Zyuzino (Astrakhan region)

In the information on the formation of villages on the Caspian Sea, it is said that the village of Zyuzino (aka Grishino) was formed on a hill and stands at the Sangachen pro-nye on the Volga River. The village began to settle in 1840 and received the name from the island of Zyuzin Spit. "Spit" is a local geographical term for "low sandy island at the seaside."

Residents of the village are commoners. The hillock (island) belonged to Pyotr Semyonovich Sapozhnikov, and the catchers contracting them stayed here with camps. According to some information, A. A. Chubarov is called the owner of the village of Zyuzino, but the fact is that P. S. Sapozhnikov was a merchant, and merchants were not allowed to own peasants at that time, and P. S. Sapozhnnkov, buying a village, could record him to a relative. A.A. Chubarova was the sister-in-law of Pyotr Semyonovich - the nobleman Milashev. Of course, no one could settle here without the permission of the owner. Then, when the seashore was bought by the state treasury, the Ikryaninsky, Chagan, and riding catchers built 3-4 huts here and stayed in them. At first, no one wanted to settle here, since each catcher had a house and a family in the places from which he came here. But in 1868-1869, the catchers began to use profitable hook gear for fishing, and from that time the number of settlers on the Zyuzino hill began to increase.

In 1876, residents of Zyuzino and Biryuchaya Kosa addressed the Astrakhan authorities with a request for permission to open drinking establishments in these places. For this period, 75 souls live in Zyuzino, there are 19 households.

In 1915, the representative of the Zyuzina Kosa village, Georgy Klyauzov, on behalf of the residents addressed his imperial Majesty, Emperor Nicholas Alexander, asking: “The village of Zyuzin Kosa, located on the sea coastal strip within the Astrakhan province, unfortunately, is among those village, koi do not have their own land ownership. The great need for land forced the peasants to repeatedly apply in previous years to the appropriate institutions with a request to provide them with land or to alienate it under the acts of sale, but all the applications did not reach their goal. Meanwhile, the rapid population growth of the village more and more exposed the land need. The difficult year of World War II, the year that took almost the entire working element from the village; and the question of land is so serious that it has become urgent for every villager. And now, the inhabitants of the village of Zyuzin Kosa, plunging at the feet of your Imperial Majesty feelings of unlimited love and devotion, pray you, the Pechnik of the Russian land, to give them land and water where they live. ”

At the beginning of the last century Zyuzino was a large prosperous village. In the center of the village was a chapel. In 1913, a church was built at the expense of wealthy villagers.

Residents of the village recall that inside the church the walls were painted blue, the church was fenced with a white fence. It was opened in 1914. It was built by all the villagers at their own expense. They bought icons or carried them from home. The first priest was buried in the courtyard of the church. The church was gradually broken, a school was built from these debris in the village of Zhitnoye. There was a parish school near the church. There were only 2 elementary classes. The lessons were taught by pop. The law of God was studied at school.

The island was located among several shallow, serving for the passage of fish into the river, the estuaries of the Volga, where each set fixed network paid for itself in one night and gave income. Zyuzino is surrounded by Eriks, Ilmeni, where other fish landowners cannot always get in and prevent the catcher, which was a good condition for the development and prosperity of the village.

"Zyuzino" was arranged like all the villages of the Astrakhan province: first dugouts were built, then mud huts, and the settlers built richer wooden houses on one floor under a reed roof. Zyuzino is one of the so-called "unauthorized villages" located on the state-owned lands of the coastal strip.

“Unauthorized villages” are called fishing settlements located on the coastal strip of the sea and which are under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Caspian-Volga fisheries and seals. A distinctive feature of them are:

1. lack of inhabitants of their own land;
2. lack of administrative and social structure (non-recognition of the rights of society by residents of the village).

Zyuzino - a village of fishermen. Previously, went to sea from the age of 14, worked as fixed netting. The work was hard, and therefore there was a saying: "Whoever has not been to the sea, he has not seen grief."

Fishing camps were built on Zyuzina Spit.

Fishing bread is difficult, but grandfathers, fathers, mothers managed to instill in their sons a love for fishing work, for the nature of their native land. From father to son the skill of fishing was transferred.

During the Great Patriotic War, the slogan “Every additional kilogram of fish is a blow to the enemy!” Appeared. The villagers remaining in the rear provided the front with fish, vegetables, warm linen, and reared horses for the army. Workers of the rear felt like the same defenders of the motherland as soldiers at the front.

National and gender composition

According to the All-Russian Census , in 2010 the population of the village was 540 people (254 men and 286 women) ^[1] . According to the results of the 2002 census , Russians accounted for 97% of the 350 inhabitants in the national structure of the population ^[3] .

In 1873, 98 men and 77 women lived in the village of Zyuzino. In 1912, 979 people lived in Zyuzino (498 men and 481 women).

• Lavrentieva V. “From the History of the Village of Zyuzino”, “North Caspian Truth”, 3 pp., September 23, 1997
• Starodubova T. “Zyuzyanochka - Volzhanochka”, “North-Caspian Truth”, 5 pp., Dated December 29, 2007, No. 104.