Samara

Samara stands where the river of the same name meets the Volga, below the great bend around the Zhiguli hills. Its position made it a meeting point between the river route and the steppe lands to the east. A wooden fortress guarded the crossing, and a town of soldiers, merchants and craftspeople grew around it.

Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich ordered the fortress built in 1586, under Prince Grigory Zasekin. Its garrison protected the Volga route and the southeastern frontier of the Russian state. The town's defences were expanded with wooden walls and stockades, while the Volga connected it with Kazan upstream and Astrakhan downstream. Cossacks and other service people lived beside a growing trading settlement.

Samara was drawn into the great uprisings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Stenka Razin's forces took the town in 1670, and in 1773 it opened its gates to Yemelyan Pugachev's followers. As the Russian frontier moved farther east and south, Samara's military importance changed, but its place at the junction of river and steppe routes continued to sustain its growth. The great bend upstream and the broad river below it gave the town a distinctive setting, while the Samara River provided a route into the eastern interior. Goods and people passing between the Volga and the steppe made the riverside settlement more than a garrison.