Krasnye Baki

Baki stood beside a crossing of the Vetluga, a river route between the middle Volga and the northern forests. The village is recorded in a 1617 survey and became known as Nikolskoye after a church of St Nicholas was built in 1635. It grew into a trading village on the river, serving settlements spread through the forests of the extensive Vetluga river valley.

In 1670 Baki became a centre of the rebellion associated with Stepan Razin under the local leader Ilya Dolgopolov. Captured rebels were executed in the village that December. Peter I granted the estate to Chancellor Gavriil Golovkin in 1709. Another peasant uprising broke out at Baki in 1744 and was harshly suppressed, revealing the tensions beneath the prosperity of the river trade.