In Yashkinsky District, attractions range from rock art and local and industrial history to rural festival traditions. The places mentioned each have a different focus: Yashkino, Polomoshnoe, Pacha and Yurty-Konstantinovy represent different chapters of regional history and culture. When planning, it is also worth considering the time of year: some offerings are guided tours that require booking by phone, while others are annual events.
Rock Art and History in Yashkino
More than 300 images can be found on the central rock at “Tomskaya Pisanitsa”; most depict elk. This concentration makes the elk a recurring, defining motif in the rock art.
The Yashkino Local History Museum is the first stop on the “Druzhim gorodami: Yashkinskiy okrug” visitor programme. Its themes range from 17th-century Russian settlers and the Kalmak, a small ethnographic group of Siberian Tatars, to Germans deported from the Volga region in 1941. A hall of military glory is dedicated to the courage and selflessness of Yashkino’s residents.
Industrial history is also part of the museum programme: it covers the history of a lime plant established in 1907 and the cement production that developed from it, run by “Tovarishchestva po proizvodstvu izvesti i portlandtsementa Dzhuricha i Golovina”. This cement production is described as the first in Siberia. The same museum thus brings together the history of settlement, different population groups and the development of local industry.
Village Museums and Annual Events
The school museum in the village of Polomoshnoe has been in operation for more than 50 years and is devoted to the history of the local region. Its staff offer the guided tour “Iz Polomoshnogo s lyubovyu”. It covers the life of Old Believers in Siberia, the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and Kolchak’s troops’ retreat during the Civil War. The tour thus combines religious and regional history with topics related to the Civil War and railway construction.
Pacha is home to Russia’s first pumpkin museum; its exhibits are about pumpkins. A separate event is the “Pachinskaya tykva” festival, held annually in autumn in the rural settlement of Pacha. Its focus is living history and national rural traditions. Another annual event is the “Zaychikha” jeep sprint, held in Yashkino in August. Biathlon has been included since 2022; check the programme for the specific event year. The two events therefore differ clearly in season and programme.
Buildings of an old, pre-revolutionary mosque and a madrasa have been preserved in Yurty-Konstantinovy. The village is also a destination on the ethnographic excursion “Etnograficheskiy tur po krayu sibirskomu, zemle Kuznetskoy”, which visits places in the Kalmak’s historic homeland. The route was established in 2020; check the current arrangements before travelling.
Guided Tours and Nature Experiences
Those who would like to get to know Yashkino on a guided walk can join “Gorod Ya. Peshkom po Klubnoy” by booking by phone. The route follows Suvorov Street, formerly Klubnaya Street, from the Memorial to Heroes’ Square. The booking requirement and clearly specified endpoints make this offering different in character from the museum-based historical topics.
Near the village of Itkara is the Itkarinsky Spring, designated a hydrogeological natural monument. In Sinerechka, the trout farm is a place for fishing and relaxation. Check the current options for visitors in advance. Nature and leisure interests thus complement the historical themes.
Discover more destinations: Kolmogorovo, Kemerovo District, Promyshlennovsky District, Prigorodnyy, Yaysky District, Novokuznetsky District, Tashtagolsky District, Leninsk-Kuznetsky.
For the overview of the wider region: Kemerovo Oblast.
