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Cherdyn is a city in the Perm region of Russia. The administrative center of the Cherdynsky urban district. Cherdyn is one of the oldest cities in the Urals and was included in the List of Historical Cities of Russia (2002 list). Population - 4618 people. (2020).
The name of the city comes, according to the
hypothesis put forward by AS Gantman, from two Permian Komi words:
cher - "tributary" and melons - "mouth" - that is, "a settlement
that arose at the mouth of a stream."
According to another
version, the name of the settlement was given by a small river
located on the northern side of the city, which before the arrival
of the Russians was called "Cher", and the settlement located at its
mouth was called "Cherdyn" ("dyn" in this case is translated from
the Permian Komi as " a place near something "). The modern name of
the river - Cherdynka - is secondary, given by the name of the city.
In the scribes of the XVI-XVII centuries, in the sovereign's
letters and other decrees, Cherdyn was called Great Perm,
identifying it with the name of the historical region.
The city is located in the north of the Perm Territory on the right bank of the Kolva River, 290 km from Perm. Distance by road to the nearest railway station Solikamsk is 95 km, to the administrative center of the Perm region, the city of Perm - 300 km.
Foundation of the city
There is no exact
information about the date of foundation of Cherdyn. There are
hypotheses according to which the city was originally located to the
south, on the site of the village of Pyantag. Later, Cherdyn
allegedly moved north, to the area of the village of Pokchi, and
then found itself in its present place.
In the Russian
historiography of the 19th century, the Old Russian toponym Perm the
Great was identified with the Scandinavian toponym Biarmia, the
center of which was believed to be in the Cherdyn region, which in
the X-XII centuries conducted extensive trade with the Volga
Bulgars, Iran, Veliky Novgorod and the northern peoples (Yugra).
During this era, the Novgorodians maintained close trade and
political relations with Perm, who followed the ancient trade route
to the east along the tributaries of the Northern Dvina, getting
from Vychegda to Kolva. Cherdyn and another important village of
Pokcha, located seven kilometers to the north, were founded on the
high right bank of the Kolva near its confluence with the Vishera
opposite Mount Polyud, the highest point in this part of the Ural
Mountains. Historians note that Cherdyn was located at the
crossroads of waterways trade routes:
To Vychegda along Kolva and
through Nemsky (Bukhonin) drag;
To the deep Pechora and along it
to the Arctic Ocean;
To Western Siberia along Vishera
(Visher-Lozvinsky portage) and Chusovaya (Cherdynskaya road);
To
Vyatka through the Volosnitsky portage.
In addition, the path
to the Kama and Volga passed to the south. To the north of Cherdyn,
there was also a "fur" road to the deep Pechora and along it to the
Arctic Ocean. The Novgorodians received tribute from local residents
(probably the name of Mount Polyud comes from polyudya, that is, the
tribute that was collected here for Novgorod) and counted the region
among their administrative districts, but there is no data on the
presence of a Russian population in Cherdyn until the end of the
15th century.
Initially, on the site of Cherdyn there was a
Cherdyn (Troitskoe) settlement, which is attributed to the Rodanov
culture. During its excavations, fragments of pottery and rustling
bronze pendants of the 12th-13th centuries were found. The first
mention of Cherdyn is contained in the Vychegod-Vym chronicle and
refers to 1451:
In the summer of 6959, the great prince Vasily
Vasilyevich sent a governor from the family of the Vereisk princes
Yermolai to the Perm land, and after him Yermolai, and after his son
Vasily, rule the Perm land of Vychegotskoy, and the eldest son of
Ermolai, Mikhail Yermolich, released to Velikaya Perm. And they
vedati volosts vychogatskie according to the charter of the charter.
Excavations carried out in Cherdyn in the 2000s showed that it
was a sanctuary, not a town: neither fortifications nor residential
buildings were found. On the site of the settlement in the 15th
century, the city of Cherdyn was founded. The remains of the wooden
fortifications of the Russian Kremlin discovered by archaeologists
date back to the 16th-17th centuries.
The economic and
political significance of Perm the Great - Cherdyn reached its peak
in the 15th century. In addition to furs, which were highly valued
in Europe, the so-called Zakamsky silver was concentrated in the
Perm Territory, that is, highly artistic silver products of Sassanid
Persia, Byzantium and Volga Bulgaria, which have long since flowed
here along trade routes in exchange for furs and, possibly, obtained
and processed locally; this silver constituted a significant part of
the tribute paid by the Russian lands, mainly Novgorodians, to the
Golden Horde. Beginning with Ivan Kalita, the Moscow princes tried
to challenge the political dominance of Novgorod over the Perm
region.
As part of the Great Perm principality 1451-1505
The Perm bishops became the conductors of the influence of the
Moscow authorities. Bishop Pitirim of Perm, under the conditions of
the feudal war in the Moscow principality, supported Vasily II,
having issued in 1447, together with other church hierarchs of
Russia, an anathema against his opponent, Prince Dmitry Shemyak.
Help was also expressed in the fact that in 1450 Pitirim sent his
flock to defend against Shemyaka the Great Ustyug, and two Permian
centurions were executed by Shemyaka. In 1451, Vasily the Dark
appointed his protege to Cherdyn - Prince Mikhail Ermolaevich. Under
him the baptism of Perm the Great took place. In 1455, Bishop
Pitirim tried to baptize the population of Perm the Great, but was
killed as a result of a Mansi raid. The new Bishop Jonah of Perm
"add the baptism" to Perm the Great in 1462. In the same year, the
St. John the Theologian monastery was founded in Cherdyn, where the
first Christian church in the Western Urals was laid - the wooden
church of St. John the Theologian. P.A.Korchagin believes that the
continuation of baptism was the Cherdyn campaign of 1472, during
which a Moscow detachment destroyed the Komi-Perm sanctuary in
Iskor. The pretext for the campaign was certain insults inflicted on
Moscow merchants in Cherdyn, as a pretext for an invasion.
In
1481, Cherdyn was attacked by the Pelym Mansi (Vogulichi), led by
Prince Asyka, who failed to take the city.
The Ustyug
chronicle collection indicates that in 1504 "the city burned down
Cherdyn and Prince Matthew Mikhailovich Velikoperm set up a new city
on the Pochka".
After the campaign of 1472, the center of the
Russian administration of Perm the Great was organized in Pokcha; A.
A. Dmitriev believed this was done on purpose in order to break the
old traditions. Prince Mikhail, taken to Moscow, expressed obedience
to Ivan III and soon returned back. His descendants reigned in
Cherdyn and Pokcha until 1505, when the principality was abolished
and a Moscow governor was appointed to Cherdyn. From that moment on,
the population of Cherdyn and Pokcha became predominantly Russian,
through the assimilation of the Permian Komi, and the resettlement
of Russians there. While the Permian population survived only in
individual villages and in the territories of the Permian Komi
National District, located west of the river. Kams.
Cherdyn
in the 16th - early 20th centuries
In 1535, on the Trinity Hill
of the city, under the supervision of a Moscow master - clerk Semyon
Kurchov - the first Kremlin in the Urals was erected - the Cherdyn
Kremlin, which survived eleven major sieges. In the same year,
Pokcha burned down, and Cherdyn was returned to the status of an
administrative center. At the same time, Cherdyn was officially
recognized as a city.
During this period, a new “Moscow”
route to Siberia took shape, which was shorter than the
“Chrezkamenny” route (which went through the Northern Urals), which
greatly increased the economic and political influence of Moscow on
Siberia.
Until the annexation of the vast Kazan Khanate to
Russia in 1552, Cherdyn remained a border fortress. In 1547, the
city was raided by the Nogai Tatars, who were defeated on the
outskirts of Cherdyn near the Kondratyeva Sloboda (they could not
get to the city itself). The 85 Cherdyn martyrs who died of their
wounds during this raid became the first Permians to be canonized by
the Russian Orthodox Church. According to another version, this raid
was made by the Siberian Tatars. According to legend, 85 martyrs
were buried in Cherdyn, and at the place of their burial was built a
not preserved stone chapel In the name of the Image of Jesus Christ
Not Made by Hands. Archaeological excavations carried out in 2005 at
the site where the chapel stood did not reveal the remains of 85
warriors (the remains of 10 people were found, among whom only 4
were adult men, moreover, of mature age).
According to the
scribes of I. I. Yakhontov, in 1579 there were 290 households and 67
shops in Cherdyn (not counting barns), and the majority of the
population was "unpowered", that is, engaged in trade and service.
The description of Cherdyn, compiled by the voivode Peter
Nashchokin in 1613, is known:
“The city of Cherdyn is wooden and
there are six towers on the city, and the bridges and breakaways on
the city and on the towers have rotted and the roofs have collapsed,
and the city has four gates, but the cache has collapsed; and on the
city side by side there is a copper cannon 12 spans in the lathe,
and the lathe and wheels are decrepit and thin. "
At the
beginning of the 17th century, Cherdyn remained a large religious
center - in 1624 there were 16 wooden churches in the city (12
parish and 4 monastic). The Cherdyn Ioanno-Theological Monastery
received in 1580 a letter of grant from Ivan the Terrible, which
gave him greater independence in economic and spiritual affairs, and
this letter was confirmed by the newly ascending Russian tsars in
1586, 1600, 1608, 1615 and 1624.
After the allocation of the southern part of the Perm lands to
the patrimony of the Stroganovs, the administrative center of the
region shifted to the south, and Cherdyn lost its former political
significance. In 1636, the Cherdyn voivode was transferred to
Solikamsk, where the control center of the Cherdyn and Solikamsk
districts was located. In the 17th-18th centuries, Cherdyn conducted
active trade with the Russian North. At the end of the 17th century,
merchants from northern Pustozersk and Ust-Tsilma already lived in
the city (from the latter the surname Iscelemov originated). At the
end of the 18th century, bread (according to a report in 1781, 20-30
thousand poods per year), hemp and some other goods, which were
exchanged for "fish, stuffed junk, walrus and beluga lavtaks, walrus
and beluga fat ". This route, from Cherdyn to Pustozersk through the
Pechora portage, also existed in the 19th century - in 1881, an
enterprising peasant from the village of Kamgort I.A. In addition to
fish, salt came to Pustozersk from Solikamsk. The active trade of
Cherdyn merchants with the Pechora region continued at the beginning
of the 20th century. Since the 17th century, the residents of
Cherdyn have been exporting whetstones from the Pechora Territory
(the right to extract them was granted by a charter from Tsar
Mikhail Fedorovich in 1638); at the beginning of the 20th century, a
large number of sharpeners came from Pechora annually to Cherdyn.
The economy of the region is developing mainly due to the
development of deposits of sodium chloride and potash around the
cities of Solikamsk and Berezniki, for the export of which barges
were built in Cherdyn and Pokcha until the beginning of the 20th
century. The construction of railways was also limited to the
southern part of the Perm region, and Cherdyn is currently connected
with the regional center only by highways and river transport.
Cherdyn was significantly influenced by the influx of refugees
evacuated during the Great Retreat of the First World War. In
September 1915 alone, 517 settlers were brought to Cherdyn:
316
Germans (two parties of 282 and 34 people each);
116 Russians;
185 Jews - subjects of Austria-Hungary.
The evacuated
Russians were sent to Pokcha, the Germans were sent to the
settlements of the Cherdyn district (to Wilgort, Iskor and other
places), and the arriving Jews were left in Cherdyn.
From the
point of view of the administrative structure, since 1781 Cherdyn
was the center of the Cherdyn district of the Perm governorate
(since 1796 - the Perm province).
Modernity
Cherdyn and
Pokcha still retain the appearance of old Russian towns with typical
manor farms and do not have multi-storey buildings. A significant
part of the region's population adheres to the Old Believer
Christianity, although the churches are mainly under the
jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. Cherdyn is the center of
the distribution of unique wooden sculpture, which is generally
uncharacteristic for the decoration of Russian churches. The origin
of this custom is unknown; it is possible that, like the custom of
decorating church buildings with bulbs, it was brought in from
Scandinavia many centuries ago. The oldest sculptures that have
survived to this day date back to the 17th century and are located
in the Perm Art Gallery (Perm).
In 2006-2009, on the
initiative of the Permian writer Alexei Ivanov, the Heart of Parma
festival was held in the village of Kamgort near Cherdyn. Since
2010, after the writer left the event, the festival has been held
annually under the name "Call of Parma". In 2016, the festival was
moved to the village of Seryogovo, located 2 km from Cherdyn.
In 1923, the city became the center of the newly formed
Cherdynsky district of the Verkhne-Kamsky district of the Ural
region, since 1934 it has been a part of the Sverdlovsk region,
since 1938 it has been a part of the Perm region.
On November
10, 2004, by the Law of the Perm Region No. 1735-355, Cherdyn became
the center of the reformed Cherdyn municipal district and the
Cherdyn urban settlement, which includes 1 settlement.
On
March 25, 2019, by the Law of the Perm Territory No. 374-PK, the
Cherdyn municipal district and the Cherdyn urban settlement were
abolished, and a new municipal entity, the Cherdyn urban district,
was formed in their place.