Yoshkar-Ola: History
In 1990 the city of Yoshkar-Ola became one of Russia's "historic cities"
and deservedly so. The city first came into being as a military fortress in 1584, a result of the final annexation of the Mari region by the Russian State. The settlement's original appellalion in documents dating from that era was "Tsar's Town on the Kokshaga". The town was constructed "in an irregular quadrangular oblong figure 4 versts and 100 sagenes in circumference" with one perimeter bordering on the Malaya Kokshaga river, the remaining 3 protected with ditches, earthern banks, fortified wooden barricades and five towers, three of which served as points of entry (the Kazan, Cheboksary and Vyatka gates). As it lost its military significance, Tsarevokokshaisk gradually evolved into a town in its own right: alongside Tsarist strelets, or regular soldiers, and the military classes there thrived a community of merchants and artisans. Today nothing remains of the original Tsarevokokshaisk. The wooden town was subject to many a fire - its first stone building only dates from the middle of the 18th century. Prior to Peter I's administrative reforms which divided the Russian State into Provinces, Tsarevokokshaisk was the chief district town; at the beginning of the 18th century it came under the administration of Kazan Province where it continued to exist as a typical provincial small town. The emblem of Tsarevokokshaisk was approved at the end of the 18th century. As the town came under the administration of Kazan Province, in the upper half of the shield a black serpent with a golden crown and red wings was depicted against a white background. In the lower half was to be seen " a silver elk against a pale blue background - a sign that such beasts are plantiful hereabouts and that the locals are versed in hunting them" - a description that was incorporated in the code of laws of the Russian Empire.
According to a census conducted in the January of 1897, with a population of 1656 the town boasted 5 churches, 22 taverns and 1 hospital. As a result of this the old name of our town came to represent provincial remoteness, a fact reflecled in the works of the renowned Russian writers N.V.Gogol and M.E. Saltykov-Shedrin. Indeed the very provincial atmosphere of the town contained a certain quaint attractiveness: luxuriant in the verdure of its gardens it painted most scenic picture.
