Kaluga has a thousand-year history, as evidenced by three ancient settlements with burial mounds located within the modern city. In total, there were about a dozen ancient settlements on the Kaluga land. Initially, they were inhabited by a patriarchal family, but over time, their population increased, and entire settlements appeared in their neighborhood. Their traces are settlements near the village of Kaluzhka, the Yachenka River, the village of Gorodny. The defensive system of the settlements has continuously developed over the centuries. The hills were carefully fortified. Large ramparts were erected on the vulnerable sides of the field, in front of which deep ditches filled with water were pulled out. And along their crest, a wooden fence-palisade was laid, encircling the settlement from all sides. Paved with wooden logs or cobblestones, the entrance led to the flat top of the fortress. Such was Kaluga in the first millennium of its long history. Who were the inhabitants of the Kaluga settlements? Archaeological research has shed light on the ethnographic identity of our ancestors in the earliest period of their history; they find elements of the ancient Baltic and Finno-Ugric cultures. Later layers (X-XII centuries) belong to the annalistic Slavic tribes - the Vyatichi. The history of the Vyatichi has preserved the names of the Slavic tribes known from the Old Russian "Tale of Bygone Years". She also names our legendary ancestor Vyatko: "... And Vyatko is gray-haired with his family along the Oka, from him she was nicknamed Vyatichi." It was they who made up the bulk of the first Kaluga residents. But when did Kaluga itself emerge? For the first time in annalistic sources, the Kaluga fortress was mentioned in 1371 in a letter from the Grand Duke of Lithuania Olgerdt to Patriarch Philotheus of Constantinople. The nature of Kaluga in the first three centuries of its existence was explained by the strategic defensive significance of the frontier fortress on the Oka, which defended Russian lands from Lithuanian and Tatar raids. But ancient settlements with barrows in its vicinity existed here long before its foundation.

In the distant past, the territory of Kaluga was not dry land: 300 million years ago, in the Paleozoic era, the waves of the ancient sea raged in its place, as evidenced by numerous fossilized remains of ancient organisms: corals, ammonites and belemnites, found in abundance in Kaluga quarries. Hundreds of millions of years have changed the natural landscape of our area, the era changed the era, the land won new spaces from the sea, mountains and plains formed, the climate changed, new species of animals died out and arose, glaciers advanced and retreated, and only 15 thousand years ago, when the last glacier, an event occurred that changed the course of history: the territory of the Russian Plain began to be populated by the first people.

Favorable conditions for the settlement of the territory of the Russian Plain by the first people developed only after the end of the Great Glaciation - in the era of the late Paleolithic, about 15-10 thousand years ago. The last glaciation - Valdai did not reach our places. But after another warming, water flows from melting ice and glaciers, eroding sedimentary rocks on their way, formed the Oka River valley. In subsequent geological periods, the Oka riverbed deepened more than once to a new level, as a result, natural floodplain terraces convenient for the life of ancient people were formed in the river valley. Only after the last warming came 10-8 thousand years ago, a relatively dry and warm climate was established on the Russian Plain, which is closest to the modern one. But the winters then were less severe than now, and therefore the snow cover was somewhat less. The hills at that time were covered with dense forests, and between them swamps stretched, overgrown with pine, alder and birch. These swamps were pastures of giant mammoths covered with thick reddish-brown wool. According to paleozoological data, the fauna in that era was mixed: in our area there were glacial polar animals - mammoths, hairy rhinos, bison, musk oxen, and at the same time bison, red deer, and roe deer lived. The flora and fauna of the Russian plain was so diverse in that era. For example, in neighboring Moscow, more than 50 finds of bones of mammoths and other ancient animals have been recorded. They are also found on the Oka coast.

The Paleolithic era was marked by periodic cooling and the onset of glaciers, which caused the migration of primitive people. With the final retreat of the last glacier, the natural situation changes and Paleolithic tribes of the Svider and Arensburg cultures begin to penetrate into our territory from Western Europe, from which, under local conditions, the Butovo and Ienevskaya Mesolithic cultures, first identified by L.V. Koltsov, are formed. The genetic roots of these ancient cultures go back to the Paleolithic.

The Paleolithic era (Greek "palaios" ancient and "lithos" stone) (2 million years ago - III millennium BC) is sometimes called the "bone age", since it is during this period that the primitive technique of processing bones and horns develops . In that distant era, a person led mainly a nomadic lifestyle and was entirely dependent on nature, its seasonal cycles and climatic disasters. The main activity of primitive man was connected with hunting, gathering and fishing. Large glacial animals - mammoths - were also a hunting industry. But in order to kill such a giant, it was necessary to show special ingenuity and ingenuity. To do this, a deep pit-trap was dug, at the bottom of which thick sharp stakes were placed. Dozens of ancient hunters drove the mammoth into a makeshift trap, and then finished off the wounded animal with stones. Harvesting meat for the future, a person could exist in this territory for a long time. Having exhausted the natural reserves of plant and animal food in one area, he was forced to develop new habitats, conquering more and more new territories. From the late Paleolithic, man began to settle not only in natural shelters, but also began to build the first earthen shelters. The skins of dead animals served as the first clothing of primitive people. Man mastered fire, learned to make stone and bone tools, being on the verge of discovering pottery and weaving.

The oldest monument of the Lower Paleolithic era in the Kaluga region is the Acheulean site, located on the left bank of the Oka. The tools found there are represented by cores, scrapers and flakes. Material similar in character was collected near the villages of Puchkovo and Nekrasovo, on the right bank of the Oka.

Finds of the Middle Paleolithic are also few in number. In the materials collected near the village of Gordikovo, on the right bank of the Zhizdra, the left tributary of the Oka, an elongated Mousterian pointed point was found, similar to those found in the Crimea. In a quarry near the village of Shatrishchi, two points and tools with notches were found.

The remains of the Upper Paleolithic sites were found near the village of Troitskoye, on the right bank of the Oka, near the Devil's settlement, on the right bank of the Pesochenka River, the right tributary of the Zhizdra, near the village of Shatrishchi, in Kaluga, on the territory of the Annenki microdistrict. At the site near the village of Troitskoye, excavations began, which yielded little material from flakes, fragments of tools and parts of cores.

Known in the Kaluga region are traces of the Mesolithic ("Middle Stone Age") located in the Oka basin: Gremyachevo, Bragino, Resseta, Neruch, Ladyzhino 1-3 and Krasnoe 3. The earliest Mesolithic culture in the Kaluga region is the Ressetinsky, associated with the site of Gagarino Khotylevo 2 and dating back to the 9th millennium BC. The Butovo Mesolithic culture existed from the 8th to the beginning. V millennium BC, Jenevskaya - from the VIII to the 1st half. VII millennium BC These Mesolithic cultures are characterized by a well-developed lamellar technique for processing stone tools, represented by arrowheads, stalked scrapers, knives, piercers, drills, scrapers, various inserts and cutters.

The era of the "Early Stone Age" - the Neolithic (the end of the III millennium BC) is characterized by the Lyalovo archaeological culture from the name of the Neolithic settlements discovered by archaeologists near the village of Lyalovo on the Klyazma River. The ancient hunters and fishermen who inhabited this area made stone tools from a natural mineral - flint - a type of silica. The Neolithic era is marked in the history of mankind by the creation of stone tools, the invention of clay pottery and the discovery of weaving. It was then that people learned to build primitive wooden dwellings, to make boats. The ancient technique of manual processing of stone characterizes the rather high skill of its grinding, drilling and sawing. As follows from the Neolithic finds, not only stone tools themselves, but also blanks and high-quality raw materials for their manufacture were of certain value for primitive man. This is confirmed by similar finds from the Neolithic site on the Desna River. Basically, these are flints, flakes, arrowheads left by ancient hunters near the parking lot on the river bank.

By the time of the Neolithic, many millennia had passed since the retreat of the glacier; the climate was close to modern. But nature did not spoil people. The river and the forest abounded with fish and game, but they could only be taken by hard work. Outside the collective, a lone hunter or fisherman with his flint tools would inevitably perish in the struggle against nature. Hunting and fishing were carried out collectively - nets were set up, special fences were arranged - "slaughters" at the mouth of the rivers. In that era, ancient people lived in dugouts, over which a hut with a stone hearth in the center towered.

In addition to the Lyalovo culture, several local cultures were found on the territory of our region, different from the Lyalov people. So in the Neolithic in the Oka valley lived the tribes of the Belyov Neolithic culture in the 5th-3rd millennium BC. BC. They made molded dishes decorated with imprints of rhombuses, large oval combs, and pits of various shapes. Massive stone flakes and plates served as labor tools. Monuments of this culture were found in Kaluga, near the villages: Nekrasovo, Kvan, Annenki, Nikolskoye, Timoshovka, Manor, Sands, Voronino, Vislyaevo, Borshovka, Kovrovo, Dugna, Troitskoye, Andreevskoye, Borovaya, Golodskoye, Przemysl.

On the tributaries of the Oka, in the Desna basin, near the village of Krasnoye, in IV-III thousand. BC. there was a Desna culture, the lamellar technique of processing flint tools of which is characteristic of the previous Mesolithic cultures. Pottery is ornamented with various pits, rhombuses, combs.

Beginning with the Neolithic, primitive man extensively mastered our areas. From the old Bessonovsky cemetery near Maloyaroslavets, a huge and very beautiful panorama opens up to the valley of the Luzha River. From here you can see limestone outcrops, reminiscent of those ancient times when the earth here was the seabed. Hills of clay and sand, scattered huge boulders, the remains of a mammoth found here - all this is reminiscent of the Ice Age. It was here in the floodplain of the Luzha River that the site of primitive man was discovered.

Another Neolithic site - "Voroninskaya", is located on the left low bank of the Oka in the Zharki-Karovo region not far from the former village of Voronino (Nikolaevka). Neolithic labor tools found here: well-crafted stone tools: arrows, arrowheads, chisels, hammers, as well as molded thick-walled pottery with pit ornament, can now be seen in the Kaluga Museum of Local Lore. They give an idea of ​​the primitive economy and occupations of our distant ancestors.

A little downstream of the Oka, in the area of ​​the village of Kovrovo, local historians-enthusiasts of the Ferzikovskaya secondary school in 1958 discovered another site of the New Stone Age. Neolithic molded pottery is still found in the bend of the right tributary of the Oka - the river Peredut, opposite the village of Bragino. Along with Neolithic objects, one can also find here a later cultural layer, apparently the remains of an ancient settlement with a settlement. Comparing the "Voroninskaya" and "Kovrovskaya" Neolithic sites, the Bragin settlement and the settlement, we can conclude that this area has been well settled since the Neolithic era.

At the end of the III millennium BC. e. - I millennium BC. e. the Bronze Age came to our area. It is characterized by the discovery of bronze tools made from copper alloys with non-ferrous metals - aluminum and nickel. The Bronze Age is represented in the archeology of the Kaluga region by the Fatyanovo culture of the Volga-Oka interfluve, named after the village of Fatyanovo, near Yaroslavl, where people lived who knew not only stone, but also bronze tools. The Fatyanovites were predominantly cattle breeders who came to our area from the southeastern steppes in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. They themselves did not make bronze tools, perhaps the latter came to them from the territories of the Upper Volga region and the mountainous Urals, abundant in copper deposits, but the Fatyanovo people mastered the technique of making polished tools from stone, similar to metal ones. The main feature of the Fatyanovo culture is the polished stone tools found near the village of Detchino and the village of Mikheevo and characteristic clay pottery with the so-called "corded" and "geometric" ornaments, stone axes-hammers, flint arrowheads, darts, knives, scrapers. a sculptural representation of the Fatyanovite, reconstructed by Professor Gerasimov and now stored in the Moscow State Historical Museum, is given.

At the end of II - beginning of I millennium BC. e. The Bronze Age was replaced by the "Iron Age", the duration of which in the Kaluga region is almost two thousand years. The main occupation of the people, apparently, was cattle breeding. But they learned how to make iron from native ore, deposits of which are often found in the Kaluga region. True, the process of obtaining iron was very imperfect. Iron ore and burning charcoal were poured into a small furnace made of stone and clay with holes in the walls through which clay nozzles passed. Through them, air was blown into the horn tightly closed from above with the help of bellows. This is how the process of burning coals and the recovery of free iron from the ore, which settled at the bottom of the hearth in the form of small layered ingots, took place. Then they were heated again and carefully forged into iron tools. The development of iron made it possible for people to cut down forests and shrubs, freeing up ever larger areas for meadows and pastures, as well as to build dwellings from logs instead of primitive huts.

In that era, people lived in small tribal communities, and for the settlement they chose the most favorable places where it would be easier to protect themselves from wild animals and rival neighbors. The settlement from the side of the open field, as a rule, was protected by deep ditches and bulk earthen ramparts, and a palisade of large logs was built along the top. The dwellings of people were small wooden houses with cone-shaped thatched roofs and a hearth located inside. At the same time, many settlements existed continuously for hundreds and even more than a thousand years, as evidenced by the cultural layer accumulated on the site. The early monuments of this era belong to the related Yukhnov and Upper Oka cultures that existed here in the 8th-7th centuries. BC. until the first centuries AD

In the Kaluga region, many hills with the remains of earthen ramparts and ditches, covered with coal-black earth - a cultural layer, have been preserved. Archaeologists call the remains of these ancient settlements with fortifications settlements. The very name "hillfort" is known among the people as an area assigned to a village or wasteland, which is confirmed by archaeological excavations.

The first hoards of the "Early Iron Age" (end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC) were found in the settlement near the village of Dyakovo on the southern outskirts of Moscow (now it is within the boundaries of Moscow). This ancient monument, which has the form of a pyramidal rising hill with the remains of a rampart and an ancient moat, received the popular name "Devil's Settlement". Picking up a stone in the scree of the hill, local residents often met here the so-called "devil's fingers" - fossilized belemnite mollusks, and often came across "thunder arrows" - stone tips of ancient arrows. In the 60s of the century before last, the Russian archaeologist D. Ya. n. e .: a massive neck torc with wire winding and loose hollow beads, a twisted torc, a horseshoe-shaped buckle, bracelets, bells. It is curious that among the objects there were also bent and broken torcs and bracelets, apparently intended for melting down, as well as a stone casting mold. The latter testified that the decorations were made by ancient craftsmen at the settlement itself.

The excavations of D. Ya. Samokvasov and his followers showed that the settlement near the village of Dyakovo belongs to the "early Iron Age" - the era when people began to mine and process iron, learned to make iron tools, cast jewelry from metal, samples of which were preserved in the "Dyakovo treasure" ". According to this monument, the entire archaeological culture of the "early iron" era in the interfluve of the Oka and Volga began to be called Dyakovskaya. Archaeologists date this period in the Kaluga region of the 7th century. BC e. - VI-VII centuries. n. e. One of such striking monuments - "Pevkin hillock" is located in the Oka valley near the village of Zhelokhov. Excavations carried out in it in 1936 showed that there was a settlement of people of the "Dyakovo culture".

While the northern part of the Kaluga region was occupied by the Dyakovo culture, in the I-III centuries. AD in the center and in the south, the Pochep culture develops under the influence of the Zarubinets tribes that penetrated here from the Middle Dnieper region. Scientists believe that on its basis the Moshchin culture developed, which existed from the 4th to the 7th centuries. AD A striking feature of Moshchin's materials is the presence of polished dishes. Lots of iron and bronze items. Pendants and clasps with champlevé multicolour enamel.

About a dozen ancient settlements were located on the Kaluga land, for example, three settlements are known within the boundaries of Kaluga itself. And nearby towered burial grounds and mounds of ancient Slavic settlements passing nearby. These include mounds on the banks of the river. Kaluzhka (XII centuries), in the Kaluga forest (XI-XIII centuries), near the villages of Yakimovo (XI-XII centuries), Klimov plant (mid-I millennium AD), Grishovo (XII-XIII centuries), village. Sekiotovo (III-IV centuries AD), village. Turynino (not determined), on the banks of the Ugra River, the Neruch River, etc. How much they can tell the seeker of antiquities - the archaeologist.

The location of the ravine in the valley of the Mozhaika River, near the village of Sekiotovo, is familiar to many Kaluga residents, but only recently scientists discovered the remains of an ancient settlement on this site. It was located at the very top of a huge hill, called the "Snake Mountain". If you climb to the top of this hill and carefully examine the surrounding area, you can easily come to the conclusion that in remote times the water flow did not flow from the western side of the hill, as now, but from the east. Later, a large glacial landslide, moving in from the east, blocked the path of the stream and directed it to where the stream now flows - from the west of the "Serpent Mountain". Thanks to this, a hill was formed, which is a typical remnant. In 1960, when examining T.N. Nikolskaya hill and the area adjacent to it, layers of the cultural layer were discovered in the cliff and a number of hills with the remains of ancient ramparts and fortifications. Later, in 1985, A. S. Frolov collected fragments of rough molded clay pottery, iron sickles, ancient arrowheads, knives, clay whorls for spindles, objects made of bone and horn, and many bones of domestic and wild animals. The latter testifies that the inhabitants of the ancient settlement were mainly pastoralists. Archaeological studies have shown that the settlement was inhabited by a small primitive community that lived here in the 3rd-4th centuries. n. e. In the ravine, deposits of the Carboniferous and Ice Ages are traced with the remains of fossilized fossil belemnite mollusks, corals and spirifera, the beginning of the formation of new ravines, traces of landslides and sinkholes. Today, a natural monument of local importance - the Mozhaisk ravine is a natural division through the Quaternary and Lower Carboniferous deposits. The outcrops available in Mozhaika are a good visual aid for studying the geological structure of the earth, and the picturesque southern valley in the upper reaches of the ravine is called Kaluga Switzerland by nature lovers. It is not surprising, therefore, that this area has been inhabited since ancient times, preserving the generations of people for many generations.

Of significant scientific interest for archeology is the small village of Klimov Zavod, which is located 25 km. from the town of Yukhnov on the Rudyanka River. On its territory there are the remains of the "Yukhnovskaya" and "Verkhneokskaya" archaeological cultures, and on the outskirts of the village there is a burial mound of the Vyatichi people of the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e.

Traces of another ancient settlement, where people lived at the beginning of a new era, is located on the high right bank of the Ugra River, near the village of Palatki, Yukhnovsky district, Kaluga region. Presumably the name of the village comes from the tents of Khan Akhmat. Here the Mongol-Tatars tried to cross in October 1480 to the left bank of the Ugra River ("Great Standing on the Ugra River"). However, the history of the village is older. Palatki is the location of the ancient Russian city of Opakov, from which there remains a hill fort with steep slopes dating back to the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. It was a small fortified settlement on a protruding high terrace with steep slopes. And nearby is the burial mound of the Vyatichi, which the locals called Kudeyarov Yar in memory of the legendary robber.

Another ancient settlement is located near the village of Prudki, Kirovsky District, on the right bank of the Neruch River. Here, along with the settlement of the early Middle Ages (XIV-XVI centuries), discovered in 1987 by A.S. Frolov, traces of an earlier Slavic culture with burial mounds of the XI-XIII centuries were found. At the same time, Neolithic and Mesolithic flint tools were also found on the territory of the settlement. The combination of such diverse archaeological sites testifies that this territory and the area adjacent to it have been inhabited since ancient times, periodically preserving and renewing human settlements in different historical epochs.

Archaeological research of the Kaluga settlements shed light on the life and way of life of the ancient inhabitants of our area, made it possible to study their customs and culture. The settlements were originally inhabited by a patriarchal clan, but over time their population increased, and entire settlements appeared in the neighborhood of the settlements. Traces of them - a settlement near the village of Kaluzhki, the village of Gorodni, Sekiotovo, Klimov Zavod. The architecture of ancient settlements is interesting. As a rule, the hills adjacent to the settlement were carefully fortified, and the fortification defense system was continuously developed over the centuries. Large ramparts were erected on the vulnerable sides of the field, in front of which deep ditches dug out, sometimes filled with water. A wooden palisade was laid along the crest of the ramparts, encircling the platforms of terraces on the steep slopes of the settlements, built for entering and exiting the territory, while the entrance paved with wooden logs or cobblestones led to the flat top of the fortress. On the territory of the settlement there were public buildings, residential houses, agricultural buildings, storage facilities, cellars. In each dwelling, one part probably belonged to men, and the other to women and children. In the center of the house was a hearth lined with homemade bricks made of baked clay. Separate families living in houses formed one community, a single large patriarchal family, inseparably leading a common household. What treasures were hidden behind its ramparts? First of all, it is cattle, since cattle breeding was the main occupation of the inhabitants of the settlements, the basis of their primitive economy. The development of cattle breeding and the development of metal largely contributed to the development of agriculture in the Kaluga region, as evidenced by iron products found in the settlements. Among the archaeological finds are iron items: sickles, scythes, knives, arrowheads. Hunting and fishing also played an important role in the economy. Among the bones of animals found in the settlement were the bones of wild and domestic animals of a bear, wild boar, elk, fox - the fauna of the territory of the future Kaluga was so diverse.

Ancient metallurgy firmly entered the life of the inhabitants of the Kaluga settlements: archaeologists discovered clay molds for melting metal - lyachki, forging, metal slags - production waste, cast bronze and iron products. Women's jewelry was skillfully made by an ancient master: temporal rings, bronze pendants, metal rings, brooches, miniature bells. They decorated the festive costumes of women. Whole tassels of such bronze pendants hung from a woman's headdress. Beads and a hryvnia were worn around the neck. All sorts of plaques were sewn on the chest and on the belt, even on the hem of the dress. A characteristic male adornment was a belt plaque. In that era, weaving and pottery were already developed on the Kaluga land. Ancient rough molded utensils were found on the settlements.

Excavations of the settlement of the alleged ancient Kaluga at the mouth of the Kaluga River and the neighboring settlement near the village of Gorodnya, where ancient Gorodensk could have stood, carried out in 1892 by the Kaluga archaeologist I. D. Chetyrkin, confirmed that the inhabitants of the settlements made not only pottery, but also were skillful bone cutters - the bone handles of knives and amulets found here are distinguished by their excellent finish. They could also engage in less laborious wood carving, but time could not preserve their wooden products. Bone carvings were also found in the Mozhaika tract near the ravine near the village. Sekiotovo.

Who were the inhabitants of the Kaluga settlements? Archaeological research has shed light on the ethnographic identity of the inhabitants of the Kaluga settlements in the earliest period of their history; they find elements of the ancient Baltic and Finno-Ugric cultures. Later layers (X-XII centuries) belong to the annalistic Slavic tribes - the Vyatichi. According to linguists, the name "Vyatichi" comes from the ancient, known to the Romans, the name of the Slavs "Venta", from which "Ventichi" (Vyatichi) was obtained. This period includes characteristic clay pottery made on a potter's wheel and Vyatichi seven-lobed temporal rings. Among the Slavic finds of the Kaluga region there are dozens of various items and iron products: coulters, plowshares, sickles and scythes, knives and axes. This could be observed during the excavations of ancient Russian Serensk. Among the many metal objects found in the Serensky citadel, household items were in the first place. Tools of labor and agriculture took the second place (5.7%), while the tools of craftsmen, used for working metal, wood, leather, etc., took the third place (4.1%). In addition, in the excavated ancient Serensk, among dozens of found items of everyday life and economic activity, written culture and cult, a hollow encolpion cross was found for storing relics. He is a witness of the ancient Christian culture of the pre-Mongolian period, which came to our region from ancient Kyiv. These cultural ties between the city of artisans of Serensk and Kyiv, Chernigov and other cities of Ancient Russia are evidenced by archaeological finds.

The history of the Vyatichi has preserved the names of the Slavic tribes known from the Old Russian "Tale of Bygone Years". This is the first Russian chronicle of the XII century. he also names the legendary ancestor of Vyatko: "... And Vyatko is gray-haired with his family along the Oka, from him she was nicknamed Vyatichi." Archaeological materials confirm that the tribe of Slavs-Vyatichi occupied the basins of the Oka and the Moskva River, including the territory of the future Moscow itself. Their communities, united in a large tribal union headed by elders (princes) from the tribal nobility, did not quarrel with each other, so the settlements were usually surrounded only by a wooden fence to protect them from wild animals. The remains of such settlements, which do not have traces of earthen fortifications, are more difficult to detect on the ground. More often they are discovered by accident, thanks to the intensely black cultural layer preserved in their place and the finds in it of pottery made on a potter's wheel, elegant in shape and decorated with a wavy or jagged ornament. Thus, Slavic settlements were discovered on the Kaluzhka River (XII centuries), near the village of Zhdamirovo (XII-XV centuries), in the Kaluga forest (XI-XIII centuries), a settlement near Simeon's settlement (XIV-XVI centuries). On the banks of the Ugra River there were also the remains of settlements, where life continued for several centuries, until the beginning of the 17th century.

Arab geographer of the early tenth century. Ibn-Rusta reported that "the land of the Vyatichi is a wooded plain, they live in the forests ... The bread most cultivated by them is millet." A significant role in the Vyatichi economy has long been played by the collection of wild fruits and berries, mushrooms and honey from wild bees. Written sources and archaeological sites testify that at the end of the 1st millennium AD. e. the Vyatichi still retained a patriarchal tribal system. They lived in fortified settlements - settlements and were engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture. But then, later, with the development of arable farming, the Vyatichi settled widely in unfortified settlements.

Archeology makes it possible to clarify not only the territories of the Vyatichi settlement, but also their main occupations. The main economic occupation of our ancestors was agriculture, so they often settled near rivers, among their field lands. During archaeological excavations in many places seeds of cereals - rye, wheat, barley, millet were found. Since ancient times, man has identified life with arable land and bread, and therefore called grain crops "zhit". This name is still preserved in the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages.

Archaeological finds indicate that the southern lands of the Eastern Slavs were ahead of the northern ones in their development. This is due not so much to the proximity of the south of Ancient Russia to the then centers of the Black Sea civilization, but also to more fertile lands. At the same time, natural and climatic conditions had a significant impact on the main systems of agriculture of the Eastern Slavs. If in the north, in the areas of taiga forests, the so-called slash-and-burn system of agriculture dominated (forest was cut down in the first year, in the second year dried trees were burned and sown grain, using ash instead of fertilizer), then in the southern regions fallow dominated (with an excess of fertile lands were sown on the same plots for two or three or more years, and then they moved - "shifted" to new ones). The main tools of labor of the Eastern Slavs were an ax, a hoe, a knotted harrow and a spade, which loosened the soil. The harvest was collected with a sickle, threshed with flails, and the grain was ground with stone grain grinders and hand millstones. In close connection with agriculture was cattle breeding. Eastern Slavs bred pigs, cows, small cattle. Oxen was used as working livestock in the southern regions, and horses were used in the forest belt. To get a more complete picture of the life of the Slavs in antiquity, fishing, hunting and beekeeping (collecting honey from wild bees) should be added to the main economic activities.

Among the exhibits of the Kaluga Regional Museum of Local Lore are widely represented jewelry made of bronze, copper, billon (an alloy of copper and silver), silver, which served as decorations for our distant ancestors who lived in the upper reaches of the Oka. They were found during the excavations of the archaeological Verkhneokskaya expedition, which attributed these finds to the XII-XIII centuries. The results of the excavations amazed the specialists with a large number of Slavic and Old Russian ceramics and metal ornaments found here. Of particular value are the individual finds collected during the excavations: temporal rings, bracelets, crosses, necklaces, pendants, rings, amulets, moons and beads, which gives reason to date these finds to the 12th-13th centuries. The excavations of the kurgans have yielded many interesting materials to characterize not only the burial rites of the Vyatichi Slavs, but also their way of life, way of life and culture. In addition to rings, bracelets, carnelian and glass beads, almost every female burial contained characteristic temporal rings with elegant seven-lobed plates.

Based on these materials and comparing them with finds from other places, the outstanding archaeologist-specialist V.I. Sizov already in the century before last determined the purpose of the temporal rings, which, in all likelihood, served to tie hair with a ribbon. Subsequently, the seven-lobed temporal rings became the most important characteristic feature of the Vyatich burials, in contrast to other Slavic tribes that lived north to Moscow and beyond the Klyazma River. Thanks to this, it was possible to quite accurately determine the boundary of the settlement of the Vyatichi Slavs, who inhabited the territory of modern Kaluga and Moscow. And when the archaeologist A. A. Spitsyn at the end of the 19th century noted the finds of rings on the map, the truth of the messages in The Tale of Bygone Years was confirmed. In the burial mounds on the Sozha River, women were buried dressed with seven-beam rings, and in the basin of the upper Oka and on the Moscow River there were seven-blade rings of the Vyatichi. Other ancient Slavic necklaces found in the Vyatich burial mounds consist of scarlet faceted carnelian and round crystal beads. The age of the necklaces is probably as old as the age of Kaluga itself, and the woman who wore the beads could be a contemporary of the legendary hero Ilya Muromets. Breast pendants were also found that characterize the cosmogonic representations of the Vyatichi: some of them - "lunar", in the form of a crescent - symbolize the moon, others - round in the form of a disk with rays - the sun. The elegance of form and the subtlety of the processing of pendants from the Kaluga mounds attracted the attention of artists; According to experts, modern women of fashion will not refuse such jewelry.

Much longer than other Slavs, even centuries after the adoption of Christianity, the Vyatichi kept the pagan custom of burial in barrows. High earthen mounds, usually located in prominent places, have long attracted the attention of residents. Their true origin has long been forgotten, and people's rumors connected the mounds with the events of a later time: they were called "Lithuanian graves" in memory of the intervention of the early 17th century, and "French graves", "graves that hid the victims of the epidemic" and simply "tufts" ( bulging earth). From generation to generation, legends about countless treasures allegedly hidden in barrows by conquerors were passed on. The Vyatichi believed in an afterlife, they were convinced that the things and tools that they used during their lifetime would also be needed in the next world.

During the excavations of the Kaluga burial mounds, chest pendants are found that characterize the cosmogonic representations of the Vyatichi and their pagan cult: some of them - "lunar", in the form of a crescent - symbolize the moon, others are round, in the form of a disk with rays - the sun. There were many tools of labor in the male burial mounds. These finds tell about the occupation of agriculture, testify to the significant development of the craft. In addition to other items, many bones of wild and domestic animals were found in the Moscow region barrows - a bear, a fox, a hare, a wild boar and a horse. Moreover, almost all the bones have undergone heat treatment. Apparently, the use of horses for food was common for the Vyatichi people of the 12th century. Perhaps it was this fact that the Kievan chronicler had in mind when he said that the Vyatichi "eat everything unclean", since horse meat was not eaten in Ancient Russia.

Old Russian chronicles of the 11th century. they paint the Vyatichi as a separate tribe, separated from other East Slavic tribes by dense forests (and the forests were so dense that in 1175, during the princely feud, two troops marching against each other - one from Moscow, the other from Vladimir, got lost in the thickets and "minus in the forests", i.e. passed each other). Known for his military prowess, Prince Vladimir Monomakh tells in his Teaching to Children about a successful campaign through the land of the Vyatichi at the end of the 11th century. as a special feat. Equally important is another place in the same "Instruction", where Monomakh reports two winter campaigns "in Vyatichi" against the elder Khodota and his son in Kordna. Princes from the Rurik dynasty Vyatichi in the XI century. did not obey, and Monomakh does not report either their subjugation or the taxation of tribute. But where could the annalistic city of Kordna stand, which means road in ancient Finnish?

Academician B. A. Rybakov, on the map of the ancient cities of the Vyatichi he compiled, indicated the proposed location of the present village of Karnady, northeast of Novosil, Oryol region. According to the assumption of the famous researcher of our region V. M. Kashkarov (1868-1915), this city of the Vyatichi was located near the village of Korna at the mouth of the Korinka stream, which flows into the Ressa. That this was the land of the Vyatichi people is also evidenced by the village of Vyatchino, adjacent to Mosalsk. The waterway from Kyiv and Chernigov to the Rostov-Murom Territory passed by this village and through the famous Bryn forests. When the legendary Ilya Muromets asked about the direct road to the city of Kyiv, the king told him: "We have a direct road to the city of Kyiv to the forests on Brynsky." In the late 1980s - early 1990s, reclamation work was carried out in the area of ​​the village of Korna, Mosalsky district. And suddenly the workers stumbled upon something incomprehensible, digging out the remains of a wooden structure from a charred log house in the ground. But the construction plan did not allow them to go deeper and, having laid a trench, laying pipes in it, they completed the object. Perhaps this was part of the fortress wall made of charred bog oak in the city of Kordno.

By the time the state was formed among the Eastern Slavs, the tribal community was replaced by a territorial (neighboring) community. Each community owned a certain territory on which several families lived. All possessions of such a community were divided into public and private. Personal property consisted of a house, household land, meadow, livestock, and household equipment. Land, meadows, meadows, reservoirs, forests and fishing grounds were in common use. Mowing and arable land was divided among families. When the princes began to transfer the rights to own land to the feudal lords, part of the communities fell under their authority. Those communities that did not fall under the rule of the feudal lord were obliged to pay state taxes. Peasant and feudal farms were subsistence. Each of them sought to provide for itself at the expense of internal resources, not working for the market. But with the appearance of surpluses, the exchange of agricultural products for handicraft goods became possible. So cities gradually began to take shape - centers of crafts, trade and at the same time - strongholds of feudal power and defensive fortresses from the encroachments of external enemies. Sites for the construction of cities were chosen with great care. Old Russian cities, as a rule, arose at the confluence of two rivers, on the hills. The location of the city provided a natural defense against enemy attacks. The central part of the city was surrounded by an earthen rampart. A fortress wall (Kremlin) was erected on it, behind which the courts of princes and nobility were located, later churches and monasteries.

According to experts, about a dozen ancient Slavic cities of the Upper Poochie, on the territory of the current Kaluga region or near its borders, are located on Kaluga land. According to the "Chronology of Russian Chronicle" by N. G. Berezhkov, from December 1146 to the first half of 1147, in the feud between the Chernigov princes Izyaslav and Vladimir Davydovich and Novgorod-Seversky prince Svyatoslav Olgovich, the cities of Kerensk (Serensk), Kozelesk (Kozelsk) are mentioned in the Land of Vyatichi, Dedoslavl, Devyagorsk, Lyubinets, Omosov, Lobynsk at the mouth of the Protva, Oblov and others. According to the annals, Svyatoslav Olgovich, having become the prince of Chernigov, buys villages, including in 1155 the city of Vorotynisk (Vorotynsk-fortress at the mouth of the Ugra), Gorodensk, Bryn , Lubutsk, Mezetsk (Meshchevsk), Mosalsk, Obolensk, Yaroslavl (Maloyaroslavets). There is no exact data by whom and when these cities were built. But the fact that in the first half of the 20th century they belonged to the Slavic tribe of the Vyatichi cannot be in doubt. And this indicates that the Vyatichi in the 20th century owned crafts, built settlements and cities, knew how to build fortifications, defending themselves from enemies.

This was confirmed by the excavations of ancient Serensk, burned in 1231 by Prince Yaroslav of Novgorod and the "sons of Konstantinov." The handicraft and cultural flourishing of this city is evidenced by several dozen casting molds found during excavations conducted in the early 1980s, book clasps, writing, copper matrices and a spiral drill, an iron mask (mask) to protect the face of a warrior in battle, etc. In XII century, another ancient city of Lyudimesk was also founded, which was located on the Berezui River, 4 km from the village of Kurakino (now Grishovo). And nearby, on the banks of the Berezuy, there is a burial mound and an ancient settlement of the XII-XIII centuries.

In 1246, Tarusa was also mentioned for the first time as a fortress city on the Oka, at the confluence of the river. Tarusy, the center of the specific possession of the Tarusian prince Yuri, the son of the Chernigov prince. Mikhail Vsevolodovich. D. I. Malinin calls Tarusa one of the most ancient cities of the Kaluga region, built by the Vyatichi people in the 10th century. Existence here in the XI-XII centuries. The settlements of the Slavs-Vyatichi are also proved by archaeological data. It arose on the site of the Slavic pre-Mongolian settlement and Przemysl (Polish Przemysl, Premysl). During the examination by archaeologist M. V. Fekhner in 1953 of the Przemysl settlement near the Assumption Cathedral, fragments of vessels of the 9th-10th centuries were found, pottery with wavy and linear ornaments of the 20th-13th centuries was found. Przemysl has been known since 1328 as a small fortress, protected by sheer cliffs above the floodplain terraces of the Oka and Zhizdra rivers and a deep ravine. Later, the fortress occupied the opposite side of the ravine. A powerful earthen rampart simultaneously served as a dam for a defensive reservoir and a platform for deploying reserves inside the fortification. Equally ancient is Vorotynsk, located on the Vyssa, a tributary of the Oka. The first chronicle mention of him refers to 1155, when one of the Chernigov princes Svyatoslav Olgovich "swapped cities" with his nephew, the son of the Grand Duke of Kyiv (from 1139 to 1146) Vsevolod Olgovich ("taking Snov, Vorotynsk, Karachev and giving him others for them." According to the hypothesis of A. I. Batalin, based on toponymic and archaeological materials, the emergence of Vorotynsk with the preaching of Christianity in the land of the Vyatichi. It was at that time that the legendary hermits Boris and Protas settled on the site of the future city. At the same time, according to researchers, a small worldly settlement Voskresensk arose - the core of the future city of Vorotynsk. The ancient settlement on the southern outskirts of the city with the remains of a moat and ramparts date back to this time. Not far from this place, where r. Vyssa makes a bizarre bend. There was an ancient Slavic settlement, the cultural layer on which reaches 3 meters. Here, along with signs of culture of the first half of the 1st millennium AD. e. many items of early Slavic culture and the Middle Ages, tools, jewelry, Tatar and Lithuanian copper coins, etc. were found.

Casting crucibles and furnaces, many items of household utensils, including metal hooks for fishing, a sickle-shaped knife, beads and earrings of rare beauty were also found during excavations of the ancient settlement of Benitsa of the present-day Borovsky District on the banks of the Protva River. In our history, this settlement has been known since 1150, together with the neighboring village of Bobrovnitsa, from the charter of the Grand Duke of Smolensk Rostislav Mstislavovich, to which he transferred the newly colonized villages of the Vyatichi: Drosenskoye and Yasenskoye, Benitsy and Bobrovnitsy to the jurisdiction of his bishopric. The villages of Benitsa and Bobrovniki in the Borovsky District have retained their names to this day. P. V. Golubovsky, the author of the "History of the Smolensk Land" published in 1893, puts the villages of Benitsa and Bobrovnitsa on the map of the Smolensk principality as trading volost centers. It is known that Novgorod-Seversky Prince Svyatoslav Olgovich, together with his ally Yuri Dolgoruky, went to Smolensk, in the upper reaches of the Protva, took "people golyad", enriching his squad with captivity. The modern scholar N.I. Smirnov in his article "On the issue of outcasts" notes that the charter of the Smolensk episcopate of 1150 is "the fact of the transformation into land holdings of the Smolensk episcopate of communal lands that were not previously part of feudal land ownership" ... So inside free tribe Vyatichi, the first signs of tribal differentiation appear. As noted by the Kaluga art researcher V. G. Putsko in his "Essay on the History of Orthodoxy in Kaluga Land", "their Christianization is associated with the colonization movement that came from the Smolensk region of the Krivichi, and then from the southern Dnieper region."

However, not only the Vyatichi, but also their neighbors in the Upper Poochya, the Krivichi and, obviously, the native population of the Golyad tribe had their own cities. Neither chronicles nor historical researchers substantiate that the chronicle "golyads" migrated to the upper reaches of the Oka, Desna or Moscow River. V. M. Kashkarov in the article "On the question of the ancient population of the Kaluga province" writes: "In the Meshchovsky district, in the place formed by the confluence of the Ugra River into the Oka, the memory of the golyad lives to this day. According to legend ... on one of the mountains the robber Golyaga lived, according to others - Golyada. Z. Khodakovsky, a remarkable researcher of the 19th century, did not share the "Western" theory of resettlement, arguing that "People or the people" Golyad "are the 14th of the Slavic regions, which are named after the rivers and rivers that irrigate the villages of the same names with them .. This tract is the Golyadyanka, which flows into the Moskva River, which is called Golyadya in the cadastres of 1623.

They say that our history is imprinted in the names of cities and villages, rivers and tracts, the language of the earth is fixed in them. So in the name of the villages of the Kaluga region, the land tells its historical language. The villages of Vyatchino or Vyatskoye say that Vyatichi lived here; Crete - Krivichi, and Glyadovo (the old name of Golyadovo, Borovsky district) - golyads. The echo of the ancient inhabitants of these places is also heard in the names of the villages of Goltyaevo, Golenki, Golichevka, Goluhino, Golotskoye, Golchan. In the neighboring Moscow region, until the beginning of the 20th century, there was a natural boundary Nachinsky Golets. A number of names of the historical villages of the Kaluga and Tula provinces are also known, referring to another neighboring Vyatichi and Golyads of the Merya tribe. It is possible that both "golyad" and "merya", having merged with the Vyatichi, also had their own cities. No wonder the ancient Scandinavians, the northern neighbors of the Eastern Slavs, called the multi-tribal Russia "Gardarik" - a country of cities. According to scientists, before the invasion of the Horde in Russia there were at least 24 large cities with fortifications.

The exact dates of the founding of many cities are unknown, and the first annalistic mention is considered to be the year of foundation. Obviously, they did not exist for a single decade before the first Russian chronicler mentioned them. But can we trust the chronicles? For example, it is not known what authentic sources were used by the famous scientist, the discoverer of the ancient list "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" A. I. Musin-Pushkin, placing on the map the "European part of Russia before the invasion of the Tatars" along with the annalistic cities of our region Kozelsky, Przemysl, Lyubeysky ( chronicle Lobynsk) and Koluga? Also doubtful is the map of the historical atlas of Poland, compiled in German and reflecting the geographical borders of Poland in 1370. Atlas in our time published in Minsk. However, it is not known on what original this map was published. If according to the ancient original, then the map is trustworthy. Among the cities bordering Lithuania, Mozhaisk, Koluga, Przemysl and others are listed on the map. It turns out that the message of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Olgerd, referring to 1371, in which he mentions Koluga as a city taken from him, had no legal basis. And according to the Resurrection list of chronicles, Koluga was not listed among the "Lithuanian cities".

But the authentic ancient city of Lubutsk is known on the right bank of the Oka River, 4 km below the confluence of the river. Dugna, which belonged to the Principality of Lithuania since the 4th century, being its advanced fortress. This is evidenced by an ancient settlement dating back to the 9th century. Before the Great Patriotic War, there was a church on it, in ancient times, obviously, converted from a Lithuanian watchtower. The settlement is bounded from the south by the steep bank of the Oka River, and from the east and north by the Lyubuchey stream, which flows. along a spacious and deep beam. On the western side of the settlement, a rampart up to 30 m high and more than 100 m long has been preserved. In 1372, the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Ivanovich (Donskoy) stopped here the Lithuanian prince Olgerd, who was marching with an army to Moscow. The Nikon chronicle tells about it this way: “And rushing near the city of Lyubugsk and, before all, the Muscovites drove them away, the guards of the Lithuanian regiment and their bish, and Prince Olgird himself escaped into the stasha Armed against both armies, and between them the enemy is steep and deep. days, and dying, and going apart from the world." Some historians believe that Rodion Oslyabya and Alexander Peresvet, participants in the Battle of Kulikovo, were Lubut boyars before they were tonsured monks. Lubutsk remained a Lithuanian fortress until 1396. Then, according to the peace of 1406, he passed to Moscow and became the lot of Vladimir Andreevich the Brave. However, in 1473 it was again under the rule of Lithuania. In 1460, Lubutsk is mentioned as a point that Khan Akhmat reached while moving through the Lithuanian lands to Moscow. The city finally came under the rule of Moscow only in 1503. Ivan III bequeathed it to his son Andrey. In the 15th century, Lubutsk ceased to be a fortress on the Oka River and became a settlement.

As for other Slavic cities of the Upper Poochie, in the 20th-13th centuries their growth was caused by an increased outflow of the population, as the historian V.O. Klyuchevsky, "from the central Dnieper Rus ... and this ebb marked the beginning of the second period of our history, just as the previous period began with the influx of the Slavs in the Dnieper region." Indeed, with the reign of Yuri Dolgoruky, not only Moscow became known, but also Kostroma, Gorodets on the Volga, Starodub on the Klyazma, Galich and Zvenigorod, Vyshgorod on the nobility, etc. Vorotynsk (1155), Gorodensk (1158), Brynia and Lubutsk are added Serpeisk, Meshchovsk, Mosalsk, Obolensk, Yaroslavl (Maloyaroslavets), Puddle, Borovsk, Medyn, Sukhodrovl, Kaluga.

Of course, Kaluga as a city developed much later than other Slavic cities. For the first time in the sources, Kaluga was mentioned in 1371 in a letter from the Grand Duke of Lithuania Olgerdt to the Patriarch of Constantinople Philotheus, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Russia Alexy and the governor of the Grand Duke of Vladimir-Suzdal, the future Donskoy. The nature of Kaluga in the first three centuries of its existence was explained by the strategic defensive significance of the frontier fortress. But ancient settlements in its vicinity existed here long before its foundation. In 1892, the chairman of the Kaluga Scientific Archaeological Commission, archaeologist D. I. Chetyrkin, examined 12 burial mounds near Kaluga and along the banks of the Kaluzhka River, referring them to the 1st millennium AD. e. Excavations of the settlement on the right bank of the Kaluzhka River near the former village of Kaluzhki (now the village of Zhdamirovo), presumably the original location of Kaluga, revealed fragments of clay pottery, arrowheads, a slate whorl, a bone ring, iron keys, which date back to the 20th-15th centuries. Probably, the settlement originally belonged to the patriarchal community of the Eastern Baltic tribes, attributed by archaeologists to the so-called Moshchinskaya culture (according to the first such settlement discovered near the village of Moshchiny, Mosalsky district). The area of ​​the settlement with the remains of earthen ramparts and ditches: southern, facing the river. Oka and western - to the Kaluzhka River is about 3 thousand square meters. m. The ditches on the other two sides are badly damaged. The height of the artificial shaft reaches 6 m, and its depth is 3 m. From this place, for unknown reasons, our city was later moved 6 versts lower, to the mouth of the Kaluzhka River, at its confluence with the Oka, where there is another settlement with traces earthen rampart and moat.

Even at the beginning of the 17th century, in old cadastral books, the mouth of Kaluzhka is called the "old settlement" belonging to the "Kaluga coachmen". According to the description of Academician V. Zuev in the 18th century, the place was surrounded by a deep moat, from which a high rampart rose almost like a straight wall, encircling the settlement from three sides, while from the side of the Oka River the settlement opened into a ravine. At the corners of the main shaft, there were hills with peals, on which, apparently, there were wooden towers. In addition, from these artificial hills, there were also slopes in the moat, and, finally, just above the moat, there were still the same mounds, possibly for secondary towers. The length of the shaft from the side of Kaluzhka was 100 steps, from the side of the field 230 steps. The settlement at the mouth of the Kaluzhka attracted the attention of researchers.

At the end of the 19th century, I. D. Chetyrkin excavated it, finding traces of a fire, numerous animal bones and fragments of pottery. Supporting the assumption of V. Zuev that the first Kaluga stood here, having collected new historical and ethnographic evidence, he put forward a new version about the reason for its transition from the banks of the Kaluga to the Yachenka. In his opinion, the ancient outpost of Kaluga, as well as the neighboring fortress of Gorodensk, mentioned in the Diploma of Yuri Dolgoruky in 1158, stood on the fiery frontier, covering the road to Aleksin and Tula. In 1911, students of the Kaluga branch of the Archaeological Institute conducted new excavations, the result of which disappointed the researchers: the age of the objects found here dates back to the 16th century. The local historian D. I. Malinin suggested that for some reason the pestilence of 1386 and 1419 or the location near the main road and the raids of enemies forced the inhabitants under Vasily I or Vasily II to move again to a new place - half a mile further - to the banks of the Yachenka River , near the Mironositskaya church. Namely, under the Kaluga appanage prince Simeon Ivanovich (1487-1518), the son of Grand Duke Ivan III, at the beginning of the 16th century, Kaluga was located on the site of the former Simeon's settlement, on which, according to legend, the palace of this prince stood. Later, the fortress from the bank of the river. Yachenki (moved) was moved to the banks of the Oka River in the territory of the city park. Before his death, Ivan III (1505) divided the volosts between his five sons: Vasily, Dmitry, Simeon and Andrey. He bequeathed to Simeon the Bezhetsky top, Kaluga, Kozelsk and Kozelsk volosts. From 1505-1518 Kaluga becomes the center of a specific principality headed by Prince Simeon Ivanovich. In 1512 Crimean Tatars (Agaryans) attacked Kaluga. Simeon fought the Tatars on the Oka and defeated them, according to legend, thanks to the help of the holy fool Lavrenty of Kaluga. For this feat, Prince Simeon and righteous Lawrence became locally venerated saints. However, local historians M. V. Fekhner and N. M. Maslov believe that the Kaluga fortress was founded on the Yachenka River by the Grand Duke of Moscow Simeon Ivanovich Proud (d. 1353).

The ancient Pyatnitskoye cemetery adjacent to Simeon's settlement reminded of the ancient times of the settlement itself. According to the plans and maps of the general land surveying of Kaluga for 1776, Academician Zuev found out that the second ancient cemetery in Kaluga was only the necropolis of the Lavrentiev Monastery, where priests and especially revered citizens of Kaluga were buried. The area of ​​Simeon's Settlement, which adjoined the old cemetery, was called "Old Settlement" according to the boundary books, and according to the scribe books of the 17th century, it was four acres. Around it were vegetable gardens of coachmen.

The first studies of Simeon's settlement were made in 1781 by academician V. Zuev. The settlement was once surrounded by a high earthen rampart with gates and a deep moat on the east side: from the south the settlement was protected by a deep Serebryakovsky ravine, from the north by Semenovsky, from the west by a steep slope to the river Yachenka. The length and width of the settlement were 310 and 150 meters. The very location between two deep ravines and a still noticeable bulk rampart suggested that a small fortress with corner watchtowers and an entrance gate could have stood here. Only from the eastern side did a road lead to the settlement along a ditch filled up near the outskirts. A bridge could have been thrown across this moat earlier, which, if necessary, was raised or dismantled. In addition, in some places the remains of utility pits and cellars have been preserved. Having explored the entire area and its environs, V. Zuev came to the conclusion that it was here that Kaluga crossed from the bank of the Kaluzhka River, and the founder of the fortress could be the Kaluga appanage prince Simeon Ivanovich. Archaeological excavations in 1956 discovered an insignificant cultural layer. An archaeological expedition of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1956 made a deep cut into the rampart, which was least affected by the destruction, and established that there was an old fortification (outpost) here at the end of the 15th century.

Various data about the ancient inhabitants of our places have been collected by archaeologists. But the real historical image of that distant era is given by authentic portraits of the Vyatichi people, recreated by the remarkable anthropologist M. M. Gerasimov on the basis of skulls from the Vyatichi burial mounds of the Moscow region. The sculptural reconstructions of Professor Gerasimov and his students have received worldwide recognition. He was the first to establish a direct relationship between the shape of the bones of the skull and the soft facial cover, found standards for marking the thickness of the cover in various parts of the head, with the help of which the individual facial features of a person are recreated from the preserved skull. The method of plastic reconstruction is documented, and its accuracy has been repeatedly tested by practice, including forensic.

Today, in the State Historical Museum in Moscow, one can see a reconstructed, documentedly accurate sculptural portrait of a young girl from the Vyatichi tribe. She, according to academician A. G. Veksler, resembles women in the frescoes of Andrei Rublev, paintings by V. M. Vasnetsov and M. V. Nesterov: ... I can't describe with a pen. A young face with delicate delicate features. The head is adorned with a tribal dress - a bandage with openwork silver rings with seven diverging lobes attached to the temples and at the same time woven into the hair ... ". According to the tradition of the Vyatichi, every woman wore such rings. A twisted wire hoop - a hryvnia and a necklace adorned the chest and neck. Metal jewelry in combination with stone beads and a shirt embroidered in different colors gave the girl an elegant look.

Another restored sculpture is a forty-year-old peasant man. “According to the chronicles and epic, archaeological and ethnographic data, one can imagine the harsh life of this man,” writes A. G. Veksler, “... with an ax and a plow, he worked on a small plot that fed him. , with the same ax in his hands, he had to defend his native land from enemies ... He lived in a tiny log house "istba", heated in black, as it is said about such a hut in the ancient Russian manuscript "The Word of Daniil the Sharpener": he could not endure smoky sorrows, heat not to be seen." During one of the cruel pestilences, the disease brought down this mighty and tall (and his height exceeded 190 cm) man. One involuntarily recalls the ancient Russian epic hero plowman Mikula Selyaninovich, who surpassed in strength and dexterity the entire princely retinue of 30 dashing fellows, and even Prince Volga himself "... The sculpture depicts the face of a courageous, handsome man. He has a straight-set head, a thinly outlined nose , an energetic, strongly protruding chin. A wide sloping forehead is cut with wrinkles - traces of deep thoughts, painful experiences. The man is depicted in a "shirt" - a simple peasant shirt, decorated with embroidery and fastened with small bells. Such a clasp-bell and the remains of clothing with embroidery elements were found during the excavations of the barrows near Moscow. Hairstyle - hair "under the pot", mustache, flexible beard - all this was restored according to the miniatures of ancient Russian chronicles. Approximately this was how a peasant-smerd of the 12th century, a contemporary of Yuri Dolgoruky, looked like. about 3.5 thousand years ago.Scientists agree that all portraits are as close to reality as possible, documentary and at the same time artistically expressive.

Thus, step by step, the most ancient horizons of human history are being opened, and our territory is especially rich in these finds, which has become a treasury of the most diverse historical and archaeological monuments. The study of local attractions shows that the territory of Kaluga and the surrounding areas have been inhabited since the Neolithic period, periodically preserving and renewing human settlements over the next several millennia in various historical eras. Antiquities and art found during excavations of local monuments are of great importance for the study of the most ancient Kaluga settlements. The uniqueness of the historical and archaeological monuments of our region requires the most decisive measures to be taken to preserve them for posterity.

The territory of the Kaluga region in ancient times was inhabited by the Slavic tribes of the Vyatichi.

Vyatichi

In ancient times, the territory of the Kaluga region was inhabited by the Slavic tribes of the Vyatichi. The fact that the region was inhabited by one of the East Slavic tribes is known from archaeological finds and from the ancient Russian chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years". It says that "Vyatko is gray with his family according to Otse, from whom he was nicknamed Vyatichi."

The land of the Vyatichi was wooded and swampy. In the southwest were the dense Bryn forests, which were considered impenetrable. They separated Suzdal land from Kyiv. In this Zalesye, the people of Kiev did not travel along a straight road, through the land of the Vyatichi people, but by a district road - along the upper reaches of the Dnieper and Volga. It is not surprising that one of the epics considers the feat of Ilya Muromets to be the first to get from Murom to Kyiv "by a straight road."

The settlements of the Vyatichi were usually located on capes. On one side they went to the river, on the other two they were limited to lowlands, ravines or streams, the fourth side was crossed by a rampart or moat. An example of such a settlement was discovered during excavations near the village of Spas on the left bank of the Oka. The settlement towered over the floodplain by 15 - 18 meters. It is a rectangular cape with steep slopes and a slightly sloping surface. The central part of the settlement - "detinets" - with a size of 3 thousand square meters is surrounded by a moat three meters deep and a rampart 6 meters high. The Vyatichi built their dwellings at first rounded, and in the second half of the first millennium AD. - in the form of rectangular dugouts. They had stoves. The walls of the dugouts were lined with wood.

The main occupation of the population was agriculture, first slashing, later plowed. The tools of slash-and-burn agriculture were an iron axe, a hoe and a large knife - a "mower". A harrow was used to plant seeds in the ground. Harvested with an iron sickle. From cereals, millet gave high yields, and from root crops - turnips. In the second half of the first millennium A.D. e. slash-and-burn agriculture was replaced by arable farming. The plow becomes the main tool of labor, first wooden, and then with an iron coulter. Compared to other East Slavic tribes, the development of the economy among the Vyatichi is slow. This is due to the marginal position of their lands. Until the twelfth century, there were no cities here.

In the ninth century, the Vyatichi, along with other Slavic tribes, paid tribute to the Khazars. In the second half of the tenth century, as a result of the campaigns of the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav in 964 and 966 against the Volga Bulgarians and Khazars, the Vyatichi were liberated from the Khazar yoke and became part of Kievan Rus. In the eleventh century, feudal relations began to develop among them. The Vyatichi, although they paid tribute to the Kyiv princes, for a long time retained their isolation and more than once tried to get out of the power of Kyiv.

During the fragmentation of Russia, the Kaluga lands became part of the Chernigov Principality. In 1146, the oldest city of the Kaluga land, Kozelsk, was first mentioned in chronicles. Further in the annals there is Serensk - 1147, Vorotynsk - 1155, Mosalsk - 1231.

Like other East Slavic tribes, the Vyatichi were pagans until the end of the eleventh century. They had polygamy. The dead Vyatichi were burned. The adoption of Christianity among the Vyatichi is associated with the preaching activity of the Kiev-Pechersk hieromonk Kuksha, who died a martyr in 1141.

With the development of feudal relations and the spread of Christianity, the tribal features of the Vyatichi are smoothed out, and in the thirteenth century the name "Vyatichi" disappears.

Tatar-Mongol invasion

The difficult year of 1237 came. The Tatar-Mongol hordes of Batu Khan moved to the Russian lands. Ryazan, Vladimir, Suzdal, Rostov, Moscow, Kolomna and dozens of other cities were destroyed. Novgorod was supposed to be the next target of the attack. But the weakened and thinned army of Batu suddenly turned south - for rest and replenishment in the Polovtsian steppes. The path of the conquerors lay on the territory of the present Kaluga region. Many cities of the region were subject to destruction. In the spring of 1238, the Tatar-Mongols approached the walls of Kozelsk. Kozelsk was located in a small area and surrounded on three sides by ravines, and on the fourth by a deep moat. In addition, it was surrounded by high earthen ramparts with fortress walls built on them.

The Nikon chronicle of the 16th century reports that the inhabitants of the city on the council decided not to surrender the city: "do not give in to the Batuyevs, but also lay down their heads for the Christian faith." The bloody siege continued for seven weeks. The chronicle reports that the Tatars, having smashed the walls with battering rams, went on the attack. Four thousand invaders were killed at the walls and on the streets of the city, three sons of "temniki", i.e. commanders of ten thousand troops of Tatars, paid with their lives for the capture of Kozelsk. Enraged by the great losses, the Tatars did not spare anyone - all the inhabitants of Kozelsk were destroyed. According to the Nikon chronicle, the young prince of the city drowned in blood.

In memory of those killed during the defense of Kozelsk, a memorial cross was later erected. Batu ordered to call Kozelsk "evil city". Since 1240, Russia fell under the cruel Tatar-Mongol yoke, which lasted almost two and a half centuries.

The first mention of Kaluga

The unification of northeastern Russia took place in an atmosphere of struggle not only with the Tatar-Mongols, but also with the Polish-Lithuanian feudal lords. In the fourteenth century, almost the entire Kaluga land was under the rule of Lithuania. At that time, Medynskoe, Mosalskoe, Zhizdrinskoe, Kozelskoe and other principalities were captured by Lithuania. The border between Moscow and Lithuania ran along the Oka and Ugra. Even Vorotynsk, 15 kilometers from Kaluga, was under the rule of Lithuania. The first mention of Kaluga falls on 1371, when the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Olgerd Gedeminovich, in a letter to Patriarch Philotheus of Constantinople, complains about the capture of a number of cities by Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich.

In 1380, the united Russian troops under the leadership of Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich set out on a campaign against the impending invasion from the Golden Horde. Despite the opposition of the Lithuanians, detachments from many cities under the rule of Lithuania arrived to help Moscow. Militia detachments and squads, led by their princes from Tarusa, Obolensk, Borovsk, joined the ranks of the Russian army. In the battle on the Kulikovo field, the Tarusian and Obolen squads were killed along with their princes Fedor and Mstislav.

After the victory on the Kulikovo field, Dmitry Ivanovich no longer recognized the Horde's right to dispose of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. He passes it into hereditary possession to his son Vasily the First. In the spiritual charter of Dmitry Donskoy dated 1389, where possessions were distributed among the heirs, for the first time in Russian sources there is a mention of Kaluga. This document says: "... and Kaluga and Grove to my son, Prince Andrei."

Other fortified points on the Kaluga land - Maloyaroslavets and Borovsk - from the second half of the fourteenth century belonged to the hero of the Battle of Kulikovo, an associate of Dmitry Donskoy Vladimir Andreevich the Brave - Prince Serpukhov.

Standing on the Ugra

In 1472, the Khan of the Horde Akhmat moved to the Russian borders with a large army. But at Tarusa, the invaders met a large Russian army. All attempts by the Mongols to cross the Oka were repulsed. The campaign ended in failure.

In 1476, Grand Duke Ivan the Third stopped paying tribute to the Khan of the Great Horde, and in 1480 he refused to recognize Russia's dependence on it. A new attempt to enslave the Muscovite state into the khan's ulus was made in 1480. Khan Akhmat, having concluded an alliance with the Polish-Lithuanian king Casimir the Fourth, moved troops to Moscow in the fall. The invaders pinned great hopes on the strife of Ivan the Third with his brothers. Ivan the Third, in turn, entered into an alliance with the Crimean Khan Mengli - Gerey, Akhmat Khan's rival, and agreed with him on a joint action against Casimir the Fourth. Russian troops moved towards the enemy. Not daring to enter into a decisive battle, Akhmat turned up the Oka to the Ugra in order to cross it into a ford. But they failed to cross: all the paths were occupied by Russian troops, who occupied the fords and ferries in a timely manner.

In the battle of October 8-12, using artillery, the Russians repulsed the attempts of the Mongol-Tatar cavalry to cross the Ugra. Akhmat - Khan began to wait for the approach of Casimir the Fourth. To buy time, Ivan the Third entered into negotiations with the enemy, which lasted until October 20. During this time, he made peace with his brothers, strengthened the position of the troops and brought up fresh forces, after which he broke off negotiations. The Horde tried several more times to overcome the fords, but all their attempts were repulsed.

Meanwhile, Mengli-Gerei attacked the southern Polish-Lithuanian lands, which disrupted the performance of Casimir the Fourth. Diseases began in the Tatar-Mongol troops, there was a lack of provisions. On November 11, Khan Akhmat began to withdraw his troops to the south, and then from the borders of Russia. January 6, 1481 he was killed. The internecine struggle within the Great Horde intensified, and in 1502 the Horde lost its independence.

Standing on the Ugra marked the end of the 240-year-old Mongol - Tatar yoke.

Time of Troubles

In 1601-1603, Russia suffered a disaster - crop failure. A terrible famine began, thousands of people died. The famine sharply exacerbated the social contradictions in the country. Spontaneous uprisings of peasants broke out in different places, including in the Kaluga region. The rebels smashed the estates of the boyars and landowners. In 1603, the rebels killed the tsar's brother, Semyon Godunov, in Maloyaroslavets, one of whose estates was located not far from the city.

Taking advantage of the difficult situation, the Polish king Sigismund III, together with the Vatican, made an attempt to dismember and deprive the independence of the Russian state. To this end, they nominated their protege - the impostor False Dmitry the First, who called himself the name of the son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible - Tsarevich Dmitry. In exchange for help in the struggle for the throne, False Dmitry the First promised to transfer the Seversky and Smolensk lands, the cities of Novgorod and Pskov to Poland, and establish Catholicism in Russia.

In October 1604, an impostor led by 4,000 Poles invaded Russia. The naive belief of the people that Tsar Dmitry would be better than Tsar Boris Godunov made it possible for the impostor to win over the rebellious peasants to his side. The inhabitants of the Kaluga Territory also became victims of this deception. During the campaign of False Dmitry the First to Moscow, Kaluga and other cities of the region went over to his side.

In June 1605, after the sudden death of Boris Godunov and the defection to the side of the impostor of the Russian army, False Dmitry the First entered Moscow and took the royal throne. But he did not last long in Moscow. As a result of a conspiracy of the nobility led by Prince Vasily Shuisky and an uprising of the townspeople in May 1606, the impostor was killed.

Vasily Shuisky, who ascended the royal throne, took measures to suppress the peasant uprising. Since September 1606, the Kaluga region became the center of the uprising, where the rebel army of Ivan Bolotnikov entered, moving towards Moscow. On the Ugra River not far from Kaluga, the rebels defeated government troops who were trying to block the road to the capital. From that moment on, Kaluga, Kozelsk, Medyn, Maloyaroslavets, Borovsk, Przemysl, Serpeysk and other cities crossed over to the side of Bolotnikov. But the siege of Moscow ended unsuccessfully for the rebels, and in December 1606 Bolotnikov retreated with the remnants of his army to Kaluga, where he met with the support of the population.

From December 1606 to May 1607, the Kaluga period of the peasant war continued. During these months, the military talent of Ivan Bolotnikov manifested itself with exceptional force. Repeated attempts by government troops to storm or starve Kaluga failed. Having suffered a series of defeats in May 1607, the tsarist army lifted the siege of Kaluga and withdrew to Serpukhov, and a significant part of it joined the rebels. Leaving Kaluga, the rebels headed for Tula, where they joined forces with the troops of the Terek and Zaporozhye Cossacks of "Prince Peter" - Ilya Gorchakov, who pretended to be the son of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich. Realizing the danger of the situation and taking emergency measures, Shuisky brought the number of his troops to 160 thousand people and, having defeated the rebels on the Voronya River, on June 14 laid siege to Bolotnikov and "Tsarevich Peter" in Tula. On October 10, 1607, believing the king's promise to save their lives, the rebels surrendered. But Shuisky broke his promise and subjected the captives to a cruel execution.

Having thrown all its forces into suppressing the popular uprising in the country, the government of Vasily Shuisky did not take the necessary measures to repel the ongoing Polish-Lithuanian invasion. In place of the murdered False Dmitry the First, a new impostor was nominated - False Dmitry II, who in September 1607, at the head of the Polish-Lithuanian detachment, moved to the upper reaches of the Oka. He was joined by the remnants of Bolotnikov's army and the Cossacks, who did not understand the true goals of the impostor. Some western Kaluga cities, including Kaluga, went over to the side of False Dmitry II.

In the spring of 1608, the impostor's troops camped near Moscow in the village of Tushino. Contrary to his promises, False Dmitry II continued the policy of strengthening serfdom, distributed land to his adherents, brutally cracked down on the local population, mercilessly plundered the central regions of Russia, subjected them to requisitions in favor of the Poles.

The boyar government of Shuisky, in order to fight the impostor, turned to Sweden, which was at war with Poland, for military assistance. Using this as a pretext, Poland opened direct military operations against Russia, after which it stopped supporting False Dmitry II. The Tushino camp of the impostor, abandoned by the Poles, collapsed under the blows of the Russian troops, and the "Tushino thief" himself fled in December 1609 to Kaluga.

Taking advantage of the defeat of the tsarist troops near Klushino, in July 1610 False Dmitry II undertook a new campaign against Moscow at the head of the Polish-Lithuanian detachments. Having reached Borovsk, he met strong resistance from the defenders of Pafnutius of the Borovsky monastery-fortress. As a result of treason, the monastery was captured. However, a small detachment of the defenders of the monastery, led by Prince Volkonsky, continued to fight until he was hacked to the last man. The monastery and the city of Borovsk were severely destroyed. Over 12 thousand people were killed.

Having reached the village of Kolomenskoye, the impostor learned that Tsar Vasily Shuisky had been overthrown and the Polish prince Vladislav had been proclaimed king. The Polish-Lithuanian troops left him and upon returning to Kaluga in December 1610, False Dmitry II was killed by his accomplice.

Polish intervention

After the death in 1610 of False Dmitry II, the Polish intervention against Russia turned into an open form. An attempt to swear allegiance to the Polish prince Vladislav of Kaluga failed. The residents of Kozelsk also refused to take the oath. For disobedience to the Poles in September 1610, Kozelsk was looted and burned. About 7 thousand citizens died. The capture of Moscow by the Poles in the autumn of 1610 and their arbitrariness aroused hatred for the invaders. The documents of that time indicate that in March 1611, among the militia of Russian cities, which moved to liberate Moscow, there was also a Kaluga detachment. Many residents of other cities of the region also joined the ranks of the militia. The militias stood for several months near Moscow, but did not achieve success. In connection with the aggravated contradictions, the militia units began to disintegrate. However, the detachment of Prince D.T. Trubetskoy, consisting of Cossacks and Kaluga, remained until the approach in 1612 of the militia led by Kozma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky. In October 1612, China, the city, was taken by storm, and at the end of November, the Kremlin was liberated.

During the election of a new tsar in 1612, the elected from Kaluga voted for Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, the grandfather of Peter the Great.

With the liberation of Moscow from the invaders, the war with Poland did not end. The fighting continued until 1618. To a large extent, they took place on the territory of the Kaluga region. In 1617, Polish troops under the command of Prince Vladislav launched an unsuccessful attack on Moscow. Two detachments under the command of Chaplinsky and Opalinsky were sent to capture Kaluga, which again found itself at the main crossroads of military roads. The defense of Kaluga was led by Prince Pozharsky, who defeated the invaders near Przemysl and Vorotynsk in 1617 and 1618. In the spring of 1618, due to illness, Prince Pozharsky was recalled to Moscow.

A new disaster struck the city when, after Pozharsky's departure, Kaluga was seized by the Cossacks of Hetman Sagaidachny. At the end of 1618, Russian troops liberated the city. After the signing of the Deulino truce on December 1, 1618, the war between Russia and Poland ceased, but Kaluga again became a border town.

Kaluga in the 17th-18th centuries

The end of the Time of Troubles found the Kaluga region in devastation and decline. What position Kaluga found itself in can be judged by the charter granted by Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich dated January 4, 1620. It says that "the houses and all the property of the townspeople were plundered; the inhabitants were brought to such extreme poverty" that they asked the king to release them from paying taxes for a while. The king agreed and gave them a privilege for 3 years.

In the subsequent peacetime, Kaluga begins to recover and grow. In 1634, it already occupies the 12th place among the cities of the state in terms of economic power. The reunification of Ukraine with Russia and the subsequent shift of the border to the south had a beneficial effect on the further development of the entire Kaluga region. By 1681, there were already 1045 households in Kaluga. By this time a good fortress had been built. A contemporary reports that the length of the walls was about 735 meters, the moat was the same length, there were 12 towers. Trade developed well. On the trading square of that time one could meet not only Russians, but also foreign merchants. The main exports were grain, timber, hemp. In addition, wooden products and utensils, tiles were famous, felt was produced from which saddles and cloaks were sewn. Industry developed. In 1715, E. Demidov built a large iron foundry in Dugna, and in 1720, a linen factory appeared near Kaluga.

In 1719, the Kaluga province was established, which was part of the Moscow province. By 1720, there were 19,000 households and 158,000 males in the province. For fifty years the population of Kaluga more than doubled and reached almost 14 thousand inhabitants.

Empress Catherine II visited Kaluga on December 15, 1775. Kaluga residents prepared in advance for the meeting. Beautiful Triumphal Gates were built. In the evening of the same day, the Empress went to the Linen Factory. In memory of Catherine II's visit to Kaluga, two medals were cast, on one of which she is depicted in Kaluga attire, and the inscription reads: "Because she loves you." This trip had important consequences for the region. On August 24, 1776, by imperial decree, the Kaluga province was transformed into a province. The province included 12 counties with a population of 733 thousand people. In Kaluga itself at that time there were 17 thousand inhabitants.

Lieutenant General Mikhail Nikolaevich Krechetnikov became the first governor in the new province. Many useful transformations are associated with his name. During his governorship, a huge two-story building of "public places" was built, a three-story building of "public charity" was erected with donations from the nobles of the province, a beautiful gostiny yard was built instead of old wooden shops. In 1777 the city received its first theatre. The activities of Mikhail Nikolaevich Krechetnikov put Kaluga among the most comfortable cities in Russia by the end of the 18th century.

Patriotic War of 1812

Autumn 1812. The Battle of Borodino is over, Moscow is abandoned. But Napoleon's hopes for a victorious end to the war are fading. Numerous peace proposals sent to the Russian Tsar remained unanswered. Emperor Alexander I said significant words that "he would rather go with his people into the depths of the Asian steppes, grow a beard and eat only potatoes than make peace as long as at least one armed enemy remains on Russian soil."

The robbery of the burning Moscow made a strong demoralization in the French troops, the partisan movement made it impossible to forage and contentment. The multi-tribal army was noticeably decomposing in the Moscow conflagration.

Having left the field of the Battle of Borodino, the Russian army lost more than half of its composition. Many heroes-commanders died. But the fighting spirit did not weaken. With a brilliant maneuver, Kutuzov withdrew his troops to the area of ​​​​the village of Tarutino, as a result of which the roads to Tula, which supplied the army with weapons, and to Kaluga, which was its main food depot, were covered. On September 20, the troops occupied the Tarutinsky camp. In their ranks, there were 52 thousand people, not counting the militia. In the next two weeks, it nearly doubled in membership. Reinforcements flowed from all over Russia to Tarutino: trained reinforcements arrived - the second battalions of infantry regiments, separated for this in the spring, 15 thousand Cossacks approached from the Don. All materiel was in good order, and the army, preparing for new battles, for the first time received rest. .

Mid-September is the turning point of this war. Here the "company of 1812" ends - the single combat of the Russian and French armies, and the Patriotic War begins - the war of the entire Russian people, who rose to the conqueror. In less than two months, 300,000 volunteers were sent out and 100 million rubles were collected. The position of the Russian army at Tarutino was strongly fortified: the steep and high banks of the Nara River served as a good defense, defensive structures were erected along the front, blockages and fences were arranged in the forest. Kutuzov's main apartment is located in the village of Letashevka, four versts from Tarutino on the road to Kaluga.

Napoleon's position in Moscow became critical. On October 6 (18), 107,000 Frenchmen, with artillery, with a huge convoy, left the conflagrations of Moscow, set off on their way back. "I'm going to Kaluga. And woe to those who stand in my way!" Napoleon said. On the same day, at dawn, Russian troops attacked the vanguard of the French Marshal Murat near Tarutino. In the ensuing battle, the enemy, having lost 600 people killed, 1700 prisoners and 38 guns, was driven back ..

Thus ended the glorious Tarutinsky period of the Patriotic War of 1812. At this place in 1834 a 20-meter monument was erected with the inscription:

"In this place, the Russian army, led by Field Marshal Kutuzov, having strengthened, saved Russia and Europe."

Kaluga in the 19th century

The Patriotic War of 1812 dealt a severe blow to the welfare of the city. The critical phase of the war, its turning point, took place precisely in the Kaluga province, which became, according to Kutuzov, "the limit of the invasion of enemies." At the same time, the province was the main supplier of food for the army. Due to the hardships of military life, the presence of a large number of troops, wounded and prisoners, the townspeople found themselves in a difficult situation.

In 1813, a typhus epidemic broke out in the city. To support the townspeople, the government distributed among the population 280 thousand rubles of food and 145 thousand rubles of cash benefits. With difficulty, after a half-year of anxiously stressful life, the city enters the rut that was established with such tension in the 18th century.

Gradually, the population began to increase, and by 1857 it reached 32 thousand people. But trade and industrial production did not receive their development. The trade turnover has decreased, the commercial capital of the merchants has almost halved.

On December 15, 1874, the opening of the Syzran - Vyazemskaya railway section took place, linking Kaluga with Tula and Vyazma. But this did not bring a noticeable revival to the economic life of the province - on the contrary, the shallowing of the Oka and the appearance of the railway led to a decrease in river traffic. By the end of the century, a number of old and traditional crafts completely disappear. Only matting, bristles and leather remain the subject of export. The main occupation of the inhabitants of Kaluga is now retail trade, crafts, and gardening.

A relatively large enterprise was the Lyudinovsky Machine-Building Plant, which employed more than 2 thousand people. Three paper mills in the Medynsky district employed 2,300 people. A large industrial enterprise was the Main Kaluga railway workshops of the Syzran - Vyazemskaya railway with about 1000 employees.

Most of the population of the province were peasants. In total there were 191259 peasant households. The average size of land per farm was 9.2 acres (about 10 hectares).

The everyday and smooth life of the city made it a convenient place of exile for political opponents of Russia. So in 1786, the last Crimean Khan Shagin Giray lived in Kaluga. The most prominent figure among those exiled to live in Kaluga was Imam Shamil of Dagestan, who was captured by Russian troops on August 26, 1859. On October 10, 1859, he was taken to Kaluga, and in January 1860 his family arrived. On August 26, in the building of the noble assembly, in a solemn atmosphere, Shamil took the oath of allegiance and allegiance to the emperor. Later in 1868, Shamil left Kaluga and moved to Kyiv, and in 1870 he went to Mecca, where he died in 1871.

At the beginning of the 20th century, 55 thousand inhabitants lived in Kaluga, there were 20 factories and plants, which employed 665 people. There were three printed periodicals published in the city. Education was provided by seven municipal and several private educational institutions.

The Great Patriotic War

On June 22, 1941, fascist Germany treacherously, without declaring war, attacked the Soviet Union. The Great Patriotic War began. In the very first months of the war, 25,000 of our countrymen left Kaluga for the front. Plants and factories of the Kaluga Territory, which only yesterday produced civilian products, began to produce weapons, ammunition, and uniforms. Tens of thousands of residents of Kaluga and regions in August - September 1941 built defensive structures near Smolensk, Yelnya, Roslavl, Bryansk, Orel, Kaluga, Maloyaroslavets, Tula.

The situation on the fronts of the Patriotic War became more and more difficult, the front was approaching Kaluga. On October 4 and 7, Kaluga was heavily bombarded from the air. On the night of October 11-12, Soviet troops left Kaluga. In the second half of October, the entire territory of the Kaluga region was occupied.

On Kaluga land, the enemy met stubborn resistance. Cadets of the infantry and artillery schools of the city of Podolsk, paratroopers of the 214th airborne brigade, detachments of the Yukhnovsky, Medynsky and Maloyaroslavets districts fought with unparalleled courage in the Ugra region.

After the capture of Kaluga, the Nazis began mass arrests and extermination of the inhabitants of the city. They turned many buildings, including the Centralny cinema, into dungeons. A concentration camp was set up in the cooperative village near the Oka. On Lenin Square, the Nazis built a gallows on which patriots were hanged. In Khvastovichi, they gave each inhabitant a bandage to wear on his sleeve - for appearing without a bandage, he was threatened with execution. A gallows was erected in the center of the village, on which 150 people were hanged at different times. In the village of Kudinovo, the Nazis burned 380 captured Red Army soldiers. In total, in the districts of the region during the occupation, the Nazis tortured 20 thousand of our compatriots.

The atrocities of the fascist monsters aroused anger and hatred in the Soviet people. The people rose to fight the enemy. The workers of the Duminichsky plant hid and disabled the equipment, the workers of the Sukhinichskaya MTS, in response to an attempt by the Nazis to organize workshops for the repair of tanks, dismantled the machines. Also, an attempt by the invaders to restore the Kondrovskaya, Troitskaya and Polotnyano-Zavodskaya paper mills, the thermal power station of the Kaluga Machine-Building Plant was thwarted. Under the leadership of the party regional committees of the Smolensk, Moscow and Tula regions, a partisan detachment was created in each district. In the annals of the Kaluga partisans, an explosion of an oil depot near Govardovo and Kondrovo, destroyed bridges across the Ressa River. Borovo partisans led 5,000 Soviet soldiers out of encirclement. On the night of November 24, partisans under the command of Captain V.V. Jabot struck at the headquarters of the German army corps in Ugodsky Zavod. During the raid, more than 600 German soldiers and officers, more than 130 vehicles, four tanks, two fuel depots were destroyed.

On November 28, 1941, the reconnaissance and sabotage station No. 4/70 of the Special Group under the NKVD, the Mitya detachment, moved from the territory of Belarus to the Kaluga land to organize and strengthen the partisan struggle. The detachment was commanded by the famous intelligence officer Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev. The legendary hero Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov fought as part of the detachment. Together with Lyudin's underground fighters and partisans, Medvedev's detachment dealt an effective blow to the Nazis during the well-known operation "The Night Before Christmas".

On December 6, the rout of the Nazi invaders near Moscow began. The Soviet troops of the Western Front were commanded by G.K. Zhukov. In order to quickly liberate Kaluga, the commander of the 50th Army, General I.V. Boldin created a mobile group consisting of rifle, cavalry and tank divisions led by General V.S. Popov. On December 21, Soviet troops broke into Kaluga. Fierce battles ensued. And only on December 30 Kaluga was cleared of the enemy.

In early January, Przemysl, Meshchovsk, and Kozelsk were liberated. From January 7 to 29, Mosalsk, Medyn, Kondrovo, Sukhinichi, Ulyanovo, and Myatlevo were liberated. The Yukhnovsky, Kuibyshevsky, Khvastovichsky, Lyudinovsky, Zhizdrinsky, Baryatinsky and Spas-Demensky regions remained in occupation. They continued the guerrilla war. Remarkable feats were accomplished by the partisans of the Khvastovichi region. For 22 months of hostilities, they destroyed 9 thousand Nazis, derailed 36 military echelons. Heroes of the underground, operating under the command of A. Shumavtsov in Lyudinovo, conducted reconnaissance on the instructions of the partisans and the headquarters of the front. Using the reports of brave intelligence officers, Soviet aircraft attacked German targets in Lyudinovo. On the denunciation of a traitor, the group was captured and shot by the Nazis.

After the defeat of the Nazi troops near Kursk and Orel in September 1943, the region was finally liberated from the invaders.

More than 140 thousand Kaluga soldiers gave their lives for their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War. More than 250,000 Soviet soldiers found their last shelter on Kaluga land.

In order to more quickly restore the national economy and better serve the workers, on July 5, 1944, the Kaluga Region was formed by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which included, with a few exceptions, the territory of the Kaluga Governorate that existed until 1929.

Important work under the motto "No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten" is carried out by the Kaluga Regional Patriotic Association of Search Teams "Memory" - reburial of the remains of fallen soldiers and officers on Kaluga land, identification and search for surviving relatives, dead, numbers of units and formations fought in our places, the military-patriotic education of youth, the neutralization of grenades and mines left over from the war, and much more.

Russian Civilization

Historical past of the Kaluga province

Kaluga province in antiquity (IX century) was inhabited by Vyatichi. “Vyatko is gray with his family according to Otse”, says the chronicler. Along the Protva and Ugra, the Lithuanian tribe Golyad lived among the Vyatichi; there were also Finnish settlements of the Merya tribe.

It was a wild and inhospitable region, unusually wooded and swampy, with a rare population that hid in the forests like animals, ate everything unclean, according to the chronicler, shamed before their fathers and daughters-in-law, had no marriages, but there were games where young people , conspiring with the girls, kidnapped them. The Vyatichi had polygamy, and in funeral rites they held to cremation. Before the 12th century there were no cities. The main occupation of the population was hunting for fur-bearing animals, with the furs of which they paid tribute. At the end of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century. Hieromonk Kuksha of Kiev Pechersk, apparently by Vyatich origin, enlightened the Kaluga region with the light of Christianity, capturing the sermon with a martyr's death.

As a separate volost, the land of the Vyatichi appears only under Svyatoslav Yaroslavich (son of Yaroslav the Wise) Chernigov, from which time cities appeared here. Under 1146, Kozelsk was mentioned for the first time; in 1155 Vorotynsk, in 1158 Gorodensk (now the village of Gorodnya in 12 in. from Kaluga), Mosalsk and others. These cities become princely, and in the XIII century. the current Kaluga province is divided into many small principalities, the main of which were: 1) Mosalskoe with Serensk (now a village near Meshchovsk), 2) Tarusskoe and Obolenskoe (now a village), 3) Kozelskoe, 4) Vorotynskoe, where the descendants of Mikhail Chernigovsky were , 5) Przemyslskoye with the same line of princes, 6) Mezetskoye, or Meshchovskoye. Medyn belonged to Smolensk, and Borovsk, Maloyaroslavetsky and part of the Kaluga district belonged to Suzdal. Thus, the region began to revive and was of considerable interest to the princes, why princely clashes took place here. But this revival was dealt a strong blow by the Tatars, who devastated the region under the command of Batu in 1238 and destroyed Kozelsk. However, the remote position of the region from the Tatars made it possible for him to recover, and he soon began to live his former life again.

In the XIV century, some of the Kaluga lands were already under the rule of Moscow; Kaluga was first mentioned in the same century. However, the clashes between the Moscow princes and Lithuania, which began with Simeon the Proud, gave almost the entire region to the Lithuanians. The cunning and formidable Olgerd entered here three times under Dmitry Donskoy. And Vitovt already owned Medynsky, Mosalsky, Meshchovsky, Zhizdrinsky, Kozelsky, Peremyshlsky and Likhvinsky counties, so the border between Moscow and Lithuania went along the Oka and Ugra. Even Vorotynsk, 15 versts from Kaluga, and Lubutsk were under the rule of Lithuania, while Kaluga and Borovsk were frontier towns. But with Basil I begins the return of the lost cities and the acquisition of others. In 1408, Vitovt ceded to him Kozelsk and Lubutsk, which were given to c. prince to his uncle Vladimir Andreevich the Brave, and from him passed to his children. From them, these cities are gradually moving away at the disposal of c. prince. Basil II took Medyn from Lithuania. And according to the peace of 1494, Ivan III finally got Przemysl, Tarusa, Obolensk, Vorotynsk, Serensk; peace with Lithuania in 1503 returned Serpeisk, Mosalsk and Opakov to Moscow. Only a small part in the west of the province remained behind Lithuania.

In general, the reign of Ivan III is memorable and important in the history of the Kaluga region. Under him, in 1480-1481. within the boundaries of the current Kaluga province, the liberation of Russian land from the Tatar yoke and the transformation of Moscow from the khan's ulus into a sovereign state took place.

According to the chronicle stories, undoubtedly in need of critical revision, Khan Akhmat, wanting to teach a lesson to the proud Moscow vassal, in the summer of 1480, counting on difficulties on the Moscow western border (the Livonian Order threatened the recently annexed Novgorod and Pskov) and Ivan’s strife with his brothers, entered into Moscow limits, but met a large army in. prince near Aleksin and Tarusa. The Tatars were repulsed while trying to cross the Oka; a general illness completed their disorder, and they quickly left. But in the next year, 1481, the khan repeated his attempt to cross the Oka and get to Moscow. And this time he ran into Russian regiments. Then he turned to his ally Lithuania, to the river. Ugra and moved along Likhvinsky, Przemyslsky and Medynsky districts. However, even here, in the Kaluga and Medyn districts, the paths were promptly blocked by troops. The main camp of Ivan's troops was Kremenets (now the village of Kremenskoye, Medyn district). Here came and reconciled with led. Prince brothers, who successfully defended the western border before this. Tatar attempts to cross the Ugra near Opakov (near Yukhnov) ended in failure, and the Tatars waited for the river to freeze. It was the end of cold October, and the river was already covered with ice, opening the way in any place for the khan in the near future. Then Ivan III withdrew all his troops to an excellent position to Kremenets, hoping to give a general battle near Borovsk. The retreat of the Russian troops from the Ugra was carried out very hastily and disorderly, which is why the khan suspected military cunning in the actions of the Russians and, in turn, hastily fled. So strange was the fall of the Tatar yoke on the “belt of the Virgin,” as the chroniclers called Ugra, probably because in all the villages almost adjacent to it, churches were built in the name of the Virgin.

However, in the subsequent time, the Lithuanians did not stop bothering the Kaluga region; moreover, the Crimean Tatars also joined them, and life in the region continued to be unsettling.

In 1508, under Vasily III, under an agreement with Sigismund, the unattached part of the Kaluga province also ceded to Moscow, and the places taken earlier were finally approved for it. The contract document says that Sigismund approves for the servants of Vasily Ivanovich - the princes of Przemyslsky, Vorotynsky, Mosalsky and others, from the generation of St. Michael all their patrimonies and that he is obliged not to intervene in Tarusa, Obolensk, Mosalsk, Vorotynsk and in the city of Lubutsk (now the village down the Oka), and in the city of Kozelsk, and in Lyudimesk (the village of Przemysh. U.), and in Serensk and to all Kozelsk, and to Ludemsk, and to Serensk places. But this agreement did not guarantee a peaceful existence for the mentioned volosts. Frontier life was full of incessant quarrels and robberies of Muscovites and Lithuanians; everyone was constantly on guard, and the cities turned into heavily fortified points.

The Crimean Tatars began to disturb the Kaluga region from 1512. Allies of Moscow under Ivan III, they are now changing their tactics and opening a number of raids on the Moscow borders, including Kaluga with its counties. To protect against the Crimeans, a notch was carried out through the Kaluga province, stretching along the southeastern and southern borders, almost to the city of Zhizdra, 193 in. The notch was called Likhvinskaya and Kozelskaya and was divided into sections, named after the notch gates. There were 7 Likhvinsky notches, and 4 Kozelsky ones. “The Likhvinskaya notch consisted of a deep ditch with a steep glacis, along which a palisade with loopholes was built, and then the path was blocked by huge chopped and fallen large trees”. The gate stood on the very road to the notch; the gates were fortified with towers and loopholes for cannons and squeakers. At the end of the XVII century. the gates were still intact, but at present only in some places you can see the remains of a moat and glacis.

The military character of the Kaluga cities left its stamp on the inhabitants, who were little inclined to civil order and a quiet life. And since, moreover, Ivan IV did not prevent criminals, runaway serfs and, in general, “thieves” from leaving for this Ukraine, in the terminology of that time, it is natural that in the turbulent era of hard times, Kaluga plays a prominent role, giving impostors a warm welcome. First, Bolotnikov labored here, and then the "Kaluga tsar" Tushinsky thief, who laid down his exuberant head while hunting on December 11, 1610. He was replaced by Lithuanian people with Sapieha, who "fought" the Kaluga, Vorotyn and Przemysl counties. The Kaluga residents atoned for their sins under the command of Prince. Dm. Trubetskoy, taking part in the liberation of Moscow from the Poles. At the Zemsky Sobor of 1613 there were deputies from Kaluga, Maloyaroslavets, Kozelsk, Meshchovsk, Przemysl, Serpeisk and Borovsk.

When MF Romanov came to the throne, the Kaluga Region was in a very sad state. In 1614, the Borovsky district was devastated by the Nogais, and Cossacks and serfs nested in the southwestern part of the region, which were joined by at. Minion. The elusive Lisovsky also turned into the Kaluga land. In 1617, during the first Polish war, new disasters rained down on the Kaluga region. It was brutally devastated by the flying detachments of Chaplinsky and Opalinsky, and then hetman Sagaidachny, who took possession of Kaluga itself, completely ruined it.

The Deulino truce ended the troubles, but instead gave Serpeisk, which was returned back in 1634, to Poland. In five months of the epidemic, up to two-thirds of the population died out in some places.

From that time on, life in the region flows peacefully, untroubled and undisturbed by dangers until the war of 1812.

In 1681, the cities of the Kaluga province had the following number of households: 1) Kaluga - 1045, 2) Meshchovsk - 38, 3) Borovsk - 41, 4) Maloyaroslavets - 101, 5) Tarusa - 20, 6) Likhvin - 39, 7 ) Vorotynsk - 61, 8) Serpeysk - 48, 9) Mosalsk - 15, 10) Przemysl - 27.

When Russia was divided into 8 lips. the cities of the Kaluga land fell apart between the Smolensk provinces. and Moscow. Serpeysk, Mosalsk, Meshchovsk, Przemysl, Kozelsk, Likhvin and Vorotynsk belonged to the first, and the rest to the second. During the formation of the provinces, by decree of May 29, 1719, the Kaluga province of the Moscow provinces was allocated. The province included: 1) Kaluga and Medyn with the county - 2515 doors, 2) Vorotynsk - 1008 doors, 3) Meshchovsk - 2812 doors, 4) Przemysl - 993, 5) Mosalsk - 1165 doors, 6) Kozelsk - 5428 doors, 7) Serpeisk - 1997 doors, 8) Likhvin - 1418 doors, 9) Odoev. The rest of the cities of the current Kaluga province with counties were part of the Moscow province. There were 7,765 houses in them, and in total then there were 19,366 households and 158,843 inhabitants in the Kaluga province.

In 1776, it was decided to open the Kaluga governorate. At that time, the population in the Kaluga province was about 700,000 souls. Viceroyalty and received the limits in which the province is now. There were 12 districts in the governorship, including Serpeysky, which does not exist today. Vorotynsk was left behind the state and renamed into a settlement; Obolensk was reduced to the level of a village, and Zhizdra and Medyn were renamed cities from villages.

In the reign of Paul I, Kaluga was renamed from a governorship into a province, and Serpeisk, Maloyaroslavets and Likhvin were turned into provincial cities, but under Alexander I the last two were again made county, and Serpeisk remained provincial.

In the same last reign within the Kaluga province in 1812, the most important episodes of the Patriotic War broke out: the Battle of Tarutino and the battle near Maloyaroslavets, after which the famous retreat of the great army began.

The population at that time in the province was 983,562 people, of which only 50,000 were in the cities.

Literature:

1. Shchepetov-Samgin P. Kaluga province in historical terms. - Commemorative book. Kaluga lips. for 1861 - Kaluga, 1861

2. Poprotsky M. Materials for the geography and statistics of Russia. Kaluga province. Vol. I and II. - St. Petersburg, 1864.

3. Jer. Leonid Kavelin. The history of the church within the current Kaluga province. - Kaluga, 1876.

4. Proceedings of the Kaluga Scientific Archival Commission, centuries. I-XXI.

5. "Kaluga Antiquity", centuries. I-VI

and general works on Russian history.

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The history of Kaluga begins in the alarming XIV century. The city arose as a stronghold of the Moscow principality near the Russian-Lithuanian border, which then passed along the Oka and the Ugra. For the first time, Kaluga was mentioned in the letter of the Lithuanian prince Olgerd in 1371, along with other foreign fortresses. From the text of the document, it becomes clear that earlier the city was temporarily in the hands of Lithuania, but by the time the charter was drawn up, it no longer belonged to it.
The Kaluga Fortress was built on a strategically advantageous section of the plateau of the high and steep bank of the Oka River, between two deep ravines: Berezuisky and Gorodensky. A detailed description of the fortress for the initial period of the city's history has not been preserved. We only know that it was quite powerful. “The city fortress stands on the top of a high hill ... with strong towers”, “... from a distance we admired Kaluga, which is vast and majestic,” P. Aleppsky, who accompanied Patriarch Macarius of Antioch to Moscow in 1654, spoke of Kaluga.
By the middle of the 17th century, Kaluga was losing its significance as a border fortress, having played an important role in the formation of the Muscovite state. Kaluga is becoming a fairly large trade and craft center. Trade Kaluga reached a special flourishing by the turn of the 17th-18th centuries. The main items of trade were hemp, honey, wax, yuft, bread. During the reign of Peter I, factory production developed in Kaluga: linen, hemp, bristle, wax, oil and other enterprises began to appear. The development of trade and industry became the basis for administrative elevation. Since that time, Kaluga had to acquire a completely different layout. Complete alteration and further development of the historical part of the city were to be carried out according to the "regular plan" approved in St. Petersburg, which meets the new urban planning requirements. Famous Russian architects P.R. worked on the projects of this plan in different years. Nikitin and I.D. Yasnygin.
By the beginning of the 19th century, Kaluga acquired a completely new look. It became a well-organized city with straight streets, an abundance of churches and greenery, and magnificent architectural structures. Among them are Kaluga's Gostiny Dvor, the ensemble of Public Places with the cathedral and the Stone Bridge, which are rightfully considered outstanding works of Russian architecture.
The shallowing of the Oka, which connected Kaluga with Tula, caused an almost complete cessation of the transport of goods by water. The city is losing its importance as a major transit point, and its rapid economic decline begins. By the end of the 19th century, Kaluga became a calm, nice and cozy provincial town.
Official portal of the TIC of the Kaluga region.

Tatar-Mongol yoke

In the spring of 1238, the Tatar-Mongol army of Batu Khan, who had been ravaging Russia for many months, ended up on Kaluga land under the walls of Kozelsk. According to the Nikon chronicle, the formidable conqueror of Russia demanded the surrender of the city, but the Kozelchans refused, deciding "to lay down their heads for the Christian faith." The siege lasted for seven weeks, and only after the destruction of the wall with battering rams did the enemy manage to climb the rampart, where "the battle was great and the slaughter of evil." Part of the defenders went beyond the walls of the city and died in an unequal battle, destroying up to 4 thousand Tatar-Mongol warriors.

Bursting into Kozelsk, Batu ordered to destroy all the inhabitants, "until they suck milk," and ordered the city to be called the "Evil City". The feat of the Kozelsk people, who despised death and did not submit to the strongest enemy, became one of the bright pages of the heroic past of our Fatherland.

In the 1240s. Russian princes found themselves in political dependence on the Golden Horde. The period of the Tatar-Mongol yoke began. At the same time, in the XIII century. under the rule of the Lithuanian princes, a state began to take shape, which included Russian lands, including part of the "Kaluga". The border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Principality of Moscow was established along the rivers Oka and Ugra.

In the XIV century. the territory of the Kaluga region became a place of constant confrontation between Lithuania and Moscow. In 1371, the Lithuanian prince Olgerd, in a complaint to the Patriarch of Constantinople Philotheus against the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Russia Alexei, among the cities taken from him by Moscow "against the kissing of the cross" names Kaluga for the first time (in domestic sources, Kaluga was first mentioned in the will

Dmitry Donskoy, who died in 1389). It is traditionally believed that Kaluga arose as a border fortress to protect the Moscow principality from an attack from Lithuania.

The Kaluga cities of Tarusa, Obolensk, Borovsk and others took part in the struggle of Dmitry Ivanovich (Donskoy) against the Golden Horde. Their squads participated in 1380 in the Battle of Kulikovo. A significant role in the victory over the enemy was played by the famous commander Vladimir Andreevich the Brave (specific prince of Serpukhov and Borovsky). In the Battle of Kulikovo, the Tarusian princes Fedor and Mstislav perished.

A hundred years later, the Kaluga land became the place where the events that put an end to the Tatar-Mongol yoke took place.

Grand Duke Ivan III Vasilievich, who during the years of his reign had turned from a Moscow appanage prince into an autocratic sovereign of all Russia, in 1476 stopped paying the Horde the annual monetary "output" collected from Russian lands since the time of Batu. In response, in 1480, Khan Akhmat, in alliance with the Polish-Lithuanian king Casimir IV, set out on a campaign against Russian soil. Akhmad's troops moved through Mtsensk, Odoev and Lubutsk to Vorotynsk. Here the khan expected help from Casimir IV, but did not wait for it. The Crimean Tatars, allies of Ivan III, diverted the Lithuanian troops by attacking Podolia.

Having not received the promised help, Akhmat went to the Ugra and, standing on the shore against the Russian regiments that Ivan III had concentrated here in advance, made an attempt to cross the river.

"And the Tatars came and the Muscovites began to shoot, and the Muscovites began to shoot at them and squealed to let go and beat many Tatars with arrows and piercers and repulsed them from the shore ...". Several times Akhmat tried to break through to the other side of the Ugra, but all his attempts were thwarted by Russian troops. Soon the river began to freeze over. Ivan III ordered all troops to be withdrawn to Kremenets, and then to Borovsk. But, Akhmat did not dare to pursue the Russian troops and on November 11 retreated from the Ugra. The last campaign of the Golden Horde against Russia ended in complete failure. The successors of the formidable Batu were powerless before the state united around Moscow.

After the overthrow of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, Ivan III began offensive operations against Lithuania, from which Moscow had only defended itself before. In 1500-1503. between the Moscow state and Lithuania there was a war that ended in a truce, according to which Ivan III retained all the principalities he had acquired, including Serpeisk, Lubutsk, Opakov.

Kaluga Territory - border area

During the reign of Grand Duke Ivan III (1462-1505), the gathering of Russian lands under the rule of Moscow practically ended and the formation of the Moscow State took place. In 1508, under an agreement between Vasily III and Sigismund, Moscow received most of the Kaluga territories from the Polish-Lithuanian state. These are Tarusa, Obolensk, Mosalsk, Vorotynsk, Lubutsk, Kozelsk, Ludemesk, Serensk and others. constantly subjected to raids by the Crimean Tatars.

One of the first attacks of the Crimeans on the Kaluga lands was recorded in 1512. Then Kaluga was in the specific possession of the fourth son of Ivan III - Simeon (1487-1518).

In the Chronicle of the Laurentian Monastery, it was said that Simeon and the townspeople went out to meet the enemy approaching Kaluga and took the battle on the river. Ok. At this time, the Monk Lawrence of Christ for the sake of the holy fool was in the house of the prince. Suddenly he shouted: "Give me a sharp ax, attack the dogs on Prince Simeon, but I will defend him from his dogs," and disappeared ("take a rest"). At the same instant, he appeared next to the Kaluga prince, just when the enemies surrounded Simeon. Having strengthened the prince and the townspeople, who, thanks to such a miraculous appearance, regained their strength and began to push the Tatars, Lavrenty disappeared again. When Simeon returned with victory to his house, he found Lawrence there, who was foolish and said that he had saved Prince Simeon "from the dogs".

To protect the Muscovite state from the raids of the Crimean and Nogai Tatars in the south and southeast in the XVI-XVII centuries. serif lines were arranged, consisting of forest blockages, ramparts, ditches, palisades, and strongholds. On the Kaluga land, the Likhvinskaya serif line of 7 serif gates and Kozelskaya, of 4, were located, which were part of the so-called Great Zasechnaya line. The Kaluga cities of Kozelsk, Przemysl, Meshchovsk, Serpeysk, Mosalsk, Tarusa, Vorotynsk, Kremenets, Medyn, Lyubutsk, Maloyarolsavets, Borovsk were turned into strong fortresses. In Kaluga, as a strategically important point of defense, the Advance Regiment of Russian troops was located. Ivan IV the Terrible repeatedly visited the Kaluga fortress cities: Kozelsk, Obolensk, Przemysl, Vorotynsk. The Russian tsar was in Kaluga in 1561 and in 1576, when at the head of the Russian troops he arrived in the city to defend the state from the Crimean Khan Davlet Giray. In 1563, part of the Kaluga lands, including Kozelsk, Przemysl, Likhvin, Maloyaroslavets, Medyn, and others, were transferred to the oprichnina.

More than once skirmishes with the Tatars took place on the Kaluga land, but the most famous was the Kaluga governor Mikhail Andreevich Beznin, who defeated the Tatars in 1587, 1592, 1595 and 1597. After these serious defeats, the attack of the Crimeans significantly weakened.

Appeared at the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. the monasteries in Kaluga were well fortified and armed. In the XVI century. Borovsky Pafnutev Monastery is gaining great fame. By the end of the century, stone fortress walls with towers were erected around it. In 1592 and 1595 Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich came to the Borovsky Monastery on a pilgrimage.

In Russia and beyond its borders of the 16th century. Kaluga was famous for its wooden utensils. This fact was emphasized in his notes on Muscovy by the imperial ambassador Sigismund Herberstein.

Time of Troubles

At the beginning of the XVII century. Russian land was overwhelmed by many years of bloody struggle for the royal throne. In this troubled time for Russia, the Kaluga land - the "Ukraine" of the Muscovite state, became the scene of many significant and tragic events.

In the summer of 1605, Kaluga expressed its obedience to False Dmitry I, who was heading to Moscow with an army, and after his assassination, in May 1606, she invariably remained on the side of the opponents of the new tsar, Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky. Kaluga residents supported the uprising of I.I. Bolotnikov. They did not let the government troops advanced to Kaluga into the city, which were defeated on September 23, 1606 in a battle on the river. Acne. After the retreat from Moscow, Bolotnikov with a detachment of ten thousand found refuge in Kaluga, where he kept under siege for more than five months. The besieged were released in May 1607 by the troops of Ileika Muromets, after a successful battle on the outskirts of Kaluga "in the village on Pchelna".

In the spring of 1608, a new contender for the royal throne, False Dmitry II, again received the support of the people of Kaluga. Having suffered a defeat near Moscow, False Dmitry fled to Kaluga, where he arrived on January 1, 1610. The inhabitants of the city met False Dmitry with honors and gave him the opportunity to gather new forces. In mid-January, the "wife" of False Dmitry, Marina Mnishek, arrived in Kaluga. In the spring of 1610, the impostor's troops marched from Kaluga to Moscow. In July, they approached Borovsk and laid siege to the Pafnutiev Monastery. Behind its walls, residents loyal to the government and troops under the command of Prince Mikhail Volkonsky took refuge, almost all of whom died during the stubborn defense of the monastery.

Having learned about the overthrow of Shuisky and the proclamation of the Polish prince Vladislav False Dmitry II on the Moscow throne, he returned to Kaluga. Here, on December 11, 1610, during a hunt, a baptized Tatar prince. Peter Urusov killed the impostor, avenging the death of Kasimov Khan, who was killed on the orders of False Dmitry. Having learned about the death of her "husband", Marina Mnishek provoked a massacre of the Tatars in Kaluga. The body of "prince" Dmitry was brought to the city and buried at the Trinity Cathedral.

After the expulsion of Polish troops from Moscow and the election of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov to the throne in 1613, the people of Kaluga took the side of the new tsar. But even in the subsequent time, until 1618, the territory of the Kaluga region continued to be a place where clashes with Polish troops constantly took place. Since 1617, Kaluga and its environs were protected from the attack of the Poles by Prince. Dmitry Pozharsky. In 1618, after his departure, Hetman Sagaidachny suddenly attacked Kaluga and, having captured the city, burned and plundered it. Only the Deulino truce, concluded with the Poles for 14.5 years, allowed Kaluga to free itself from the Zaporizhzhya troops. The Time of Troubles was left behind and a gradual restoration of peaceful life began on the Kaluga land.

Kaluga region in the 17th century.

During the "troubles" the Kaluga region was heavily devastated. In most villages and villages, there were only a few households with a population of 10-20 people, and many of them turned into wastelands, i.e. were abandoned by the residents. The situation was not the best in Kaluga, which in 1620 was exempted from paying taxes for three years by Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. A new misfortune struck the city in 1622, when "on the holy week on Thursday, God's wrath in Koluga city and prison and their yards and shops, with all their bellies, burned down without a trace." And again the city receives permission not to pay taxes to the state for another three years. In 1649, the large and economically developed village of Spasskoye was included in Kaluga. This government measure had a positive role in the further development of the city.

A serious test for the Kaluga land was the "pestilence" of 1654. During the epidemic that swept over the region, more than half of the inhabitants died.

In 1642, 1649 and 1654 Kaluga nobles and townspeople took part in the activities of Zemsky Sobors. After the accession of Ukraine to Russia in 1654 and the end of the Russian-Polish 1654-1667, the borders of the state moved to the west, and the Kaluga Territory lost its significance as a border land. The wooden fortress of Kaluga, which burned down at the end of the 17th century, was no longer restored. Some fortress cities turn into administrative centers (Maloyaroslavets, Borovsk, Kozelsk, etc.), while others become villages (Vorotynsk, Kremenets, Obolensk, etc.).

Around the end of the 1640s. The first Porotovsky iron-smelting plant appeared on the Kaluga land, and in the second half of the century two more hammer iron-working plants were built - Ugodsky and Istinsky. These factories were run by foreigners. The activities of the Kaluga factories were aimed at meeting state needs and, first of all, at military needs.

In the second half of the XVII century. The history of the Kaluga region turned out to be closely connected with the split of the Orthodox Church. The reforms of Patriarch Nikon did not find full support among the Kaluga clergy. Kaluga and Borovsk became the centers of the split. At the same time, in 1665 and 1666, in Borovsky Pafnutiev Monastery for several months, before and after the Cathedral in Moscow, Archpriest Avvakum, a consistent supporter of the schism, was kept in prison. The well-known schismatic sisters, noblewoman Feodosia Morozova and princess Evdokia Urusova, were also exiled to Borovsk.

Kaluga region in the 17th century.

The reign of Peter I led to fundamental changes in all spheres of the life of the state. The tsar-reformer paid special attention to military needs. It is no coincidence that during the Northern War, new manufactory production appeared on the territory of the Kaluga Territory. The Menshov blast-furnace plant and the Dugninsky iron-smelting iron-working plant (founded by Nikita Demidovich Demidov), whose products were used to meet the needs of the army and navy, gained particular fame. For these purposes, in 1718 on the river. Sukhodrev, by order of the tsar, the merchant Timofey Filatovich Karamyshev founded the Linen factory, and in 1720 the paper factory. Subsequently, the owner of the factories in the Linen Factory was Afanasy Abramovich Goncharov, the largest manufacturer in Russia, who in 1742 received hereditary nobility "for the distribution of factories, and especially paper factories".

A historical anecdote has been preserved, according to which in 1722 Peter I at the Istinsky plant pulled out 18 pood strips of iron and marked them with his personal brand. For the work, he received from the owner the payment due to the blacksmiths - 18 altyn. With this money the king bought himself new shoes and then, showing them, he always said: "Here are the shoes that I earned with my own hands."

In 1708, by decree of Peter I on the division of the state into provinces, the Kaluga lands were included in the Moscow (Kaluga, Tarusa, Maloyaroslavets, Medyn, Borovsk) and Smolensk provinces (Serpeisk, Mosalsk, Meshchevsk, Kozelsk, Likhvin, Przemysl, Vorotynsk). In 1719, with the new division of the provinces, Kaluga became a provincial center, which included the Medynsky district and the cities: Oboev, Vorotynsk, Meshchovsk, Przemysl, Mosalsk, Kazelsk, Serpeysk and Likhvin. Other cities became part of the Moscow province. In the same 1719, the tsar's decree was followed to open the first secular educational institution in Kaluga - the school of tsyfiri and geometry.

In 1748, the Kaluga region acquired its own shrine - the miraculous icon of the Kaluga Mother of God, revealed in the village of Tinkovo, on the estate of the landowner V.K. Khitrovo.

In the XVIII century. a long period of peaceful life began on Kaluga land. Due to its location on the Oka, Kaluga become a major trade and craft center. The economic situation in the region has noticeably improved, the population has increased significantly. However, even at that time, various disasters visited the Kaluga land more than once: crop failures, fires. But perhaps the most difficult test was the plague epidemic that swept through central Russia in 1771. In Kaluga, in memory of the deliverance from this disease, a religious procession with the icon of the Kaluga Mother of God was established on September 2.

A new stage in the history of the Kaluga region begins after a visit to Kaluga in 1775 by Empress Catherine II. On August 24, 1776, a personal decree of Catherine II followed on the establishment of the Kaluga province as part of 12 counties and the appointment

The clock donated by Catherine II to the Kaluga society at the opening of the Kaluga viceroy. KOCM

Viceroy of the Tver Governor Mikhail Nikitich Krechetnikov. The grand opening of the vicegerency took place on January 15, 1777. On this day, the first meeting of the nobility took place, at which the leaders of the nobility and noble assessors were elected. On January 18, 1777, a play by V.I. Maykov "Prologue to the opening of the Kaluga governorship". In the following days, performances were given in the theater every evening. In honor of the opening of the governorship, dinners, balls, concerts, masquerades, and fireworks were arranged. In memory of the opening of the Kaluga vicegerency, Catherine II presented the Kaluga society with a watch, and on January 23, 1777, she expressed her highest favor to Krechetnikov and the Kaluga nobility. During January, government offices were opened in Kaluga and county towns and self-government bodies were elected. On February 28, 1777, a decree of the Governing Senate followed, officially confirming the opening of the Kaluga governorship.

On March 10, 1777, the cities of the Kaluga governorship received coats of arms created under the guidance of the famous historian Prince M.M. Shcherbatov. Finally, the territory of the Kaluga province took shape in October 1777. On November 24, 1777, schools were opened in Kaluga and county towns for the education of merchant and petty-bourgeois children. At the same time, probably, a school for noble children also appeared in the provincial city. In 1778, the plan for the development of the provincial center was approved by the highest. The establishment in the reign of Catherine II of the Kaluga province and viceroyship marked the beginning of the development of the Kaluga region as an independent administrative-territorial unit within the Russian Empire.

In 1799, Kaluga also became the center of the diocese, whose bishops became known as Kaluga and Borovsk.

At the beginning of the XIX century. scandalous fame in Russia was acquired by the Kaluga governor D.A. Lopukhin. His abuses were investigated by a senator who arrived in Kaluga in 1802, the famous poet G.R. Derzhavin. According to the results of the work of the Senate audit, on November 18, 1802, Emperor Alexander I issued a decree on the fight against extortion and bribes among officials.

Patriotic War of 1812

At the beginning of the XIX century. Kaluga was glorified by its native - non-commissioned officer Semyon Artamonovich Starichkov. In the Battle of Austerlitz on November 20, 1805, he saved the banner of the Azov Musketeer Regiment and, dying in captivity, handed it over to Private Chuika (Seagull), who returned the banner to Russia.

Feat S.A. Starichkov, who "at the very end of his life, thought only of preserving and delivering to the authorities the banner entrusted to him," became widely known, becoming for many years a model for the education of soldiers of the Russian Imperial Army.

During the Patriotic War of 1812, the Kaluga province took an active part in wartime activities. Nobles, clergy, merchants and philistines donated provisions, weapons, things, silver and money for the army, of which more than 150,000 rubles were collected. In Kaluga, General M.A. Miloradovich formed new troops, of which 14,000 took part in the Battle of Borodino. In August-September, 15,000 militia were formed in the Kaluga province, which in 1812 took part in protecting the borders of the Kaluga province, liberating the Roslavl and Elninsk districts of the Smolensk province from the enemy and restoring order in the Mogilev province. Kaluga Governor P.N. In early August, Kaverin established a chain of guard cordons along the border of the province from armed peasants, on which, with the support of the Cossack regiments and parts of the Kaluga militia, approximately 2,200 people were destroyed and 1,400 people were taken prisoner. During the period when the Russian armies approached the province, Kaluga became the main rear base and the nodal center of the communication line, supplying the active troops with food and fodder, reinforcements, horses and ammunition. Military hospitals operated in Kaluga, Mosalsk, Kozelsk and Meshchovsk. More than 10,000 prisoners of war passed through the Kaluga province. From the end of 1812, the governor of Kaluga was entrusted with the administration of the Smolensk province.
After leaving Moscow and performing a flank maneuver, Russian troops under the command of M.I. Kutuzov on September 21 entered the Kaluga province and stopped at a pre-selected position near the village of Tarutino. Settled in the Tarutinsky camp on the right bank of the Nara River, the troops got the opportunity to rest and increase their strength. Reinforcements arrived in the army, including Cossack regiments, food and fodder were delivered, ammunition and medicines were brought.

At a time when hostilities between the main forces were suspended, the "small war" gained wide scope. On October 6, the Russian army went over to active operations and in the battle near the Chernishni River (called Tarutinsky) defeated the vanguard detachment under the command of I. Murat.

In this battle, the commander of the 2nd Infantry Corps K.F. Baggovut, whose body was brought to Kaluga and buried in the necropolis of the Laurentian Monastery.

On October 7, Napoleon with the main forces left Moscow. Having crossed to the New Kaluga road, he made an attempt to bypass the Russian troops, but in Maloyaroslavets on October 12 he was met by troops under the command of D.S. Dokhturova. During the Maloyaroslavets battle, the city changed hands at least 8 times, gradually the main forces of the opposing armies were drawn to the battlefield.

By nightfall, the Russian troops left Maloyaroslavets and retreated to a position prepared outside the city. From October 12 to 13, a raid was made in the rear of the enemy army by the Cossacks of ataman M.I. Platov, who attacked the bivouacs and convoys of the enemy, seized the guns and almost captured Napoleon, who was passing next to his retinue.

After the Battle of Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon abandoned further movement to Kaluga and on October 14 began a retreat to Mozhaisk. Kutuzov, fearing a flank bypass through Medyn, where on October 13 three Cossack regiments defeated the vanguard of the Polish corps, on the 14th retreated from Maloyaroslavets to Detchino, and then to Linen Plants. From here, the main forces of the Russian army on October 18 began to pursue the retreating troops of the Great Army.

Kaluga region in the XIX - early XX centuries.

After 1812, the Kaluga Territory quickly healed the wounds inflicted by the war, and over the next century, its life flowed in a calm direction, and the changes that took place on Kaluga land did not go beyond the framework of nationwide processes.

In the 1820s on the territory of Kaluga, the founder of the "factory power" I.A. Maltsov acquired factories located in the Zhizdrinsky district, including Sukremelsky and Lyudinovsky. On the latter in 1841, for the first time, the production of rails for Russian railways began, the development of steam engines began, and the Dnieper steamship was built for the first time. In the 1870s The Maltsov factories mastered the production of steam locomotives for Russian railways, which were made, under the terms of the contract, exclusively from domestic materials. In the 19th century The Kondrovskaya and Troitskaya paper mills, which were owned by the prominent industrialist V. Howard, became especially famous. The Goncharov Linen Factory was famous for papermaking.

A landmark event of the 19th century was the abolition of serfdom, which marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of the Russian state. In the Kaluga province, the "Regulations of February 19, 1861 on the peasants who emerged from serfdom" was promulgated within one day. Kaluga Governor V.A. Artsimovich (according to A.I. Herzen - the best governor in Russia), knowing the hostile attitude of the nobles to the reform, took a number of measures in advance. The entire province was divided into 167 small sections, to which officials were sent who sympathized with the cause of the liberation of the peasants. They had to read only the articles marked by the governor, which spoke not only about the duties of the peasants in relation to the landowners, but also about the rights of former serfs. Officials were ordered to perform their duties in uniform and to acquaint the peasants with the articles in the presence of the landowners. To ensure order, a policeman was sent with each official.

In the second half of the XIX century. the important place in the life of society was occupied by the issues of improvement. In Kaluga, for example, the city authorities, headed for a long time, from 1885 to 1901, by a merchant of the first guild, an honorary citizen I.K. Tsipulin, solved numerous problems related to the construction of water supply and sewerage, electricity, asphalting and landscaping of streets, beautification of market squares, repair of roads and houses, resolving the issue of including Kaluga in the railway network and introducing a tram service in the city, streamlining the tax from cabbies etc. Charitable events were actively held: concerts, lotteries, donations of money, property, etc. For example, the same mayor Tsipulin donated a stone house worth 70 thousand rubles for the construction of a vocational school, allocated money for the repair of the building of the Kaluga provincial gymnasium, the construction of a church in a military camp, gave an interest-free loan in the amount of 2 thousand rubles for the construction of a Workhouse and 9 thousand rubles for the formation of the Society for Insurance of Citizens' Property from Fire.

Kaluga region in 1917-1941

Early 20th century was noted in the Kaluga province by the activation of public life, the revolutionary events of 1905-1906. and the industrial boom of 1909. In 1914, the First World War began, which led to an economic and political crisis in the country. The February Revolution of 1917 was enthusiastically received in the Kaluga province. Numerous rallies and demonstrations were held in her support. New authorities were created in the province, the process of formation of Soviets was taking place everywhere, the activity of the Social Democratic wing - the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks - was intensified. In rural areas, in the absence of a strong government, the illegal appropriation of land expanded, attacks on the estates of landlords and landowners became more frequent, unauthorized felling of forests, and seizure of property. The Bolsheviks gradually intensified their activities, especially in the industrial centers of the province: Lyudinovo, Zhizdra, Petrovsky Zavod, Tarussky district, etc. In Kaluga, they received support from the garrison, which played a large role in the revolutionary events of 1917. The new administration of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, elected democratically , could not solve the pressing problems, and especially the food crisis. The population was losing confidence in the government, and food riots took place in September. Under these conditions, preparations began for the elections to the Constituent Assembly.

In October, a struggle for power broke out in Kaluga between the Menshevik-SR Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies and the Bolshevik Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies, which relied on the Kaluga garrison. To establish order, troops were sent to Kaluga, which on October 19, after little resistance, managed to arrest members of the Council of Soldiers' Deputies and restore order in the Kaluga garrison. After the October Revolution of 1917, Kaluga remained loyal to the Provisional Government, so Soviet power was established in it by force of arms only on November 28, 1917. One of the last acts of confrontation in Kaluga was a manifestation in support of the Constituent Assembly on December 10, which was the use of armored vehicles.

The final establishment of the new government in the Kaluga province was completed by the end of December 1917. In February-July 1918, the Kaluga Soviet Republic existed on the territory of the province. During the Civil War, the Kaluga province was declared under martial law three times. On its territory, uprisings against the Soviet authorities repeatedly broke out. Especially large at the end of 1918 happened in Medynsky, Borovsky and Maloyaroslavetsky counties. Detachments and military units were constantly formed in Kaluga and the province, medical institutions for the wounded and sick Red Army soldiers were located. Command infantry courses operated in Kaluga.

After the end of the Civil War, the restoration of the national economy began through the implementation of the New Economic Policy in 1921. Already in the first years of the NEP in the Kaluga province there were significant shifts in economic development.

A gradual restoration of large enterprises began: the Dugninsky iron foundry, a paper mill in the Linen Factory, a weaving factory in Borovsky district, and others. In 1923, the process of electrification of the village began. At the same time, since 1924, a struggle began in the province against the "former landowners" who were subject to eviction.

In December 1925, the course towards socialist industrialization was adopted in the country. In the Kaluga province, the pace of capital construction has increased. New products were mastered (the Kaluga Electro-Mechanical Plant set up serial production of telephone sets, telephone dialers and phone switches, the Kondrovskaya paper mill switched to the production of paper of higher grades, etc.), in 1927 a garment factory was opened in Kaluga, in 1929 The main railway workshops were transformed into the Kaluga Machine-Building Plant NKPS, in 1931 the Gigant match factory was built, in 1936 the construction of the SDV plant began and preparations were made for laying the turbine plant. By 1940, there were 35 factories and factories operating in Kaluga alone, employing over 15,000 people. Since the end of 1929, the process of complete collectivization began on the Kaluga land. Since the mid 1930s. in the Kaluga region, as well as throughout the country, repressions began that claimed the lives of many thousands of Kaluga residents.

During the period of socialist construction, cardinal changes took place in the territorial-administrative division of the country. In 1929, the Kaluga Governorate was abolished, and its territory became part of the Moscow and Western regions. In 1937 there was a new division between the Moscow, Tula, Oryol and Smolensk regions. Since 1929, Kaluga (the district center of the district, since September 1, 1930 - the regional center) was part of the Moscow, and since 1937 - in the Tula region.

In the 1930s Kaluga gained all-Union fame thanks to the scientist and inventor, the founder of cosmonautics K.E. Tsiolkovsky. In 1932, in the year of the 75th anniversary, the activity of the scientist was marked by a government award. Solemn meetings were held in Moscow and Kaluga. September 19, 1935 Tsiolkovsky died. A year later, on September 19, 1936, a museum was opened in his house.

Kaluga region during the Great Patriotic War

From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, the entire life of the state was subordinated to the requirements of wartime. On the territory of the Kaluga Territory, mobilization unfolded, factories and factories set up the production of military products, and collective farms fought for the harvest. The population collected money and things for the needs of the army. The Stakhanov movement was organized at enterprises and collective farms, competitions were held. To combat enemy saboteurs and paratroopers in Kaluga and the regions, 44 fighter battalions and detachments were formed. Over 90,000 Kaluga residents in August-September 1941 built defensive structures near Smolensk, Bryansk, Orel, Tula and on the near approaches to Moscow. In the autumn of 1941, when the front line approached the Kaluga region, evacuation work began.

During the defensive stage of the battle near Moscow, Kaluga land was almost completely occupied by the enemy. From October 4 to October 8, 1941, after a stubborn defense, the troops of the 43rd, 50th and 33rd armies were forced to leave Spas-Demensk, Mosalsk, Yukhnov, Lyudinovo, Duminichi, Zhizdra, Meshchovsk, Sukhinichi and Kozelsk. To keep the German troops rapidly advancing towards Moscow, the Mozhaisk line of defense was put on alert. From October 10, the command of the troops of the Western Front was entrusted to a native of the Kaluga land, the famous commander - G.K. Zhukov. Cadets of the Podolsk infantry and artillery schools were advanced to the Maloyaroslavets direction, delaying the advance of the enemy towards Moscow. The Kaluga direction was defended by units of the 49th Army. After stubborn fighting on the outskirts of Kaluga, the units of the 5th Guards Rifle Division defending the city were forced to retreat. From 12 to 13 October, Kaluga was in the hands of the enemy. By the end of October, the enemy troops were stopped at the turn of the river. Nara and r. Okie.

In the occupied territories, the Germans established a "new order", the victims of which were more than 20,000 civilians in the Kaluga Territory. Despite the cruelty of the occupation regime, the orders of the German command were sabotaged everywhere, underground and partisan detachments were created, residents hid the sick and wounded soldiers of the Red Army, etc. During the war years, about 100 partisan detachments operated on the territory of the region, of which 37 were created in the regions of the region. The partisans destroyed up to 20,000 people, about 200 tanks and 500 vehicles, derailed about 80 enemy trains, and blew up 150 bridges.

On December 5, 1941, a counteroffensive began near Moscow, and in the first days of January 1942, without an operational pause, a general offensive of the Soviet troops unfolded. As a result, by the end of April 1942, most of the Kaluga Territory was liberated (16 districts completely and 8 partially). In December 1941, the troops of the 50th Army carried out a successful operation to liberate Kaluga. For a deep breakthrough into the rear communications of the enemy, a special mobile group was created under the command of Major General V.S. Popova, who was to make a 90-kilometer raid and capture Kaluga with a sudden blow. The operation began on the night of December 17-18, 1941. At 5 am on December 21, Soviet troops rushed to the city. Fierce battles ensued, threatening the complete defeat of the mobile group. By December 23, the main forces of the 50th Army approached Kaluga. On December 30, the city was stormed, as a result of which Kaluga was completely liberated.

In the liberated areas, the party and administrative authorities focused on restoring the national economy, infrastructure, providing assistance to the Red Army and solving social issues. Mobilization was resumed on the territory of the Kaluga Territory, troops were formed, defensive structures and fortifications were built, mine clearance was carried out, weapons, ammunition and ammunition were collected. Kaluga residents took part in the material and financial assistance of the Red Army, the donor movement, took care of the wounded soldiers and war invalids, families and children of front-line soldiers and orphans. Thus, more than 100 million rubles were contributed to the country's defense fund. Residents of the Kaluga Territory participated in the construction of 14 tank columns, 12 air formations and individual aircraft, 5 armored trains and one artillery battery. Collective farmers handed over grain, meat, milk to the special food fund of the Red Army, sowed overplanned "hectares of defense".

After the successful completion of the Battle of Stalingrad, offensive operations were carried out in February-March 1943 in order to eliminate the Oryol and Rzhev-Vyazemsky ledges that threatened Moscow. During the fighting, the territories of the Yukhnovsky, Mosalsky and Baryatinsky regions were liberated. In July-August 1943, Kaluga land became the place where heavy fighting unfolded during the Battle of Kursk. During the offensive, the troops of the Western Front liberated the Khvastovichsky and a significant part of the Zhizdrinsky districts. The final liberation of the Kaluga region occurred as a result of a series of offensive operations carried out in August-September 1943 during the general summer-autumn offensive of the Red Army.

In order to more quickly restore the national economy and better serve the workers, on July 5, 1944, the Kaluga Region was formed by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which included, with a few exceptions, the territory of the Kaluga Governorate that existed until 1929.

During the years of the Great Patriotic War, 175,464 people were called up from the Kaluga region. Including, from Kaluga and the Kaluga region - 30,139. ​​During the war, 80,100 Kaluga soldiers died and 56,000 went missing. Thus, about 78% of the conscripts sent to the front did not return to their homes. More than 150 natives of the Kaluga land were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for heroic deeds. Tens of thousands of Kaluga residents received orders and medals. More than 250,000 Soviet soldiers found their last shelter on Kaluga land. July 25, 1967 by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "for active participation in the partisan movement, courage and steadfastness shown by the workers of the Kaluga region in the fight against the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War, and for the successes achieved in economic and cultural construction" Kaluga region was awarded the Order of Lenin.