Syktyvkar

Founded in 1780.

Since 1780, Ust-Sysolsk is a county town of Velikoustyuzh province of Vologda province. Since 1785, the city Duma has been working in Ust-Sysolsk. In the XIX - early XX century, the place of exile of politically unreliable citizens.

Once on the site of the city of Syktyvkar, called until 1930 Ust-Sysolsk, there was a small churchyard. It was inhabited mainly by Komi-Zyrians, so the city was called Zyryanovsky. It is mentioned in a document dated 1586. According to the scribe books of that time, it had a church and nine courtyards. The convenient location at the confluence of the navigable rivers Vychegda and Sysola, along which the waterway to the Siberian lands and the Kama region went, contributed to the development and settlement of this area. The Komi-Zyrians living here, together with the Russian people, explored the vast expanses of Siberia. Since ancient times they knew the way to those lands, so they were often taken by the "leaders", that is, the conductors of the Cossack detachments going to the east.

The troubled time almost did not affect the Zyryanovsk city hall. Since the end of the XVII century, its development went at an accelerated pace. Pogost turned into a large settlement, which became known as Ust-Sysol. It was inhabited by peasants and merchants. The development of trade and agriculture singled out Ust-Sysola among the other settlements of the region. In the first decade of the XVIII century, there were up to 80 houses, in which about a thousand people lived. The settlement became an important point of transit and redistribution of goods, especially bread coming from the Kama region and Vyatka. But the largest income to local traders brought furs. Visiting merchants brought here fabrics, metal products, everyday objects. Some of the merchants firmly mastered here and remained permanently resident. Since the beginning of the XVIII century, two fairs a year began to be held in Ust-Sysolsk: autumn, George, and winter, Vasilievskaya. At these fairs came traders from Pechora with salt and ice cream fish and nuts, merchants from Ustyug, Yarensk and Solvychegodsk with fabrics, clothes, shoes, dishes, tea, sugar and other goods. By the middle of the century, the settlement of Ust-Sysol became a significant trading center of the Komi region. With the reforms of local government in the late XVIII century, it was transformed into a city. By that time, the number of residents in it had more than doubled, and the number of houses was approaching three hundred.

The official opening ceremony of the new city took place on September 10, 1780 in the house of Sukhanov merchants, the richest family in the city. On this day, in the presence of officials, the ringing of the bells of the Trinity Cathedral on the map of the Russian Empire, a new district center of the Velikoustyuzh province of the Vologda viceroyalty appeared - Ust-Sysolsk. The city was given the coat of arms with the image of a bear lying in the den, "as a sign that such kind of animals in the vicinity of this city is quite."

After four years, the development of Ust-Sysolsk began according to a new master plan developed by the All-Russian Commission of Buildings in St. Petersburg. When creating the city plan, the architects used the experience of St. Petersburg, reworking it taking into account local conditions. The layout of the city had a clear system of streets linked with the terrain and the outline of the Sysola River. The city was divided into 26 blocks with 12 streets. The city line was marked by small ramparts and, in addition to the initial Zyryanovsky church, included small nearby villages. According to this plan, Ust-Sysolk developed until the beginning of the XX century. Soon in the city there were institutions mandatory for county centers: the presence and other state buildings, the living yard. At the intersection of the central streets is located the main city square, named after Stephen of Perm, an Orthodox missionary who brought Christianity to the Komi region.

At the head of the city was the town. To "maintain public safety and order," he had a paramilitary "staff team" at his disposal. According to the regulations of 1785 in Ust-Sysolsk, the city Duma appeared, dealing with issues of urban economy, improvement and managing finances.

Although Ust-Sysolsk was far from Moscow, it did not stay away from the events of 1812. During the Patriotic War, the city, in addition to recruited men, sent an additional 53 people to the militia, which joined the ranks of the Russian army. In February 1814, a party of French prisoners arrived in Ust-Sysolsk - 100 people. Barracks and an infirmary were built for them in the city, as many of them were sick and frostbitten. With the end of the war, the French were sent home. However, a part of France remained in Ust-Sysolsk: the place where the French camp was located retained the name Paris after leaving.

At the beginning of the XIX century, the economy of Ust-Sysolsk was mainly agricultural in nature. The inhabitants of the city built houses next to their fields, and therefore the city is strongly stretched along the riverbank. In the 1840s, a new vegetable appeared here - potatoes, to which the local population at first reacted very unfriendly, if not hostile. About the attitude to the potatoes of the inhabitants of Ust Sysolsk preserved the testimony of a contemporary, recorded in 1846 in the "Description of the Vologda province": "Zyryans, who gave out in the garden at the deacon of their parish planted in the ground "apples", dug the unholy, in their opinion, fruit and scattered it to the extreme chagrin of the owner." The Sysols were engaged in animal husbandry, kept horses, cows and sheep. Various crafts were also developed in the city. According to the city Duma, in the middle of the XIX century there were blacksmiths, shoemakers, carpenters, carpenters, tailors, carriages, furnaces and one chimney sweep. Small private industrial enterprises operated in Ust-Sysolsk, owned by merchants and burghers. In the post-Reform years, four brick factories, leather, soap and dyeing establishments worked here.

In the late XIX - early XX century, Ust-Sysolsk continued to be the most significant city of the Komi region, but its development was extremely slow. Due to its geographical location, it was the center of the largest district of the Vologda province, but was located hundreds of versts from the provincial center. The number of residents of Ust-Sysolsk increased solely due to natural growth. People voluntarily settled here reluctantly, although the Russian government periodically sent "politically unreliable citizens of the empire to reside in Ust-Sysolsk." By the beginning of the XX century in the city lived a little more than four thousand people, most of whom were still engaged in agriculture, fishing, hunting and cattle breeding. The products of hundreds of artisans met local needs. Trade continued to play a significant role in the city's economy, although the fair was held only once a year, giving way to a permanent shop trade, in which imported goods and edible products prevailed. Local merchants by land transported furs to Nizhny Novgorod and both capitals, still bringing them the greatest income.

By the beginning of the XX century, Ust-Sysolsk was a typical suburban county town with a small number of educational institutions, a paid library and minimal medical care. There was no theater, no club, no educated society in the city. Newspapers and magazines were not published here, large factories and factories did not work, the railway did not reach here. In the book "Forest Kingdom" by the writer V. Zasodolesky there are such lines: "There is no city garden or boulevard in Ust-Sysolsk, the streets are not paved and illuminated at night only by the light of the heavenly bodies, at all times of day and night horses roam the streets and whole flocks of sheep loite."