The «Nizhegorodskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti» ("Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Gazette") was the official provincial newspaper published in Nizhny Novgorod in the 19th century. It was issued under the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Board and served as one of the province's main printed organs, publishing both official government decrees and materials of local historical and ethnographic content.
Local history publications
The pages of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Gazette carried historical and ethnographic material about the region. In 1845 and 1847 it printed the legend of the origin of the name of the Dyatlovy Hills, discovered by P. I. Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky. The legend linked the place name to a Mordvin named Skvorets — a friend of Nightingale the Robber — who lived on the site of the future Nizhny Novgorod.
In January 1846 the newspaper carried an article titled "The Water Supply of Nizhny Novgorod," describing the city's acute water shortage. The article recorded that residents, especially in the upper part of the city, faced serious difficulty obtaining water from the Volga and the Oka because of the steep riverbank, about 43 sazhens high, while the ponds and streams grew shallow and polluted with wastewater in summer.
Significance for the history of the region
The publication was an important source of information on the economic, social and cultural life of Nizhny Novgorod Province. Its materials have survived as a documentary base for local-history research: in particular, the 1846 article on water supply provides evidence of the city's problems of the time and preceded many years of effort to build a Nizhny Novgorod water system.
Sources
Materials used from articles (2)
Nizhny Novgorod Woodpecker, Water Supply System in Nizhny Novgorod