Zuevka is a city (since 1944) in Russia, the administrative center of the Zuevsky district of the Kirov region. Population - 10 166 people. (2020).
To connect the central regions of Russia with the
Urals, Siberia and the Far East, the Perm-Kotlas railway was built
at the end of the 19th century. When designing the stations on this
road, they were usually tied to already inhabited settlements.
At that time, small paper mills operated on the rivers Kos and
Kordyaga, to which the necessary materials were delivered by water
on shitiks and punt boats. In the same way, finished products were
floated from tributaries to Cheptsa, and then to Vyatka.
The
manufacturers Platunov and Ryazantsev were quite satisfied with such
a situation, which made it possible to keep in the hands of workers
cut off from the outside world. A real competitor appeared in the
face of the future station, where the labor force could go. The
manufacturers knew that the daily wages on the railroad were 50-60
kopecks, while they paid 15-20 kopecks.
Shatunov and
Ryazantsev did not skimp on treats and bribes in order to appease
the engineer who supervised the exploration work, and thus take away
the construction site of the new station. The engineer turned out to
be accommodating, and in order to please both manufacturers, he
designed a station almost halfway between Kordyaga and Kosaya, in a
deserted swampy place overgrown with small forests and bushes.
The builders felt very uncomfortable when they came to build a
new station in 1896. The inhabitants of the village of Zuya, where
the newcomers were accommodated, told them terrible stories about
the dead swampy places that were very close - cattle drowned there,
people were lost. Right there, where it was necessary to begin
construction, the water surface of a small lake, on which wild ducks
quacked, turned blue.
The Tsar's decree demanded to build a
railway line along the shortest path (although there were others,
with harder ground, but longer), and it was useless to think. In the
same 1896, the builders laid the foundation for the future
locomotive depot and station. The place for the main road had to be
significantly raised due to the bulk land.
The work really
started in 1897, and already on October 21, 1898, the first train
followed the Vyatka - Glazov section. He covered the distance of 200
versts in 12 hours, the speed was 16.5 versts per hour. In
preparation for the launch of the railway, a train schedule was
drawn up, and it was in this timetable in 1898 that for the first
time an unnamed station was named Zuevka (after the name of the
nearby village of Zuya).
At first, trains ran through the
station once a week. With the launch of the 804 km section of the
Kotlas-Perm road on February 1, 1899, this traffic became a little
more intensive.
From the memoirs of pensioner SI Nikulina:
“My parents came to Zuevka when only two residential buildings were
built in the village near the locomotive depot. Dad worked as a
machinist. The trains went slowly. There were cases - a passenger
asks for a ticket to a certain village, but there is no stop there.
The cashier says: "And you ask the driver, he will stop the train
where necessary." It used to be like this - the brigade asks: “Ivan
Ivanovich, stop the train, please, there - the birches are good, the
brooms could be broken!” Sometimes the reason for the unplanned
stops was mushroom spots. Both the brigade and all the passengers
fled into the copse, and then gathered at the whistle of the
locomotive.
By the time the railway was launched, a small
building of a locomotive depot for 7 places for organizing lifting
and washing repairs of locomotives, a water tower, and 7 residential
buildings were built in the station village. The buildings were
located only on the southern side of the railway, on the northern
side there was a forest.
In the early years, three small
streets were built, which did not have names for a long time, only
after the revolution they were named: 1st Soviet, 2nd Soviet and
Republics, a bathhouse, a reception room, two private shops were
built.
In 1909, lighting appeared on the station tracks for
the first time, 4 kerosene lanterns were installed. For a long time,
the settlement did not have its own governing bodies and was
administratively subordinate to the Sezenevsky volost government. By
the twenties, it had already become obvious that the larger station
settlement was subordinate to a small village located ten kilometers
from the railway. Local railway workers have repeatedly appealed to
the Slobodskoy district executive committee to resolve this issue.
In March 1921, an instruction was received, consisting of 24
points: "On the elections of the Zuevka village council." The
elections took place on May 20 of the same year, 1,500 voters took
part in them, 30 deputies were elected to the village council. A.M.
Esyunin became the first chairman of the Council, P.K.Malyshev was
elected as his deputy, P.K. The first meeting of the executive
committee was held in the building that still stands today
(Torgovaya st., 37).
In 1924 the volosts were enlarged, Zuevka became the center of
the volost, which included Kosinskaya and Sezenevskaya volosts.
In 1929, a new state management reform was carried out in the
country, a transition from volost division to district division was
carried out. Zuevka became the center of the district, which
included a number of volosts of Slobodskoy, Vyatsky and Glazovsky
districts. The district at that time was part of the Vyatka district
of the Nizhny Novgorod region. The first regional executive
committee was located, like the volost committee, in the southern
part of the city.
The national economy of the country began
to accelerate in the 1920s - 1930s. In this regard, the flow of
freight and passenger trains passing through the Zuevka station has
increased. This required the reconstruction of railway enterprises,
which was carried out in the pre-war years.
During the Great
Patriotic War, the population of the village increased sharply.
Evacuated residents of Leningrad, Velikie Luki and other regions
arrived in Zuevka. In March 1944, a decree of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR was published, according to which Zuevka
received the status of a city.
Zuevka during the Great
Patriotic War
On the very first day of the war, a meeting of the
district committee of the Komsomol was held in Zuyevka, at which the
statements of the Komsomol members wishing to immediately go to the
front were considered. Quite a few applications were received by the
regional military registration and enlistment office. During the war
years, almost every fourth inhabitant of the district was drafted or
voluntarily left for the war. 7645 people did not return, of which
about four thousand were Zuev residents.
The wounded came
from the front. Hospitals were organized for their treatment. There
was one in Zuevka, its number 3162. The first building was located
at school number 37, the second - at school number 1, the third - at
school number 38. Buildings of three more buildings have not
survived, this is the former house of pioneers, the former district
polyclinic (opposite school number 2) and the house of the
collective farmer.
The headquarters of the hospital was
located on Kirov Street in a now residential two-story wooden house,
across the street from the grain-receiving enterprise. Doctors and
nurses fought around the clock for wounded soldiers and officers,
but it was not always possible to snatch a person's life from the
grip of death. More dying people were in building No. 1, where the
surgical department with an operating room was located. Either by
chance, or it was specially thought out, not far from the building
there was an old cemetery where the dead were buried.