Sviyazhsk (Tat. Zya) is a village (historical town) in the Zelenodolsk region of Tatarstan, on an island at the confluence of the Sviyaga into the Volga. Population - 243 (2017) people.
On May 24, 1551, on the Sunday of All Saints, Tsar Shigali, together
with the governors and the Russian army, sailed along the Sviyaga River
on ships and came to one of the banks, to an elevated place. Here they
begin to cut down the forest for the foundation of the city. In this
place, they serve a water-blessed prayer service, and then go around
with the procession and sprinkle holy water on the places for the walls
of the future city. Then they begin to build the walls of the city and
lay a temple in the name of the Nativity of the Virgin and Sergius of
Radonezh. The city was built in 4 weeks, using the dismantled and
brought fortifications of the city of Perevitsk. Local residents begin
to come to the governors in the new city and ask the sovereign Ivan the
Terrible to give them citizenship. A report is sent to Tsar Ivan that
Prince Peter Serebryany killed many Kazanians, while suffering minor
losses, and the Tsar is also informed that a new city is being built and
local residents (“mountain people”) want to serve the Russian Tsar.
Having received this news, Tsar Ivan sends his butler Shabas, Prince
Shamov, to resolve all issues, while the boyars send Ivan Feodorov, the
son of Shishkin.
Sviyazhsk was founded on May 24, 1551 under the
reign of Ivan the Terrible on the land inhabited by the Turks, Shigalei:
Every time the Sura river melts, then Cheremis is mountainous, and
according to them, Chuvash called, a special language, they began to
meet five hundred and a thousand of them, as if rejoicing at the coming
of the king: after all, this predicted city was placed in their lands on
Sviyaga.
In 1551, the fortress was assembled in 4 weeks from
parts prepared in the Uglich region and rafted along the Volga:
The
Grand Duke ordered to cut down the city with wooden walls, towers,
gates, like a real city; and beams and logs to sweep everything from top
to bottom. Then this city was dismantled, folded on rafts and rafted
down the Volga, along with military people and large artillery. When he
approached Kazan, he ordered to build this city and fill all
[fortifications] with earth; he himself returned to Moscow, and this
city was occupied by Russian people and artillery and named it
Sviyazhsk.
The city built soon, called Sviyazhsky (Sviyaz city),
became the base of Russian troops during the siege of Kazan in 1552. On
August 13, 1552, Tsar Ivan the Terrible arrived in the city of
Sviyazhsk.
In the middle of the 16th century, the Sviyazhsk
fortress exceeded the Kremlins of Novgorod, Pskov and even Moscow in
terms of the size of the defended territory.
In 1555 (7063), Tsar
Ivan IV granted an unconvictionable letter to Archimandrite Herman for
the construction of the Sviyazhsky Bogoroditsky Monastery.
In
1565-1567, a land survey was carried out and the Sviyazhsky city became
the administrative center of the Sviyazhsky district. Boyar Prince
Andrei Ivanovich Katyrev-Rostovsky was the first governor in Sviyazhsk.
In 1648, 70 Sviyazhsky horse Cossacks were transferred to the
construction of the Simbirsk line, where they founded the Sviyazhskaya
settlement (now in the Leninsky district of Ulyanovsk).
In 1708,
Sviyazhsk with the district became part of the Kazan province
(1708-1781).
In 1719, the city became the center of the Sviyazhsk
province of the Kazan province, in 1781 - the county town of the
Sviyazhsk district of the Kazan governorship (since 1796 again the Kazan
province).
Initially wooden churches and monasteries of Sviyazhsk
were gradually replaced by stone ones; the abundance of monasteries made
it possible to call small Sviyazhsk a "monastic city".
In
1920-1927 the city was the center of the Sviyazhsky canton of the Tatar
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and in 1927-1931 the center of the
Sviyazhsky district.
Alexander Shirokorad claims that in 1918
Sviyazhsk became one of the first places of Soviet political repressions
in the country, when, on the orders of the military commissar of the
Bolshevik government, Trotsky, every tenth Red Army soldier stationed on
the island was shot, who failed to drive the White Czechs out of Kazan.
There are several conflicting testimonies about the erection of
monuments to Judas on the territory of the RSFSR (in particular, in
Sviyazhsk) in the early years of Soviet power. In 1917-1923, some White
Guard and émigré newspapers wrote about the installation of monuments to
Judas in Soviet Russia. In the same years, the Danish diplomat Henning
Köhler and the émigré writer A. Varaksin, who allegedly witnessed the
installation of the Judas monument in Sviyazhsk in August 1918, wrote in
their memoirs about the installation of a monument to Judas in
Sviyazhsk. Contemporaries opposed to the Soviet regime considered the
reports about the monuments to Judas quite plausible (for example, I.
Bunin). As for Varaksin, there is only a link to his book: in the Kazan
magazine No. 2-3 for 2000, an article was published ““ As it was ” -
eyewitness accounts of the Sviyazh tragedies during the revolution and
civil war. This article cited A. Varaksin's book "On the Roads of
Russian Troubles" published in Berlin in 1923. However, there is no
exact data in the book.
Possible source of rumors about the
monument
In August 1918, one of the commanders of the operation to
capture Kazan by the Reds was one of the leaders of the Latvian riflemen
Jan Yudin (Janis Yudinsh). In particular, he is credited with developing
a plan for military operations in the region. On August 12 (that is,
just around this time a monument to Trotsky is supposed to be erected),
he died, having been mortally wounded. The funeral of brigade commander
Yudin was carried out with great honors in Sviyazhsk. Quite likely is
the speech of Leon Trotsky at parting with the Latvian shooter.
For Henning Koehler, who confused the names and names of cities, did not
know the Russian language and was a man of extraordinary imagination,
the surname Yudin (Judin, English Judah - Judah) could well seem
consonant with the name of the traitor apostle.
Yudin was indeed
erected in 1918 a monument on his grave in Sviyazhsk. This is evidenced
by his colleague, the Latvian shooter Stuppe: “In August 1918, the
commander of our 3rd Latvian rifle brigade, Comrade Yudin, was mortally
wounded by the explosion of a random White Guard shell. After his death,
his body was sent to the Sviyazhsk station and buried there behind the
railroad tracks. On the monument erected on the grave, it was engraved:
“Yan Yudin, commander of the left-bank group of the Red Army for the
defense of Kazan, and his orderly, who died in the battle for Kazan on
August 12, 1918.”
Perhaps it was the presence at the installation
of the tombstone that a certain Yudin seemed to Koehler, who had little
understanding of what was happening, a phantasmagoric blasphemy.
As Koehler himself admitted in 1943, “memories are artistically
processed, condensed and enhanced. Each of them has a lot of experience
gained, but they should be perceived as a work of art.
In view of
the foregoing, the existing evidence is doubtful, no one has seen the
monument, not a single photograph of it has survived. There is no
mention of the installation of this monument either in documents, or in
the memoirs of contemporaries, or in the then Soviet newspapers, which
also noted much smaller events. Thus, most likely, information about the
monument to Judas is an element of the propaganda and information war
between whites and reds.
By the Decree of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee of February 1, 1932, the city of Sviyazhsk was transformed
into a rural settlement. It served as a place of exile and forced labor
during the Stalinist repressions.
In 1928, in Sviyazhsk, a
children's labor commune was opened on the premises of the Assumption
Monastery, which in 1936 was transformed into a correctional colony
(Collection No. 11), initially for 200 convicts. In 1943, prisoners of
war appeared in the colony. In the period from 1937 to 1948, 5 thousand
convicts died in the colony, which ceased to be a correctional one. From
1953 to 1994, a psychiatric hospital functioned in the premises of the
Assumption Monastery. In 1960, the colony was reorganized into ITK No.
5.
In the 1920s-1930s, part of the churches of Sviyazhsk,
including the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin of the
16th century, was destroyed, and the survivors were plundered; some of
the surviving temple buildings were used as warehouses. The monastery
library was also destroyed.
In 1957, as a result of filling the
Kuibyshev reservoir, Sviyazhsk ended up on an island; due to a decrease
in transport accessibility, the population of Sviyazhsk has
significantly decreased, amounting to less than 300 people by the
beginning of the 21st century.
In 2008, a dam was opened with a
road connecting Sviyazhsk with the left bank of the Sviyaga, uniting
Sviyazhsk with the Tatar Griva islands (these islands are separated from
the coast by a channel and connected to the coast by a bridge). In May
2011, Sviyazhsk was again on the island - the transport dam was cut by a
canal, a bridge was thrown across the canal.
Since 2009, in
April, on the day of memory of Fyodor Chaliapin, the annual All-Russian
Sviyazhsky Festival of Sacred Music has been held. Since 2010, the
annual all-Russian open archery and crossbow tournament "Sviyazhsk Cup"
has been held in July.
Since 2010, a large-scale implementation
of the Republican Fund for the Preservation and Development of Bulgar
and Sviyazhsk "Revival" program has begun on the island-city, including
the restoration and reconstruction of historical sights and the
construction of new cultural and infrastructure facilities, as well as
the renovation of the housing stock of Sviyazhsk. In July 2011, a new
building of the river station was commissioned with an information
center of the museum-reserve, a cafe and a bus stop. Subsequently, all
the temples were restored and several new facilities were opened,
including museums and a horse farm. It is planned to build a new hotel
(in addition to the hotel organized in the reconstructed building of the
former shelter for the blind), an observation deck, a museum of the
Sviyaga River, a replica of the boat on which Emperor Paul I visited
Sviyazhsk, and other objects.
On July 9, 2017, by the decision of
the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, the architectural ensemble of the
Sviyazhsky Assumption Monastery was included in the World Heritage List.
Sviyazhsk is one of the tourist sites of Tatarstan, which has a
whole range of attractions:
Theotokos-Uspensky monastery.
Assumption Cathedral (1556-1561). In 2017 it was included in the
UNESCO World Heritage List.
Bell tower of St. Nicholas Church
(1556)
Sviyazhsky John the Baptist Monastery
Cathedral of
Our Lady of All Who Sorrow Joy (1898-1906)
Sergievskaya Church
(late 16th - early 17th century)
Sviyazhsky
Trinity-Sergievsky Monastery (inactive)
wooden Trinity Church
(1551)
Church of Constantine and Helena (XVI-XVIII centuries)
Makaryevskaya desert on the opposite bank of the Volga
Monument to the Victims of Political Repression (two-meter stele of
white marble)
The State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum
"Island-city Sviyazhsk" operates.