The Museum of Enotaevka

 Данный прект был создан учеником МБСОШ с.Енотаевка Астраханской области. Автор ставил целью рассказать о районном музее Енотаевки.

                                                  The Museum of Enotaevka, the Repository of My Town`s History.

      Peoples live until the past lives in their memories, because there is neither the present nor the future without knowledge of the bygone days.

      The Enotaevka region is rich in historical events; the steppe burial mounds, the items of the archeological excavations, the archive documents, photos, memoirs are the evidence of the past. Many tribes lived and fought with each other thousands years ago in our region and they left a visible trace in the history of the town. So, everything concerning Enotaevka can be found in the local museum of region studies.

    1.The history of our museum goes back to the late 60s of  XX century. The teachers and students of our school decided to commemorate the names of the participants of the Great Patriotic War against fascist invaders on the eve of the 20^th Anniversary of the Victory.

The collection of materials started at our school under the supervision of Ivan Andreyevich Kozhin, the teacher of the town school. Many inhabitants donated their photos, different items, private documents to the future museum. Soon the museum was founded and began its work. Now it is a branch of the Astrakhan Historical and Ethnological Museum.

     2.A considerable part of exhibits is devoted to the ancient history of the town. The vast Volga steppes with its lush grass attracted the tribes of different nomads. It was the Scythians who first appeared here, later other nomads such as the Savromats, Alans and Sarmats followed them. The Sarmats were always on the road. They appeared in the steppes of Eurasia more than two thousand years ago. Those tribes fought their enemies with their 70-130 cm.  long swards on horseback galloping. They bred cows, sheep and goats. The image of domestic animals, especially sheep, played an important part in their religious and cult beliefs. The whole steppe was their home. Their little children and elderly lived in the movable felt houses, the young from their early childhood were taught to ride horse, for to go on foot was a shame for them.

     But in 375 AD the Huns appeared in the Lower Volga and routed the Sarmats. They had no constant residence, for they always moved with their livestock. They worshiped the horse. From their childhood they learned to endure cold, hunger and thirst that`s why they considered to be tough and courageous. They spent their whole life on the horseback. Even when they made crucial decisions they did them horseback.

      Other numerous tribes,the Pechenegs,the Kypchaks,the Khazars,the Bulgarians followed the former tribes.

       In XIII century the Tatar-Mongols moved towards our region. They destroyed everything with sward and fire on their way. The new conquerors left a lot of burial mouds behind themselves. In the 40s of the XIII century the military-feudal state ,the Gold Horde, was founded with its centre in Saray-Batu on the Lower Volga.

   So the above-mentioned facts show that our region imbibed the history of peoples and tribes who lived on the Lower Volga thousands years ago.

       3.After joining the Astrakhan Khanate to Russia there had been no organized population for two hundred years on the Lower Volga. Astrakhan was the only inhabited point from Kazan to the Caspian where the infantrymen guarded the Russian borders from different nomads. The infantrymen were not native inhabitants, they always were looking for a chance to get back to Russia. The steppe nomads, the Kirgiz (Kazakh), Kalmyks and Tatars remained   to be the masters of those half-wild lands. At the same time many run-away serf peasants, convicts, tramps began to settle in our region. The Tsar government  being  unable to catch them decided to let them live there and doing so it wanted to protect the Russian merchant ships from the raids of the nomads. So the Russian Tsar decided to build fortresses in order to guard the trade route on the Volga. As the  result such fortresses like Samara, Tsaritsyn, Cherny Yar, Krasny Yar were built on the Volga banks from Astrakhan to Moscow. At last at the beginning of XVIII century the colonization of region began. So the Cossack settlements appeared on the Lower Volga. Their main goal was to maintain security of the post highway and the trade route. In 1765 Lebyazhye, Zamyany, Grachi, Kosika, Kopanovka and other stanitsars (Cossack villages) were founded up and down the Enotaevka fortress. Besides the duties of guarding services the Cossacks were engaged in fishing and kettle - and sheep breeding. The Cossacks were known to be the first who began to change the lifeless soils of the region into tilling fields, melon-fields, gardens, orchards, kitchen gardens. So the first wheat fields had already appeared in Kopanovka (not far from Enotaevka) by the middle of XIX century. By that time there had been 11 Cossack villages, where 7.283 inhabitants lived. During the Soviet times the name of the Cossack was officially ignored, nevertheless this group of the Russians have always been aware of their self-identification, moreover they have been following their own traditions and customs although they considered themselves to be the integral part of the great Russian nation. In the new democratic Russia the Cossacks are equal members of the society.

      4.Nowadays the representatives of almost  20 peoples live in Enotaevka side by side, they are the Kazaks, Ukrainians, Tatars, Chechens, Kalmyks and others. The Kazakhs are the second nation after the Russians in the size of their population. They are the descendants of former Turkic and Mongol tribes who have once lived and dwelt on the Lower Volga centuries ago. The history of the Kazakhs has begun since ancient times. Historical, economical, cultural relationships between Kazakhs and Russians have been interconnected and interwoven since then.

       5.A large space is given to the history of the foundation of the Enotaevka fortress. It was Volynsky Artemy Ivanovich,the governor of Astrakhan, a great diplomat and politician, who suggested the idea of founding a fortress on the left bank of the river Enotaevka (a tributary of the Volga ). But unfortunately his intentions were not realized, for after the death of Peter the Great his successors had altogether forgotten about that valuable suggestion. In 1741another prominent politician Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev was appointed Governor of Astrakhan. It was he who converted Volynsky’s plans into reality. He wrote to the central authorities, ”The fortress is essential for those who travel from far Cherny Yar to as far as Astrakhan to have a haven in the winters as well as in the summers from enemy raids.” The Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna ordered Tatishchev to build a fortress and houses for dragoons, Cossacks and officials. In 1742 the construction of the Enotaevka fortress started on high steep bank of the Volga tributary, Enotaevka, which was separated from the Central Volga by a large island. The fortress itself had the shape of a square and there were four mighty bastions with installed canons. A great rampart surrounded the fortress from three sides and there was a deep moat around it. In 1748-1750 the fortress was badly damaged by the fires, but it had always been reconstructed in a comparatively short time. By the end of XVIII century Enotaevka had lost its status of a fortress, for there was no longer any necessity for it. Many Russian and foreign travelers visited Enotaevka such as Samuel Gottlieb and Peter Pallas Gmedin. Nowadays Enotaevka is a common district town in the Astrakhan Region.

        6.The museum contains  exhibits devoted to the defenders of our Motherland during the Great Patriotic War in 1941-1945.The enemy bombed the Volga from Saratov to Astrakhan. Barges with oil were burning, ships with the wounded were sinking all the time in the river days and nights …   

        In October 7^th, a fascist bomb fell on the yard of Zinina Klavdia Davydovna, a dweller of Enotaevka. Her three-year-old daughter Tanya, her six-year-old son Vitya and her sister Antonina were killed and the woman herself lost her eye-sight. The fascist planes often fired on Enotaevka flying at zero altitude. On fighting line Enotaevka-Yusta-Khalkutta the troops of the 28^th Army had hold the line until November 10^th. The representatives of Enotaevka fought heroically in that battle-field over 70 days…115participants of that war were conferred the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, the name of Musaev Muqat is among them. Shaposhnikov Ivan Ivanovich, the former physics teacher of our school, had marched as a sergeant from Stalingrad to Berlin, Kachuevskaya Natalia, a nurse, was killed on the 20^th of November near Khalkutta. In 1977 she was conferred the title of Hero of Russia. Temirgalieva Zoya Alexeevna went to the Stalingrad front in 1942 as soon as she had finished the drivers course, took part in the liberation of Rostov…We are proud of our great defenders, both men and women…  

7.We cannot but remember the names of those who fought in the so-called ‘hot points’, one of them was Afghanistan. A lot of young people took part in the battles in the mountains of that country. One of them was Vladimir Efimovich Lazaridi, the former student of our school. We can see an exhibit devoted to him at the museum. He was born on the 29^th of October 1960 in Zamyany to the family of the teachers. After graduating from the Ordzhenikidze Higher Military School he was sent to Afghanistan where he had been since July 1984 till December 1984. He was killed on the 11^th of December. He was awarded with  the Red Star Order posthumously. One of the streets in Enotaevka was named after him.

8. Writers as I.I. Hemnitzer, P.I. Yakushin, B.I. Zhilin lived and worked in Enotaevka. The museum contains the exhibits about them.

Hemnitzer I.I. was one of the famous poets of XVIII century. He was born on the 17^th of January 1745 in Enotaevka. His father came to Russia from Germany in the Peter I times. When Hemnitzer I.I. was 10 years old he moved to St. Petersburg with his family.  He served in the Russian army; in 1769 he published his first book of fables. About 104 fables are known to the modern readers. Indeed he was I.A. Krylov`s forerunner. He was famous for scoffing at stupidity, cruelty, hypocrisy, mendacity, adulation, embezzling of public funds, taking of bribes.

 We are really proud of the name of Boris Ivanovich Zhilin. He was born on the 1st of January in 1921 in Astrakhan. After graduating from the Medical Institute he came to Enotaevka and lived there until his death. Since 1974 he had devoted his life to literature. His well-known works are “The Black Flags;” “Dear and Native;” “Alarm” and many others. He had always been for justice and truth in the society.

So, that was a short account of the history of the Enotaevka Local Museum.