Village Tales: "Operation SOUTH". 1982
"Spring was slow everywhere that year. And here, in the Vologda north, even at the end of April, the ice on the Yug River had only just begun to form on the snow. So people could travel along the river from village to village without any fear. Fresh bread was delivered from the district center for lunch, as usual, but people flocked to the store well in advance, whether in Baydarovo or Kozhayevo, to unwind in leisurely conversation.
The late spring worried people because they didn't know how to keep their livestock until the first grass appeared, and because late sowing is always dangerous in the short northern summer. Perhaps an outsider, accustomed to the well-being of big cities, wouldn't understand the concerns of the local residents, and not every Vologda peasant understands them either.
These places are special, after all. These villages seem cut off from the mainland. "With untracked snow in winter and impassable swamps in summer, they wait impatiently for the flood, because every year a large convoy of ships arrives here with it. Three remote districts along the Yug River—Velikoustyugsky, Kichgorodetsky, and Nikolsky—three districts share one problem: impassable roads. During the muddy season, it's practically impossible to get from house to house; the cream of the crop is collected from the farms by helicopter. Although there are airlines and the highway from Ustyug to Nikolsk is already half paved, the main cargo is still transported by river…"
Watch this film, stunning in its unique and now-vanished details. Soak in the beauty of the Yug River, a river with a name typical of the Meryan toponymic area—Yug (*jug)—"river." Along the banks of this river, from Nikolsk to Veliky Ustyug, there are numerous villages with Meryan names. I counted 35 of them during my toponymic project. Once, in the early and late Middle Ages, the Yug River connected Vyatka, and through it Merovia and Galich-Mersky, with the North. Along it, one could travel from the ancient Mari village of Koksharov to Koksharka and then on through Ustyug, Sukhona, and portages to the mysterious Kokshars, guardians of the famous Tiunovsky Sanctuary and sacred groves of "kusty" (a nod to the Mari "kusoto").
Andrey Meryanin.
Creative Association "Ekran." USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. 1982.