Balakovo

Balakovo stands on the left bank of the Volga near the Balakovka, in the country between the Great and Little Irgiz. Its name was recorded in the first half of the eighteenth century for a Cossack meadow holding. Farming settlements subsequently grew beside the river, drawing people from different parts of Russia to the Volga's eastern bank.

An April 1762 census recorded a newly settled village of Balakovo inhabited by peasants from a Moscow monastery's estate. Later that year Catherine II issued a manifesto inviting Old Believers who had fled abroad to return and settle in the region. Orthodox and Old Believer communities both became part of the local history. The river provided a route by which this growing village could exchange the produce of the Irgiz country with the wider Volga world.