The name Serednoe corresponds to the location of the village in relation to the two largest cities of Zakarpattia — between Uzhgorod and Mukachevo. Many local residents and researchers associate its name with this location. However, some reasonably draw attention to the fact that the “average” location of Seredny reflected in the name of the settlement could not be relative to the cities, but relative to the center of the valley in which the village is located.
And there is also an old legend that the inhabitants moved from place to place three times until they settled where their descendants still live.
The name Seridnyovo (Serednyovo) is used by local residents in the living colloquial language.
The area where Serednoe is located today was inhabited since ancient times. During the archaeological research, objects from the Neolithic era (IV millennium BC) and the Bronze Age (II millennium BC) were discovered.
The first written mention of Serednoe, according to the “History of Towns and Villages of the Transcarpathian Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR”, dates back to the 14th century.
However, the Castle in Seredny was built back in the 12th century. Half-ruined, it has survived to this day and is now considered one of the main interesting historical monuments of Transcarpathia.
Thanks to the favorable climate, viticulture has developed significantly here. There is a written reference to this dated 1417. The population grew, because the Lviv-Uzhhorod trade route also passed through Serednoe.
In the middle of the 14th century, Serednyi was granted city privileges, and King Charles I Robert donated the town to the Drugets magnates. The bulk of the population consisted of serfs, who during the 14th and 15th centuries. lost their independence, and later were completely subjugated by feudal lords. The shackles became especially harsh after the defeat in the 1514 uprising. Taking advantage of this, the magnates and nobles achieved full power of the serf landlords over the enslaved peasants in the state, imposing an overwhelming lordship on them. Palochi, after a long-term confrontation at the beginning of the 15th century, consolidate the Middle according to their kind.
In 1526, after the Battle of Mogach, the castle came under the control of the Dobo noble family. A new era begins in the history of the village, connected with the Dobo family. The new owners strengthen the castle and develop winemaking in the Middle.
In the XVII-XVIII centuries — multiple changes of owners of the Srednyany Castle. And in the years 1703-11, great damage was done to the castle during the national liberation uprising led by Ferenc II Rakocza.
After the suppression of the Rakocza uprising, the Habsburg troops carried out punitive terror in Transcarpathian villages, as many local (Rusyn) peasants took an active part in the uprising on the side of the Magyars. The consequence of terror was the massive depopulation of villages and towns in Transcarpathia. In 1720, only 2 indigenous families, 19 immigrant families and 11 noble families lived in Sredny. In 1805, the troops of Napoleonic France occupied the capital of Austria – the city of Vienna, and there was a threat of occupation of the territory of Hungary. The political leadership, aware of the danger hanging over the state, decides to take the national symbols of the Hungarian people from the palace of Count Butler to a safe place in advance. Mukachevo Castle, located far from hostilities, was the most suitable for this at that time. The Hungarian National Council of the Viceroyalty, in decisions dated November 19 and 30, 1805, demanded from the leadership of the Uzhan County to ensure the transportation of the coronation relics and the Holy Crown through their territory. The holy crown of István was planned to be delivered to Mukachevo Castle, in particular to Seredne. On November 25, 1805, the administrator of the committee, Ung Baron Pereni, wrote a letter from Uzhgorod to Paul Morvai, the Vice-President of the Coast Committee, saying that “at the border of the committee in Serednyi, the Holy Crown will be handed over to riders from the Coast Committee.” On December 1, 1805, a group of nobles under the leadership of Baron Józef Shpleny left the royal castle in Buda with the relics of the Hungarian people. The crown of St. Stephen was transported in a box tied with strong belts and sealed with 13 seals.
Gradually the Middle came back to life. In 1839, 1,578 people lived in the village. By that time, the serfs’ situation had worsened even more, as evidenced by numerous complaints about the arbitrariness of the landlords, addressing them to the judicial authorities of the Uzhan Committee. Officially, each serf must work in the landlord’s farm for 104 days without tax or 52 days with oxen, but the landlords resorted to various tricks to increase the number of people on the manor. In a complaint on January 14, 1839, the serfs wrote that for every 20 days worked by them, the landowner I. Palfi credited them with 5-6 days, and if anyone dared to express his dissatisfaction, he was met with a brutal beating and punishment. All this intensified the growth of discontent on the part of the enslaved peasant masses. The wave of revolutionary struggle that began in 1848-1849 in Hungary, and reached the Middle. Dozens of local residents fought in Lajos Kossuth’s revolutionary units. To this day, the Bordash family has kept certificates of the participation of one of their ancestors in this revolution. The Hungarian rulers formally had to abolish serfdom, but the peasants, as before remained economically dependent on the landowners and the church, which even increased their holdings. Only the village priest received 32 holdings of arable land at the expense of the villagers. The situation of the peasants, especially the landless, was extremely difficult, they often went hungry. They had to eat oat cakes and potatoes, which were also in short supply.
In the 19th century, Sredne had the status of a “trading town” and a seal with a coat of arms: on a silver shield is the Lamb of God with a red banner standing on a green ground. In 1904, this coat of arms with a minor change (the background color became blue) was confirmed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kingdom of Hungary. In 1906, the population reached 1729 people.
At the end of the 19th century, most peasants had debts or large arrears. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Srednyan county (district) was formed as part of the Uzhan committee. When the October Revolution took place in the Russian Empire in 1917, the peasants intensified their struggle against the authorities. So A. I. Yasenivskyi joined the Red Army unit and fought against Wrangel’s White Guards. He returned to his native village only in 1922. On April 7, 1919, village council elections were held in the village. But Soviet power did not last long in the village. At the end of April 1919, the troops of the Czechoslovak Republic entered Sredne. Arrests began – many activists and initiators of the Soviet government were arrested. Subsequently, Serednoe, like the entire territory of the Ruthenians, became part of the Czechoslovak Republic under the name – Subcarpathian Rus, according to the terms of the peace treaty of Saint-Germain (September 10, 1919). During the period of stay as a part of the Czechoslovak Republic (1919-1939) in Srednoye, as well as in Zakarpattia as a whole, the bulk of the peasants remained landless or with little land.
In 1920/21, the education of Ruthenians in the general school began (in the 1930s, the teachers of the Dorosh couple, A. Slukov, A. Cheika, G. Chornytsia M.S. were teachers of the general school (at the same time, teachers L. Chvoik worked here, L. Nemtsova, H. Vesela, J. Škalda) Later, a branch of the Rusyn bourgeois school was opened (director Sh. Fedor, teachers V. Zahariash, E., T. Zima, E. Revachkova).
In 1924, the Communists of Srednyi organized a large conspiracy (strike) of grape workers in the district, thus supporting the conspiracy (strike) in Mukachevo and Beregov. The strikers demanded an increase in daily wages from 10 kroner to 15 kroner (April 16, 1924).
On March 15, 1939, the Hungarian army entered Sredne. During the Hungarian occupation, the villagers were deprived of their political rights and freedoms, and there were cases of brutal treatment of the local population by “gendarmes”. Terror especially intensified when the Soviet army began to approach the Carpathians. On October 26, 1944, the Soviet Army entered Serednoe, with the arrival of which the government changed. In the first years of Soviet power, the village began to restore destroyed public buildings. The communist authorities, carrying out collectivization, began to massively take away land, cattle, grain and various agricultural goods from wealthy and middle-class peasants. In April 1947, a collective farm was created. The first head of the collective farm was F. Shinglyak. In 1952-1953, the former factory for the production of champagne wines was transferred to the State Farm and rebuilt into a winery. The Srednyany collective farm took the first place in terms of harvest, and the second place in Transcarpathia in terms of gross harvest. At the end of 1959, the “Ukraine” collective farm (Irlyava village) with developed animal husbandry was added to the “Serednyansky” collective farm.
In the spring of 1949, most of the peasants of Srednyi became members of the collective farm. At the end of the same year, the party organization reported on the completion of complete collectivization of the village. In 1950, both collective farms were united into an agricultural artel named after Kirov, which was joined a little later by the collective farm named after Shchorsa from the village of Vovkove. The consolidated collective farm had 659 hectares of arable land, 100 horses, 427 cattle, 210 pigs, and 300 sheep. In 1959, with the collective farm named after Kirov, two more small artillery units were united: named after Kutuzova (the village of Chertezh) and “30 years of the Soviet Army” (the village of Dubrivka). The collective farm has become a large, multi-sector economy, which has 4,372 hectares of land and a strong material base at its disposal. In 1968, there were 21 tractors, 15 trucks, 8 combines and a lot of other equipment.
Artil has auxiliary industrial enterprises (two mills, a sawmill, a quarry), is engaged in winemaking. The party organization and the board of the collective farm paid a lot of attention to personnel placement. Now the main part of communists is directly employed in the sphere of material production: 25 communists work on livestock farms, 6 in agriculture, and 14 as mechanizers and tractor drivers.
Artil grew year by year. In 1964, the collective farm collected 17 cents of grain per hectare, 120 cents of potatoes, 45 cents of corn, 17 cents of tobacco, and 45 cents of grapes. The collective farm has 428 hectares of vineyards. The new five-year plan plans to bring their total area up to 700 hectares in 1970.
Cash wages also increased. If in 1965 the collective farm paid out 290.6 thousand rubles for working days, then in 1966 – 308 thousand roubles.
Deserved honor in Srednyi was enjoyed by the former laborer, and then the best rider V. A. Bilanych, the noble viticulturist Y. K. Muchichko, I. Y. Bakosh, V. M. Olean and others. All of them were included in the district “Book of Honor of Labor Veterans”. In 1967, the general meeting of the collective farm awarded him the title of honorary collective farm worker. The following were awarded the Order of the Labor Red Banner: O. Fedornyak, K. Vash, V. Shpontak, R. Shpontak, Ye. Andreychyk.
In Seredny, there was also a sadin state farm – a large specialized farm, formed in 1946 on the basis of 28 hectares of landowner vineyards and 33 hectares of subsidiary farms in the village. Gayivtsyakh
In 1947, the state farm had only one car, 2 pairs of oxen and 1 pair of horses. A total of 55 workers worked in the state farm.
In the following years, the state farm expanded its farm. In 1950, he already had 98 hectares of fruitful vineyards, on which he collected 41.3 cents of grapes from each hectare. For high harvests, the 12 best workers of the state farm received government awards: O. V. Onufer was awarded the Order of Lenin, M. I. Bobok, A. I. Sabovchyk, I. Yu. Sember – the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
At the end of the fifth five-year plan, the Srednyansk Wine State Farm took the first place in terms of yield, and the second place in the Transcarpathian Vintrest in terms of gross collection. The team of I. Yu. Sember, which grew 80 cnts, was especially distinguished. grapes from each hectare.
In the following years, the wine farm rapidly expanded the area of vineyards, and now it has become the leading farm in the area. The area of vineyards and gardens here exceeds 1,000 hectares.
The wine farm has its own primary wine processing plant, several wineries and cellars for conditioning and storing aged wines. In harvest years, the plant processed 3.5 thousand tons of grapes.
