Zalm, raids began on the lower reaches of the Volga by Caucasian Tatars, and the banditry of the Kirghiz began, crossing from the left bank of the Volga to the right. It seemed that the position of the small cultural center before the every minute possible attack of entire hordes of savages had become completely desperate; but the energetic Herrnhuters were not at a loss here either: having dug their colony with a ditch, surrounding it with a rampart, they decorated this rampart with 12 cannons begged from the government; Moreover, 20 soldiers were mercifully released to them. Of course, guns and soldiers responded very little to the basic idea of peaceful brotherhood, but the Herrnhuters decided to resort to them in view of a positively irresistible, so to speak, necessity. There were not many 12 guns and 20 soldiers, but the colonists could defend themselves against robbers even with these forces. It was a different matter for Pugachev, whose huge gangs approached Sarepta in 1778; here the brothers all fled from the colony, taking with them what they could and leaving their beautiful cultural center to be plundered. Pugachev was defeated 40 versts from Sarepta, and therefore the colosha was not burned, but for that the remnants of the Pugachev gangs, in company with Sarepta’s good neighbors, the Kirghiz, plundered the colony to such an extent, they broke and spoiled everything that they could not carry away, that when the colonists returned, they did not find any of the remaining items of their household; I had to start it again.
The government, in order to help the brothers, delayed the payment of their debt and extended the tax exemption by another 9 lt, and foreign fraternal communities sent the Sarepta Herrnhuters 12 thousand rubles, which was a large amount at that time. Both of these brought the colony back to its feet.
From Gerngut itself - this capital of the brotherly communities - auditors came and their stay in Sarepta was followed by important reforms, which greatly contributed to its further prosperity; Having opened two schools, the elder brothers planted two new branches of industry, which subsequently brought Sarepta all-Russian fame, namely the weaving of sarpinka and the making of mustard.
A few years have passed since Sarepta was founded, and Kolovya managed to become the intellectual and industrial center of all the other Volga colonies; she supplied them with teachers, doctors, masters of all kinds of workshops, and Sareptskle stores were the only ones of their kind in the Volga region, since from them the huge region received good-quality goods at a normal price and without the slightest deception.
In 1775, 8 miles from Sarepta, the brothers discovered a mineral spring, from which it was possible to extract Glauber's salt and magnesium; This did not belong to the colons, but the Sareptans begged it from the government and it increased the already numerous production of Sarepta. In the first years, after the discovery of the spring, people even began to come to Sarezta for medicinal purposes, so that she threatened to go to the resort; but the modest, quiet life of Zarephath does not at all correspond to what the majority of those who go to the waters crave, and therefore the income of those who were treated decreased every year, and at the beginning of the present century it was reduced to zero. Since the beginning of the current century the name
We also have to note the gradual decline of the communal economy in Sarepta. The matter began with the fact that in 1808 a fire destroyed a sawmill and two mills in Sarepit. This misfortune itself was fixable, but it seemed to open up behind it a whole host of other illnesses and misfortunes: the death of cattle, which occurred in 1805, 1808 and 1812, caused many losses; the quarantine, on the occasion of the plague, organized in 1806 in Astrakhan and existed until 1823, to a certain extent undermined the trade of Sarepta; the fire of Moscow in 1818 caused up to 400 thousand losses due to the termination of payments by Moscow merchants; strong trade competition from other Volga colonies that had developed by that time. All this taken in put Sarepta in a seemingly hopeless situation: her debt increased to 600 thousand rubles and the annual benefits from Gerngut were insufficient to pay it off, even slowly. Sarepta was threatened with complete and final bankruptcy, but her foreign brothers helped her out again: the central directorate sent 120 thousand rubles in aid, 100 thousand rubles in a loan and, moreover, disbursed the previous debt. In 1820, the colony again and completely recovered, but in 1821 its commissionership from Saratov went bankrupt and went bankrupt for more than one hundred thousand, and in 1828 a fire almost destroyed the entire column, causing it a loss of over 600 thousand rubles.