 Since 1928 there is a little hydroelectric plant on the river not far from Petäjärvi (now Petrovskoye), which was the largest private hydroelectric facility in pre-Winter War Finland (owned by Leonard Sääksjärvi).The entire river was a boundary between the Kingdom of Sweden and Novgorod Republic as defined in 1323 in the Treaty of Nöteborg.The higher reaches of the Saijanjoki (Volchya) to the south of the Tungelmanjoki (Smorodinka) and the Tungelmanjoki itself constituted part of the Russia-Finland border in 1811–1940.