Kalyazin.

  My visit to Kalyazin began at the Savyolovo railway station in Tver oblast. Here, twice a day, a train departs for Uglich and stops at Kalyazin along the way. I longed to take this train journey for quite some time, but unexpected circumstances delayed my plans for about a month. Then one Saturday I set my mind to finally doing it.  With my little sister in tow, I drove to Savyolovo to catch the train.  And we were off!

  Savyolovo is the farthest destination for Moscow Railway’s electric trains that head from Savyolovsky railway terminal. It's also the final point for diesel trains from Sonkovo and Uglich. Only one long-range train on this rail stops at the Savyolovo station.  That’s the train connecting Moscow and Rybinsk in Yaroslavl oblast--it changes locomotives there.  The station gave its name to the railway line that runs through Lobnya, Dmitrov and Taldom. It also gave its name to the Savyolovsky railway terminal in Moscow. At the station, the electrified section toward Savyolovo ends, becoming a single-track non-electrified road. The Moscow line to Dmitrov is also single-track.

  The train is still without its locomotive.  It will be attached about twenty minutes before departure. The train has only two cars, because passenger traffic is minimal. The train passes mainly by forests and small villages. Uglich and Kalyazin are the only significant settlements there.

  The locomotive was attached. In the moment when I took this photo, the train conductor who stood beside the entrance looked at me and quickly entered the car. I was afraid that she had reported me, as railways have been considered strategical objects since Soviet times. Several years ago I read how different authors who wrote about Russian railways had unpleasant conversations with railway security or police after their attempts to take a picture. However, I was worried for nothing. As usual, nobody really cared about my camera. It seems that the Soviet disease of "it's restricted to take photos here" is over in Russia.

  The cars are former sitting cars of long-distance trains. Several years ago sleeping cars were used on this route.

  The atmosphere inside is much better than in suburban trains in my area. The cars are very clean and every one of them has its own conductor, like in other rural trains. I think that it's a way to help with unemployment. And like in other rural trains there aren't and "free riders".

  Brutal Soviet design. In the childhood I thank that this thing look as minimum as baby- atomic bomb. I proposed that atomic bombs look so: as ugly, heavy and bulky pieces of iron.

  The train started. The first station is "Bely Gorodok."  Its building still remains from a time in the past when the railway was used much more intensively.

   This is the "151st kilometer" station, and actually most stations like this.  I remind again that this isn't an ordinary line--the train stops here only two times per a day, and there is only one long-distance train on the entire direction.

  The view during most of the way is forests, giving way occasionally to views of the Volga River and its tributaries.

  The train trip to Kalyazin took an hour and a half. Kalyazin is a typical town of depressed Tver oblast, with a good past and a sad present. The settlement that later became the town Kalyazin appeared here in 1the 2th century. Its importance grew significantly with the foundation of the Makaryevsky Monastery, on the opposite bank of the Volga, during the 15th century. This abbey used to be the most conspicuous landmark of Kalyazin and comprised numerous buildings of historic interest, including a refectory from 1525. Around 1468 the settlement was visited by Afanasy Nikitin, who mentioned it in his travel notes "A Journey Beyond the Three Seas" (notes, made during his journey to India in 1466–1472). In 1775, Kalyazin was granted town rights. At that time, the status of the town was assigned if the total capital of the merchants of the settlement exceeded 100,000 rubles. The most important event that starkly divided Kalyazin's life from past to present was the flooding of most of its historical area during the construction of Uglich hydroelectric dam.

  The area near the station is surrounded by cottages and Soviet blocks. Several years ago, Kalyazin lost its station building because of fire. A new one was never built.  Maybe the railway company decided that a station with such little traffic don't really need a building after all. The first interesting building on the way to the historical section of town is a former professional school. As you see it's abandoned now, as well as the park nearby. By the way, the school is rather old, and was found by a local merchant, Nikolai Polezhaev.

    Another building is in nice condition, and I like it very much.

Despite the submergence of most of the historical area of town, there are still many old buildings here.

 The former house of a merchant that was nationalized after the revolution.

  This wooden house seems to be built during the early Soviet years.

 Some buildings seem alive.

  Many do not. Like other small towns in the Tver oblast, and all over Russia, Kalyazin has lost population. Since the year 2000, the population grew only during one year--2011. I think that the number of inhabitants fell even more than official data states, because people can be registered in Kalyazin but actually live and work outside of it.

  Many people travel to Kalyazin on weekends, because of its location on the bank of the Volga. Some Muscovites buy houses there and restore them. But new owners of houses barely make the situation better. Also, it seems that the town doesn't get much money from visitors, because there aren't really any places where they can spend money. I wanted to eat in the restaurant, for instance, but couldn't find any. It seems that most locals can't afford to go out to eat.  Nevertheless the place is really beautiful. The Volga and artistic desolation of the town, to me, make a magnificent mix.

Where you can see water now used to be ground before the dam was constructed.

  Here you would have seen buildings before the flooding. Sometimes, when the level of water in the reservoir falls, you can still see building foundations and piles of bricks. The bell tower was the part of Saint Nicholas Cathedral, built in 1800.

  So it looked in the old days. There was a whole temple complex: the five-domed Cathedral of Saint Nicholas (1694), and the Winter Church of Saint John the Baptist (1792), with a huge dome and bell tower in the center. All buildings except the bell tower were demolished in 1939. The bell tower was left to serve as a lighthouse. In Soviet times, there was talk of demolishing the bell tower, since it was a little tilted due to the fragility of its foundation. Fortunately, the foundation was reinforced, and an artificial island was created around it.

   The area around the cathedral as it was a hundred years ago.

  An even greater loss than the destruction of the cathedral and many other buildings in Kalyazin was the demolition of the Trinity Makariev monastery. It was where the white chapel stands in the above photo.

 The founder of the monastery was Matvey Kozhin, a noble from the town Kashin which is situated 20 kilometers from Kalyazin. He became a monk in the Kashin Klobuk monastery and here was awarded the name Makarius, after that he settled near the bank of the Volga and founded Trinity monastery. The land for the new monastery was donated by the owner, the boyar Ivan Kolyaga.  Having lost his entire family, he went to Makarius and gave all his possessions to the monastery. The monastery became a kind of stronghold for Novgorod merchants who were trading in this area. Stone construction of the monastery was carried out in the 1520s at the expense of Dmitrov Prince Yuri Ivanovich. Then Rostov masters erected Trinity Cathedral, a warm church with an extensive refectory that survived until the 20th century. In 1609, the famous commander Michael Skopin-Shuisky formed his army against the troops of false Dmitry II and the Polish-Lithuanian invaders, near the walls of the monastery. And here, during the battle of Kalyazin, he repelled the attack of Hetman Jan Sapieha before going on a liberation campaign to the Trinity-Sergius monastery and Moscow. However, in May 1610 the Trinity Makariev monastery was taken and looted by the "Lisowczycy", and all the defenders led by the voivode David Zherebtsov were killed. After the events of the Time of Troubles, Makaryev monastery was one of the first to be rebuilt.

  After visiting the monastery, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich gave money for the construction of a new five-domed cathedral. The cathedral was built in 1654 and painted at the same time.  Some of the fresco work was removed prior to the destruction of the monastery, and moved to the local museum of Kalyazin, where it could be seen today.

  In the late 17th century, someone wrote "the Kalyazin petition," a sample of Russian social satire which was a parody of the complaint of local idle monks (who mostly spent their time drinking beer from a bucket) to the new Abbot, who makes them engage in different sorts of nonsense such as prayers and farming.

  For centuries, the Trinity Makariev Monastery was a place of pilgrimage for Russian tsars, emperors and patriarchs. At various times, Ivan the terrible, Boris Godunov, Mikhail Fedorovich, Patriarch Filaret, Alexei Mikhailovich, Patriarch Nikon (the last two also took refuge here from the plague in 1654), Peter I, Catherine II, and Alexander II, all came to worship the relics of the monk Makarius.
    Soon after the revolution, Makariev monastery was closed. In 1939, all the buildings of the monastery were demolished. Nevertheless, some elements of its buildings were moved to the Kalyazin museum, where an entire hall is devoted to the history of the Makariev monastery.

  With the construction of the reservoir, Kalyazin lost its best part. Because the reservoir covered the center of the town, the main squares, and the richest houses, secondary areas became the new historical center of Kalyazin.  As a result, the visitor is left with a sense of incompleteness. While few historical streets remained, their buildings lend some understanding of how the lost town looked long ago.

  In the past, the town was lively, but now it just seems to exist. Kalyazin looks like a wounded man who couldn't recover, but at the same time didn’t die. Well, I I guess I sound depressing, and I must stop--perhaps it's just the influence of autumn. Actually the entire town of Kalyazin is not really as depressing that you might think from my groaning. I write so only because I know about the great losses suffered by the town in 20th century. I wish all the best for the town and hope that it becomes better in the future. Perhaps all the old buildings will be restored, with Makariev Monastery being built in a new place. I don't see anything bad when lost historical and architectural heritage is recreated with the greatest possible accuracy. Like the Poles did with the destroyed historical part of Warsaw after World War II.

  Beside the bridge you can see the "Kalyazin Ear”--the radio telescope of Kalyazin Observatory, built at the sunset of the USSR and put into operation in 1992. The diameter of the "Ear" is 64 meters. It observes different things, from pulsars (for the study of which the Observatory was built) in distant galaxies, to space debris in orbit.

  A luxury house with an excellent view.

  The element is looked like spruce in a pot is typical for wooden houses here. And like other small towns, Kalyazin is full of houses with "nalichniki" (platband of window).  A Soviet-era plaque on the house says "A veteran of the Great Patriotic War lives here".

  A beautiful balcony. How come no one creates such things now?

  It would be a sin not to have a boat in a place like this.

Here’s another house with nalichniki.

  Ascension Cemetery Church was built in 1783. It was built when the cemetery, which previously was beside St. Nicholas Cathedral, was moved outside of the center of town. After the revolution, the church was closed and a bakery opened there. The building in ruined condition was returned to believers in the 1990s. The cemetery near the church was demolished in 1932-1933, and a football field took its place. It was normal practice to demolish cemeteries, even when unnecessary, during Stalin's time. But there were no reburials--the bodies are still underground.  After restoration of the Ascension Church, the football field was replaced by a garden.

A monument to Skopin-Shuisky.

Remaining tombstones from the destroyed cemetery.

 The chapel that was previously situated beside the entrance arch. The church was in similar condition prior to its restoration.

The former poorhouse of Polezhaev with a children's shelter.

  The second building of Polezhaev's poorhouse. Kalyazin court is situated there now.

 This building was the Public House (1881-82). Here dwelt the local district Council, the police, the fire department and the school. Ultimately, the school has taken over the entire building.

   

   

For today it's all my photos from Kalyazin. Thank you for attention.