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The tsarist government chose the Russian North as an exile place. The territory of the Konosha District-to-be was no exception. The legend says Shirvan-Khan, the Tartar Khan, was sent here after being taken prisoner by Ivan the Terrible, the conqueror of Kazan; the village of Shirykhanovo where he stayed with his servants and guards was called after him. The strelets (soldiers of regular Russian army) who guarded the Khan were stationed nearby, their posts later became villages; the village of Khmelevoye, in particular, was called so because the strelets used to grow hop (‘khmel’ in Russian).
In the 19th - 20th centuries the territory (the area of which is not big – 8430 square km) of the Konosha District belonged to three Guberniyas (regions). The whole north-west (Vokhtoma, Vandysh, Vadya) area was in the Kargopol Uyezd (a smaller district) of the Olonets Guberniya. The south-west settlements (Kovzha, the Rotkovets villages, Klenovo) belonged to the Kirillovsky Uyezd of the Novgorod Guberniya. The east area (Tavrenga, Khmelniki, Podyuga) was in the Velsk Uyezd of the Vologda Guberniya. The south area (Kremlevskaya and Davydovskaya Volost (a bigger district) with Perkhino, Glotikha villages belonged to the Kadnikovsky Uyezd of the Vologda Guberniya. None of these Volost entered the Arkhangelsk Guberniya. To get to the Uyezd administrative town one had to travel hundreds of kilometers, so the greater part of the population had never been to their Uyezd towns, to say nothing of the Guberniya capitals. There were no huge trading centres in the territory of the Konosha District, peasants had to buy the necessary goods from traveling merchants. The Fair was held only in Vokhtoma, at the end of January, and was called the Afanasyevskaya Fair.
The long distances from the Guberniya towns were the reason why ethnographers called these places ‘a bear’s corner’. The situation changed with the appearance of a new railway station of Konosha on the maps of the Russian Empire. The name ‘Konosha’ was derived from the name of a smallish river near the new station on the railway line, on the section of the road Vologda - Arkhangelsk which had just been put into operation. In its turn the river was named by the people of Chud who once lived here. Before the railway was built there had been huge taiga forests, and the place where Konosha lies now was covered with bogs. All communication lines avoided the area completely.
The road to the new station was built mainly by peasants. A spade, a wheelbarrow, a cart – these were the main ‘technical’ devices used by the builders. No wonder, the folklore tradition derives the name of Konosha from two Russian words ‘kon’ (a horse) and ‘nosha’ (a burden).
In 1898 the construction of the railway station of Konosha was completed. The official documents say that on October 22, 1898, the regular train traffic started, and the station of Konosha was put into operation. This day is considered the foundation day of Konosha.
The official date of the Konosha District foundation was the year of 1935. Areas with deep historical and cultural roots were united around the settlement of Konosha as a District centre which had not been burdened with any traditions. As a result the village culture was in the background, the course was to develop the city culture in the District.
The Konosha Land is a native place of an outstanding researcher and political figure, a doctor of geology and mineralogy, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolay Pavlovich Laverov. In 1964-65 Joseph Brodsky, a Nobel Prize winner-to-be, was exiled there and lived in the village of Norenskaya. A year and a half spent far from the habitual world, in a place where time flew differently, were later called by the poet as ‘one of the best periods of my life. There were some periods worse that that one, but better … there were none».
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