Cherdyn is a town and the administrative center of
Cherdynsky DistrictCherdynsky District is an administrative district of Perm Krai, Russia; one of the thirty-three in the krai. Municipally, it is incorporated as Cherdynsky Municipal District...
of
Perm KraiPerm Krai is a federal subject of Russia that came into existence on December 1, 2005 as a result of the 2004 referendum on the merger of Perm Oblast and Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug. The city of Perm became the administrative center of the new federal subject...
,
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Population:
The Kolva River flows by the town.
Local authorities advertise Cherdyn to tourists as the capital of the ancient Principality of Great Perm. This information is based on an 1835 study by the Swedish
historianA historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
A.M. Strinnholm and one in 1815 by the famous Russian author Nikolay Karamzin. Strinnholm mentioned that the last trip of Scandinavian Vikings to Bjarmia (aka the Great Perm) happened in 1222. Four well-equipped ships of
Haakon IV of NorwayHaakon Haakonarson , also called Haakon the Old, was king of Norway from 1217 to 1263. Under his rule, medieval Norway reached its peak....
burned Bjarmian towns to the ground.
After that, the fur trade between the
Great PermGreat Perm or simply Perm, Latinized Permia, was a medieval Komi state in what is now the Perm Krai of the Russian Federation.Cherdyn is said to have been its capital....
and Western Europe was possible via only the Russian
Novgorod RepublicThe Novgorod Republic was a large medieval Russian state which stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Ural Mountains between the 12th and 15th centuries, centred on the city of Novgorod...
, which became a suzerain of all the Northern Russia. After the centralization of Russian principalities by the Grand Dukes of Moscow, the princes of Perm, who already had Russian names, became their vassals as well as answering to Novgorod. Great Perm–Cherdyn supplied a great deal of
silverSilver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
paid as tribute of Moscow, which in turn paid the
Golden HordeThe Golden Horde was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate that formed the north-western sector of the Mongol Empire...
. Tension between Moscow and Novgorod led to a war of 1471, after which the defeated Novgorod Republic was annexed by the
Grand Duchy of MoscowThe Grand Duchy of Moscow or Grand Principality of Moscow, also known in English simply as Muscovy , was a late medieval Rus' principality centered on Moscow, and the predecessor state of the early modern Tsardom of Russia....
. The next year (1472) Cherdyn, Pokcha, and all other towns of Great Perm also became the prizes of conquest. The main fort of the Muscovites was built in Pokcha, another town located 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) to the north of Cherdyn). It was burned by indigenous tribes in the beginning of the 16th century.
Cherdyn, as well as all of Perm, was still governed by the dynasty of local Great Perm princes until 1505. After that, the
TsarTsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
sent a governor from Moscow, and he chose Cherdyn as his residence. In 1535, Cherdyn was granted town rights, but following the
Russian conquest of SiberiaThe Russian conquest of Siberia took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Siberian Khanate had become a loose political structure of vassalages which were becoming undermined by the activities of Russian explorers who, though numerically outnumbered, pressured the various family-based...
, the town quickly lost its significance.
In the twentieth century, Cherdyn was notable where the
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
Osip MandelstamOsip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...
's was sentenced to internal exile with his wife Nadezhda in 1934, by the government of
Joseph StalinJoseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
.
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