Nelkan (Khabarovsk Territory)

The name "Nelkan" has Evenki roots - "nel" means an arrow or place from the confluence of two rivers. So it is in fact: the village is located near the mouth of the Chuya River, which flows into the Maya River. The suffix "kan" means "one who lives here," that is, belonging to a given area.

There is exact confirmation when and by whom the Nelkan tract was founded. In 1816, a terrible epidemic of anthrax occurred in Yakutia. The Yakuts lost almost all their horses, the supply of food to remote areas stopped, and mass hunger strikes of the nomadic Tungus began. It was then that the decision was made to open universally bakery stores to support local people in difficult times. By order of the Yakutsk regional administration, serving Cossacks Prokopiy Novgorodov and Grigory Tsipandin were sent to the venue for the fairs of the Tungus in 1818 to organize a bread store. According to the order from the Yakut regional administration to the supervisor of the Nelkan store, “the May Tungus, the exiles who had fled from Okhotsk, were devastated and went on a hunger strike. Wanting to provide benefits to the Tungus ruined by the victims, I order you to send those Tungus, the Komi, according to your closest ID and the Clan Directorate, most of all suffer a hunger strike from ruin, send them 50 pounds of provisions at the official price for food from Nelcan shops, sharing each amount it will be accounted for only under the circular of their and the patrimonial management of the guarantee, and to collect money for it from them next year. The consequences of this in detail to me to inform ” ^[3] .

On August 1, 1818, the first record was made about the opening of a bread store in the Nelkan tract (on the day of the festival to the All-Merciful Savior and the Most Holy Theotokos, "Depreciation of the Honest Trees of the Life-giving Cross of the Lord"). Since then, for a single day, life in this village has not stopped. The essence of the bakery store did not change until 1848, when it passed into the jurisdiction of the Russian-American company and until 1867 (the time the RAC closed) the store belonged to the company.

In 1851, the Amgino-Ayan tract became an official postal service, and Nelkan became one of its stations. That is, the status of Nelkan is defined as state and the concern for his life should lie on the shoulders of officials. Officials shifted these concerns onto the shoulders of the front-line population. The first settlers were Old Believer peasants from Transbaikalia (mostly scribes), they settled in the Ust-Mai region , and the peasants Bushkova, Berezovsky, Protodyakonov, and Suknev arrived in Nelkan. In 1852, fundraising began for the construction of the chapel. Ten years later, in 1862 it was built, and in 1864 it was consecrated by the Archbishop of Kamchatka and the Aleutian Innocent.

The most difficult time in the history of Nelkan was the years of the change of centuries and the first decades of the 20th century. After the abolition of the Russian-American company, there were 7 yards in Nelkan, in which only 18 people lived. Life began to boil with the beginning of the “tea road”, when Chinese tea was delivered from China to Yakutsk, and from there to Irkutsk - then the population grew significantly here. From Russian America and Japan, tiled and long tea began to be delivered by sea to Ayan. In the year of tea, up to 100 thousand boxes were transported, for which the tract got the name - tea. By the beginning of the summer navigation, up to 200 working Yakuts gathered in Nelkan, and even winter workers — Evenki-mushers — joined the tea business. The life of the village was, as they say, at its peak. Up to the point that they needed their own, local competent people, and for this purpose, in 1902 a parish school was opened. Her first teacher was the priest of the Nelcan Annunciation Church, Father Vasily Maltsev. Subsequently, teachers arrived at the school - in fact, from this time on, the beginning of the formation of the educational system in the village of Nelkan can be considered.

With the advent of new power in Nelkan, the most hectic time began - firstly, Nelkan belonged to the Yakutsk region, the Yakutsk district, and subsequently to the Yakut ASSR since 1914. In 1920, Nelkan separated from the Aldan-Maysky ulus and, as an independent ulus, remained part of the Yakut ASSR. In 1922, the Far Eastern Region was formed, the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic did not enter there, while the port of Ayan was assigned to the territory of the Far East and entered the Kamchatka province. The issue of administrative-territorial division in those years was so acute and intricate in the conflicts of interethnic, economic, and political problems that this served to create a situation of permanent revolutionary actions. For ten years, the local authorities in Nelkan were represented by ulus revolutionary committees, the first chairman of the UlRevkom was Nikolai Bushkov, who was executed by counterrevolutionaries in 1922.

During the Tunguska Uprising in May 1924, the rebels occupied Nelkan, which became the base of the rebels. It housed a group of up to 300 armed men.

Nelkan, by virtue of his geographical position, was in the thick of those events about which, such as Pepelyaev’s campaign , much is known; about others, such as the speech of Artemyev and Galibarov a little smaller, even more confused today are the fighting of the Vasin detachment and the death of the Chekists in 1927 in Nelkan ^{[4] [5]} , the monument of which stands in the center of the village.

On December 10, 1930, the Ayano-May district was formed as part of the national Okhotsk Evensk district of the Far East, Nelkan became part of the national district in the Ayano-May district , but as an administrative-territorial unit belonged to the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic until 1932.

The climate is sharply continental . Winter is extremely harsh and with little snow. Summer is short. Therefore, permafrost is developed.

• Nelcan Annunciation Church - built in 1914 according to the project of Konstantin Ton .
• Monument to the Chekists of the 2nd Far Eastern Cavalry Regiment who died in December 1927 during the liberation of Nelcan. "

• Map sheet O-53-XXIII . Scale: 1: 200 000. Indicate the date of issue / condition of the area .

• System "Tax Reference"