People started to settle in the district around 60 000 years ago. The first settlements began to appear in the VIII-III centuries BC when the representatives of the
Ananyino culture arrived. In VI-VIIth centuries the
Bulgar tribes settled in the region while searching the new lands in the Volga region. Later Bulgars formed a
feudal state
Volga Bulgaria the population of which mostly engaged in agriculture, sowing wheat, rye, barley, millet, peas, oats, rye. In 922, on the territory of the Volga Bulgars, the ancestors of the modern Kazan Tatars officially converted to Islam. In the first half of the XIII century, the territory of the Volga Bulgars was captured by the
Mongols. For a century and a half, the majority of the population abandoned the Zakamye and moved to the Predkamye. Thus, during the period of the
Khanate of Kazan and the first century after the
siege of Kazan (in 1552), the territory remained uninhabited. Resettlement of the region began only in the second half of the XVII century, after the construction of the Zakamskaya zasechnaya line - a system of defense structures built in the period from the XVI to the XVII centuries on the southern borders of Russia to protect against nomads. In the second half of the 17th century, servicemen, archers, captured
Poles,
Chuvash and
Mordovians began to resettle in the region. The Spassky district was formed on August 10, 1930. Until 1920, the territory of the region belonged to the Spassky district of the Kazan province, and in the period between 1920 and 1930 - to the Spassky
canton of the
TASSR. At the time of formation, the district included 1 city and 41 village councils, 95 settlements, in which 52,504 people lived (46,231 Russians, 4641 Tatars, 1632 representatives of other nationalities). In 1935, part of the land became part of the Kuznechikhinsky district. In 1935, the city of Spassk was renamed the city of Kuibyshev in honor of the revolutionary and party leader
Valerian Kuybyshev. The Spassky district was also named Kuibyshevsky. In 1940, the area of the district was 1762 km², and the population was 49.4 thousand people. During the Kuybyshev reservoir construction in the 1950s, Spassk was faced the danger of flooding. For this reason, the Soviet government initiated the resettlement of the city which lasted from 1953 to 1957. A new Kuibyshev city was placed near the village of Bolgary, 120 kilometers from Kazan and 100 kilometers from Ulyanovsk. Despite the relocation of one of its major cities, the Spassky district suffered greatly from flooding associated with the construction of the reservoir. More than a hundred villages and the city of Spassk itself were submerged, more than half of the archaeological monuments belonging to the period of the Volga Bulgaria and the Kazan Khanate were destroyed by water. During the 1960s, the region was actively developing. At that time a meat processing plant, a bakery, a brewery, a grain-receiving enterprise, an oil depot, residential buildings, and administrative buildings were erected. As of 1960, the area of the district was 1700.6 km². Thanks to the reform of the administrative-territorial division of the TASSR in 1965, the territory of the district increased to 2026 km², and the population was 38.7 thousand people. In 1991 the district was again renamed to Spassky while city of Kuybyshev received a name Bolgar in honor of the historic state. From 1995 to 2019, the district was headed by Kamil Nugaev. == Population ==