Rybinsk Mologa Reservoir. Rybinsk trip: ghost town, flooded Mologa

Mologa is a flooded city on the Rybinsk Reservoir. You can see and read photographs of the settlement and stories from the lives of residents in our article!

“Holy Rus' is covered with sinful Russia,
And there are no ways to that city,
Where the conscript and the stranger call
Underwater gospel of churches."

Maximilian Voloshin. "Kitezh"

In 1935, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov, and the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Lazar Kaganovich, signed a decree on the construction of waterworks in the area of ​​Uglich and Rybinsk.

For construction, the Volzhsky forced labor camp was organized near Rybinsk, where up to 80 thousand prisoners, including “political” ones, worked.

The rivers were blocked with dams to supply the capital and other cities with water, to build a waterway with sufficient navigable depths to Moscow, and to provide electricity to the developing industry.

Against the background of these global goals, the fate of individual people, villages and entire cities obviously seemed insignificant to the country. In total, during the construction of the Volga-Kama cascade, about 2,500 villages and hamlets were flooded, flooded, destroyed and moved; 96 cities, industrial settlements, settlements and villages. The rivers, which had always been a source of life for the inhabitants of these places, became rivers of exile and sorrow.

“Like a monstrous, all-destroying tornado swept over Mologa,” he later recalled about the resettlement local historian and Mologda resident Yuri Aleksandrovich Nesterov. “Just yesterday, people calmly went to bed, not thinking or wondering that the coming tomorrow would change their destinies so unrecognizably. Everything was mixed up, confused and spinning in a nightmare whirlwind. What seemed important, necessary and interesting just yesterday has lost all meaning today.”

Scheme of the Rybinsk Reservoir. River beds before flooding are marked in dark blue.

When flooded with water in 1941–47 in the lake part of the Rybinsk reservoir, three monastery complexes disappeared under water, including Leushinsky convent, who was patronized by the holy righteous John of Kronstadt (photo by Prokudin-Gorsky).

The Leushinsky monastery was not blown up, and after the flooding its walls rose above the water for several years until they collapsed from waves and ice drifts. Photo from the 50s.

The receding water exposed wide strips of sandy beaches.

Due to the drop in level, stones, pieces of foundations and islands of earth came out of the water here and there. In some places, right in the middle big water, you can walk, the water is no higher than your knees.

Before the city was ordered to be “abolished,” it had about 5 thousand inhabitants (up to 7 in winter) and about 900 residential buildings, about 200 shops and shops. The city had two cathedrals and three churches. In the north, not far from the city, stood the Kirillo-Afanasyevsky Convent. The monastery ensemble consisted of a dozen buildings, including a free hospital, pharmacy and school. Near the monastery in the village of Borok, the future Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev, revered by many as an elder, was born and raised.

As of 1914, Mologa had two gymnasiums, a secondary school, a hospital with 35 beds, an outpatient clinic, a pharmacy, a cinema, then called “Illusion”, two public libraries, a post and telegraph office, an amateur stadium, an orphanage and two almshouses.

The settlers recalled that during the flooding, frightened animals could be seen on the islands formed in the middle of the water, and out of pity, people made rafts for them and felled trees to build a bridge “to the mainland.”

The press of that time described numerous cases of “red tape and confusion, reaching the point of obvious mockery” during relocation. Thus, “Citizen Vasilyev, having received a plot of land, planted apple trees on it and built a barn, and after a while he learned that the plot of land was declared unsuitable and he was given a new one, on the other side of the city.”

And citizen Matveevskaya received a plot in one place, and her house is being built in another. Citizen Potapov was driven from site to site and was eventually returned to his old one. “The dismantling and reassembly of houses is happening extremely slowly, the workforce is not organized, the foremen are drinking, and the construction management is trying not to notice these disgraces,” reports an unknown newspaper from the Mologa Museum exposition. Houses lay in water for several months, the wood became damp, pests infested it, and some of the logs could be lost.

There is a photograph of a document circulating on the Internet called “Report to the head of Volgostroy-Volgolag of the NKVD of the USSR, state security major comrade. Zhurin, written by the head of the Mologsky department of the Volgolag camp camp, state security lieutenant Sklyarov." This document is even quoted Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an article about Mologa. The document says that 294 people committed suicide during the flooding:

“In addition to the report I submitted earlier, I report that the number of citizens who voluntarily wished to die with their belongings when the reservoir was filled was 294 people. These people absolutely all previously suffered from a nervous health disorder, thus total The number of citizens killed during the flooding of the city of Mologa and the villages of the region of the same name remained the same - 294 people. Among them were those who firmly attached themselves with locks, having previously wrapped themselves around blind objects. Methods of force were applied to some of them, according to the instructions of the NKVD of the USSR.”

However, such a document does not appear in the archives of the Rybinsk Museum. And the Mologgan Nikolay Novotelnov, an eyewitness to the flooding, completely doubts the plausibility of this data.

“When Mologa was flooded, the resettlement was completed, and there was no one in the houses. So there was no one to go ashore and cry,” recalls Nikolai Novotelnov. – In the spring of 1940, the dam doors in Rybinsk were closed, and the water gradually began to rise. In the spring of 1941 we came here and walked the streets. The brick houses were still standing and the streets were walkable. Mologa was flooded for 6 years. Only in 1946 was the 102nd mark passed, that is, the Rybinsk Reservoir was completely filled.”

Walkers were selected for resettlement in the villages; they looked for suitable places and offered them to the residents. Mologa was assigned a place on a slip in the city of Rybinsk.

There were no adult men in the family - the father was condemned as an enemy of the people, and Nikolai's brother served in the army. The house was dismantled by Volgolag prisoners, and they reassembled it on the outskirts of Rybinsk in the middle of the forest on stumps instead of a foundation. Several logs were lost during transportation.

In winter, the temperature in the house was minus and the potatoes froze. Kolya and his mother spent several more years plugging the holes and insulating the house on their own, so they had to uproot the forest to plant a vegetable garden. Livestock, accustomed to water meadows, according to the memoirs of Nikolai Novotelnov, almost all the settlers died.

– What did people say about it then? Was the flooding worth the result?

– There was a lot of propaganda. People were encouraged that this was necessary for the people, necessary for industry and transport. Before this, the Volga was not navigable. We crossed the Volga on foot in August-September. Steamboats sailed only from Rybinsk to Mologa. And further along Mologa to Vesyegonsk. The rivers dried up, and all navigation along them ceased. Industry needed energy, this is also a positive factor. But if you look from the perspective of today, it turns out that all this could not have been done, it was not economically feasible.

Maxim Aleksashin, 24 years old, student from Moscow. I came for the weekend so that, while still young, I could test myself in confrontation with nature and look at Mologa. Reached the ruins of Mologa with big land ford (about 10 km).

“At first I regretted going, I thought I wouldn’t make it,” says the unusual guest. The impressions from the ruins are gloomy: “It’s sad, of course, before there was life here, but now there are waves and seagulls.”

At first, Maxim decided to stay on the sandbank overnight to see what it all looked like in the dark and “photograph the stars.” But towards evening it began to get colder, and Maxim had only a short-sleeved shirt and a camping rug for the night. When the journalists working on the island were already taking the boats away, Maxim changed his mind and asked to go with them to the mainland.

Experts are still arguing about the exact number of Volgolag victims. According to experts published on the portal Stalinizm.ru, the mortality rate in the camp was approximately equal to the mortality rate in the country as a whole.

And Kim Katunin, one of the prisoners of Volgolag, in August 1953 witnessed how employees of the Volgolag to be liquidated tried to destroy the personal files of prisoners by burning them in the furnace of the ship. Katunin personally carried out and saved 63 folders of documents. According to Katunin, about 880 thousand people died in Volgolag.

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In August 2014, the city of Mologa (Yaroslavl region), completely flooded in 1940 during the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station, again appeared on the surface due to extremely low level water at the Rybinsk Reservoir. In the flooded city, the foundations of houses and the outlines of streets are visible. Babr suggests recalling the history of 6 more Russian cities that went under water

View of the Afanasyevsky Monastery, destroyed in 1940 before the city was flooded

Mologa is the most famous city, completely flooded during the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir. This is a rather rare case when the settlement was not moved to another place, but was completely liquidated: in 1940 its history was interrupted.

Celebration in the city square

The village of Mologa has been known since the 12th-13th centuries, and in 1777 it received the status of a county town. With coming Soviet power the city became a regional center with a population of about 6 thousand people.

Mologa consisted of about a hundred stone houses and 800 wooden ones. After the impending flooding of the city was announced in 1936, the relocation of residents began. Most of the Mologans settled far from Rybinsk in the village of Slip, and the rest dispersed throughout different cities countries.

In total, 3645 square meters were flooded. km of forests, 663 villages, the city of Mologa, 140 churches and 3 monasteries. 130,000 people were resettled.

But not everyone agreed to voluntarily leave their home. 294 people chained themselves and were drowned alive.

It is difficult to imagine what tragedy these people experienced, deprived of their homeland. Until now, since 1960, meetings of Mologans have been held in Rybinsk, at which they remember their lost city.

After every winter with little snow and dry summer, Mologa appears from under the water, like a ghost, revealing its dilapidated buildings and even a cemetery.

Kalyazin center with St. Nicholas Cathedral and Trinity Monastery

Kalyazin is one of the most famous flooded cities in Russia. The first mention of the village of Nikola on Zhabnya dates back to XII century, and after the founding of the Kalyazin-Trinity (Makaryevsky) Monastery in the 15th century on the opposite bank of the Volga, the importance of the settlement increased. In 1775, Kalyazin was given the status of a county town, and from the end of the 19th century the development of industry began in it: fulling, blacksmithing, and shipbuilding.

The city was partially flooded during the creation of the Uglich hydroelectric power station on the Volga River, which was built in 1935-1955.

The Trinity Monastery and the architectural complex of the Nikolo-Zhabensky Monastery were lost, as well as most of historical buildings of the city. All that remained of it was the bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral sticking out of the water, which became one of the main attractions of the central part of Russia.

3. Korcheva

View of the city from the left bank of the Volga.
On the left side you can see the Church of the Transfiguration, on the right - the Resurrection Cathedral.

Korcheva is the second (and last) completely flooded city in Russia after Mologa. This village in the Tver region was located on the right bank of the Volga River, on both sides of the Korchevka River, not far from the city of Dubna.

Korcheva, early 20th century. General form to the city

By the 1920s, the population of Korchevka was 2.3 thousand people. There were mostly wooden buildings, although there were also stone structures, including three churches. In 1932, the government approved the plan for the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, and the city fell into the flood zone.

Today, on the unflooded territory of Korchev, a cemetery and one stone building have been preserved - the house of the Rozhdestvensky merchants.

4. Puchezh

Puchezh in 1913

City in Ivanovo region. Mentioned since 1594 as the Puchische settlement, in 1793 it became a settlement. The city lived by trade along the Volga, in particular barge haulers were hired there.

The population in the 1930s was about 6 thousand people, the buildings were mainly wooden. In the 1950s, the city's territory fell into the flood zone of the Gorky Reservoir. The city was rebuilt in a new location, and now its population is about 8 thousand people.

Of the 6 existing churches, 5 turned out to be in the flood zone, but the sixth also did not survive to this day - it was dismantled at the peak of Khrushchev’s persecution of religion.

5. Vesyegonsk

City in the Tver region. Known as a village since the 16th century, a city since 1776. It developed most actively in the 19th century, during the period of active functioning of the Tikhvin water system. The population in the 1930s was about 4 thousand people, the buildings were mostly wooden.

Most of the city's territory was flooded by the Rybinsk Reservoir; the city was rebuilt on non-flooded areas. The city lost most of its old buildings, including several churches. However, the Trinity and Kazan churches survived, but gradually fell into disrepair.

It is interesting that they planned to move the city to a higher place back in the 19th century, since 16 of the 18 streets of the city were regularly flooded during floods. Now about 7 thousand people live in Vesyegonsk.

6. Stavropol Volzhsky (Tolyatti)

City in Samara region. Founded in 1738 as a fortress.

The population fluctuated greatly, in 1859 there were 2.2 thousand people, by 1900 - about 7 thousand, and in 1924 the population decreased so much that the city officially became a village (city status was returned in 1946). In the early 1950s there were about 12 thousand people.

In the 1950s, it found itself in the flood zone of the Kuibyshev Reservoir and was moved to a new location. In 1964, it was renamed Tolyatti and began to actively develop as an industrial city. Now its population exceeds 700 thousand people.

7. Kuibyshev (Spassk-Tatarsky)

Volga near Bolgar

The city has been mentioned in chronicles since 1781. In the second half of the 19th century there were 246 houses, 1 church, and by the early 1930s 5.3 thousand people lived here.

In 1936 the city was renamed Kuibyshev. In the 1950s, it found itself in the flood zone of the Kuibyshev Reservoir and was completely rebuilt in a new location, next to the ancient settlement of Bulgar. Since 1991, it was renamed Bolgar and soon has every chance of becoming one of the main tourist centers in Russia and the world.

In June 2014, the ancient settlement of Bulgar (Bulgarian State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve) was included in the list world heritage UNESCO.

The city of Mologa was located 32 km from Rybinsk and 120 km from Yaroslavl in an area rich in water, at the confluence of the Mologa River with the Volga. The width of the Mologa River opposite the city was 277 m, the depth was from 3 to 11 m. The width of the Volga was up to 530 m, the depth was from 2 to 9 m. The city itself was located on a fairly significant and flat hill and stretched along the right bank of the Mologa and the left bank of the Volga.

By the beginning of the 20th century, 34 stone houses and 659 wooden houses were built in Mologa. Of the non-residential buildings, there were 58 stone, wooden - 51. Population in the city: total - 7032, of which 3115 were men, 3917 women.

Victims of electrification

The resolution on the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station (one of the seven Volga-Kama cascade of hydroelectric power stations) was adopted in 1935. According to the original project, the area of ​​the Rybinsk reservoir was to be 2.5 thousand km2, and the height of the water surface above the level of the world ocean was 98 m. In this case, the city of Mologa, located at levels 98-101 m, would remain alive. However, the gigantomania of Stalin's five-year plans forced a reconsideration of plans, and in 1937 it was decided to raise the water level to 102 m. The power of hydroelectric power stations increased by 65%, and the area of ​​flooded land almost doubled. Then the migration of people began. And on April 14, 1941, the last opening of the dam was blocked and the filling of the reservoir began, which lasted about six years. In 1991, this date was recognized as the day of memory of Mologa.

As a result of the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station, an original city with an 800-year history, which was once the center of an appanage principality, disappeared from the face of the earth. It included more than 700 villages and hamlets; unique ancient estates and three monasteries also perished. The flooded meadows, the pride of the Mologo-Sheksninskaya lowland, which had the status of a nursery for seed production of grassland grasses of Union importance, went under water. The area's ecosystem was disrupted and the climate began to change. But most importantly, the fates of 130 thousand people who suddenly lost their homeland changed dramatically. The eviction proceeded in accordance with the order established by Volgostroy. The museum archives contain documents in which people asked to postpone the move until spring in order to be able to dry the logs after rafting and assemble their houses before the onset of cold weather. They received answers that threatened disaster: “You are talking anti-Soviet.” “Volgostroy” was under the jurisdiction of the NKVD and, according to official data, during the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric facility, 150 thousand prisoners were killed, convicted mainly under Article 58, the anti-Soviet article.

However, there were other victims of the great construction. In materials round table on the problems of the Mologa region, which took place in June 2003, there is a reference to an archival document according to which 294 residents of Mologa chose death over forced relocation, chaining themselves or locking themselves in flooded houses.

For the sake of objectivity, it is worth saying that some migrants left for new places with pleasure. For example, those who lived near the flooded meadows of the Mologo-Sheksninskaya lowland, which was regularly subject to flooding. The majority was consoled by the thought that this was necessary for the good of the country. It’s hard to move to an empty place, it’s painful to leave homes, farms, and the graves of relatives, but there is no other way out! “Our hydroelectric power station supplied Moscow with electricity throughout the war,” says Nikolai Novotelnov, who was a representative of the Molgostan community for 30 years. - The Volga has become navigable. It was important then."

hydroelectric power station

Hydroelectric power station complex in the Volga-Kama river basin. During their construction, seven reservoirs were formed: Ivankovskoye, Uglichskoye, Rybinsk, Gorky, Cheboksary, Kuibyshevskoye and Volgogradskoye. Many cities were flooded, some partially and some completely. The bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kalyazin stands as a monument to the lost lands in the middle of the Uglich reservoir. Two-thirds of this city fell into the flood zone, including the Trinity Monastery, once the largest on Tver land. The bell tower was saved from complete destruction by the decision to adapt it for paratrooper training. Later, an island was built around it to protect it from destruction caused by water and ice drift.

Round glass of a submarine porthole. Behind it is a white stone temple, leaden waters closed over the neat onions of the domes. This model is one of the exhibits of the Mologsky Region Museum in the city of Rybinsk. In reality, however, no buildings remained at the bottom of the reservoir, only piles of stones. What they were unable to disassemble and move to a new location before the flooding, they tried to blow it up. They did not have time to destroy 20 of the 140 churches in the doomed region. Long years they emerged from the water as lonely ghosts, collapsing gradually and steadily. But the flooded city does not want to accept its fate. In dry years, the water level in the artificial lake drops, exposing the skeletons of houses, preserving the traces of ancient streets that can once again be walked. And those people who managed to keep in their hearts the memory of their small homeland pass by.

The Rybinsk Reservoir occupies 13% of the territory Yaroslavl region, in addition partially capturing Vologda and Tverskaya.

Museum

The Mologa Region Museum is located in the building of the former chapel of the Afanasyevsky Convent. The monastery itself, located 3 km from the city of Mologa, was lost during the flooding. The chapel built on his Rybinsk courtyard was able to survive. When the museum opened in 1995, it was consecrated again. Where generations of Mologans who came to Rybinsk prayed, you can still light a candle in front of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow.”

The basis of the museum collection was made up of exhibits evacuated from the Mologsky Museum of Local Lore in 1936. Much was given by the Mologans themselves and their descendants. Another source of income was expeditions to the flooded city, organized by the founder of the museum, Nikolai Alekseev, in those years when Mologa was opening, emerging from the waters pacified by drought.

From Rybinsk to Mologa - 32 km. They go there on a specially rented ship, then sail on boats. “Imagine: people who are over 80 years old are moving into lifeboats from the high side of the ship. It’s shaking - the wind there is terrible,” says the director of the museum.

There was a monastery and several churches in the city. Mologa was famous not only as a trade and transport hub of the country, but also as a producer of butter and cheese, which was even supplied to London. There were 11 factories in the city: a distillery, a bone mill, a glue brewery and brickworks s, a plant for the production of berry extracts, etc., there were a treasury, a bank, a telegraph, a post office, and a cinema.

After the revolution. In the 1930s, there were more than 900 houses in the city, about a hundred of which were made of stone, and there were 200 shops and stores in and around the shopping area. The population did not exceed 7 thousand people.

On September 14, 1935, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution to begin construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes. The city of Mologa lay at 98-101 m above sea level and, thus, fell into the flood zone.

In the fall of 1936, the young people were informed of the upcoming resettlement. Local authorities insisted on relocating about 60% of the city's residents and removing their homes by the end of the year, despite the fact that it was impossible to do so in the two months remaining before the freezing of Mologa and the Volga. In addition, the floated houses would remain damp until the summer. It was not possible to implement this decision - the resettlement of residents began in the spring of 1937 and lasted four years. By the spring of 1941, the city (according to TSB, recently numbered 6,100 inhabitants) was empty, all buildings had been moved or destroyed. The city area was finally flooded in 1946. Those. there was a gradual increase in water level over 6 years.

Most of the Mologans were settled near Rybinsk in the village of Slip, which for some time was called Novaya Mologa. Some ended up in neighboring regions and cities, in Yaroslavl, Moscow and Leningrad. It was not only Mologa that went under water. The following were flooded: the ancient village of Breytovo, ancient villages and temples located along the former banks of Mologa were flooded, in particular, the village of Borisogleb - the former Kholopy Gorodok, first mentioned in the 12th century, the Yugskaya Dorofeevsky Hermitage, the Leushinsky St. John the Baptist Convent, and majestic five-domed cathedral.

In August 2014, the region experienced low water, the water receded and entire streets were exposed: the foundations of houses, the walls of churches and other city buildings are visible. This phenomenon gave rise to many rumors, myths and legends.

Don’t believe the pictures on the Internet: here neither the skeletons of bell towers nor church chapters, no ruins. The only building in the city that survived the flooding was the prison. According to old guidebooks, it remained on the island until the end of the 1970s.

On the site of the high bank of the Mologa River, where the city’s cathedrals stood, there is a sandbank covered with bricks. If you wander around it, you can stumble upon a tombstone buried in the sand, find a fragment of a cast-iron grate and nothing more.

MYTHS:

There are a lot of such pictures. Not only the “yellow press”, but also serious news portals dabble in Photoshop.
The city of Mologa is called the Russian Atlantis and the city is a ghost. There are many myths that we were introduced to at the Mologa Museum.

1. For example, that residents tied themselves to the porch of the house and went under the water along with the house. This is fiction. At the time of the flooding, all houses were transported or destroyed, because... construction garbage would damage the dam. The eviction of residents took place in 1936/37. The flooding lasted for 6 years (1941/47), i.e. the water came very slowly. No man could stand to stand chained for several years, waiting for the flood. Although there is such a document on the Internet:

Many researchers doubt the authenticity of this document. None of the researchers saw the original of this document with their own eyes. Copies that can be found on the Internet, as they say, will not fit the case. In addition, the flooding did not occur instantly - the reservoir was filled gradually, from April 1941 to 1947. Therefore, “fasten yourself with locks” in order to die in own home, and not on someone else's side, is quite difficult. But you can drown if you jump into the water of a filled reservoir.

"The most high buildings cities and churches were razed to the ground. When the city began to be ravaged, the residents were not even explained what would happen to them. They could only watch as Mologa-paradise was turned into hell. In this nightmare, residents were told to urgently pack up, take only the essentials and go for resettlement. Then the worst thing began. 294 Mologans refused to evacuate and remained in their homes. Knowing this, the builders began flooding. The rest were forcibly taken away... Whole families and one at a time came to the banks of the reservoir to drown themselves. Rumors spread about mass suicides, which reached Moscow. It was decided to evict the remaining Mologans to the north of the country.”

This myth is also dubious. There are many documents about the removal of houses and property to new places; these documents are in the museum.

Young people, part of it, gladly changed their place of residence from provincial Mologa to Moscow, Leningrad and Yaroslavl. The area was famous for its swampiness and abundance of mosquitoes, and the city was not distinguished by its amenities or economic well-being.

Few people thought about cultural heritage in those days. But most residents perceived it all as a tragedy. After all, this is their home, their homeland with the graves of their ancestors. Together with Mologa, about 700 villages and hamlets, hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile arable land, famous water meadows, pastures, green oak groves, forests, monuments of antiquity, culture, and the way of life of distant ancestors went under water.

2.“For one mention of it (Mologa), even just as a place of birth, one could end up in a camp for 10-25 years.” Newspapers wrote about the filling of the Rybinsk reservoir and showed newsreels. The place of birth of “Mologa” was written in the passport. Mologa, as a place of birth, appears in the lists of those killed at the front. The ban on mention is also rumors and unverified information. Although they didn’t jail you for anything in the old days. They could also be arrested for spreading rumors from point 1. Be that as it may, until the early 60s, the Mologans did not openly mention their lost homeland.

3. “The level of the reservoir fluctuates, and approximately once every two years Mologa emerges from the water. Street paving, house foundations, and a cemetery with tombstones are exposed. And the Mologans come: to sit on the ruins of their home, to visit their father’s graves.”

As already mentioned above (see photo), there are no streets or graves left to sit on, just as it is impossible to determine the location of the “native” houses. Especially if we assume that last people who remember where their home and grave in the cemetery are, cannot possibly be younger than 1931-1935. Those. at the time of shallowing (2014) they should be 79-85 years old. It is doubtful that they can not only navigate the terrain exposed in the water, but also independently reach their homeland. But young and curious tourists, including descendants of Mologans, visit the sandbank with pleasure.

MOVIE:

“Mologa. Russian Atlantis" film 2011. Filmed on the basis of the above dubious Internet document about 294 dead. Nothing to do with history, just cinema.

MEMORY:

The memory of the city and nearby settlements remains only in photographs. It’s a pity for the lost churches, monasteries, houses, it’s a pity for the residents who lost their homeland. But nothing can be returned back. Now on the site of Mologa the waters of a huge reservoir splash.

In November 2003, a monument to the Mologa settlers, who left their homes during the construction of the hydroelectric power station from 1936 to 1941, and there were about 150 thousand people, appeared on the shore of the Rybinsk reservoir in Breytovo. The chapel, built with donations, was named “Our Lady of the Waters.”

THE SCARY TRUTH:

The tragedy of socialist reconstruction Upper Volga— these are the broken destinies of people expelled from centuries-old territory. These are thousands of people who died from unbearable conditions and the work of prisoners (Volgolag) during the construction of a hydroelectric power station. Experts are still arguing about the exact number of Volgolag victims. According to the most terrible data, about 880 thousand people found their death in Volgolag. Against the background of global goals, the fate of individual people, villages and entire cities obviously seemed insignificant to the country.

The Rybinsk archive contains hundreds of letters, where the same request is repeated: not to be evicted before winter, to be allowed to live in the old place until spring. The most incomprehensible thing about these letters is the dates. We are talking about the winter of 1936/37. Filling of the reservoir began only in 1941 and ended in 1947. No one understood why such a rush was needed. More real story the beginning of the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir, however, without mentioning the thousands of prisoners, Volgolag presented in the book, who personally participated in the construction of the Rybinsk waterworks: “I still remember how rafts of settlers floated along Mologa, Sheksna and Yana. On the rafts are household utensils, livestock, huts.” The Rybinsk man-made sea is a living monument to the victims of the Volgolag, a reminder of the Stalinist regime, the Gulag system, which was only declared a crime against the people by the end of the 20th century.

People's resistance was slowly but surely broken. The relocation has begun. Walkers were selected for resettlement in the villages; they looked for suitable places and offered them to the residents. Mologa was assigned a place on a slip in the city of Rybinsk. And immediately the residents of the city and villages were divided into “displaced people”, “evictees” and “homeless people”. The strong huts of the “migrants” suitable for moving were rolled out log by log, each log was numbered to make it easier to reassemble the house later. They were transported on carts. Those who did not have time to transport their houses on dry land floated them down the river, log by log. They built rafts and moved houses across the water to their designated places of residence. Old Mologa huts with numbered logs still stand in villages near Rybinsk.

Numerous cases of “red tape and confusion, reaching the point of outright bullying” during relocation were described. But the worst situation was with the “street children” - old men and women who had no relatives and were unable to move independently.

The settlers recalled that during the flooding, frightened wild animals could be seen on the islands formed in the middle of the water, and out of pity people made rafts for them and felled trees to build a bridge “to the mainland.”
The newspaper “Big Volga” in its report “On the Rybinsk Sea” dated May 19, 1941 wrote:
“Forest birds and animals are retreating step by step to higher places and hillocks. But water from the flanks and rear bypasses the fugitives. Mice, hedgehogs, stoats, foxes, hares and even moose are driven by the water to the tops of the hillocks and try to escape by swimming or on the floating logs, peaks and branches left from cutting down the forest.

Real photos during low water:

And here are the reports of travelers who visited Mologa during the decline in water.

Perhaps the statement that a Russian person most often lives with his past rather than with his present or future is not so far from the truth, a member of the Union of Writers of Russia once wrote Boris Sudarushkin in his magazine "Rus". He wrote this in connection with the eternal theme for Rybinsk of the flooding of Mologa during the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir. It seems that everything that can be said about the era of the great construction projects of communism has been said about the death of Mologa. Russian Atlantis, ghost town, dead city, the hidden page of Russian tragedy - no matter how Mologa is called in literature. Despite the wide popularity of this story, there are no clear assessments of the events of the first half of the twentieth century. And obviously it won't.

Story

In the local history monograph Peter of Crete“Our region. Yaroslavl province. The Experience of Rodnoverie,” published in 1907, tells the story of Mologa:

“As a populated place, Mologa was mentioned in the 13th century... Germans, Lithuanians, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Italians came here to trade... Visiting traders exchanged their goods here for raw goods, mainly for furs. Even at the end of the 16th century, the fair at Serf Town was considered the most important in Russia; later its value began to decline. At the beginning of the 17th century, the inhabitants of Mologa suffered a lot from the Cossacks, Poles and Lithuanians (especially in 1609 and 1617).”

The time of settlement of the area where the city of Mologa was located is unknown. In chronicles, mention of the Mologa River first appears in 1149, when Grand Duke Kiev Izyaslav Mstislavich, fighting with the prince of Suzdal and Rostov Yuri Dolgoruky, burned all the villages along the Volga all the way to Mologa. In 1321, the Molozhsk Principality appeared, which during the reign of Ivan III became part of the Moscow Principality.

From the inventory compiled between 1676 and 1678 by steward Samarin and clerk Rusinov, it follows that Mologa was at that time a palace settlement, it had 125 households, including 12 belonging to fishermen who, together with the fishermen of Rybnaya Sloboda, fished in the Volga and Mologa red fish, delivering annually to the royal table three sturgeon, 10 white fish, and 100 sterlet.

At the end of the 1760s, Mologa belonged to the Uglich province of the Moscow province, had a town hall, two stone and one wooden parish churches, and 289 wooden houses. In 1777, the ancient palace settlement of Mologa received the status of a district town and was included in the Yaroslavl province. The coat of arms of the city of Mologa was approved on July 20, 1778. In the complete collection of laws it is described as follows: “ Shield in a silver field; part three of this shield contains the coat of arms of the Yaroslavl governorship (on the hind legs there is a bear with an ax); in two parts of that shield, part of an earthen rampart is shown in an azure field; it is trimmed with a silver border or white stone».

IN late XIX century, Mologa was a small town that came to life during the loading of ships, and then plunged into the rather boring life of county towns. From Mologa began the Tikhvin water system, one of three connecting the Caspian and Baltic Sea. More than 300 ships were loaded with grain and other goods annually at the city pier, and almost the same number of ships were unloaded.

There were 11 factories in Mologa, including a distillery, a bone mill, a glue and brick factory, and a plant for the production of berry extracts. There was a monastery, several churches, a treasury, a bank, a telegraph office, a post office and a cinema here.

There were three libraries in the city, nine educational institutions, two parish schools - one for boys, the other for girls, the Alexander Orphanage, one of the first gymnastics schools in Russia, which taught bowling, fencing, cycling, and carpentry.

Soviet power was established in the city on December 15, 1917. Supporters of the Provisional Government did not particularly resist, so no blood was shed.

In 1931, a machine and tractor station was organized in Mologa. The following year, a zonal seed-growing station and industrial plant were opened. In the 1930s, the city had more than 900 houses, about a hundred of them made of stone, and almost seven thousand people lived here.

The Mologans were announced about the upcoming resettlement in the fall of 1936. The authorities decided to resettle more than half of the city's residents and remove their homes by the end of the year. It was not possible to fulfill the plan - the resettlement of residents began in the spring of 1937 and lasted four years.

On the lands condemned to flooding, there were 408 collective farms, 46 rural hospitals, 224 schools, and 258 industrial enterprises.

According to official data, about 300 people refused to leave their homes during the resettlement. In the report of the head of the Mologsky department of the Volgolag camp camp, state security lieutenant Sklyarov: “In addition to the report I previously submitted, I report that the citizens who voluntarily wished to die with their belongings when filling the reservoir are 294 people...”

The city finally disappeared in 1947 when the filling of the Rybinsk Reservoir was completed.

Big Volga

On April 1, 1936, an interview with the head of Volgostroy was published in the newspaper “Severny Rabochiy” under the heading “Big Volga” Yakov Rapoport. The interview is accompanied by the following editorial introduction:

“There are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not take. How long ago did the construction of Dneprostroy, Kuznetskstroy, the Moscow metro and many other, no less grandiose problems seem like a dream? The dream has come true. Dozens of industrial giants have entered into operation at existing enterprises. Under the leadership of the great architect of socialism - Comrade Stalin - our country is solving enormous problems. One of these problems is the Big Volga.”

Rapoport explained what the Big Volga is: to connect the Volga route with the Dnieper through the Oka and tributaries of the Dnieper, to connect the Volga with the Black, Azov and Caspian seas: « Connecting rivers and seas, the Bolsheviks' hands reach the Arctic Ocean. The White Sea Canal plus the expanded Mariinskaya system, plus the Volga-Moscow Canal will make it possible to connect the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean with the southern seas».

Almost all of these promises were fulfilled. Rapoport kept silent about only one thing - that all this gigantic work was carried out by the labor of thousands of Gulag prisoners.

The most interesting thing in Rapoport’s interview is the information about the first option for building a power plant on the Volga near Yaroslavl, which included flooding the city of Uglich. The second option, with the flooding of Mologa, was sent by a group of young engineers personally to Stalin. By that time, all calculations for the Yaroslavl hydroelectric power station were completed, and construction had already begun. It is not difficult to imagine how the authors of the second option felt while waiting for a response from the Kremlin - at that time, such an initiative could easily have landed them in the category of enemies of the people. However, this time it happened differently. Here's how Rapoport talked about it:

"With the usual Comrade Stalin sensitivity, he was attentive to the project of young engineers. On his initiative, a secondary examination was carried out, which confirmed the validity and enormous advantage of the new project.”

With all his sympathy for the fate of Mologa, Sudarushkin believes that the flooding of Uglich would have had even more tragic consequences for the history and culture of Russia. But that’s not all - according to the first project, flooding threatened Rybinsk too! At least this is what Rapoport, who had a good understanding of the situation at that time, spoke about.

A more realistic history of the beginning of the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir, however, also without mentioning the thousands of Volgolag prisoners, was presented in the book “ Man-made sea» Seraphim Tachalov, who personally participated in the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex: “I still remember how rafts of settlers floated along Mologa, Sheksna and Yana. On the rafts are household utensils, livestock, huts.” And then the author cites a conversation with a displaced woman: “After all, happiness, my dear, lives not only in parental home. I think it won’t be any worse in the new place. Our place is unenviable - every spring there were floods. The underground is in water almost all the time, so there is nowhere to store supplies. If you need to go to the store, get on the boat. The cattle moo in povet. They didn’t take their eyes off the guys - they were about to drown... And the harvest itself was two or three, there wasn’t enough of our own bread until Easter. You fight and fight, but it’s of little use.”

Watery grave

In 1991, the Upper Volga book publishing house, where The Man-Made Sea appeared ten years earlier, published the book Yuri Nesterov « Mologa - memory and pain", in which the history of the Rybinsk Reservoir is presented in a tragic light.

The next year after the book was published, the author died; an obituary signed by the initiative group of the Mologa community was published in the newspaper “Rybinskie Izvestia” on June 6, 1992, under the heading “Chronicle of the Mologa Region”. It said, in particular, that Yuri Aleksandrovich Nesterov was a career military man, a reserve colonel. “In 1985, I began to study the history of my hometown of Mologa and the entire Moloy-Sheksninsky interfluve. He was especially interested in issues of resettlement, everyday life and life of Mologans in new places.”

Yuri Nesterov was one of the initiators of the creation of the Mologa Museum in Rybinsk. The book “Mologa - Memory and Pain” was published on the 50th anniversary of the flooding of his hometown by the Rybinsk Reservoir. It contains documents and the following figures: about 150 thousand Volgolag prisoners worked on the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex; one hundred people a day died from disease, hunger and “hellish” working conditions. “Today on the site of Mologa there is a huge watery grave,” wrote Yu.A. Nesterov. “But maybe, like the legendary Kitezh, it will reveal itself to people before the Last Judgment Seat of Christ?” After all, the Last Judgment has been going on for a long time, because our life is the Last Judgment itself. Nowadays, science often refutes the correctness of previous decisions, and if the low energy output of the Rybinsk cascade puts lowering the level of the reservoir or its descent on the agenda, then Mologa will indeed be able to rise out of the water again someday.”

On August 12, 1995, the museum of the city of Mologa was inaugurated in Rybinsk - a tiny island of the disappeared culture of Russian Atlantis.

Russian Pompeii

“Forest birds and animals are retreating step by step to higher places and hillocks. But water from the flanks and rear bypasses the fugitives. Mice, hedgehogs, stoats, foxes, hares and even moose are driven by the water to the tops of the hillocks and try to escape by swimming or on the floating logs, peaks and branches left from cutting down the forest.

Many forest giant moose more than once found themselves in spring floods and floods of Mologa and Sheksna and usually swam safely to the shores or stopped in shallow places until the flood waters subsided. But now the animals cannot overcome the flood of unprecedented size in the flooded area.

Many moose, having stopped trying to escape by swimming, stand up to their bellies in the water in shallower places and wait in vain for the usual decline in water. Some of the animals are saved on rafts and races prepared for rafting, living for several weeks. Hungry moose have eaten all the bark from the logs of the rafts and, realizing the hopelessness of their situation, allow people in boats to come within 10-15 steps..."

...As a result of the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir, 80 thousand hectares of floodplain meadows, 70 thousand hectares of arable land, more than 30 thousand hectares of highly productive pastures, and more than 250 thousand hectares of forests went under water. 633 villages disappeared and ancient city Mologa, the ancient estates of the Volkonskys, Kurakins, Azancheevs, Glebovs, the Ilovna estate, which belonged to the Musin-Pushkins, the Yugskaya Dorofeev Hermitage, three monasteries, several dozen churches. Some churches were blown up before the flooding, others were abandoned, and they were gradually destroyed under the influence of water, ice and winds, serving as beacons for ships and a resting place for birds. The bell tower of the Church of St. John Chrysostom was the last to collapse in 1997.

130 thousand people were resettled from the area subject to flooding.

From the essay Vladimir Grechukhin « In the capital of Russian Atlantis»:

“We have been walking back for a long time through the dark sand and silt desert. We don’t talk much, it’s still to come. Each of us is still in Mologa. Both in thought and feeling. And the realization quietly comes that the meeting with the murdered City, it seems, not only enveloped him in misfortune, but also endowed him with a certain sad and proud strength. That there is something in these “Russian Pompeii” that stopped your thoughts on the last brink of bitter powerlessness, and enlightened your gaze and strengthened you, like a prayer. So what touched you so bitterly and beneficially in the murdered City? And you realize in shock that, probably, his Soul. That the City was killed, but the Soul seems to be alive. And perhaps, in this place of conciliar Russian suffering, Russia has found another holy place of Russian new martyrdom? And is it worth looking for more important holy places in the Yaroslavl region, if there is an amazing case here when an entire city was torn out from its native life and, without guilt, was punished with eternal exile? Is it not because of the awareness of the holiness of the deserted hills of Mologa that the feeling of high and proud sad strength does not leave me? Is it not from her that the soul becomes so passionately thoughtful? Isn’t it because of her that after the sermon you feel sadly bright?”

November 6 at 17.20 on Channel One - premiere of a film about mysterious story the flooded Russian city of Mologa