Around Moscow!

May 15, 2019 rosenn Leave a comment

Around two weeks into the trip, we were assigned to go and find some neighborhood in Moscow, which could be done in pairs or individually. Being that we had only been in Moscow a few weeks, the notion of going anywhere besides the stolovaya and to class alone seemed rather intimidating, so I opted to go with Claire. We then had to pick a neighborhood; we had little guidance in this, so it turned out to be an arduous process, which involved me finding a list of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Moscow and Claire looking up the best places to go with children. We almost had decided on a neighborhood until we realized that it had mostly been converted to a business district, and had to start over. Eventually we settled on Basmany (Басманный район), and decided the best way to tackle it would be to walk from Kurskaya metro station to Baumanskaya, and without finding any further knowledge, we set off. We were first greeted, exiting Kurskaya, by a mural of sorts on the wall of a nearby building, decorated with a dazzling array of colors. Later, when we would return nearly 5 weeks later, we would still be impressed by these unusual pieces of art. But besides this, after more time in Moscow our views on the neighborhood had shifted drastically.

When we first came to Baumanskaya, we had barely been away from a few very prominent landmarks like the Red Square and the vicinity of the university, which can’t really be called a neighborhood. Consequently, seeing streets like this one amazed us: streets with such architecture simply don’t exist in Carson City, and the apartments almost looked as if they could house the entire town of Northfield, which is less ridiculous than it sounds: the population of the neighborhood is around 109,000 while Northfield is around 22,000. Cars zoomed by, trains screeched, and the overall experience was at times even a bit overwhelming. On the other hand, returning 5 weeks later with our praktikantka Alyona, all of this felt normal, and though this was a nicer area, it didn’t seem anywhere near as surprising as it did the first time; rather, just like any other neighborhood in the center of Moscow. Our perspective had changed. This didn’t preclude us from finding other interesting spaces, however.

In an attempt to understand how the people here lived, we ventured away from the street businesses and distant apartments of the Garden Ring and headed towards a park we had staked out. Along the way we passed a modest church. The church presumably was an important gathering place for some of the residents, but Claire hadn’t brought a head scarf so we didn’t attempt to enter. We then found the park, where a helpful sign informed us that it was formed in the 18th century when M. P. Golitsyn (М. П. Голицын) donated part of his estate to the city. Later, a stage was built and some famous Estrada singers sang there in the 1920’s and 30’s. Around us, there were many people, most of them either with children, dogs, or both, and they mostly appeared to be locals. There was a little play area for children; a statue to Bauman, after whom the neighborhood once was named, a Soviet hero; and numerous cafes with surrounding benches. There was also an exhibition declaring Sevastopol to be one of the gems of modern Russia, perhaps betraying something about contemporary politics. It wasn’t the first such exhibition I had seen. Claire talked briefly to a woman with a dogs, who had lived in the neighborhood for multiple generations, and we continued on our way.

Considering that the park was absolutely central to our first trip, it may be surprising that we didn’t go there at all the second time, but we wanted to visit Moscow State Technical University, the one landmark Alyona knew of in the neighborhood and one of the most important universities of its type in Moscow. Founded in 1830, it is the second oldest institute of higher education in Moscow, after our beloved MSU, and offers BS, MS, and PhD’s in science and engineering related fields. The architecture there was quite nice, although the fact that it was right next to a noisy major road off-put especially Alyona a little. We then headed to a cat cafe called Kotissimo at Claire’s behest, but payment was by the hour and I had this blog post to write (among other things to do), so we politely declined and set off for Baumanskaya metro station.

On the return trip both times, we passed by a impressive looking cathedral, which the first time through I stopped into. This was my first time inside a cathedral, so I was duly awed afterwards, and it is a good cathedral. Known as the Yelekhovo Cathedral (Богоявленский собор в Елохове), it was constructed in 1837-45. Passing by, we completely missed the historical importance of the cathedral, but it turns out that in 1938 this very cathedral was briefly the chair of the Russian Orthodox Church, as all all of the other major cathedrals had been closed or destroyed. Also, in the original cathedral built in 1722 Pushkin was baptized. So this also was a very interesting place as well. A great amount of history and importance evidently are embedded in different spaces of the neighborhood, and it was interesting to explore it, although in just two visits we barely scratched the surface.

Ian, St Petersburg

Poetry in Petersburg

May 15, 2019 belli Leave a comment

Defying St. Petersburg’s Pushkin obsession, the “poem” I was reading while in town was not Eugene Onegin but Venedikt Erofeev’s Moscow To The End of The Line, an alcoholic’s lovesong to Moscow and Vladimir. It was after midnight in the hostel. Nick–one of 8 other men in our room–was dead asleep. Behind me Vadim, another guest I’d met the previous day, was clicking away on his laptop. I’d begun to wonder if he had found an elusive Internet connection (WiFi certainly hadn’t been advertised). A red-bearded man drank from a massive can of Zhiguli beer in front opposite me, just to the left of the door.

It was then, long after the lights were out and as I was still reading, that two men entered the room and started taking off suitjackets and shoes. I’d first seen them that morning, surprised to notice one of them was putting on a waistcoat. We were in a hostel where hot water came in twenty second bursts and there was no Internet. I guessed they were businessmen or students on a budget, eager to make a good impression.

Now I saw how much they looked alike; I realized they might even be brothers. They were still standing at the end of the room, undressing, when they began to address the beer drinker and exchange pleasantries. Then, with the red-bearded man lying in his bed, beer in hand, the shorter of the two men turned and moved into the center of the aisle. His “brother” moved to the left and leaned, almost too casually, against a nearby bed and pulled out his phone. The beer drinker sat up a little straighter, and I felt an unmistakable call to pay attention.

Jacket open, waistcoat still on, the man in the center began to speak in precise metre. In disbelief I realized he was reciting poetry (Lermontov, I later learned) as the other two watched.

The tempo was almost hurried. Why shouldn’t it have been? He ran past strophe after strophe without losing the cadence. It was impossible not to be taken in, and I felt my neck tingle. For the next five minutes I beat back the idea that “this is what the travel writers are talking about” and just watch this strange perforamnce.

The main theme was love, but the power of the poem lay in the free metaphors, from sunsets to the sea, stacked one on another. When the poem and my vocabulary coincided, the images drawn were melancholy and lovelorn, their sadness accredited by his husky voice. Not one detail, no matter how beautiful, disrupted the even cadence: the intonation rose in emphasis but fell in time. His voice did not echo but wafted, reaching its greatest tenderness when “love” entered in any form and with each return to that concern I grew more eager to here it again. Once, the phrase “I love you” was repeated twice in a row and I was ready to turn to the videographer and start telling him about love. At the end I had become so transfixed I failed to follow our makeshift salon and applaud the performance.

The scene continued with two more poems: some Mayokovskii, and then a humourous lyric about the history of St. Petersburg. The latter involved turning the whole room–including Nick, asleep on his bed–into a massive map, which is a story unto itself. And after this, an Irish goodbye without further ado as everyone went to sleep without even saying goodnight.

But that first recitation of Lermontov (which one, I didn’t catch), its sudden appearance in a hostel inexplicable, burned so hot I can’t recall anything else. The above description of it was wholly inadequate–as inadequate as the below photo is to describe the opulence of the Winter Palace we would see just 24 hours later. In 6 hours spent between the Hermitage museum and the palace itself, I saw masterpieces by Malevich, Kandinsky, Cezanne, Vrubel, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Signac, Faberge and too many others to name. Notes and photographs can’t do justice to the vastness of Petersburg. All I have are some singular impressions, shown below: a malachite pavilion, the humourously porcine Faberge figures, a statue that caught my in the suburb of Pushkin. And, of course, that unforgettable, impromptu recitation, never photographed.

Visitors inspect a malachite and gold dome in the Hermitage

A plump rock crystal pig by the Faberge firm

A Grecian statue in the Catherine Palace courtyard

Alexis, St Petersburg

St. Petersburg

May 14, 2019 shucka Leave a comment

St. Petersburg, a popular song by Brazilian Girls

Over midterm break, we embarked on an adventure to the “Window to the West”, aka St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg is a dream city. It has a beautiful river running through it, accompanied by numerous canals and bridges. The streets are filled with buildings of different styles and colors, each adding its own unique taste to the overall architecture. As the former capital of Russia, the city has a vast variety of monuments, museums, and palaces. It also has a rich history, filled with triumphs, wars, floods, fires, and the infamous 900-day siege. For these reasons, today, St. Petersburg is no doubt a tourist city.

Moscow is also a tourist city. Frequently, I see tour groups when visiting major museums and monuments downtown. However, St. Petersburg wins in terms of numbers. This was apparent not just from simply the tourists I saw, but from the English signs, hotels, and souvenir shops I came in contact with.

Our hotel the first night in St. Petersburg

In some respects, it is easy to see how tourism may result in a negative reaction while in other ways the tourism industry in the city may have helped highlight important aspects of the place. Because of this, it was hard for me to determine my own opinion of the city. Furthermore, it helped me bring to face my own position in this country as a foreigner studying the language and culture of the country. Tourism is a major industry, bringing money and jobs. Personally, I believe it has a lot of advantages. Economically, it contributes to both private and local incomes by providing jobs in hotels, restaurants, transportation, etc. This dependence then provides incentives for the city to preserve major historical sites and the surrounding environment to better promote the city. Additionally, increasing globalization brings more cross- cultural collaborations. In this way, it promotes awareness for both locals and tourists through these interactions and subsequent understanding between the two.

Undoubtedly, tourism has its consequences. Many more authentic and local places are being replaced by souvenir shops and crowds. This contributes to the strain of local infrastructure and businesses. This is because they suffer as a result of accommodating for the increasing number of tourists. In addition, tourism has environmental problems with the continued and growing waste with the expansion of sites.

On a boat tour in St. Petersburg which interferes with the natural habitat

What sets me apart from other tourists? In what ways am I also damaging the “authenticity” of the country and city that I am staying in? As much as I want to consider myself not just another “tourist” am I just fooling myself?

When visiting another country, you are exposed to different languages, beliefs, food, and environments. In a lot of ways, traveling helps create a more informed, open-minded perspective of the world. It helps to break down stereotypes through first-hand experiences and relationships formed. I believe every visit is an opportunity to learn something new and embrace the complexity and diversity of the world. Even if you do visit a country as a tourist, you are granting yourself an opportunity to meet new people and expand your knowledge. However, to understand a culture, it takes more than just simply visiting a place. It requires effort forming relationships from first hand experiences and understanding between people by learning from each other.

Amelia, St Petersburg

five star hotel

Image May 13, 2019 blairsmitha Leave a comment

Amelia, St Petersburg

monument of the floods of st. petersburg

Image May 13, 2019 blairsmitha Leave a comment

This is a monument we saw in St. Petersburg that marks the water height of the highest floods the city experienced. The highest black bar marks the 1824 flood, which Pushkin wrote about in his poem “The Bronze Horseman”.

Amelia, St Petersburg

canal girls/yellowcard girls (poem about st. petersburg)

Quote May 13, 2019 blairsmitha Leave a comment

we arise unwillingly, like springtime mists

and similarly, seep onto the streets,

float across dead water.

we wipe the sky clean with our hands as if it is a foggy window

and then, like mist, must settle onto a blade a grass, discarded trash, your forehead, you know.

the sun will kill us every day unless we hide in some shady spot and wait till evening.

on the backs of ladybugs and fruit flies we ride triumphant into the night,

defeating death to once again move forward on the endless wheel.

our faerie song is a simple one:

if you see us crawling along the banks of the canal,

smile, raise your hand, and wish us well.

Claire, St Petersburg

The Hostile Hostel: Our Trip to St. Petersburg Through Three Pieces of Art I Saw in the Russian Museum

May 12, 2019 williamsc Leave a comment

On our last day in St. Petersburg, our group visited the State Russian Museum, a collection of all types of Russian art ranging from Rublev icons and folk art to giant Surikov pieces and Soviet art exhibition posters. Here, I explain why these three works of art remind me of my favorite memories from this trip.

How the Mice Buried the Cat

Our experience with public transportation in St. Petersburg was very different from the easy and painless daily experience of riding the Moscow metro. When we stepped off the train platform in St. Petersburg, we were greeted by a giant sign announcing that we had arrived in “the hero-city of Leningrad,” a massive obelisk, and… a closed metro station. Not only was the metro closed, but the entirety of Nevsky Prospect was as well, thanks to the May 1st Workers Day holiday. Thus began a very long trek dragging all our luggage around the city. Perhaps you can begin to tell why these poor mice dragging a heavy cat reminded me of our trip! We attempted to circumnavigate all the street closures to find our hostel, only to finally show up and realize that the hostel didn’t exist.

I looked up this carving later, and discovered that it is based on a fairy tale about a group of mice who all work together to bury a dead cat that has been terrorizing them. After being hauled to its grave, the cat, who wasn’t actually dead, wakes up and eats the mice while they celebrate their victory. This story actually seemed fitting for the saga of our hostel: the first day’s fiasco seemed to be a great blessing, because we ended up being “forced” to spend the night in a five-star hotel instead. Like the foolish little mice, we rejoiced in our good luck, only to have disaster befall us the next day: for the next two nights, we stayed in a hostel that seemed to be beyond the wildest nightmares of our praktikanty. For example, when I first looked around our eight-bunk room, I heard a loud yowling noise. Walking down the stairs, I found an actual catfight going on between two ferrel cats in the litter-filled courtyard of the building, and wished for an army of little mice to come take these noisy feline neighbors somewhere else.

Conductress

As mentioned above, we sorely missed our beloved Moscow Metro. We took public buses to our meeting places most of the time, which I found to be slightly more confusing and a great deal more motion sickness inducing. Conductress illustrates a feature of the St. Petersburg transportation system that we encountered many times: the bus employee whose job it is to go around collecting fare from all the passengers. In our experience, like in the painting, these were mostly women, although they were never as terrifying to interact with as this painting suggests. Still, Conductress did get me thinking about the various Russian women we had encountered during our stay.

We spent the most time, of course, with our praktikanty Alyona and Natasha, who are university students about our age. Occasionally, we were aware of the cultural differences between us, such as when they were horrified by me taking off my sneakers and putting my sock-clad feet on the floor before stepping into slippers (this is, apparently, extremely dirty and dangerous). But in general we had really great, successful interactions with the two of them, and I would often forget we had been raised on opposite sides of the planet.

For example, once we tried to explain the English phrase “wild goose chase” to them as a way that an English speaker might describe our first misadventure with the hostel. Teaching each other idioms in our respective languages has become one of our favorite topics of conversation.

“Ahhh, I understand,” said Alyona at last, “We have a similar phrase in Russian, we say: finding a needle in a haystack!”

Natasha pulled out her phone and started showing me pictures of haystacks, as I didn’t understand the word in Russian. Ironically, this was happening while we were in the midst of a different wild goose chase, this time to find a tiny metal figure dedicated to Daniil Kharms, the absurdist writer much beloved by Russian 205 students.

“No no no,” I said, “we have that phrase too, this is different.”

Finally, we were able to communicate that a wild goose chase is not only long and difficult, like finding a needle in a haystack, but has no positive result at the end. In the end, we didn’t find the figure, but Alyona took the group to a bakery that “anyone visiting St. Petersburg must go to,” and we both ate a slice of speciality cake which she recommended.

My favorite instance of the bond we all formed in St. Petersburg, however, brings me to my last painting, Queue by Alexxei Sundikov.

Queue

This painting, Queue, will definitely remind the my fellow students our trip. We waited in lines for palaces, museums, boat rides, coat checks, bag checks, exits, and even other lines. We waited in lines which, had they been half their length, my family at home would have seen and promptly turned around and gone home. Sometimes, we would see the end of a line while walking along and Diane would have us all get in it, and only after we were in the line would we figure out what we were waiting for. At the Hermitage ballet, Diane taught us the art of waiting in a line: you have to be very pushy and keep your shoulders and elbows in front of the people next to you and behind you, all the while subtlety moving forward even if there’s no movement at the front of the line. But all this standing in lines meant that we had lots of time to hang around and joke with each other, and this leads me to one of our favorite moments of the trip.

Another Russian woman we had the pleasure of spending time with on this trip, in addition to the praktikanty and the “conductresses,” was one of our roommates in the hostel. She was an older woman who immediately began interrogating us when we walked into the room after our night at the ballet. What were our names? Where were we from? What did we study? How much did our ballet tickets cost? Did Amelia believe in God? Where did Amelia buy her face cream? Why didn’t she buy her face cream at the pharmacy? Why did I want to take a shower at night? Why did we presume we could come into the room after 10 pm? Why in God’s name was Amelia eating chips while she was trying to sleep?

After being yelled at least four times for such offenses as walking into the room and getting in bed after the lights had been turned out (“you can go sleep in the streets if you continue causing these scandals tomorrow young ladies!!”), we began to sympathize with Alyona and Natasha’s opinion of the hostel. The next day, as we discussed all this in the many lines involved in visiting the Hermitage, she earned the unflattering nickname of “Babka” among the group.

We all had Crime and Punishment on our mind, having come to St. Petersburg to see the city where Dostoyevsky set his novel. Soon, a running joke started that if we murdered “the Babka,” we could re-live the protagonist Raskolnikov’s crime of killing an old women in a gross St. Petersburg apartment, and thus truly get the “Dostoyevsky experience” we were looking for. Finally, as we waited in a line (which we ended up leaving because it was the wrong line), Natasha (who had mostly remained quiet on the Babka front–we thought she might be a little horrified by the awful joke), piped up with some of our favorite words from the whole trip:

“Kill, kill, kill the Babka!”

This, of course, sent us into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. That night, we returned home late after Babka’s “curfew” with great trepidation, only to find that she wasn’t even in the building. We celebrated by eating snacks in bed and coming in and out of the room as often as we wanted.

These three works of art don’t show the multitude of mighty palaces, picturesque canals, and historical monuments that we were lucky to visit in St. Petersburg. However, each one brings to my mind memories that I will treasure of my time in this city with my fellow Carleton students and our new Russian friends.

Nick, St Petersburg

The Global Big Day in St. Petersburg

Link May 10, 2019 rosenn Leave a comment

I’m standing by a crane, the smell of industrial smoke wafting through the air; a fierce cold breeze carries stinging flakes of snow onto my face. My stomach is rumbling, my ears are nearly totally frozen from the wind and cold. Before me is a tunnel with a clearly marked sign: an image of a pedestrian crossed out: вход запрещён (no entry). An unfamiliar woman approaches me: молодой человек (young man), she says вы идете куда? (where are you going). I barely have the strength to open my mouth, and she proceeds to explain that I can reach the ships by passing the tunnel, through which walking is prohibited. I thank her, and turn around.

This anecdote immediately raises the question: what was I doing? Well this particular day is May 4, or Star Wars day (May the 4^th be with you), but more importantly here this year it was also the Global Big Day. The Global Big Day of what, you may ask. This is the Global Big Day of birding. This still may not make much sense, so for a bit of context, birders have an obsession with big days, which involve trying to find as many bird species as possible in one 24-hour period in a certain region, generally a county or a state. Now, a few years ago some folks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology had the brilliant idea to expand this concept to the world, a coordinated effort wherein all birders across the globe report bird sightings to a website, eBird and they see how many species they can get in a day. More information can be found about it here. So essentially, as a dedicated (and slightly obsessive) eBirder, I had to report as many species as I could on this day.

I was a bit disappointed when I found out we were going to be in Petersburg on the 4^th, since I knew that would mean we had excursions planned, I didn’t know my way around the city as well, and generally there are just fewer birds in Petersburg since it is farther north. However, in a sense I got lucky; free time was at a premium on this trip, but on this day we at least had until noon free, giving me 5 hours to look for birds if I woke up early. If I could last that long. I dragged myself out of the grimy hostel room at 6:30 in the morning, having only a thin down coat, and as soon as I stepped onto the street I realized how cold it was. The wind was strong and snow was falling, though admittedly not hard. This wasn’t the only problem. We were in the center of Petersburg more or less, which was great for getting to the sights but not so good for birds; the only possible habitat near the hostel was one of the ubiquitous canals, but they have concrete along the edges and thus at best support a couple of Black-headed Gulls, a few terns, and a Mallard. My goal was to reach the ocean.

I started to walk down the nearly-deserted wide boulevards of Saint Petersburg, briskly to stay warm and because there were no birds around to see. I tried a spot along the Neva that looked promising in the map, but only found a House Sparrow and some pigeons, and then headed towards the ocean. I didn’t quite realize that I was going to a shipyard. Upon reaching the above-mentioned tunnel, I realized that this was futile, and had to backtrack.

My backup was a place called Ekaterinahof, which looked like it might at least have a few trees (as opposed to in Moscow, trees seem to be quite rare in Petersburg). Ekaterinahof was not at all like Peterhof, which was an estate of Peter the Great on the Baltic Sea, but rather like an ordinary city park. I roamed there for a little while and found some of the usual urban park birds as well as a drake Eurasian Wigeon, and at a nearby canal I located a couple of the standard Petersburg terns (eBird checklists here and here). Although better than the industrial hell I had just left, it was far from exciting, and I was very cold, so quickly retreated into a Teremok, which is a fast-food Russian cafe of bliny and then returned to the hostel with an hour and a half to spare.

The morning wasn’t a total failure, however. I did manage to stumble upon a couple of Petersburg landmarks in my roaming, including the Narva Triumphal Arch, built in 1814 to commemorate the victory over Napoleon; and the Trinity Church, which we had seen from a distance, but not up close. It was certainly better than sitting around the hostel all morning. Plus, I did end the day with 24 species, which is 24 more than anyone else reported in Saint Petersburg on this Global Big Day.

Note: For the record, the Black-headed Gull and Eurasian Wigeon pictures were not taken in St. Petersburg. The Black-headed Gull is from Moscow and the Wigeon is from Iceland. However, the birds I saw on this day looked the same as these birds, just they were less cooperative for pictures.

Alexis, Rus', Suzdal

Small Town Traditions

April 29, 2019 shucka Leave a comment

Living in Russia’s capital, I am exposed to only a glimpse of Russian life and what this vast country has to offer. I am surrounded by a variety of museums, parks, restaurants, cafes, etc. Living in this giant metropolis allows me to explore the history and culture through the vast number of establishments available to me. However, it also limits my own idea of Russia and Russian culture because it is only based on what I see and experience in Moscow. Fortunately for me, I recently embarked on a weekend getaway to two smaller towns, Vladimir and Suzdal. These towns allowed me to enhance my knowledge of Russian life by providing me a different perspective on what life in Russia can look like for people who aren’t living in its capital. It was in these small towns that I appreciated the traditions of Russian culture and the importance of its history.

To begin our journey, we departed on a three-hour train ride from Moscow to Vladimir. Already on the train, I began to notice our descent away from the skyscrapers, cafés, metro, and overall bustling city life. The buildings quickly disappear and are replaced by trees, parks by fields, and apartment buildings by small houses.

It is around evening when we arrive in Vladimir. When I step off the train, I am engulfed by a drastically different atmosphere. The number of people in the station has diminished. Additionally the shops encircling the station are limited. Our hostel is a quick walk from the station. We walk down a dirt path where few cars drive past. Already, I can sense the slower pace of life this town has in comparison to Moscow. When we arrive at our hostel and settle in, I take off my shoes in order to put on my slippers, a Russian custom, and head upstairs to rest.

The next day, we embarked on our adventure to an even smaller town, Suzdal. Our one day there highlighted the importance of small towns and their history through its preservation and traditions. I would describe our time there as a nearly perfect one. To get there, we had to take a thirty minute bus ride from Vladimir. The ride there included amazing views of open fields. It is a very walkable town, with a beautiful river running through it. It is also filled with an assortment of historical buildings and museums. For this reason, Suzdal is a prime example of historical preservation. The town feels as if time has stopped here. From each direction, you can see a religious building, whether that be a church, cathedral, or monastery. This is illustrative of Suzdal’s rich history as the religious center of medieval Rus. For instance, by the 14^th century, it had over 50 churches. Preservation of this town’s history is revealed through its citizens. For example, you can take a horse carriage around the center, shoot a bow and arrow as the Russians once did, and purchase one of the hundreds of antiques available in the city square.

The traditions of this town truly makes it unique. For example, multiple vendors here sell медовуха, а Russian alcoholic drink made with honey. Another unique aspect of this town are its twin churches. Located throughout the town, twin churches are built side by side, a larger one for summer standing alongside a smaller one for winter. In addition, this town offers a domestic museum, which represents what typical huts looked like in Suzdal. In this house are traditional 17^th century furniture and decorations. Here you can see a traditional stove, the most important piece of the house in these huts because of the warmth it brought. It was also where the eldest member of the family slept. Likewise, the museum has icons on display in the corner where they are traditionally kept. Lastly, the bell tower and the ringing of the bells in the city represent the city’s religious traditions and are an important feature of Russian history and culture through the beautiful music they make.

Our day ended here with a walk back to the train station with the sun slowly setting. It was on this walk that I could truly appreciate the small traditions Suzdal preserves in order to illustrate its vast history. Suzdal allowed me to see a different side of Russian life outside its bustling capital. Likewise, it made me appreciate the laid-back notion all small towns seem to have. Suzdal, to me, captured the importance of historical preservation and natural beauty.

Ian, Rus', Vladimir

Old Rus, New Russia

April 28, 2019 belli Leave a comment

Click to View Panorama

A thin tongue of multilane highway runs into town, gleaming with cars, as a cloud of smoke rises in the distance from agricultural spraying. Directly below is a nest of new apartment buildings. And, just peeking out in the right corner, about 100 feet from where you stand, is the Dormition Cathedral–built in the 12th century.

This is the view at the edge of Vladimir: Old Rus and its storied history nestled in a major hub of contemporary Russia. This contrast–in the former capital of the Old Rus, no less–is certainly strange, even jarring. Not shown in the panorama is what I considered the most surprising contrast; directly facing the front of the cathedral is a McDonald’s.

Coffee cup with Russian text — A refreshing mocha from the Vladimir McDonald’s. (PC: Claire Williams)

A golden-domed church with belltower to the left — Cathedral of the Dormition, Vladimir (PC: Hd Ellen)

Within are distinctive frescos by Andrei Rublev, painted in the 15th century. Of special note is his Last Judgement, painted just above the exit to remind believers of the consequences of sin as they leave the church. Rublev’s work is much tamer than most (compared with Michelangelo’s work, being weighed up by God looks like a breeze), but his muted blues and grays are equally arresting. As I began to leave the church, I saw it and froze, and I found it difficult to push myself back out into modern Vladimir.

Fresco with christ surrounded by saints on a blue background — The Last Judgement at The Cathedral of the Dormition, Vladimir (PC: Andrew Gould)

The Dormition, sitting smack dab in the middle of a modern city, was our last stop on our excursion. We started just outside town at the Svyato-Bogolubovskoye Women’s monastery, where the appearance of modernity is less pronounced. The newest buildings are from 19th century, including the blue-domed church, but within are the remains of the palace of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the prince responsible for raising the city to the capital of the northern Rus.

A blue-domed church and matching belltower — Svyato-Bogolubovskoye Women’s Monastery

The palace itself is now a reminder of a much less triumphal history: in a still-extant staircase, Bogolyubsky had his arm cut off by restive nobility before being dragged into the street to die. Though grisly, such an end might not have been wholly unanticipated; Bogolyubsky himself had not lived a peaceful life. What brought Vladimir to prominence was his 1169 sack of Kiev, which had been the heart of Old Rus. Despite overthrowing Kiev, the city where the Rus were baptized in 988, Bogolyubsky eventually became a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was a vision of the Mother of God that inspired him to found the monastery, and the icon within became the central miracle working icon of the Russian state. Here, as I watched the nuns file by, I felt less the contrast between ancient and modern–with the exception of the Soviet era, Bogolyubovo has been in continuous operation–and more the contrasting but inseparable forces of violence and Christianity in the world of the Old Rus.

Click to View Panorama

Between our visits to the monastery and the Dormition cathedral, we saw the last of our three churches: the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, about a 20-minute walk from Svyato-Bogolubovskoye through an idyllic field. Thick-walled to keep it warm or cool as needed–cool enough to see your breath on the hot day we visited–the church both within and without appears distinctly solid, its squat simplicity a reminder that not all Orthodox churches aspire to the theatrical onion domes of Saint Basil’s on Red Square. The interior is simple, just white walls with a couple of mosaic icons in the Byzantine style.

Seeing the history of the Rus today is not a straight look at the world recorded in the Chronicles but a collision between Old Rus and new Russia. One day in Vladimir wasn’t enough to take it all in, but seeing these three churches taught me to be a bit less confident I already know what there is to know about the rich heritage of Rus’ religion and culture. I’ll end with an image I took just two days ago in Moscow on Tverskoi Boulevard. It’s a monument to Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow–and none other than the father of Andrei Bogolyubsky. Even here, amidst the hustle and bustle of downtown Moscow, Old Rus and new Russia collide, and the history of Vladimir is never far away.

Monument of man on horse, right arm extended — Monument to Yuri Dolgoruky