Capacity of the municipalities

Atninsky District

The smallest in Tatarstan, it squeezed into a barrel between the Arsk and Vysokogorsky districts and reached Mari El in the north. From the district center - the village Bolshaya Atnya, to Kazan in a straight line - only 54 kilometers, but here is a completely different world. This is the famous north-western part of the Kazan Khanate, covered with legends and sung by Tukay. Fields, hills, rivers, lakes, forests, forests, ancient settlements, horses freely grazing on them, fat cows, intricately carved ribbons on brightly painted wooden houses... Atnya district is the embodiment of an ideal Tatar village - clean, honest, hard-working, and poetic. 

 Reference. Atninsky district is located in northwestern Tatarstan. The population, according to data for 2017 - 13178 people. The total area of the district is 681 km², of which 621.3 sq. km are allocated for agriculture, the main sector of the district.

 In the villages and townships live the vast majority - 9 thousand, in the Bolshaya Atnya, as well as in the adjacent Malaya Atnya, Novaya Atnya, and a couple of other villages - a little over 4 thousand people. Almost all of them are Tatars, there are almost no other nationalities in the area.

 How to find моң* in Atnya

The whole republic knows that the most "Tatar Tatars" are in Atnya. To be more exact, this was expressed by the first president of Tatarstan, and now the state advisor of the RT Mintimer Shaimiev: "On this land, there are true examples of traditions and customs of our people, even more - an example of what should be the face of the Tatar people".

 The origin of the original Tatar culture in these places began in the 15th century - this is the period when scientists refer to the ancient handwritten books found here. In total, more than two hundred ancient manuscript books created between the 15th and 19th centuries were found in the Atninsky district. Here in 1818 in the village of Epanchino (Tat: Yabynchi) was born Shigabutdin Mardjani, a famous Tatar enlightener, and theologian, philosopher and historian, ethnographer and teacher, who was the first to talk about the education of national consciousness of the Tatar people. The greatest Tatar poet Gabdulla Tukay was also born in the same place. (The village of Kushlavych, where Tukay was born, although it now belongs to Arsky district, is only 20 kilometers from Bolshaya Atnya). The roots of Rashid Rakhmati-Arat, a major linguist, one of the founders of the encyclopedia of Islam, are also in the Atninsky District. And the birthplace of the modern national poet of Tatarstan Sibgat Hakim (died 1986) - here, in the village of Kulle-Kimi.

 It seems that the soul itself, the very essence of the Tatar people is spilled with a delicate delicate fragrance in the air here. This is "the one" моң, which penetrates the heart of everyone who comes to the Atninsky region. But the residents of the district simply live here. They take care of what they have - language, customs, and architecture (By the way, there are two remarkable examples of wooden architecture in the area - the house of the merchant Dautov in Bolshaya Atnya, where the Atninsky Museum of local lore is now located, and the estate of the merchant Bakirov in the village of Bolshoy Menger).

 

The main keeper of the cultural code of the Tatar nation in the district is the Atninsky Folk Theatre. No other settlement in Russia, as small as the Bolshaya Atnya, has its stationary theater. And Atnya celebrated its centennial in December 2018! To celebrate the anniversary, the theater director Ramil Fazlyev (the one who made a full-length film based on Tufan Minnullin's play "Mullah" and played the main role in it), staged a new performance-based on “The Blue Bird” by Maeterlinck. In the same way - "Behet Koshi" (translated from the Tatar "happy bird") was called the very first play, which a century ago was staged in the building of a local school by teachers and part-time workers under the guidance of the inspector for the education of the Atninsky and Alatsky parishes Muhammet Parsin.

 Reference. In 2011, the Atninsky Folk theatre was named after Gabdulla Tukay and received the status of the State Drama Theater. The theater has its building, its auditorium can accommodate 264 people. The troupe successfully tours - in areas of Tatarstan, Mari El, Ulyanovsk region, Moscow, and Siberia.

 The Atninsky Theater is loved and visited, its premieres are waiting, its artists are appreciated and respected. The theater actively supports the state - several townhouses have been built for specially invited actors. It was here that the President of the Republic of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, together with the entire theater elite of Tatarstan, came to the opening ceremony of the Year of theater in 2019 The Atninsky theater is a symbol of the fact that the connection of times is not broken and the cultural and spiritual life of the district does not stop.  

 But, of course, the district is inhabited not only by the "spirit" but also by the "land".

What can an Atninsky cow give 

 Under the tag #любимаяатня on Instagram - a lot of photos in the background of haystacks and fields - girls, children, guys. Unlike the townspeople, hay is not a fashionable entourage of a photoshoot, but an everyday routine, something they face every day. Agriculture is their main occupation, and it is also their pride. They sow wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat, barley, millet, peas, and rapeseed, but the most important thing is animal husbandry - sheep and cows everywhere in the area. For six consecutive years, the region has been ranked first in all the national dairy cattle breeding ratings.

 Atninsky cows are the most productive in Tatarstan and produce 25 kg of milk per day on average. They are also the most hardened. They are bred using Canadian technology, which implies a cold method of keeping animals. If in traditional Russian farms for cows build capital, warm hangars, on heating which takes a lot of money, the Canadian principle of keeping the cattle involves hangars cold, frame. Heat maintenance in such cowsheds is based on the laws of physics: when the animal's bedding gets wet, it is not cleaned, and fill the top with a new dry layer, while the lower wet layer of bedding begins to produce heat. In this microclimate, cows do not freeze even in harsh winters, and farmers save a lot of money - cold hangars are cheaper to build and maintain.

 Spartan conditions have a good effect on the health of Atninsky cows - they are not only milked well, but also grow quickly, and give good offspring. The region's farms barely manage to build new large cattle-breeding complexes, and they are also advanced. IT technologies, without which modern Tatarstan is impossible to imagine today, have penetrated even into cowsheds. For example, in the farms "Tukaevsky", "Shakhtar" and "Tan" there are hangars with feed shops, where the feed for livestock is produced, stored, and then, in strict accordance with science, in computer mode, fed to animals - at the touch of a button.

 But even small, peasant farms, where there is neither Canadian technology nor computer equipment, as well as almost 4.5 thousand personal subsidiary farms of Atninsky district, achieve high results in livestock breeding. All these "kids" produce 41% of the region's meat and 20% of its milk. On the whole, the whole region produces 200 tons of milk every day.

But you will not buy cottage cheese, cheese, katyk, fermented baked milk, or even just a liter of milk, let alone sausage sticks with the sign "Made in Atninsky district" anywhere. There are no food processing plants in this region yet. Opening them in the next few years is a promising idea for visionary investors. Future industrialists will have no problems either with raw materials supply or with product sales. "Atninsky district is located not far from Kazan, which provides it with the necessary market for locally produced goods and also makes it possible to attract highly qualified personnel to the local economy. These factors may become a plus to the region's investment attractiveness," said Talia Minullina, head of Tatarstan's Investment Development Agency. It will not be difficult to find manpower for new food production facilities - the Atninsky Agricultural College trains not only veterinarians, agronomists, and mechanics but also cooks, accountants, and fitters. 

 And there is no doubt in the success of new enterprises – Atninsky residents can work. All you need is a little impulse from the outside.

 *Моң - from Tatar "sadness, sadness, melody, chant, harmony, cordiality, lyricism".

3 facts about the Atninsky District 

1.   There is the oldest stone mosque of Tatarstan in the district. Mosque in the village of Nizhnyaya Bereske, built with the funds of the merchant Ibrahim Burnaev, opened in 1769, a year earlier than the Kazan Cathedral Al- Mardjani. Permission to build a stone mosque Burnaev was also received from Catherine II. Now the mosque is being restored.

2.  Atninsky district is the homeland of Asgat Safarov, head of the Office of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Tatarstan, and former Interior Minister of the Republic of Tatarstan, police lieutenant general. He was born in Novy Shinger village in 1961

3.  There is a special holiday in the district - "Eleshe Bayram", which dates back to ancient Turkic times of worship of the Supreme deity Tengri. Every year on the first Friday of June, residents of nearby villages gather on the Kala Tau Mountain (from Turkic "Fortress of the Mountain") and pray for their deceased ancestors. 

Источники фото: dumrt.ru, museum.ru, komanda-k.ru, tatar.ru