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Dimitrovgrad (until 1972 - Melekess) is a city in the Ulyanovsk
region of Russia. It is the administrative center of the Melekess
district, which is not part of, being a city of regional
significance, forms the municipal formation of the same name, the
city of Dimitrovgrad with the status of an urban district as the
only settlement in its composition.
It is located on the
shore of the Cheremshan Bay of the Kuibyshev reservoir at the
confluence of the Bolshoi Cheremshan River.
The city occupies
an area of about 4150 hectares, the population is 113 472 people.
(2020). Named in honor of the General Secretary of the Central
Committee of the BKP Georgy Dimitrov (1882-1949).
Dimitrovgrad is located near the regional center of Ulyanovsk (about
85 km), the center of the neighboring region of Samara (about 160
km) and the second largest city of the Samara region, Togliatti (100
km).
17th century
The first settlements in the area of
the modern city appeared in the second half of the 17th century,
when the settlement of the lands between the Volga and Cheremshan
began. It was associated with the construction of the first Zakamsk
fortified line, created by order of Alexei Mikhailovich to protect
the Zakamsk and Trans-Volga residents from the raids of the Kalmyks,
Kirghiz and Bashkirs. In 1656, residents of the Chelny community of
peasants from the Elabuga district of the Vyatka province headed by
Fyodor Popov (including residents of the small Tatar village of
Melekes) were forcibly resettled to the Zakamskaya line. Moving to
new places, IDPs brought the names of their native places. This is
how the river Melekesska, the Russian Melekess and the village of
Melekess appear.
The date of the foundation of the city is
not known exactly and, according to various estimates, is between
1626 and 1767. So, in the encyclopedia “Russia. Full geographical
description of our fatherland: handbook and road book for Russian
people ”(volume 11) it is reported that the first attempt to settle
the area dates back to 1626, undertaken by people from the Elabuga
district of the Vyatka province. However, they were forced to leave
this place due to the constant raids of nomads.It is incorrect to
consider 1626 as such: some historians, describing the Middle Volga
region at the beginning of the century, mistakenly considered the
Tatar river Melkes (Melekesk) to be a tributary of the Big
Cheremshan and thereby confused Melekess with the village of the
same name, which was located not far from Naberezhnye Chelny (now it
is the village of Melekes, Tatarstan). It was these settlements
(including Krasnye Chelny), but not Dimitrovgrad, that were founded
in 1626 by a community of Elabuzhan peasants in the Ufa district
near the Kama on two rivers - Chalna and Melekes. At present, the
conditional date of 1698 is adopted for the year of the city's
foundation. It is included in the Charter of the city and is
associated with the appearance of the first settlement on the
territory of modern Dimitrovgrad, which was the village of Yasashny
Chuvash. The village was named after the founder - Chuvash Melekes
(Chuvash. Chăvash Melekkes) in the lower left bank of the river
Melekesski of the same name. The first documentary mention of this
village is found in the "Genuine Land Survey Book of Prince
Menshikov's Lands" and dates back to 1706. This thousand-page
manuscript contains a record that in 1706 residents of a number of
nearby villages, including peasants from Melekess, participated in
the surveying of the Cheremshan volost. The villagers paid yasak,
were engaged in fishing, hunting, cattle breeding, arable farming.
The village of Chuvash Melekes was part of the Mullov volost and
until 1917 belonged to the category of appanages, being the property
of the royal family. In the 1920s, its territory became part of the
city of Melekess and ceased to exist independently.
XVIII
century
In the first half of the 18th century, distilleries were
built on the territory of the city, which were engaged in the
production of bread alcohol and were the largest not only in the
Volga region, but also in Russia. The area had all the resources
necessary for production: cheap high-quality cereal raw materials,
forest and water lands. So, in 1706 the Simbirsk merchant Osip
Tverdyshev built a distillery on the Melekessk River - one of the
first industrial enterprises in the city of Dimitrovgrad, in 1710
this plant became state-owned. Distilleries of merchants Panteley
Popov (1728), Frol Belousov (1735), Semyon Talshov, Pyotr
Kozhevnikov (1746), Stepan Maslennikov and Mikhail Krasheninnikov
(1750s) appeared after the state-owned distilleries. In 1767, all
distilleries came under the jurisdiction of the state and were
called "Upper" (Maslennikovsky), "Main", "Middle" (or "Lower", along
the northern border in the village of Chuvashsky Melekess)
factories. Then they were merged; this is how the Melekessky state
distillery was formed - the largest in the Trans-Volga region in
terms of territory and volume of production. For normal work, he
needed workers. Since there were no large settlements nearby,
workers were forced to settle at the plant. So, next to the main
plant on the left bank of the Melekess river, a settlement
(settlement) appeared, which became known as the Melekess plant of
the Kazan province or the village of Melekess (this was partly due
to the low prices for land for the settlement). The settlement grew
rapidly: another distillery “Novy” appeared (Trekhsosensky, 1772),
mills, tanneries, sheep industries were built, merchant trade
developed. The plant's products were used by the Russian army and
navy, in medicine and in the production of detergents.