Savinka

The steppe around Savinka lies north of Lake Elton, amid the dry plains east of the Volga. In the eighteenth century the lake's salt became the object of a state monopoly. Ukrainian carriers known as chumaks brought it across the open country in ox-drawn wagons to stores on the Volga opposite Saratov. Their long salt road crossed a landscape of shallow valleys and grazing land, before the later village of Savinka appeared among the settlements of the steppe.