On your way to Moscow by the Trans-Siberian Railway (connecting the capital with Eastern Siberia and Far East, the longest railroad in the world-9,288.2 km), the first European city will be Kungur-a district center of the Perm Territory on the banks of the Sylva River and its tributaries Iren and Shakva. According to historians, Kungur was set up in 1647-1648 by Prokofy Yelizarov, a voivode of Sol Kamskaya (today Solikamsk), and his assistants, who caught runaway peasants from the possessions of Stroganov manufacturers and from church lands. 1222 of caught peasants were delivered to Stary Posad settlement, near the Kungurka River, and they were granted lands and exempted from taxes for three years. In 1649, the settlers built a fortress that became a shelter for "fugitives and vagabonds" from Vyatka, Solvychegorsk and other стр. 83 northern settlements, who, like local residents, wanted to live "under the tsar's protection", not to be serfs. However, in 1662, the aboriginal population--Bashkirs and Tatars--turned against Moscow officials who collected tribute there, devastated all local Russian villages and almost wiped Kungur off the face of the earth. Only those who escaped and hid in the forests or caves survived after that massacre and petitioned the tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to rebuild the town. The tsar, who wanted to have a reliable outpost in the faraway corner of his lands, ordered to build a town there "and guard against Bashkir attacks... and arrange a small prison inside the fortress". An appropriate place was found a little bit aside from the former town, on a high bank of the Sylva River at the confluence with Iren. In 1675, there was built a wooden fortress with eight towers, a church, voivode's house and other public facilities inside. In 1703, Semyon Remizov, a cartographer, geographer and historian from Siberia, made the first plans of the town and its outskirts, including a plan of a unique cave in the Ice Mountai ... Читать далее