Tonshaevo

Tonshaevo is an urban-type settlement in the northeast of Nizhny Novgorod Region, the administrative center of Tonshaevo Municipal Okrug, the one farthest from the regional center: it is 293 kilometers from Nizhny Novgorod ^[1][8]. The settlement stands on the Pizhma, a tributary of the Vyatka; in the Mari language it is called Pizhymbal, "the place on the Pizhma," and it grew out of the Mari village of Tonshaykova, which became a selo (a larger village) when a church was built here ^[8][1].

Pizhymbal: the place on the Pizhma

Tonshaevo stands in the northeast of the Region, near the border with Kirov Oblast, on the Mari-Vyatka Upland, a hilly rise that stretches from Mari El through Kirov Oblast to the north of the Nizhny Novgorod land. More than two thirds of the surrounding territory is occupied by forests and bogs ^[1][15].

In the Mari language the settlement is called Pizhymbal, "the place on the Pizhma"; historians consider Pizhymbal an ancient Mari center of the area, where matters important to the people were decided. The road here is a long one: it is ten kilometers to Tonshaevo railway station, and the regional center is farther away than from any other district seat ^[8][1].

The Pizhma, on which the settlement grew up, is a tributary of the Vyatka; to the south of the okrug lies the basin of the Vetluga, and this whole forested corner at the junction of the Nizhny Novgorod, Kostroma, and Kirov lands has long been called the Vetluga Region ^[8][30].

The Mari Beginnings

The first truly Mari settlements on what is now Tonshaevo land are dated to the 8th–10th centuries: this conclusion rests on the 1908 excavations of the Tonshaevo burial ground. In the 15th–16th centuries, during Moscow's wars with Kazan and the Cheremis wars, the large Mari settlements near the present-day villages of Purly, Toktary, Maloye Tonshaevo, and Ashkaty were ravaged and abandoned; only small camps of beekeepers and hunters survived ^[3].

New settlement began in the second half of the 17th century: not before 1665, Oshkaty, Luga, Arkeevo, Romachi, Shugarnur, Odoshnur, Irga, Oshary, Pektubaykova, Alganur, and Oshma appeared — and Tonshaykova, from which the settlement's present name derives. The first written mention of the area dates to 1685 — the "Book of Cheremis Beekeeping 'Ukhozhai' of Yaransk Uyezd," which names villages of the Romachi end of the Oshma (Kiknur) Volost ^[3].

Until the early 19th century, the center of the Mari settlements was the village of Romachi. In documents from 1719 the area is already listed as the Armachi Volost of Yaransk Uyezd; there were no Russian villages in it, only Mari, about four hundred people. According to the third revision of 1762–1764, the volost had twelve Mari settlements and about seven hundred inhabitants, and was headed by an elected sotnik (hundredman) from among the peasants themselves — Fyodor Ignatyev ^[3].

Two heroes of the Mari epic are associated with these places. Kuguz Osh Pandash (White Beard) attempted in the mid-14th century to assemble a Mari principality in the upper Vetluga, paying tribute to both the Golden Horde and the Principality of Galich; after losing his lands, he hid in the remote Tonshaevo forests and, according to legend, is buried in the Romachi grove. The second hero is the maiden Irga, who refused to submit to bandits and was hanged on a pine, which afterward became sacred ^[15][30].

A Village with a Church

In 1778 the Tonshaevo Volost was established here. The settlement received the status of a selo (a larger village) together with its church: according to some sources in 1811, according to others at the very end of the 18th century, when the church began to be built in the former Mari village of Tonshaykovo ^[8][1].

The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was built in 1811 and rebuilt and enlarged in 1895–1901. It has three altars: the main one dedicated to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, and side chapels of Elijah the Prophet and Alexis, the Man of God. At the church there was an old cemetery for clergy and honored parishioners, while the parish cemetery lay a hundred sazhens away, behind a wooden fence; the parish owned 37 desyatinas and 2,300 square sazhens of land, and the clergy staff consisted of two priests, a deacon, two psalmists, and a sexton, plus one more sexton above the established staff ^[9].

The church warden was Zakhar Sergeevich Solonitsyn (1783–1853), the best-known peasant chronicler of the Vetluga Region. He painted icons, left his own painted self-portrait, and compiled the "Ark of Vetluga Antiquity," a book about the region's past based on monastery manuscripts that have not come down to us. His izba-cell (a traditional wooden house serving as a hermit's cell) survives in the village of Zotovo near Tonshaevo; on the church itself, the chronicler's memory is marked by a plaque ^[9][15].

In the 1930s the church was closed: the bell tower was demolished, the stone fence was destroyed, and the building housed the production shops of a food-processing plant and the raipo (district consumer cooperative). In 1990 the church was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church and repaired, and services are held in it again ^[9].

Volost, District, Okrug

In 1921 the Tonshayevo Volost was listed as part of the Kostroma Governorate ^[7]. In 1929, at a meeting of the Nizhny Novgorod Archaeological and Ethnological Commission, N. F. Kozlov delivered a paper, "On the Question of the Dying Out of the Mari in the Former Tonshayevo Volost of the Vetluga Uyezd," alongside papers on the colonization of the Vetluga region and on its pottery trade ^[29].

In 1929 Tonshayevo was given the status of a district center ^[1]. It received the status of an urban-type settlement in 1973 ^[8]; in the same year Pavel Vasilyevich Tyrinov was elected chairman of the Tonshayevo settlement council, and he remained in that post until 1981 ^[7].

By Nizhny Novgorod Region Law No. 40-Z of April 29, 2020, "On the Transformation of the Municipal Entities of the Tonshayevo Municipal District of Nizhny Novgorod Region," the territory was granted the status of a municipal okrug; the Council of Deputies approved the charter of the Tonshayevo Municipal Okrug on March 26, 2021. So the settlement's current address is the Tonshayevo Municipal Okrug, while the former name, Tonshayevo District, has remained with the administrative-territorial unit. The head of local self-government of the okrug is Stanislav Yuryevich Stremin ^[2][1].

Railway and Bus Station

The Tonshayevo station of the Gorky Railway stands at the 698th kilometer of the Nizhny Novgorod-Moskovsky–Kotelnich I line, away from the settlement, about ten kilometers to the northwest. Tickets for all passenger trains are sold at the station, but baggage is not accepted; freight operations include single-carload shipments, which can be stored on open platforms, and full-carload loading on sidings ^[17][8].

The railway through the northern districts was built after 1917 and quickly changed life here: neighboring Shakhunya is known as a town of railwaymen and loggers, and by 1927 it already had a locomotive depot ^[16].

Within the district, people are carried around by the bus station at 9 Tsentralnaya Street: from here, buses run to Shakhunya, Shaygino, Pizhma, Oshminskoye, Kodochigi, Vyakshener, and Burepolom ^[14].

What the Settlement Lives On

The occupations of the local population have always been connected, one way or another, with the forest and its processing: since time immemorial, pine, spruce, and fir have been felled here and floated down the rivers, and forestry and timber harvesting remain among the main occupations even now. The spruce also found its way onto the district's coat of arms — as a symbol of growth, renewal, and forest wealth — while the two silver bands on the coat of arms stand for the many small rivers ^[1].

The district's industry consists of logging and wood-processing enterprises, peat extraction, and the fuel industry; agricultural enterprises are engaged mainly in livestock farming ^[1].

Tonshaevo still has no gas. Six northern districts — Shakhunya, Varnavino, Tonshaevo, Tonkino, Sharanga, and Vetluga — remain almost entirely without it, although they have been promised a supply since the 1990s; an inter-settlement gas pipeline from Shakhunya to Tonshaevo was planned for 2026 ^[19]. On September 18, 2026, Governor Gleb Nikitin reported the opening of a high-pressure gas pipeline from the gas distribution station near the village of Obkhod in Urensky District to Shakhunya, and said that Tonshaevo, Tonkino, Shakhunya, and Sharanga would receive gas as early as next year ^[20].

Population

According to the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, conducted in October 2021, the settlement had 4,397 residents — 2,000 men and 2,397 women; the whole district had 14,823 people ^[22].

The 1979 census — the first to find Tonshaevo as an urban-type settlement — counted 3,931 residents here. Over the four decades since, the number of residents has grown by roughly a tenth and holds at around four and a half thousand, with a noticeable preponderance of women ^[27][26][22].

Peoples of the District

The District's population includes people of more than forty nationalities ^[1]. The 2020 census counted 930 Mari here, the second-largest group after the Russians; 225 live in urban-type settlements and 705 in villages ^[23].

Smaller communities are also noticeable: Tajiks, Tatars, Uzbeks, Chinese, Ukrainians, Armenians, Roma, Georgians, Chuvash, Koreans, Chechens, Mordva, Belarusians, Udmurts, Komi, and Komi-Permyaks ^[23].

Sacred Groves and the Mari Festival

The district has twelve Mari sacred groves, which are natural sanctuaries. Three of them, the Duplyakovo grove and two Penkovo groves, were clan groves where people worshipped Keremet. The Romachi and Groznaya groves are of inter-community importance; the Groznaya grove, not far from the village of Bolshiye Ashkaty, is known to the Mari even beyond the district. The Kuverba grove was called the "widows' grove," a place of women's prayers and of commemoration of the dead, while the neighboring Mayakovo grove was considered a men's grove ^[4][15].

In the Mari world the gods are arranged in tiers: highest of all is Kugu Yumo, the Great God, and below him are Kece-Yumo (the god of the sun), Osh kece Yumo (the god of the bright day), Yur-Yumo (of rain), Mardezh-Yumo (of wind), and Ur-Yumo (of animals). Public prayers were held in late April and early May, in summer, and in late October and early November. For the sacrifice, people tried to choose a white animal, such as a bull, a ram, or a goose, and in the vicinity of Ashkaty a foal as well; if no white animal could be found, the animal was wrapped in white cloth. The sacrifice had to be eaten in its entirety, and the bones were buried in the grove, each time under a new tree ^[4].

Besides the groves, individual trees are venerated: the birch is considered the tree of girls, the oak a male tree, and the linden a female tree. The Tonshaevo Mari know the Gorintsevo, Mayakovo, Romachi, and other sacred healing lindens: people brought them food or money with a plea for healing, and brought gifts to the Penkovo sacred birch for protection from misfortune ^[4][15].

These rules are still alive today. The Groznaya grove, dedicated to the god of the midday sun, is entered only in a white ritual costume, and an all-Mari prayer was held there, attended by the chief kart (priest) from Yoshkar-Ola ^[30].

Sometimes you do pick berries and mushrooms to sell, but every time you ask the forest for special permission…

Toshto Marii Payrem

Every year in October, Tonshaevo hosts the interregional festival of Mari culture "Toshto Marii Payrem," meaning "Festival of the Ancient Mari." It is organized by the Region's Ministry of Culture and the regional department for cultural and educational projects together with the district administration; on the stage of the district House of Culture appear groups from the Tonshaevsky, Tonkinsky, and Sharangsky Districts and Mari El, along with masters of applied crafts and national cuisine. The 13th festival, in 2023, drew more than 120 participants, and the special guest was the dance ensemble "Mari El" of the Yakov Eshpai Mari State Philharmonic ^[18][15].

In the village of Kuverba there is a Center of Mari Culture, where people make Mari dumplings and tukmachi, dance the "topotukha," a circle dance, and play the bladder pipe, the drum, and the iya kovyzh, the Mari fiddle ^[15].

Mari Cuisine can simply be tried in the local cafés: large pelmeni, tukmachi (nicknamed "Mari hedgehogs"), three-tier pancakes, a honey drink, and "Tonshaevsky" kvass made with cranberry, mint, and lingonberry ^[15].

The Russian half of the local tradition has been recorded as well. The "Tonshaevskaya" quadrille — also called the "Cheerful" and the "Village" quadrille — has eight figures, each with its own tune: "Veseloye," "Serbiyanka," "Barynya," "Podgornaya," "Krakowiak." The young men stamp quickly and loudly, the girls move smoothly and don't stamp, no one raises their hands above the waist, and in the last figure the couples waltz for as long as they like. The quadrille was recorded on August 4, 2000, in Tonshaevo from the folklore ensemble of the District House of Culture ^[28].

The Interregional Festival of Mari National Culture "Tosht Mari Payrem" is a significant event in the social and cultural life of our Tonshaevsky Municipal District. It is very pleasing that the festival has become a tradition.

Tsentralnaya Street

The main street of the settlement is Tsentralnaya, and almost everything people come here for stands on it or nearby.

The Local History Museum occupies the former gatehouse of the Church of St. Nicholas. The executive committee of the Tonshaevo District Soviet of People's Deputies decided to create a district museum on November 16, 1982; the cost estimate for reconstructing the building was set at 55,000 rubles, and the money was raised jointly by the district's enterprises, organizations, kolkhozes, and sovkhozes. A second floor was added to the building along with a vestibule; on October 23, 1985, a state commission accepted it with a rating of "excellent" ^[6][5].

The museum opened its doors on October 27, 1987, as a museum run on a voluntary basis; in 1990 it became a branch of the Vetluga Local History Museum, on January 1, 1992 it became an independent cultural institution, and in 2005 it received the status of a legal entity. Today the exhibits are housed in five halls — nature, history and ethnography, the Soviet period, military glory, and an exhibition hall — and the main and auxiliary collections exceed twelve thousand items ^[5][11].

The House of Culture at 18 Tsentralnaya Street runs 32 club groups, six of which hold the title of "folk" ensembles: the folklore group "Skomoroshinka," the dance group "Happy Childhood," the ensemble "Lekshe Vyt," the dance group "Sudarushka," the vocal group "Native Melodies," and a folk theater ^[12].

Also here, at number 14, is the editorial office of the district newspaper "Kray Rodnoy" ^[31]. On Mira Square stand a fountain and a monument to those killed in the Great Patriotic War, and nearby is the central park of culture and recreation ^[13][8].

The Start Physical Training and Recreation Complex opened on December 14, 2018, and became the 37th in the Region. It has a multifunctional sports hall, fitness and choreography studios, a hockey rink with artificial ice, two swimming pool basins, a 49-seat movie theater, martial arts, tennis, and billiards rooms, and a shooting range, with an artificial-turf football field next door; the complex's operations are provided by 84 employees ^[21].

• St. Nicholas Church — Tsentralnaya, 40
• Local History Museum — Tsentralnaya, 38
• House of Culture — Tsentralnaya, 18
• Offices of the newspaper "Kray Rodnoy" — Tsentralnaya, 14
• Bus station — Tsentralnaya, 9

People of the Settlement

Shishmakov Street and the monument on it are named after Ilya Nikolayevich Shishmakov (July 31, 1926 – July 30, 1944), a Hero of the Soviet Union. He was born in the village of Parfyonovo and was called up in December 1943 by the Tonshaevo District military enlistment office; from May 1944 he fought on the 3rd Belorussian Front. On July 29, 1944, near Kaunas, when his company was pinned down by fire, Private Shishmakov crept up to the enemy trenches, shot the machine-gun crew, seized the machine gun, and opened fire with it; the company rose to the attack and broke through the defenses. He died of his wounds the next day and is buried in a mass grave at the military cemetery in Kaunas; the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded posthumously on March 24, 1945, and the monument in the center of the settlement was unveiled on May 9, 1975 ^[10].

Pavel Vasilyevich Tyrinov (August 18, 1921, village of Lozhkari – October 26, 2013) spent almost his entire life working in Tonshaevo: as an accountant at the State Bank branch until 1965, as chairman of the district planning commission, as director of the district consumer cooperative's public catering, and from 1973 to 1981 as chairman of the settlement council. From 1962 to 1993 he headed the district branch of the All-Russian Society for Nature Conservation. Beside his house he cultivated a flower garden and an orchard — 24 apple trees, 60 currant bushes, 20 gooseberry bushes, pears, and cherries — and he gathered more than four thousand stamps, eleven thousand postcards, and a personal library of over seven thousand books, and donated 630 items to the museum. It was largely thanks to his persistence that the settlement got its local history museum, and in 1989 Tyrinov became the first in the district to be given the title "Honorary Citizen of the Settlement of Tonshaevo" ^[7].

Sources

1. tonshaevo.nobl.ru — Official website of Tonshaevo Municipal Okrug — "About the Okrug" section
2. tonshaevo.nobl.ru — Council of Deputies of Tonshaevo Municipal Okrug — founding document — Charter of Tonshaevo Municipal Okrug, Nizhny Novgorod Region
3. tonshaevo-museum.ru — Tonshaevo Local History Museum — essay on the history of the area — Tonshaevo District in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (archive)
4. tonshaevo-museum.ru — Tonshaevo Local History Museum — essay on the beliefs and daily life of the Tonshaevo Mari — Mari Culture (archive)
5. tonshaevo-museum.ru — Tonshaevo Local History Museum — its own chronicle — History of the Museum (archive)
6. tonshaevo-museum.ru — Tonshaevo Local History Museum — documents on the founding of the museum — At the Origins of the Tonshaevo Local History Museum (archive)
7. tonshaevo-museum.ru — Tonshaevo Local History Museum — biographical essay — "The Man Who Changed His Native Land" (on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pavel Vasilyevich Tyrinov) (archive)
8. autotravel-nn.ru — Autotravel-NN — guide to Nizhny Novgorod Region — Sights of Tonshaevo and Tonshaevo District (archive)
9. autotravel-nn.ru — Autotravel-NN — description of the church — St. Nicholas Church in Tonshaevo (archive)
10. autotravel-nn.ru — Autotravel-NN — description of the monument — Monument to I. N. Shishmakov in Tonshaevo (archive)
11. autotravel-nn.ru — Autotravel-NN — description of the museum — Tonshaevo Local History Museum (archive)
12. autotravel-nn.ru — Autotravel-NN — description of the House of Culture — Tonshaevo House of Culture (archive)
13. autotravel-nn.ru — Autotravel-NN — description of the square — Peace Square in Tonshaevo (archive)
14. autotravel-nn.ru — Autotravel-NN — description of the bus station — Tonshaevo Bus Station (archive)
15. sever-no.ru — SeverNO — tourist information center of the north of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Tonshaevo Okrug (archive)
16. sever-no.ru — SeverNO — tourist information center of the north of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Shakhunya Okrug (archive)
17. railwayz.info — directory of Russian railway stations — Tonshaevo Railway Station (archive)
18. nobl.ru — Government of Nizhny Novgorod Region — The 13th Interregional Festival of Mari Culture "Toshto Marii Payrem" Held in Nizhny Novgorod Region
19. GIPERNN — GiperNN — Nizhny Novgorod publication, December 12, 2024 — Gasification Deadlines for Northern Districts Pushed Back in Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
20. 1prime.ru — Prime Economic Information Agency, September 18, 2026 — Inter-Settlement Gas Pipeline Built in the North of Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
21. V gorode N — Sports and Fitness Complex Opens in the Urban-Type Settlement of Tonshaevo (archive)
22. 52.rosstat.gov.ru — Nizhegorodstat — results of the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, Table 5 (archive)
23. 52.rosstat.gov.ru — Nizhegorodstat — results of the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, Table 1 — Ethnic Composition of the Population by Municipal Entity (archive)
24. rosstat.gov.ru — Rosstat — results of the 2010 All-Russian Population Census, Volume 1, Table 11 (archive)
25. web.archive.org — 2002 All-Russian Population Census, Volume 1, Table 4 (copy in the web archive) (archive)
26. demoscope.ru — Demoscope Weekly — publication of the results of the 1989 All-Union Population Census (archive)
27. demoscope.ru — Demoscope Weekly — publication of the results of the 1979 All-Union Population Census (archive)
28. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — Ethnological Museum of Nizhny Novgorod Region, records of folklore expeditions — Traditional Dances of Nizhny Novgorod Region. Pp. 23–29 (archive)
29. opentextnn.ru — Open Text — report of the Nizhny Novgorod Archaeological and Ethnological Commission — The Nizhny Novgorod Archaeological and Ethnological Commission in 1929 (archive)
30. komanda-k.ru — Mari Forest Trekkers — essay by Evgeny Konstantinov on a trip with Nizhny Novgorod ethnographers — Sacred Groves of Tonshaevo District, Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
31. kray-rodnoy.ru — "Kray Rodnoy" newspaper of Tonshaevo Municipal Okrug — publication details — About Us (archive)