In the year dot the inhabitants of Vygozero travelling in their boats along the White Sea coast disembarked at the end of Onega peninsula. They turned around and were stupefied: golden sands, radiating warmth and happiness, gray ridges of boulders that still keep the secret of Creation, immense thickets of aboriginal forest full of animals and wild fowl, and the severe White Sea. Like today, for many centuries the Pomor people have been catching salmon and hunting sea animals, have been singing ancient songs during white nights, and telling their children the wonderful northern tales. Since unrecorded times the Pomor settlements of Letnyaya Zolotitsa and Letny Navolok had been situated near the cold White Sea. For many centuries the village with the Chudes’ name Pushlakhta stands on the seacoast.
Under the rhythmic sea wash the centuries passed by and generations changed.
There was everything to live a good life. Together they organized farms and built churches. And the industrial Pomor work started here. The news of the land named Zolotitsa came to Ivan the Terrible. For many centuries Letnyaya Zolotitsa had been the centre of Zolotitskaya volost (Zolotitsky district) that also included Pushlakhta and Durakovo (Letny Navolok).
Folk legends can tell about the events of Novgorod nobility, documents can tell about monastic colonization. Already in the beginning of XVI century the Solovetsky monastery had its farms and lands there, in the second half of the same century Zolotitsky district became the patrimony of Kirillo-Belozersky monastery. People will always remember the heroic defense of Pushlakhta in 1854.
Pomors are specific people, who had always underlined their independence and self-sufficiency: “We breathe because of the sea, - the Pomor saying tells. – The sea is in front, the moss is behind. We are on our own”. The Pomor character merged with northern nature, with the cold sea, with the waves. The Pomor is full of dignity.
“In front of the house the huge seine net sleeps, the sea animal skins sleep, the dried fish sleeps, - Mikhail Prishvin, who visited Letnyaya Zolotitsa in 1905, wrote, - Near the sea the boats sleep turned upside down, the permanent black cross overhangs by the water. There sits an old man with broad shoulders, like a statue made by the cold sea. He is so motionless and calm, that even the white bird that sits on the cross is not afraid of him, taking him for stone. I approach him. He doesn’t notice me, he is keeping silent: northern people are chary for words. And not only people, but nature too…
Only the lazy breaking wave falls to pieces and says: “Hel-lo, Hel-lo”…
Nowadays the descendents of the first Pomors, who settled these lands, celebrate the 590-year anniversary of the district of Zolotitsa, they still devotedly love their native land and say: “There is no village lovelier than our Pushlakhta, and on the Zolotitsa river we will become twice as happy”.
The crafts that contributed to the economic rise of the Zolotitsky district:
- Salt making (XVI-XVIII c.)
- Logging operations (steam sawmill in Pushlakhta, 1893-1902)
- Seaweed storage and processing: iodine factory on Zhizhgin island (since 1924)
- Agarinic factories since 1936
- Traditional fields: fishing and sea animals hunt
- Accompanying secondary fields - arable farming and cattle breeding
Administrational belonging of the Zolotitsa district
(the villages of Letnyaya Zolotitsa, Pushlakhta, Letny Navolok)
- II thousand year B.C. Neolithic sites discovered in the villages of Letnyaya Zolotitsa, Letny Navolok, Pushlakhta and on the Paraninsky stream
- Till 1478 –Novgorod Land.
- 1479 – Kargopol district, Turchasovsky area belonging to Moscow kingdom.
- 1708 – Ingermanland government, Kargopol district, Turchasovsky area.
- 1710 – Saint Petersburg government, Kargopol district, Turchasovsky area.
- 1719 - Saint Petersburg government, Belozerskaya province, Kargopol district, Turchasovsky area.
- 1727 – Novgorod government, Belozerskaya province, Kargopol district, Turchasovsky area.
- 1780- 1781 – Vologda government, Arkhangelsk region, Onezhsky district.
- 1796 - Arkhangelsk region, Onezhsky district.
- 1837 - Onezhsky district is divided into two areas, Zolotitskaya volost belongs to the second area.
- 1924 - Zolotitskaya volost joines Arkhangelsk region and since 1926 belongs to Suzemskaya volost.
- 1929 – Northern government, Arkhangelsk district, Primorsky region.
- 1930-1936 - Northern government, Primorsky district.
- 1937 - Arkhangelsk region, Primorsky district.
- 1941 - Arkhangelsk region, Belomorsky district.
- 1958 – till present day Arkhangelsk region, Primorsky district
