Traveling in the North Kazakhstan region.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page” 

Augustine of Hippo.

A trip to the North Kazakhstan region.

Arykbalyk (Kaz. Aryқbalyқ) is a village in the Ayyrtau district of the North Kazakhstan region of Kazakhstan. The administrative center of Arykbalyk rural district. In 1820, the village Aryk-Balykskaya was founded on the shore of Lake Logovoye at the foot of a hill covered with a birch forest.
During the trip of I.Ya.Slovtsov in the area in 1878, there were 300 houses and more than 2100 inhabitants in the village. In the village there was a wooden church, a village board, a male and female school, a bread shop, 6 water and 23 windmills, a malting factory, three forges, a state-owned wine shop.
On the western shore of Lake Imantavskoye, where the Aryk-Balyk River flows from it, there was the village of Aryk-Balykskaya, founded in the 1820s. The village lies 97 miles from Kokchetav. It has a wooden church, a village board, male and female schools, a bread shop, 6 water and 23 windmills, 34 oil mills, a malting factory, three forges, a state-owned wine shop, a fair is held for the holidays
 In the village there are about 300 houses and more than 2100 inhabitants, there are traces of ancient aryks, dividing the fields crosswise, indicating the development of tillage here in the most distant times. Near the village, in the south-west, there are two settlements - Verkhne-Burluksky and Nizhne-Burluksky at the Babyk-Burluk river.
The first has 128 yards and 1,100 residents of both sexes, and the second has 209 yards and 1,430 inhabitants, a school, a bakery, 6 water mills, 22 windmills and two tanneries, two forges and a wine shop. The village of Aryk-Balyks of Kokchetav Uyezd was formed in 1824 at the behest of Emperor Alexander I, as well as some other nearby villages, including the county town of Kokchetav itself.
The locals associated the name of the village with the original method of sturgeon fishing (balyk) by the first settlers, who divided the channel of the river flowing from Lake Imantau into several dozen irrigation ditches according to the number of families living in the old village, on the site of which the village was formed.
The first mention in the documents of the Omsk archive on June 5, 1827, due to the fact that four Cossacks of the 5th regiment of the Linear Siberian Cossack army with families from the former Polish lancers captured in the war of 1812 were sent to the settlement in the village of Aryk-Balykskaya: Andrei Kozhitsky Mikhailov son, Dobroslav Chervinsky Ivanov son, Grigory Buchinsky Stanislav son, Joseph Savitsky Timofeev son.
During the formation of the village, 27 Don Cossack families were resettled in Aryk-Balyk, which founded the Don end of the village. In the Don end, and in 1858 a church was built in the name of St. Alexander Nevsky.
Along with the Don, the village had three more ends - the old, Polish and military. The old end, apparently, was founded in the late 17th - early 18th centuries. The Polish end was founded in 1827, and the military one in 1849, when military settlers from the Volga Cossacks and free peasants of the Volga region appeared in the village, when they were relocated partially to the registered and partially to the reserve Cossacks.
The ethnic composition of the population of the village was heterogeneous, along with 27 Don Cossack families assigned to the 1st regiment named after Yermak Timofeevich, several dozen families from Zaporizhzhya Cherkasy, as well as descendants of Poles and Lithuanians, participants in various wars and uprisings lived in the village.
The descendants of Little Russian Cherkasy, as well as Poles and Lithuanians who converted to Orthodoxy, were attributed, as a rule, to the 5th and 7th regiments. A certain proportion of the population of the village was made up of military settlers from among the Russian peasants.
The first batch of military settlers from the Chelyabinsk district (16 families) arrived on the border of the Siberian army on June 4, 1849. The village Aryk-Balykskaya (85 miles from Kokchetav) fell to the first military settlers of the Siberian Cossack army, where they left Kokchetav on June 25, 1849, accompanied by the centurion Pakhomov.
During the formation of the village, 27 Don Cossack families were resettled in Aryk-Balyk, which founded the Don end of the village. In the Don end, and in 1858 a church was built named after St. Alexander Nevsky. Along with the Don, the village had three more ends - the old, Polish and military.
The old end, apparently, was founded in the late XVIIth - early XVIIIth century. The Polish end was founded in 1827, and the military one in 1849, when military settlers from the Volga Cossacks and free peasants of the Volga region appeared in the village, when they were relocated partially to the registered and partially to the reserve Cossacks.
In the village were: a military hospital, a storage of military property In 1868, the first teacher, Volkov Ivan Ivanovich, arrived in the village. He opened the first school with 50 places - 4 classes, which was located at one end of the infirmary.
In 1888, the first teacher, Pevunova Alexandra Petrovna, arrived and opened a school for girls with 25 seats. These selfless ascetics gave their beloved work at least four decades each. And only at a deeply advanced age they parted with their beloved brainchild, leaving an indelible mark on the life of the village.
And this is understandable. For example, those who were once the first to cross the threshold of the class, after a while brought their children and grandchildren there. For many decades, it was difficult to find a family in Arykbalyk where Ivan Ivanovich and Alexander Petrovna did not know closely.
All this noisy many-sided stream of village children passed through hands, through hearts of beloved teachers. With their help, they were introduced to the basics of letters, so that they matured and become firmer on the path of life.
Leaving the walls of the school, everyone kept in his heart warm, sincere feelings of gratitude to his mentor teachers. And still it must be said that Alexandra Petrovna enjoyed special respect and gratitude of the population.
In her early youth, having been captured by the illusory ideas of Narodism, she swore an oath to devote herself to the enlightenment of the darkest, lawless, oppressed half of the population of Tsarist Russia - women.
A young student girl Sasha Pevunova was in Aryk-Balyk school. And in the name of working with girls, a young, beautiful and quite healthy teacher voluntarily and forever deprived herself of the most precious thing in life - to have a family, to experience the happiness of motherhood.
At school, in working with children, this ascetic saw the purpose and meaning of her social and personal life. The Siberian Cossack character was forged from people of different origin, culture, education and ethnic composition. Different fates and circumstances threw these people to the outskirts of the Russian Empire.
Not everyone who appeared on the expanses of the steppes had the skills of farmers and cattle breeders, not everyone knew how to hold weapons in their hands, but by the middle of the 19th century the Siberian Cossack army had become that formidable force that allowed Russia to subjugate all of Central Asia to influence
Along with the Cossacks resettled in 1824 from the Don, descendants of the first settlers lived in the village. According to A.N. Bukeikhanov, the first settlers of the village of Aryk-Balykskoy were Siberian Tatars from Bukhara Sarts, professing Nestorian Christianity, which was limitedly distributed among Siberian Tatars and some Kazakh clans.
A large number of Turkic and Iranian words were used in everyday life in the village, some Cossack women went around with a jug and wore it on their heads, braiding 3 – 4 dozens of braids, not to mention the dark hair and facial features that are more common for residents of Bukhara or Kokand, than the middle zone of Russia, they speak in favor of the assumption made by Alikhan Bukeikhanov.
On the other hand, when considering the different variants of the origin of the stanitsa of the old end, one cannot ignore the generic legends of the stanitsa, which claimed that the Cossacks of the old end were descendants of Razin Cossacks.
This is confirmed by a large number of legends about the last prince Cherkassky, his remote raids on the Volga towns and overseas campaigns, which the old men of the old end of the village liked to retell. Among other things, it was the elders of the old end who were the guardians of the Cossack customs and Cossack law
Among the stanichniks there were descendants of exiled Poles and Lithuanians who converted to Orthodoxy, as well as several dozen families from among the Zaporizhzhya Cherkasy. Poles, Lithuanians and Cossacks made up the Polish end of the village.
Naturally, military settlers from peasants and Cossacks of the Volzhko-Kama Volnitsa made up a certain proportion of the village’s population. Among the free population of the Volga and Ural regions, the so-called Volga Cossacks, there were both descendants of the Novgorod Ushkuyniki, and free Russian peasants, both the Zaporozhya Cherkasy, who moved to the Volga after the defeat of the Sich, and the Tatars, Mordvinians and Chuvashs.
The resettlement of this troubled people in Priishimye and Altai made it possible to form the backbone of the population of several dozen villages of the Siberian Cossack army. So the first batch of military settlers from the Chelyabinsk district of the Orenburg province (16 families) arrived on the border of the Siberian army on June 4, 1849. The village Aryk-Balykskaya fell to the first military settlers of the Siberian Cossack army, where they left Kokchetav on June 25, 1849, accompanied by the centurion Pakhomov.

Literature:
Russia. Full geographical description of our country. Handbook and travel book for Russian people edited by V.P. Semenov and under the general guidance of P.P. Semenov. Volume 18. Kyrgyz region. St. Petersburg. Edition by A.F. Dervien 1903.
Kozlov I. A. Memorial book of the Akmola region for 1887. Address-Calendar and geographic statistics.
Bukeikhanov A.N. On the origin and history of the Siberian Cossacks. The newspaper Irtysh, Omsk, May 15, 1906.
Nedashkovsky V. S. Memorial book of the Akmola region for 1913. Address-Calendar and geographic statistics.
Goltsev V.A. Ataman Annenkov. Globus Publishing House, 2006, Alma-Ata.
Shuldyakov V. A. The death of the Siberian Centerpolygraph, 2004

Authority
http://op-airtau.sko.kz