Ikryanoye

Ikryanoye developed beside the Bakhtemir channel in the Volga delta below Astrakhan. Its late-eighteenth-century settlement was closely bound to the distribution of crown lands and access to fishing waters. Count Dmitry Zubov settled seventy-seven peasants from Simbirsk province on a riverside mound. They faced reeds, marshes and channels instead of familiar arable fields, and had to learn a new fishing economy.

Disputes over the Bakhtemir waters disrupted the undertaking. Zubov sold the village land and its serfs to Ivan Varvatsi, a Greek officer and entrepreneur, and the settlers moved temporarily to Fedorovskoye. Between 1807 and 1810 Varvatsi brought them back to newly built houses at the junction of the Ikryanka and Bakhtemir. A Senate decision in 1817 settled the fishing-rights case in his favour. That year the village had 147 inhabitants. Its revival depended on rights to the delta's waters as much as on ownership of dry land.