Staraya Russa a look into past contacts. Winter old russa

We visited here one day, arriving on the morning train and leaving in the evening.

Staraya Russa is a city in the Novgorod region (not to be confused with the Nizhny Novgorod region) with almost a thousand years of history and a population of 30 thousand.
The inhabitants of the city are called Rushans.
Here Dostoevsky wrote "Demons" and "The Brothers Karamazov", during the Second World War the city was almost completely destroyed, and an SS cemetery was built on the site of the Old Russian Park.

Currently, Staraya Russa is known for its city-forming enterprise - the 123rd Aircraft Repair Plant, as well as a health resort with several sources of mineral drinking water and a whole network of salt lakes, from the bottom of which biologically active sulfide-silt mud is extracted.

The 17th-century Resurrection Cathedral served as a club, cinema and warehouse during Soviet times, and during the war the Germans set up a stable there.
Since 1992, the temple has been used for its intended purpose again, and has recently been restored.

The stop of the train going to Pskov lasts 10 minutes.

The train arrives at 3:38 and someone can’t bear to smoke.

The first thing to greet the city's guests is the station.

The blue building of Stalinist architecture appeared to have been recently painted and renovated.

The inside is clean and beautiful, the cafe is open until 18:00, the rest of the time (schedule below) buffet services are provided.
Passengers buy tickets at the ticket office in the old fashioned way and watch.
At the entrance there is a board with suspects.

By the way, an excellent name to replace “business lunches” - set lunch!

One of the disadvantages of the station is the terrible smell in the toilet. It feels like the “aroma” of several generations has gathered here. It is impossible to breathe, although it looks quite clean.

Taxi drivers are waiting for clients near the bus station. By the way, a trip around the city center costs 50 rubles.
In the morning we were taken to the hotel for 150.

There are several hotels in Staraya Russa, and the largest is “Polist”, named after the local river.
At the entrance, a piece of paper from the booking office is alarming, where according to reviews the rating is 8.3 points out of 10.
Well, let's check if this is true.

No... what?

In the morning there are cats grazing on the steps, which is a plus.

Mostly cute and shy.

Room for 1400 rubles (check-in at 4 am, check-out at 10).
What can I say... Apparently, compared to other bedbugs, this is a super number. But for me, it’s an ordinary 1-2 star, not 3*, as indicated on the website.

The curtains are light, you can’t sleep well without an eye cover.
The socket is God knows where - on the wall near the TV, next to the bed there is only a bedside table.
The bed is short, the mattress is too soft and sinks when you sit down.
The walls are cardboard. I could hear my neighbor coughing through the earplugs (!), and the noise from the parking lot under the windows didn’t bother me either.
In the morning, children started running and screaming along the corridor, so there was no sleep.

On the plus side - good linen. White, like the towels.

Outside there is a cozy-looking summer terrace, a fountain, and a barbecue.

Quite a rich breakfast, including even fried cod and five types of salads with mayonnaise.
But at the same time, there is dirt on the tables from previous breakfast diners, and three canteen workers stand and kick their butts or talk about their own things. For half an hour, no one changed the napkins anywhere. Some kind of intrusive music coming from the speakers. Thank you for not watching TV on full blast with Malysheva.
By the way, another indicator of Soviet service - at the entrance to Hello or Good morning! followed by a sullen look and deathly silence.
Is it really difficult to train staff to be basicly polite?

My rating is 3.

From morning to evening we went on an excursion to the 123rd aircraft repair plant, where Il-76, L-410 and D-30KP engines are repaired.
The plant has a large, well-kept area, a wonderful museum and park. There will be a separate report on this.

We took a short ride with a taxi driver around memorable places.
Our dear Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

In the city there is a house-museum of Dostoevsky that has survived to this day.
This was the first property purchased by Fyodor Mikhailovich in 1876 and here he wrote his “Karamazovs”, “The Idiot”, “Demons”...

The house miraculously survived the revolution and two wars, and the founding date of the museum is considered to be 1909.

Literally five meters away is the embankment of the Porusya River - by the way, from our bank it is fortified with large boulders, which are pleasant to sit on in the evening.

Before buying the house, Dostoevsky came here to a rented dacha, but it has not survived.

There are many temples in the city, I don’t remember the names, we just admire them from the window.

Post-war architecture.
Dixie, houses on Velikaya Street, bottom right Dostoevsky Scientific and Cultural Center.

15th century, Church of Mina the Martyr. They will restore it little by little.

In the south of the city, on an area of ​​92 hectares, there is the Staraya Russa resort, which is designed for the treatment of the digestive system, musculoskeletal system, peripheral nervous system and gynecological, there is a children's rehabilitation treatment center, a therapeutic swimming pool with mineral water and a beach by the lake.

The Muravyovsky fountain, for example, and the pavilion with two mineral springs. The recommended time for drinking water is 9-11 am.

In the spring, the president visited the city, and a little later he awarded Staraya Russa the title “City of Military Glory.”
A lot of things were put in order for his arrival, including a couple of exhibits near the military museum.

You can climb everywhere and touch everything.

A coin was found in the barrel.

Lenon and the Resurrection Cathedral.

The tile is no longer a cake.

On the title photo I put the most beautiful photo, in my opinion, but maybe I should have used another one? Here are the options:

A variant with shit that pigs leave on the embankment.

Option with reflection.

With green flowers.

We went to the Muravyov restaurant with plastic chairs and tables on the street.
There's a beggar right there. Try to guess in which photo he is hungry and in which he is full (after he has eaten almost half of the chicken breast).

Water tower on Revolution Square, built in 1908-1909

The square has no benches, people hang out near cars.

But there is somewhere for children to run.

The administration is apparently afraid that if they put benches here, people will start drinking heavily on them.

But people don’t even need benches; there will still be room for acceptance.
The dog chewed the chips without pleasure.

Oh, what is this guy doing?

And the uncle spilled some food in the bag and wants not a drop to go to waste.

City of contrasts.

Rushans are residents of Staraya Russa.

Lots of cute girls.

Old Russian fashion.

Is it uncomfortable to sit in this position? Or is this not just a get-together?

Seeing the camera, some instantly hid their faces (shy, probably), others remained calmly watching. What was it?

Bicycle and beer - are they compatible?

And home.

In general, Staraya Russa turned out to be a rather nice, quiet provincial town where airplanes are given a second life.
I like it.

The name of this city already smells of antiquity. Associations with it arise quite naturally - Rus', Russians... Even the adjective from the name of the city is “Old Russian”; such a funny situation, from a philological point of view: when you say “Old Russian”, you can mean both Rus' and a separate Russian city. Staraya Russa, according to a number of assumptions, is almost the same age as Veliky Novgorod; excavations directly indicate that the city already existed and lived a full life in the 12th century. And in general, Staraya Russa seemed to me like a “reduced Novgorod”; now it is a small city with a population of 30 thousand people (in better times it was 40 thousand), but after the Hill even it seems huge. The first time I looked a little at this city in the evening from the window of the bus on the way to Kholm, and the next day I left Kholm back and arrived in Staraya Russa by mid-afternoon.

2. The bus station in Staraya Russa is located, like the railway station, at the northern exit from the city, that is, from Novgorod. Therefore, I did not get to it and got off in the city center, at the intersection of Mineralnaya and Karl Marx streets. This place is dominated by Soviet buildings.

3. School No. 1. I couldn’t immediately identify the gun visible in the frame, but it looks like a 1930 model 37-mm anti-tank gun.

5. Mineralnaya is one of the main streets of the city. From where I got off the bus, I walked along this street in a northerly direction. Khrushchev buildings in Staraya Russa are also painted in light colors, which emphasizes the similarity of the city with Novgorod.

6. Crossroads with Volodarsky Street. The building of the cultural center looks like it was built in the 1930s.

8. Opposite the Rusich Central Committee there is a museum of the Northwestern Front and the Partisan Region. I visited this museum, and there will be a separate post about it.

9. Next to the museum there is a small exhibition of military equipment from the Great Patriotic War. Particularly noteworthy is the T-26 tank, which is extremely rare on monuments.

10. Here, at the intersection of Mineralnaya and Volodarsky, there is a kind of “Finnish trace” in Staraya Russa - a monument to the soldiers of the 86th Vilmanstrand Infantry Regiment, who were stationed in Staraya Russa, who died in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Vilmanstrand is now the Finnish city of Lappeenranta.

12. Having passed the plant, I turned left and came out to the ensemble of the former Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery:

13. The former monastery now houses a local history museum. This is one of the most ancient buildings of Staraya Russa, not inferior to many buildings in Novgorod. The monastery was founded in 1192, rebuilt several times, and its oldest surviving building is the Transfiguration Cathedral (1432).

15. But the Church of the Nativity of Christ standing next door is a later construction. First half of the 17th century.

16. The wooden porch is, of course, already a reconstruction. But convincing.

17. Still, many people think that, as a St. Petersburg resident, there is very little architecture that can surprise me. But this is not so - my eye is unaccustomed to ancient Russian architecture.

18. This is one of the former monastery buildings (and now, it seems, a residential building), built in the 19th century, and therefore does not fit in with the general ensemble of buildings.

19. On one of the neighboring houses I saw this Soviet sign. In the summer I saw the same ones in Krasnoyarsk.

20. From the monastery I again returned to Volodarsky Street, along which I walked to the bank of the Polist River.

21. And here she is. A quiet river in the rays of the low November sun.

22. The deck of the bridge over Polist is, oddly enough, wooden.

23. From this bridge there is a very picturesque view of the Resurrection Cathedral. The same angle appears in the title frame, but here I decided to show it with zoom. The cathedral stands on the spit at the confluence of the Porusya River with the Polist.

25. In the northwestern part of the city, across the river, there is St. Petersburg Street and a fairly complete pre-revolutionary building. During the era of the Russian Empire, Staraya Russa was a district town of the Novgorod province.

26. Stalin's cinema building. In the background you can see Polist and the Resurrection Cathedral in the distance.

I will explore the rest of the city beyond the river the next morning, on the way to the bus station. In the meantime, I’m returning to the right bank of the Polisti.

27. District development. During the war, Staraya Russa did not suffer as much as it could have, if we compare it with the scale of the fighting that took place here.

28. And the post-war Stalin buildings are integrated into the appearance of the city so well that at first glance, sometimes you can’t tell them apart from the old buildings.

30. Revolution Square with an almost entirely preserved architectural ensemble of the county town. Even the old water pump remains.

32. Marx Street, leaving Revolution Square. The shot shows an old fire station with a watchtower and a red brick building that now houses a polytechnic college. I suspect that it was originally a district school.

33. This same building from the other side (the sky is cloudy because the photo was taken on a different day in the morning):

Porusya (by the way, presumably this name has the same root as the name of the city) is a swamp river, and therefore its water is brown in color. It begins in the huge Rdeysk swamp, already mentioned in the post about the Hill. However, Polist also originates there (the swamp system is called Rdeisko- Polistovskaya).

36. Along the Cathedral Bridge across Porussia, I went to the Resurrection Cathedral, which I had already seen from the Living Bridge across Polist. The cathedral was built in 1692-1696, although in subsequent years it was periodically reconstructed. For example, the bell tower is clearly of a much later date.

37. Then I returned from Strelka to the right bank of Porusya and continued moving south along the coast, along the Dostoevsky embankment, muddy in the autumn mud, towards the writer’s house-museum.

38. In the foreground is the building of the district noble assembly built in the 19th century (and now the scientific and cultural center of the Dostoevsky Museum), and a little further is the Old Russian military registration and enlistment office; by the way, it’s common to as many as five districts - in addition to Starorussky, also Volotovsky, Parfinsky, Poddorsky and Kholmsky (the military registration and enlistment office in Kholm was closed).

39. A little further south, that is, upstream, in Porussia there are the remains of another dam:

40. Autumn evening in Porussia and the bell tower of the Resurrection Cathedral:

41. The old pavement has been preserved on the embankment. And in general, the atmosphere here is somehow special. It seems that little has changed here since the time of Skotoprigonyevsk from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov...

42. And here is the Dostoevsky house-museum, which looks quite simple and discreet, but is therefore pleasing to the eye. The writer lived here for six years - from 1872 to 1878, and it was during this time that “The Brothers Karamazov” (as already mentioned, Staraya Russa served as the prototype for the district town of Skotoprigonyevsk) and “Demons” were written.

I didn’t go to the museum itself, since the plans included a military museum, and from this place I walked back in a northern direction, but along a different street.

44. These places are mainly built up with wooden houses:

45. Nearby stands the red brick church of the Great Martyr Mina, built in the 14th century in a typical Novgorod style, which is as simple as it is beautiful. Not so long ago, this valuable architectural monument stood virtually abandoned, but in the 2000s it was transferred to the Church, and restoration is now underway.

46. ​​School number two - a building that looks like it was built before the war:

47. Church of St. George the Victorious, built in 1410. The porch, I suspect, is much later.

48. From St. George’s Church, I walked through some slum alley onto the parallel street of the Red Commanders, on which another ancient Orthodox church attracts attention - the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of 1371 (bell tower of the 18th century) - apparently the oldest surviving building in the city.

49. And nearby is the thoughtful Fyodor Mikhailovich:

50. And this street has a very non-trivial name - Svarog Street. Naturally, thanks to the ancient history of the city, the already emerging association with Slavic pagan mythology is strengthened even more. Only later does one become disappointed when one finds out that this is only the name of a local artist. Although why "only"? The artist was lucky to have a last name, and in such a city...

From Svarog Street I went out again to Mineralnaya. Thus, completing the circular route, I gradually return to the same place where I got off the bus during the day.

51. The Staraya Russa resort is one of the symbols of the city. Over the course of several centuries, the city developed thanks to the salt industry, and at the beginning of the 19th century the medicinal properties of local mineral waters containing salts were discovered, and in 1828 a resort was opened, which is still in operation today.

52. Mineralnaya Street:

53. An original way to combat unauthorized posting of advertisements is to put posters behind bars. And rightly so, otherwise they would have covered Dostoevsky’s face with pieces of paper...

54. Victory Park next to the resort. In the center is the Monument of Glory with an eternal flame.

55. Khrushchev buildings and the Polist hotel, where I spent the night:

56. Nearby there is the Holy Trinity Church. It was originally built in 1676, in the middle of the 19th century it became very dilapidated, after which it was restored by the architect K. A. Ton (the same one who built the Cathedral of Christ the Savior).

57. View of Engels Street towards the bank of Polisti. This photo (like the subsequent ones) was taken the next morning, when the weather was cloudy, and I was walking from the hotel to the bus station.

58. We need to know what the name of the store is. Some of the Siberians made their mark in Staraya Russa.

60. View from the Living Bridge across Polist to the Strelka and the Resurrection Cathedral. It looks better in sunny weather :)

61. St. Petersburgskaya Street behind Polistu. I followed it towards the northern exit from the city.

62. Red stars seem to be from Soviet times:

63. Soviet architecture:

65. So I finally came to the crossing over the railway tracks. This is the western neck of the Staraya Russa station.

66. The railway station in Staraya Russa was opened in 1897 as part of the Bologoe-Pskov railway. The current station building is Stalinist (the old one was destroyed during the war), the chapel next door is a new build. And the railway traffic here is extremely weak. There is a fast train from Moscow to Pskov every night, and a commuter train runs to Edrovo station (not far from Valdai) twice a week.

I took a photo of the station while standing at the bus station waiting for the bus that took me to Shimsk, that is, towards Veliky Novgorod. But more on that later.

This ancient city in the Novgorod region preserves the memory of the great writer who once lived there and created his masterpieces here.*

About the author. Galina Evgenievna Lebedinalives in St. Petersburg. She graduated from the Orthodox St. Tikhon's University for the Humanities with a degree in social pedagogy. Currently - head of the art studio.

The small, cozy district town seemed to be hidden in the Novgorod lands, modestly, like some old man-man of prayer hiding from human eyes.

...We fell in love with Old Russia by reading the diaries of the wife of the great writer Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya. "... We fell in love with Staraya Russa very much... But besides the city itself, we also fell in love with Gribbe's dacha... Mr. Gribbe's dacha was not a city house, but rather was a landowner's estate, with a large shady garden, a vegetable garden, sheds, a cellar, etc. I especially appreciated it Fyodor Mikhailovich had an excellent Russian bathhouse, located in the garden, which he often used without taking baths,” - writes Anna Grigorievna.

The dacha stood on the bank of a river, lined with huge elms, planted in Arakcheev’s times.

For several years in a row we went to Russa thanks to Fyodor Mikhailovich.

We loved to walk along the old cobblestone street, which was miraculously preserved. They loved to walk along the river on the ground: either along the paths going down to the river, or among the coastal bushes hiding in the thickets. And they knew: a great writer wandered here. This pristine embankment was preserved in its untouched beauty, as Dostoevsky knew it. Protected places! Georgy Ivanovich Smirnov, inspired by the literary feat of Dostoevsky, did a lot to preserve this protected Rus'. He fought, one might say, to every piece, to an inch of land, for what belonged to the writer’s memory. But we didn’t know Smirnov, we are simply reconstructing his image from the memories of other people who knew him closely. He died. We were lucky enough to meet the successor of his work, Vera Ivanovna Bogdanova. We met her on our very first visit. We visited her and were touched by her warm welcome, and also received an unforgettable delicious orange jam as a gift.

When I asked how she came to faith, Vera Ivanovna answered simply:

From early childhood I was a believer. Our entire village was believer.

Vera Ivanovna was born in a village, in the very outback of the Batetsky district of the Novgorod region, which is eighteen kilometers from Luga.

There were two temples in our village. The village was divided into two parts and belonged to two landowners, and each of them built a temple for their peasants. One was the Nikolsky temple, and the other was in honor of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, where we went with the whole family; there, in the cemetery near the temple, all our relatives were buried.

Have you heard about hidden Rus'? - Vera Ivanovna, in turn, asked the question and answered herself: - Russia, which preserved the faith, preserved the rituals, preserved loyalty to God.

When they came to close the cathedral in the village of Gorodnya in 1962, this was under Khrushchev, they collected all the icons and took them to the bathhouse to be burned. Mom came home and cried.

And for a long time we thought that the icons had been burned, and we grieved over this, but several decades later, when services were resumed in the church, in 1993 the icons returned.

We looked at Vera Ivanovna in surprise. She smiled:

We also thought they were burned, but the stoker who was tasked with burning them distributed them to people instead. And so these people began to bring them back to the temple.

We came to Russa with my husband, both teachers - he in mathematics, and I in literature, got a job in the local history museum, - Vera Ivanovna began to tell, - at that time Georgy Ivanovich Smirnov was restoring the Dostoevsky Museum.

Scientific work must be carried out in a museum, otherwise it is not a real museum, says Vera Ivanovna. - The heart should tremble with authenticity, even if the exhibits did not belong to the person to whom the museum is dedicated, but they should belong to his era. Each exhibit must have its own “dossier”.

A black graceful cat came out of the next room, he looked at us inquisitively - is everything all right? - and then peacefully rubbed himself against his legs, without taking his devoted eyes off his mistress.

Well, have you come to check? - Vera Ivanovna laughed.

Handsome,” I said in approval to the cat.

“We found the cat in the trash heap and at first we fed it with a syringe,” the owner told us the story of his appearance.

The cat delicately left, and we continued the conversation.

How did your life change when you came into such close contact with the life of Dostoevsky?

Vera Ivanovna did not immediately answer this question. After thinking a little, she said:

How did Dostoevsky influence? I began to feel my children more subtly. (Vera Ivanovna has three children.) I began to understand them more, to feel their pain more acutely when I read about Ilyushenka in The Brothers Karamazov. “Children heal the soul,” “Children are given to us to touch,” she quoted her favorite writer.

All children are like God, they smile at everyone, they love everyone and look at the world and people trustingly, but why do some of them so soon grow into tyrants? - asked my husband Gennady.

We are to blame for this, we,” Vera Ivanovna sighed. - Do you know Dostoevsky’s favorite prayer? “I place all my hope in You, Mother of God, keep me under Your roof.” Every evening he came to his children, read this prayer over them and blessed them at night.

What was Staraya Russa for Dostoevsky?

Staraya Russa is his home,” Vera Ivanovna almost exclaimed. - In the deepest sense, a house, and a garden, and soil, and earth. This was the only place that belonged to him, the place where he had his own. A home where he was loved and waited for. House with a garden. Dostoevsky attached great importance to the garden. He believed that if a person has land, then he participates in government. He was worried that his children would not grow up to be “stupid.” “Stryutsky,” according to Dostoevsky, is a man without land, without roots, who has nothing to value. And he wrote in his diary: “Humanity will be renewed in the garden, it will be straightened out in the garden.”

Communication with the land ennobles, work on the land is revitalizing work, added Vera Ivanovna

“My husband liked our shady garden and large paved courtyard, where he took healthy walks on rainy days, when the whole city was buried in mud and it was impossible to walk along the unpaved streets. But we both especially liked the small but conveniently located rooms of the dacha, with their antique, heavy mahogany furniture and furnishings, in which we lived so warmly and comfortably. In addition, the thought that our dear Alyosha was born here made us consider the house something like family,” wrote Anna Grigorievna.

Anna Grigorievna and Fyodor Mikhailovich were afraid of losing their “favorite corner.” And it so happened that the heiress of the estate decided to sell the house and asked for a thousand rubles for it. At that time, this was a large sum, and the couple did not have that kind of money. Then Anna Grigorievna asked her brother, Ivan Grigorievich Snitkin, to buy a house in her name in order to resell it to them when the money appeared.

“My brother fulfilled my request and bought a house, and after my husband’s death I bought a house from my brother in my name. Thanks to this purchase, in the words of my husband, we “created our own nest,” where we happily went in the early spring and from where we so did not want to leave in the late autumn. Fyodor Mikhailovich considered our old Russian dacha a place of his physical and moral peace and, I remember, he always put off reading his favorite and interesting books until his arrival in Russa, where the solitude he desired was relatively rarely disturbed by idle visitors,” - writes Anna Dostoevskaya in her memoirs.

We looked at Vera Ivanovna “for a minute” and talked with her for two hours. Therefore, we still had to say goodbye to her in order to give her peace.

Peace, said Vera Ivanovna, is when you live in harmony with God. The more I live, the more I am convinced that God alone is perfect, therefore nothing perfect can be built on earth without God. For God, the main thing is love.

Dostoevsky is a Christian writer, moreover, he is Orthodox.

...I still have before my eyes the image of a beautiful Russian woman with kind wrinkles near her eyes and blond hair hidden under a headscarf. The image of Vera Ivanovna for me became the image of that hidden Rus', rich in talents, rich in faith, and its fearless confessor.

We walked around Russa for a long time; we wanted to “digest” and comprehend the new things we heard. It must be said that Russa is a city of gardens: I went into the courtyard, and there was an apple orchard. One day we were walking along the outskirts of the city, and the street led us to a dead end. It turned out that it was a garden. You can say that this garden was a people's garden; they said that there used to be a boarding school for children on this site. I don't know who owned it before. In August you could see grandmothers with baskets and boys knocking down apples with sticks. When we came to Russa, we always visited this garden first. We rejoiced at its accessibility and beauty. Various types of apple trees grew in it. We wandered around the orchard and tried all kinds of apples.

We reached the Polist River, walked along the Living Bridge and from there admired the banks of the river, the Resurrection Cathedral, reflected, as in a mirror, in the leisurely and serene river. Everything is as before - a charming sunset, the charm of antiquity, but the territory of “our garden” has been purchased, the garden itself has been half cut down and a brick road has been laid along the shore leading to the writer’s house.

Would Fyodor Mikhailovich like to walk along a road covered in asphalt? - the husband asked thoughtfully, seeing this creation of human hands.

Ambrose of Optina once said wise words: “We must live on earth as a wheel turns, just one point touches the ground, and the rest tends upward; and even if we lie down, we can’t get up.”.

How can we learn to live like this, so that even when we touch the earth, we do not harm it, do not spoil its beauty...

Old Russian Icon of the Mother of God

It is not surprising that F.M. led us to this shrine in Staraya Russa, especially revered by the Rushans. Dostoevsky. St. George's Church, in which this shrine is located - the miraculous icon of the Mother of God, called the "Starorusskaya" - rises not far from the house that the Dostoevsky family rented. On their very first visit to Staraya Russa, in 1872, they stayed in the house of priest Rumyantsev, who served in this church. Here's how Anna Grigorievna writes: “ Finally, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the ship approached the pier. We took our things, sat down on the rulers and went to look for the priest Rumyantsev’s dacha that had been hired for us. However, it didn’t take me long to look for it: we had just turned from the embankment of the Pererytitsa River into Pyatnitskaya Street when the cab driver said to me: “And there’s the priest standing at the gate, apparently waiting for you.” Indeed, knowing that we would arrive around May 15, the priest and his family had been waiting for us and were now sitting and standing at the gate. They all greeted us joyfully, and we immediately felt that we were among good people. Father, having greeted my husband, who was riding in the first cab, approached the second one, on which I was sitting with Fedya in my arms, and so my little boy, rather wild and not being picked up by anyone, very friendly reached out to Father, tore off his wide-brimmed shirt. hat and threw it on the ground. We all laughed, and from that moment began the friendship of Fyodor Mikhailovich and mine with Father Ioann Rumyantsev and his venerable wife, Ekaterina Petrovna, which lasted for decades and ended only with the death of these worthy people.”

St. George's Church stands on the street of the same name. Georgievskaya Street is located near the city’s Cathedral Square. And if you go from the center of the square, the route will run past low city houses that look like white marshmallow. And if you walk from the Dostoevsky house, then to the right and left you will be surrounded by cozy wooden village houses, closely pressed against each other by fences. Viburnum bushes are planted along the street. It was along this street that Dmitry Karamazov walked: " Viburnum, the berries are so red!” he whispered, not knowing why.”

We stopped at the church gate, where locals were sitting poor people, city residents. This is the only temple in the city where we saw people with outstretched hands. I thought that it was probably Providence that preserved them here. " When my husband didn’t have change, but they asked him near our entrance, he would bring the beggars to our apartment and give out the money here.”. (A. Dostoevskaya, “Memoirs”)

Dostoevsky’s daughter, Lyubov Fedorovna, recalls that Dostoevsky “ He gave to all the poor who met on his way, and could never refuse money if someone told him about their misfortune and asked for help.”

Having passed the beggars, stuffing sweets into their outstretched hands, we entered the temple. Now I’m writing and thinking that if the beggars, the wretched, the sick, the poor are standing in front of the doors of heaven... will we get to heaven without passing them?

The church was preparing for the Feast of the Assumption. On the wooden floor there was a path made of grass and flowers up to the altar and near the Old Russian Icon. The Old Russian icon impresses not only with its size (278 cm height and 202 cm width), but also with its unique history. The icon was once brought to Staraya Russa from Greece, from the city of Olviopolis.

Tradition says that when a pestilence occurred in Tikhvin in 1570, the residents of the city asked to borrow a miraculous icon. In a procession of the cross, the Tikhvin residents walked around the city and carried it in their arms into the Assumption Church of the Tikhvin Monastery. The pestilence has stopped.

...The Tikhvin people were in no hurry to return the icon, and soon they completely refused to return it. And only in 1787 it was possible to obtain only a list of the miraculous icon. The headman of the Resurrection Cathedral, Ilya Petrovich Krasilnikov, himself went to Tikhvin, and when they once again refused to return the icon, then, at his order, Tikhvin painters copied the Old Russian icon “measure in moderation.” In 1788, the residents of Rush met an image that became the main shrine of the Resurrection Cathedral in the city of Staraya Russa. Despite the fact that this list has repeatedly demonstrated miraculous power, healing physical and mental illnesses, the residents did not give up hope of returning the ancient Image. A joyful event happened during the reign of Emperor Alexander III, who ordered that the request of the Rushans be approved positively. Wanting to say goodbye with dignity to the shrine that had protected their city for three hundred years, the Tikhvin residents carried the miraculous icon with a religious procession around Tikhvin. And Staraya Russa was preparing to greet her with dignity! The day of September 18 became a significant event for Staraya Russa. Staraya Russa has not seen such a gathering of clergy and pilgrims for a long time. The icon was greeted with the ringing of bells, which merged with the voices of many singers. The service ended only at three o'clock in the afternoon. And the ringing of bells did not cease in the monastery all day. Rejoice, opening of the doors of heaven! (from Akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary)

The shrine returned to its native land, and an exact list remained in Tikhvin. The long-awaited return took place to the general joy of the townspeople. But it turned out that the holy faces on the icons are located differently. The face of the Mother of God is meekly turned towards everyone who comes to Her image. On her left hand is depicted the Divine Child, but His face is turned away from Her. In the monastery, on the icon, the Child also rests on the left hand of the Mother of God, but His face is turned towards Her in this image.

Until now, this difference cannot be explained. Many people have different interpretations about what caused the Baby to “turn away.” One of the versions was this: The baby grieves over human sins. Others believed that He turned away at the sight of the wicked life of the city's inhabitants. It is also possible that, restoring the Image, darkened by time, the icon painters changed the position of the face. But they did not exclude the miraculous transformation of the icon.

After the revolution, church valuables were confiscated. A museum opens in the city cathedral, where the Old Russian icon is transferred and where the list of the icon made by I.P. was kept. Krasilnikov. In 1941, during the occupation, the icon disappeared, but the silver robe encrusted with precious stones that adorned the Old Russian Icon of the Mother of God miraculously survived. Now in the St. George Church a list of the miraculous icon is venerated. This is a brief history of the miraculous Icon, which is the most revered in the city. The great writer bowed before Him when he came to the Liturgy.

When you first enter the temple, you are surprised not so much by the painted vaults and the abundance of ancient images, but by the atmosphere itself. It seems that this ancient temple has stopped at that time of the last century. The wooden flooring creaks underfoot, candles are burning on an ancient massive candlestick near the Old Russian icon. The eyes of the Mother of God look dispassionately. Her silence is a prayer. She is prayer itself! And She is not present somewhere in another dimension, but here! And this makes it both scary and calm at the same time. The grandmothers serving in the temple were distinguished by their unhurried nature. Everything was done leisurely and calmly. It generally seemed to us that there was a different time dimension in the city. They willingly showed us the place where Dostoevsky prayed. Throughout the Liturgy he usually stood before the icon of the Joy of All Who Sorrow. It must be said that the image of the Mother of God of All Who Sorrow, Joy of All Who Sorrow, was his favorite icon. According to his wife, he loved to pray “in silence, without witnesses.” “I did not follow him, and only half an hour later I found him in a corner of the cathedral, so immersed in a prayerful and tender mood that at the first moment he did not recognize me,” writes Anna Dostoevskaya. The writer’s doctor, Stepan Dmitrievich Yanovsky, wrote that “his truest medicine was always prayer.”

And this icon was given by Saint John of Kronstadt himself,” said an elderly parishioner sitting in a corner on a chair. I went to a dark corner under a low arch and, shining a candle, read the dedicatory note on the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God.

Our Old Russian Icon is miraculous,” the old woman continued to speak, slowly pronouncing each word. “She is our Intercessor, she educates us and heals us,” here the grandmother sighed. - Everyone has their own illnesses, after all.

You see, the Baby seemed to have turned away from the Mother of God,” she said just as quietly and slowly. - Everyone thinks that He turned away, but He turned to us, turned to us.

We looked at the icon - and it seemed to us that the entire movement of the Mother of God in the icon was directed towards people. She seems to say: “Whatever He tells you, do it” (John 2:5).

The festive service began, and we no longer dared to distract the old lady with questions.

* November 11 (NS) is the birthday of the great writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, he was born on October 30 (November 11), 1821. We dedicate this publication to this memorable day.

On September 4, 2015, an exhibition was opened at the Starorussky branch of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve "A look into the past. The thousand-year history of Staraya Russa in archaeological finds". I was busy in Novgorod that day, but thanks Anton Kamensky, who kindly shared the photographs, I can present a photo report from the opening.

At the exhibition you can see not only finds from the 2015 field season, but also objects from archaeological collections from different years, incl. stored in the funds of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve and its Old Russian branch and not presented in permanent exhibitions.

The opening began with greetings and a lecture with slides about the finds and discoveries of this season.

The exhibition exposition consists of seven main sections. First - "History of the archaeological study of Staraya Russa". It is dedicated to archaeological research and archaeologists who contributed to the study of the cultural layer of Staraya Russa.

Next - "Russa to Russa". This part of the exhibition is dedicated to the late Neolithic and early metal era (III-II millennium BC). The remains of a settlement from this period were discovered in the lower part of the cultural strata of the Pyatnitsky-I excavation site in 2012.

Most of the exhibition is dedicated to medieval Ruse. These are the sections "The Making of a City"(tells about the oldest stage of the city’s life at the turn of the 10th – 11th and 11th centuries) and "The Middle Ages - an era of prosperity"(talks about the daily life of the Rushans in the medieval period).

Here you can see a wide variety of finds, reflecting the most diverse aspects of the life of medieval townspeople.

Finds from the early layers -

Leather shoes -

Various household items -

Whistles and brunchers -

Jewelry -

Board for playing "Mill" -

Toys: balls, balls, dice, etc. -

Fabric collection -

Separately presented is a selection of interesting birch bark letters from Staraya Russa and a collection of hanging lead seals.

Part of the exhibition - “Time of Troubles”, tells about the 16th – 17th centuries. in the history of Staraya Russa and the material culture of this time.

"Resort City"- this is the name of the part of the exhibition dedicated to the daily life of Rushan people in the 18th – 19th centuries.

The exhibition ends with a section “Staraya Russa during the Great Patriotic War through the eyes of archaeologists”, which reflects some moments of life during this difficult time.

The exhibition will be available to visitors during September – October 2015. We invite everyone.

Research at the Pyatnitsky-II excavation site in 2015 was carried out with the support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation (RGNF), project No. 15-01-18034e.

Staraya Russa, one of the oldest cities in Russia, became the main goal of our recent trip to the Novgorod region. I've been here before - and also in winter. Unfortunately, that trip took place in the “pre-digital” era, so if there was anything about it in my LJ, it was little and uninformative. Now we came here by car and quite systematically toured almost all the main attractions.
Staraya Russa has been known since 1167; salt has always been mined here, and the city paid very decent taxes from these industries to the treasury - first of the Novgorod Republic, then of the Moscow Kingdom. Now the salt factory of the 1770s, of course, is not in operation, although it has been partially preserved - we, unfortunately, did not get to it, it is better to go there in the summer.
One of the oldest surviving buildings in Russa is the Spassky Cathedral of the Transfiguration Monastery, which now houses an exhibition of the local history museum. Thus, you can not only get acquainted with the exhibits (quite interesting, I must say), but also visit inside the temple of the 12th-17th centuries. From the 12th century, however, only the foundations remain, the main volume belongs to the 15th century (from this time there are also fresco fragments inside - very indistinct, however), and the completion is already from the 17th century (there are also frescoes from the 17th century here). Nearby there are a couple more interesting buildings - a hexagonal bell tower and the Church of the Nativity of Christ from the 1630s with a refectory. There is an art gallery in the church with works by local artists, but to save time we did not go there.
Nearby on Krestetskaya Street there is another monument - the recently restored Church of the Life-Giving Trinity. It is based in the 17th century, but in the 19th century it was extensively rebuilt according to the design of the controversial architect Ton; from the same time, fragments of paintings inside the temple have been preserved.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery. Spassky Cathedral (1198, rebuilt in 1442), bell tower (XVII century), Church of the Nativity (1630s), Church of the Presentation of the Lord (1630s).


And from another angle: Spassky Cathedral (1198, rebuilt in 1442) and the bell tower (XVII century). A fragment of 15th century masonry has been uncovered.

This church houses exhibitions of the local history museum, which contains artifacts from excavations on the territory of Siara Russa. Here are some of them:

Spoons of the 12th century and fabrics of the 12th-14th centuries.

Leather shoes XII-XIV centuries.

Cornices of a residential building from the 11th century.

Fragments of a salt pipeline from the 12th to 14th centuries.

Counting tags of the 11th-14th centuries were used for counting, possibly recording some debts, mutual settlements, etc.

Wooden decorations from the 14th century

Well, and birch bark letters - where would we be without them in the Novgorod region.

The frescoes inside are poorly preserved. The 17th century is still here and there, but only small fragments remain from the 15th century.

And here are fragments of 19th century paintings.

Trinity Church (1684), rebuilt in the 19th century according to the design of the architect Ton.

There are 19th century paintings inside the church.

From here it’s a stone’s throw to the central Cathedral Square, where there is no cathedral, but you can see a red-brick water tower built in 1908-1909, several buildings of the 19th century (Real School, a women’s gymnasium, the former Belgrade Hotel, etc.), and also walk along the pedestrian Voskresenskaya street leading to the bridge. Near the bridge stands the oldest civil building in Russa - the Popov House, built early. XVIII century (in my opinion, the building is still residential!). The embankment of the Polist River is probably good in the summer; in winter it is only suitable for viewing from the opposite bank of the Resurrection Cathedral, built in 1692-1696. The cathedral was recently restored and painted very brightly; the interiors did not seem to have been preserved, so we limited ourselves to the view from the opposite bank.

Fire station (1887) and Alekseevskoe real school (late 19th - early 20th centuries).

House N.P. Belyaev - mansion early. XIX century

Cathedral Square. Women's gymnasium (19th century) and water tower (1908-1909).

Historical development of Voskresenskaya Street.

House of I.I. Popova (beginning of the 18th century) is the oldest civil building in Staraya Russa.

Resurrection Cathedral (1692-1696) at the confluence of the frozen rivers Polist and Porusya.

Some approximation of the Resurrection Cathedral.

Next we headed to Georgievskaya Street, where one of the most interesting monuments of the city is located - St. George's Cathedral of the 15th century, rebuilt in the 18th century. It seems that this temple was not closed during Soviet times, because there you can still see a gilded baroque iconostasis of the 19th century and even older icons, as well as paintings from the beginning. XX century At the end of the street there is another ancient temple (the most authentic, despite the recently erected dome) - the Church of St. Mines. And two steps away from it, in the house that the Dostoevsky family acquired in 1876, a museum of the writer was opened. I visited the museum on my last visit to Russa, not that it was uninteresting, but now, to save time, we didn’t go there.
Staraya Russa is generally closely connected with what is, in my opinion, the best work of Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - by all accounts, this is the city of Skotoprigonyevsk depicted in the novel. On the opposite bank of the river there is the so-called. “Grushenka’s house”, and in the building of the Belgrade Hotel in the tavern located there, Ivan Karamazov delivered his speech about the Grand Inquisitor.
However, the ancient churches here are no less (and most likely, more) interesting: in addition to those shown earlier, there is another ancient temple here - the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, built in 1391. It was also restored, but this time we were not able to get inside.

St. George's Cathedral of the 15th century (rebuilt in the 18th century).

Gergievsky Cathedral from the apse.

At the foundation, masonry from the 15th century is exposed (it’s a waste of time to plaster these old churches!).

Iconostasis of the Gergiev Church (XVIII-XIX centuries) and its fragment.

Royal Doors of the 19th century.

House of A.K. Gribbe (mid-19th century) was acquired by the Dostoevsky family in the 1870s. Now there is a writer's museum, which we did not go to this time. There are many places connected with Dostoevsky in Russe, but due to lack of time they did not come to our attention.

The most authentic ancient church of St. Great Martyr Mina was built of shell rock and Ilmen limestone (beginning of the 15th century, restored after the Swedish devastation in the 1650s). All the churches in the city at that time were the same, but they are all now plastered. I hope that in view of the restoration that has begun, the church of Mina will not suffer the same fate.

Like, for example, this temple - St. Nicholas the Wonderworker (1371, perestroika and bell tower 1710).

From this side the church seems more like the 14th century, but the 17th century still prevails.

Finally, we went to the Staraya Russa resort, founded in the beginning. XVIII century (we remember that the city has long been famous for its salt and mineral springs) and experienced its heyday in late. XIX - early XX centuries However, the resort is quite alive and well these days - there are a lot of buildings for accommodating patients, a drinking gallery, a mud bath - unfortunately, the old wooden buildings of the 19th century did not survive the upheavals of the 20th century - and all this is mainly post-war. The territory is publicly accessible to everyone - for a small fee of 50 rubles per person you can go through the checkpoint, drink and take water from the springs in the drinking gallery, admire the self-flowing mineral Muravyovsky fountain (which has been flowing here continuously since the mid-19th century), and feed the ducks , gather in abundance around the non-freezing mineral Lower Pond, from where they draw brown mud for the nearby mud bath.
Near the resort you can visit the reconstruction of the estate of a medieval Rushanin (I can’t judge the quality of the exhibition; we didn’t go here), and also see the Pyatnitsky excavation with the remains of pavements and foundations of buildings of the 11th-12th centuries, but you can see them only in the summer, since in winter Everything there is covered with snow.

The symbol of the Sraraya Russa resort is the Muravyovsky fountain. This is one of the most powerful self-flowing mineral fountains in Europe. The well, drilled in 1859, is still in operation! Previously there was a beautiful tent above it, but it has not survived. However, the fountain is already beautiful at any time of the year.

Unfortunately, no other historical buildings (most of which were wooden) have survived on the resort territory.

The central entrance to the resort.

Drinking gallery where you can drink water and take it with you.

Sulphide-silt brown mud is drawn from this ice-free mineral lake.

for a nearby mud bath.

The ice-free pond is a great place for ducks, which are also fed here by holidaymakers.

V.F. began her career at the resort theater of Staraya Russa in 1895. Komissarzhevskaya. The current theater building looks like this.

The Pyatnitsky excavation site is probably very interesting, but you can only be convinced of this in the summer, when the snow melts :)

Near the resort there is a restored manor of a medieval Rushan with several museum exhibitions. We didn’t go inside, so I can’t say how spreading a cranberry it is.

This was where the walk around Staraya Russa had to end, since that day we still had a long way to go to the city of Porkhov, where we really wanted to get there before dark.