Kansk is located on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a 4-hour drive
east of Krasnoyarsk; it is one of the oldest cities beyond the
Yenisei. A cathedral in the Siberian Baroque style and good examples
of old buildings, including stone ones, have been preserved here. In
addition, Kansk is the site of a contemporary film festival - the
International Kansk Video Festival.
The city of Kansk stands
on the Kan River, the right tributary of the Yenisei, in the middle
of a rather flat but picturesque forest-steppe. The first Kansky
fort was built in 1628, 43 km below the modern city. In 1636 the
fort was moved to its current location. There was no permanent
population in Kansk until 1717, when several Cossack families were
sent here from Krasnoyarsk. The development of the city was greatly
helped by the Siberian Highway, built in the second half of the 18th
century. Soon a stone cathedral will be built in Kansk, and not
every Siberian city has been awarded this honor. Industry emerges
and there is an active cultural life: for example, theater and
cinema appeared in the city even before the revolution.
In
1919, the bloody events of the Civil War unfolded in the vicinity of
Kansk. Bolshevik-minded partisan detachments operated in the
forests, even trying to organize uprisings, but without the support
of the regular Red Army they did not succeed. In 1920, the Czech
writer Jaroslav Hasek stayed in the city, and not only did he stay,
but he also managed to get married.
During Soviet times,
Kansk retained its industrial character, giving, for example, its
name to the Kansk-Achinsk coal basin, one of the largest in Russia.
The main branch of local industry is timber processing; there is
also a large thermal power plant.
Along with Yeniseisk,
Minusinsk, Achinsk and Krasnoyarsk itself, Kansk is one of the five
cities in the Krasnoyarsk Territory that have preserved a few
pre-revolutionary buildings and therefore are of interest to the
traveler: however, of all the five cities mentioned, it is the
smallest. Compared to Achinsk, which is comparable in size, in Kansk
there is a particularly acute sense of neglect towards the urban
environment - from the weeds in the central square to the abundance
of garbage and completely absent sidewalks. In the central part of
Russia, this would be a classic district town N, attracting only
very keen local historians, but in Siberia the opposite is true:
Kansk is the most interesting city on the entire long, almost daily
stretch of the route from Irkutsk to Krasnoyarsk.
It is
curious that at the end of summer Kansk is briefly transformed in
connection with the Cannes International Video Festival of
Experimental Film, made as a parody of the Cannes Film Festival for
classical cinema. If from the outside the holding of a film festival
in Kansk looks like a simple play on words, complemented by a comic
prize - a “golden palm pruner” as opposed to the “Golden Palm
Branch” awarded in Cannes - then, once in the city, you will see in
this festival either evil sarcasm or an ascetic attempt to develop
culture in a remote Russian province. In any case, once a year the
city fills with people, losing its usual, sleepy and shabby
appearance during the festival.
Old Kansk is located on the left (southern) bank of the Kan River. The city center is Korostelev Square, from which it is 500 m to the railway station. The most interesting old buildings are on Krasnopartizanskaya and Kaytymskaya streets, which run parallel to the railway north of the central square. The city extends beyond the river, to the right bank, where there are multi-story buildings from the Soviet era.
You can get from Krasnoyarsk to Kansk by long-distance train, bus or
train. All trains stop in Kansk except Beijing and Ulaanbaatar; travel
time from Krasnoyarsk is 4 hours. A direct express train runs once a day
at approximately the same speed as a long-distance train. At other
times, you can take a train with a transfer at Uyar station, but it will
take much longer.
Buses from Krasnoyarsk to Kansk run 4 times a
day, a minibus every 2 hours, there are also several passing (to
Kodinsk, Boguchany, Aban, Taseevo, Dolgiy Most, Nizhny Ingash). The
travel time is the same 4 hours. The cheapest price is the electric
train - 277 rubles, the bus - 536 rubles, and on a long-distance train a
reserved seat ticket is comparable in price to a bus ticket or more
expensive (there are no general carriages on this section, with the
exception of the Krasnoyarsk- Karabula).
On the P255 highway from
Krasnoyarsk to Kansk 230 km. To the north the road goes to Kodinsk (470
km), and to the east the path seems endless: to Irkutsk 830 km.
1 Railway station (Kansk-Yeniseisky), at the end of the street. Lenin.
The huge size of the Soviet building is interesting except for a couple
of stained glass windows on the theme of the history of the city. There
is a rather large waiting room on the second floor. On the first floor
there are cash registers, a food stall and a storage room. There are
rest rooms, but no food places. The station is filled with freight cars.
For passenger trains, a lonely platform is used, access to which is only
possible via a pedestrian bridge.
2 Kan-Perevoz, Sanatornaya st. (in
the new part of the city). The train stop is behind the bridge over Kan,
100 m from the Spasskaya Church.
3 Bus station (next to the railway
station). 6:00–18:00. The bus station has its own waiting room, as well
as the 24-hour Vostok cafe, which opens directly onto the platform, with
high tables and an assortment of snack bars. The courtyard of the bus
station is the only place in the city where they tried to create a cozy
atmosphere, although even here it didn’t quite work out.
There are about 20 bus routes in the city, converging at the railway station and at Korostelev Square. Fare: 22 rubles (2020). Buses are not needed in the center. On the other side of the river, in the new part of the city, you can take buses to the microdistrict. Solar.
1 Trinity Cathedral, pl. Korostelev. Built 1797-1804 The cathedral
is made in the Siberian (Yenisei) Baroque style. Later it underwent
several reconstructions; in Soviet times it lost its domes and only in
the 1990s. was restored. In terms of external design and smooth lines,
the cathedral is far from the best churches in Yeniseisk and
Krasnoyarsk. It is not painted inside; the iconostasis stands among
white walls.
2 Korosteleva Square. Cathedral Square in Kansk is
named after Nikolai Korostelev (Mikhail Kretov), a professional
revolutionary who was exiled to Kansk before the revolution and
established Soviet power there as soon as possible. In March 1919, the
Kolchakites hanged Korostelev in the central square of Kansk, and the
Soviet government, in turn, later perpetuated the memory of the hero: in
addition to the symbolic mass grave, an obelisk was installed on the
square. The background for this monument is the symmetrical red and
white buildings of the Chevelev trading house. In the first years of the
new government, similar old buildings surrounded the entire square, the
former Bazarnaya, but in 1929 the bazaar was removed from the square on
the personal orders of Budyonny, who came to Kansk (since it was
inappropriate for revolutionary memorials to stand in the bazaar), and
then many of the shops on the site burned down which are now built with
ugly modern buildings.
3 Monument to an unknown artist, pl.
Korostelev (closer to the recreation center). The original monument, an
example of contemporary art that is rare in Kansk, appeared in the city
in 2009 after one of the film festivals (see What to do).
4 Zazubrin
House, Krasnopartizanskaya street, 105. Lived in Kansk from 1919 to
1928. Vladimir Zazubrin can be considered the first Soviet writer.
Written by him in 1920, hot on the heels of the Civil War, the novel
“Two Worlds” about the defeat of Kolchak’s army was highly praised by
Lenin and Gorky, who declared this work the first Soviet novel. Later,
Zazubrin wrote other books, and not always ideologically literate ones,
and in the end he was repressed in 1937. Zazubrin's house is a fine
example of Kansk wooden architecture with simple architraves and massive
shutters. You will see many similar houses on the way here, on
Krasnopartizanskaya and Kaytymskaya streets.
5 Wine Monopoly
Buildings, st. Nekrasova (at the beginning of Moskovskaya Street).
Hidden behind a high fence are the luxurious red-brick buildings of the
Kansk winery, which later became a distillery and is now closed - most
likely forever.
6 Filimonov Mill, Krasnopartizanskaya street, 19.
The mill was built in 1911 on the initiative of one of the city
merchants. On the scale of Kansk, this is a large building, and some
kind of production activity is still simmering in it.
7 Royal Gate
(triumphal arch) (behind the bridge over Caen). The arch gate was
erected in 1891 for the arrival of the future Emperor Nicholas II, who
was returning to St. Petersburg from Japan. After the revolution, the
gates were demolished; in 2006 they were recreated in a new location in
the center of Predmostnaya Square.
8 Spasskaya Church, st. Krasnaya
Ilanka, 100 (in the new part of the city). The cemetery church was built
in 1964 after the closure of Trinity Cathedral. History is silent about
how much the church has changed since then, but it is interesting to
look at it anyway: it is a rather elegant building, decorated with
colored shutters in the spirit of the wooden houses of old Kansk.
1 Museum of Local Lore, Moskovskaya st., 51. 11:00 – 18:00 except
Mon. 20 rub. The small museum in the building of a pre-revolutionary
cinema was made with great love. Here you will learn about the history
of the founding of the city and the bloody events of the Civil War,
presented without ideological cliches, but with harsh factual accuracy.
In two small halls you can easily spend 20 minutes, or even half an
hour, looking at maps of the settlement of Siberia and holding objects
of peasant life in your hands. The exhibition ends with an installation
made from garbage, donated to the museum (perhaps not without subtext)
by some Krasnoyarsk author. In front of the museum is a symbolic
monument to Ermak, or, more precisely, to Ermak’s head and his hat on
one side - when creating this monument, apparently, the influence of
modern artists was also involved.
2 Exhibition hall, microdistrict.
Severny, 11B. Temporary exhibitions, mainly the work of local artists
and craftsmen.
3 Kansky Drama Theater , st. 40 years of October, 31
(in the new part of the city). The theater has existed since 1907.
4 Kosmos Cinema, Moskovskaya St., 82. Modern cinema with 3D. There is
an arcade and a small coffee shop.
Since 2002, the city has hosted
the International Cannes Video Festival, dedicated to avant-garde cinema
and contemporary art in general at the intersection of cinema,
literature and music. The festival takes place in September or in the
second half of August. At this time, the city is filled with artists
doing the strangest things - for example, turning an abandoned airport
into a giant cinema hall. They say that signs of modern art remain after
the festival and on the streets of the city, but they apparently do not
live there for long, except for the monument to an unknown artist in the
central square.
5 House of Culture , st. Lenina, 10 (on the
central square). For most of the year, art groups gather here and
nothing interesting happens, but in the summer the cultural center
becomes the main venue for the film festival.
Despite Budyonny's covenants and prohibitions, in the area of the
central square, right on the street, they sell absolutely everything -
from forest products to household goods. All official stores are located
on the same square on its western side. Magnets can be bought at the
local history museum.
1 Market, at the end of the street. Paris
Commune. The official city market is located two blocks from the central
square next to the cinema.
2 Port Arthur shopping center, st. 40 Let
Oktyabrya, 62 (Dramater bus stop). 10.00-20.00.
1 Coffee house “Prospect”, st. Gorky, 46 (on the road to the railway
station). 10:00–22:00. The only establishment in the city center with
service maintains the reputation of the coffee shop, offering a choice
of more than 20 types of tea and decent brewed coffee. Otherwise, this
is an ordinary cafe with good food and Krasnoyarsk prices. Wi-Fi.
2 Cafe “Kuptsov”, Moskovskaya st., 68 (opposite the museum). Mon–Sat
8:00–18:00. Behind a beautiful sign hides an ordinary canteen, which
locals do not recommend.
3 Dining room, st. Lenina, 3 (on the
central square). 8:00–20:00. Hot: about 100 rub. In contrast to the
previous cafe, this nameless cafeteria offers a good range of hot food
in a simple but fairly decent environment with a clean toilet and even
air conditioning.
1 Hotel “Siberia”, Kaytymskaya st., 65. ☎ +7 (39161) 2-06-60. The
hotel has not changed since Soviet times, and that says it all. It is
unclear whether there are rooms with amenities at all, but there is
definitely a shower, but it is paid for on the floor.
2 Hotel
“Cannes” , st. Kobrina, 26, building 1 (northeast of the center, near
the bridge over the Kan). ☎ +7 (39161) 4-10-06. Double room: from 3700
rub. In the city where the Cannes Film Festival is being held, there
simply cannot be a five-star hotel, located, of course, on the Kanskaya
Embankment. In the evening, you just need to sit on the terrace with a
glass of wine, contemplating scenes unimaginable in Cannes - puddles,
weeds and local men drinking another bottle. The hotel itself is not bad
(about three stars), and it seems to have a restaurant, but a large dose
of surrealism is guaranteed here.
3 Hotel “Yug”, 40 Let Oktyabrya
str., 70 (stop “4th platform”, any bus towards Solnechny). A hotel
combined with a medical center. It is quite worthy of 3 stars, there is
a sauna, a swimming pool, a decent dining room, a hairdresser and a
bunch of all sorts of medical specialists in private practice.
The city is located in Siberia, on both banks of the Kan River (the right tributary of the Yenisei), 247 km east of Krasnoyarsk.
It was founded in 1628 as the Kansk
small prison at the Komarovskie rapids on the Kan river, 43 km below
the modern city. In 1636 it was moved to its present location. Like
Krasnoyarsk, the city was built as a fortress from the raids of the
Yenisei Kyrgyz.
In 1717, twenty Cossack families from
Krasnoyarsk were resettled to Kansk. In 1720-1724, there were
twenty-two courtyards in the Kansky prison, in which 126 male souls
lived. By 1722, the only in the Krasnoyarsk district, the Spasskaya
ruzhnaya church, was built.
By 1735, the area of the prison
was increased. New walls were built, a moat three arshins deep and
wide. Forty courtyards were built in the prison itself, where
peasants, artisans, merchants began to move. The first peasants of
Kansk were Eremey Shilyaev from the Abakan prison, Filat Dmitriev
from the village of Pavlovskaya, and the lonely 44-year-old exiled
Ivan Belykh, from the serfs of the Moscow district.
In the
1740s, the Siberian tract passed through Kansk. A post station
appeared in the city. The resettlement of the exiled peasants began.
In 1782 the population of Kansk consisted of forty-one revision
souls of merchants and petty bourgeoisie, 264 revision souls of
state peasants and eight settlers.
On the night of November
17, 1772, the Savior Church burned down. On August 16, 1780, a new
wooden church was laid. On September 30, 1781, the Church of the
Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands was consecrated. On September
21, 1797, the Krasnoyarsk Spiritual Board issued a permit for the
construction of a stone church to replace the wooden church.
Construction began on May 18, 1800. In 1805, the side-chapel of the
Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos was consecrated. The
iconostasis for the new church was painted by the famous icon
painter Martin Khozyainov. On July 5, 1814, a stone church was
consecrated in the name of the Image of the Savior Not Made by
Hands.
In December 1822, the city received the status of a
district, becoming the center of the Kansk district (since 1879 -
the Kansk district) of the Yenisei province. Officials begin to
appear in the city - in 1823, seventeen people. Kansk at this time
consists of two blocks, three streets and three lanes, a stone
parish church, three state and two public wooden buildings. There
were also 161 houses, three taverns, four shops, a hospital, an
almshouse and a district school. 123 people are engaged in
handicrafts, two people are engaged in trade. The population of
Kansk in 1823 was 1112 people. After 1831, a post office was opened
in the city in accordance with the decree of the Senate.
In
1827, the Spiritual Board was opened in Kansk. The parish church was
renamed to the cathedral. The spiritual board was closed on August
27, 1857.
In 1847-1849, Chinese merchants purchased 133,933
yuft leathers in Kyakhta. 6463 of them (about 4.8%) were of Kan
origin. In 1850, eight out of ten merchants of the highest guilds
are engaged in gold mining.
By 1861 Kansk became a
full-fledged city - factories appeared: a soap-making plant, a
tannery, and two saloons. Forty-three noblemen, nine merchants of
the I and II guilds live in the city. The population is 2486 people.
In 1875, the City Regulation was introduced in Kansk. Thirty
vowels and six members of the Council were elected to the city
council.
Famous merchants began their activity in Kansk:
Gerasim Gadalov - the founder of the Gadalov dynasty, merchant of
the 2nd guild Timofey Savenkov - the father of the archaeologist I.
T. Savenkov and others.
In 1897, the Society for the
Promotion of Primary Education was opened, and a public reading room
was opened.
By the beginning of the 20th century, there were
six handicraft tanneries in Kansk, two candle-making factories, and
one soap-making. The population in 1897 was 7,537 people. There are
534 houses, of which only two stone, two stone churches, a Jewish
prayer house. There were three schools, a city bank with a capital
of 80,000 rubles.
In 1911 the cinema "Furor" of the merchant
AP Yakovleva for three hundred places began to work - the first
cultural institution in Kansk.
During the First World War, a
prisoner of war camp was established in the city, which in the
winter of 1915-1916 housed six thousand people.
During the
Civil War, Kansk was one of the centers of the partisan movement. In
May 1920, the famous satirist Yaroslav Hasek, who had lived in the
city for a short time, married the daughter of a merchant Lvov here.
From December 9, 1925 to July 30, 1930, Kansk was the regional
center of the Kansk District of the Siberian Territory. Then it was
part of the East Siberian Territory. Since 1934 - the regional
center of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
During the Great
Patriotic War, a number of textile industry enterprises were
evacuated to the city from the European part of the country. During
the war, a cotton mill and a hydrolysis plant were built in Kansk.
Twelve hospitals with five thousand beds were deployed.
In 1986 the city was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.
The historical coat of arms of the city was approved (20) December 1855. The shield is divided into two equal parts, at the top is the Yenisei coat of arms, and at the bottom, on a green field, there is a golden rye sheaf. The shield is adorned with a golden city crown. On December 15, 2010, the coat of arms of the municipal formation of the city of Kansk was approved, the sign of the Yenisei province disappeared, a rye sheaf remained on the green background of the shield, the coat of arms was decorated with a golden crown.
The
Decembrists V.N.Solovyov, D.A.Schepin-Rostovsky, K.G. Ingelstrom,
P.N. Falenberg repeatedly visited the city.
In Kansk lived in
exile:
Decembrist A. E. Mozalevsky - died in Kansk, was buried in
the summer of 1851 in the Spassky Cathedral.
participants in the
Polish uprising of 1863 NN Oswald, NA Benevolensky, V. Lewandowski,
etc .;
associates of NG Chernyshevsky N. Serno-Solovievich, Yu.
Shlenker, Yu. Roytynskiy, etc .;
PA Moiseenko, member of the
Northern Union of Russian Workers (1880-1883);
N. A. Gerasimov, a
member of the Blagoevskaya group (1889-1892);
Marxists V. P.
Artsybushev (1891-1894), M. A. Silvin, F. V. Lengnik (1900-1902), F.
E. Dzerzhinsky (1909), E. D. Stasova, S. S. Spandaryan ( 1913), N.
N, and E. A. Panin (1903-1904), G. A. Usievich (1911-1914), I. I.
Schwartz (since 1914);
participants in the revolution of
1905-1907 I. B. Prisyagin, N. I. Korostelev (1913-1918).
In
1912, there were fifty-five exiles in Kansk.
In 1931, the
daughter of Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy, artist Sophia
Juncker-Kramskaya, was in exile in Kansk.
During the
repressions of 1937-1938. in the city there were many exiles who had
a very high intellectual, educational and professional level. For
example, the brother of People's Artist of the USSR Martiros Saryan
N.P.Sariev taught at a children's music school at a time when it was
headed by the Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR L.P.
Kryuchkova. It was her merit that the school was recognized as an
exemplary one in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.