Nekrasovskoe is a large village. Once a county center, for many years it was called the Great Salt in all scribes and chronicle documents: due to ancient geological processes, its innumerable deposits were formed here.
And fed and healed
Extraction and cooking of salt has become a very profitable but unhealthy trade. Saltmen barely lived to be forty, but the profession did not give up. Corrosive vapors corroded their lungs and bronchi, burned their skin almost to the bone, but becoming a salt miner, and even more so to acquire your own salt, was considered a very prestigious business.
It is not for nothing that salt was compared to gold - it was a currency more expensive than caviar and honey. It was highly valued: a pood (16 kg) could buy a good house. For some, maybe salt is white death, but here it has always been life itself. Both fed and treated.
After the revolution, the village was given a new name - in honor of the great Russian poet, a native of these places. Nearby was the family estate of his father, Greshnevo. Only one hut has survived from it - the former serf theater, "musician"; the rest burned down. Nekrasov himself, who inherited part of the estate, did not want to return here: he was pressed by the "sins of his father" - the horrors of serfdom absorbed in childhood, which he then so mercilessly castigated in his work. At the same time, he loved his native Yaroslavl land selflessly: it was not for nothing that later, having already become a famous writer, he acquired the Karabikha estate nearby. It's no more than an hour to drive to him today.
A precious gift
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But here's the paradox: if in a concentrated form salt is harmful, then in small doses, and even with an admixture of a number of important natural substances and minerals that are found in abundance in these parts, as it turned out, it heals many ailments.
The healing properties of salt were discovered by ancient people, whose sites are still found on the banks of the Volga. However, the first documentary evidence of the value of these places was obtained from the chronicles of the 13th century. One of the sources mentions the struggle of the princes for a small piece of land, which, in modern terms, is of great strategic and economic importance. And all thanks to the salt. Merchant ships walked by from Kostroma to Yaroslavl, bought here with common white goods, and at the same time with pickles of local production. Something fell to the local prince. It was a tasty morsel.
However, its main value was that miraculous springs, healing all ailments, gushed out of the ground here. It is no coincidence that the ancient names of these places are Great Salt, Malaya Salt, the Solonitsa River, Varnitsa (places where salt was cooked), Usolye.
The fact that the local salt springs can heal "stomach diseases", lameness and other ailments has been known for a long time, but only in the twentieth century, scientists proved that these statements have a scientific basis. Nekrasovskaya mineral water has undeniable medicinal properties: it cures almost all diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.
Due to the sources located here, the present Nekrasovsky district throughout its history became an object of donation. So, in 1583, Ivan the Terrible presented Big Salts to the merchant Semyon Stroganov for his services in the development of Siberia. In 1693, Peter the Great granted Big Salts to the Pereslavl Goritsky Monastery. In 1761, at the request of the residents, Empress Elizabeth ordered the Big Salts to be taken away from the monastery and added it to the "city salary".
Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery is now under restoration.
Since the beginning of the 12th century, Salt Velikaya was the largest Russian salt mine. Since then, the Salt Island has been preserved, standing in the center of the Solonitsa River. Previously, it housed many salt pans. One of them is "royal": salt was delivered from there directly to the sovereign's table.
Black, special
Now a unique landscape and ethnographic museum has been created on the island - "Salt Great". Exhibits were collected in all the surrounding villages: salt shakers, salt millstones, objects from the everyday life of salt pans. Here you can learn a lot about the methods of making salt, about church traditions: for example, Thursday salt, with which all festive dishes were seasoned in Russia, is made from Wednesday to Thursday during Holy Week and is considered medicinal, and sick cattle are given bread salted with it.
And this is no ordinary superstition. The fact is that quaternary salt, as research has shown, actually has a number of benefits. This is black salt, which our ancestors attributed to a special miraculous power. With its help, diseases in humans and animals were treated, worn on the chest as a talisman against all misfortunes, protected from the evil eye and dark forces. Black salt was prepared in a cunning way: ordinary salt was burned in a furnace, and then, after allowing it to settle, various medicinal herbs, bran, coal were added there.
Natalia Leskov, photo by Andrey Afanasyev
