way, branching into Kinel (not far beyond Samara): one path, a long one, goes from Samara through Buzuluk to Orenburg, the other, the main one, goes from it through Buguruslan, Ufa to Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk, etc. Thus, the “rising sun,” one might say, has risen to a significant extent. What should Samara pretend to be now, this city, whose true career began so recently and so successfully?
Before we talk about Samara’s present, let’s say a few words about its past.
“Samara Country” is becoming famous in the KhSh Vif. That period, when the area that now makes up the Samara province was worthy of nomadism
— 96 kov, represents very meager material for history; It is only known that in the KhG and HIP so many times this property passed from hand to hand of the same wild nomads, individual groups of which constantly conquered from one another the right to own the lands of the Samara country. In the 13th century, the Golden Horde already existed, whose main headquarters were located on Akhtub (one of the branches of the Volga), where the city of Tsarev, Astrakhan province, is now located. The khans of this horde extended power to the lands that make up the current Samara province.
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The holy metropolitan Alex, who healed the khan's wife Taidula, who had lost her sight, enjoyed great respect and honor among the wild nomads. He rendered much service to the Moscow principality in general and the Orthodox clergy in particular, being a constant intercessor before the khan and defender of Russian interests. On one of his trips to the Khan’s headquarters, as it seems between 1860 and 1370, the holy Metropolitan Alex met a hermit on the street where Samara now stands, and this hermit predicted to him that a large and rich city would grow here.
In 1586, Samar, or rather the Samara estuary, was mentioned in the letters of Tsar Theodore Toannovich, given to the governor Prince Zaskin and other governors; These letters entrusted them with the construction of new cities in the steppe and the construction of Samara on the Volga. The Tatar khans, quite reasonably suspecting that the construction of Samara and other towns was an encroachment on their freedom and represented an extension of Russian power in their domains, although they protested against this, they protested extremely weakly. So, for example, one of the Nogai princes Urus expressed his protest in repeated sendings to the parish, complaining about the unauthorized seizure of lands, but to all these indulgences the king responded to Urus only with advice: “leave your old stupidity.”
Be that as it may, Samarsv! The town was founded in 1586 at the junction of the Samara and Volga rivers, where Khlebnaya Square and the theater are now located. In the notes of Olearl, who visited Samara in 1688, it is said that the city of Samara is located 30 versts from the mouth of Samara; Thus, it is, as it were, a contradiction, which is most natural to explain in a dark way, as Mr. Monastyrsky does: the Samara River flowed into the Volga in a dark channel, which is now called Dry Samarka and is 80 verts from the current mouth of the river. Consequently, the opinion that the town of Samara was later moved 30 miles, which Mr. Demyanov partly adheres to, is hardly fair. The Lenten rampart of the ancient town, judging by some sources, began near the now existing Church of the Transfiguration and adjoined the Samar River, and on the site of the current Alexander Square there was a lake.
As the extreme point of Russian settlements on the meadow sides of the Volga, the Samara fortress suffered quite a bit from the Kalmyks, Bashkirs, Nogais, and especially from the lower Volga freemen. The town fought off the nomadic foreigners well, but in the difficult times of the development of Volga robbery, when huge gangs of them recklessly ruled on the banks of the Volga, Samar had a hard time. So in 1671 the city was occupied by Stenka Razin,
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— 97 executed the governor Aleimov and drowned in the Volga all the nobles and leading people who found themselves in cash. A short time later, Stenka Razin’s successor, Eedka Sheludyak, again took possession of the city, in which a terrible massacre was again carried out. By the time of Pugachev, Samara, which had only about a hundred soldiers and three soldiers, was essentially also deprived of the opportunity to defend itself, and therefore it is not surprising that a hundred years after the city was captured by Stenka Razin, Samara surrendered to Pugachev without a fight. Among the major ones in the history of the existing city is the huge fire of 1703, which destroyed Samara almost to the ground.