Yaransk

Yaransk arose as a Russian fortress in the Mari lands during the campaigns that followed the conquest of Kazan. Its foundation is generally placed at the end of the sixteenth century; officials of its administration are documented by 1594. A settlement grew around the wooden kremlin, protected by a stockade and the fortified Ascension Monastery. In 1601 the disgraced boyar Vasily Romanov, uncle of the future Tsar Michael, spent several weeks in exile here before being sent farther east.

In 1648 infantrymen from Yaransk were transferred to build the Simbirsk defensive line, where they established another settlement named for their former home. Swedish prisoners captured in the Great Northern War were settled near Yaransk in 1711. In 1780 the town became the center of an uyezd in the Vyatka Viceroyalty. The self-taught local mechanic Leonty Shamshurenkov had earlier built a self-moving carriage, demonstrating his invention in 1752.