The history of Samara, a beautiful city, the center of the economic region and the region, began with a small settlement on the river with the same name. Interestingly, the first mention of the pier was found not in Russian documents, but on one of the maps compiled by Venetian cartographers back in 1367. The official date of the foundation of Samara is 1586.
Samara-town
It turns out that the name of the famous song has a real basis - the first toponym - Samara town. The second name of the settlement is the Samara fortress, built by Prince Grigory Zasekin. Previously, I had to negotiate with the Nogai Murza about the construction, motivating it with the need to protect it from the Cossack thieves. And in fact, the construction of the fortress made it possible to take control of the huge territories located at the mouth of the Samara and in the middle reaches of the Volga, to put a barrier on the way of raids of guests from the south and, conversely, to open trade roads along the Volga to Astrakhan.
The history of Samara briefly tells who were the first inhabitants of the Samara fortress - these are military men of various specialties, gunners, archers, collars. The defensive structures have not survived to this day, the wooden fortress burned twice at the turn of the 17th – 18th centuries.
County center
In 1646, Samara underwent the first in its history population census in the settlement and county, where the estates of local nobles were located. Therefore, historians argue that this settlement existed as a city from the very beginning, and later as a district center. True, he himself was one of the various administrative-territorial associations: in 1708 he was part of the Kazan province; in 1719 it is an integral part of the Astrakhan province.
Two of the most famous peasant uprisings led by Stepan Razin (1670) and Emelyan Pugachev (1773) also left their mark in the history of Samara. Because of this, the city was deprived of the status of a county center. And only in 1780, thanks to Catherine II, the Samara district was formed as part of the Simbirsk province.
Provincial town
In 1850, Samara reached a new level, became the center of the county of the same name, at this time the population increased sharply, and the city itself began to develop at a rapid pace. The province is among the leaders in wheat harvesting, the city hosts the largest Russian fairs. The railway connection, which appeared in 1874, allowed Samara to become a large transit center.
The history of Samara after 1917 is best viewed in the context of the history of all of Russia. The city is going through the same revolutionary events, takes part in the Civil War, is under construction, changes its name to Kuibyshev and returns to the usual - Samara.
