/8.jpg)
Vyoshenskaya (in vernacular Vyoshki) is a village in the north of
the Rostov region, the administrative center and the largest
settlement of the Sholokhovsky district and Vyoshensky rural
settlement.
Population - 9261 people (2010). In 2018, she was
awarded the title "The Frontier of Military Valor".
Vyoshenskaya (Вёшенская, locally Vëshki) sits on the left bank of the
Don in the far north of Rostov Oblast, at about 49°38′ N, 41°43′ E. It
is the administrative center of Sholokhovsky District and of Vëshenskoye
rural settlement. The stanitsa lies roughly 350 km northeast of
Rostov-on-Don and about 145–147 km from Millerovo, the nearest rail and
highway hub on the Moscow–Rostov corridor.
It occupies the East
European Plain inside the Don–Donets depression, in the Don River basin.
The settlement itself is a modest rural locality of around 9,200 people
(2010 census), stretched along the river on a sandy terrace. The wider
rural settlement covers about 272.5 km² and includes neighboring khutors
and the older stanitsa of Elanskaya to the east.
Position on the
Don
The Don here is a broad, slow, typically meandering plain river
with a very gentle gradient. The valley is wide. Floodplain, old
channels, oxbow lakes, and sandy terraces dominate the left-bank
setting. Sholokhov’s well-known description matches the terrain: the
stanitsa lies on a gently sloping sandy left bank above the Don.
Frequent floods forced residents to abandon the older low-lying site
(between the river and Lake Rassokhovo in the floodplain) and move onto
a higher terrace around 1740, where the settlement merged with
Reshetovka and received stanitsa status.
Local bank morphology is not
uniform. Immediately around the stanitsa the left bank is sandy and
relatively open. A short distance east, toward Elanskaya and Lebyazhy
Krutoyar, the left bank often becomes steeper and higher while the
opposite (right) bank is lower and gentler—the reverse of the Don’s more
famous high-right-bank pattern farther downstream. Floodplain woodland
lines both banks in places; oxbows and former channels lie hidden among
the trees.
A road bridge, opened in 1985, now links Vyoshenskaya to
Bazkovskaya on the right bank and replaced the old ferry. An asphalt
road of about 145 km, built in 1963, connects the area to Millerovo. A
small airfield exists nearby.
Relief, sands, and vegetation
The surrounding country is steppe plain with low relative relief.
Absolute elevations around the center are on the order of 75 m. Beyond
the floodplain the landscape opens into rolling steppe cut by balkas
(dry valleys and ravines). Yellow sands cover much of the left-bank
terrace—the “bald-pated, gardenless” stanitsa of Sholokhov’s novel.
These sands are part of a broader system of Don terrace sands that
elsewhere form dune fields and blowouts; here they were a practical
problem of drifting soil and poor gardening.
Pine plantings were
established to fix the sands and to create a protective forest belt
along the Don. Isolated woodland patches occur mainly along the river
and in these plantings; true forest is scarce on the open steppe. About
8 km from the stanitsa stands the well-known Vëshensky oak. Floodplain
forest (willow, poplar, and associated species) occupies the wetter
bottoms and frames views of the river from points such as Lebyazhy
Krutoyar.
Soils in the district are typical of the steppe Don basin:
chernozems on the uplands and more varied alluvial and sandy soils on
the terraces and floodplain. Agriculture and pasture remain the dominant
land uses outside the settled core and the museum-reserve lands.
Climate and hydrology
The climate is moderately continental and
belongs to the insufficient-moisture steppe belt. Mean annual
temperature is around 7 °C. January averages near −9 °C (absolute lows
have reached about −36 °C). July averages near 22–23 °C, with highs that
can exceed 35–40 °C. Annual precipitation is on the order of 440–450 mm,
with a summer maximum (July around 50 mm). Stable snow cover typically
forms in late December and breaks up in late March. The Don itself is
fed mainly by snowmelt and has a pronounced spring flood; levels drop in
summer. Ice cover lasts on the order of three months in this reach.
Evaporation exceeds precipitation in the regional water balance, which
is why the sands and open steppe feel dry even though the river is
close.
Regional setting
Sholokhovsky District covers about
2,500 km² of northern Rostov steppe. The Don is the organizing axis. To
the north and east the country continues toward Volgograd Oblast and the
Khopyor confluence farther downstream. To the west and southwest lie
Millerovo and the M4 / North Caucasus railway corridor. The stanitsa is
not on a major through-route; it is a river-and-road destination rather
than a transit town.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov lived in the village of Vyoshenskaya
from 1926 to 1984.
The village is located on the left bank of the
Don River. Currently, it is the administrative center of the Sholokhov
district of the Rostov region and the Vyoshensky settlement. Here is the
center of the State Museum-Reserve M.A. Sholokhov and a number of his
objects.
The name of the village, according to local historians
P. Losev, A. Gribanov, writer A. Suichmezov, came from the word
"milestone", "milestone": "The name came from those milestones,
milestones that stood here in ancient times on a long way from the north
to the south” (A.M. Suichmezov. Native Donshchina. Rostov-on-Don, 1985,
p. 42). VN Korolev adheres to another, less common, version. In his
opinion, the name of the town comes from the word "vezha", which means
"hut, dwelling, gatehouse." He writes: “In pre-Mongolian times, the
Eastern Slavs called semi-nomadic felt dwellings vezha, later known in
Russian under the terms “kibitka” or “yurt” ... It is quite possible
that in the Veshki region more than four hundred years ago there were
huts and gatehouses - “vezhi” - the first inhabitants ”(Korolev V.N.
Starye Veshki. The story of the Cossacks. Rostov-on-Don, 1991. P. 18).
There is an assumption that Vyoshenskaya was founded in the middle
of the 16th century. free Cossacks of Sary Azman, and later their camp
was used by Russian border detachments for their settlement. The town of
Veshki was first mentioned in 1571, when Tsar Ivan the Terrible signed
the “Boyar verdict on stanitsa and guard service”, in which “they
mention the“ head in the field ”, which should be sent from the city of
Shatsk and“ stand ”in Vezhki, above Medveditsa and Khopra." Over time,
the border tract of Vezhki became the town of Veshki.
It is known
that the Cossacks of the Vyoshensky town participated in the capture of
Azov in 1637 and the Azov siege seat in 1641, in all land and sea
campaigns of the Cossacks against the Turkish and Crimean cities of the
Black Sea region. In 1670, the Vyoshenians were active participants in
the peasant war led by Stepan Razin, and in 1707-1708. - Bulavinsky
uprising.
According to the Don Diocesan Gazette, in 1740, due to
floods, the town was moved from the floodplain to a high terrace above
the Don, where it connected with the village of Reshetovskaya and
received the status of a village.
In the novel "Quiet Flows the
Don" M.A. Sholokhov gives a detailed description of Vyoshenskaya: “On
the gently sloping sandy left bank, above the Don, lies the village of
Vyoshenskaya, the oldest of the upper Don villages, transferred from the
site of the Chigonatskaya village devastated under Peter I, renamed
Vyoshenskaya. The milestone was once along the large waterway Voronezh -
Azov. Against the village, the Don arches like a kobarzhina of the Tatar
sagaydak, as if turning to the right, and near the farm of Bazka again
majestically straightens up, carries greenish, translucent blue waters
past the chalk spurs of the right-bank mountains, past solid farms on
the right side, past rare villages on the left side to the sea, to blue
Azov…
Vyoshenskaya - all in the mound of yellow sands. A sad,
bald village without gardens. On the square there is an old cathedral,
gray with time, six streets are laid out along the Don. Where the Don,
arching, leaves the village for Bazki, a lake, as wide as the Don in
shallow water, leaves like a sleeve in a thicket of poplars. At the end
of the lake, the village also ends. On a small square, overgrown with
needle-gold thorns, there is a second church, green domes, a green roof,
matching the color of the greenery of the poplars that have grown on the
other side of the lake ”(Sholokhov M.A. Collected works in 8 vols. Vol.
1. M ., 1985, p. 146).
During the resettlement of the town, the
wooden church of the Archangel Michael was also moved to a new place,
then the construction of a stone church with a bell tower and a chapel
of St. John the Theologian began. The aisle was consecrated on November
26, 1780, and the main altar on December 28, 1786.
In 1853, in
the eastern part of the village, construction began on a stone church in
the name of the Holy Trinity with a chapel of the Dormition of the
Mother of God. The temple was consecrated in 1858. In 1936, at a joint
meeting of the bureau of the district committee and the presidium of the
RIK (a), a decision was made to demolish the Trinity Church (minutes No.
8 of March 9, 1936 “On the closure of the church in the village of
Vyoshenskaya”). February 9, 1937 Holy Trinity Church was blown up. In
1993, a memorial cross was erected at this place.
St. Michael the
Archangel parish was closed in 1937, and the church building was adapted
for a granary. The temple survived only thanks to the intercession of
Sholokhov, who convinced the authorities not to blow it up. In 1946, the
parish was opened and has been operating to this day.
In the old
days, all economic and civil affairs of the Cossacks of the village of
Vyoshenskaya were decided at gatherings, which were the highest
authority. Each Cossack was given the right to speak on the issue
brought up for discussion or to make proposals. The decision was taken
by simple vote.
The first stanitsa ataman was Ivan Fedorovich
Shchepotkin. In the confessional manuscript of the Vyoshenskaya Church
for 1745, the names of the Cossacks who lived in the village are
mentioned: Averkin, Dudarev, Zykov, Kolundaev, Kaledin, Soldatov,
Likhovidov, Bolgarov, Popov.
In 1782, Vyoshenskaya was almost
completely burned down in a fire, then rebuilt.
In the XVIII
century. Don had the board and warehouse of the Singer Manufactory
Company, which was engaged in the sale of sewing machines, mowers and
agricultural implements, as well as bulk grain of famous Paramonov
merchants. There was a trade in industrial and food products in the
shops of the merchants Khrennikov, Mokhov, Konev, Sergichev. In the
first half of the XIX century. Sholokhov's grandfather Mikhail
Mikhailovich Sholokhov settled in Vyoshenskaya, started a family and
started trading.
In Vyoshenskaya there were a stanitsa and two
farm reception rooms, a post and telegraph office. In 1861, the first
educational institution was opened - a stanitsa one-class men's parish
school, in 1863 - a one-class women's school of the third category
(subsequently both schools were transformed into two-class ones). In
1915, a women's gymnasium was opened, and in 1917, two gymnasiums: an
eight-grade and a four-grade gymnasium. In 1918, by decision of the
stanitsa assembly, both gymnasiums were located in a two-story building
of the stanitsa administration and merged into a mixed gymnasium, which
received the name "Vyoshenskaya gymnasium named after the fallen
fighters for the liberation of the Native Land." From autumn 1918 to
spring 1919. M.A. studied there. Sholokhov.
According to V.N.
Koroleva, 715 people lived in Vyoshenskaya in 1867. (345 men and 370
women); in 1915 - 1863 people. (732 yards). Currently, the population of
Vyoshenskaya is 9704 people.
In the first half of the XIX
century. the village of Vyoshenskaya belonged to the Ust-Medveditsky
district of the Don Army Region and was the center of the Vyoshensky
yurt, at the end of the 19th century. Vyoshensky yurt went to the
Donetsk district.
In 1918, the Don Cossack Oblast was renamed
into the Oblast of the Great Don Cossack Army, a new district was formed
- Verkhne-Donskoy, with the center in Vyoshenskaya.
In 1923, the
Verkhne-Donskoy district was liquidated, Vyoshenskaya became the center
of the volost and was assigned to the Donetsk district. In 1924, the
volost was liquidated and the Vyoshensky district was formed with the
center in Vyoshenskaya. In 1984, the Vyoshensky district was renamed
Sholokhovsky.
During the Civil War, Vyoshenskaya was the site of
fierce fighting. On April 23, 1918, Soviet power was established in the
Upper Don District (GARO, f. R-3440, op. 1, d. 3, l. 140). On the night
of March 10-11, 1919, the Cossacks raised an uprising against the
"Bolsheviks and executions", which became a response to the
decossackization policy pursued by the Central Committee of the RCP (b).
Vyoshenskaya became the center of the uprising that engulfed the entire
district. The events of the Upper Don (Vyoshensky) uprising are
dedicated to the 3rd book of The Quiet Don by M.A. Sholokhov.
During the Great Patriotic War, the front came close to Vyoshenskaya,
but the enemy failed to cross the Don. The headquarters of the 197th
Infantry Division of General M.I. Zaporozhchenko, front-line medical
institutions, supply agencies of the troops, she was subjected to
shelling and bombing. In 1942, the house where the Sholokhovs lived was
destroyed by a fascist bomb, and the writer's mother died.
After
the war, Vyoshenskaya was rebuilt. M.A. Sholokhov, as a deputy of the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR, made a great contribution to the improvement
of the village, the arrangement of the life of the inhabitants. On the
initiative of the writer and with his assistance, a water supply system,
a power station, a television repeater, schools were built, a house for
children's creativity, an art school, a pedagogical school with a whole
complex of buildings - an educational building, a library, a hostel,
houses for teachers, were organized, the Don Research Experimental a
station that grew pine seedlings to strengthen the sands, a forest
protection zone was established on the banks of the Don.
M.A.
Sholokhov was the initiator of the creation of a folk Cossack choir and
a theater of Cossack youth, with his support the Vyoshensky sanatorium,
the Palace of Culture, an airport, an asphalt road to the city of
Millerovo were built, the construction of a bridge over the Don River
was started, which was completed after his death.
Already in the
1930s. the village of Vyoshenskaya became a place of pilgrimage for
admirers of Sholokhov's work. Many famous people have been here - Soviet
and foreign writers, actors, politicians, public figures.
Today
the village is a leading center of culture and education, a key object
of cultural tourism. Objects of the M.A. Sholokhov - the only museum of
federal significance in the Rostov region - is visited by more than 100
thousand tourists a year.
A bronze bust of the writer and a
sculptural composition "Grigory and Aksinya" are installed on the
stanitsa embankment, a sculptural composition "Grandfather Shchukar" is
installed in the park, a bas-relief in memory of the meeting in 1967 of
Vyoshentsev with the first cosmonaut Yu. Gagarin, near the Palace of
Culture, is installed in the center of the village - the monument
"Oath", dedicated to the liberation of the area from the Nazi invaders.
Every year in May, Vyoshenskaya hosts the All-Russian literary and
folklore festival "Sholokhov Spring", dedicated to the writer's
birthday, which gathers thousands of admirers of his work.
How to get there
By plane you need to get to Rostov, and from the main city of the
region there is a direct road to Veshenskaya. You will have to spend
about 8 hours on the way.
By train, it is best to get to
Millerovo station, from where buses leave for the village. On the way -
3 hours. If you want to get to Sholokhov's homeland faster, then take a
taxi. The driver will drive you to your destination for a couple of
thousand and an hour and a half.
By private car, you need to
drive along the M4 highway exactly to the intersection: if you go
straight, you will get to Rostov, to the right - to Millerovo, and to
the left - to Veshenskaya, which will be 140 kilometers away.
Transport
Approximately 9 thousand people live in Veshenskaya. So the best public transport here is minibuses or buses that run along the highway from Moscow to Rostov. Between this village and Bazkovskaya, located on the opposite bank of the Don, a bridge was erected, which replaced the ferry crossing.
Cuisine and restaurants
There are two restaurants worth visiting in Vyoshenskaya - "Khutorok"
and "Pogrebok". These are such culinary islands of Cossack cuisine,
where dishes are brought to folk music that you are unlikely to try
anywhere else.
For example, the Cellar is decorated in the style
of a kuren with elements of Cossack life. It is hidden in a quiet street
under a vineyard. The portions are huge, almost for two. Here you can
order Don fish soup, okroshka, dumplings, rich borscht and mushrooms.
Hotels
As many as five hotels operate in Vyoshenskaya. Here you can rent a
cozy room for a moderate fee. The hotels offer healthy, home-cooked
food, which the owners claim is made from only organic ingredients. In
principle, there is no reason not to trust them.
In addition,
hotels offer guests various excursions. For example, you can go to the
forest for mushrooms, go fishing on the Don, take a steam bath, take a
horse ride.
And in Veshenskaya there is a balneological resort of
the same name. Diseases of the musculoskeletal system, peripheral
nervous system and diabetes are treated here. There is a mineral spring
on the territory of the sanatorium - its waters are used for drinking,
baths and procedures in the pool. The resort is open all year round.