Settlement
Ukrainian Colonization of Nyzove Nadvolzhya
The information about the first settlements of the Ukrainians on the Nyzova Volga refers in the historical literature to the 1680s. Those were generally small settlements – just a few homesteads – in hard-to-reach areas. The first settlements of the Ukrainians often became the refuge for the so-called “thievish cossacks” making a living in the Dyke Pole (the Wild Field) and on the Volga by robbing.
During the reign of Peter I the Russian state started to strengthen its South-Eastern borders. Peter I sent recalcitrant and obstinate Ukrainian cossacks to build the Tsaritsyn defense boundary and defend it afterwards. The cossacks could not endure such a punishment for a long time and very soon they returned home to their families. After a time the tsarist government made another attempt to settle the Ukrainians along the Tsaritsyn boundary. The second attempt was more successful as the government applied the means they had used while colonizing Slobitska Ukraine – with the help of osadchiys (founders of new settlements and chiefs of the settlers) and granting various benefits to the settlers.
In the end of the 1840s the number of the Ukrainian settlements on the Nyzova Volga began to grow steadily. The reason for the appearance of new Ukrainian settlements on the banks of the Volga was extraction of salt from the bottom of Elton Lake. By tradition the government engaged Ukrainian chumacks (cossacks, state peasants) to take out the extracted salt. So, Ukrainian chumacks started to form their settlements along the Saratov and Kamyshyn highways: Pokrovska sloboda, Alexandrov Gai, Maly Uzen, Nova Porubezhka, Stara Porubezhka.
Ukrainian slobodas (settlements) and villages grew quickly raising the question of the further resettlement of the settlers – malorosses (Ukrainians). In a while the Ukrainian slobodas formed in the end of the XVIII c. – in the first part of the XIX c. became the centers of resettlement of the Ukrainians in the Nyzove Nadvolzhya area. For instance, the emigrants from the Rudnya sloboda formed the following slobodas and villages: Tersynka, Barannikovo, Tarapatyno, Kozlovka, Lemeshkyno, Borodaivka; from the Krasny Yar sloboda – Dobrynsky, Nedostupov, Moiseev, Serpokrylovo, Doroshevo, Netkachevo, Kryachkov, Vereshchagin; from the Kotovo sloboda – Lobinets; from the Balanda sloboda – Sergino; from the Samoylovka sloboda – Zaselyanka.
As a result of noblemen’s intensive development of empty lands during the years of the reign of Catherine II, noblemen’s vast patrimonies settled by the Ukrainians were formed in Nyzove Nadvolzhya. Such great votchinniks (holders of patrimonial estates) were the landowners the Naryshkins, the Chetvertinskiys, the Sheremetievs, the Kochubeys, the Vorontsovs, the Persidkiys, the Skibinevskiys and others.
In the 1830s the government began to actively develop the steppes of the left bank of the Nyzova Volga. As a result of the colonization flow, the Ukrainians founded the following settlements in Zavolzhya: Perelyub, Velyka Chernygivka, Avgustivka, Dergachi, Zhdanivka, Semenivka and others.
After the emancipation of peasants in 1861, Ukrainian peasants began to buy plots with the help of the Peasants Land Bank and form new settlements in the guberniyas of Nyzove Nadvolzhya. More than 200 new villages and khutors (farms) were formed by the Ukrainians in Saratov guberniya by the beginning of the XX century.
After the October Revolution of 1917 the process of forming new Ukrainian settlements stopped. Since 1924 the Soviet government launched the campaign on village councils enlargement. As a result of the “work” done, some Ukrainian villages were “enlarged” and small Ukrainian settlements disappeared from the administrative map of Nyzove Nadvolzhya.
Many thousands of Ukrainian families perished from starvation established artificially in Ukraine and Nadvolzhya by the bolsheviks in 1933-1934. A considerable part of the Ukrainian peasants of Nyzove Nadvolzhya had to leave their homes to earn their living in cities at that time.
World War II renewed the emigrant process of the Ukrainians to the Nyzova Volga. Thousands of Ukrainian families took refuge on the Volga land during those horrible years. In September of 1941 the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR issued Regulation #2030-922c “On activities concerning the resettlement of kolkhozes (collective farms) from the front zone of action of the Ukrainian SSR, Orlov and Kursk oblasts”. Dozens of thousands of Ukrainian families were evacuated to Nyzove Nadvolzhya on the grounds of this regulation. At that time the families of miners from Donbass were evacuated to Saratov oblast according to the resolution of the State Defense Committee. After the liberation of Ukraine from the German fascist invaders one part of the settlers returned to their homeland and the other part stayed on the Nyzove Nadvolzhya land forever.
At the time of the war the migratory processes within the Nyzove Nadvolzhya region intensified. After the Stalin deportation of Nadvolzhya Germans, a part of the Ukrainian families was forcibly resettled to the deserted villages of German colonists.
While developing virgin lands during the post-war years the Ukrainians along with the representatives of other nationalities formed new settlements.
Thus, the Ukrainian settlers played a remarkable role in the process of Nyzove Nadvolzhya colonization. Migrating to the banks of the Volga river, the Ukrainians formed dense ethnic areas.
