Bykovka (stress on the second syllable) — a historic village in Vorotynsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region. It is part of the Krasnogorsky rural council.

It lies 140 km east of Nizhny Novgorod and 10 km from the M7 Volga federal highway, which runs from Moscow to Kazan and then on to Ufa.

The first plantings of potatoes and sowings of fodder crops in Nizhny Novgorod Province were made in the village. There were remarkable gardens and greenhouses; Kholmogory cattle and Oryol trotters were bred here. The fire brigade was the best in the governorate. Under Vasily Lvovich Demidov (first half of the 19th century), the inhabitants of the estate were vaccinated against smallpox and quarantines were imposed during epidemics. The manor park of the mid-19th century has survived in good condition, and individual plantings from the "Livada" park and from the park of the late 18th century have also survived.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the village was in effect the administrative centre of Vasilsursky Uyezd. The district zemstvo board was located here, chaired by Alexander Vasilyevich and later by Alexander Alexandrovich Demidov.

The essence of the phenomenon

The village of Bykovka, situated in the east of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, developed as the central estate of one of the branches of the The Demidovs of Nizhny Novgorod, noblemen who were imperial "innovators". Thanks to the landowners' careful personal management of the estate and their attention to the peasants' advantage, for many years it differed from other settlements of the Vorotynsky District in its better layout of buildings, the soundness of its private households and the order in its streets.

In Soviet times Bykovka lost its former importance: the Church of the Nativity was used as a storehouse for the local collective farm, and the Demidov necropolis was partly plundered — graves were opened and gravestones carted away. Gradually the village fell into economic decline.

Today work is under way to restore the tourist and cultural standing of Bykovka.

Foundation and development

Bykovka is first mentioned in the 17th century as a hamlet situated on the lands of the Vorotynsky princes.

Later it was part of the patrimonial estate of Count F.A. Golovin. In 1720 N.F. Golovin, the son of the first Russian admiral, sold part of the estate to Nikita Demidov, thanks to which the latter acquired noble rank.

In the 18th century the village passed by inheritance from Nikita to Akinfy Nikitovich, then to Prokofy Akinfeyevich and Lev Prokofyevich.

Nikolai Demidov writes in his "Historical Essay on the Vasilsursk Uyezd" (1884) that at the end of the 18th century the Bykovka estate led a miserable existence: the properties were "not only without any organization, but barely habitable. Most of the land was covered with dense forest, undergrowth and swamps." There is no reason to speak of any particular wealth on the part of Lev Demidov. Farming was conducted by the methods of their forefathers, and yields were extremely low. The results of the General Land Survey and the census of 1784 showed that the village had become practically depopulated and could barely manage to grow grain. This apparently happened because a considerable part of the serfs had been transferred to the Urals factories.


The peasant uprising of 1918

Chronicle of events

July 1918. The Yegoryevskaya volost organization of the RCP(B) proposed holding a uyezd-wide party conference in the village of Bykovka on 25 July 1918. There was a single item on the agenda: uniting the village poor for a common struggle against kulak violence.

25 July 1918. Despite timely notice, no one came to the conference in Bykovka except its initiators, that is, the delegates from the Yegoryevskaya volost. Seven of them arrived: Vorobyov, Komolov, Rusakov, Kachanov, Kukushkin, Chernov, Artemyev, and two carters, the drivers Pankratov and Kutlakov.

Learning that no one but themselves had come to the conference, the men from Yegoryevskaya volost decided to go to Ivan Ivanovich Belyakov's tea house before setting off back.

At that time a village assembly of the peasants of the village's second community was under way. Hearing that Communists from other villages had come to Bykovka for a meeting, the peasants were "outraged" by this.

Straight from the village assembly the crowd headed for the tea house, arming themselves along the way, some with pitchforks and some with stakes, and began to shout: "Why have you come here, you scoundrels? Probably to incite the poor to rob us and take away our grain and orchards?"

The crowd attacked the Yegoryevskaya Communists and began to beat them brutally. Artemyev threw a hand grenade, and the blast killed N.A. Vorobyov, chairman of the Kazyevskaya party organization. This, however, outraged the people of Bykovka still more, and in the fighting the party cell secretary Komolov and Rusakov, commissar for military affairs of the Yegoryevskaya volost, were killed. Three of the Communists and the two drivers nevertheless managed to escape.

26 July 1918. All the peasants were out in the meadows haymaking; only the old people and the children remained at home. I.S. Yerin, head of the Vorotynets precinct police, arrived in the village to look into the affair. A group of men armed with rifles came to Bykovka from Yegoryevsk and began committing outrages. Without any investigation or establishing the circumstances of the events, they killed the tea house owner I.I. Belyakov, I.S. Yerin, the elderly villagers Mikhail Timofeyevich Sukhov, Vasily Ivanovich Naumov, Fyodor Ivanovich Vorobyov, Salynin Petrovich Ivanovich, Ivan Yegorovich Samokhin, the former landowner A.A. Demidov and the insurance agent L.A. Petrovsky. Frightened by the shooting, the villagers fled the haymaking meadows in panic and began returning home only towards evening, when the group from Yegoryevsk had left for home.

27 July 1918. News of the events in Bykovka spread quickly through the district. Crowds of people began streaming into the village from the Vorotynskaya, Kriushinskaya and Tubanayevskaya volosts and from the villages of Yelvashka, Akhpayevka, Ivanovskoye, Novy Usad and Vatras. More than a hundred people gathered near the volost executive committee building. The enraged crowd attacked the houses of the local authorities S.I. Medvedev, I.I. Krasnov and others and plundered all their property.

They tortured and tormented S.I. Medvedev's sixteen-year-old brother Pyotr, who escaped being shot only by a miracle. Tortured and brutally murdered were Alexander Mikhailovich Steklov (the first chairman of the volost executive committee) and the Red Guards Ivan Ivanovich Kalashnikov and Mikhail Ivanovich Kiselev.

In all, the uprising took the lives of 12 residents of the village and three residents of the Yegoryevskaya volost.

Some five days after these tragic events a Gubcheka detachment arrived in Bykovka from Nizhny Novgorod, armed with rifles and one cannon. The cannon was set up near the church, and the ChON fighters made camp on the spot. The investigation went on for several days. Many witnesses were summoned and questioned. Many of those responsible for the revolt were shot. Several residents of Bykovka were arrested and sent to the prisons of Vasilsursk and Sergach (disambiguation).

6 November 1960. A monument to the fallen Communists, made of marble gravestones taken from the Demidov necropolis, was erected on the village's central square.

Architectural heritage

...

— Is the Church of the Nativity in Bykovka also connected with the Demidovs?

— Under Vasily Lvovich Demidov two churches were built in Bykovka: a winter one in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "of the Sign" (1829) and a summer one in honour of the Nativity of Christ (1830). The latter is one of the most interesting churches in the Nizhny Novgorod region in the Classical style. The Church of the Nativity is a cultural monument of regional significance. The strict and restrained exterior of the church is set against its interior, decorated with magnificent moulded ornament.

The Demidov family burial ground is also on the church grounds. The point is that Vasily Lvovich was very fond of Bykovka. It is no accident that the village came to be known as the ancestral seat of the The Demidovs of Nizhny Novgorod. Here were the best orchards and kitchen gardens, the best trotters, the best fire brigade. It was in Bykovka that the province's first planting of potatoes and fodder grasses was carried out.

— What became of the Demidov estates in Bykovka?

— Originally the estate of Lev Prokofyevich and Vasily Lvovich Demidov — the first in Bykovka — stood not far from the entrance to the village from the Nizhny Novgorod–Kurmysh road. The wooden Church of the Sign (early 18th century) stood here as well.

In the middle of the 19th century Vasily Lvovich withdrew from affairs and divided the estate among his sons.

To his eldest son, Alexander Vasilyevich, he gave his own manor, where he lived out his life until August 1861. The estate suffered in the Soviet years: most of the buildings were dismantled and the parks felled. Two have survived: a wooden one (first quarter of the 19th century) and a stone one (second half of the 19th century).

The second son, Arkady Vasilyevich (in the photograph he is wearing felt boots), received the upper, "hill" part of Bykovka. Another manor arose here. In Soviet times the manor houses were taken apart for their bricks. Apparently crushed stone was badly needed for the construction projects of the first five-year plans. They wanted to ship the brick rubble out on special barges, but this failed: the barges sank in the The Sura River. Judging by the foundations, the main house was surrounded by several more buildings.

The park of this estate has survived to our day, with its lime avenue and avenue of silver poplars. Several years ago the "Rodnoy Kray" children's excursion bureau cleared the park's ring avenue, and at the foot of the hill, now with the assistance of the Vorotynets district administration, a chapel and a bathing house at the Sytny Klyuch spring were restored. Village and district festivals are held here.

Today the wooden house of Vasily Lvovich's estate holds the display of the Demidovs' "spontaneous museum" (from household objects of that era to old photographs and archival documents). I hope our museum will soon receive official status. Its collection is constantly being enlarged with very interesting exhibits. Not long ago descendants of the Demidovs provided us with unique photographs, thanks to which we now have an idea of yet another Demidov "place of memory" in the Vorotynets district — a farmstead in the forest between Bykovka and Pokrov-Maidan.

Galina Filimonova, the historiographic project "Places of Memory"

Sights and traditions

In this village, small by modern standards (about 160 residents), there are 5 cultural heritage monuments of regional significance: the Church of the Nativity (1830) and the Church of the Sign (1829), a manor house of the first third of the 19th century, a stone church wall (19th century), a retaining wall (second half of the 19th century), and also the Demidov necropolis (19th – early 20th century). A manor park of the middle of the 19th century has survived, along with individual trees 150 to 200 years old.

"Demidov Lilac"

Since 2007, at the end of May, when the village is literally drowning in a sea of blossoming lilac, memorial events dedicated to the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Demidovs have been held in Bykovka.

24 May 2011 was a special day. Part of the gravestone slab from the grave of Arkady Vasilyevich Demidov, removed from here in the 1970s and discovered at the Bugrovsky Cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod, returned to the family necropolis. After a service in the Church of the Nativity and a gathering on the square in front of the church, a memorial litiya was performed at the necropolis and the gravestone was consecrated.


After the memorial part was over, the young guides of the "Rodnoy Kray" excursion bureau led a tour of the village, showing its sights. The guests visited the manor house housing the display devoted to the Demidovs. And in the manor park the visitors "happened" to meet a "Turgenev maiden", who told them the legend of how lilac appeared on earth. Bykovka's chief symbol that day delighted them with only slightly opened lilac and white clusters. The sea of lilac was only just beginning to spill over.

The festival ended with performances by the vocal ensembles "Lyubava" (the settlement of Vorotynets (disambiguation)) and "Razdolye" (the village of Spasskoye). All the participants and guests of the festival were treated to hot potatoes with stewed meat, lightly salted cucumbers, fragrant tea and pies.

The festival in Bykovka — beautiful, homely, cosy, to the inspired trilling of nightingales — is becoming a tradition.

Interesting facts

  • Vasily Lvovich Demidov carried out the first planting of potatoes, which had not yet been grown in the Nizhny Novgorod province. The potatoes gave an excellent harvest. Bykovka can therefore rightly be considered the birthplace of Vorotynets and even Nizhny Novgorod potatoes.
  • The Bykovka estate was a diversified enterprise: grain crops and beekeeping, the raising of Kholmogory cattle and Oryol trotters, pig breeding and beekeeping, orchards and greenhouse farming (hothouses in which peaches, apricots, plums and even grapes ripened). The farm was brought to perfection; even the director of the Petrovsky Academy came to see it, and the Dokuchayev expedition visited as well.
  • Two years after the abolition of serfdom, the peasants of Bykovka, with the help of a public fund created on the initiative of their progressive squire, were able to buy out their allotments and moved from the category of temporarily obligated peasants into the estate of peasant proprietors. A unique case in the history of Russia. This was made possible by funds from the operation of the grain storehouse and shop.
  • In 1944 Boris Babochkin made the feature film "Native Fields", the screenplay of which is based on events that took place in the village of Bykovka in the autumn of 1941 - summer of 1942. The author of the screenplay - USSR State Prize laureate M. G. Papava - lived in the village during the evacuation and witnessed the life of the A. S. Pushkin collective farm.


See also

  • The village of Ivanovskoye