Raznezhye (stress on the second syllable) — a historical village in the Vorotynsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region. It is part of the Mikhailovsky rural settlement. Located on the left bank of the Volga. It is one of the oldest settlements of the Nizhny Novgorod land, known since the 14th century.
Near the village is the "Zavod" (Backwater) holiday resort. Its 10 cozy cabins welcome guests from every corner of Russia. Staying in a wooden house next to the forest, on the bank of Mother Volga, in unity with nature, enjoying the clean, clear air — what could be more wonderful? Depending on the season, guests can go fishing or mushroom-picking, take ski trips, ride ATVs or snowmobiles, and visit a real Russian bathhouse.
History of Raznezhye
After the death in 1389 of Grand Prince of Moscow Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy, his son Vasily Dmitrievich became ruler of the state. Using every means available, he pursued an active policy of annexing ancestral Russian lands to the Principality of Moscow. Thus in 1392 he bought from Tokhtamysh in the Horde the rights to the grand-princely throne of the The Principality of Nizhny Novgorod. Local boyars lost their former privileges and had to seek new means of subsistence. So Semyon Raznezhsky mortgaged his estate, including lands, waters and bee-keeping grounds, for 20 rubles of silver to Malachi, archimandrite of the Nizhny Novgorod Annunciation Monastery, until Palm Sunday of the following year.
If the debt was not paid on time, the Raznezhye lands would pass forever into the possession of the Annunciation Monastery authorities. Evidently the prince was unable to find the money to redeem it, and his holdings became part of the monastery's patrimony. However, Semyon Raznezhsky stipulated in the agreement that, should he fail to pay the debt, the Raznezhye lands and waters would be recorded as a donation for the commemoration, on 3 February each year, of himself together with his kin. Thus an ancient entry in the monastery synodikon (preserved in the original!) not only clarifies the full name of the first owner of the lands on the left bank of the Volga — Semyon, son of Stepan Raznezhsky — but also the composition of one of the oldest families of Nizhny Novgorod natives.
However, one question remains unresolved: was the village named Raznezhye after the surname of its first owner (which occurs quite often in Nizhny Novgorod toponymy), or, conversely, did the Raznezhsky family take its name from its patrimonial holding? According to Nizhny Novgorod local historian Professor N. F. Filatov, the latter is more likely, since 14th-century records mention boyars such as Yuri Kurmyshev (voivode of Kurmysh), Dmitry Muromsky (prince of Murom (Wikipedia)), Ivan Turov (owner of the town of Turov), and so on.
The following two centuries brought the Annunciation Monastery little income from its Raznezhye patrimony. The reason was that these lands proved defenseless against constant threats from the east, from the Khanate of Kazan. Thus in 1439 a detachment of Ulu Muhammad burned down the Makaryev-Zheltovodsky Monastery, passing up the Volga right through Raznezhye. After this the trans-Volga (Zavolzhye) region lay deserted for centuries. The Annunciation Monastery authorities came to pay the treasury a mere 50 kopecks a year for the Raznezhye holdings. Only after the Time of Troubles of the early 17th century, under the relatively peaceful conditions of life along the Volga, did life here gradually begin to revive.
Highly valuable historical and geographical information is contained in the monastery's inventories of holdings: "The Annunciation Monastery's patrimony, the village of Raznezhye, newly settled after the earlier land-survey books (of 1621–1624), from the Volga River upstream along the Roznezhskaya backwater, from its mouth on the right side, on the Roznezhye bee-keeping grounds, and from the Volga River, between the streams Talbochanovka and Orlovka, also known as Stroyki and Babki."
In the 1630s a wooden tent-roofed Annunciation church was built; its vestry held not only the tin vessels usual for village churches but also a silver chalice and paten. The bells of the Raznezhye church tolled daily to announce that life was being reborn here.
Local residents began actively developing the land for economic use. They felled timber and craft-wood in the forest, smelted bog iron in the marshes, burned charcoal for the surrounding blacksmiths, and gathered resin, kindling wood, mushrooms and berries for sale. They supplied their goods to the nearby, famous Makaryev Fair.
In the mid-17th century, bobyli — landless villagers who had no arable land and lived solely by craft and trade — also appeared among the villagers. In 1651 Fyodor Bober, an ore-prospector from Lyskovo, discovered industrial deposits of bog ore near Raznezhye. It was reported to Moscow that "in the Nizhny Novgorod Annunciation Monastery's patrimony, the village called Roznezhye and the hamlet of Roznezhye, they say there is a large deposit of iron ore. But they have no craftsmen for it; and the ore, they say, lies as deep as a standing man; the peasants of the Annunciation Monastery take that ore and put it in a barn, but there is no one among them to work the iron..." Boyar B. I. Morozov instructed his Nizhny Novgorod steward P. Vnukov to buy up the ore-bearing sites from the Annunciation Monastery authorities without delay.
The monastery, however, having realized the benefits of ore mining, sent to Raznezhye the Nizhny Novgorod blacksmith Andrei Pavlov, who set up local iron smelting. He became the founder of the local ore trade in the 17th century. Yet what remained central to the life of Raznezhye's peasants and bobyli was still work on the Volga and servicing its shipping traffic. Passing merchants were sold timber and small vessels, resin and linen cloth, iron in bars, and forged boat fittings.
Actively developing the surrounding area, the Annunciation Monastery authorities in the mid-17th century established the Korotyginsky pochinok (a small new settlement) on the bank of the Raznezhskaya backwater, and, on the Kamenka stream, the Krasny pochinok (later Krasny Borok), near which fields began to be cultivated. On the streams Nuzhemka, Kamenka and Stroyka, three water mills were built at once — the "Big Wheels" — which processed grain into flour and groats.
By the end of the 17th century Raznezhye, together with the pochinki and villages attached to it, had become one of the largest patrimonial estates of the Moscow patriarchal household, since as early as the 14th century the Nizhny Novgorod Annunciation Monastery had been a household of the Moscow metropolitans, and from the time the patriarchate was established in Russia (1589) it became a household patriarchal monastery, regularly receiving support and charters of privilege from Moscow.
Serious damage was done to Raznezhye's economy by the Petrine era, with its wars and every kind of "burden" for common folk. In 1700, when Peter I forbade the election of a new patriarch to replace the one who had died, the village lost its patron. The extensive holdings of the Nizhny Novgorod Annunciation Monastery, including Raznezhye, came under state control. Peasants were taken every year for public works: felling timber for the construction of the fleet, building the new capital of St. Petersburg, and the strongest and youngest men were taken as recruits. Various taxes and extraordinary levies grew every year: for hiring post-horses to transport troops, artillery and provisions, for buying horses and saddles, for "shipbuilding needs," and so on.
Raznezhye's economy suffered a marked decline in the early 18th century for another reason as well. In 1700 Peter I granted Admiral F. A. Golovin the right-bank Barminskaya volost. The people of Barmino, relying on the count's patronage, trespassed without permission into Raznezhye's forests, cut down timber, plundered bee-trees, and seized hay meadows and mowing grounds, fisheries and beaver-hunting grounds.
All this became fertile ground for the spread of Old Believer preaching in the Zavolzhye region. One of the leaders of the local "schism" was Stefan Fyodorov, son of the Raznezhye priest, along with the elder Tarsila, who by her own account was raised "on the Kerzhenets and the Sanakhta River in schismatic hermitages." Social and spiritual protest gave rise to the most varied forms of resistance, including banditry. The remote, impassable forests of Zavolzhye reliably sheltered fugitives, who often lived by robbing merchant vessels on the Volga. In Raznezhye they kept "lodging" huts where they hid in secret hideouts.
In 1764 the lands belonging to the Annunciation Monastery were transferred to the treasury, and Raznezhye came under the College of Economy. At that time the village had 376 men and 403 women. The village became the center of a separate Raznezhye volost, which in 1779 was made part of Vasilsursky Uyezd. Under state administration, life for the local peasants became much easier, which immediately showed in the growth of the population.
Up to the 20th century, Raznezhye remained a major trading center of the Volga region, its life oriented around the river. Timber was shipped out from here, and carpenters from Raznezhye went off every year to work at shipyards, just as others worked as river pilots, water-bailers and shipworkers of every other trade.
Today the village, which has come through a very difficult path over the centuries of its history, is not experiencing the best of times. A most serious blow to Raznezhye's economic and everyday way of life was dealt by the rise in water level of the Cheboksary Reservoir. Floodplain meadows went under the Volga's waters, and pastures for livestock disappeared. The perestroika that began in the mid-1980s led to the disappearance of the forest trades.
The village, with its highly poetic name, is becoming a dacha (summer-house) destination. It draws artistically gifted people — painters, poets, writers — for whom a "spiritual nourishment" is simply essential, found precisely in such Russian villages where the Russian national spirit is still invisibly alive, in its images!