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Starocherkasskaya (Starocherkassk, until 1805 - Cherkassk) is a
village in the Aksai district of the Rostov region of the Russian
Federation - Russia.
The village is located on the right bank
of the Don River, 30 km from the regional center. The administrative
center of the Starocherkassk rural settlement. It is known as the
capital of the Don Cossacks and the birthplace of General Matvey
Platov and many other Don heroes. In the center of the village are
the Svyato-Donskoy Starocherkassk Monastery and the Starocherkassk
Museum-Reserve, covering an area of 180 hectares. The Cossack
Culture Festival is held annually in the village.
Disagreeing with the data of scientific archeology, the Don
regional historians are convinced of the pre-Mongol origin of the
settlement. In their writings one can come across assertions that
“everywhere” within the stanitsa there are cultural layers and
deposits dating back to the times preceding the invasion of Batu
(that is, the XIII century and earlier). Local historian V.N.Korolev
in his book "Don Cossack Towns", referring to another Don historian
E.P. dated 1517 (compiled in two languages - Tatar and Old Church
Slavonic). Moreover, these houses were allegedly not built by the
Tatars, and they were not new at the time of purchase. E. P.
Saveliev himself voiced prescientific notions that the city of
Cherkassk was built on the site of the city of Orna (or Ornach),
which was flooded during the capture of the Mongols in the 13th
century, in the Cherkaskaya tract. And another Don historian A.G.
Popov argued that in 1500 the Cossacks had just moved to a new place
(the Cherkaskaya tract) from the city of Orna, to create a new
capital there, which in 1570 was numerically replenished with the
Cossacks-Zaporozhian Dnieper moved to the Don. There is no
documentary evidence of the statements of local historians about the
deep antiquity of Cherkassk.
History of Starocherkassk in the
17th century
In 1637, the Azov campaign began from
Starocherkassk, when, having taken the Turkish fortress of Azov, the
Cossacks defended it for four years. In retaliation, the Turks
captured and completely burned Cherkassk in 1643, but the next year
the town was restored and fortified. In the same 1644, the main camp
moved to Cherkassk, which turns it into the capital of the Don
Cossacks. And in 1650, according to the vow given during the Azov
campaign, the first (wooden) military cathedral was built. Military
circles gathered in the square near the cathedral (Maidan).
It was in Cherkassk in 1667 that the uprising of Stepan Razin, a
Cossack of the village of Zimoveyskaya, began, and in 1708 the
leader of another uprising, Kondraty Bulavin, was killed in his
kuren.
History of Starocherkassk in the 18th century
Before the construction of Novocherkassk (the new capital of the
Cossacks, at the beginning of the 19th century), Cherkassk (the
village of Starocherkasskaya) was the only settlement that was
divided into villages within itself (Cherkasskaya, Durnovskaya,
Skorodumovskaya, Pribylianskaya, Srednyaya, Pavlovskaya, Rykovskaya,
Tyuterevskaya (Novorodumovskaya), Tatarskaya, Ratinskaya and so on).
In 1751, the church of the Apostles Peter and Paul was consecrated,
in which the legendary ataman Platov was baptized. All Cossack
campaigns of that period began from another Cherkassk church - the
Transfiguration of the Lord, built in the 17th century in the Ratny
tract, at the Cherkassk cemetery.
In the 18th century, the
Don capital was a strong fortress. “Being right in front of the
lands of its enemies and thus subject to their ever-present raids,
Cherkassk,” wrote V. D. Sukhorukov, “even in the 17th century had a
wooden wall around it, filled with earth inside. In decent places
such bastions were erected, sufficiently equipped with cannons ...
Danilo Efremov in 1742 undertook to fortify Cherkassk with a stone
wall and had already begun work from the side of the Don River, but
... only one started wall was allowed to be completed ... This new
wall extended near the villages of Cherkasskaya, Pribylianskaya and
Durnovskaya, and six bastions hung on it. The villages of Tatarskaya
and Srednyaya were protected by a double front garden with two
bastions, adjoined by both ends to the Protok. The villages of
Rykovskaya and Tyuterevskaya were covered from the enemy side by the
same front garden with two bastions. Equally, the village of
Ratinskaya with its suburbs had its own front garden. " The city
bastions, "being 100 and 200 fathoms apart from one another, greatly
contributed to the fortress of the city."
In the second half
of the 18th century, the number of bastions was increased to 11, of
which 2 were stone and 9 were wooden; 7 defended the central part of
Cherkassk, 4 others. The height of the outer wall of the most
powerful of the peals, Danilovsky, was 4.56 m in modern terms, and
2.35 m of the inner wall. Later local historians determined that the
length of the Cherkasy wall, wood and stone together, exceeded 2.3
km. The above-mentioned front garden, or palisade, in the 1780s was
"a measure around ... with the outskirts of twenty miles." According
to V. I. Dal, the front garden was generally "a fence, a fence made
of stamens, from poles with a poke, a stand", and a military front
garden consisted of "a solid palisade, from piles pointed upwards,
connected by spikes, a through run or a sewing beam".
At the
end of the 18th century, under the ataman A. I. Ilovaisky, the "Main
People's School" was opened, under which a museum was organized with
a natural history department and a rich collection of bones of
"antediluvian animals" that were extracted by fishermen from the
Don.
In 1744, Cherkassk almost completely burned out (the
city was always built up very tightly) and later could not fully
recover.
History of Starocherkassk in the 19th century
In 1804, the Caucasian postal tract was established:
Starocherkassk, Stavropol, Georgievsk instead of the previous route
from Astrakhan to Georgievsk. Later, in 1806, a contract was signed
with Ilya Volkov for a postal "chase": at 16 post stations along the
path there were supposed to be 16 horses, and at Georgievskaya - 24.
From Georgievsk there was a postal service with Konstantinogorsk and
Slobodka, which arose near the fortress.
In spring the Don
floods regularly flooded the city. It was precisely because of the
constant floods and fires that ataman M.I. After that Cherkassk
began to be called Starocherkassk, and by the end of the 19th
century it lost its status as a city.
In 1970, on the advice
of scientists from Rostov State University, a solemn celebration of
the 400th anniversary of the village of Starocherkasskaya
(1570-1970) was held. In the same year, on the initiative of
M.A.Sholokhov, the Starocherkassk Historical and Architectural
Museum-Reserve was founded in the village in honor of the 400th
anniversary of Starocherkassk.