Nizhny Novgorod

Nizhny Novgorod stands on a high bluff above the meeting of the Oka and the Volga. Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich of Vladimir founded it in 1221 as a border fortress against the Mordvins and the Volga Bulgars, and it remained the easternmost Russian town until 1372. In 1350 it became the capital of the Suzdal–Nizhny Novgorod principality, a rival of Moscow, under Prince Dmitry Konstantinovich. In 1374 Dmitry began a white-stone kremlin to replace the earthen walls, but money and politics left it unfinished. Moscow annexed the principality in 1392, and the former princes moved to the Muscovite court as the Shuisky family.

The Tatar chieftain Edigu burned Nizhny in 1408, yet Muscovy came to see it chiefly as the great stronghold against Kazan. The red-brick kremlin, begun in 1500 and completed in the 1510s, was never taken by an enemy. In 1612 the town elder Kuzma Minin raised money and men under its walls, and with Prince Dmitry Pozharsky led the militia that freed Moscow. After the church schism, Old Believers settled along the Kerzhenets river nearby, and a diocese was founded in 1672 to counter them. Peter I made Nizhny the seat of a governorate in 1714, and in 1817 the great Makaryev Fair was moved here from Makaryev.