Fokino (stress on the first syllable) — a historic village in Vorotynsky District, Nizhny Novgorod Region. The village of Fokino is situated on the right bank of the Volga river. It is the center of the Fokino rural settlement (selsoviet).
The essence of the phenomenon
The village has long been famous for its apple and cherry orchards. Today it is one of the centers of active tourism in Nizhny Novgorod Region.
Origin of the village
If historical sources are to be believed, in the middle of the 16th century Fokino was the largest settlement in our region. This selishche (small settlement) is mentioned in the last wills (spiritual charters) of both Ivan IV Vasilyevich the Terrible and Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky.
Local historians of the 19th century, followed by our contemporaries, believed that Fokino took its name from ataman Foka, who plied his trade as a brigand in this area. As for the date the village arose, it was originally simply given as "the 17th century." In the 1980s more precise dates began to appear: 1617 (V. M. Ilyichev), before 1617 (A. F. Kukelev). In 2002, citing the spiritual charter of Ivan the Terrible, local historian A. Abramov named 1572 as the founding date.
Relatively recently, the will of M. I. Vorotynsky was discovered in the archives, which makes it possible to refine information about the early history of the village of Fokino.
In February 1569 the tsar carried out an exchange of the holdings of Prince Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky in the upper Oka for lands in the Murom, Nizhny Novgorod, and Vasilgorod districts (uyezds). This "redistribution" of property is described in the first codicil to the prince's spiritual charter: "... Odoev with Chern and Novosil with the whole district of those towns... the sovereign tsar and grand prince Ivan Vasilyevich of all Rus took that patrimony of mine for himself, the sovereign, and in its place granted and gave me Starodub Ryapolovsky …, and in Murom district the village of Moshok with all the hamlets of that village, and in Nizhny Novgorod the village of Knyainino, and to that same village of Knyainino, in Vasilgorod district, the selishche of Fokino (emphasis mine — A. D.), together with all the lands of that village of Knyainino, and with the beekeeping forests, right up to the Volga, and the hamlets and small settlements (pochinki) of the Fokino selishche, and the sloboda settlements, and the wastelands, and the beekeeping forests, and all the lands that belong to that village of Knyainino and to the (Fo)kino selishche."
To date, this codicil to the spiritual charter of M. I. Vorotynsky is the earliest mention of Fokino, which, as becomes clear, already existed in 1569. Moreover, it existed as a village (selo), that is, a settlement with a church.
As for the name of the village of Fokino, the legends of the brigand (bogatyr) Foka find no confirmation in historical sources and are merely… legends. And as is well known, folklore material should be used with caution. Nor is it worth searching for the caves and treasures of the brigand Foka, for the simple and rather banal reason that he had no untold riches: shipping traffic on the Volga was still very sparse in the first half of the 16th century. After all, only 17 years had passed since the conquest of Kazan and 13 years since the annexation of Astrakhan to the Muscovite state.
Thus the exact founding date of Fokino is unknown; we only know that it was first mentioned in February 1569, in the spiritual charter of Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky, and was then part of Vasilgorod district. The settlement belonged to the state, and Mikhail Ivanovich Vorotynsky became its first private owner.
But who Foka was, the man whose name gave the village its own, remains an open question — until documents are found that can shed light on the history of Fokino before February 1569.