History
The area was originally populated by Finno-Ugric peoples and then colonized by the Novgorod Republic, with the exception was Veliky Ustyug, which was part of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality. Totma has been first mentioned in the chronicles in 1137, and Veliky Ustyug — in 1207. In 13th century the Novgorod merchants already reached the White Sea. The area was attractive in the first instance because of the fur trading. The main waterway from Novgorod into the Northern Dvina was along the Volga and its tributary, the Sheksna, along the Slavyanka River into Lake Nikolskoye, then the boats were taken by land to Lake Blagoveshchenskoye, from there downstream along the Porozovitsa River into Lake Kubenskoye and further to the Sukhona and the Northern Dvina.
Until 1700s, Arkhangelsk was the main trading harbour for the sea trade of Russia and Western Europe, and the Sukhona was on the main trading route connecting the central Russia with Arkhangelsk. Peter the Great drastically changed the situation, by founding Saint-Petersburg in 1703, thus opening the way for the Baltic Sea trade, and by constructing the highway between Saint-Petersburg and Arkhangelsk via Kargopol. The river quickly lost its role as the leading trading route, which was accelerated by the construction of the railway between Vologda and Arkhangelsk between 1894 and 1897.
Read more about this topic: Sukhona River
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)