Industial East of Moscow region. Pavlovsky Posad and Drezna.

  Today I’m writing about industrial towns in the eastern side of the Moscow region. The largest are Noginsk (named Bogorodsk prior to the revolution), Pavlovsky Posad, and Orekhovo Zuevo.  Unfortunately, I have no photos of Noginsk right now, so I'll tell only about Pavlovsky Posad, Drezna and Orekhovo-Zuevo. I visit quite these places quite frequently, due to work, and cycling during the summer months. Old industrial towns always impressed me with their pre-revolution factory buildings, which are huge and strict-looking, like gothic cathedrals. Unfortunately, not many people consider such places worth visiting. In this post I'll try to show you that the old industrial districts are also very interesting places.
   The first stop on my way is the town Pavlovsky Posad, which is 65 km. east of Moscow.

  Near the turn-off to Pavlovsky Posad from Nosovicha Road, you see the Church of St. Ekaterina in the village of Rachmanovo. The church was built in 1906.

  These barracks were built for workers at the French factory here, which is colored red and white, which was typical for the time. The unofficial name of this district among locals is "Paris". The barracks were built in the beginning of the last century, before the revolution, but people continue to live there. I've gone inside and can say that it definitely is in need of repairs. I hope that the barracks won't be demolished. It would be nice to see the inhabitants moved into more modern flats, and these buildings repurposed by the local authorities.

  These buildings are well-built, historically important, and can serve the needs of people for a long time.

  This is the main building of the French spinning and weaving, cotton and paper, factory. The factory itself is no longer in use, and warehouses occupy the building.
The factory was built in 1881. It was formed as part of a large Anonymous Society of French-Russian factories, which had a fixed capital of 12.5 million francs. A cotton-spinning and weaving factory of the Russian-French company with 60,000 spindles and 2,000 looms was opened in Pavlovskiy Posad in 1898. The textile industry is a very important one, as it kick-started the industrial revolution in most countries. This true of Great Britain in the beginning of 19th century, of China in the time of Deng Xiaoping, and the Russian Empire in the beginning of 20th century. There are low costs for equipment and raw materials in the textile industry, so the cost of labor becomes decisive. Soon, the textile industry was overshadowed by the iron and metal industries, chemical fertilizers, machine tools and tractors, cars and airplanes, electronics and pharmaceuticals, etc.  Through all of this, the financial sector and retail trade blossomed on the demand for those products.  The textile industry, like the baton in a relay race, was passed from developed countries, to the less developed countries of third world, the next in line for modernization.

  A Soviet-era mosaic dedicated to workers in this factory who perished fighting in the  Great Patriotic War.

  The local museum is located in the building of former the factory preventorium.
Pavlovsky Posad was founded in 1845 on the site of a village called Pavlovo. The land on which the town stands belonged to the Troitse-Sergieva Lavra monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church. Later, in the mid-17th century, the land came into state ownership. Due to this unique history, Pavlovsky Posad never knew Russian serfdom, and from the very beginning, the textile industry has been the main business in this town.

    There are still many buildings of pre-revolutionary factories in the town. During the 1990s, most textile factories were transformed into public corporations, and many went through bankruptcy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, up to now, the textile industry has been in a very bad state in Russia.  The competition from Asian countries has been too strong for the less-developed Soviet industry to survive. However, some of the factories have survived by finding their own narrow product niches.

  This Soviet-era mosaic depicts the main job in the town.
The other main business in the town, aside from the textile industry, has been trading . Local merchants left the town many interesting houses, and the center of the town is still covered with historical buildings.

Some of them look like small estates of nobles.

  Some are designed in a more traditional Russian style.

  The first floor is made of bricks, and the second is made from wood, which is typical of the time.

  It's nice to see that many houses still have the original wooden gates next to them.

  Some of the houses are very unusual like this one, which was designed with elements of the then-popular Russian revival style.

  The owners of houses frequently were not very educated in design, and they sometimes classical rules of beautiful architecture in creating their residences. However, after a hundred years, the houses become some of the most interesting. While I cannot call them very beautiful, perhaps “strange and interesting" would be more descriptive.

  During 1908 and 1909, there was illegal printing house of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in the basement of this building. The RSDLP split into majority and minority factions, with the majority (Bolsheviks) faction eventually becoming the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It seems that the owner of the house, an industrialist named Sikachev, was a supporter of theirs, but I don’t know what happened to him after the revolution.

Not many of pre-revolutionary fire towers remain.

  Pokrovsko-Vasilyevsky Monastery was founded in 1885 by two local industrialists--Jacob Labzin and Vasily Griaznov. On the grounds of the monastery, only the road to the cathedral in the photo is open for visitors, so there’s not much to interest the visitor.

  These frames around windows are called "nalichniki" in Russian. Most of the old houses in Pavlovsky Posad have them. Some of them are very beautifully made. Modern windows in these old house make the view uglier than it could be.


  The belltower of Ressurection cathedral, demolished in Soviet time.

  A сlosed factory.

  A pre-revolutionary water tower.

  One of the FUBR houses. FUBR is an acronym for a fund for improvement of the living conditions of workers. Groups of these houses were built in the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s in many industrial towns in the Moscow region and other regions. There, lived mainly the important specialists and factory principals with their families. The rest of the workers continued to live in barracks (mainly wooden) until the 1950es. Some people live in wooden barracks even now, but not many.


  Constructivist building of "banya", built in 1927.

  I went to the other side of Klyazma River to take more photos.
  The photos below, I took on the grounds of the former Gorodok factory, which was founded by a former peasant named Nikita Kudin, in 1869.


  "Our pride".



  My time in Pavlovsky Posad was over, and the next stop in my trip was the town of Drezna, 20 km. to the east. The industrial town of Drezna has experienced a fate very similar to that of Pavlovsky Posad. Unlike Pavlavsky Posad, it has only one factory, but what a factory!

  The huge complex of the Drezna textile factory makes a big impression. It was founded together with the town, in 1897, as a settlement for the workers at the textile factory.  It was granted town status only in 1940.

  A monument to the founder of the factory- Zimin Ivan Nikitich. I think they made a mistake with the year of his death. He already had two factories in Orekhovo-Zuevo when he decided to build this one on the site of modern Drezna. The choice of location was good one, as the surrounding bogs served as a source of cheap peat fuel, and nearby rivers provided convenient transportation. There ws no problem hiring labor either, as there were many villages in the area. Founder Zimin's sons continued to successfully run the family business, rivaling other large industrialists from Orekhovo-Zuyevo-Morozov family.

The barracks of workers. I like the design of the chimneys.

A Soviet-era bas-relief on the wall of one of the barracks

  There are many Soviet symbols in the town.

  "The house of exemplary maintenance".

  Zombie Lenin searches new victims.

  The house of factory manager.


  Old houses here have a special plan on the front side: shed--wooden gates--house.

A Similar plan, the difference in decorations.

 The old owner of this house very appreciated my interest.


  I took these photos on the way to what I think was the last abandoned church in that part of the Moscow region. 

  I haven't seen an archaic construction like this for a long time, since most people have easier sources of water now.

  This is the church that I mentioned.  However, I was late, as the church was already under restoration.  Of the original construction, only the bell tower remained.  The church was in very poor condition by the end of the Soviet era.  I found out later that it could not be restored, so sadly it was demolished. 

For now it's all. In the next post, I'll write about Likino-Duliovo and Orekhovo-Zuevo.