Sales to Eastern countries at the 1927 fair amounted to 2.3 million pounds and purchases from them to 1.5 million pounds. Trade with the Ural metal region via the Kama, with Siberia and with the corn, salt, wine and naphtha regions of the Caspian has revived. The duration of the fair is fixed for Aug. i to Sept. 15. A horse fair is held in June, and one in January on the ice of the river Oka for wooden goods made by the peasants, the river being frozen from November to April.
In addition to its trading activities the town has shipbuilding and repair yards and manufactures machinery, telephones, chemi cals, sewn goods, matches, bricks, flour, confectionery and alco holic drinks. These industries are now supplied with electricity from the Balakhna peat fuel plant opened in 1925-26. A recently established industry is the making of radio sets, in connection with which there is an experimental station. The town has rail way links through Vyatka with Perm and Sverdlovsk, and also with Kotlas, which will probably be linked with Murmansk via Soroka at no distant date, with Moscow, and, by a branch line to Arzamas, with the trans-Siberian railway. There is also a short branch to Pavlov. Steam navigation on the Volga began in 1821, and has developed rapidly since 1845. A biweekly air service between Moscow and Nijni-Novgorod has been estab lished, with daily services during the period of the fair.
The Town consists of three parts. The upper city is built on three hills on the right bank of the rivers (490 ft.). On one of them is the ancient citadel or Kremlin, first erected as a pali saded fort in the second half of the 14th century, and rebuilt in the early 16th century, with a wall 2,300 yards long, 65 to 95 ft. high and having eleven towers. Within it are the law courts, the former governor's residence, the arsenal, barracks, etc., a museum and the Preobrazhensky and Archangel cathedrals, dating from 1225 and 1222 respectively, but much spoilt by later restorations. Kozma Minin Sukhorukov, a cattle-dealer of the town, who organized the army that saved Moscow from Polish dominion in 1612, is buried in the Preobrazhensky cathedral and a square in the Kremlin contains a monument to Minin and Pozharsky erected in 1826. The view from the Kremlin of the broad Volga with its low-lying and far-spreading left bank is very striking. Near the Kremlin are two monasteries, the Pechersky, built in the first half of the 16th century to replace one founded in 1330 and destroyed by a landslip in 1596, and the Blagovyeshchensk (1370, rebuilt 1647). Five descents lead to the lower town, the Nijni bazaar, built on the alluvial terrace 3o to 35 ft. above the banks of the Oka and Volga.
The fair is held on the flat sandy tongue of land between the rivers, connected with the town by a bridge of boats, 1,50o yards long, which is taken to pieces in winter. The shops of the fair, 4,000 in number, built of stone in regular rows, are surrounded by a canal and cover half a square mile, and there are more than 4,000 other shops outside this inner fair. There are salt, grain
and timber wharves and rough goods are landed on an island in the Volga. Tea boxes and temporary shelters for the tea tasters ac cumulate in the Siberian harbour during fair time. The point of the peninsula is occupied by the storehouses of the steamboat companies, while metal wares and corn are discharged on a long island in the Oka, at the iron harbour, and in the Grebnovskaya harbour. The railway from Moscow has its terminus close to the fair buildings, to the south of which is the Kunavino pleasure suburb. On the fair side are the Alexander Nevsky cathedral (1881) and the "Fair" cathedral (1822). The climate is harsh and continental, average January temperature 10.6° F, July 64° F, extreme readings —40° F and -1-104° F.
History.—The confluence of the Oka and the Volga, inhabited in the loth century by Mordvinian tribes, began to be coveted by the Russians as soon as they had occupied the upper Volga, and as early as the II th century they established a fort, Gorodets, 20 m. above the mouth of the Oka. In 1221, the people of Suzdal, under Yuri Vsevolodovich, prince of Vladimir, erected a fort on the hill now occupied by the Kremlin. Until the beginning of the i4th century Nijni-Novgorod, which grew rapidly as the Russians colonized the banks of the Oka, remained subject to Suzdal; it enjoyed, however, almost complete independence, being ruled by its popular assembly. Until 1390, it elected its own princes. III protected by its palisaded walls, it was plundered in 1377 and 1378 by the Tatars, supported by the Mordvinians.
In 1390 Prince Vasili of Moscow, in alliance with Toktamish, khan of the Golden Horde of the Mongols, took Nijni and estab lished his own governors there; in 1417 it was definitely annexed to Moscow, becoming a stronghold for the further advance of that principality towards the east. It was fortified in 1508-1511, and was able to repel the Tatars in 1513, 1520 and 1536. In 1606 161I the trading classes took an active part in the expeditions against the revolted serfs. A Nijni cattle-dealer, Sukhorukov, helped to deliver Moscow from the Poles in 1612. In 1667 the city withstood an attack by Stenka Razin. During the 17th cen tury the country became the seat of a vigorous religious agitation, and in its forests the Raskolniks established hundreds of their monasteries and communities, those of the Kerzhenets playing an important part in the history of Russian Nonconformity.
Nijni-Novgorod had at one time two academies, Greek and Slav, and took some part in the literary movement of the end of the 18th century; its theatre also was of some importance in the history of the Russian stage. It has a growing university and a Workers' Scientific institute opened since the 1917 revolution.