Gorodets is a city (since 1171) in the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia. The city is located on the left bank of the Volga (Gorkovskoe reservoir), 53 km above Nizhny Novgorod and 14 km northeast of the Zavolzhye railway station (the terminal station of the electrified line from Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod hydroelectric station).
The city is located on the left bank of the Volga (Gorky reservoir), 53 km above Nizhny Novgorod and 14 km northeast of the Zavolzhye railway station (the terminal station of the electrified line from Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhegorodskaya hydroelectric power station).
Museums
Gorodets is known not only as the oldest city in the
Nizhny Novgorod region, the center of folk crafts (woodcarving,
painting), but also as a city-museum. It is the only city in the
region that has a Museum Quarter in its historical part. The central
place in it is occupied by the local history museum - one of the
first regional museums of the Nizhny Novgorod region (along with the
Vetluzhsky), which arose in 1918. Since 1920 he has occupied the
mansion of the merchant I.P. Oblayev the Younger on the street.
Lenin, 11 (former Merchant). The collection of the museum includes
about 16 thousand items of storage of the main fund. Its collection
of archaeological antiquities of the XII-XIV centuries, which
includes a princely helmet of the XIII-XIV centuries decorated with
silver and gold, as well as a hanging lead seal of Prince Alexander
Nevsky, is of all-Russian significance. In April 1991, on the basis
of the museum, the All-Russian conference "Gorodets Readings" was
held for the first time, which later became a traditional regional
scientific forum with the participation of leading archaeologists,
historians, archivists, specialists in the protection of ancient
monuments, and since 2016 the museum is a co-organizer and a
platform for holding a traditional seminar "Archeology of the Nizhny
Novgorod Volga region and adjacent territories". In 2007, on the
basis of the local history museum, the Gorodetsky historical and
artistic museum complex was created, which has several more museums
located next to it and on the neighboring ones - Andrei Rublev
Street, Revolution Embankment and Alexandrovskaya Embankment:
Children's Museum on Kupecheskaya
Museum "Gorodetsky
Gingerbread": opened on July 26, 2008 in the main house of the
former mansion of the merchant S.F. Tryapkin, which is an
architectural and urban planning monument of federal significance.
The building is located at the very beginning of the museum quarter,
at the crossroads of Lenin and Kirov streets. The museum tells about
the history of the gingerbread business and modern gingerbread
production. The Gorodetsky Gingerbread Museum is the second (after a
similar Tula museum) dedicated to the history of sweet craft.
Museum "House of Countess Panina"
Museum "Terem of the Russian
Samovar": opened on September 8, 2007 in the Grishaev estate, which
is an architectural monument of the 19th century. The basis of the
museum's collection was the private collection of Nikolai
Fyodorovich Polyakov, head of the Zemsky Assembly of the Gorodetsky
Municipal District. The collection includes over 400 samovars and is
considered the largest in Russia. In September 2017, N.F. Polyakov's
samovar collection was donated to the city.
City of masters
Museum "Gallery of Good"
In 2016, a private museum "Gorodets on
the Volga" was opened, in the exposition of which there is a
collection of old coins, items of clothing and everyday life of
officials of the pre-revolutionary era, a collection of paintings by
contemporary artists.
Gorodets in the Middle Ages
Gorodets is one of the oldest
Russian cities on the Middle Volga; it arose in the 2nd half of the
12th century as a fortress to protect the borders of Vladimir Rus
from the campaigns of the Volga Bulgars.
In popular and local
history literature, there is a widespread point of view about the
foundation of Gorodets in 1152 by Yuri Dolgoruky, which was also
adopted by a number of official publications. However, most scholars
attribute the foundation of the city to the reign of Andrei
Bogolyubsky. The history of Gorodets dates back to 1171, when it was
mentioned in the Laurentian Chronicle in connection with the
campaign of Prince Mstislav Andreyevich against the Volga Bulgaria.
Archaeological excavations also allow us to attribute the emergence
of the city to the second half of the 12th century.
In
February 1238, the city was burned by Batu's troops, but quickly
rebuilt and between 1263 and 1282 it was the capital of the Gorodets
principality. November 14 (Art. Style) 1263 on the way from the
Golden Horde in Gorodets, the great Vladimir Prince Alexander
Yaroslavich Nevsky died. According to church tradition, on the eve
of his death, he took monastic vows at the Fedorov Monastery with
the name of Schema monk Alexy.
After the death of Alexander
Nevsky, his third son, Andrei Alexandrovich, received the Gorodets
principality as an inheritance and ruled over it until his death.
Prince Andrey was the initiator of violent civil strife in
Vladimir-Suzdal Rus in the 1280-1290s. The last ten years of his
life he occupied the throne in Vladimir. He died on July 27, 1304,
was buried in the church of Mikhail the Archangel Gorodets (not
preserved).
In the second half of the XIV century, it was
part of the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod Grand Duchy (founded in 1341),
was the center of the appanage reign. A significant role in the
political life of the region at that time was played by the Gorodets
prince Boris Konstantinovich from the dynasty of the Suzdal-Nizhny
Novgorod grand dukes. Gorodets is known as the birthplace of the
famous icon painter Elder Prokhor from Gorodets - the mentor of
Andrei Rublev.
In December 1408, it was burned by Edigey,
after which it left the political map of Russia, for a long time
being called Empty Gorodets.
About 1469 Afanasy Nikitin
visited the city.
In 1565, after Tsar Ivan the Terrible
divided the Russian state into oprichnina and zemstvo, the city
became part of the latter.
Gorodets in modern times
Until
1700, the Volga changed its course and moved away from the center of
Gorodets. It reappeared as a craft village in the late 16th - early
17th centuries. Gorodets was a volost village of Yuryevets, then -
Balakhninsky districts.
Since the end of the 18th century it
has been known as the center of wooden shipbuilding, grain trade,
baking of printed gingerbread, as a point of sale for handicrafts
made of wood - the so-called "chips" (wooden dishes, spinning
wheels, etc.). According to contemporaries, in winter the Saturday
bazaar in Gorodets was not inferior to many fairs, covering several
nearby counties of the Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir and Kostroma
provinces with its influence.
The second half of the 19th and
the beginning of the 20th centuries was the heyday of Gorodets.
Remaining a volost village, Gorodets acquired the features of a rich
merchant town. There were two iron foundries and mechanical
factories, shipyards for the construction of barges in Zaton and
Nizhnyaya Sloboda, a steam mill, tanneries and timber mills, and
gingerbread establishments. With the money of merchants-benefactors
in Gorodets, an orphanage, public schools, men's and women's
gymnasiums, an all-estate club (with an auditorium for a theater and
a library), a voluntary fire brigade, a sobriety society, and much
more were set up.
At this time, Gorodets was a large trade
center (in 1890, goods arrived in it along the Volga, 2,258 thousand
poods, and 525 thousand poods were sent), and the main trade item
was bread. There were three Orthodox churches in the village, as
well as an Old Believer chapel (Gorodets was one of the main centers
of the priestly Old Believers).
The newest history of
Gorodets
In 1921, the center of the Balakhna district was moved
to Gorodets, and the district was renamed into Gorodetsky. In 1922
it received the status of a county town, but socialist
transformations broke its previous economic structure. The first
Soviet five-year plans did not significantly change the appearance
of Gorodets. Due to the lack of sites for large industrial
enterprises and railway communication with Gorky, the socio-economic
life of the city developed slowly.
In the post-war period
(1950-1960s) the city received an impetus for development. The
shipyard, the ship repair and mechanical plant were overhauled, a
shoe factory, a stitching factory and the Gorodetskaya painting
factory were built. The Spartak stadium, which was then one of the
best in the region, became a gem of the city. During these years,
mass housing construction began, which continued later (the
settlement of the shipyard, the settlement of the mechanical plant,
the Furmanovsky, Severny microdistricts, etc.).
In the 1960s-1980s, in the area of Proletarskaya Square, the
administrative center of the city was practically re-formed
(administration, social and cultural institutions, school,
kindergarten, city park, department stores, bus station, etc.) In
the area of the village of Matronino, in the continuation of
Novaya and On the Gorodets - Nizhny Novgorod highway, a residential
area of Melioratorov was laid. The city will probably grow in this
direction in the future.
The annual City Day became an
incentive for the revival of Gorodets as a small historical town and
a center of folk crafts. It has been held since 1984 on the first
weekend of September (first on the second Sunday, then on the second
Saturday of the month).
Recently, inbound tourism and museums
have been actively developing in Gorodets. This was largely
facilitated by the regional festivals "Gorodets - Museum Capital"
(since 2003) and "Masters of the People's Brotherhood" (since 2002
on the third Saturday of July).
Since 2006, the city has been
successfully implementing a regional program for the development of
culture and tourism called "Gorodets - the 21st century." In the
course of the program, the central part of the city was improved,
new museums were opened, the Fedorov Monastery was renewed, and the
City of Masters museum and tourist complex was built (both in 2009).
Gingerbread
Gorodets has long been famous for printed
gingerbread. Contrary to the opinion widespread in the local history
literature about the local gingerbread business as early as the 17th
century, documentary evidence of the gingerbread craft in the
village of Gorodets, Balakhninsky district, dates back to the end of
the 18th century. Judging by the reviews of contemporaries, the
gingerbread craft at that time was already quite large. The earliest
known gingerbread boards of Gorodets masters (kept in the collection
of the State Historical Museum) date back to the last quarter of the
18th century. The development of the gingerbread business in
Gorodets was facilitated by the large trade in bread at the local
bazaar, as well as the proximity of the Nizhny Novgorod fair, from
where the gingerbreads were sold throughout the Volga region, went
to the Urals, Don, Central Asia. The flourishing of Gorodets' sweet
craft fell on the end of the 19th century. At that time, more than
30 varieties of gingerbread were baked here (some reached a weight
of up to one and a half pounds), 15 gingerbread establishments
worked. Most of the gingerbread were Old Believers. The most famous
dynasties of gingerbread masters are the Bakharevs, Belyaevs,
Glazunovs, Lemekhovs, Shcherbakovs.
During the years of
Soviet power, the gingerbread craft declined sharply. In 1930, an
artel "Red Gingerbread" was created, later transformed into the
Gorodetsky food processing plant. Keeping the traditions of old
masters, the food-processing plant baked a printed gingerbread
"Sterlyadki" weighing 5 kg. The author of the printed board for him
was a descendant of the famous dynasty of gingerbread masters - the
carver Georgy (Yegor) Illarionovich Bakharev.
In the 1970s, a
new stage in the development of the gingerbread business began in
Gorodets. This was a great merit of the director of the food
processing plant Nina Petrovna Shishkina. Under her leadership, an
original recipe for a printed gingerbread was created under the name
"Gorodetsky Souvenir", and new printed boards were ordered to the
talented woodcarving master Valery Georgievich Zelenin.
Currently, the main producers of printed gingerbread are Anna
Grigorievna Voronina's Gorodetsky Gingerbread enterprise (the former
collective of the Gorodetsky food processing plant) and JSC
Gorodetsky Confectioner (also known under the brand name LyuVeNa -
Lyubov, Vera, Nadezhda). Printed boards are cut by local craftsmen
Valery Zelenin, Sergey Sokolov, Viktor Galibin. The largest printed
gingerbread in Gorodets is baked annually for the regional festival
“Folk Brotherhood Masters”. It weighs 20 kg and is made from the
board of the famous Gorodets carver Andrei Kolov, which was intended
for casting a cast-iron panel to decorate the museum quarter. The
giant gingerbread consists of four parts, baked separately and
sealed with sugar glaze.