Chkalovsk is a town and the administrative center of Chkalovsky District

Chkalovsky District, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

Chkalovsky District, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast is an administrative district , one of the 47 in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. Its administrative centre is the town of Chkalovsk....

 of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

Nizhny Novgorod Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Nizhny Novgorod. Population: The oblast is crossed by the Volga River. Apart from Nizhny Novgorod's metropolitan area, the biggest city is Arzamas...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, situated on the right bank of the Volga River

Volga River

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...

, 95 kilometres (59 mi) northwest of Nizhny Novgorod

Nizhny Novgorod

Nizhny Novgorod , colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1,250,615, the fifth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg...

. Population:

History

It has been known since the 12th century as Vasilyeva Sloboda

Sloboda

Sloboda was a kind of settlement in the history of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The name is derived from the early Slavic word for "freedom" and may be vaguely translated as "free settlement"....

, named so in honor of its founder Prince Vasily Yuryevich, the son of Yuri Dolgoruki

Yuri Dolgoruki

Prince Yuri I Dolgorukiy , also known as George I of Rus, was the founder of Moscow and a key figure in the transition of political power from Kiev to Vladimir-Suzdal following the death of his elder brother Mstislav the Great...

. For a long time the territory belonged to Prince Shuisky

Shuisky

The Princes Shuisky were a Rurikid family of boyars descending from Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich of Vladimir-Suzdal and Prince Andrey Yaroslavich, brother to Alexander Nevsky. Their name is derived from the town of Shuya, of which they gained ownership in 1403. The family briefly reached the...

 who eventually became Tsar Vasily Shuysky.

The famous Russian pilot Valery Chkalov

Valery Chkalov

Valery Pavlovich Chkalov was a Russian aircraft test pilot and a Hero of the Soviet Union .-Early life:...

 was born in 1904 in Vasilyovo. In 1937, Vasilyovo was renamed Chkalovsk after him, and in 1955 the settlement was granted town status. Most of the original village was flooded by the Gorky Reservoir

Gorky Reservoir

Gorky Reservoir is an artificial lake in the central part of the Volga River formed by a hydroelectric dam of Gorky Hydroelectric Station built in 1955 between the towns of Gorodets and Zavolzhye and filled in 1955 – 1957...

 after the construction of Gorky Hydroelectric Station

Nizhny Novgorod Hydroelectric Station

The Nizhny Novgorod Hydroelectric Station or Nizhny Novgorod GES is a hydroelectric station on the Volga river. Located near Zavolzhye, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, it belongs to the Volga-Kama Cascade of dams.-Technical data:...

in 1955.