Kazashko

How it was built

As early as the 1897 talks on the settlement, the elders set a condition: the village must have its own church with five or six bells. The church was built in 1935 with money from the Cossacks themselves. According to local legend, the site was chosen where people had seen the Mother of God in white robes.

Bells from cartridge cases

In the 1940s dolphin hunting in the Black Sea was permitted. Eleven men from Kazashko took part in it as marksmen and captains. According to legend, the bronze for the church’s five bells was collected from the cartridge cases.

Inside the church

The church is modest. Instead of an altar there is only a holy table, the walls are not painted, and an oil lamp burns before every icon. It is said that General Fyodor Tolbukhin, too, knelt before the old icons and prayed that his troops would reach Berlin.

Which church it belongs to

The church belongs to the Russian Old Orthodox Church, headquartered in Novozybkov, and is its only church in Bulgaria. After a major renovation supported by the Russian Consulate General in Varna, it was consecrated again on the Feast of the Holy Protection, 14 October 2007, by the head of the church, Alexander. For many years services were led by deacons from the village. Today priests from the Old Believer communities in Romania serve here from time to time: Slava Cercheză, Sarichioi, Mahmudia and Tulcea. The Easter service has been held by Father Yevgeny.

Pokrov and Cossack Day

The church’s feast day is 14 October. It is also Cossack Day. In the village they call it “the day of our childhood”: with borscht and pastries for the shared table, Old Believer chants and the ringing of bells. By old custom, every stranger is welcomed as a guest.

Why the “old” faith

The ancestors of the Cossack families rejected the church reforms of Patriarch Nikon in the 17th century and kept the older rite. That is why they cross themselves with two fingers and pray with a lestovka, a leather prayer rope. The speech of the older people preserves southern Russian dialects of the 18th century.

The old calendar

Feast days follow the Julian calendar. St Nicholas’ Day (Nikulden) falls on 19 December, Christmas on 7 January, and the Old New Year together with St Basil’s Day on 14 January. On the Old New Year children go from house to house with blessings and scatter wheat for prosperity. In mixed families some holidays are celebrated twice.

Customs

A child is baptised by the 40th day after birth, with the priest immersing its head three times. The old men do not shave their beards, “because a person should live as God created him”. Older women wear colourful cashmere headscarves. There is no smoking in the churchyard.

Maslenitsa and the fishermen’s feasts

On Sirni Zagovezni (Cheesefare Sunday) the village celebrates the Russian Maslenitsa: blini are baked, songs are sung and an effigy of Grandmother Winter is burned so that spring will come sooner. On the feast of the Forty Martyrs, turbot fishing traditionally begins. On St Nicholas’ Day there is ritual fishing, with pies and pelmeni with sour cream.

Honour above all

Until 1949 mixed marriages were not allowed in the village. The first Bulgarian daughter-in-law was Zhivka, brought home by the Cossack Karney Grigorov. The elders handed down two rules: “A Cossack may die, but he must never lose his honour!” and “Derzhi krepko i ne otstupay!” (“Hold fast and do not retreat!”)

History

Construction began in 1958 with the volunteer labour of the villagers and was completed in 1962. The name was proposed by the mayor at the time, Vladimir Malahiev, a Don Cossack, in honour of Mikhail Sholokhov. Sholokhov was the author of “And Quiet Flows the Don”, the novel about the Don Cossacks, and was then alive and at the height of his fame. The motto of the community centre (chitalishte) is “We remember the past, we preserve our traditions and we build the future!”

The library

The library holds more than 10,000 items. At the end of 2022 it opened its doors with a renewed collection: new novels, biographies, required reading for schoolchildren, academic books and children’s fairy tales. The associations “Slavyane” from Shumen and “Rossiyane – 21st Century” from Varna donated Russian literature.

What happens here

The Kalinushka folk group and the Kazacheta children’s club are part of the community centre. Together with the mayor’s office, it organises the village’s festivals: Sailors’ and Fishermen’s Day on the stone terrace behind the building, Maslenitsa, St Nicholas’ Day and Christmas. For its 65th anniversary in 2023 there was a concert with Georgian, Moldovan and Ukrainian ensembles. Villagers, led by the mayor and the community centre’s secretary, also made the “return journey” to the home villages of the founders in Romania.

Contacts

The address is 19 Kazashka Street. The management and contact details are on the community centre’s website. The community centre also has its own Facebook page.

The voice of the village

Kalinushka is the folk group of the Mikhail Sholokhov – 1958 community centre (chitalishte). It performs Old Believer, Cossack and Russian folk songs, dressed in traditional costume. It sings at the church’s feast on 14 October, on Sailors’ and Fishermen’s Day, at Maslenitsa and at the village’s anniversaries. It has also sung for elderly people in care homes.

The people behind the songs

The founder and leader is the village mayor, Gergana Petkova.

For many years the group’s musical director was the accordionist Stoyan Gamolov, whom his friends called “Gamata” (“the Scale”). As a five-year-old boy in Dobruja he walked kilometres to his music lesson, and at home he “played” on a keyboard drawn on cardboard. He graduated with honours from the music school in Varna and played in the representative ensemble of the Ministry of Interior. He left behind three songbooks of Russian folk and military songs set to notation, and several CDs. Two decades of his life were bound up with Kazashko, where he was an honorary resident. “A festival without him and his accordion is no festival,” the mayor’s office wrote. May he rest in peace.

Awards and appearances

• Laureate of the first Moscow festival “Russian Compatriots Abroad”.
• First prize at the international festival “Thrace, the Land of Orpheus” (2023). The jury was chaired by Mimi Ivanova.
• Guest at “Topoli Sings and Laughs” (2017).
• The concerts for the village’s 110th anniversary (2018), with the Roza ensemble from Novo Selo, Romania, and for its 120th anniversary (2025).

The opening

The centre opened on 14 October 2019, on Cossack Day, on Kazashka Street. The idea came from the mayor, Gergana Petkova, and was a long-held dream of hers. The collection is made up of objects donated by the villagers. Colonel S. B. Volkov of the Union of Cossacks of Russia attended the opening.

What you will see

The collection includes Old Believer costumes, old photographs of bearded Cossacks, household and church objects, craftsmen’s tools and old school desks. There is also the small window from a house next to the church, linked to the legend of General Tolbukhin.

The “lipovanochka” boat

In front of the centre stands a “lipovanochka” (Lipovan fishing boat) more than 50 years old. It “has known both storms and calm waters” and never let down its captain, Perfeni Vikulov, who donated it to the village. The boat is one of the symbols on Kazashko’s coat of arms. It also appears in the Russian documentary “Odna dusha” (“One Soul”, 2011) by director Marina Ivanova.

A living centre

The Kazacheta children’s club meets at the centre. On feast days the museum opens its doors to visitors. In 2021 the children put on an exhibition of drawings there on the theme “My Home Village”. To visit at other times, contact the mayor’s office.

What the children learn

Kazacheta (“Little Cossacks”) is the children’s club of the Centre for Cossack Culture and the community centre. The children learn Russian, Cossack traditions and folklore, songs and dances. They prepare Christmas programmes, theatre performances and recitals, for example for the village’s 115th anniversary.

Customs in action

On the Old New Year the Kazacheta go around the village with blessings and good wishes and scatter wheat for a good harvest, and the householders welcome them gladly. At the St Nicholas’ Day celebration before Christmas they put on a play, and the tombola brings the whole village together.

Awards

On 6 June, Russian Language Day and Pushkin’s birthday, the most diligent children receive certificates from the mayor and teacher Gergana Petkova and the Cossack colonel S. Volkov. The greatest recognition for them and their parents is the “Hereditary Cossack” breast badge.

Welcoming the fisherman

The festival is also called “Welcoming the Fisherman”. By custom, in the morning the women meet the “lipovanka” boats and their catch on the shore. The date is set each year by the mayor, always on a Sunday a few days before the Dormition of the Mother of God (Golyama Bogoroditsa). In its present form, as a gathering of the whole village, the festival was created in 2000 by Gergana Petkova.

The programme

The day begins with a service in the church and a children’s party. Then come stalls, fish (grey mullet, anchovies, fish soup) and an evening concert on the stone terrace behind the community centre or on the square in front of the museum.

The guests

Performers on stage have included Tedi Genev, Olga Vasilenko, the Elektra ballet, the Arlekin theatre and the Berezka trio. Guests have included the Esaul ensemble with Lipovans from Romania (2024) and the Cossack flankirovka (sabre-twirling) champion Yulia Cherednichenko (2023). The host is always Kalinushka.

The anniversaries

Anniversaries are counted in two ways. The 110th (2018) and 115th (2023) anniversaries date from the 1908 decree that recognised the settlement. The 120th anniversary (2025) dates from the settlement of 1905.

A living from the sea

The founder, Matvey Rusov, settled on the shore in 1905 because of the abundance of fish. Fishing from the light “lipovanka” boats remains the main livelihood to this day. In the 1940s eleven men from the village were marksmen in the dolphin hunt, which was permitted at the time.

A boat for the tsar

Master Kondrat built a boat commissioned by Tsar Boris III. The tsar paid him well and personally gave him a master craftsman’s certificate. This made Kondrat the only Cossack with such a document. According to local stories, the tsar went fishing with the Cossacks and tasted their fish soup.

The longboat “Perun”

In 1987 his son, Master Foma Kondratievich, built “Perun”, a replica of an ancient Slavic vessel, in two months. Under the leadership of Dr Garo Tomasyan, the longboat made three voyages:

• 1987: from Kyiv along the Dnieper and across the Black Sea to Varna.
• 1988: along the Danube from Budapest to Vidin.
• 1989: from Thessaloniki to Athens across the Aegean Sea.

It was the first Bulgarian experiment with a replica of an ancient ship.

Today

The old fishermen’s jetty was renovated in 2021. In the park stands a boat monument in memory of the fisherman Andrey Gerasimov. Also in 2021, two Lipovans from Romania retraced the founders’ route. They sailed for 5 days and more than 250 km in a two-seater “lipovanochka” from Sarichioi to Kazashko.

The home villages in Romania

The founders came from the Old Believer settlements in the Tulcea region: Sarichioi, Jurilovca, Slava Cercheză and Carcaliu. The connection is alive. Priests from there serve in the church in Kazashko, and ensembles from Romania perform at the festivals. In 2023 villagers made the “return journey”, “In the Footsteps of the Ancestors”, and were welcomed at the Lipovan House in Slava Cercheză.

Natukhayevskaya

On 24 June 2019 a committee of Varna Municipal Council approved twinning between Kazashko and the Cossack stanitsa (village) of Natukhayevskaya. The stanitsa has about 7,000 inhabitants and lies within the urban district of Novorossiysk, Varna’s twin city. The official twinning took place on 21 September 2019. The two communities also signed a declaration of cooperation in culture, education and tourism. Messages of greeting arrive from Novorossiysk for Kazashko’s festivals.

The people who keep the connection

Gergana Petkova has been mayor since 2000 and holds the Cossack rank of esaul. She is the author of a book about the village, written together with the teacher Vladimir Stoyanov. She also designed Kazashko’s coat of arms and flag.