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During the Slavic colonization (the 9th - 15th centuries) the territory of the Ustyansky District of today was in the centre of Zavolochye ( the area in the triangle between the Vaga, the Northern Dvina, the Sukhona rivers) which had been explored and inhabited by Chud tribes of Ves, Yem, Zyryan, Udmurt, Merya, Korela. The lands inhabited by Chud Zavolotskaya were first mentioned in the «Povest vremennykh let» (The Story of the Passing Years) by Nestor, the Kiev-Pecherskaya Laura monk-chronicler. The union of tribes under the collective name of Chud, inhabiting the Northern Dvina basin, knew how to make bronze. The evidence of it is Chud decorations made of bronze, splendid items of Middle Age symbolic art: ‘noisy’ pendants (ducks, horses, lambs), horse-shoe fibulas (claps for cloaks), needle containers, beads, etc.
At the end of the 13th – the beginning of the 14th century the Ustyany Land became part of the Ustyuzhsky Uyezd, and within it part of the Rostov Principality. At the end of the 14th century Novgorod began to seize the Rostov lands along the Kokshenga River, and in the first half of the 15th century the Novgorod Boyars captured all the Rostov property in the Vaga area. Soon Moscow, too, turned its eyes to Zavolochye Land. In 1471 all the disputable lands along the Ustya, and in 1478 all the Novgorod property along the Vaga River were annexed by the Moscow Principality.
The Ustya River, as the Vaga River, was a considerably long river of several hundreds km and was a trading route for the tribes of Bulgar and Veps. Besides, the Ustya was of great strategic importance – almost all military campaigns of Moscow forces to Zavolochye followed the Sukhona River, then the Northern Dvina, and then the Ustya and Kokshenga. The Ustya River was the main water route to connect local people with the outer world because it crossed Zavolochye Land from East to West.
In the first half of the 17th century the peasants’ riots broke out again and again due to the unbearable taxes. At that time a separate district, the Ustyany Volost, was organized in the Ustya area. On December 18, 1708, on Peter the Great’s Order, the Arkhangelsk Gubernia was organized which comprised 18 uyezd (bigger districts), including the Vaga Uyezd with the Ustya Volost. At different times the Ustyany belonged either to the Vaga Uyezd, or to the Velsk Uyezd. ‘The Vologdskiye Vedomosti» newspaper of 1853 said that there were only two volost, Pavlitsovskaya and Bestuzhevskaya in the Ustya area.
In 1990 there were 8 volost already - the Leontyevskaya, Kamkinskaya, Nikolskaya (Stroyevskaya), Bestuzhevskaya, Semyonovskaya, Dmitriyevskaya, Rostovskaya and Malodorskaya – they all were situated along the Ustya River.
The District underwent dramatic changes after the Great October Revolution under the Soviet power. The year 1929 entered the history of the Ustyansky District as the year of its foundation.
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