Ardatovsky District

Ardatovsky District is a municipal entity in the southwest of Nizhny Novgorod Region, known since 2022 as the Ardatovsky Municipal Okrug ^[1]. Its center is the urban-type settlement of Ardatov, at the confluence of the Lemet and Siyazma rivers, 160 kilometers from Nizhny Novgorod; the okrug covers 1,887.63 km², and as of January 1, 2025, it had 22,137 residents ^[1][2]. This is the land of the former, vast Ardatovsky Uyezd, of Mordvin burial grounds and gentry estates, of bast-shoe crafts and Sarov eldership.

Land and Borders

The okrug lies in the southwest of the Region, in the basin of the Tyosha and its tributaries — the Lemet, Irzha, Kanerga, and Siyazma. It borders the Navashinsky urban okrug; the okrugs of Kulebaki and Vyksa to the west; the Voznesensky and Diveyevsky okrugs to the south; the Arzamassky to the east; and the Sosnovsky to the north ^[1].

The territory is crossed from west to east by the Moscow–Kazan railway mainline (the Murom–Arzamas–Kanash section) of the Gorky Railway, as well as by federal and regional highways. The station nearest to Ardatov is Mukhtolovo: the official description of the okrug gives 30 kilometers, while a local history reference book gives 25 ^[1][3].

The area is rich in forest, fish, and game, and the forest shaped its economic character: firewood and timber-felling trades, the turning of wooden tableware, sleigh-making, and the manufacture of tools. This is exactly what the okrug's coat of arms speaks of — a red leaping deer with azure flax flowers on its antlers, set on a golden field above a green fir-tree-patterned base, which represents the Ardatov forests ^[1].

Limestone and gypsum gave the area its karst: near Mukhtolovo lie Lake Bolshoe and Lake Charskoe, and next to them is Lake Svyato, about which Nizhny Novgorod toponymy preserves a tradition that a monastery collapsed into its site, whose monks had turned to brigandry ^[4][5].

Origin of the name

The most persistent version is the legend of Ardatka, a Mordvin who, together with his brothers Kuzhendey and Totorsha, led the regiments of Ivan the Terrible through the dense forests during the third Kazan campaign of 1552 and received in reward a Mordvin settlement, which became Ordatova Village and later a palace village ^[6][7]. The brothers' names are still borne by the villages of Kuzhendeevo and Totorshevo.

The local historian A. V. Bazaev, in his book "Historical Information on the Settlements of Ardatovsky District," collected other interpretations that dispute the very existence of Ardatka: the historian and linguist L. Trube derived the name from the Mordvin "arda" (to go) and "tov" (there); the local historian N. V. Artemov, from "orta" (gate) and "tov," that is, "the gate to the Russian state"; the historian A. M. Orlov considered the toponym Turkic. Bazaev himself leaned toward the word "Horde": the border of the Golden Horde ran along the Tyosha River, and the Russians of the 13th–14th centuries saw an unfamiliar Tatar settlement on the trade route to Temnikov ^[4].

Before the uyezd

People have lived here since the 7th–3rd millennia BC: the camp sites along the banks of the Tyosha near the present-day villages of Sakony and Lichadeevo were excavated in 1929 ^[7][8]. Sakony Camp Site 1 and the "younger" Kuzhendeevo burial ground of the 12th–13th centuries are under state protection as sites of federal significance; nearby are Sakony Camp Site 3 of the 6th millennium BC, the Bolshoe and Maloe Sakony gorodishche (ancient fortified settlements) on the banks of the Tyosha, the "older" Kuzhendeevo burial ground of the 6th–7th centuries, and the complex of camp sites Lichadeevo 3 and Lichadeevo 4 ^[4].

From the 2nd to the 9th century the area was settled by Mordvin tribes — mostly Erzya, partly Moksha — as well as Kipchaks, Volga Finns, and small groups of Volga Bulgars; they settled in the floodplains of the Tyosha, Lemet, and Irzha rivers. From the 9th–12th centuries Slavic settlers appeared, who taught the Mordva farming and the making of iron tools and weapons ^[1][6].

The "Tsar's Sakma" ran through the area — the state embassy road from Moscow to the Golden Horde and the Astrakhan Khanate; Russian princes traveled along it to obtain yarlyks (khans' charters). The Ardatov lands witnessed Svyatoslav's campaign to pacify Volga Bulgaria, the Tatar hordes of 1237, and Ivan IV's campaign against Kazan in 1552; from the 13th to the 16th century the border between the Russian state and the Horde ran along the Tyosha ^[1][6]. The Sakonskoye gorodishche (hillfort) also served as a customs post on the old sakma (trail) — the road was closed in 1498, when the Kazan Khanate took control of the route ^[4].

After the campaign of 1552, the tsar distributed the Mordvin lands as service estates to Russian princes and boyars, Tatar and Mordvin murzas, and servicemen — mostly Sviyazhsk zhiltsy (Sviyazhsk was a Russian fortress near Kazan). Officially, land was also granted to the Mordva, but only to the baptized ^[7]; an echo of these grants is Kologreevo, which in 1606 was the patrimonial estate of the Sviyazhsk zhilets S. I. Kologrivov ^[4]. The way the baptism of the Mordva unfolded is also recalled by the Erzyan urochishche (a named natural locality) of Molyany, which survives near the village of Kavley: a round clearing on the slope of the right bank of the Kanerga with a granite boulder, where the Erzya of the surrounding villages came to worship the forces of nature ^[4][5].

District Town

On September 5, 1779, by decree of Catherine II, Ardatov became a district town ^[1]. The district turned out huge: 40 volosts and about 120,000 inhabitants, fourth in population and third in area in the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. It included the lands of the present-day Diveevo, Vyksa, Kulebaki, Pervomaysk, and Voznesenskoye districts and part of Arzamas District; Kulebaki and Vyksa were removed from its composition only in 1921 ^[1][6][8].

The townspeople were granted privileges: almost a third of the peasants were enrolled in the merchant estate, and the rest received the status of meshchane (townspeople), free from serfdom. Two yarmarkas (fairs) were established in the town, drawing traders from various places. A new regular development plan for Ardatov was approved in 1781: houses were to face the red lines of straight, wide streets and follow "model" designs from the capital ^[6][4].

But there was no major road nearby, and the little town grew slowly. In the 1850s it counted 2,444 inhabitants, 309 houses (seven of them stone), 14 shops, two small tanneries and six indigo-dyeing workshops, a ten-bed hospital, a district school, and a prison fortress; there were six merchant capitals, and farming remained the residents' main occupation ^[6].

The town was unlucky twice more later on: when Ardatov's merchants were invited to invest in building a railway, they came out against it, and, according to the director of the district museum, they were even backed by the leader of the district nobility, Prince Zvenigorodsky ^[7].

Three reigning monarchs visited this land. In June 1767, Catherine II, traveling along the Volga, stopped at the Bykovka estate of retired Lieutenant Colonel Zhukov: a dinner was held in her honor, a chorus of peasant girls greeted the empress, and a triumphal arch was erected at the site of the meeting. On July 17, 1903, Nicholas II passed through the area on his way to Sarov for the glorification of Seraphim of Sarov — at the village of Orekhovets he was met by the leader of the Ardatov district nobility, Prince I. D. Zvenigorodsky, and the police chief (ispravnik) I. K. Samosudov. And in the village of Sakony stands the Trinity Church, which, according to tradition, was built on the site of a chapel hewn by Ivan the Terrible; the Ardatov zemstvo board marked the memory of the royal army's longest halt in 1910 with a separate chapel ^[7][8].

The district's economy rested on the ironworks of the Batashev brothers, potash production, and a cloth factory ^[8]. The main peasant trade, however, was bast-shoe weaving: residents of eight settlements engaged in it, the season ran from Pokrov (October 14) to Trinity, and Ardatov's craftsmen produced up to a hundred thousand pairs a year — for themselves and for the treeless southern governorates. For this Ardatov was long called "the bast-shoe town" ^[8].

The town was partly merchant, partly noble, and still more ecclesiastical and monastic. In 1802 the three-altar Znamensky Cathedral rose in the center; there were also the city's Ilyinsky Church and a cemetery church; in 1834 a district school was built to a design by the architect M. P. Korinfsky, and in 1897 the zemstvo board building; preserved are trading shops of the late 19th century, the houses of Krasheninnikov and Zelin, the district treasury, a women's gymnasium of the early 20th century, and the district prison of 1856–1858, the work of the architect A. E. Turmyshev ^[4][8]. And on the territory of the district, in the village of Diveevo, through the efforts of the Sarov recluse, the Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery grew up ^[6].

At the beginning of the twentieth century, industry also revived: the Murom merchant V. F. Naumov opened a starch factory in Ardatov, oil pressing developed, flour-grinding windmills and many smithies appeared, women's and men's gymnasiums (secondary schools) opened, along with a peasant land bank, and the city hospital was rebuilt ^[6][8]. By 1917, Ardatov and its uyezd (county) had 8 ironworks, 3 distilleries, 8 sawmills, and 9 starch-grating plants, more than 600 small enterprises, and over 200 commercial establishments; there were also 20 credit partnerships, 9 loan and savings associations, 9 insurance societies, and about 30 consumer societies ^[1].

Three churches, seven stone houses, sidewalk posts, and two or three sentry boxes with rusty halberds by the doors reminded one that this was no ordinary village… In a word, Ardatov is a town of the kind that Holy Mother Russia has a fair number of…

The main trade in Ardatov families was weaving bast shoes (lapti). For this, Ardatov was long called "the bast-shoe town." We still weave lapti here!

Pokrovsky Monastery

Around 1800, V. D. Polyukhova settled in a house on the bank of the Lemet River and led a secluded life of prayer; around 1808, Saint Seraphim of Sarov blessed her to receive women who came seeking spiritual guidance. A community took shape, led by the Sarov elders Seraphim and hieromonk Hilarion; in 1810 Polyukhova bought a house with a plot on Temnikovskaya Street near the cathedral for the sisters. The forty sisters supported themselves by making prosphora (liturgical bread), sewing women's clothing, weaving, and working in the garden and vegetable plot ^[9].

After the fire of 1837, the city authorities did not permit the community to be rebuilt on its former site, and the sisters moved to a plot outside the town, bought on Seraphim's advice; in 1838–1844, 19 cells were built there. On May 9, 1842, the Holy Synod approved the community; in 1860 a church of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God was raised with donations, and in 1861 the community received the status of a third-class cenobitic convent (women's monastery). Under Abbess Seraphima (Sinitsyna), over twenty years they built a two-story refectory building for 200 sisters, two stone cell buildings, and a hospital with a church of the Vladimir Icon; in 1895 a school for girls opened, and by the beginning of the twentieth century more than 300 sisters lived in the convent ^[9].

In March 1920, the provincial executive committee ruled that the monastery was "not subject to complete liquidation," but its premises were to house a company of Red Army soldiers. On June 25, 1928, a resolution of the Arzamas uyezd executive committee closed the churches, on March 29, 1929, the agreement with the community was terminated, and the convent was finally dissolved. From the 1930s a correctional labor colony for minors was housed here; by 2001 only a half-ruined cell building survived of the structures ^[9]. In Ardatov itself, people say the monastery buildings were blown up in 1931 ^[7].

From Uyezd to District

Soviet Power was proclaimed in the uyezd on January 5, 1918. In 1921 the local newspaper "Krasny Pakhar" ("Red Plowman") began publication for the first time, the Ardatov theater appeared, the neglected city garden was put in order, and the system of education and orphanages was streamlined ^[6].

In 1923 Ardatovsky Uyezd ceased to exist, and Ardatov Volost became part of Arzamassky Uyezd ^[1]. Ardatov lost its town status: according to some sources this happened in 1925, according to others in 1929 ^[1][6][4][7]. In the selo a kolkhoz called "Our Answer to the Kulak" was organized, uniting 160 peasant households ^[6]; the first kolkhozes in the area appeared in 1928, and between 1928 and 1935 ninety of them were created.

On June 10, 1929, by resolution of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR, Ardatovsky District was established — this date is considered here to be the district's birthday ^[1][6]. The importance of the center grew: in 1934 a machine-tractor station (MTS) appeared, followed by a mechanization school, an agricultural technical school, a House of Socialist Culture, and a cinema ^[6]. From 1944 to 1957 the northern part of the district lived separately: the center of the independent Mukhtolovsky District was Mukhtolovo, which received the status of a workers' settlement in 1946 ^[3].

In 1959, the selo of Ardatovo was converted into a workers' settlement ^[1][6]. In 1969, a branch of the Moscow plant "Mosdetal," which worked for the defense industry, was opened here — an enterprise later known as "Sapfir"; its creation was helped by a fellow native, Army General S. S. Maryakhin, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR. The settlement's population grew from 4,500 to 10,500 people, and a new residential district began to be built to accommodate the new workforce ^[6][7]. At the same time, a new building for the District hospital, Secondary School No. 2, and new buildings for the technical college and vocational school went up ^[6].

By Law of Nizhny Novgorod Region No. 43-Z of May 4, 2022, "On the Transformation of the Municipal Entities of Ardatovsky Municipal District of Nizhny Novgorod Region," the District, as a result of the merger of all its settlements, was granted the status of a municipal okrug under the name Ardatovsky Municipal Okrug; the workers' settlement of Ardatov was named its administrative center ^[1]. The former settlements became territorial departments of the administration — Ardatovsky, Kuzhendeevsky, Lichadeevsky, Mukhtolovsky, Sakonsky, Steksovsky, and Khripunovsky ^[10].

War

More than 15,000 people from Ardatovsky District went to the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, many of them as volunteers. The District raised 1,200,000 rubles for the aircraft of the Valery Chkalov Squadron and 309,760 rubles for tank columns. Four became Heroes of the Soviet Union: K. V. Makarov, N. S. Moiseev, A. T. Muravyov, and Popkov — the diocesan sketch calls him A. I. Popkov, while the Ardatov library, in its list of local natives, calls him N. I. Popkov ^[6][8].

In August 1942, in an Ardatov mansion that now houses the local history museum, 126 children and eight caregivers from Leningrad Children's Home No. 31 were taken in, brought out of the blockade sick and weakened; the children's home remained in Ardatov until 1969. Among the museum's exhibits is the casing of a German high-explosive aerial bomb dropped in this area during the war ^[8].

The name of Divisional Commissar Ivan Vasilyevich Zuev (1907—1942), a native of Blizhne-Pesochnoye in Ardatovsky Uyezd, is also connected with the Ardatov land. He fought in Spain, was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine, and from March 1942 was a member of the Military Council of the 2nd Shock Army on the Volkhov Front; he was killed while leading yet another group of soldiers out of encirclement, and was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class ^[11]. In Ardatov, a street bears his name — the one on which the local history museum stands ^[5].

Population

As of January 1, 2025, the District had 22,137 residents, of whom 13,281 lived in urban areas and 8,856 in rural areas ^[2]. The All-Russian Census of 2020, conducted as of October 1, 2021, counted 22,835 people here — 10,632 men and 12,203 women ^[12]. For comparison: at the end of the 18th century, Ardatovsky Uyezd alone had about 120,000 inhabitants, and in the 1850s the uyezd town itself had 2,444 people ^[6].

Economy

The leading branch of the industrial complex is light industry: the production cooperative, now a limited liability company, the firm "Mukhtolovskaya Spetsodezhda" (Mukhtolovo Workwear), which accounts for about 75% of the output and 54% of the industrial workforce of the district. Because of this, Mukhtolovo is classed as a single-industry town: roughly half of the settlement's working-age residents are employed at the factory ^[3]. The enterprise is still operating today: according to the register of legal entities, the firm's revenue for 2025 was 775.6 million rubles, with an average headcount of 556 employees ^[13].

The industrial complex was supplemented by branches that work with the local raw-material base: the Mukhtolovsky Timber Industry Enterprise (OAO) and the Mukhtolovsky Chemical Forestry Enterprise, a dairy plant, the former defense-industry enterprise OAO "Sapfir", and a printing house. The instrument-making Sapfir on Oktyabrskaya Square in Ardatov is still in operation today, producing parts for instruments used in navigation, control, measurement, and monitoring; dairy production in the settlement is carried on by the Ardatov Dairy Plant ^[13].

Agriculture remains focused on meat and dairy, but the largest ruble invested in the district in recent years went to poultry farming. On July 22, 2026, construction was completed in the selo of Mikheyevka on a table-egg production site: 2.9 billion rubles in investment, five houses for laying hens of 200,000 birds each and two houses for replacement pullets of 100,000 each, almost 50,000 square meters, 150 jobs, and a capacity of about one million eggs per day. Reaching design capacity will add up to 295 million eggs a year to the Region's output ^[14].

Architecture and Churches

Ardatov has been recognized as a historic settlement, with protected and reserved historic zones designated within it ^[6]. Its main landmark is the Znamensky Cathedral of 1802, with altars dedicated to the Sign of the Most Holy Theotokos, the Beheading of John the Baptist, and St. Nicholas; the road to Diveevo passes directly beneath its walls ^[4][8]. Next to the building of the District House of Culture lies the gravestone of Mikhail Yakovlevich Chaadayev (1792–1866), a landowner from Khripunovo and the brother of the philosopher ^[4].

The rural churches of the district are a story of their own. The Trinity Church in Lemet, dating from 1725 and a monument of federal significance, repeats in simplified form the ornate Moscow-area churches of the Petrine era. The Trinity Church in Avtodeyevo, dating from 1822, is associated with the architect M. P. Korinfsky: the spire of the bell tower has survived, and inside are the remains of an iconostasis of clear classical composition. In the abandoned Savior-Transfiguration church in Levashevo, dating from 1764, frescoes, an iconostasis, and icon cases have survived to the present day. The wooden Savior-Transfiguration Church in Vyipolzovo, dating from 1738, lost its dome before 2006, and by 2013 its bell tower had collapsed as well ^[4].

Estates and Owners

The lands of the uyezd were held by noble families, and in almost every village the name of the church is followed by the name of the landowner. In Sakony the lords were the Romodanovsky boyars, the Demidov factory owners, Major General S. L. Lvov, and Court Marshal D. N. Durnovo; in Lichadeyevo, the Serene Princes Lieven and Privy Councillor V. Yu. Soymonov; in Mechasovo, Prince I. V. Golitsyn, who received the estate from Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich for military service, and later the boyar B. I. Morozov, the Odoyevskys, and the Lanskys; in Khokhlovo, the Vrassky, Mukhanov, Mosolov, and Prokudin families and the Counts Olsufyev; in Khripunovo, from 1653, the Chaadayevs; in Lipovka, the Romodanovskys, the Demidovs, and the Durnovos ^[4].

The village of Mechasovo stood on the Murom Highway, and had had a market since long ago, along with a great number of inns and taverns. A distinct Ardatov family was the Zvenigorodsky princes: they owned estates in Kotovka and near Maly Seryakushi, it was through their efforts that the Kazan Church rose between Karkaley and Aleksandrovka on the watershed of the Tyosha and the Moksha, and they also supplied the uyezd with its marshals of the nobility ^[4].

Hermitages, Museums, and Protected Places

Today the old village churches of the district house hermitages (skity) of the Seraphim-Diveevo Monastery: the Nikolsky hermitage in Avtodeevo, the Pokrovsky in Kanerga, the Znamensky in Khripunovo next to the Chaadaev necropolis, and the hermitage of the Savior the All-Merciful in Nucha; near Kanerga there is a spring in honor of the Holy Trinity, and in Mukhtolovo in 2000 a Church of the Nativity of Christ was built on the site of a lost wooden church ^[4]. The district's parishes belong to the Ardatov Deanery of the Vyksa Diocese, which was separated in 2012 from the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese ^[8].

The official list of the district's attractions is short and rests on living places: the local history museum on Zuev Street in Ardatov, the Museum of the Venerable Elena of Diveevo in the village of Nucha, the public space "Over the Surface of the River" on the bank of the Lemet, the park in Ardatov, the lakes Bolshoe and Charskoe near Mukhtolovo, and the urochishche (a named natural locality) of Molyany near Kavley ^[5]. The museum occupies a two-story old mansion where the Monakhov family, townspeople of the merchant-artisan class, lived in the 19th century; on the first floor stands a scene that children like: Ivan IV in royal robes reads a decree to a Mordvin lad in a linen shirt with a birch-bark basket on his back — that very Ardatka ^[8].

Among its natural rarities the area points to its karst lakes and the Balakhonikha Cave — it lies at the foot of the sheer wall of an abandoned gypsum quarry near the village of Balakhonikha, on the border of the Ardatov and Arzamas lands, and reference books assign it now to one district, now to the other. The entrance is a narrow crack of 75 centimeters, the length together with the sinkholes is 48 meters, and the main chamber stretches more than 19 meters at a height of up to 2.8 meters; even in summer the temperature there does not rise above two or three degrees, so ice stalactites and stalagmites often grow in the cave ^[7][15]. Next to Mukhtolovo lie the Mukhtolovo and Lichadeevo nature reserves (zakazniki), and fragments of the manor park in Lichadeevo are among the two dozen specially protected natural areas of the district ^[4][3].

Natives

In Ardatov, on February 10 (22), 1881, the Silver Age poet, prose writer, and critic Boris Aleksandrovich Sadovskoy (1881–1952) was born — the son of A. Ya. Sadovskoy, the future chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate Scholarly Archival Commission. His first poem, "Ivan the Terrible," was published by the Volgar in January 1901; Sadovskoy's name was spoken in the same breath as those of Blok, Bely, and Bryusov, and his best-known collection became Samovar of 1914, with its longing for the manorial gentry way of life ^[16]. The main house of the estate where he lived stands in Lichadeevo behind the school ^[4].

In the village of Totorshevo, on September 24 (October 7), 1911, Sergey Stepanovich Maryakhin was born — the future General of the Army, commander of the Northern Group of Forces and of the troops of the Belorussian Military District, and from 1968 to 1972 Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR and Chief of the Rear of the Armed Forces. In 1975 Zarechnaya Street in Ardatov, where he spent his childhood, was renamed General Maryakhin Street ^[17].

The Ardatov land has given Russian Orthodoxy several names. In the selo of Nucha stood the estate of the Manturovs: Mikhail Vasilyevich Manturov, whom the venerable Seraphim healed of a grave illness and who then spent his whole life helping the elder build up the Diveyevo convent, and his sister Elena, canonized as the venerable Elena of Diveyevo; the selo has a museum dedicated to her ^[7]. Anastasia Semyonovna Logacheva (schema-nun Afanasia, 1809–1875), a Kurikha ascetic and the abbess of the Nikolayevsky Ulalinsky Convent, came from the selo of Kudley ^[4]. In the Pokrovsky Monastery, by the blessing of the elders of Sarov Hermitage, A. F. Petrova lived the ascetic life, bedridden for almost forty years, and the Sarov schema-monk Anthony, who lived in Ardatov from 1851 to 1861, was buried there ^[9]. Bishop Polycarp of Ardatov (Tikhonravov) died on July 7, 1931, in the hospital of the Nizhny Novgorod factory-and-plant colony, at the age of 73 ^[8].

Prince N. G. Shakhovskoy, the owner of the selo of Yusupovo, kept a home theater and staged performances at the Makaryev and Nizhny Novgorod yarmarkas, and at the end of the 18th century moved his troupe to Nizhny Novgorod — this is how the city's first public theater opened in 1789 ^[4]. The list of natives of whom Ardatov is proud also includes the philosopher P. Ya. Chaadayev, the 19th-century woman writer M. S. Zhukova, the poet A. Zvenigorodsky, the historian N. M. Karamzin, the founders of the region's metallurgy, the Batashev brothers, the Decembrist F. P. Shakhovskoy, brigade commander I. V. Boryayev, partisan detachment commander F. I. Koshelev, Army General S. S. Maryakhin, commissar I. V. Zuyev, the pilot V. Shchepalin, who repeated Gastello's feat, and Academician A. M. Samarin ^[6].

The District Today

The district is governed by an administration and a Council of Deputies; the administration includes seven territorial departments covering the former settlements, departments of education, finance, construction and housing and utilities, and agriculture, and a department of culture, sports, and youth policy ^[10]. The district is a co-founder of the district newspaper "Nasha Zhizn" ("Our Life") ^[10]. The administration's reception office sits in Ardatov; the postal address is ard@nobl.ru ^[1].

The settlement is home to the Ardatov Central District Hospital, an employment center, a comprehensive social services center, a police department, a fire and rescue unit, and a multifunctional center; the military enlistment office serves the Ardatovsky, Voznesensky, and Diveyevo districts at once ^[10]. The library network is run by an inter-settlement library system with central and children's libraries in Ardatov, two libraries in Mukhtolovo, and rural branches; it also maintains the local-history compendium of the Ardatov area ^[6].

Sources

1. ardatov.nobl.ru — Administration of Ardatov Municipal Okrug — "About the Okrug" section (archive)
2. 52.rosstat.gov.ru — Nizhegorodstat — estimate of the permanent population by okrugs of the Region (archive)
3. autotravel-nn.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Local History and Tourist Guide — on the urban-type settlement of Mukhtolovo — Mukhtolovo Settlement (archive)
4. gttp.ru — "Give to Understand" Foundation, "Places of Memory of Nizhny Novgorod Region" project; text by Galina Filimonova — Ardatovsky District on the Map of the "Places of Memory" of Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
5. ardatov.nobl.ru — Administration of Ardatov Municipal Okrug — list of landmarks — Landmarks (archive)
6. ard-bib.ru — Ardatov Central Library — local history essay — The Ardatov Land (archive)
7. nn.aif.ru — "AiF-Nizhny Novgorod" — interview with Natalya Baranova, director of the Ardatov Local History Museum — They Still Weave Bast Shoes: Milestones in the Varied History of Ardatov (archive)
8. vyksa-eparhia.ru — Vyksa Diocese — essay on Ardatov and its museum — a treasure trove of history (archive)
9. pravenc.ru — Orthodox Encyclopedia — article on the Pokrovsky Monastery — Ardatov Convent of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos (archive)
10. ardatov.nobl.ru — Administration of Ardatov Municipal Okrug — structure of the administration (archive)
11. bibliokray.ru — Vyksa Centralized Library System — on Division Commissar I. V. Zuev — Our Dates: November 7 — 115th Anniversary of the Birth of Ivan Vasilyevich Zuev (archive)
12. 52.rosstat.gov.ru — Nizhegorodstat — results of the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, volume 1, table 5 (archive)
13. checko.ru — Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and financial statements of OOO firm "Mukhtolovskaya Spetsodezhda" — OOO FIRMA "MUKHTOLOVSKAYA SPETSODEZHDA," INN 5201000867
14. nobl.ru — Government of Nizhny Novgorod Region — on the launch of the Mikheyevka poultry complex — New Poultry Complex Launched in Ardatov Okrug with State Support
15. autotravel-nn.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Local History and Tourist Guide — description of the Balakhonikha Cave — Balakhonikha Cave (archive)
16. ngounb.ru — Literary Map of Nizhny Novgorod Region (Lenin Nizhny Novgorod Regional Universal Scientific Library) — on Boris Sadovskoy — Sadovskoy, Boris Aleksandrovich (1881—1952) (archive)
17. names52.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Biographical Encyclopedia — on Army General S. S. Maryakhin — Maryakhin, Sergey Stepanovich (archive)