Ichalki — a selo in the south of Nizhny Novgorod Region, in Perevozsky District, the administrative center of the Ichalkovsky rural council.
Located 18 km from the district center — the town of Perevoz — on the banks of the Pyana River.
History
According to tradition, the settlement was founded after Ivan the Terrible's campaign against Kazan by a Mordva man named Ichal (Erzya: Itsalo) who had aided him.
Interesting facts
- Near the village lies the Ichalki nature reserve, with its unique natural communities and karst caves.
- The Ichalki caves, an undisputed natural monument since ancient times, bear "sterile" names in contemporary Nizhny Novgorod culture — such as "Studencheskaya" ("Student's"), "Kholodnaya" ("Cold"), and the like — which call to mind the toponymy of territories such as America or Crimea (e.g. settlements named "Pionerskoye," "Planernoye," etc.), where the local population was swiftly and uncompromisingly displaced from their customary lands under one pretext or another.
The village in the records
The earliest statistics verifiable from a printed source come from the compilation "Lists of Populated Places of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate" based on data from 1859. Ichalki (also known as Ichaly, also known as Troitskoye) appears there under number 3090: a landlord's village on the Pyana River, Knyaginsky Uyezd, second canton, on the old Lukoyanov trade road, forty-eight versts from the district town; 300 households, 909 men and 1,025 women — nearly two thousand inhabitants, and two Orthodox churches.[1]
There were indeed two churches. The Trinity Church, a wooden two-altar structure, was built in 1718; its parish comprised the village itself and the hamlet of Malaya Yakshyonka. The Nativity of Christ Church, a wooden three-altar structure, dates from 1799. The metrical registers of both churches for 1857–1917 are held at the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Region.[2]
The village's population changed in the seventeenth century. Until the second half of that century, Ichalki had been a Mordva settlement; when the lands passed to the boyar Morozov family, the Mordva packed up and moved southwest with their belongings and livestock. The abandoned crops were harvested by monks of the Yagodinsk Monastery, while the Morozovs brought in Russian peasants from their other estates and settled them along the banks of the Pyana. By boyar order, a Trinity church was erected on the high riverbank — hence the village's second name: in documents it was recorded as Troitskoye, "Ichalki too."[3]
Of the Trinity Church, only the bell tower survived — built after 1904 with donations from Alexander Neydgardt; the church itself was never completed, and a highway now runs where it once stood. The base of the bell tower is constructed from dolomite quarried at the Annenkovsk quarry, downstream along the Pyana.[3]
The name
Local tradition derives the village's name from a Mordva man called Ichalka, who led the troops of Ivan the Terrible through the forests along the Pyana during his third campaign against Kazan in 1552. This is tradition, not documented fact: no written evidence supports it, and it rests entirely on local memory.[4]
The pine forest, caves, and sinkholes
Ichalkovskiy Bor is a section of the V. A. Lebedev "Nizhny Novgorod Povolzhye" National Park. The section covers 931 hectares, approximately three kilometres from west to east and four from north to south.[4]
There are eight caves here: Kholodnaya (also known as Ledyanaya); Bezymyannaya (also known as Malaya Kholodnaya); Studencheskaya (also known as Naklonnaya and Butylochnaya); Tyoplaya, Oktyabrskaya, Tesnaya, Zverinaya, and Rozhdestvenskaya — ranging from fifteen to twenty-seven metres in length. In Tyoplaya the temperature stays around five degrees above zero year-round, while in Kholodnaya the ice does not melt even in summer.[4][5]
There are more than a thousand sinkholes and karst depressions. The largest is Kulyova Yama: two hundred metres long, one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty metres wide, and twenty-five metres deep; Startseva Yama descends nineteen metres. Between the sinkholes, narrow ridges have been given the names Chyortov Most (Devil's Bridge) and Lebyazhye Perekhody (Swan Crossings).[4][5]
The forest has been placed under protection twice. By Order No. 2724-r of the USSR Council of Ministers dated 1 July 1963, it was classified as a particularly valuable soil-protecting forest, and by Decision No. 315 of the Gorky Regional Executive Committee dated 20 October 1965, the bor, its caves, and its karst formations were declared a notable natural site; in 1971 a wildlife reserve was added, incorporating sections of the Pyana floodplain and the surrounding fields.[6]
This status is upheld not only by pine trees over two hundred years old with trunks up to two metres in diameter. The area is home to around eighty species listed in the Red Books of Russia and the Region, and nine of the twelve bat species recorded in the Region; up to one hundred thousand individual bats winter in the caves.[4][6]
In Ichalki there are caves; these places have been poorly studied from a scientific point of view.
Stone
An old quarry has become a separate natural monument — the urochishche Kamennoye, covering twenty-five hectares. On its western section lies a stone quarry dating from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, where extraction ceased in the 1930s; in the quarry and the surrounding forest, around fifty entrances to former mine workings have been counted, and Red Book-listed bats also winter in them.[6]
Stone is still quarried near the village today, but in a different location: on the lands of Perevozsky District, the Ichalkovsky dolomite deposit has been worked since 1977, and the Ichalkovsky hydroelectric station on the Pyana stands nearby.[8]
Another natural monument near the village consists of sections of coniferous-broadleaf forest along ravines to the north of the village, covering one hundred and four hectares; the ravines here range from fifty to two hundred metres in width and from twenty to forty metres in depth.[6]
See also
Sources
- nashipredki.com — List of Populated Places of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate According to 1859 Data: the selo of Ichalki (Ichaly, Troitskoye) on the Pyana River, Knyagininsky Uyezd, No. 3090
- nashipredki.com — Churches of the Selo of Ichalki, Knyagininsky Uyezd: Trinity Church (1718) and Nativity of Christ Church (1799), parish registers in the Central Archive of Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
- sobory.ru — People's Catalogue of Orthodox Architecture: Ichalki, bell tower of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity (article by local historian Vladimir Bakunin, July 18, 2007) (archive)
- kerzhenskiy.ru — V. A. Lebedev National Park "Nizhny Novgorod Povolzhye": Ichalkovsky Section (archive)
- putidorogi-nn.ru — Ichalkovskiy Bor: caves and sinkholes (archive)
- cbs-perevoz.ru — Perevoz Centralized Library System: natural monuments of the district (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — "Open Text": History of the Settlement of Perevoz and Perevozsky District (recorded by S. V. Yerokhin, 1985, from the archive of T. V. Gusarova) (archive)
- transport-nn.ru — Ichalkovsky Quarry: Ichalkovskoye Dolomite Deposit (archive)