Slyudyanka is a city on the western shore of Lake Baikal, famous
for the fact that here you can ride on the Circum-Baikal Railway,
which, after the creation of the Irkutsk reservoir, was cut off from
the Trans-Siberian Railway and is now a tourist attraction. From
Slyudyanka to the port of Baikal, the same historical train runs
along the old one-track railway, which tourists enjoy with pleasure,
admiring the idyllic landscapes of Lake Baikal.
You can get
to Slyudyanka itself from Irkutsk by Transsib. The city got its name
due to the presence of mica deposits in its vicinity. There are also
marble quarries, material from which went, for example, to the
construction of a local train station, which looks more like a
palace than a simple station building. Tourists visit the marble
mines, admire the snow-white stone ruins, watch the auto races that
take place on the track specially equipped in the quarries.
Slyudyanka was founded at the beginning of the 19th century on the
site of an inn, where travelers could rest on the way from Irkutsk
to Kyakhta. The historical center of the city is located on the
shore of Lake Baikal and is bounded by Lenin Street. Its length is
only 1.5 km. Further, in the opposite direction from Lake Baikal,
typical residential areas of the Soviet era begin. Tourists come to
those places if they want to hike to Chersky Peak. The trail to the
top begins just behind these houses.
In the city you can see
the Nikolskaya Church, the Museum of Local Lore, the Private Museum
of Minerals and the Water Tower. The latter was built by exiles, who
had nothing to love the tsarist regime, therefore, as local guides
say, they decided to take their revenge and encrypted an obscene
word in the lower floor of the tower. It is said that some tourists
have such a developed imagination that they see this message.
The name Slyudyanka is of Russian origin. It is based on the appellative "mica" - the name of a mineral that has been mined for 350 years in the vicinity of the settlement. Slyudyanka did not change its name, being a prison, a winter hut, a village and a city. The river that flows within the city and in the middle course of which mica deposits were discovered is also called Slyudyanka.
ancient history
The first people on the territory of Slyudyanka
appeared in the Eneolithic era. This can be judged by the burials of an
ancient man found in 1962 on Cape Shaman. These burials have been
attributed by archaeologists to the Chinese Eneolithic era. Drawings and
rock paintings of ancient people were found in the caves on Shamansky
Cape, but after the rise in the level of Lake Baikal in connection with
the start of operation of the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station, they
were under water.
The territory of Slyudyanka before the arrival
of the Russians
Little is known about this stage in the history of
Slyudyanka. Historians suggest that in the 1st century BC. Huns lived on
the territory of the Southern Baikal region. Then they were replaced by
the Kurykans, a people of Turkic origin. According to historians, they
are the progenitors of the Yakuts. According to the found graves of the
Kurykans, one can judge that they were cattle breeders, knew how to melt
iron, were rich relative to the tribes surrounding them, and had a
developed art. In the 11th century, they were supplanted by the Mongol
tribes, among whom were the Buryats. They inhabited the southern,
southeastern, eastern and southwestern coasts of Lake Baikal, including
the territory of Slyudyanka. In addition to the Buryats, Evenks lived in
the territory of the Southern Baikal region. By the time the Russians
arrived, their camp was located on the site of Slyudyanka. As noted by
the Decembrist Lorer, by the time of his arrival in 1813, Kultuk, the
nearest settlement to the territory of Slyudyanka, was still a village
inhabited mainly by Evenks.
Slyudyanka from 1647 to the 1890s
At the beginning of the colonization of Siberia, mica was one of the
most valuable goods for explorers, in addition to furs and salt. The
Cossacks who arrived in southern Baikal began searching for this
particular mineral and found it in the middle reaches of one of the
small mountain rivers, later called Slyudyanka. At the mouth of the
river adjacent to it, there was an Evenk camp. In its place, it was
decided to organize a small prison in order to mine mica and protect
miners and miners from the Evenks. Its founder was the explorer Ivan
Pokhabov, a Yenisei Cossack, a boyar's son. The creation of the prison
was reported to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. At this place, the prison did
not last long and was transferred by the Russians a few years later to
the place where Kultuk now stands, but the river at the mouth of which
the prison stood was named after its founder.
After the transfer
of the prison, there were no settlements on the territory of Slyudyanka
until 1802. In 1766 and 1780s. traveler Eric Laxman visited the
territory of Slyudyanka. He became interested in minerals in its
vicinity and discovered deposits of jade, lapis lazuli and rediscovered
deposits of mica, which had been forgotten and not developed by that
time.
After the appearance of the decree of Paul I "On the
population of the Siberian Territory ...", settlers from the central
provinces of the Russian Empire in 1802 set up the Slyudyanka winter hut
on the site of modern Slyudyanka and revived the extraction of mica. The
next important step for the development of the Southern Baikal region
was the decision to build a wheeled road from Irkutsk to Kyakhta. A post
station was organized at the Slyudyansk winter hut. In the 50s. XIX
century Muravyov-Amursky approved the idea of building the Circum-Baikal
tract along the coast of Lake Baikal. By that time, Kyakhta began to
lose its former significance. Verkhneudinsk became its competitor, and
it was decided to build a road along the very shore of Lake Baikal,
first to Posolsk, and then to Verkhneudinsk. The construction was
carried out by the efforts of the exiled Poles, who raised an uprising
in 1866. Wheel and postal communication along the road was opened in
1864.
Slyudyanka from the 1890s before 1917
In 1899, land was
allocated from the land owned by the Kultuk rural gathering for the
construction of a railway settlement. So the village of Slyudyanka was
founded [6]. It housed the First and Second Sections of the Construction
Administration of the Circum-Baikal Railway. There are different
versions about why it was necessary to create the Slyudyanka railway
junction, and not to make it in the then largest settlement in the south
of Lake Baikal, Kultuk. There is an assumption that the construction of
Slyudyanka was a personal wish of the then Minister of Railways Khilkov.
According to another version, the village gathering of Kultuk refused to
allocate land on its territory for a railway station, since in this case
the already small land suitable for agriculture would be occupied by the
station and the locomotive depot. The Circum-Baikal Railway was a
strategically important and at the same time very expensive link of the
Trans-Siberian Railway. The locomotive depot, as well as the
world-famous Slyudyansky station made of white marble, were commissioned
in 1904, and in 1905 train traffic was opened. In 1912, an initiative
was put forward to transform the village into
“... the city of
Slyudyanka, since in terms of the number (4072 souls of both sexes),
class composition and occupation of the population, this settlement,
which currently has the character of an urban settlement, in the future,
due to natural geographical conditions: the proximity of many useful
minerals (mica, white clay, alabaster, marble) and the convenience of
selling them along the railway and waterways adjacent to the village
must inevitably expand and develop.
By 1916, 5109 people lived in
Slyudyanka, there was a church, 6 schools, 4 inns, a tavern and about 60
shops.
At the beginning of the 20th century, revolutionary organizations
began to develop in Slyudyanka. In 1903-1904. a Social Democratic group
appeared in the city. With the beginning of the revolutionary movement
of 1905 in Irkutsk, unrest begins throughout the railway. In December
1905, the Council of Deputies of Workers and Employees of the Railway
was created in Slyudyanka. To support the rebels in Irkutsk, the
Bolsheviks, led by I.V. Babushkin, seized a train with weapons in Chita,
but at the Slyudyanka station, Babushkin was captured by a punitive
expedition, taken to Mysovsk and executed there with his comrades. In
memory of this event, a memorial plaque by the sculptor G. V. Nerody was
installed on the pediment of the Slyudyansky railway station.
In
Slyudyanka, the well-known revolutionary figure Sergei Kirov conducted
agitation work.
The October Revolution of 1917 took place in
Slyudyanka in the form of spontaneous strikes. Soviet power was
established practically in the first days after the revolution.
In the spring of 1918, in Slyudyanka, in order to prevent anyone who
inspired even the slightest suspicion of belonging to an officer, the
further path to Transbaikalia, the Bolsheviks organized a “checkpoint”,
where several hundred Russian officers died as a result of the reprisals
of Commissar Dashkov. These measures of the Bolsheviks led to a sharp
increase in the bitterness of the internecine conflict. So, analyzing
the behavior of officers in the Far East, the Supreme Ruler Admiral A.
V. Kolchak noted.
By mid-July 1918, the Red forces, who had left
Kultuk, retreated to Slyudyanka after they, retreating by rail in
echelons, managed to get ahead of the White forces advancing on foot
along the old Circum-Baikal Highway from Irkutsk through the village of
Vedenskoye to Kultuk. When parts of the Czechoslovak corps of Radol
Gaida approached Slyudyanka, the Slyudyanka Revolutionary Committee
announced the introduction of martial law. On July 17, the train of the
commander of Tsentrosibir arrived in Slyudyanka, and on July 19 military
clashes began. The Slyudyankov Red Guards, detachments of Nestor
Kalandarishvili and the Angara icebreaker resisted, but the White Guards
advancing from Irkutsk easily occupied the trench defenses and on July
23 the Bolshevik forces left the city. The front of the Civil War rolled
back to Verkhneudinsk. Soon Russian power was established in Slyudyanka.
At the same time, there was a Bolshevik underground in the city, which
carried out sabotage at the shipyard in Listvennichny against state
power. On January 8, 1920, an armed uprising led by Georgy Rzhanov was
raised in Slyudyanka against the forces of the Russian army retreating
along the entire front, as a result of which Soviet power was
established in the city.
Soviet years (1920-1991)
Slyudyanka
before the Great Patriotic War
Immediately after the establishment of
Soviet power, disputes arose between Kultuk and Slyudyanka over the
volost administration. As a result, until 1930, the management of the
volost committee was carried out from Kultuk, which caused discontent of
the Slyudyansk village committee. On November 13, 1930, the Slyudyansky
district was allocated from the East Siberian Territory by the decision
of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and it was
decided to make Slyudyanka its center. In 1928, Slyudyanka was granted
the status of a workers' settlement, and in 1936, the status of a city.
Immediately after the Civil War, confiscation of property from the
wealthy segments of the population began in Slyudyanka. Also, under the
pretext of storing weapons, the Slyudyanskaya St. Nicholas Church was
closed. It was transformed into a May 1 club.
The industry of
Slyudyanka at that time was represented by railway enterprises, mainly a
locomotive depot, a brick factory and mica mining (in 1927 the
Slyudyanka Mining Administration was opened). Also, local crafts were
developed in the city - fishing, picking berries and pine nuts. Due to
the insufficient provision of workers and railway workers with food,
forest gifts made up a significant part of the diet of local residents.
In Slyudyanka in 1924 there was only one school and one club. The
only cultural and entertainment center was the Blue Blouse propaganda
train, which traveled with concerts for residents of railway villages.
In 1936, funds were allocated from the regional budget for the
construction of an orphanage for homeless children in Slyudyanka.
In the 1930s, repressions began in Slyudyanka. About 500 people were
repressed in the city. On the mountains near Slyudyanka there were
logging sites where exiles and repressed people worked.
On
January 1, 1939, 12,331 people lived in Slyudyanka.
Slyudyanka
during the Great Patriotic War
During the Great Patriotic War, 3461
people were mobilized from Slyudyanka.
Slyudyanka was a deep rear
during the war years. The extraction of mica and the maintenance of the
stable operation of the railway were carried out by hard work.
"Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda" has repeatedly written about the workers
of the labor front, the Slyudyan people - the head of the Slyudyansky
mining department Bertenev, the worker of the mica factory Anastasia
Stupa, the Stakhanovite miners, the machinists who achieved significant
coal savings by caring for the machines, the fishermen of the Baikal
fishing collective farm, who received the All-Union award for shock
work, about the women of Slyudyanka, who cleared the paths. At the same
time, financial assistance was also provided to the army. About 23
thousand rubles were collected by the steam locomotives of the depot
alone. The Slyudyansk military hospital was also opened in Slyudyanka.
V.P. Snedkov became the head physician. Many fighters here have
recovered and returned to duty. Local enterprises and the pioneer
organization took patronage over them. The well-known Baikal scientist
Gleb Vereshchagin gave lectures at the hospital. In September 1945,
there was a railway accident near Slyudyanka. The train with soldiers
returning from the Japanese front went downhill. 15 people died. In
memory of them and the wounded who died in the hospital, on June 22,
1989, a memorial was opened in the Uluntui valley.
In memory of
the Slyudyans who did not return from the front, another memorial was
created in the city - a memorial in the Pereval park. The sculptural
composition consists of a monument to the warrior-liberator and plates
with the names of the dead. One of them bears the names of the Heroes of
the Soviet Union I. V. Tonkonog and G. E. Beresnev. Every year, a local
Victory Parade is held near the memorial.
Slyudyanka after the
Great Patriotic War
During the war and in the post-war years, a
geological study of the territory was carried out. Samples of about 200
minerals were found, new mica veins were explored. The main event was
the discovery of a deposit of marbled limestone. The thickness of the
productive horizon here reached 350 m, and the length was about 10
kilometers. The possibility of its use as a raw material for the
production of cement was considered. The reserves of raw materials at
that time were estimated at 200 million tons. In 1955, the construction
of the largest quarry for the extraction of building materials in the
Irkutsk region at that time began. By 1957, it was completed, and the
Pereval quarry, named after the deposit, produced the first tons of raw
materials. Together with the quarry, a residential area for 1,500 people
was built, consisting of panel apartment buildings.
Mica mining
developed. It was used in various industries, including radio
engineering and the aerospace industry. A mica factory was organized in
Slyudyanka to process mica. Mining in the post-war period was carried
out at full speed. Nine mines were in operation. The exhausted adits
were abandoned, mining began. In 1958, one of the mines was flooded.
Unprecedented engineering surveys were carried out to divert the water.
A five-kilometer-long working was created to divert groundwater to
Baikal. However, mica mining was unexpectedly stopped in 1973. Aldan
phlogopite mica had to be marketed to justify the investment in this
project.
After the war, Slyudyanka became a major railway
junction. It was decided to build a section of the railway Slyudyanka -
Bolshoy Lug - Irkutsk. Construction was completed by 1949. In the same
year, the Slyudyanka II and Rybzavod stations were built (near the fish
cannery). By 1960, the Trans-Siberian section from Mariinsk to
Slyudyanka was electrified. In 1961, the locomotive depot of the city
was transformed into a locomotive depot. In 1980, the depot was
transferred from the Irkutsk branch of the Eastern Railway to Ulan-Ude.
In 1975, mica mining was completely stopped. It was necessary to
re-profile the mining department to save jobs. It was decided to extract
building materials. The Slyudyansk Mining Administration became part of
the Rosmramorgranit Industrial Association of the Ministry of Building
Materials Industry of the RSFSR and began mining marble, gneiss and
granodiorites at the Burovshchina (in the village of the same name),
Dynamite and Orlyonok deposits. During mining, a stone-working shop and
a mosaic slab shop were organized. 30% of the products were exported
from the region, mainly to Moscow and other cities of the Soviet Union,
where work was carried out on lining metro stations. In 1985, the mining
department produced 45 thousand m² of facing and 50 thousand m² of
mosaic slabs.
Modern period
Since the beginning of the 1990s,
the decline of industry in the city begins. As a result of
privatization, in 1993 the Slyudyansk Mining Administration was
transformed into Baikalsky Marble JSC, and then it broke up into various
JSCs, such as Baikalpromkamen JSC, Baikal Stone Processing Plant JSC,
Burovshchina Quarry JSC. In the same year, the Yuzhno-Baikal fish
cannery was privatized and named AOOT "South-Baikal fish factory and
Co."
In 1994-1995. the inhabitants of Slyudyanka were terrorized
by the serial killer Boris Bogdanov. Being a forester and a professional
hunter, he lay in wait for his victims in the forest, usually they were
people who gathered wild garlic or mushrooms in the forest. According to
official data, there were fifteen victims on the account of the
criminal, according to unofficial data (taking into account the homeless
people who lived in the forest) - 20 people. The police failed to detain
the sadist, as he professionally tangled his tracks in the forest and
had a phenomenal instinct, each time leaving the chase at the last
moment. On May 22, 1995, the house where he was hiding was surrounded.
One of the operatives, Alexander Kutelev, was shot dead by a maniac
during the storming of the house. When Bogdanov realized that he could
not escape, he shot himself. One of the streets of the city was named
after Kutelev.
In 1998, the South Baikal Fish Cannery ceased to
exist. Its closure was due to the general crisis of the fishing industry
in the Irkutsk region. A tough tax policy, as well as serious
competition from the Far Eastern canned fish producers, undermined the
development of the fish processing industry in Slyudyanka. An attempt to
revive the plant by transferring the enterprise's capacities to
processing chicken and pork meat into semi-finished products failed.
In 2005, as part of the celebration of the centenary of the
Circum-Baikal Railway, the Slyudyanka I station was reconstructed. A new
boarding platform was built (from the side of the city). Repairs were
also made in the station building. Its appearance was changed, an
exhibition exposition appeared in it, telling passengers about the
Circum-Baikal Railway.
In 2011, Slyudyanka celebrated the 75th
anniversary of receiving city status. By this anniversary, the
construction of housing for Slyudyanka resumed in Slyudyanka. For
veterans of the Great Patriotic War, a residential complex is being
built as part of the Federal Program to provide them with housing. A
sports and recreation complex is being completed. Work was carried out
on the arrangement of street sports facilities in the city.
Geographical position
Slyudyanka is located in Eastern Siberia, in
the south of the Irkutsk region, on the southern shore of Lake Baikal,
110 kilometers along the R-258 highway and 126 kilometers from Irkutsk
along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Circum-Baikal Railway starts from
the city. The city stands on two rivers, in the foothills of the
Khamar-Daban mountain system. The area of the city is 38.7 km²
(excluding the Slyudyansk municipality); 436 km² (together with him).
Timezone
The city is located on a foothill plateau (pediment) at
the foot of the Khamar-Daban mountain system. The lowest point of the
city is the edge of Lake Baikal, which is 456 meters above sea level.
The plateau is formed by estuarine valleys and filled with alluvial
deposits of the Slyudyanka and Pokhabikha rivers. The plateau is
inclined to the water surface of Baikal. Its length from west to east is
about 5 kilometers, from north to south - from 2 to 4 kilometers. The
plateau is surrounded by the Komarinsky Ridge and one of its spurs,
protruding into Baikal - Cape Shaman. Shaman Cape is one of the most
recognizable elements of the Slyudyanka relief, as well as a popular
vacation spot.
Slyudyanka is located in the center of the Baikal rift zone, and
therefore earthquakes of up to 11 points with a huge intensity and
magnitude are possible in it. Large earthquakes (up to 6 points)
occurred in Slyudyanka in 1862, 1959, 1995, 1999. An earthquake in
February 1999 damaged the Slyudyansk wastewater treatment plant. But the
most powerful earthquake occurred on August 27, 2008.
On August
27, 2008 at 10:35:32 local time, the strongest earthquake in its history
with a magnitude of 7–9 points occurred on the territory of the
Slyudyansky district. The epicenter was located 50 kilometers north of
Baikalsk. In Slyudyanka, the tremors reached 8 points. By a happy
coincidence, not a single collapse of a residential building occurred in
the city and no one died. In houses built in 1940-1950. numerous cracks
appeared (along the streets of 40 years of October and Perevalskaya).
There was a displacement of the railway track and a break in the
electrical wiring, so long-distance trains and suburban trains were
delayed for several hours on the Mysovaya-Angarsk section. The district
administration allocated funds to help victims of the earthquake. The
damage was estimated at 80 million rubles. Holidays for schoolchildren
were extended until September 8. Some houses were deemed uninhabitable,
demolished and new ones built in their place. The building of the former
kindergarten, in which the primary classes of the secondary school No. 4
studied, became unusable. It was demolished, and a kindergarten No. 213
of Russian Railways was built in its place.
Slyudyanka is located in the foothills of the Khamar-Daban mountain
system, consisting of rocks of the age of Baikal and Early Caledonian
folding, in connection with this, the main rocks found in the vicinity
of Slyudyanka are granites, marbles, crystalline schists, diopsides,
feldspars, etc. The city's four most famous minerals are phlogopite
mica, marble, lapis lazuli (lapis lazuli), and marbled limestone.
The first attempts to start industrial mining of mica were made in
1902, when the local miner Yakunin discovered mica veins 3 kilometers
from the railway station and staked them out. Industrial mining of mica
began in Slyudyanka only in 1924. The trust "Slyudasoyuz" was created,
and then, in 1929, the Slyudyansk Mining Administration was organized.
The extraction of mica was carried out at a high pace due to the high
demand for mica in electrical engineering and military engineering. By
1975, mica mining had ceased. Now mica mines can be of interest only to
tourists.
Currently, the most used mineral is marbled limestone.
Its extraction is carried out by the forces of OAO Quarry Pereval. For
the construction of the dams of the Angarsk HPP cascade, cement was
needed, and in 1958 a quarry was opened in the vicinity of Slyudyanka to
extract raw materials for the production of cement, which was mined
limestone and sent to the Angarsk cement plant. In 2008-2010, the quarry
worked intermittently.
No less valuable fossil is marble of
different colors, from white to pink. It was mined in the Burovshchina
quarry. After the cessation of mica mining, the Slyudyanskoye Mining
Administration refocused on the extraction and processing of marble.
Marble from Slyudyanka was used for the production of tombstones and as
a facing stone. They lined the Krasny Prospekt station of the
Novosibirsk metro, the Proletarskaya station of the Kharkov metro, the
Barrikadnaya and Ulitsa 1905 Goda stations of the Moscow metro.
Lapis lazuli began to be mined in the vicinity of Slyudyanka immediately
after the discovery of its deposit by Laxman, already mentioned above.
The first batch was sent to St. Petersburg for facing the walls of
Peterhof. Azure stone was also used for facing the walls of St. Isaac's
Cathedral and as a raw material for obtaining ultramarine paint. From
1851 to 1863, Permikin, a craftsman from the Yekaterinburg Lapidary
Factory, was engaged in its extraction in the Malobystrinsky quarry.
After 1863, its mining stopped for almost 100 years. Obruchev, who
visited Slyudyanka in 1889, noted the abandonment of these places. In
1967, the Baikalkvartssamotsvety organization again organized the
extraction of lapis lazuli, but in 1995 the enterprise went bankrupt.
Academician Fersman in one of his works called Slyudyanka a
mineralogical paradise. In addition to the above minerals, about 400
more minerals were found in the mountains near Slyudyanka, such as
apatite, diopside, wollastonite, glavcolite, uranothorite, mendeleevite,
goldmanite, azurite, andalusite, afghanite, bystrite, vermiculite,
graphite, dolomite, hydrogoethite, quartz, corundum , laurovite,
molybdenite, orthoclase, plagioclase, rhodonite, sphalerite,
florensovite, schorl, etc.
Slyudyanka is located in the temperate continental climate zone.
Almost the entire Irkutsk region is located in the zone of a sharply
continental climate, and the mildness of the climate of Slyudyanka is
associated with the location of the city on the shores of Lake Baikal.
Due to the warming influence of Lake Baikal, winter in the city is
milder than in the rest of the Irkutsk region, and due to its cooling
influence, spring comes late in the city, the summer maximum
temperatures are shifted towards August, and autumn lasts relatively
long. The last spring frosts end here in the 20th of May, and the first
autumn frosts come after September 25th. The long-term average duration
of the frost-free period is one of the longest in the Irkutsk region. It
lasts 126 days. It is larger only in two places in the region - the city
of Baikalsk and Peschanaya Bay (135 and 136 days, respectively).
There is little rainfall within the city. This is due to the special
local air circulation - the city is located in a hollow, surrounded by
mountains on three sides, and on the fourth - by the water surface of
Lake Baikal. Because of this, local winds prevail - breezes and
mountain-valley winds that do not bring precipitation. Meager
precipitation is brought to the basin by north-western winds, but most
of it falls in the upper tier of the mountains. At an altitude of 1.5 km
above sea level, 20 km from Slyudyanka, about 1500 mm of precipitation
is already falling at the Khamar-Daban weather station.
In
winter, after Baikal freezes, typically anticyclone weather sets in over
the city, due to the Mongolian anticyclone. A state of inversion sets
in, and cold dry winds flow down from the slopes of the mountains,
cooling the territory. The highest relative humidity is observed in
November-December during the freezing of Lake Baikal. As the locals say,
Baikal is floating. Evaporation at 15-degree frost forms advective fogs.