Vladimir Goriachev

  
Old Gorodets "Little Kitezh"

  Moscow, "BILINA", 1993

  Translated by M.I.Quartskhava

Forty or so miles up the Volga from Nizhny Novgorod, on the river's steep
left bank, there is a town called Gorodets, one of several district centres
in the area. Gorodets belongs to the large family of boroughs known in Russia
as "lesser towns" and boasts a rich history of over eight centuries long. It
is among Russia's oldest, one in a chain of fortress settlements,
warrior-towns whose original purpose was to shield the land from attacking
hordes.

The artistic heritage of Gorodets never ceases to amaze people with its
splendour and diversity of crafts: take wood carving, the so-called "blind"
kind, on houses; or stained-oak inlaid seats of spinning wheels, a true
masterpiece of folk art; or else the fantastic Gorodets ornamental painting,
carved gingerbread boards, gold embroidery, hand-written books, you name it.

So, let me introduce: Gorodets! The legendary Little Kitezh-Town!

A good few hoary centuries have gone by since the first Russian set foot on
this soil and our own Russian tongue could be heard on these low hills. Long
before Prince Yuri Dolgoruky the Longarm came to these parts, there was a
tiny , cloister near here peopled by the first settler monks. It must have
been those monks who had founded the original Gorodets then called Littll
Kitezh. The name itself comes from the Mari Language and means a wanderer or
a new-comer.

The history of Gorodets on the Volga starts from the second half of the 12th
century, when it was a fortress on the eastern border of Rostov-SuzdaF lands.
After his defeat in the struggle for the seat of Kiev in 1152, Prince Yuri
Dolgoruky set his hand to the task of strengthening the borders of his
Rostov-Suzdal princedom. In record time he had founded the fortress towns of
Yuryev-Polsky, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Kostroma and Kideksha near Suzdal. Having
crossed the Volga, next to its Unzha tributary, the Prince reached some
picturesque hills with Little Kitezh perched on them. The Volga looked
particularly majestic here, a mighty river from whose tall precipitous bank
one could see a vast expanse of the plain on the other side that stretched
away as far as the horizon with an almost unbroken covering of primeval
woods. Prince Yuri Dolgoruky thought the place just right for a settlement
and founded there a town which he christened Gorodets-Radilov, that is
Gorodets on the Volga, or a Volga town (the Volga's ancient name is Ra, hence
the town's name of Radilov). The event's hypothetical dating is around 1152.

Like most other cities and towns of Old Russia. Gorodets was made up of two
parts - the kremlin (detinets) and the business area outside its walls
(posad). The kremlin, wthicii was the Prince's residence, was the first to be
built behind a palisade of hefty oak logs. Later there were ramparts and a
moat to protect it. The oldest inhabitants still insist on calling the
detinets place the Prince's Hill. Now a portion of the bank that used to
support the ancient kremlin has collapsed into the river, a victim of its
eroding current, and people occasionally find here old artifacts washed up on
the sandy beach.

The next item on the defence agenda was the burgeoning trade and business
quarters of posad. The ramparts and the moat then constructed still look
sufficiently awesome: a bank of earth a mile long and five to seven and a
half metres high, and a waterfilled hole between four and six metres deep. It
is easy to see how safe Gorodets dwellers must have felt behind the ramparts
in those distant days when they were all of fifteen metres in height. These
unscalable walls gave protection to the citizens of Nizhny Novgorod, when in
1378 Arapsha, a Tartar prince, stormed their city and put it to fire and
sword. Luckily the townspeople, to the last man, managed to escape and took
refuge in Gorodets-Radilov where they waited in safety for Prince Arapsha to
leave Nizhny Novgorod.

The ramparts are the only link between today and the distant past to remind
us of the turbulent times when Russia's statehood was taking shape.

There are patches of pinewood there, and the hollow trunks of old trees,
scarred and crowned with mops of gnarled boughs, stand guard over the town,
tall and powerful in the prime of their mute, mysterious and imposing
centuries-old beauty.

One of the ancient pines bore the name of "Christening tree". Not far from it
there was a "Holy Lake". That was the place where pagans were once baptised
and the crosses they were to wear were hung on the branches of the
"Christening" pine. Later, local Old Believers used to festoon the now dead
pine tree with brass crosses and small icons on holidays. The townspeople
looked on the tree with a kind of superstitious awe, and the place where it
stood had always been thought sacred. The powers-that-be did not approve of
that mood, and by special orders of the Emperor Nicolas I the pine was felled
and burnt. But in its place another pine tree grew eventually, with a fork
vaguely reminiscent of a cross, and Old Believers in Gorodets worshipped it
instead.

A landmark in the history of Gorodets-Radilov was the foundation of a
cloister there, later known under   the   name   of  St   Theodor's
monastery   in Gorodets. In the North-East of Russia, in areas beyond the
Volga populated entirely by pagans, these | seats of Christianity were of
supreme importance.

The appearance of a new town here had both strategic and economic
significance. The road that passed through Gorodets went to Vladimir, Suzdal
and Rostov the Great; this was the way Russian troops took to fight off the
Volga Bulgars whose devastating raids had more than once made havoc of the
Russian lands. That was what made Gorodets a strong point in the east of
Rostov-Suzdal princedom, for it was the last downstream Russian town on the
Volga at the time, Also it had a large and growing population of artisans who
could meet the needs of the Prince's army and of the town's dwellers. Another
advantage was the nearness of a great waterway, which provided excellent
conditions for the development of trade and crafts. The place was famous for
its pottery, silver- and goldsmithery, weaving and spinning. Its carpenters
had an equally good reputation, which is not surprising, given the abundance
of timber there. Among its people's other traditional occupations were
hunting and fishing.

Archaelogists did a good job in Gorodets, and now its ethnography museum
boasts a fine collection in proof of the town's erstwhile glory of a major
trade and craft centre. Among the objects yielded by excavation were four
"pens", iron pins used for writing on birch bark and waxed tablets - a proof
of posad people's literacy. In 1172 Gorodets was for the first time mentioned
in the Russian chronicle, while in 1186 it was already habitually described
as a sizeable town with a thriving population.

The heyday of its early period of existence came when Gorodets-Radilov was
governed by Georgy Vsevolodovich, grandson to Yuri Dolgoruky. In the less
than three years of his stay in Gorodets, Georgy had considerably extended
the limits of Gorodets princedom; the same man played a part in the
foundation of Nizhny Novgorod in 1221.

But then came the year 1238 which proved fatal for Gorodets. The subsequent
events should more properly be written in blood and tears, as chroniclers
said at the time, for ink-written words failed to convey the horror and
cruelty of the Tartar invasion, when their hordes had flooded Russia leaving
wilderness in their wake. Having captured Vladimir, the capital of the Grand
Duchy, Tartars scattered about the place in search of the Grand Duke, Geordy
Vsevolodovich, who fortunately was not in the city. One of the Tartar posses
approached Gorodets-Radilov and laid siege to it. The entire town was burnt
to cinders... The few survivors fled to the woods beyond the Volga, while
most of the people were captured by the enemy...

The chronicle gives the following account of the awful attack:
"... the Tartars, they took the town, and set fire to it, and even to the
monasteries and churches, and set fire too to all steads of the Prince and
the people, while the young and the old, and the deaf and the blind were cut
up by them, and some men, wives and infants eaten, and those halved by sword
and others pierced by arrows, and others still hurled into the fire, and the
rest of the people, barefoot and bleeding and frozen, they drove captive to
their own lands".

As soon as the news of the Tartars' retreat had reached Radilovians hading in
the Volga woods, they hastened back to the burnt ruins of their native town.
And two or three years later, Gorodets was restored to its former glory,
rebuilt and bustling with activity as before. And with the town, St Theodor's
monastery was given a new lease of life.

The factual story of Gorodets-Radilov's plunder is connected with the name of
Georgy Vsevolodovich. The Grand Duke stationed his army on the banks of the
river Sit waiting for reinforcements sent by other princes. The Tartars took
him by surprise and closed in on him before he could get ready for the fight.
The battle that ensued was "great and fierce". In that unequal struggle the
Grand Duke fought valiantly side by side with his men, without any regard for
his personal safety. But the enemy was too strong. And on March 4th 1238,
Georgy Vsevolodoyoch met his death on the battlefield. The tragic episode
served the basis for a folk epic about the invisible town of Kitezh and Lake
Svetloyar.

Here is what the legend says about the battle: "That was in olden times, too
long ago to remember when. Many hundreds of years since perhaps.

Well then, in those olden times it was that the town of Great Kitezh was
built in a dence wood, on a low hill that was by a calm and beautiful lake.
The town was built by Prince Georgy Vsevolodovich after he had put up Little
Kitezh (Gorodets) on the Volga. And no sooner had the masons and carpenters
finished work on the palaces and snow-white temples, than the wicked Batu
Khan brought his cruel men to fight the Russians. Then the Tartar hordes
reached the Volga Kitezh and besieged that town from all sides. Russian
warriors fought bravely, but they were too few. The foe overpowered the
town's defenders. And Batu Khan, having captured Little Kitezh, moved on to
the other one called Great. Georgy put up a defence, wanted to stop the enemy
on the road to Great Kitezh, but the Prince's troops were no match for the
Tartars and had to retreat to the depth of the Volga forests. And so Batu's
men followed their tracks to the very forest lake called Svetloyar. And when
the enemy hordes were close, the Russians stood up against them. But their
strength was not enough...

The Tartars then rushed to Great Kitezh, but a wonderful miracle happened
before their very eyes: the town began to sink slowly and the waters flooded
it. Under the lake, under the hills was the Russian town concealed from the
foe, for its dwellers would not yield to the enemies".

Andrei Yaroslavovich, a brother to Alexander Nevsky and the Duke of Suzdal,
put up a resistance and fought the Tartars. Berke Khan, infuriated by his
boldness, diceded to send 300,000 of his men to Russia. Alexander Nevsky, to
stave off disaster, went to the Golden Horde, at considerable risk to his
life.

He had to spend the whole of winter and summer there. On the way back, he
fell ill and arrived in Nizhny Novgorod a shadow of his former self. As soon
as he got better, he continued on his way, but by the time he reached St
Theodor's monastery he was too weak to get up. Alexander Nevsky felt that his
end was near and so he took the vows under the name of Alexius and schema
(the highest monastic degree in Orthodox Christianity which implies a life of
austerity and seclusion in a monastery and observance of special rules).

Alexander Nevsky died on 14 November 1263. "The Sun of the land of Russia
hath declined", said Metropolitan Cyrill during a church service in Vladimir,
when he had learnt that the Grand Duke was no more. The people of Gorodets
were destined to be the first to grieve over the death of Alexander Nevsky
who was mourned by the whole of Russia. The body of the deceased was in great
solemnity transported to the capital city of Vladimir.

The Great Duke was succeeded by his son Andrei Alexandravich, later nicknamed
Andrei of Gorodets.

Under Prince Boris Konstantinovich (1365-1392), Gorodets started to mint its
own silver money. Gorodets coins are displayed in the Nizhny Novgorod
reservation museum, in the National History museum and in the Hermitage.

In the 14th century Gorodets princedom was an autonomous province in the
Duchy of Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod. According to the pact concluded by Grand
Duke Vasily Dmitrievich and Vladimir Andreevich, the Duke of Serpukhov,
around 1401-1402, attached to Gorodets were the following volosts
(administrative units): Belogorodye, Yuryevets, Koriakova Sloboda,
Cherniakova and Unzhenskaya Tamga. A deed drawn up by Vladimir of Serpukhov
later added to the list Porozdna and Sol, as well as a number of nameless
settlements on the left bank of the Volga upstream from Gorodets, and
downstream on the river's right bank (Spiritual and Treaty Deeds of Grand
Dukes and Princes in the 14th-16th Centuries. Moscow-Leningrad 1951.: 1. No.
16, p. 43.; 2. No. 17, pp. 47-50).

In 1408 Gorodets was once more burnt and pillaged by the hordes of Yedigei
Khan. The town never recovered from the blow and was referred to in the
chronicles as "empty Gorodets". In the 16th century Gorodets was a minor
estate and it was not till the 17th century that some kind of economic
activity was noted in the town with the revival of the aol trades. In 1620
one half of Gorodets was granted by the Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov to
Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky and the other to Tsarevna Xenia, daughter of Boris
Godunov. Later Gorodets was downgraded to the status of crownland village.

Memory of the past... It lives on in legends. And in place names. The steep
bank on which sits the town of Gorodets is furrowed with deep gulleys that
carve it up into separate hills, each with a name of its own: Panov Hills,
Vorykhanov Hills, the Prince's Hill, Cyrill's Hills. Cyrill's Hills were the
bit of ground where part of Gorodets was situated. A legend has it that "he
who would sail down the Volga at dawn, while all the people are asleep, and
past this mountain, would see it open miraculously and noble and handsome
elderly men come out and say to the sailor: "When you are in Zhiguli,
remember to give our love to our brothers". The same thing happens around
Zhiguli Hills, for elderly men there send their love to their brothers on
Cyrill's Hill. And barge-haulers nearing Cyrill's Hill, if they have a
Zhiguli greeting to give, must shout by all means: "Brothers of Cyrill's
Hill, your brothers on Zhiguli Hills are sending you their love'. And if the
time is sunrise, then the mountain opens and the wonderful old men come out
and bow to the sailors in silence, to show their gratitude. But if the
barge-haulers forget to pass on the greeting, going by Cyrill's Hill or by
Zhiguli, then there will be a storm, or their ship will run aground, and she
will not be saved unless the barge-haulers beg the old men to forgive them."

In the late 17th century (under Peter the Great), Russia was rapidly turning
into a naval power, and Gorodets became one of its shipbuilding centres. A
big shipyard was constructed on the Volga, and in 1722, on his way to
Astrakhan in the Volga estuary to supervise the laying of a port there, Peter
I stopped in Gorodets and inspected the local docks. The reputation of
Gorodets carpenters who worked at the shipyard was so high that the Emperor
took them to Ms village of Preobrazhenskoe near Moscow where warships were
being built.

In May 1767 Gorodets again entertained royalty; this time it was Catherine II
who was travelling along the Volga on board the galley Tver. She was present
at the consecration ceremony in the church of Our Lady rebuilt after the fire
in St Theodor's monastery. There the Empress donated 50 roubles for
decorating the consecrated church and another 150 to feed the Prior and the
fraternity.

At one of the meetings of the Imperial Legislative Commission, the phrase
"notable villages around Nizhny Novgorod" was used for the first time, and
Gorodets was named as one. Catherine II made a present of a large portion of
Gorodets to Count Grigory Orlov; later the same estate was owned by Gount
Panin and Princess Volkonskaya.

From the second half of the 17th century - and all through the early 18th
century - when the followers of Protopope Abbakum known as Old Believers were
particularly mercilessly persecuted, the villages of Gorodets, Kovernino and
Semenov in the Nizhny Novgorod province had been the seats of organised Old
Faith adherents.

Here, in the wooded areas along the Uzola and the Kerzhenets, found refuge
Old Believers from the northern fringes of Muscovy, to build cloisters
without fear of harassment.

The new settlers brought with them not only their books and icons and their
simple goods and chattels - they also brought the folk-culture traditions
preserved over the centuries in their families. And eventually the Nihnny
Novgorod province became a veri-table bulwark of Old Faith.

In 1852, Old Believers in the Nizhny Novgorod region totalled 240,000,
according to Metropolitan Jeremy. In and around the village of Gorodets alone
there were 90,000 of them in 1903 (The magazine Istina (Truth). Pskov 1882,
issue 79, pp. 83-85.).

In the 19 th century, the village of Gorodets of Balakhna uezd
(administrative unit) was in fact the unofficial capital of Old Believers and
a "key" to the Transvolga areas populated by them. The local Old Believers
still use the old saying which argues that "what is laid to rest in Rogozha,
is bedrock for Gorodets; and what supports Gorodets, will do so for the
Kerzhenets" (Rogozhskoe cemetery in Moscow, informally styled "Rogozha", was
the Old Faith centre for those who accepted the idea of priesthood.).

Writer Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky, an acknowledged authoritory on the Old
Faith, wrote in his report on schism in 1854: "... In terms of trade, that
village is remarkable as the chief wharf on the upper Volga within reach of
Nizhny Novgorod, and as the central trading point for six uezds of three
provinces that have over 530,000 people living in them. Almost all merchants
of Semenov, Balakhna, and some from Yuryevets and Puchezh posad, have
residence in Gorodets. From there wheat and other supplies are sent up the
Volga, while in the opposite direction goes woodenware and other articles
made of timber for the whole lower-Volga area and Siberia. The schismatic
Transvolga settlements send there Targe quantities of butter, tar, resin,
linen and so on, to be shipped on up or down the Volga."

The combination of the Volga and the large city of Nizhny Novgorod near at
hand was ideal for trade. Merchants bought off rye and wheat in various
Russian towns and brought the lot to Gorodets which was then a major centre
for wheat trade. Melnikov-Pechersky left a vivid sketch of the economic life
in the 19th-century Gorodets in Ms travel notes: "The whole space at the foot
of the hill was a bustle of activity. The vast market place was teeming with
people, and though it was a routine weekend affair, it was on the scale of
most Russian fairs: in the numerous smithies (over forty in number) hammers
were banging nonstop; all along the Volga bank, mountains of wheat were being
poured into granaries; while on the Volga itself, bound by the winter cold,
freight-boats were busily constructed, in anticipation of spring when all the
wheat stocked in Gorqdets would be sent on its speedy way to upstream cities
and towns".

The busy economic life of Gorodets found expression even in its appearance
which was certainly un-villagelike. An item printed in the Nizhny Novgorod
Provincial Gazette remarked that "as far as its outer orderliness and public
welfare go, Gorodets is far better than its uezd centre of Balakhna. In the
upper, hilly, part of the village there are streets that would be the pride
of any uezd city, neatly paved and even lined with streetlamps, with very
urban houses owned by the local merchants".

By the early 19th century, Gorodets had become a major shipbuilding centre.
During the winter of 1844 alone, there were 163 wooden ships built there.
Beautifully ornamented with carved wood, light and mobile, Gorodets
flat-bottom freight-boats were famous on the Volga. From the ancient
primitive rowing boats, through several generations of flat-bottomed cargo
boats of all sizes, both drift and sailing, with colourful local names of
kladnuhka, podchalka, beliana, the shipbuilding art in Gorodets gradually
came to the manufacture of more sophisticated barges and floating debarkation
platforms. Gorodets was fairly rich in dockyard owners: some specialised in
barges and wooden flat-bottoms, others built steamers.

In the second half of the 19th century, Gorodets became one of Russia's
tug-boat navigation centres, which encouraged the growth of the local
anchor-making and foundry trade.

Gorodets and the villages around it were also famous for the locally-made
tarantases (a type of covered brake), hansom cabs, sledges and other
horse-drawn carriages. Gorodets was home to a famous carriage-maker, Piotr
Lotsmanov, blacksmiths Muravyev, Sushin and other outstanding craftsmen.

In Gorodets and other villages in its vicinity, quite a few people went in
for collecting and occasionally copying ancient hand-written books. Corodets
merchants in particular, especially when Old Believers, were very partial to
this hobby and had good collections of ancient books and icons. Some of the
better known names among them are P. A. Ovchinnikov, G. I. Prianishnikov, N.
I. Beklemishev, A. D. Malekhonov and others. The name of Piotr Ovchinnikov
(1843-1912) stands out in this list, for he was one of the most prominent
collectors of Old Russia books and other antiques in Gorodets. He was one of
the Volga wheat traders, a native of Gorodets of the Balakhna uezd in the
Nizhny Novgorod province. An active Old Believer, he did much as a member of
the Board of the All-Russia Brotherhood of Priest-Recognising Old Believers.
In 1911 he quit the Brotherhood and joined the Belokrinitskaya branch of the
Old Believers community. During his lifetime, Piotr Ovchinnikov collected a
vast library, mostly of hand-written and early printed books, which had 836
manuscripts in it.

This is what S. Y. Yelpatyevsky, writer and doctor, wrote about Ovchinnikov
in his Memoirs: "He collected everything old - icons, byt mainly old
hand-written and printed books. He looked for those everywhere: in Moscow, in
the Archangel and Vologda provinces, and took special trips to the Urals and
around the Volga to search for more" (Yelpatyevsky, S. Y. Memoirs, p. 217).

Shortly before his death, Ovchinnikov took up publishing, which follows from
advertisements in the periodical Church printed in 1912: "On offer are new
books printed off old manuscripts in Church Slavonic script in the village of
Gorodets by P. A. Ovchinnikov".

Another person impressed by Ovchinnikov was I. Kirillov: "He is an ordinary
Russian man, urged on by the flame of Old Russian Faith and nothing else, who
has managed to create in a village miles away from any "university centres" a
superb monument to Russian culture" (Kirillov, I. On the Volga (Impressions).
In:   Word of the Church, Issue 21 1916, p. 473).

The dedicated work of Piotr Ovchinnikov received due recognition while he was
still alive; he was elected to the Academic Archive Commission of the Nizhny
Novgorod province. In 1918, Ovchinnikov's collection was sent to the
Rumiantsev library. Currently it is in the manuscript section of Russia's
State Library, stock No. 209.

Another major Russian antique collector in Gorodets was Grigory Prianishnikov
(1845-1915). A second-guild merchant of Balakhna, he'came of a family of
gingerbread (prianik) - cooks in the village of Bolshie Mosty, near Kovernino
in the Makaryev uezd, whose ware had been vastly popular since the second
half of the 18th century. Grigory Prianishnikov was an Old Believer and the
guardian of the Old Believers' chapel in Gorodets. His collector interests
were many. He collected a unique set of icons, coins, small items of plastic
art, gold embroidery and other fine old things. There was also a valuable
book collection of 200 hand-written and 300 early printed books. This may not
sound very impressive in terms of numbers, but all his manuscripts were of
the rarer kind.

It is known that Grigory Prianishnikov had a workshop right in his house for
making hand-written books, and that he employed the best calligraphers and
artists who painted miniatures and icons, and they all worked under his
protection and guidance.

In 1888, Prianishnikov was elected to the Academic Archive Commission of the
Nizhny Novgorod province.

The wonderful collection of rarities owned by Gorodets merchant Grigory
Prianishnikov was described in 1892 by archaeographer E. V. Barsov.

After his death, Prianishnikov's collection of books and icons was donated by
his heirs to the Rumiantsev museum in 1918. Now it is in the manuscript
section of the Russin State Library as a self-contained stock registered
under No.F242.

Melnikov-Pechersky wrote: "The Old Believers' infinite devotion to anything
ennobled with age rendered an invaluable service to science by preserving so
many articles of the Russian past."

At roughly the same time there lived in Gorodets an original calligrapher and
miniature painter, Ivan Blinov. He was born in 1872 into a family of peasants
and Old Believers, in the village of Kudashikha near Gorodets. As a young
lad, Blinov said, he had developed a passion for hand-written books and
studied various manners of Church Slavonic handwriting by copying old books
and painting miniatures for them.

His acquaintance with Gorodets bibliophiles, Grigory Prianishnikov and Piotr
Ovchinnikov, acknowledged collectors of old hand-written and printed books
and icons, was a boost to his interest in books and Russian icon-painting
technique and helped his talent to blossom. Ovchinnikov commissioned him to
copy 25 books, most of which are in the Gorodets ethnography museum now.

In 1905, Ivan Blinov worked in the libraries of Kazan University and Kazan
Seminary, at the request of Nizhny Novgorod's City Council. In 1906 he was
invited to the Seventh Archaeological Convention in Vladimir. Soon afterwards
Ivan Blinov was offered the job of head proof-reader of Slavonic script at
the Old Faith printing shop of Lev Malekhonov in Moscow. Work at a Moscow
printing shop gave Blinov a chance of regular business contacts with the
Russian History Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery and a number of major
libraries.

In Moscow Ivan Blinov also met Russian artists V. M. Vasnetsov, A. I.
Savinov, V. V. Zvarykin, M. V. Nesterov, D. S. Stelletsky and some other
prominent figures in Russian culture with whom he worked.

D. S. Stelletsky and Ivan Blinov together worked on the manuscript of the
Song of Igor's Campaign. Later Blinov produced his own copies of the
miniature-illustrated manuscript of the great Russian epic.

In 1916 Blinov was invited to work at the Moscow Art Printing house of A. A.
Livenson. After which he was picked out, as one of the best calligraphy
artists, to design the Statute of the Order of Saint Princess Olga
commissioned by the Chapter of Orders for the members of the imperial family.
He went to St Petersburg to do the work for which he received a gold St
Andrew medal.

In 1919 Ivan Blinov was discharged from the army and went back to Gorodets to
resume his work of illustrating old Russian manuscripts at the request of the
history museum. He joined the staff of the Gorodets ethnography museum and
eventually became its director.

Ivan Blinov left over a hundred richly illustrated hand-written books now on
display in the National History Museum, or kept in the manuscript section of
the Russian State Library, in the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library and
in the Nizhny Novgorod Ethnography Reservation Museum.

His last piece of work was apparently the handwritten book on the history of
the town of Gorodets which he finished copying and illustrating in 1937. One
copy of the book is in the manuscript section of the Russian State Library,
stock No.491, the other in the Nizhny Novgorod Ethnography Museum.
Exquisitely written and illustrated with numerous fine miniatures, the book
reveals the author's passionate enthusiasm for regional ethnography.

Ivan Blinov died in Gorodets in 1944.

The art of book design was not the only distinctive feature of Gorodets. It
was also known for excellent carpenters and wood carvers, as it was
surrounded by forests which provided cheap and plentiful timber. Everything
was made of wood there - ships, kitchenware, spoons, salt-cellars, children's
toys and tools.

The technique of "blind" low-relief carving has been known in the area since
time immemorial. The art of wood-carving was for centuries perfected by
generations of handicraftsmen, with style and taste developing along with the
methods of carving wood.

Nizhny Novgorod wood carvings are quite a phenomenon in both the architecture
of the traditional Russian house and in decorative art. The best samples of
the craft come from the area around Gorodets, Balakhna and nearby villages.

Volga boats are known to have been decorated with a special kind of "ship"
wood carvings. Gradually the same art began to be used to ornament peasant
houses. Eave boards, window cases and gates were covered with "ship" carving.
The basic motif used by peasant wood-carvers in their low relief
ornamentation was floral, enlivened by mermaids, fanciful paradise birds -
harpy-like sirins and alconosts, and also lions with benign faces and lots of
other fabulous creatures. Peasant houses decorated with Gorodets-style
carvings seem fairytale dwellings miraculously placed there to delight us
today.

Writer Anatoly Rogov made the following colourful description of Gorodets
wood-carving in his book The Stockroom of Joy: "... you were greeted by the
friendly smiles of comic wooden lions or longtailed mermaids carved on the
facades and even the gates of houses here and there. Carved wood could be
glimpsed on nearly every house, sometimes quite modest, byt occasionally of
breathtaking splendour, of the kind I had not seen before, except in photos
in books: carved patterns covered every inch of those houses; what carvings
too! So rich and fantastic, and festive, and joilly! And it was never the
same: here was a tangle of willowy, leafy branches, there a quantity of
tastefully arranged beads, diamond-shapes, ribbons, lace, grapes, rays!"

It is a great shame, bat today you will not see those carvings in such
profusion. However, there is the odd house which can give you some idea of
the earstwhile spleandour: thus No. 8 in Revolution Embankment is richly
decorated with Gorodets carving. The middle of the eave board covered with
twining plants is graced with a couple of fabulous bird:maidens which pretend
to support the medallion with the date "1864" carved in the Old Slavonic
style. On either side of the board are two recumbent lions in a halo of
sun-like manes. The side walls sport a shoal of mermaids, ancient guardian
goddesses known in Gorodets as "pharaoh lasses". More houses with Gorodets
"blind" carving can be found in Maxim Gorky and Novaya Streets, in Nizhniaya
Sloboda, and a few more areas, as well as in villages around Gorodets.

Another famous local speciality was wooden toys made by carpenters in the
nearby villages of Yakovlevo, Sumino, Yelzelkino where the trade had
flourished since the second half of the 19th century. The toys were
remarkable for their flamboyant colours and festive look. The favourite kind
was horses fixed on little planks, singly or in twos, between the shafts of a
buggy, or else a troika pulling a carriage. Gorodets "horse-drawn vehicles"
had eventually attained a wonderful degree of expressiveness and looked both
decorative and touchingly life-like.

Take a look at one: the carriage is about to set off on a journey; the
coachman is pulling back the reins to check his lively team raring to go. The
figures suggest the daring recklessness of Shrovetide rides at break-neck
speed and of dishing troikas.

One more centre of the craft was the village of Kurtsevo and its vicinity
along the river Uzola. The toys made there were a somewhat unusual species of
doll with a flat front and a threedimentional rear. The variety of types
could be endless: there were children, and village maidens with cats, and
courting couples, and stern-looking Old Believers, and townspeople decked out
in their Sunday best. Toy makers used the most primitive implements in their
work - the axe with which they split blocks of wood into smaller chunks, and
the knife; later to this were added a few simple chisels. To paint the toys
they used distemper and aniline dyes and an ordinary bruch; occasionally the
process was further simplified by dipping the toy in a pot of paint.

One of the last toy-makers was Timofey Krasnoyarov, a hereditary craftsman
from the village of Kurtsevo in the Gorodets district. Kurtsevo craftsmen
were also known as excellent makers of children's chairs, brightly painted
and without a single nail in them. Wooden toys were the cheapest articles
manufactered by peasants and they were always made in large quantities.

As the object was to reduce the cost as much as possible, craftsmen had to
sacrifice the finer details, which, however, added to the toys' laconic
expression and originality.

The cheerful and honest art of folk toy-making, where the deep-going
tradition is married with the genuine sence of living, no stranger to healthy
humour and mirth yet permeated with real, rich decorativeness, is one in a
whole series of bright pages of Russian folk creation.

Another set of masterpieces with in the same class is made up of gingerbread
boards. These boards used for fahsioning sweet cakes were carved in a special
style practised in various places in Central Russia, but Gorodets was perhaps
the only locality where the craft had become a form of art. The cakes
(prianiks) had patterns and figures "printed" on them by pressing carved
boards to the slab of dough before baking, hence the name of "printed
prianiks" they were given.

The boards of every conceivable size and pattern were made of well seasoned
wood (birch, pear, lime); the carving technique was a combination of
counter-relief and minutely patterned notched carving. The images were
extremely diverse, with the traditional pagan representations of peacocks,
sirin-birds, horses and the tree of life recurring most often.

The carver would achieve a poetic abstractior and an artistic interpretation
of what he saw around him. And so there are gingerbread boards adorned with
fairy-tyle palaces, sabre-brandishing horsemen, peacocks, fish, later
replaced by steamships and railway engines.

The village of Gorodets had long since been known for its prianiks. Thus a
Saxon historian and geographer, Adam Olearius, who visited Nizhny Novgorod in
1636, noted in his travel diary that he was very impressed by the local
dainty - honey cakes made with utmost skill by the natives of the village of
Gorodets on the Volga.

In the 19th century the trade was at its peak, with Gorodets prianiks sold in
wast quantities at the fair in Nizhny Novgorod whence they reached nearly
every other part of Russia. To meet the ever growing demand, Gorodets
produced something like 10,000 poods (164 tonnes) of prianiks a year, varying
in size and flavour; there were up to thirty kinds of cake baked with honey,
mint, treacle and all sorts of spice. Formerly Gorodets had a whole "prianik
market" which offered the local ware in highly original bast boxes.

There were several families of hereditary prianik-cooks in the village - the
Bakharevs, the Guniakovs, the Sintsovs and others.

On the occasion of the coronation of Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra, Old
Believer merchants from Gorodets presented the royal couple with a prianik
that weighed one pood (16.38 kg).

Gorodets has retained its prianik boards with their beautiful carving are on
display in a lot of the country's museums as perfect samples of Russian
applied art.

In the 18th century the area around Gorodets and the Uzola valley emerged as
a centre where the best spinning-wheel seats (bottoms) were made. According
to the archive records, there were at least 34 families engaged in the trade
with about 70 top-notch craftsmen in the villages of Koskovo, Kurtsevo,
Khlebaiha, Repino, Savino, Boyarskoe and other places.

The classical dictionary of the Russian language by Vladimir Dahl defines the
word "dontse" (bottom) as a board on which the spinstress was sitting and
where she stuck the comb with flax tow. Craftsmen always tried to make
spinning-wheel seats richly ornamented with carving and colour, for peasant
women kept their spinning wheels all their lives. Often the thing was given
to the woman as a present; a groom would give one to his bride, a father to
his daughter, a husband to his wife. And the seat board had to be
particularly festive, brightly coloured and finely carved, to catch the eye
of the giver and delight the recipient of the gift. Spinning wheels were
passed on to daughters and granddaughters and were treasured by the family.

Gorodets spinning wheels were different from the res in that they had
detachable seats and combs. The owner could take the thing apart on finishing
work and hang the bottom on the wall, which served as an interior decoration
then.

Local craftsmen used an extremely rare inlaying technique for ornamenting
these boards that was virtually unknown elsewhere. Elements of the design
were carved from a different kind of wood and fitted into the hollows made in
the board. Dark stained-oak bits looked very decorative against the light
surface of the bottom-board. So, with only two colour varieties of wood at
their disposal, and a minimum of simple tools, folk artists contrived to make
the piece of wood into an intricate picture that was a perfect wall panel.

The tradition of bottom-board decoration goes back to the second half of the
18th century. One of the earlier subjects is known as "carriage riding". A
horse with its neck arched gracefully canters along pulling a carriage behind
it. Inside the elegant vehicle is a lady in a crinoline. On the box is seated
a coachman, the reins taut in his hands to hold in his steed. Standing on a
special footboard at the back is the lady's servant.

The   spinning-wheel   seats   became   still   more expressive and
eyecatching with the introduction of colour. The dark oak against a fair
background enlivened with blue, green and red dyes made the pieces
particulary vivid and decorative.

A well-known maker of inlaid and painted bottom-boarbs was Lazar Melnikov.
The heyday of his art was in the 1850s-1860s. His boards are readily
recognisable as he used to divide the surface of the board into three tiers,
with the tree of life and a bird at the top, this being a traditional image
in folk art. To the peasant, the "tree of life" symbolised nature, that is
everything that could ensure his wellbeing and survival. On either side of
the tree were prancing horses with armed men in the saddle who supposedly
were there to protect the tree.

The middle section was reserved for everyday scenes. It could be ladies with
parasols taking a wolk in the company of their suitors. The picture was
complemented by a flock of geese on the lower third of the board. Melnikov's
spinning-wheel seats were very much in demand and highly valued by discerning
customers.

The growing demand for their craft prompted the craftsmen to simplify their
technique. From the second half of the 19th century the comlex and
time-taking method of inlay-setting had been replaced by simple carving with
the bits coloured in; later carving, too, was abandoned in favour of
painting.

The painting technique used in Gorodets was not complicated. First a board
was made of spruce or pine wood, a plain-surface "belye". Then the side where
the pattern was to be was coated with a thin layer of chalk mixed with glue,
or "leucas" in the painters' lingo.

A few rough brush strokes were enough to slap colour blotches on the wood;
later those stains were worked into flowers and figures. When both the
ornamental pattern and the central scene had been completed, they were toned
up with whiting and the whole thing given a skincoat of drying oil.

The   basic   pigments   preferred   by   Gorodets craftsmen were red,
yellow, blue, green, white and black.   But   mixed   or   thinned   down,
the   paints provided a variety of extra hues: pink, olive-green,
reddish-brown, sky-blue and cherry-red. The painted boards display all manner
of subjects.  Thus the famous craftsman Gavriil Roliakov favoured battle
scenes of the Russo-Turkich war:  The Carture of Kars, The Battle of
Adrianopolis, ect.

Another Gorodets painter, Ignaty Mazin, decorated his boards with the scenes
of galloping troikas, visits of the mother-in-law, wedding feasts, hay
mowing. Ignaty Lebedev concentrated on middle-class family life. He painted
interiors of merchants' homes in loving detail, or well-dressed ladies, or
young dandies in stylish coats and narrow trousers.

I would like to stress that each craftsman had his own distinctive manner of
painting, his favourite subjects and is interesting precisely for these
reasons. Gorodets painting is another colourful and original page in the
history of folk art that is filled with joy and holiday spirit.

Its origins are found in the past many centuries old. Thus the Trinity
chronicle mentions Prokhor, a monk from Gorodets, who painted the frescos in
the Annunciation Cathedral in Moscow Kremlin, together with Theophanes the
Greek and Andrei Rublev.

In the collection of the State Fine Arts museum in Nizhny Novgorod there is a
14th-century icon, The Life and Fiery Ascension of Prophet Elija, which was
once the property of the well-known collector Grigory Prianischnikov.

Icon-painting was perfected within the walls of the ancient Gorodets
monastery of St Theodor. In the late 19th and the early 20th century one
Vasily Kozlov kept in Gorodets an icon-painting shop. Icon-painting was also
practised in the village of Kovernino where the family of Zolotarev,
well-known for their icons, went in for the art for several generations. The
skill in icon-painting and manuscript decoration, valued by Old Believers and
fairly common among them, was a major contribution to the local painters'
artistic taste and culture. In the 1920s and 1930s there was virtually no
market for wooden spinning-wheel bottoms, since homespun fabrics could not
compete with the mass-produced variety.

In 1935 painters in Gorodets tried to resuscitate their craft, and artist
Ivan Oveshkov was dispatched to Gorodets from Sergiev Posad to assist them in
their undertaking. There was a type of community studio in the house of
Ignaty Lebedev in the village of Koskovo. Ivan Oveshkov took upon himself the
search for a new sphere of application for Gorodets talents - quite a
herculean task at the time. The craft started to pick up and continued to do
well till the Great Patriotic war of 1941-1945; the second revival of the
unique and sunny art occurred after the war was over.

The honour of breathing new life into Gorodets painting should first of all
go to the oldest hereditary craftsman there, Aristarkh Konovalov. For over 30
years, he was head artist at the "Gorodets Painting" factory. In December
1985, Aristarkh Konovalov and his apprentices L. F. Bespalova, A. V.
Sokolova, F. N. Kosatova, L. A. Kubatkina and Ò. Ì. Rukina were awarded the
Repin Prize for a series of new works in the traditional Gorodets style.

The times have changed, and so have the artists' subjects: Gorodets Old and
New, The Village Fete, The Volga Motives. One of the leaders in subject
updating is doubtlessly Valentina Chertkova whose talent blossomed forth in
works like The Town of Gorodets Celebrating, Russian Pancakes and Merry
Shrovetide.

The local artists' imagination is inexhaustible, like a clear spring in the
woods; and the pageant of more and more dashing troikas, prancing horses,
fabulous birds perched on unearthly flowers never fails to delight people and
add colour to their life.

Today the "Gorodets Painting" factory puts out over 30 kinds of artistic
items, with new articles added all the time: ornamental dishes and panels,
kitchen sets, furniture suites and lots of other handsome souvenirs.

Gorodets painting is rightly rated among the world-famous pieces of applied
art. The best works of the major local artists always attract visitors at art
shows in this country and abroad.

Another folk craft Gorodets can be proud of is needlework, including gold
embroidery. Gorodets needlewomen used a variety of embroidery techniques to
decorate household articles and the best finery. The most popular was
probably the guipure stitch, with a soft, sheer texture of design that was
traced in the fabric by drawing out threads, and gold embroidery that gave
the garment a solemn and majestic air. Gold embroidery took a lot of time and
effort to complete, and it was costly too. A dress embroidered with gold
threads was the dream of every young girl.

The most coveted item was the "dorodovy" (gorgeous) kerchief. It was made of
closely-woven silk - black, blue, dark-red or, occasionally, white, and was
by no means a common thing to own. The woman in possession of one was the
envy of the neighbourhood. Gorodets needlewomen who embroidered those
kerchiefs had customers coming to them from villages miles away.

Today we can only marvel at the beauty and diversity of embroidered garments
carefully preserved in museum collections, and at the skill of their makers.
The gold, silver and colour-silk needlework abounds in flowers and birds
transformed by the embroideress's imaginations into weird, fairy-tale images.

Birds in particular seemed to take their fancy: peacocks, mythical sirins,
but also horses and deer, for all of those were recognised as symbols of
good, wellbeing, rebirth, love and family happiness. To decorate
ecclesiastical or festive dress, needlewomen used beading - an art as complex
as the old Russian pearl embroidery.

Currently in this area too things are beginning to look up. An embroidery
cooperative set up in old Gorodets a while ago has now grown into a big
neddlework factory where the local artistic traditions are religiously
preserved. The emphasis in its work is on gold embroidery and guipure
stitching. The latter's quaint beauty and richness of snow-white tracery is
particularly captivating.

The wealth of tradition in folk embroidery, its artful and intricate
techniques, the rich palette of Gorodets needlewomen, never fail to win them
prizes and acclaim at national and international exhibitions.

The gold thread of Gorodets lives on.

For a better understanding of the ancient town's history, one's best bet is
to go to the local regional ethnography museum which has on display a fine
array of beautiful things, a summary of Gorodets artistic heritage, as it
were. The address is 11, Lenin Street.

The museums's official birthday is February 1920, when it had been moved to a
mansion formerly owned by merchant Oblaev. Its first director was Konstantin
Smirnov, a highly-cultured man educated at the Spiritual Academy of St
Petersburg and the history department of St Petersburg University. After a
visit to the Gorodets museum, G. P. Georgievsky, a scholar of high repute and
curator of Moscow's Rumiantsev museum, wrote: "I cannot but approve of the
first steps made by the museum here; its future seems ensured, for the place
is run with loving care and competence". Konstantin Smirnov also chaired the
Academic archival commission in Gorodets which took up the issues of regional
ethnography and preservation of ancient monuments.

In its seventy years of existence, the museum collection in Gorodets has
reached a scale which by far exceeds that of a run-of-the-mill local
ethnography museum. It boasts rich displays of archaeological finds regularly
replenished by excavation teams of the Archaeological Service of Nizhny
Novgorod whose work in Gorodets is supervised by Tatiana Guseva, MA.

The museum's centrepiece is a showcase with the hand-written, lavishly
illustrated books and other works by Ivan Blinov, a well-known calligrapher
and miniature painter. Its collection of wood carving on elements of house
decor, utensils and gingerbread boards is rich and variable. As is the
collection of samples of Gorodets painting from old spinning-whell boards to
fairly recent works of art.

A visitor will also find there a superb display of the Russian national
costume and embroidered articles.

And finally, there is a most representative collection of toys (Gorodets clay
whistles).

The museum staff, today working under the directorship of Ms Vera Brovina, do
a lot of serious ethnographic research; thus in 1991 they held "Gorodets
Readings", a conference on a variety of archaeological, historical and
cultural issues of old Russian towns. Among other things, the conference
focused on the study of the rich heritage of ancient Gorodets and the
problems of preserving monuments there. The conference was attended by
scholars from different parts of Russia.

The museum staff also make prodigious efforts to revive the crafts and arts
in and around Gorodets. Museum people look for talented craftsmen and give
publicity to their art.

A time has come, and none too soon, for a spiritual renaissance of the
Russian people. And Gorodets is painstakingly rebuilding and restoring its
surviving temples. Thus the Saviour's Church built in 1752 has been handed
over to the local Orthodox Christian community.

Gorodets has preserved a memorable monument to valour and grief - the Church
of the Holy Mother (with churchyard, built in 1824). Its construction was
paid for by the Gorodets public and it commemorated the victory of the
Russian army over Napoleon and Gorodets citizens who had perished in the war.
Now there are religious services conducted there and restoration work is
almost over.

The Church of St Michael the Archangel, built in 1707 on the site of an
earlier temple, has likewise been handed over to believers and is being
restored to its original splendour.

... Roaming the streets of old Gorodets is a facsinating experience, for
there are vestiges of the past everywhere. An attentive observer will see
them in the quaint architecture of merchants' stone houses adorned with
little porches in the festive filigree of iron lacework, drainpipe tops
recalling crowns, and chimneypots of openwork cut-through metal. The past
looks at you from wrought-iron doors and shutters, massive and
indestructible, from heavy bolts and ponderous padlocks that afforded ample
protection for the family riches. In some places they have survived to this
day telling the story of their owners' lives. Every such particular catches
the eye of a strolling visitor. Together those narrow steep driveways,
bridges over deep ravines, wooden peasant houses in their finery of carving
make Gorodets a uniquely picturesque place.

At no time is this more noticeable than on Town Day celebrated here every
autumn. Then Gorodets is at its best, so rich in the handicraft of its
dwellers that one feels sure it still has a long and happy life to live, to
surprise the world by its history and arts.