Ertil is a city (since 1963) in the Voronezh region of Russia, the
administrative center of the Ertil district and the urban settlement of
Ertil.
Ertil railway station of the Yelets branch of the
South-Eastern Railway, the terminus on the branch from Oborona station
on the Gryazi-Povorino line.
Population - 10,024 people. (2021).
Currently, there is a local history museum in Ertil, the exhibits of
which are constantly being replenished. Its attraction is the work of
the artist Vasily Nikolaevich Silin, who donated more than 40 paintings
to the museum. In the city of Ertil there is a cinema "Rodina", which
shows domestic and foreign films. On the outskirts of the city there is
an open-air ethnographic museum complex “Village of the 17th-19th
centuries”, created by the honored farmer of Russia Vladimir Brezhnev.
Currently, there are six secondary schools, one vocational school, a
music and sports school, a house of pioneers (schoolchildren), a palace
of culture, and a city library in Ertil.
The toponym “Ertil” was first mentioned in 1685. Named after the Ertil River (in the 19th century and earlier - Ertil). Hydronym is classified as Turkic, but there is no reliable etymology (the supposed translation from Turkic languages is “the place where the tribe lives”).
Ertilsky district is located in the northeast of the Voronezh region
and borders the southern regions of the Lipetsk and Tambov regions.
The city is located on the Ertil River (Don basin), 112 km from
Voronezh, 10 km from the border with the Tambov region and is the
northernmost of all cities in the region. In natural-geographical terms,
the area is in the south of the forest-steppe zone.
The
prevailing climate is temperate. About 512 mm of precipitation falls
annually. The least precipitation falls in February, with an average of
about 27 mm, and the most in July, with an average of about 66 mm. The
warmest month is July with an average temperature of 20.4 °C, and the
coldest month is February, with an average temperature of −9.4 °C.
In the 11th-13th centuries, there were Polovtsian encampments on this
land. Founded in the 17th century as the village of Ertyl of the Ertyl
yurt.
On September 6, 1698, Voivode Tevyashov conducted a survey
of residents of the village of Ertyl. He wrote about the residents of
the village like this: “Bityutsk residents of the Ertyl yurt of the
village of Ertyl.” From among them, he included the names of several:
Boris Telegin, Avdey Ivanov, Miron Filatov, Maxim Putimtsov, Foka
Kolitvinov. A total of 28 residents of Ertil were interviewed. Their
settlers were also Prokofy Belyaev and Semyon Gundorov.
In 1699,
by decree of Peter I, peasants from Vladimir, Kostroma and other
districts of northern Russia began to be resettled to the Bityug River.
Illegally created settlements along Bityug were destroyed, 1,515
households were burned. This is how the first villages appeared:
Bityug-Matryonovka, Shchuchye, Stary Ertil and others.
From
Empress Catherine II at the end of the 18th century, Count Orlov, for
his services, received a gift of 39,000 acres of land in the Pribituzhye
region, which officially became known as the “Ertil Steppe”. After his
death on December 24, 1807, the lands passed into the possession of his
only heiress, his daughter Anna Orlova-Chesmenskaya.
In 1832,
Orlova-Chesmenskaya ceded part of her possessions, called the Ertil
steppe, to her relative, Count Alexei Fedorovich Orlov. These lands with
a total area of 42 thousand dessiatines were located near the Greater
Ertil River.
With the death of the next owner, Nikolai
Alekseevich Orlov, in 1885, his inheritance passed to his sons Alexei
and Vladimir Orlov, who found more effective ways to increase wealth.
By the end of the 19th century, sugar production had become one of
the leading places in the industrial sector of the Voronezh province.
Having secured a considerable loan from the State Noble Land Bank, the
Orlov brothers organize the construction of a sugar factory. The
location for the plant and the village was chosen deliberately. It
happened at the intersection of the bank of the clean Big Ertil River
and the cattle road.
In 1891, construction of a sugar factory
began on the estate by 400 peasants from nearby villages. They became
his first workers. In 1897, the construction of a sugar factory on the
estate of Count A.F. Orlov “Ertilskaya Steppe” was completed.
Essentially, the plant was the starting point from which the city of
Ertil began. The first building of this enterprise was located on the
territory of a modern foundry and mechanical plant. Under Prince Orlov,
residential one-story buildings were also built and still remain on
Sadovaya Street and Sadovaya Square. And the street itself was then
called “Nevsky Prospekt”, it was paved with cobblestones and was
illuminated in the evenings by electric lanterns. The population of the
village was 426 men and 32 women (only single young people were hired).
After the death of the prince, the estate passed to V.N. Orlov, he
turned out to be the last owner of the sugar factory and farms. V.N.
Orlov received the highest permission and in three years built a railway
on the Oborona (Mordovo) - Ertil section, and in 1915 traffic along this
railway line was opened.
In 1917, after the start of the
revolution, in the main building of the sugar factory, the Bolsheviks
Ivan Ivanovich Bakulin and Efim Ivanovich Zimoglyal held a meeting and
announced the victory of the October Revolution in Petrograd; they
called on the workers to have revolutionary consciousness and fight
against the bourgeoisie. On January 31, 1918, the Voronezh provincial
congress of sugar industry workers, by its resolution, nationalized the
sugar factory. At the same time, the surplus appropriation policy began.
During the civil war, Ertil alternated between the whites and the
reds. In 1921, the sugar factory was partially destroyed and burned by
the Antonovites. The railway station was also damaged. In 1926-1928 the
plant was restored. At the same time, the enterprise’s drying shop was
built, and the adjacent microdistrict was nicknamed “Drying”.
With the onset of industrialization, the city's economic and social
revival accelerates. In accordance with the first five-year plan for the
development of the national economy of the USSR (1928-1932), the
construction of a new sugar factory began - one of the largest factories
in the Central Black Earth Region. Its construction began in June 1931.
At first, the laborers lived in dugouts, but at the same time as the
plant, a new residential neighborhood was being built (its name
“Stroyka” has been preserved to this day). A school, kindergarten and
nursery were built for the children of workers moving to new housing in
the microdistrict. The new sugar factory was put into operation in
February 1934.
To strengthen the plant’s own raw material base,
during the first five-year plan, in 1932, two large beet-growing state
farms were organized: “Krasnoarmeysky” and “Udarnik”. In 1933, a grain
collection point was put into operation. The period from 1932 to 1935
was marked by the construction of houses on the first streets of the
Novostroika village, the creation of an inter-district oil depot and the
Krasny Pishevik industrial martel.
The village of Ertil acquired
the status of a “workers’ village” on December 4, 1938. In June 1939,
the Ertil Creamery was launched.
A noteworthy milestone in the
history of Ertil was the launch of the glycerin (“G-2”) and butter and
cheese factories. The brick factory was already producing bricks at that
time. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War (namely in the summer
of 1942, when the Ertil region was declared front-line), the glycerin
and sugar factories were evacuated to Kazakhstan, but after the war only
one returned - the sugar factory.
During the war, the Ertilians
donated 210 thousand rubles to the fund for the construction of a tank
column. We collected food parcels for the front. Small-caliber mortars
were manufactured in the sugar factory workshops, and U-2 aircraft
engines were repaired on platforms at the Ertil railway station. More
than 23 thousand Ertilians fought at the front. On June 23, 1941, the
first mobilization of Ertilians into the active army took place. School
No. 1 housed a hospital where residents of the working-class village
served the wounded.
In the first post-war year of 1946, the
Voronezh region, like other regions of the Central Black Earth Region,
was engulfed in severe drought. On September 16, 1946, the USSR
Government established monetary compensation to the population at
100-110 rubles for medium- and low-income categories of citizens (the
so-called “bread allowance”), and on November 9, 1946, the Council of
Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution “On the development of
cooperative trade in food and industrial goods and on increasing the
production of food and consumer goods by cooperative organizations” in
order to improve the situation of citizens. However, famine could not be
completely avoided. By the spring of 1947 in the Voronezh region, the
number of patients diagnosed with dystrophy was 250 thousand people.
However, already in 1947, the labor victories of Ertilian farmers were
celebrated, the first Heroes of Socialist Labor appeared and mass awards
were held.
In 1958, the MTS was abolished, and the equipment was
sold to collective farms. In May 1959, passenger air service began on
the Voronezh - Ertil route.
On February 1, 1963, the workers'
village of Ertil was given city status. The workers petitioned the
Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR to transform the village of Ertil into the
city of Sovetsk. The petition was accepted, but the city retained its
previous name.
In June 1963, by decree of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, the city of Ertil was transferred to the
Anninsky rural district.
In the fall of 1963, Ertil football
players took second place in the Russian championship.
In 1967, a
high-voltage power line came to the area, and Ertil was included in the
country's energy system. Until 1967, large enterprises, social and
cultural facilities, and residential buildings were serviced by diesel
engines. The line was pulled from Borisoglebsk in February. In blizzards
and frost, the Ertilians went out to the highway as a whole, knocked off
the stuck snow from the wires, manually chiseled the frozen earth under
the poles, and helped to tension the wires.
The mechanical plant,
which was formed from auto repair shops created in 1949, plays a special
role in the history of the city. At first, only car engines were
repaired here. And in 1958, by decree of the Voronezh Economic Council,
the Ertil machine repair workshops were renamed the Ertil Mechanical
Plant. This was the only enterprise that produced equipment for
preparing feed for animal farms in our country.
In the late
1960s, the first street in the city was paved. In the 1970s and the
first half of the 1980s, noticeable changes in the economy and culture
took place in the life of the city. The appearance of the city has
changed. Enterprises and organizations of great importance for the
region were created. In 1973, a forest reclamation station (now a
forestry enterprise) was organized. Before its appearance, there were
only 1% of forests, after - 3.4%. Through the efforts of this
enterprise, an entire residential microdistrict was built, thousands of
hectares of forests were planted. A television repeater, a sports
complex and stadium, a bath and laundry plant appeared, a local history
museum was opened (1974), a market was landscaped, a regional
communications center was put into operation, a new grain collection
point or elevator appeared (1972), and a new co-op department store was
opened in 1973. More than 10 thousand hybrid tea roses were planted in
the central square and main street of the city, chestnuts and ornamental
shrubs appeared. The city was transformed beyond recognition and was
recognized four times as the winner of the All-Russian competition for
the improvement of cities and regional centers (1971-1975). More than 40
km of sidewalks and streets of the city have been paved, and a monument
to the Ertilians who died during the war has been unveiled. From 1974 to
1979, standard buildings of Ertil schools No. 2 and No. 3 and a training
and production plant (TPK) were rebuilt and put into operation. In 1975,
the construction of the Voronezh-Ertil asphalt road was completed. In
1976, the Ertilraygas association was organized. In 1979, a hospital
complex with 240 beds and a clinic was opened.
The modern
administration building (until August 1991 - the district committee of
the CPSU) was put into operation in 1982. In October 1994, an important
event took place for the city and region - the new Church of the Iveron
Icon of the Mother of God in the city of Ertil was consecrated. In 1995,
the “Book of Memory of the Ertil Region” was published. In 1997, modern
buildings of Sberbank and the tax office were opened.
Ertilsky Sugar LLC
OJSC "Ertil Foundry and Mechanical Plant"
Experimental mechanical plant
LLC "Ertil-milk"
Forest reclamation
station
LLC "Vegetable Oils Plant"
Flour mill "Aktal"
Silin, Vasily Nikolaevich. Born in 1918. The front-line artist
donated more than 40 canvases to the museum and for a long time
maintained close ties with the city, considering it the best place on
earth. One of the streets of Ertil is named after him. He was buried in
Lipetsk.
Goleva Ekaterina Ivanovna, born in 1923, native of the
village of Shchuchye. Participant of the Great Patriotic War. From 1948
to 1981 she worked as a librarian, then as director of the district
library. Headman and active member of the choir of war and labor
veterans. The main participant in the work on the “Book of Memory of the
Ertil Region” (1995). Lives in Ertil.
Obryvko, Mark Dmitrievich, born
in 1909. Design engineer, inventor and innovator, head of the design
bureau at a sugar factory - the predecessor of the experimental
mechanical plant. Laureate of the State Prize. For his success in
creating mechanisms for the sugar industry, in 1966 he was awarded the
title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Died in 1999. He was buried in Ertil.
Belolipetsky Boris Ivanovich, born in 1927. During his years as chief
specialist and then director of the sugar factory (1947-1979),
reconstruction and a noticeable increase in labor productivity took
place. Under his leadership, the construction of housing, cultural and
everyday objects was carried out in the Stroika microdistrict. Died in
2001. He was buried in Ertil.
Zhukov Ilya Gerasimovich, born in 1935,
native of the village of Krivka. He worked as a designer at the Obryvko
Design Bureau M.D. From 1972 to 1994 - director of a mechanical plant.
These were years of stable development, active housing construction
along Truda and Plekhanovskaya streets. Died in 2003. He was buried in
Ertil.
Valikova Alexandra Vladimirovna, born in 1937. Veteran of
cultural activities in the area. She devoted about 50 years of her life
to the popularization of Russian song. Soloist of the choir of war and
labor veterans. Lives in Ertil.
Zavyalov Alexander Ivanovich, born in
1926. Director of the Sokolov school from 1965 to 1999. Innovative
teacher with 49 years of experience, scientist. Through his efforts, a
memorial complex near the school and the natural environment, a museum
of Russian folk crafts and much more were created. Honored Teacher of
Russia. Died in 2001. He was buried in Ertil.
Shmatov Ivan
Fedorovich, born in 1920. From 1951 to 1956 - First Secretary of the
Republic of Kazakhstan CPSU. In those years, the district occupied a
leading position in the region in the grain industry and milk yield. In
1956 he was awarded a large gold medal of the All-Russian Agricultural
Exhibition and a Pobeda car. Lives in Voronezh and maintains active
contacts with the city.
Kondaurov Mitrofan Romanovich, born in 1927.
Veteran law enforcement officer, Lieutenant Colonel. From 1970 to 1982 -
head of the Ertilsky District Department of Internal Affairs. During
these years, the district police department occupied leading positions
in the region. A lot of educational work was carried out with the team
of employees. Has ten government awards. Lives in Ertil.
Subbotina
Natalya Ivanovna, born in 1940. She began her activities in the Ertil
region in 1965 as an accountant-economist of the Ertil Department of
Agriculture. From 1972 to 1978 she worked as a manager of the State Bank
of the USSR. From 1978 to 1991 She held the position of secretary and
then first secretary of the RK CPSU. From 1966 to 1991 - deputy of the
district and one convocation (since 1980) of the regional Councils of
People's Deputies, delegate to the XXVI - XXVIII Congresses of the CPSU.
Under the leadership of Natalya Ivanovna, the construction of new
schools, roads, cultural facilities, etc. was carried out in the area.
From 1991 to 1996, she was deputy director of the Krasnoarmeysky state
farm. From 2002 to the present, he has been deputy head of the Ertil
district public organization of the All-Russian Veterans Organization
and secretary of the Ertil branch of the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation. The title “Honorary Citizen of Ertil” was awarded in 2003.
Lives in Ertil.
Viktor Fedorovich Zharenko, the first director of the
newly formed sports school, made an invaluable contribution to the
development of sports (especially gymnastics and basketball).