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Tarusa is located in the Kaluga region. It is an Old Russian city on the left bank of the Oka at the confluence of the river Tarusa. The city has the status of a natural architectural reserve. Tarusa is the administrative center of Tarusa district.
Tarusa is interesting low-rise buildings of the XIX century,
which is preserved in the city center.
Temple architecture
Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Resurrection Church.
Nikolskaya
church.
Monuments
The cenotaph of Marina Tsvetaeva.
Lenin monument.
Monument to the poet M. I. Tsvetaeva.
Monument
to Konstantin Paustovsky.
The sleeping boy (Grave of artist
Borisov-Musatov)
Museums
Local History Museum.
Picture
gallery.
Museum of the Tsvetaev family.
House-Museum of K.
Paustovsky.
House-Museum of S. Richter.
Purchases
Products local factory "Embroidery".
How to get there
By car
From Moscow: along the Simferopol
highway M2 "Crimea" with a turn to Serpukhov, or along the old
Simferopol highway to Serpukhov, then transit through the city, over
the bridge across the Nara river to the Bolshevik, then at the fork
with the monument-tank to the left to Drakino, then to Tarusa . The
distance is about 150 kilometers.
From Kaluga: Through the New
Village and Ferzikovo, a distance of 75 kilometers.
By bus
Bus station in the city is located in the center, near the Cathedral
Square.
Bus station.
The city of Tarusa is located on the high left bank of the Oka River
at the confluence of the Tarusa River. There is no railroad, and
therefore the city was less subject to the passage of time and
industrialization. Most of the buildings are one- and two-story houses
located on their own plots of land.
I live in a small town on the
Oka. It is so small that all its streets go either to the river with its
smooth and solemn turns, or to the fields where the wind shakes the
bread, or to the forests, where in spring wild cherry blossoms between
birches and pines ... (K. Paustovsky)
Tarusa and its environs are
located in the north of the Central Russian Upland in the interfluve of
the Oka and Protva.
In the Tarusa region there are deposits of
clays suitable for making bricks, expanded clay (thanks to which the
city is famous for its production of ceramics), as well as building
sands and building limestones, mineral waters, and timber is being
harvested. In the vicinity of the city, limestone suitable for
construction and processing was mined, from which many buildings (ground
parts and floors) were built in Moscow and Serpukhov. In terms of
strength and ease of processing, local limestone is not inferior to
marble, so the builders called it "Tarus marble". It is mined in the
Ignatovsky quarry.
A fortified settlement on the site of Tarusa arose at the end of the
10th century, at the beginning of the 13th century the settlement was
transformed into a city. According to the genealogies of the Verkhovian
princes of the 16th century, the first Tarusian prince was the son of
Mikhail Vsevolodovich of Chernigov, who was killed in 1246 in the Golden
Horde, Yuri, and based on this, the date of the first mention of the
city is considered to be 1246. The city got its name from the Tarusa
River (formerly Torusa, also Taruska), on which it was founded.
In the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles, the city is mentioned
in 6900 (1392 AD), when the son of Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy, Moscow
Prince Vasily the First went to the Horde and bought a label for
reigning in Gorodets, Murom, Meshchera, Nizhny Novgorod and Tarusa.
More than 30 archaeological sites were found on the Tarusa land,
representing all periods of human exploration of the Oka Valley. The
earliest found traces of its habitation in this area date back to the
15th century BC. On the basis of archaeological research, researchers
suggest that Tarusa was formed as a city at the turn of the 11th and
12th centuries, which is a hundred and fifty years earlier than the
first mention of Tarusa in the annals. The location of the princely
citadel continues to be discussed.
During its history, it has
been the center of a specific principality, its own principality and
again a specific principality, from the end of the 14th century in the
Grand Duchy of Moscow: after his death in the Horde, St. Michael of
Chernigov Tarusa separated from the Principality of Chernigov, forming
an independent inheritance, and went to the inheritance of his fourth
son Yuri, whose descendants reigned until 1392. In 1375, three princes -
Tarusa, Obolensky and Moscow - signed a friendship agreement "as one
person." The united Moscow, Tarusa and Obolen squads fought together
against the Lithuanians. In 1380, the Tarusian princes - the brothers
Fyodor and Mstislav - fight under the banner of Dmitry Donskoy on the
Kulikovo field. In the 14th century, the Tarusian appanage began to
break up into a number of smaller formations. The Tarusa princes ruled
over their patrimony until 1392, when it was annexed by Vasily I
Dmitrievich to the Moscow principality and liquidated as an independent
state entity.
When Ivan III decided to put an end to the yoke, in
1472 the Khan of the Great Horde Akhmat began a campaign against Rus'.
At Tarusa, the Tatars met a large Russian army. All attempts of the
Horde to cross the Oka were repulsed. The Horde army managed to burn the
city of Aleksin, but the campaign as a whole ended in failure. Ivan III
gave Tarusa to his younger brother Andrei the Less in 1472.
In the middle of the XV century. Tarusa was not long owned by the
Lithuanians. Only in 1508, after a long struggle, the Lithuanian prince
Sigismund was forced to renounce his claims to Tarusa and other cities
of the Kaluga land. In the first quarter of the XVI century. Moscow
princes gave the Tarusa lands to the Wallachian ruler Bogdan, but then
again annexed them to Moscow.
Repeatedly attacked by the Crimean
Tatars (1521 (Mehmed I Giray), 1591, etc.) - as the chronicler said:
"the Tatars climbed the Oka near Tarusa." In the XVI-XVII centuries,
Tarusa was an important fortified point of "coastal" protection (along
the Oka) on the southern approaches to Moscow. It was part of the
strategic line of the Oka River and was heavily fortified. Gradually,
the place of Tarusa as a fortress-defender was taken by the city of
Aleksin, where the regiment of the "right hand" was transferred for
permanent deployment. In 1654, a plague epidemic raged in the city. By
1681, only 20 residential yards remained in Tarusa. In the 18th century,
the fortifications were no longer maintained, and in 1760 they were
washed away by the flood of the river. Every summer in Tarusa, a small
three-day Petrovsky fair was held, where fabrics, mosquitoes and other
goods were brought.
Tarusa was the family nest of the ancestors
of Peter I: the grandfather of his mother, Natalya Kirilovna Naryshkina,
appears in the Boyar Book of 7135 (1627) among the nobles in the city of
Tarusa: “Poluekht Ivanov, son of Naryshkin. His local salary is 600
rubles; serve by choice. Thus, as early as the beginning of the 17th
century, the grandfather of Tsarina Natalya Kirillovna belonged both in
terms of local salary and service to the number of significant Tarussky
landlords: owning 600 children, he served by choice, that is, in the
first article of nobles.
In the documents of 1671-1672. Tarusa is
mentioned in the list of cities where governors were forbidden to
interfere with the activities of Moscow and other "trading people ...
salt and grain industrialists."
In 1708, Tarusa was assigned to the Moscow province, in 1719, with the district, it went to Serpukhov, in 1776 it was appointed the county town of the Tarusa district of the Kaluga viceroy, renamed in 1796 into the Kaluga province. Tarusa received its own emblem - a silver shield, along which a blue stripe ran from top to bottom, depicting the Tarusa River flowing through the city. In 1779, there was a devastating fire, after which the city was re-planned according to a regular, very successful plan. The layout of that time has been preserved to this day. The main production capacity at that time was a crushed mill, on which hemp was crushed, which was then sent to Serpukhov for the production of the Kishkin merchants.
By the beginning of the 19th century, about 600 inhabitants lived in
Tarusa, there were 70 houses, two churches and one small brick factory,
where only 10 people worked. The main characteristic of the city
continued to be slow development, remoteness from trade routes,
secondary importance compared to Serpukhov and Aleksin.
During
the Patriotic War of 1812, Tarusa, where there were no hostilities, was
the nearest rear city through which the Russian army was supplied with
food. Seven equestrian "flying" posts were created in it, which
constantly monitored the advance of the French troops, daily delivering
information to Kaluga.
In 1837, there were 217 houses, eight
shops, a paper and weaving factory and a tannery in the city. By the
middle of the 19th century, about three thousand people already lived in
the city, the first district school, a hospital, a pharmacy were opened,
a paper and weaving factory and a tannery worked.
Zemstvo reform
was carried out in the Kaluga province in 1864-1871. In 1870, according
to a special architectural design, a stone 3-story zemstvo hospital was
built, which cost the local zemstvo 14 thousand rubles (now the building
houses the Tarusa School of Arts). By 1870, every tenth inhabitant of
Tarusa was classified as a merchant, every second - as a
petty-bourgeois, every sixth - a peasant. “But the city could no longer
feed its inhabitants. There was little urban land (150 acres), the
Tarusa River had no commercial or industrial significance. Residents
went to work in Moscow. Only a small part of them tried to engage in
crafts (40 people) and trade, and even find a job at one of the weaving
factories in the area. The Holy Trinity women's community (169 nuns) was
located in the city, and in 1894 a brotherhood in the name of the Most
Holy Theotokos was founded to fight Khlystism in the district.
The most famous merchant family of Tarusa in the 19th century was the
Pozdnyakovs, the head of the clan was Lavrenty Vasilievich, the mayor of
Tarusa in 1810-1812. His son Vasily Lavrentievich was also mayor from
1842 to 1845. Another son, Yakov, owned a cotton factory and taverns.
Since the end of the 19th century, thanks to its picturesqueness,
Tarusa has become a popular holiday destination. At the beginning of the
20th century, as they say, with the light hand of the artists Vasily
Polenov and V. A. Vatagin, she was nicknamed "Russian Barbizon". The
city attracted many cultural figures who were looking for a quiet
semi-village life. In the 1890s, a lot of landscape painters poured in
here, who chose the town for the extraordinary picturesqueness of its
streets and environs. The first wave of intelligentsia that came to
Tarusa was the Polenovs, Tsvetaevs, Borisov-Musatovs, Vatagin,
Vinogradovs.
Paustovsky wrote: Perhaps nowhere near Moscow there
were places so typical and touchingly Russian in their landscape. For
many years, Tarusa was, as it were, a reserve of this landscape, amazing
in its lyrical strength, diversity and softness. Not without reason,
since the end of the 19th century, Tarusa has become a city of artists,
a kind of our domestic Barbizon. Polenov and the subtlest artist
Borisov-Musatov lived here, Krymov, Vatagin and many of our artists live
here. Every summer, young people from Moscow art institutes come here
for practice. Writers and scientists followed the artists, and Tarusa
became a kind of creative laboratory and a haven for people of art and
science.
In the 19th century, communication with Moscow was by rail (to the
Tarusskaya station of the Moscow-Kursk railway) and further along the
highway. The station is located 20 km on the other side of the Oka River
(Zaoksky village, Tula region). (Previously, there was a floating
pontoon bridge across the Oka. It was unfolded for the passage of ships
and closed manually.)
Vatagin recalled Tarusa at the beginning of
the 20th century: “You drive up to Tarusa on a steamer or from the Tula
coast - even though the city is on the palm of your hand, you can hardly
see it because of the garden greenery, only the lighthouses can see the
cathedral and the church on Voskresenskaya Gorka. And in the spring,
when apple trees bloom, Tarusa flaunts like a bride in a wedding dress
... And what flood meadows along the Oka and Taruska, what herbs and
flowers - you will not find them everywhere in the middle lane. The Oka
flows from the south and brings to us both asparagus, and evening
primrose, sage, and clematis, and the rare kirkazon and orchids.
Botanists come to the Oka flood meadows to collect these rare plants.”
In 1915, V. D. Polenov organized a people's house in the city, which
opened with a production of Polenov's own opera The Ghosts of Hellas.
Also, King Lear, Othello, and the Maid of Pskov were staged in the
people's house.
Soviet power in Tarusa was established on
December 27, 1917. In 1929, the city became the regional center of the
Tarussky district of the Serpukhov district of the Moscow region. In the
1930s, there was a new wave of "emigration" to Tarusa. It was located
beyond the 101st kilometer, and therefore they were sent there after
being sent into exile by “political”. The society there was formed very
intellectual. Since 1937, Tarusa has been the regional center of the
Tula region, since 1944 - the Kaluga region.
From October 24 to
December 19, 1941, the city was occupied by German troops, but did not
suffer any noticeable damage. Bridge over the river Tarusa on the
highway towards Serpukhov was blown up by the retreating troops of the
Red Army. Subsequently restored.
Thanks to the persistent
publicistic appearances in the central press (the Pravda newspaper) by
the writer Konstantin Paustovsky, who at that time bought a house on the
outskirts of Tarusa, the city received the unofficial status of a resort
place in the Moscow region. The limestone quarry was closed. Tarusa was
connected to the central power lines. Significant funds were allocated
for the improvement of the city and its environs.
In 1961, in the
wake of the thaw, the almanac Tarusa Pages was published. Party
officials recognized the almanac as an ideologically harmful book, and
the circulation was withdrawn from sale. However, a number of Tarusa
Pages were sold out. The book is now a rarity.
In the early
1970s, the city became a favorite haunt of dissidents. The tradition of
the 101st kilometer also continued. Here, waiting for a visa to leave
the USSR, Joseph Brodsky lived; the author of the sensational samizdat
collection "White Pages" Alexander Ginzburg visited, and Solzhenitsyn
came, Svyatoslav Richter built himself a summer house. Writer V. Osipov
recalls how in 1983, living in Tarusa after two terms of imprisonment
under public administrative supervision, he looked into Sutormino to see
his acquaintances for literally half an hour and was sentenced by the
court to a fine for “violating administrative supervision”, as he
crossed the invisible city line Tarusa.
Boris Messerer recalls
his life in Tarusa with his wife Bella Akhmadulina: “I love these
places, the Central Russian landscape. Better than him, in my opinion,
does not happen in Russia. It attracts with beauty, nature, expanse. At
the beginning of 1975, Bella and I came here for the first time and
began to live in the house of Svyatoslav Teofilovich Richter, 10
kilometers from Tarusa, in the village of Alekino. There he built
himself such a tower, three log cabins, placed one on top of the other.
We lived happily in this tower. Then we got into the habit of coming to
Tarusa every year. (…) Bella loved these places. In addition, they are
beyond the 101st kilometer, that is, political elements (and criminal
ones too) were allowed to live here. Many famous dissidents came here:
Anatoly Marchenko, Larisa Bogoraz and others. Bella had a circle of
friends, the company was always the best, interesting people. We
wandered, went into all sorts of shawls, drank a glass, talked about how
everything is abandoned and that, however, there are sprouts of life
through the indifference of the authorities.
It has become a
favorite place, a kind of creative workshop for many writers, poets,
translators. Anatoly Vinogradov, Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva, Boris
Pilnyak, Ivan Kasatkin, Konstantin Paustovsky, Nikolai Zabolotsky,
Nikolai Bogdanov, Lev Krivenko, Yuri Kazakov, Sergey Krutilin, Alexei
Shemetov, Sergey Mikheenkov, Anatoly Salutsky lived here. Often there
were Leonid Borodin, Bulat Okudzhava, Yuri Vlasov, Valentin Volkov, and
many others. In the late 1930s and before the war, translators Nikolai
Lyubimov, Nina Daruzes, Ivan Kashkin, Wilhelm Levik lived in Tarusa.
On February 29, 2008, an Interdistrict Cardiology Center was opened
in Tarusa with the help of charitable funds from patrons (the Tarusa
Hospital Charitable Foundation) by the efforts of physician Maxim
Osipov, after which a scandal erupted on March 3 of the same year in
connection with the dismissal of the head physician of the hospital,
Irina Vitalievna Oleinikova, on an unmotivated order Andrey Borisovich
Kryukov, Deputy Head of the Administration of the Tarussky District.
Officials accused doctors of embezzling money given to them by sponsors,
while the sponsors themselves objected to them that only equipment,
medicines and building materials for repairs were transferred to the
hospital - but no cash. The hospital was searched, and the deputies
accused the doctors of "working for the CIA." The case received a lot of
publicity. The public was excited, expressing surprise at the meticulous
interest of officials in other people's charitable money (the word
"kickbacks" was mentioned, in particular). The case was taken over by
the governor of the Kaluga region, Anatoly Artamonov, who reprimanded
the regional health minister, dismissed the deputy for national projects
and the head of the administration of the Tarussky district, Yuri
Nakhrov. On March 20, 2008, by order of the acting head of the
administration of the municipality "Tarussky district" Oleinikova was
reinstated as the chief physician of the Tarusa Central District
Hospital.
In 2016, Tarusa resident, businessman and promoter of
mosaic art Ismail Akhmetov became the winner of the "Patron of the Year"
award, in particular, for the establishment of the Tarusa Children's Art
School in the building of a former hospital and the founding of the
House of Writers in the restored former building of the club-dining room
of the Rest House named after. Kuibyshev.
On October 20, 2020,
the City Council decided to rename 16 streets, returning their
historical names. The decision caused a public outcry and
dissatisfaction of part of the city's residents, deputies from the
Communist Party. He was supported by members of the board of the
Tarusskaya Heritage Foundation. On March 25, 2022, this decision was
canceled by a majority vote of the City Duma deputies.
Tarusa houses the legislative, executive and judicial authorities of
both the city of Tarusa and the Tarusa region.
Local government
The city administration and the city council of the municipal formation
"City of Tarusa" are located in a building on Posadskaya Street (former
Roza Luxembourg).
District
Tarusa District Administration,
District Assembly of Deputies and Electoral Commission of Tarusa
District Located in a building on Sobornaya Square (former Lenin
Square), 3.
The first instance in the consideration of criminal
and civil cases in Tarusa is the judicial district No. 44 of the
Zhukovsky judicial district, where the justice of the peace judges.
Located on Voskresenskaya (former Oktyabrskaya) street, 3a. The Tarussky
District is under the jurisdiction of the Zhukovsky District Court of
the Kaluga Region. The Tarussky District Court was abolished in June
2010. Now in the same building on Kaluzhskaya Street (former Lenina), 59
Zhukovsky District Court.
Regional
In the Legislative Assembly
of the Kaluga Region, the Tarussky District is represented by a deputy
elected from district 19. However, the district also includes the part
of Kaluga, where the majority of voters live, and partly the
Maloyaroslavetsky district. In the elections in September 2020, Tatyana
Drozdova (United Russia) was elected as a deputy.
Services
The
department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation
for the Tarussky district (police) is located along Voskresenskaya
(former Oktyabrskaya) street, 8.
The city has one fire station
number 24, located in the city center next to the bus station. It is
planned to be moved.
Enterprises
Tarusa design studio of artistic embroidery produces
modern women's clothing with handmade elements of traditional Tarusa
embroidery.
The Artistic Embroidery Factory was created on the basis
of the Tarusa artel of embroiderers, founded in 1924.
CJSC "Building
ceramics" (brick)
The plant of the Scientific Research Institute of
Artistic Crafts (ceramics) (now - NHP - Tarussky Artist LLC) was founded
in 1974.
Shop-salon of art crafts "Ksyusha", ceramics, painting,
birch bark, wood products, etc.
Special Design Bureau for Space
Instrumentation of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy
of Sciences
KB Integrated Systems LLC is a group of private companies
in the field of high-precision small arms and robotics.
Brewery
"Tarussky Gus"
Rest House "Silver Age" (previously the Rest House was known as the
Kuibyshev sanatorium, but now it has been reconstructed and partially
rebuilt).
On the city embankment on the banks of the Oka there is
a boarding house "Anchor".
Welna Eco Spa Resort is located in
Tarusa.
There are two secondary schools in the city: MBOU TSSH No. 1 and MBOU
TSSH No. 2.
Secondary vocational education is provided by
professional lyceum No. 34. It has been operating since 1968. The lyceum
trains in the specialties: firefighter, seamstress, carpenter, cook,
salesman, auto mechanic, secretary, plasterer.
Additional
education for children in the field of music and art is provided by the
Tarusa School of Arts. The school is located in the historic building of
the former zemstvo hospital.
Tarusa hospital "CRH of the Tarusa region".
The Russian-Swiss
charitable foundation "Raduga Tarusskaya" operates in the city. The
founder is the Swiss Jörg Duss. The main focus of the fund is to help
children, lonely old people, the disabled, and orphans. The fund is
funded by voluntary donations from citizens of Switzerland and Russia.