hundred years ago.

Unzha river..
it contains crayfish and fish
bear Meryan names:
Ayma and Layvi, Pashay and Kirash..
Unzha river..
Unzha river..
Paraphrased by Denis Osokin. "Oatmeal"

• ethnic groups

The formation of the Kostroma Mary and the Vetluzh Mari, the autochthons of the current Kostroma land, developed on the basis of two close Finno-Ugric cultures of the early Iron Age: Ananyinskaya in the Volga-Kama region, from which the Azelinskaya culture later developed, and Dyakovskaya in the Volga-Oka interfluve. Among the Kostroma Meryans, the influence of the Dyakovo culture, layered on the Proto-Sami culture of the more ancient autochthonous population, is more noticeable, while the features of the Azelinsky prevail among the Vetluzhsky Mari.

• Kostroma Mari

Merya and Marie are relatives. Even their self-name, it seems. In the northwestern dialect of the Mari, the self-name of the people, in contrast to the literary version of "Mari", sounds "mӓrӹ",. To the question "whose are you?" Vetluzhsky Mari answer "mӓrӹn", that is, Mari, which in Slavic transcription is written as "meren". This is one of the arguments of the supporters of cultural closeness, if not the identity of Meryans and Mari. Among them are such well-known historians and linguists as M. Vasmer, T. S. Semyonov, S. K. Kuznetsov, D. A. Korsakov.

Merya. Reconstruction by Ivan Kuptsov

But the matter is not only in the similarity of self-names of peoples. Too much intertwined between them in the thickets of the Kostroma taiga, the reeds of countless rivers and swamps of its swamps. We will tell about this in this material, having made a virtual trip to Unzha.

Unzha stretches. Photo from http://valuh.livejournal.com

• Unzha river

The richest centuries-old history and culture of the ancient Unzha land, the presence of many monuments of archeology, amazing toponymy and ethnography - are an endless untouched field of activity for historians, archaeologists, local historians, folklorists.

• Myths of the Finno-Ugric peoples

For example, the folklore layer about "pans" is still poorly studied, which is one of the universal Meryan and Mari ethnic markers.

Numerous legends about the "lords", who in later times were identified with the "Lithuanian thieves' people" of the Time of Troubles, retain, as we will see below, elements of legends that developed in a much earlier era.

In ancient times, according to one of the legends, in the vicinity of the village of Vala, next to Makariev, lived "gentlemen", people of large build, who spent their whole lives in military campaigns and robberies.

Treasure hunters in burial mounds, on the banks of rivers actually found numerous large bones, weapons and various noisy decorations. In the legends, "pans" are clearly thought of as natives of the region who did not know the Orthodox faith, since neither crosses nor other images of the Christian cult are found in the burials.
In the forests of the Vetluzhsko-Unzha interfluve, there is such a legend:

"pany" are not our faith, people who once lived in these places in the old days. They attacked the inhabitants, took away the cattle. Local residents tried several times to drive them away, but to no avail, but could not overcome them, because they were very strong and well armed. So far, thanks to one quick-witted person, the "lords" have not been killed. After the lords, rings and jewelry were preserved for a long time among the people, but now they are difficult to meet, because they were uncomfortable to wear - they are large and therefore converted into other things. (Recorded by the priest v. Ilyinsky)

By their origin, all of the above stories are combined with identical legends existing from Mari El to Karelia. In them we see one Finnish mythological motif.

They are similar to the earliest Finno-Ugric legends about giants, which go back to the ideas of our people about the first ancestors. It can be seen from them that the artistic consciousness of the tribal society was preserved in later periods, slightly lagging behind social life, therefore the activities of later folk heroes were reflected in the traditional figurative form.

Archaic carving. Photo from http://valuh.livejournal.com

• Language

The ancient language of the ancestors - "lords" was not forgotten by the locals. In Unzha, in the middle of the 20th century, an amazing language called “Zhgon” was spread.

The Zhgon language is one of the so-called "conditional languages" of the Volga artisans, who used such languages ​​as special corporate means of communication in order to make conversations incomprehensible to others. For the first time, the presence of a special language among the Kostroma sherstobits was noted by V.I. Dal. The regional and ethnic features of this language are an interesting topic, which, unfortunately, is not touched upon by specialists, and meanwhile, Zhgon contains quite a few Meryan and Mari vocabulary.

Here, for example, is the Mari-Meryan vocabulary in Zhgonsky from Bondaletov's collection, occasionally with our additions.

Inhabitants of Makarev. Typical Finno-Ugric faces. Photo: Tatyana Gaposhkina.

Arbez, arbezia- boy; arbezka - a child; arba - child, boy; arbushka - a girl; Erbez, Erbez- boy; erbezenok - a boy, a child; erbezenochek - a child, a baby; erbezka - son; erbishka, erbishechka - boy, boy, boy; lure a yerbezenka - give birth. Mariysk. rveze - baby, easy rveze - boy
Bashkovo, Vashkovo- soon, quickly; vashketno, vashketno - quickly; more heady, more heady - faster, faster; head, vashketny - fast, fast; smarter - faster; Bashketit- hurry. Mariysk. vashkash - to hurry; vashken - hastily: vashke - soon.
Valgazh- day; belgazh (+ a clear influence of the Russian word "white") - chalk, paper, sugar, snow, hail, all white; belgazhovy - white; belgazhovye - rolls; volgazh, volgazhovy, Valgazhovy- daylight, white, light; valgazhovye - day; volgazhenit, volgazhetitsya - lighten up. Mariysk. volgydo - light, light; volgyzhash - dawn.
cotton wool- grandmother. Mariysk. vate - wife, woman.
View- water, river; vit - water, rain; view hlit - it's raining; twist, see - wash; to see, to see- wash; wit, view - lake, pond; povititsya - wash, swim; vyvyvit- wet; wind - pour; twisted, prominent - wet; vidnik, vitnik - well; Vityachiy- well; twisted - river; twisted - steamer; vital - a bucket; Vitelnik- towel; winding, winding, twined, twisted, twisted - wet. Mariysk wood (y - upsilon = zhitsa) - water, water.
Vychur, vysur- five; fancy xov - a nickel, 5 kopecks; fancy - five; artsy - the fifth; fancy - five of us. Mariysk. vych, vizt - five; vichyr - nickel.
Goguza, goguza, goguzen- old man, grandfather, father; goguzny - senior. Mariysk. oh shon gugyza, dial. kugyzai - old man; shon go - old man.
Yelashty, glashty, elanki- trousers, pants; elashty kokurny (lit. pants second) - underpants; underpants - underpants. Mariysk. yolash - pants.

• Toponymy

Meryansk settlement. Photo: Galina Suslova.

Around Makariev, as well as hundreds of years ago, untrodden forests, swamps, rivers and ancient villages with bizarre names stretch.

• villages

Pelegovo- from the personal name Peleg, pele - offspring.
Amanovo- from the personal name Aman, Amanai - apparently, it seems.
Karykovo- karyk dial. cutting, notch in the wall.
Shemyatino- from the personal name of Shemyat, Shemyatai - short, short.
Lopalovo- lop - lowland.
Shohra- Shohra - a forest in a swamp.
Ileikino- from the personal name Iley, Ileyka - viable, young.
Kukuy- kukui, kuk - a hill, a hill above the river.
Meleshevo- from the personal name Melesh - close to the heart.
Samylovo- from the personal name Samyl, derived from the Christian Samuel.
Sokornovo- sokor, sokyr - blind.
breakage- sex - ancient fin - berry. related Mari polan - viburnum. berry place.
Shohra- swampy forest.

Neya River. Photo from the site: http://ko44.ru

• Rivers

Unzha- from the ancient Permian - unja - a stream, a river.
Tomsha- tomasha, tymasha - noise.
Nereg- ner, nergo - damp, wet, swampy.
Shoksha- shoksho - warm, non-freezing.
Poda- ancient Perm. poda - root, escape.
Shomokhta- shom - hydrobase, from other Ural catfish-stream, Ukht or Okhta - hydroformant-drag.
bunk- Koi - ancient Perm. - genus, kinship, ha - hydroformant.
Nozoma- from ancient Perm. nez, tender - lowland, hollow, swampy place, ma - hydroformant.
Vodgat- wud - water.
Pizvas- piz, pizh - the root of ancient Perm. origin meaning an unclean place, formant you - possibly a modified leader - root, source.
Sholoksha- shola - left, ksha, ksa - hydroformant.
Kus- body, kus-spruce.
Tomsha- tomsho - pleasant.
Yachronka- yahr - lake, pond.
Volomsha- ancient f-y topo-based ox, shaft - failure, valley, sha - hydroformant.
Yurongash- yur, yyr - ancient Perm. topographic base - whirlpool, deep place in water, depth, ha - hydroformant.
Koklash- kokla - medium.
Vozhora- vozh - root, vozhora - rhizome; root system.
Lahtoga- laht, lyakht - Prialto-Finnish. water source.
Toyehta- ancient f-y. toy - support, support, rod, top, xta - hydroformant.
Lehta- lectash - go out, go out; leave (leave) the limits of smth.
Wonda- vandas, wondas - a bush, a sprout, a handle, a kind of large top, muzzles from vines for catching fish in ravines.
Shileksha- shi - ancient f-y hydrobase. ksha - hydroformant.

Residents of the Makariev side. Photo: Petr Bushmanov.

• Onomastics

And modern Russian local surnames go back to ancient pre-Christian names and nicknames reminiscent of the recent times, when Merya and Mari, who lived here, still spoke their native language.

Alyabyshev- the Muscovite worldly name Alabysh has been found in letters since the 15th century. It is curious that one of the Alabishs (1556), a coachman, was the son of Kolob and, obviously, had the surname Perepechin from his grandfather - an example of traditional generic names for similar objects or calams of native languages. (Fasmer). Alyabysh, olyabysh - a dough product: among the inhabitants of the upper Volga region this is a pie, among the inhabitants of Vyatka - a bun.
Sheshin- shesh - a pit barn for drying sheaves before weeding. Meryan.-Mar.
Mazin- maza, maza - beautiful, beautiful. From the personal name of Mazai. Meryan.-Mar.
Ulegin- coals, coals - simple, coarse leather shoes, arkhang., vologda, perm., ulevi pl. "peasant shoes", perm., unegi "top boots made of reindeer skin", sib., uligi "soft women's shoes without heels", petergofsk. (Bulich, IORYAS 1, 330). According to the linguist Kalima, related to Fin. uilo, uilokas "half boots with a wide, turned-up sole".
Shurkans- 1. shurka - crest, crest; protruding tuft of feathers in birds. Meryan.-Mar. 2. Meryan-Mari women's headdress "shurka". The name comes from the word "shur" - horn, "shurka" - literally translated "horned"
Sholyakov- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Sholyak - little brother.
Teleshev- body - winter, winter. Meryan.-Mar.
Konyshev- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Konysh - kon - house, + ysh - suff. Home.
Vagurin- vaga, vaga - lever, pole. Meryan.-Mar.
Shiganov- Shiga - fish ruff. Meryan.-Mar.
Shabanov- shaban - sour, viscous, boggy. Meryan.-Mar.
Shabarov- shaba - a child. Meryan.-Mar.
Kargashin- kargash - curse, curse. Meryan.-Mar.
Mardasov- Meryan.-Mar. the worldly name Marda is the middle one. from other Finn. mardas is a masculine being.
Kokyrev
Simanov- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Siman - ruddy, young.
Tetenev- from the nickname Aunt. It originates from the verb "aunt", the meaning of which is V.I. Dahl in the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" defines it as follows: "to caress, pump, amuse a child, babysit." From aunt, aunt - child, childish. Meryan.-Mar.
Chamin- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Cham, Chamai - cham, tsam - foal
Kataev- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Katai - kata-th - ancient. Finnish persistent, hardy
Shinov- shin, shun - clay. Meryan.-Mar.
Tolmakov- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Tolmak. From tolmash, tolash - arrival, arrival, coming.
Kokurin- kokir, kokur mouth. half a penny, a grosz. Meryan.-Mar.
Seryshev- gray - a letter; text with a message to send to someone. Seryshe - adj. from serash 2. adj. writing. Meryan.-Mar.
Shabarov- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Shabar. From Volga-Finnish. shabra - neighbor, comrade.
Susnin- susna - a pig. Meryan.-Mar.
Chelikov- Chelyk - a goddess, a holy place. Meryan.-Mar.
Koryogin- the surname is formed from the toponym - Koryoga - a river flowing in a gorge, a ravine.
Pagin- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Pagin. From pag + in - ancient. perm. Finnish - small fish, offspring.
Talamanov- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Talaman, Talai, Talim. From tale - strong, fast, courageous. Meryan.-Mar.
Shadrunov- Meryan.-Mar. the worldly name of Shadra, Shadrun. From shadyr, shadra - pockmarked. Meryan.-Mar.
Shalagin
Vizyaev- Meryan.-Mar. worldly name Shala, Shalaga. From shala - a brush of tow, translated sms. hello bow. Meryan.-Mar.

Having completely switched to the Russian language a little over two hundred years ago, in the territory of the present Kostroma region, Merya and Mari have not physically disappeared anywhere. This, as we can see, is evidenced by the anthropological type common among the modern inhabitants of the Unzha land, Finno-Ugric surnames, features of the language, toponymy. The hidden Finno-Ugria still lives and lives among us.

The village of Unzha is named after the tributary of the Volga - the Unzha River (from the Turkic languages ​​\u200b\u200b-, according to another version -).

Unzha is an ancient Slavic settlement that appeared in the 11th-12th centuries. According to historians, Unzha arose under Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest between 1176 and 1212. The chronicle mentions this settlement as a city in 1218.

In the 12th-13th centuries it was a stronghold for defense against the Tatars. In the 14th-19th centuries, the city carried out a trading mission. In 1928 a collective farm was formed. Currently, Unzha has a SEC, a district hospital, a school, a recreation center, and a post office. In the village there are monuments of architecture (including three churches, one of which is active), history and nature.

Unzha is the old city. What is known about him?

In the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron (1902 edition) it is written:

In the work of Khersonsky (a member of the Kostroma Scientific Archival Commission) (edition of 1888) it is mentioned that in 1552 Kazan Tatars visited the city of Unzha.

In 1670, there was a detachment of Stepan Razin in Unzha under the command of Ilya Ivanovich Ponomarev. A detachment from the Volga walked along the Vetluga River and then through the territory of the present Timoshin village council went to the city of Unzha. While in Unzha, Ponomarev forced the zemstvo head Taraska Grigoriev to gather the people, and priest Timofey to read. Having learned about the existence of the Makaryevsky monastery, the detachment went there, but on the way, somewhere between Unzha and Makaryev, they were met by the troops of the Moscow governor Vasily Narbekov and were defeated. The historian Solovyov writes that (vol. XI, ch. 5. History of Russia). Khersonsky, in his work on the development of the annals of the Makaryevsky monastery, argued that Ponomarev's detachment was defeated on the head. In reality, as can be seen from the collection of authors L. Belov, V. Kastorsky and N. Sokolov on the history of the city of Galich (Kostroma publishing house 1959), the detachment was not defeated, but consisting of 400 cavalry and 300 foot soldiers through the territory of Kologrivskoye county retreated to Sudai and laid siege to it. Ponomarev left the foreman of the detachment, Miron Fedorovich Mumarin, to lead the siege, and he himself, on five occasions with nine fighters, went to Totma to recruit new forces and find weapons. But on December 11, 1670, on a deaf forest road near Totma, he was caught by a detachment of the Totma governor Rtishchev and on December 12, 1670, he was hanged near Totma on the banks of the Sukhona River. The foreman Miron Mumarin from Sudai reached Veliky Ustyug, where he was caught and sent to Moscow with several assistants.

Before the transformation of the Makaryevskaya monastery settlement into the city of Makaryev (1778), Unzha had a voivodeship (county administration). But the monastic patrimony had a royal charter dated October 20, 1626, in which it was said:.

The city of Unzha was for a long time a significant trading center and only with the formation of the city of Makariev began to decline. Unfortunately, there are no specific data on the size of trade in the past about Unzha. But some idea can be had from the available information about trade in the Makaryevskaya monastery settlement. So, according to the chronicle data of 1667, trade was widely conducted in the Makarievskaya Sloboda. Every year in January and July fairs were held and every Friday there were fairs. At the time of the fairs, the monastery alone rented 267 shops, 15 huts, 8 huts and 2 closets. There were 13 rows of shops. Merchants from Yuryevets, Galich, Unzha, Kineshma, the village of Voroneya, Nerekhta, Reshma, Plyos, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod and from Moscow came to the fairs. Even English merchants came to the fairs with tobacco. It must be assumed that in Unzha, before the formation of the city of Makariev, trade was more lively than in the monastery settlement.

There are two monuments of old architecture in Unzha - the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of the 16th century. and the settlement - a military engineering earthen structure of the 15th century, one of the most powerful partially preserved in the Kostroma region.

January 26th, 2015

So my short cycle of notes about the Kologriv region is coming to an end. The beginning was here and there. But one cannot do without a story about the Unzha River. There will be more tourist information here, tracks and maps with references in the application, but there will also be few photos, though they are more and more landscaped.

My guide through the forests of the Kostroma region, the director of the Kologrivsky Les reserve, Pavel, asked me every time: “Well, why are you all in the forest, but you feed mosquitoes in the Christmas trees, let's go to the river, to the open space. Let's go rafting from the sandy hill on which the fortress was Old Kologriv! By winding meanders, through clear water we will reach the new Kologriv." Finally we made up our minds. We took a small inflatable boat for two, but only so that a backpack with photographic equipment would enter there, prepared a small three-horsepower silent four-stroke engine just in case, and went, for five days.

Seeing our heavy belongings for two, the inspectors decided to give the travelers a ride, loaded the boat onto a trailer. Behind the Unzha River, behind the Kologrivsky Bridge, you need to move to the right, towards Varzenga and Shablovo along a wide dirt grader road. Here the abandoned village of Pavlovo flashed on the left, and Burdovo, popular with summer summer residents, on the left. Houses in Burdovo go right at the river banks, so the village does not die. The wooden sculpture waved its hand, pointing the way to the Efim Chestnyakov Museum and the Efimov Key.

The village of Chermenino has a convenient slope, the car can get right to the water. Silence, Tall firs of the right bank, growing on the hills, darken, talking about the imminent evening. Almost inaudibly, we start our way up, past the hill where Old Kologriv was. We will climb it tomorrow, in the morning, the weather promises to be good.

Pavel hurries to climb up to the village of Vyaltsevo in order to put up a modest tent on the shore and spend the night. We are going along the river in low water period (dry period), we should not be afraid of a sharp rise in water, as happens in mountain or Far Eastern rivers. So the solid and clean beach is very suitable for parking, the wind blows mosquitoes away from the open place. The fact that we have a gas burner with us helps us not to cut the willow on the shore (it is still of little use), and we take all the garbage produced with us.

As one famous landscape photographer says: "I take out my camera when the sun has already disappeared below the horizon." This is just such a case, the sky and the reflections of the setting sun illuminate the river with a large reflector, in which the fish are splashing. The splashing of fish and the play of water on the rifts near the stones were the only sounds that could be heard. There is not even a subtle squeak of the ubiquitous Central Russian mosquito.

But in the morning there is an opportunity to inspect the channel. The river becomes noticeably shallower upstream.

Let's try to figure out why not only the Unzha, but also dozens of other rivers of the Middle Strip, the North, is getting shallower from year to year. The upper reaches of the Oka and Don used to be navigable, steamboats of the Samolet partnership known from the works of the classics went to Kologriv. There are several different opinions, we talk about this with Pavel. He is a local resident, grew up on the river and is well aware of its character and the changes that have taken place over the past 40+ years.

According to O. CHIZHOV, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, the mole rafting of timber, which began on the Unzha and other rivers of the Vologda and Kostroma regions, was to blame. He himself was among the researchers who designed the use of this method in 1928. Here is what he writes. “Such great changes in the state of the river are explained by the fact that since 1930 they switched to mole rafting - the forest went in bulk, in separate logs. I was then, in fact, a boy, I was 25 years old, and did not understand what consequences this could lead to .Yes, and the head of the party, engineer V.V. Tsinzerling, and the head of the rafting detachment, engineer A.V. approx. author), I think, also did not imagine the consequences of the mole alloy, considered it a temporary measure - for the sake of the speedy implementation of the first five-year plan (in four years, as you know). And the consequences turned out to be terrible, and not only for the Unzha and its tributaries, but also for many other raftable rivers in the north of Russia.

This is how an artist from the town of Manturovo saw it, down the Unzha.

In early spring, along the high water, the logs collided into the river and the water carried them down, they were almost uncontrollable. Many drowned, some were covered with sand or thrown ashore. This was not followed.

Until now, in some places you can see the bottom, covered with trunks from the Kologriv forest. The river was chopping, many cut down trees reduced the amount of water carried from forest streams. True, some scientists refute this theory. But still, for a couple of decades, the coast could look like this.

Now the trunks along the banks are almost all overgrown with willow, which during the ice drift does not allow clearing the shallowing channel. However, the path for a kayak, a small boat among the deserted shores, is still free, the current is quite fast, the water is clean and transparent. The frame shows a tree trunk, preserved from the middle of the last century.

So, after stories from the past and discussion of the theories of shallowing, we reach a large sandy cliff, behind which was probably the mythical Old Kologriv. On the map of the Kostroma governorship of 1792, it is present, on the map of Strelbitsky in 1874 it bears the name of the town of Gorka, on the Soviet topographic map of 1989 it has already disappeared, the edge of the river is overgrown with forest.

The break is impressive. On the sandy hill, spruces and fir trees grow at various angles, on the top there are already old, almost hundred-year-old coniferous trees. The angle of elevation, in my opinion, is almost 70 degrees. You have to carefully climb the hollow on the left, trying not to break.

In steep outcrops soil layers are clearly visible, in sandy layers I find several fossils.

Some of them remind me of pictures from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which tells about the ancient fauna of the seas of the Jurassic period.

Here on the right is a white tube in cross section - probably the "damn finger" known to every schoolboy of the seventies. I remember that I collected them in the suburbs, in the spruce forests of the Klin district. Let these ones lie down here, otherwise there will be nothing to show to other guests of the steep slope.

An anthill on top of the hill. In the moss layer, the old ant road is clearly visible, along which the system of forest "hostels" communicates with each other or is settled when the family becomes too large.

But the sun, time, current call us further, to the next stop. The next cliff on the left bank, no less high, but inhabited. Gazebo, equipped fireplace offers the next camp to do here. I go down the cliff to get things and a black kite, probably a young one, literally swoops down on me. He circles around, takes an interest, tries to remember a strange creature with a large white pipe, and then sits down on the shallows of the opposite bank. I distinguish the horseback by the tail, which has a noticeable triangular cut inward.

This parking lot is located in a tall pine forest just above the village of Kolokhta. Opposite - a sandy spit and a beach on which there are no human traces. The water is clear, you can see the bottom.

And if you walk a few hundred meters ahead, you can see traces of tree cutting. Now this trade is almost not used, and earlier pine resin was mined in this way in order to make rosin. Or turpentine, a therapeutic and educational remedy for laziness and various other diseases. Usually, with a special cutter, a lot of cuts were made along the bark in the form of a Christmas tree, top down, the resin flowed into a special container.

Our boat departs from a tall pine forest.

Ahead, beyond Kolokhta, another world awaits us, damp and shady. Elniki begin.

The coastal strip meets with thickets of horsetails of such splendor that I make a note for memory. This is all because the humidity of the river is adjacent to the sunny, illuminated slope. Probably, it is good to take photos of insects or girls in the dew here, in the style of Yulia Vtyurina or Rimantas Dikhavicius. As they say, to whom that is closer.

I am content with the water striders that have accumulated near the sunbeam that breaks through the paws of the fir trees. At the risk of falling right into a small pool, I make about 500 frames of chaotically moving creatures from the lower point. And in my viewfinder I have spaceships, an early Lucas with Star Wars, and a young Luke Akiwalker. Of the entire series, only in one frame did the position of the water striders form an organized star patrol.

The river then becomes shallow and we get out of the boat, lead it on the reins in high wading boots, then we fall into a rapid. The motor is off. We silently move forward, I am with binoculars and a telephoto lens on my nose, Pavel is on the steering wheel. And of course we see a lot of birds. There are a lot, and downstream, closer to the reserve, the diversity increases.

The mallards did not even take off, they probably felt good on a sunny warm stone covered with dried algae.

The gray heron, more cautious, disguises itself as a tree branch. But all the same, then I got used to it, I let myself be considered.

I was especially surprised by the meeting with the white-fronted goose, who somehow ended up on the Unzha in the summer.

The fact is that Kologriv is considered the Goose capital of Russia, this is such a brand in the city. Local residents organized the Kologrivskaya floodplain reserve, forbade hunting in it and feed flocks of geese and geese with grain on the migration. And scientists study them, put transmitters and loggers on birds. At a certain period, on the May holidays, several thousand geese concentrate in the vicinity of the city, I really haven’t been to Unzha at that time, so the photo will be from Alexei Terentyev, a local resident.

A few more birds, which, by the way, can be seen in the center of the city of Kologriv, on the pond.

The next stop is on the high left bank just above the village of Ileshevo. There is already a little more garbage left by various tourists. But still comfortable, there is a canopy and a table.

The next crossing will be straight to the Kologrivsky bridge, there are a few kilometers left. And then it is already possible to decide whether to leave the river or continue rafting down to Manturovo. The channel becomes wider, the river is deeper, the banks change.
The site that we passed seemed to me safe, adapted for a leisurely family vacation. I saw a baby with young parents on a kayak, bathing children, people of age. Right a few hundred meters from the Shablovo River with its museum of Efim Chestnyakov, you can safely drink water from the river, there are few fishermen in the summer, they used to talk about the dominance of nets and electric anglers on the river - but we didn’t hook on more than one net with a lowered motor, we swam up to the floating plastic tags, there were also no networks. In spring, the nature of the river will certainly be different. And yet we invite readers to the headwaters of the Unzha.

Since the river is not included in the forbidden territory of the reserve, anyone can be on it. And the staff of the reserve will help with a word or some deed, because they know these places very well.

And finally. Several terrain maps for Ozy Explorer (space, shooting, two-kilometer) can be downloaded here https://yadi.sk/d/j5jSCsDPeFVhx from my Yandex disk. It will be useful for those who know the program well and understand why it is needed. For everyone else, my set with the boundaries of the reserve (where you should not climb), parking points, a route along the river for free Google Earth here https://yadi.sk/d/C2_q1v60eFVrX, again on my Yandex disk. My live story about the Kologrivs region, meeting with the staff of the reserve and the museum will take place on Saturday, February 7 at 16 o'clock at the festival "Pristine Russia" In the Central House of Artists, Moscow, st. Krymsky Val, 10, Central House of Artists on the second floor. Come.

UNJA